The soft bottom gives beneath my feet and finally we are waist-deep. The lights and shadows of the city form another city on the water’s surface. Buildings ripple on the waves. We stand in the middle of the image, the water breaking against our stomachs. Looking at her I remember that we have already picked names for our unborn children, chosen the house we will live in. And I know that it is silly and naïve. It is all a long way off, but we have made plans together.
“Float with me,” she says. I allow my legs to come up beneath me until I am weightless and resting on my back, the water like a mattress underneath. She is lying next to me and between us our hands are joined. For a while we float. The dark sky looks close enough to touch. And then I am picturing her father, staring up at the springy underside of a prison bunk. And I think of my own dad, sitting in his office taking phone calls. I imagine her uncle Charlie dying alone, the asphalt softening below him, everything becoming unimportant so quickly. And I realize that in my entire life I’ve never even met anyone who’s been robbed. I can feel her hand tighten in mine.
“Hold on to me,” she says. We’ve floated further out. “Don’t let go.”
And so I squeeze her hand. I grip it hard until my own hand cramps and aches from the effort. And though she doesn’t make a sound, I know that it must hurt her too.
Harvesters
WHEN MAY CAME, tiny fissures cleaving the steel-gray sky, Ty packed the duffle his father had left him long ago and drove west. Every year was the same. The Harvest began in Texas and it was there where he joined the others, running the combines day and night in staggered lines that left wide swaths in the open fields like fingers through sand. By June they had passed through Oklahoma and on into Kansas where the world seemed flatter still and the wheat moved atop the earth like the shimmer of heat over a fire. Across into Colorado and back through Nebraska following the grain, they slept and ate in trailers too small for comfort and worked till the great sky bruised at its edges, pinks and reds and violets Ty had seen nowhere else. They spoke of little besides the Harvest, and knew each other by their jobs. They traded day wages for rolls of quarters and washed their clothes in empty laundromats. If they drank they did so quickly and with a purpose in mind, filling the corner booths of taverns where they were nameless. With August came the Dakotas, where they moved up East River until they reached Redfield where Ty knew a woman. They worked two full days and half another before the rain they’d left in Tyndall caught up with them. When it did, Ty went to see her.
The flat house stood stark and chipped white at the edge of the town. Shutters that had been bright blue the year before hung faded. How many years had he been coming here? The raised porch, which had always sagged, was gone, replaced by a set of concrete stairs with a wrought iron railing. Ty wondered who’d done the work. In the kitchen window, a candle burned in a wine bottle. The rain had let up some, but the sky was still dark. In the distance, a caravan of semis moved slowly along 212, a gray smudge against the surrounding fields. A black walnut stood in a corner of the open yard, the tire swing that had once been there gone, though the frayed rope remained, twisting in the wind.
Ty knocked twice. A full minute passed before there was any sound, and then another before the door opened. The inside of the house was dark and, though it was four in the afternoon, the woman standing there wore a silk night robe cinched at the waist. He recognized it immediately and felt better. Her hair was matted and her face clear of makeup. Ty tried to reconcile her with his memory. The woman pinned her head to her shoulder as though to crack her neck.
“I guess summer’s about over then,” she said. She stepped back, and shut the door. Ty ran his hand over the railing. A small pool had settled between the front door and the concrete landing. Whoever had built the shuttering had missed on the rise. Ty was halfway to the road when he heard the door open. “You’ll catch your death out there,” the woman said.
The TV was on in the living room, a game show with the sound turned low. The rain picked up and made a steady racket on the asphalt shingles. Ty moved a blanket and sat on the edge of the sofa. The woman sat opposite him in a brown recliner. She pushed an ashtray aside and crossed her bare legs on the coffee table.
“You been to Jilly’s?”
“Got in this morning,” Ty said. The woman shook her head.
“If you think I believe that…” Her voice trailed off, and she stared through the window above his head. “It’s always raining when you come.” The creases at the corners of her eyes looked deeper and she rubbed at them with her fingertips as though she sensed him looking. “They cut my shifts down anyway.” Ty remembered her moving behind the bar, fixing drinks and smiling. He remembered cupping her hand that first time, stopping her before she could turn to go.
The woman looked down from the window. “Where you headed next?” she asked.
“Let me take you to dinner,” Ty said. She stared at him, her eyes hard-set and unblinking. Last year she’d told him to not come back. “Just pass right through,” she’d said.
“Same as always,” Ty said. “Up through Jamestown and Minot, maybe Montana if the weather holds and those others don’t beat us to it.”
“And if they do?”
Ty stood and ran his hands over the front of his jeans.
“Come on,” he said. “Get ready. Anywhere you want.”
They drove to Ashton, and stopped at the only restaurant there. Ty parked near the street and she was out with the door shut before he’d put the truck in park. They sat at a booth with a tiny jukebox on the table and water glasses so small he wondered if they were a joke. It was early still for dinner and the place was empty. She’d put her hair up and wore a yellow sundress with white trim he’d never seen before. She looked pretty, but he hadn’t told her so. A young waitress in nurse’s scrubs took their order.
“You want music?” he said, rifling through his pocket for leftover quarters.
“And ruin our conversation?” she asked. He laid his hands flat on the Formica tabletop and smiled. She lowered her head, but he thought he saw her do the same. Outside the rain was coming down in silvery sheets, filling the potholes in the gravel lot.
“Those stairs are nice,” he said. “What happened to your porch?” Now she smiled full on, showing him again the way her front teeth on the bottom overlapped some. He’d forgotten.
“Never mind that,” she said.
“It’s a nice renovation.”
“Yep,” she said and nodded. “One of several.”
They ate Swiss steak and homemade kuchen for dessert. Halfway through their meal, the rain stopped and there was a break in the sky. He stared at it, and when she saw, she stood to use the bathroom. He wondered if she was crying, but she returned quickly, and without even a streak in the powder she’d put on at home.
“It’ll be pheasant season soon,” he said. “Business will pick up. You might get yourself some of those shifts back.”
“I’ve got other plans,” she said. “And they don’t center on ring-necks.”
“What do they center on?”
“A whole lot of none-of-your-business.” She was older now, but could still sound like a girl. She’d had plans before, and when the waitress stuck her head out from the kitchen to check on them, he lifted his empty coffee mug.
They took 281 toward Redfield. A small pocket of blue had opened above them and the sun sat at its center, curling back the clouds like a flame through plastic. He had belts to tighten on the draper header, teeth to replace on the reel, but it had rained for the better part of the day and he could see the stagnant pools in the fields all around them.