Murphy awoke with nonetheless on his lips. He wondered if nevertheless was better. Or perhaps simply, however or regardless. Be that as it may, he showered and ate breakfast with his dog, a red heeler named Squirt, not because of her size but because of her tendency to have diarrhea. It was gross and so he usually kept that story to himself. He sat on his porch and ate his whole-grain cereal and yogurt while he watched the house of his neighbors a quarter mile away. They were brothers who often played loud music, blues or Southern rock, late into the night. Murphy imagined their smoky parties, men playing poker, women dancing and lounging on couches, and he hated the noise. Still, they were always done before he was finished with his nightly reading and looking for the escape of a dream. Everyone strongly suspected there was a meth lab in the barn behind their house; its blowing up twice fueled the belief. It seemed the brothers were either related to or feared by the deputy who made the rounds through this part of Riverside County. This morning he watched as the red pickup of the fat brother kicked up dust as it headed toward Murphy’s place. In fact, both brothers were fat, and for that reason Murphy didn’t know whether this fat brother would be Donald or Douglas. Murphy was wondering what it would be like to be a painter right up until the time that Donald or Douglas was extracting himself from his vintage, but not well maintained, Chevy Luv pickup. The fact that one of the brothers always wore overalls didn’t help in identification, since he could not remember which one did. The fat man had skidded to a stop alongside the house and now ambled toward Murphy.
Hey, he said. That was all he said. It wasn’t particularly antagonistic or sarcastic, just a hey, but Murphy didn’t like it. Murphy remained seated while he approached, told Squirt to stay.
You do building work? the man asked.
I do. I do building work.
Want a job? He stopped and looked out across the valley, the brown smog hanging over it. He nodded at the view. “You got a nice spot here.”
I like it.
Like I said, you want some work? We got a leak in our roof. It’s pretty bad by now.
It can be really hard to find where a roof is leaking.
We pay pretty good, he said.
Murphy looked out across the landscape at the man’s house. Are you Donald or Douglas? he asked.
This is the part I knew you would like or you knew I would like.
Take a guess. We don’t look nothing alike.
Donald, Murphy said.
Bahhhhnnnn. The fat man made an awful game show sound. I’m Douglas. I’m the pretty one.
Sorry.
We don’t look nothing alike.
I’m bad with faces and names, Murphy said. When can I come by and look at your roof?
You can stop by anytime. I’m on my way out right now, but Donald will be around. Just tell him I talked to you. Blow your horn and wait in the yard, though. Don’t knock.
Okay. Why not?
Donald’s kind of paranoid.
If you go back and read the first paragraph and even the first page you will note that there is no mention of the Eiffel Tower or the fact that it is on the Seine, and you will not find the fact that between the Saint Cloud Gate and the Louvre there are twelve bridges, but yet you know it now. Don’t say I never told you anything.
Murphy wanted to tell the man to go fuck himself and his brother as well, but he needed the work and he didn’t really know why he disliked them so much. In fact, Murphy really needed the work. He wouldn’t shoot me, would he?
Yes.
How easily that yes comes and it makes you, me, wonder just why it would be so easy to not only say yes, but to shoot at a person. But I step outside myself here or at least outside the inside that I have established. There was apparently room here for little more than a monosyllabic, circumscribed utterance.
I won’t knock.
Yep, got yourself a nice view here. You got a nice big barn out back, too. Do you use it?
I keep my horse in it, Murphy said.
If you ever want to rent it out, Douglas or Donald said. Murphy had already forgotten which one he said he was. You know my memory. The funniest thing is I forget how bad my memory is.
I’ll keep you in mind.
So, go on over there whenever you want. The man walked back toward his little truck. He pulled out his cell phone and started yakking loudly, then drove away, kicking up rocks and dust.
Murphy watched him go. Squirt had moved to the edge of the porch to watch the fat man leave. Murphy looked at his soggy cereal and got out of his chair. He thought about the job he didn’t want and then about all the jobs he didn’t have and then about the bills he needed to pay. A much-needed job had fallen into his lap. What was bad about that?
Murphy had to wait awhile to go over and assess the job at the fat brothers’ house. The vet was coming to check out his horse. Trotsky was a twelve-year-old gelded leopard Appaloosa with a good attitude but not a lot of sense. Murphy tried to ride him every day in the hills behind his place. The horse was in need of his shots and he had been lethargic lately.
This business about vets. I could use a good vet. Vets have better medication to dispense than these quacks.
Maybe this is close to, but not what you want to write. Perhaps it’s just ever so different. Like when you come back to a restaurant a few weeks later and the leek soup is just a wee bit saltier or doesn’t have that hint of fennel that you recall, the very thing that made you come back, and yet, even though you’re disappointed, you have to admit that the soup is better this time and so you sit there, stroking your napkin, it’s kind of slick, and you wonder how it’s supposed to clean your mouth, stroking your napkin, thinking, This is not what I came in here for, but it’s better, it’s so much better, but still it’s not what I wanted, but it will no doubt be what I will want in the future, but how will I, in sound judgment, be able to return to this place with the notion that I can get what I got last time, my reason for returning? Fennel.
The paddock was set on a gentle slope, a big blue-gum eucalyptus on the uphill side. The drainage was generally pretty good, but with the horse constantly pacing the perimeter the sand would mound up under the metal corral pipes. When it rained the mounded sand served as a dam. And when the water was dammed, it just pooled there and then the gelding would stand like a fool, ankle deep, but pawing, digging himself into the muddy soup, courting thrush and lameness. When I could see the rain coming, and that was not often enough, I would go out and shovel gaps to drain the water. Sometimes I forgot or the storm developed quickly and I’d have to do the shoveling during the downpour. I was doing just that, at dusk, rain running over the brim of my hat into my face and down my collar, when I noticed the trickle of blood on the animal’s wet neck. The usually spooky horse was at once less nervous and more agitated than ever, an unfortunate combination in a twelvehundred-pound sack of dumb muscle. I put my hand to his nose and he snorted out a wet breath. I slowly moved my fingers up his jaw and to his neck, talking to him the while. I found a wound that had already begun to granulate over. He’d found a nail or something else to throw himself onto. The wound and the area around it were soft and angry and tender. I took away my hand and ducked through the corral pipes, looked at him and thought how it was always something. I grabbed a halter from a nail inside the barn, hooked him up, and led him to a stall. Then it was back through my foaling shed and into the house, where I called the vet.