Lately, and despite the best of intentions, all I\u2019ve been doing is delivering food to Mom. Putting around Bend in Jimmy\u2019s old Ford Ranger like a wind-up Hot Wheels toy. And everywhere I look all I see is a thirsty town, a hungry little village. Eight years ago, when I left, it was the fattest calf in all the land, and now, July third in the second year of our recession, everything\u2019s bleached and dying: yards slurp leftover shade snow from the clay, trailers split in the heat. Used to be a guy\u2019d have to find a real good excuse not to find work here. Construction companies would hire a man to hold signs or carry buckets. They\u2019d pay you to stand around. Nowadays, yours truly, a true blue vet with a Purple Heart, hell, I can\u2019t find a job to save my life.<\/p>\n
The straw that broke the camel\u2019s back was that boy in KFC, pointing, gripping his mother\u2019s arm, calling me fat in his tiny Spanish when all I was doing was trying to ask for an application at the counter. \u201cGordo, gordo, gordo,\u201d like I didn\u2019t know what he was saying. \u201cGordo,\u201d like it was his secret word for what I am. So I shadowed him in the corner of the lobby and popped my knuckles real slow like old George used to do when all Afghanistan was open around us, freezing and dark, concrete dust in the air, everything silent but for pop pop pop. And the boy practically wet himself and started a rapid-fire whimper, his mother guarding him and apologizing and everybody in the store looking at us. Everything about to break. Then my order was called, and the kid\u2019s mom bustled him out. I took a table to myself and tore through that bucket like I\u2019d never eaten chicken in my whole life, and I knew I wouldn\u2019t be able to ask for an application again. Not there, maybe not anywhere.<\/p>\n
They call it Kabul Fried Chicken in Ghanners, one hundred percent original recipe, I shit you not. Growing up, I figured they\u2019d have stored the secret in a vault somewhere, that only two guys in the whole world knew the combination. Jimmy said we could be those guys someday, and so we\u2019d train for hours in the backyard. Because he was the older brother, he\u2019d lead us through all manner of drills. That was us in the pictures, Jimmy and Timmy Vaux, buried up to our eyeballs in the dirt. We\u2019d strip off our shirts and slide along the yard on our stomachs, bruised and filthy and grinning. Shoot BB-guns into an old t-shirt swinging from a limb. I thought we should go for parachutes and M-16s. Jimmy thought we should tunnel in.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s be real goddamn frank, the Colonel sells to whoever wherever, his smug smiling face right tight next to black-gold mosques, mine fields, city centers, you name it, those stupid old-time hornrims a reminder that everywhere you go, everything\u2019s the same, and ain\u2019t nothing sacred. That\u2019s what two tours\u2019ll teach you: the whole world\u2019s addicted to Fried Chicken, and when you come home, you can\u2019t even get a job selling it.<\/p>\n
Mom\u2019s burning through our second bucket of thighs when she asks if any of my apps went through. \u201cThey\u2019d be lucky to hire a veteran,\u201d she says. \u201cTax breaks. You make sure to shake their hands, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m shaking their hands. First thing,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt needs to happen, Tim.\u201d And she isn\u2019t kidding around. I need a job because we have one foot in the street. Mom\u2019s been out of work since Jimmy died, and she\u2019s got no intention of looking, either. A few months after I returned, I moved half the furniture six inches in every direction to make her think she was losing weight, to make it easier for her to get around, but she keeps getting bigger. I thought it would help her get out of the house, but it only gave her more excuses to stick around. How two people can be stone cold broke and fat as a pair of prize hogs, that\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n
Mom\u2019s chewing her chicken to the bone. \u201cYou gotta do more than shake their hands,\u201d she\u2019s saying through a mouthful. \u201cYou gotta stare them down. Appear confident. Make them think you want the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking them right in the eye,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
She swallows and picks up another thigh. Her fifth. \u201cYou doing anything tomorrow?\u201d She asks, \u201cFireworks?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t feel much like watching them burn down Pilot Butte again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHasn\u2019t happened in years,\u201d she says. \u201cYou should go.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a pair we are, both of us squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen, standing while we eat. Too scared to sit on the chairs around the dining room table. \u201cYou should go,\u201d she says again. \u201cAfter all, you\u2019re what everybody\u2019s supposed to be celebrating.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t sleep because I can\u2019t lie on my side anymore, so I spend my nights like I spend my days: driving. Jimmy\u2019s truck is as nimble as it was when he taught me to shift, and I push down Third, hitting 60, 70 miles an hour, past the movie theatre, past the closed-down bowling alley, the Carl\u2019s Jr., the old Wendy\u2019s. Every joint a splash of red in the dark, signs bursting out bright and sudden in the empty desert sky. Red\u2019s supposed to make a man hungry, and goddamn if it don\u2019t work. So I stop at a 24-hour Dairy Queen, order a milkshake, and then I\u2019m really flying high.<\/p>\n
Skin bunches around a shrapnel scar on my waist, and the seatbelt pinches every time I move. An IED, same bomb that took George\u2019s foot. In the one interview I got, the job at the call center, this pumped-up blonde manager asked me about my time in the service, and that\u2019s the story I told. My destroyed waistline. George crawling on his belly. And for some reason I can\u2019t explain, no matter how many damn times I replay it in my head, I lifted my shirt and I showed her. Ran my fingers over my stomach and touched the scar. She made a little note on her clipboard and said she\u2019d let me know. I figured I\u2019d never hear from her again and I was right.<\/p>\n
But for now, off comes the seatbelt and I unbutton my pants, too, breathing easier as I sail toward the next town over.<\/p>\n
In Redmond, everything leads to that Super Walmart me and Jimmy helped save from a wildfire the year I graduated high school. The night we lost him. All through the night, black smoke curled around the mountains and buttes, junipers popping like sticks of dynamite, one after another, and moving ever closer. Every guy strong enough to hold a hose formed a defensive line around the store, spraying and spraying while helicopters from California dumped truckfuls of water over our heads. Clouds of ash billowed up and spread across the plateau and that bitter taste of pine swam in my mouth, black and red pine, a tornado of pine ash, and Jimmy lost somewhere in the smoke, Jimmy lost and the Super Walmart still standing and me always somehow still standing, growing fat and fatter still.<\/p>\n
Out of nowhere, out of the dark, a cop\u2019s red lights swirl up behind me. I slow to a crawl and pull over. I\u2019ve passed through Redmond without even realizing it. I slip the seatbelt across my waist and roll the window down, the officer shaking his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus,\u201d he says, \u201cI didn\u2019t know Fords could go that fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
I look him right in the eyes, say, \u201cHow fast was I going, boss?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI clipped you at a hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rests his elbows on the door and asks for license and registration. I tell him it\u2019s my brother\u2019s truck, and I know this cop\u2019s gonna hit me with a ticket the size of Mt. Bachelor, drop it right in my lap, so heavy I might not be able to stand up again. The nightsmell of cottonwood sweeps in, dry heat radiating along the asphalt. The air pressure rises, and the humidity swells. Everything is so close to burning I can taste it. Cutting through all of it, there\u2019s his alcoholic cologne, a young man\u2019s for god\u2019s sake, the kind a teenager might wear on a date. I unbuckle my seatbelt again, open the glove compartment, and slide my thumb down the handle of the Beretta M9 I keep hidden there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour fly\u2019s undone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
I hand him the papers and ask him the name of his scent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the morning I\u2019m at MickeyDees: two Sausage Egg McMuffins, two orders of hash browns, a large Coke, and the same for Mom. \u201cHappy Fourth of July,\u201d the kid says. He\u2019s a nice looking guy, acne on his chin, real clean cut. I nod and repeat it back. An idea I\u2019ve been mulling all night catches and burns through my stomach. It aches like a sore tooth in the back of my mouth. This is going to be the kid who decides if I live or die.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you hiring?\u201d I give him my best smile.<\/p>\n
He shakes his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a veteran,\u201d I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not my call,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody\u2019s hiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom and I eat breakfast together. She inquires where I was last night. \u201cDo I know her?\u201d she says, and she elbows me. The sun touching her blonde hair through the window, and it\u2019s easy to remember what she looked like before Jimmy went. Thin and tall. She\u2019d been a dancer. Jimmy only ever chased blondes that looked just like her\u2014who can say why, and who\u2019d want an answer? Daisy, his first girlfriend, used to sit in my lap while we cruised around town, her bare feet against the dash, her hair waving in the wind, strands catching on my lips. I found her telephone number when I returned from my first tour. I called and asked if she still used the same hairspray. She\u2019d cut her hair, she said, married some guy named Dan Rodriguez, moved to Portland. All she wanted to talk about were her two sons. All I wanted to talk about was Jimmy. A kid was crying in the background, and I couldn\u2019t tell if it was hers or the television.<\/p>\n
Jimmy and I spent his last Fourth of July together. I\u2019d just graduated, and we were skipping all the redneck stuff that plagued Bend every summer. He\u2019d scouted out a vacant motel with a pool on the outskirts of town, boosted me up over the fence, and I went around and opened the gate. He saluted me, then dived into the water, floating up onto his back, lying still for a while before saying, \u201cCome in, coward, what the hell?\u201d<\/p>\n
I jumped in. The water was warm, and above the evening sky was a red eye, unblinking, everything dead calm. My shirt clung to my stomach and trailed in the water. Jimmy noticed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t you gonna take it off?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way, Jos\u00e9. What if someone sees us and we have to book it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI got you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took off his shorts and for a second I thought I could see right through him, his body cut in halves by the concrete coping, invisible from the waist down, his long blonde hair wet against his forehead. I pulled my shirt over my shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cShorts, too,\u201d Jimmy said, and I flipped them onto the walkway, naked in public for the first time in a long time. Nobody showed up to bother us, and Jimmy started talking about Daisy, what her lips felt like, how she tasted when he went down on her. He was totally hard. And against all my will, so was I. I kept twirling my head around, waiting for someone to kick us out, us two perverts, to call the manager or the police. Waiting for punishment. Waiting for retribution. We floated on our backs until dark fell, and heard fireworks and saw the tips of their explosions in the distance, pop pop pop. A great red light rose over Pilot Butte, coloring the sky, sirens ringing in the distance, getting closer. \u201cBeautiful,\u201d Jimmy said. The first of the two big fires that swallowed up the desert that summer swirled up and up, smoke slithering away over Bend like a lost black snake. I wish I would\u2019ve known Jimmy would be lost in the next. I would\u2019ve said something.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At home, I take a long shower, wash the dust from my hair and hands, scrub my fingernails, wipe under all the folds of my skin. Make myself as clean as possible, and it takes some doing. It\u2019s the 4th of July, and I have a plan for the top of that butte, for right when the fireworks reach their crescendo. I\u2019ll have the Beretta ready. I\u2019m gonna say fare thee well to the whole damn desert, ces\u2019t la vie, good riddance.<\/p>\n
Mom\u2019s lounging on the couch, watching television. The sun cuts motes through our windows. Early bird pops and whistles of firecrackers smack along the streets of our neighborhood. Cars peel out in drag races down empty suburban lanes, and somewhere music plays dimly from a boombox in a yard.<\/p>\n
She asks if I\u2019m going somewhere. How can I tell her I\u2019ve been everywhere there is to go? I\u2019ve seen George cut a boy in half with an M16 while a jingle truck turned the corner behind us, shaking its bells and a crowd of people hung from its wooden beams, watching. I could smell the boy\u2019s blood. Nobody claimed him. All the muscles in my collarbone are tightening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThought I\u2019d head down to Pilot Butte like you said. Haven\u2019t seen the fireworks up close and personal in years.\u201d<\/p>\n
She tries to stand and I help her up. \u201cMind if I come along?\u201d<\/p>\n
And shit, there\u2019s my Mom, excited and smiling, wearing her giant white shirt, the Stars and Stripes emblazoned across the front. This is the first time she\u2019s wanted to leave the house in weeks. I\u2019m nodding my head before I know what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go together,\u201d I say. \u201cWe\u2019ll get some food, take a picnic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The foot of Pilot Butte is ringed by a path that swirls to a clearing where the local pyrotechnicians shoot off their explosives. Firemen water the brown sides, and families trek up with their folding chairs and blankets, coolers of food and drink, children in tow, the whole procession slow and perfect as the track of a tank. It\u2019s over a hundred degrees now, everyone in shorts and skirts, tank tops, bathing suits. Music beams down from the top of the clearing, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. I turn the engine and Mom looks up, into that long walk and the sun. Squint, and you can see the heat roiling over the concrete and waving over the dirt.<\/p>\n
She places her hand over mine. \u201cCan\u2019t we just sit here for a while?\u201d she asks. \u201cIn the air conditioning? We don\u2019t have to make that climb, do we?\u201d<\/p>\n
I pat her hand. \u201cNot if you don\u2019t want to.\u201d She closes her eyes and leans back. \u201cThis Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land,\u201d starts playing over the loudspeaker. It shakes the windows of the Ranger. There\u2019s a crowd of people singing along as they walk up the hill. Mom\u2019s running her hand through her hair and fanning herself. A line of sweat darkens the stomach of her shirt.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sure you don\u2019t want to try it?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t make it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re singing up there,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019ve seen you make it through worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
She turns up the air conditioning. \u201cYou can go without me. I\u2019ll understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we leave now, we can make it before the fireworks start.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can see them from here, can\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n
I nod and turn off the engine. Her perfume is all over the truck now. She smells like lavender. Always has. Every care package of Oreos and chips and Hostess cakes I ever got smelled like lavender. Everything tasted the same. She smelled like lavender in her dress at Jimmy\u2019s funeral. We were each half our size then\u2014you could fit our past selves inside our current selves with enough room for two more people. Now you can barely fit us both in the truck. I unbuckle my seatbelt and the world tilts a little bit as the pressure releases. The sun creeps downward, burning its hole through the earth\u2019s head. The wind picks up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to land a job,\u201d I say. \u201cJust don\u2019t think it\u2019s in the cards. And I\u2019m not feeling any better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll happen,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re dying, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sun\u2019s half-buried and red lines shoot out over the desert. She doesn\u2019t say anything. My words slip around the truck and can\u2019t seem to take hold anywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you\u2019re still missing him,\u201d I say. \u201cI miss him, too. But damn, they\u2019re singing up there. Actually singing. When was the last time you heard a bunch of strangers singing like that together? Listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shakes her head, shivers. She looks like she\u2019s going to throw up. Runs her hands down her thighs. We sit like that for a moment, adjusting to the heat, to the hole I\u2019ve just acknowledged. Then her posture changes like she\u2019s been shocked. She straightens, goes tight, looks me up and down, then opens the door to the truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she says, \u201cCome on then. Let\u2019s go. Nobody\u2019s dying today.\u201d<\/p>\n
And together we start the climb up the butte. Out goes my elbow and she grabs it, and her arm is warm and dripping with sweat, and I don\u2019t care because we\u2019re moving, goddamn it, we\u2019re moving. And the scar along my beltline is pulsing and stiff and every time I bend my knees up the path it feels like my belly will tear open and all of me will spill out wild onto the butte here. But we\u2019re fine, as fine as fine gets, and we\u2019re moving. Mom\u2019s got her eyes on her feet, hut two three four, and I never knew a better soldier, but me? My eyes are on the sky, where the first of the fireworks are already exploding. Huge red bursts pop overhead, spreading out and surrounding the butte. And I\u2019ll be honest, half of me, the outer, harder half, gordo gordo gordo, hopes those sparks catch and take us all in one big final fire, the fast food joints and the swept-out movie theaters, the trailers and the half-built homes that\u2019ll never fill up with families. I can\u2019t tell whether the red\u2019s been driving that half hungry or angry\u2014that\u2019s the problem I can\u2019t seem to figure out. I don\u2019t know if I ever will. But the other half, the part that\u2019s always been there, the half that\u2019s buried inside, swimming naked in the pool with his brother, hell, that half is just happy he\u2019s made it to the top of the butte with his mother. And maybe it\u2019s just my imagination, but it feels like everyone\u2019s turned and is listening to us sing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An idea I’ve been mulling all night catches and burns through my stomach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1540,1543,1158,1542,1541,1539,53,1538,671],"class_list":["post-14427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-brotherhood","tag-fast-food","tag-fire","tag-mom","tag-obesity","tag-oregon","tag-suicide","tag-veterans","tag-war","writer-william-gatewood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14427"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14438,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427\/revisions\/14438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}