He got up and banged on the AC with his boot heel. It clanked to life slowly. Out behind the barn, there was a vicious cacophony of squealing and grunting and thrashing and then it was silent. Clearly it was going to be a long night, the mind chasing the heart in circles around the moon.
—
The days passed. True to his word, Karl kept James moderately busy. But, it was pleasant work, at a stately pace. Lots of golf cart driving, and standing around discussing strategy before anything was actually done. James patched a few fences. He cut and cleared some brush. He filled the feeders, hauling sacks of corn, winching the hoppers down to the ground, smelling that good midwestern smell as the golden stream poured forth from the tipped bag. On weekend evenings he and Karl would load up in the truck and head to Bandera, the nearest town, for beers and a hamburger. As far as James could tell, Bandera was not populated by a single attractive female between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. This relaxed him in a way that he, up until this point, had thought impossible.
—
He called Casey to update him on ranch life. After listening for a while Casey said, “Hey, while I got you on the phone, I wanted to ask you for something.”
“What?”
“Your life, basically. I want your life.”
“Like, you want to sacrifice me for something, or you need a heart transplant, or—?”
“I just want to take off when I want to and go live on a ranch and mend fences and screw around with strange women and drink beer.”
James laughed. “Don’t tempt me, brother. I’d take your place in a heartbeat. Wear your house slippers. Drink your fancy whiskey. Enjoy your bank account. Choke your wife.” There was silence on the line for a moment.
Casey cleared his throat. “Please never mention that again.”
“You’re right. Sorry.”
“Seriously, though, James. Never change. For the sake of all of us sad bastards who need to live vicariously through you, never stop what you’re doing.”
James knew what his brother needed. He gave it to him. He said, “I have a feeling that all this will be decidedly less thrilling when I’m fifty. You ever think of that? Because I do, all the time. I worry that I’ll be doing all the same stuff, just none of it will be quite as good as it used to be. There’ll still be strange women but most of the time I won’t be able to get it up anyway. I’ll still have my freedom but I’ll be too tired to go anywhere, and I’ll probably start to accumulate cats and when I finally ride the big one, sitting alone in my recliner in front of the TV, no one will find me for three weeks and the cats will have eaten most of my face. So, there. Stop your bitching. You’re living the dream.”
Casey didn’t say anything for a few moments. James could hear the rhythmic clicking of a pen.
“You remember Linda’s ovaries?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, we’ve been walking the tightrope with no safety net for a while. Flying with no parachutes. Rafting with no life jackets.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“We agreed that Linda should go off birth control and just see what happens.”
“And?”
“We’re knocked up over here in Amarillo.”
“Oh, man. Congratulations. Tell Linda I love her. That’s great.”
“I still don’t know if I’m ready for it all, but I guess it’s too late. We are about to go shopping for stuff to make one of the spare bedrooms a nursery. Lord help me.”
James could hear the happiness in his brother’s voice, and felt a small twinge. It stopped short of jealousy. But just short.
—
There was a rainy day. A small miracle. The air was thick and humid and it was still hot but the dust lay down. James and Karl pulled the golf carts into the barn and did some maintenance. James had never been mechanically minded and Karl was having a good time exposing his ignorance. “Hand me that oil filter wrench there, Montana. No, I said the oil filter wrench. No, the oil filter wrench.”
“Karl, I don’t know what that is.”
“Goddamn, son, are you serious? You’ve never changed your own oil? The decline of a once great nation. Evidence.”
Later, James drove up to the hill where he was able to get spotty cellphone reception. He had one voice message from Carina. “Call me immediately.” This was how she always left him messages. No one else he knew did this and it always drove him to think the worst, that she had been involved in an accident of some kind or that she needed him to bail her out of jail or that she was pregnant. There was something about Carina that placed all of these things firmly in the realm of possibility. But, up until this point it had always been something benign, something like, she had just heard an NPR program about life on the Wind River reservation that she thought was horribly off base and she wanted to discuss it with him.
He wasn’t sure he was ready to talk to her. He’d called her only once since leaving, and he’d kept it vague. He’d told her he was going to visit his brother, and that was it. His life at the ranch was simple, unexamined, not something she’d understand. He could picture the conversation, trying to defend himself in the face of her incredulousness. You’re filling deer feeders with corn? Are you serious? Everything unraveling under her scrutiny. She would accuse him of trying to hide. “My god,” she had said to him once. “Am I the first adult woman you’ve ever had to deal with?” They were parked in his car on the hill overlooking town. This was when they were still stealing moments wherever they could.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you seem incapable of taking anything seriously. Is that how she likes you to be? Or, is it just a coping mechanism you’ve developed in order to endure swimming in a pond that shallow?”
“Shallow ponds are the best for swimming. They warm up the quickest. And you can always touch the bottom if you get tired.” She looked at him for a long moment. Shook her head. Got out of his car and into hers.
He figured that she had probably never been swimming in a pond her whole life. He could see her as a child, in the summer, running wild through the concrete heat of whatever hellhole she’d grown up in, the busy city pool her only escape. After that, how could she help it if her aura was clear-blue California chlorine?
He sat for a while watching the rain dapple the truck windshield. Then, he drove back to the bunkhouse and stripped, running through the rain, to dive into the spring pond. He kicked down until his outstretched feet had felt the muck bottom, and then he turned and drifted slowly back to the surface, opening his eyes to see the raindrop-pocked roof of water above him. He floated for a while on his back trying to evaluate his level of enthusiasm for the return home. A new school year at Pine Creek. Anxious parents. Lesson plans. His classroom had two long bulletin boards that would need to be rehung with inspirational quotes and motivational posters. These bulletin boards had become nightmare fodder. In one memorable dream his posters had somehow morphed overnight, so that, on the first morning of school, the children were greeted by walls plastered with profanity-laced diatribes and pornographic pictures. He woke up soon after his firing.
He toweled off and sat at the small table in the bunkhouse. Call me immediately. Maybe he’d write her a letter.
—
Somehow, it was mid-August. There was more activity on the ranch than there had been all summer. Housekeepers came to air out the guest cabins. Men in camouflage shirts with binoculars around their necks patrolled on golf carts. Hunting season was approaching. The actual owner of the ranch came from Austin for the day. He was a big, white-toothed, red-nosed man who didn’t have much to say to James but immediately fell to back slapping and exchanging barely coherent Texas good ol’ boy insults with Karl. They loaded a cooler with beer and departed on a golf cart and were gone for the rest of the day. Apparently he’d made his money mostly in real estate. Probably a little oil revenue there on the top, like salad dressing.