“Not really.”
“You’ll learn about it later in school.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“Nothing is special about it. It’s just something my father did. The men who worked for him were very tough; you had to be, working with cathodic protection. Sometimes, the men would have to splice the cables together, which involved something called epoxy—a kind of glue. They would have these bags of liquid that were divided into two parts, and they would have to squeeze the bag repeatedly to heat up the liquid, then pull apart the divider to mix it, then cut open the bag of liquid, and pour it into a mold. My father said that epoxy, if it got on your skin, would be almost impossible to remove. He told me once when I was a little boy, ‘Edward, I’m thirty-six years old, but my hands are eighty-four.’ I don’t think he meant that literally, because that would be impossible.”
Kyle kneels down and picks up a small rock from the roadway. He throws it sidearm, and it thumps against a fence post.
“Good throw,” I say.
“Can we go over there and look at the pump?” Kyle asks.
“Oh, no.”
“Why not?”
“That would be trespassing.”
My father warned me never to trespass. There was nothing he hated in the world more than disrespect of private-property rights. If you got him talking about those or the shenanigans of Democrats, he would get very angry. However, if you got him talking about tax cuts or Ronald Reagan, he would get very happy. To be honest, none of those subjects interests me very much.
Kyle spreads his arms wide and says, “Dude, there’s nobody for miles. Let’s go take a look.”
“Kyle, no.”
Kyle is not listening to me. He shimmies (I love the word “shimmies”) under the barbed-wire fence while I say “No, no, no, no, no,” and he takes off running across the field, his feet kicking up dust as he goes.
I am too large to shimmy under the fence. I grab a fencepost with my right hand and put my left foot on the bottom strand of barbed wire. The strand goes all the way to the ground as I put my weight on it. I look for Kyle, and he’s now just a dot on the horizon, yards and yards away from me.
Slowly, I straddle the barbed wire, bringing my right leg over to the other side. I am in a precarious (I love the word “precarious”) position now. My balls are hanging directly over the barbed wire. As I find the ground with my right foot, I start bringing my left foot over, and that’s when it happens. I let go of the top strand of barbed wire too fast, and it springs upward, gouging me in my left hamstring. It tears my pants and cuts into my leg, and I fall down on the other side of the fence.
I pick myself up and dust off, and as I limp toward the oil pump, I see that Kyle has climbed up the back of it.
“Kyle, get down!” I scream. He can’t hear me or doesn’t want to hear me. The wind is blowing, and it’s as if my words get scattered away from where I’m aiming them.
“Kyle, get off that right now!” I scream again, and this time I know he hears me, because I’m close enough to see his face.
He waves at me. “I’m a cowboy, Edward, and I’m riding the biggest horse there is!”
“Get down!”
“Make me!”
I am flummoxed. I’m not going to climb on the back of the pump to chase him; that is just asking for trouble and maybe even tragedy. I can’t call his mother, because I left the bitchin’ iPhone way back at the car. I can’t get anyone to help me, because no one else is here.
I’m feeling helpless. I run several steps toward the oil pump and then I stop, because I have no idea what I’ll do once I’m there.
“Get down,” I yell again.
“No.”
I pace back and forth and I run my hands through my hair and I get more and more frustrated. I want to scream.
“Kyle Middleton, you little fucking shitball, you get down off that right now! You’re pretty high and far out, aren’t you? Well, fuck you and the horse you’re riding on.”
Holy shit!
Kyle’s face appears to lose all color. He climbs down off the back of the oil pump and walks over to me. He doesn’t say anything. I’m breathing hard. I try to speak.
“I—”
“Wow, Edward.”
“I—”
“‘Little fucking shitball’?”
“I—”
“Wow.”
“I—I don’t know where that came from. I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry. That was cool.”
“No, it wasn’t. Also, Kyle, you shouldn’t say ‘fucking’ or ‘shitball.’ I know I did just now, again, but it’s not nice to say things like that.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry again, Kyle.”
“I’m sorry, too. What happened to your pants?” He points at the hole on the backside of my legs.
“That dumb fence,” I say.
“It tore your pants up pretty good.”
“I know, Kyle. It hurts, too. I’m lucky I didn’t snag my balls.”
We’re making our way to the Cadillac DTS slowly, because I’m limping. I look to the sky now and I can see what the motel owner—why do I not know her name?—warned us about. It’s not the bright blue it was this morning; instead, it’s that gray color that forebodes (I love the word “forebodes”) a storm. I think about R.E.M. and the song that was playing as we drove out of Cheyenne Wells, the one where Michael Stipe sings about a sky that looks like a Man Ray painting.
I also think about the awful thing I said to Kyle and where it must have come from. Actually, I know where it came from. When I called him a “little fucking shitball,” that came from Scott Shamwell the pressman. He usually said that about Elliott Overbay, the copy desk chief, but never when Elliott Overbay could hear him. When I said “you’re pretty high and far out,” I was quoting Sergeant Joe Friday from the first episode of Dragnet 1967, which originally aired on January 12, 1967. It’s one of my favorites.
The last part, when I said “fuck you and the horse you’re riding on” to Kyle, is easy. That’s my father. Those are his words. I am flabbergasted (I love the word “flabbergasted”) that they ended up on my tongue. Not literally, of course. That’s a figure of speech.
Two things are clear. First, when it comes to yelling at people, I am derivative (I love the word “derivative”). Second, I have no business telling Kyle what he should or shouldn’t say. I can’t control my own mouth.
Kyle again shimmies under the fence, and then he steps on the middle strand and lifts the top one so I can dip my head and sneak through.
We get in the car, and I turn it on. Michael Stipe is singing about the flowers of Guatemala and how they cover everything. I make a U-turn on the dirt road and head back to the two-lane highway that will lead us to town, and that’s when the first fat snowflake hits the windshield.
By the time we get back to the motel, it’s an onslaught (I love the word “onslaught”) of snow. The flakes are fat and wet, and they cling to the windshield almost as fast as I can use the wipers to get rid of them. The streets of Cheyenne Wells fill quickly with snow, and the Cadillac DTS fishtails as we pull into the parking lot.
Inside, the motel owner is waiting for us.
“I was watching for you,” she says. “I told you a storm was coming.”
I rub the top of my head with my hand, feeling the snow melt in my hair, and Kyle stomps on the entryway rug to get the snow off his shoes.
“It came on with no warning,” I say.
“No,” she says, “I warned you. I told you ‘storm’s coming.’ I couldn’t have been more clear than I was.”
Again, her eyes are playing games with me. Every time she speaks they sparkle, or seem to. I know this is a trick of the light. And her mouth crinkles like she’s holding something back—it flummoxes me that I can’t tell if it’s a grin or disdain for how stupid I was, getting caught in the storm like that.