I collected the bowl of apples and the peeler Mom had left on the counter for me and went out to the front porch. I balanced the bowl on the railing and slid my feet between two spindles to stand on the bottom rail, so I could lean over and get a better look at my brother. Mick was crouched in the driveway next to a black Triumph motorcycle, his high school graduation present to himself. He was hoping to catch a girl with it, I knew, or to go away on it, or both. I was not in favor of either, but he was over the moon. The bike was magnificent.
His toolbox lay open in the dust, and a greasy rag dangled like a cockeyed tail from the back pocket of his coveralls. Most of his blond hair was tucked up under a train engineer’s cap, but a few wayward strands crept down his neck and caught the poplar-filtered morning light like filaments of some shiny spun metal. No one else in the family had hair like that. Not even close. I thought about sneaking up behind him with a pair of scissors and snipping off a piece, but it seemed like a lot of work and probably not worth the repercussions. Instead, I looked around for something small to throw at him, as it was my habit to be annoying. I did know better than to hit him with an entire apple.
Without looking at me, he said, “Don’t even think about it,” and gave one of the screws on the engine an infinitesimal turn.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything,” I said. I was still searching, but there was nothing. I’m sure I sighed. I was a great sigher in those days. I picked up the bowl and sat down with my back to the wall, scissored my legs open, and set the bowl between them. The peeler was still on the porch railing.
“Crap.”
“What’s wrong? Can’t find a weapon?”
“I left the peeler. It’s on the rail.”
“Bummer.”
“Get it for me?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Cupcake.”
I didn’t move. I sniffed the air and it smelled like cow farts. I said so.
Mick said, “What smells like cow farts?”
“The world.”
“Probably not,” he said. “Probably just Montana.”
“Oh.” I pondered my entire range of geographic and zoologic knowledge, not coming up with a whole lot. “So, does that mean Africa smells like hippo farts?”
“I doubt it. Hippos fart underwater.”
“So what other animals are there?”
“Anywhere? Or just in Africa?”
“There. In Africa.”
“You have an encyclopedia, Riley. Why don’t you look it up?”
“I have to peel these.” I took an apple out of the bowl and balanced it on the top of my head. “Plus, it wouldn’t hurt you to just tell me.”
I heard him sigh. I think he must have taught me how. “All right. Then will you be quiet?” No promises. I made a noise, like hrrmm.
He pulled the rag out of his pocket, dipped it in a tin of rubbing compound, and began to buff a tiny scratch on the gas tank. “Elephants. Don’t even tell me if you didn’t know that already. Antelope, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, warthogs…”
“Warthogs?” I sat up straighter. “You made that up.”
“No,” he said, “I did not.”
I tilted my head forward to drop the apple into my hand, put it back in the bowl, and slitted my eyes like a snake. I considered my options. My tendency to doubt was well earned, but I still believed most of what Mick said, unless the bullshit was totally obvious. He was ridiculously smart. He read tons of books and remembered what was in them. Not like some people.
“What do they look like?” I said, still not sure which way this was going to go.
“Like bristly little pigs. Their tails stand straight up.”
I was eyeing the peeler, and even went so far as to set the bowl next to me so I could get up to retrieve it.
“What else?”
Mick said, “I’ll draw you a picture later.”
“When later?”
“After now.”
We were almost done. I could tell.
“Where do these guys live?”
“At the beach.”
“The ocean?” To me, the ocean was the most magical place in the world, even though I’d never seen one, never been farther outside Montana than the North Dakota Badlands. But even the Badlands had once been underwater, or so I’d been told.
“Yes. At the beach at the ocean. Where beaches are.” Mick popped off the spark plug wire, reached into his toolbox for the ratchet, and loosened the plug. The noise the ratchet made was a bit cricket-like. I wondered if I could tie that in somehow to make the conversation go further. Gave up.
Mick looked over his shoulder at me. I wasn’t moving. I could have been dead. “Are you going to peel those apples or what?”
“What,” I said, but that was it. I knew it was going to be.
I got the peeler and began skinning apples, imagining for a short time they were small rabbits and me a wily trapper collecting pelts, but it didn’t make me feel very good; it made me feel a little sick, in fact, so I tried to take it back, in my head, but couldn’t. By the time I finished, Mick had disappeared into the garage. I took the apples inside and set them on the counter. “Here are your rabbits,” I said — whispered — to no one.
I whistled Cash from his refuge under the table, and together we padded the two flights up to my room, which had once been the attic. It was small, because the whole house wasn’t very big — just a tallish box, perfectly square with the exception of a two-story addition off the back. I could get to the roof of it from my window but had to be careful on account of the steep pitch, for snow. The walls were blue, with tiny green and yellow fish trailing like ivy around the windows. Mick had painted them when he and Dad fixed the space up the summer before.
I was nearly asleep on the floor, one hand buried deep in the fur around Cash’s neck, when I heard the bike start up. I bolted down the stairs, banked off the bannisters, miscalculated, and slammed my shoulder hard into the wall at the bottom. I hesitated just long enough to straighten a framed picture there, which was long enough to miss Mick’s turn from the long driveway onto the frontage road. I stood on the porch, tracking his progress beyond the hedgerow by the rooster tail of fine Montana silt he kicked up. I watched until all evidence of my brother and his bike disappeared from sight, a mile or more away. Cash leaned against my leg, and I reached down to scratch behind his ears.
“Shit,” I said. I did not realize my mother was standing at the screen door until I heard my name.
“Riley,” she said, “I really wish you wouldn’t swear so often.” Mick was teaching me. He was doing a good job.
“Sorry, Mom. But damn…”
“Riley. I know.” She pushed the door open and held it with her hip, laid her hands on my shoulders, rubbing the one that hurt. I wondered how she knew. “Maybe I’d like to go with him too.”
I snorted. “You would not.” I tilted my head straight back so I could see her expression, but it was upside down and I couldn’t tell anything from that angle. Not that my mother was all that decipherable anyway. We never knew from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, which mom we were going to get. There was quiet mom, silly mom, fierce-but-not-mean mom, and mom with the faraway look in her eyes. That mom was almost but not quite the same as quiet mom, who still knitted and cooked and made us do our homework. Faraway mom just stood at the window, looking out at what I would remember later, after I’d gone away: the distant mountains, the buff-colored wheat fields, red-tailed hawks drifting with the thermals, poised to drop out of the sky, like missiles, onto errant field mice.