UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Marine

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE

Marine Biology

A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts

Kyle Zaffino

December 2013

Thesis Committee: Professor Mark Haskell Smith, Co-Chairperson Professor Andrew Winer, Co-Chairperson Professor Elizabeth Crane Brandt

The Thesis of Kyle Zaffino is approved:

Committee Co-Chairperson

University of California, Riverside

Table of Contents

Bull Market 2

Regicide 4

Arc of the Covenant 13

Country Fried 24

Spring Forward 31

Whitecaps 40

Sabra 45

Braille 57

Pay it Backward 62

Angel Hair 77

Marine Biology 100

DOT 119

while we used long fingernails to carve epitaphs into the floor

you were scratching freedom from concrete living in a world of gamblers

and murder victims I walk these corridors knowing of the net beneath

your defiance has become legend within these walls and we sit

in our cells and hope you live enough life for the rest of us who did not make it out

~Scott Hull, Alcatraz Metaphors

Bull Market

Park Tavern is a squat gray concrete box, slightly elevated above the south side of PA State Route 5. With its short pale walls and the sloped dirt parking lot, the establishment looks like a major league pitcher's mound, although in a ballpark the

Budweiser and Coors signs are on the outfield walls rather than beckoning the fielders from within the rubber.

The interior of the tavern is composed of darkly-varnished lumber, dotted here with a 26” LED television and there with a vintage bicycle in the rafters.

Though the televisions are the only thing in the tavern younger than the average medical student, everything is tidy and well-maintained; the room has the soft umber hue of a Scout camp's mess hall.

James is a regular at Park Tavern. He frequently brings his fiancee and their two daughters to enjoy the seventy-five-cent tacos on Wednesdays. The kids are five and twelve, they haven't grown into their appetites yet, so he can usually feed the family for twenty bucks after tip if he and Dana don't order booze.

This is important when you’re trying to feed a family on what you make teaching phys-ed at Iroquois High School.

This week James and Dana do order booze, he a Manhattan and she a Cosmo.

This week the girls aren't restricted to tacos—James springs for a white pizza and eighteen butter garlic wings. This was their older girl's last Wednesday of elementary school—Emily's starting at Harborcreek Junior/Senior High next year.

It's a good evening—Emily is old enough to appreciate that she's taking a big step, but not old enough to bitch about her parents making a big deal out of it. They savored the pizza, mouths dripping olive oil as if they were Roman vampires, and when the wings were gone the girls squabble over the wet-naps like sparrows jostling for a branch and the sight is too goddamn adorable for Dana to chastise them.

As the family steps out of the bar and into the receding warmth of the early- summer sunset, holding hands all in a row like a miscut chain of paper dolls, James hears a truck come to life with the snarl of a lion in estrus. He squeezes the hands of his fiancee and his baby girl and slows down.

He turns to warn Emily in time to hear the popcorn crunch of plastic being pulverized and the sudden sharp thud of heavy metal colliding with substantial metal, sounds that reverberate past your eardrums and somehow make you part of the collision. His head snaps back up as he notices a green truck across the parking lot drawing a scraggly breath and watches it drag his station wagon five feet before the brand-new car next to his jostles his car off the truck’s frame like a football ref breaking up a post-tackle scrum.

Regicide

Amanda sat in trigonometry class transcribing some equations into the labyrinthine order of a Japanese newspaper and sketching corresponding figures amongst the symbols; Goku pointing to a variable to indicate that it’s over nine thousand, Bill the Cat in his tighty-whities blearily wheezing a theta into an equation, Woody pointing to another equation with the remark “Buzz Linear, space remainder.”

The teacher went Baptist revival on one particular equation, starting on one side of the twenty-foot blackboard with a conversion and painstakingly scrawling every single step of a proof. When it was clear that he wouldn’t be turning around for at least ten minutes while he turned their math lesson into a Lego manual,

Amanda wrote her phone number on the top of the page, then tore her creation from her binder--a light pull to loosen it, a deft jerk to rip it quietly--and glanced right to be sure Billy was still frantically writing everything the teacher said and wrote. When he shifted to the right to continue his blistering pace, she slipped the sheet of sketches on his left.

He started when he saw the paper enter his vision, a short line crossing off the word “cosecant” in the manner of a No Smoking sign as, in his distraction, his pencil got away from him. He had to chew on his eraser for a solid minute to keep from laughing aloud. She looked back up to see the teacher at the blackboard and hear “…and so we get…” which indicated the end of the lesson. Perfect timing.

She wrote the conversion and attendant description on the farthest right side of the board, skipping the intermediate work—she figured the answer was as important as the question, but the intermediate conversation was malleable, not meant to be transcribed.

She went to close her binder only to narrowly miss Billy’s hand as he passed her a note of his own; he’d sketched a dancing Ren and Stimpy surrounding a triangle with a natural log in one corner, Ren pointing while shouting “It’s better than bad, it’s good!” and Stimpy holding his hands aloft agreeing “It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood!” She snickered, and glanced over at him with a modest smile.

She slowly swung down to her right to put her binder in her backpack, being careful to catch his eye and to tuck the drawing into her binder when she knew he was looking. “How are ya, Billy?”

He smiled, looking as though he wanted to look as though he hadn’t expected this. “I’m doing. How about your own bad self?”

“I’ve been bad, huh?” She bit her lip, with an exaggerated wink—as far as she knew he’d never really dated, though being a grade apart their social circles did not intersect much.

A full blush, at this. She meant to keep him on his toes, so this was a welcome development.

“Yeah, if you don’t eat your meat you won’t get any pudding,” he said.

If this was meant to be a joke, she didn’t get it. “Duly noted. Dessert’s my favorite part of the meal. What are you up to tonight?”

“I have to go to work,” Billy said. He emphasized “have to” with an eye roll; she knew he worked at McDonald’s, which is a job that solved some problems but not the problems of being broke here and now or of ever not being broke.

She wanted to give him an excuse to call off, but she gathered by the fact that he’d said it at all that calling off wasn’t an option. “How are you getting to work today?”

“I was going to walk, it only takes like a half-hour or forty minutes.”

“Would you like a ride?”

“You don’t have to do that, if you don’t want to.” He looked at her for maybe five seconds after he finished speaking, as though he wanted to say something, but was lacking the words, or maybe the courage, a thing he couldn’t really quite put his finger on.

She smiled, fairly confident she’d just proven her suspicion. “I do want to, you goofball. Meet me at the front door in ten minutes? Or will that make you late for work?”

“Sure, let me drop my English book at my locker and I’ll be right there, thanks.”

She smiled at him and waved—holding his gaze long enough for him to turn and hit his funny bone on a wall-mounted fire extinguisher and do a little bunny-hop in pain and wince, then covering her mouth and looking pitifully at him to let him know that she thought his clumsiness was endearing.

Amanda pulled around the front of the high school in her cobalt Nissan

Altima to pick him up, pop bottles and McDonald’s bags courteously swept off the back seat to the floor to accommodate Billy’s backpack. She shifted the flamingo air freshener hanging on her rearview mirror so it wouldn’t hang cockeyed and distract her while she drove.

She looked away from the flamingo to the front of the school to see Billy exit, stepping uncertainly forward as he panned the lot for her. It occurred to her then that she hadn’t told him what kind of car she drove, so she killed the engine, got out, and waved.

He caught her waving, smiled broadly, and began to walk faster. He did not look away from her until he got to the car, nearly trampling a couple freshmen in the process and earning angry stares and halfhearted muttering like a wrestling heel.

She grinned shyly and tucked her bangs back, turning her head to let him think she was tidying up on his behalf. “Hey, fancy meeting you here,” she said as he approached.

“What’s up, Amanda?” He did a good job of steadying his voice, but in his nonchalance he stumbled on the curb, catching himself on the car.

Amanda stifled a giggle. “You okay over there, cowboy?”

He flushed and laughed nervously. “That’s why I’m not on the track team, for the record.”

“I’m sure. Would you like help getting into my car, or do you think you can manage?”

“Well, with the skill I’ve displayed at trig, I don’t think vector calculus is a good idea. Maybe I’ll just hold my backpack.” He entered the car holding his bag, clutching it like a life ring as he sat before deftly sliding it around his seat to the back.

She smirked at him as she took the wheel. “I thought you were going to hold your backpack?”

“I changed my mind; I’ve heard the legend of your driving, I needed a hand free to desperately grab the bitch handle.” Billy looked between the front seats with feigned dismay. “I was going to hold the armrest for dear life with my other hand. I guess I’ll just have to hold the e-brake instead.”

Amanda clucked at him. “I offer you a ride to work and you try to break my car, and then you talk shit about my ability to drive, even though I’ve now had my license for a whole month longer than you have. I see how it is, Billy.”

She heard his breath catch when she said his name. Gotcha.

After a few blocks of silence, she tried to break the ice. “So there’s a basketball game tonight. You guys are probably going to get rocked at work.”

Visibly relieved at the return to his territory, he replied, “Yeah, we’ve got a great group. I mean, I don’t always know what to do with Bradley, but fuck it, I don’t always know what to do with myself.”

No shit. Amanda rolled her eyes to be polite. “I don’t think you’re supposed to. If you do, it makes your midlife crisis suck a lot worse.”

“Amanda, we live in a place where people get excited for the local beekeepers to sell their honey. We’re having an early-life crisis. If I can have a mid-life crisis from here, I don’t even want to know what it’ll look like.”

Amanda chuckled. “Oh, Billy.” She hit her turn signal to get onto Route 20.

“Hakuna Matata, and all that.” Her eyes lit up, and since she was stuck in traffic she took the opportunity to dig her iPod out of her pocket and click on the Lion King soundtrack, then turn the volume dial all the way up before Billy knew what was going on.

“Oh, no,” Billy moaned, covering his eyes with his hands as Timon began to croon unremarkably.

“Yes,” Amanda said, rolling down the windows even though a noticeable chill had set in. “We are bumping the Lion King soundtrack.” She started driving again, then stopped to turn into McDonald’s and drop Billy off. She saw the manager standing outside the restaurant, looked him directly in the eye, and chimed in with

Simba; “It means no worries, for the rest of our days….”

Billy smiled like a fresh snowman and helped her out; “it’s our PROBLEM-

FREE….PHILOSOPHY!!!! Hakuna Matata…”

Amanda burst out laughing as the song wound down. The car behind her pulled forward a bit to emphasize that maybe she should participate in the flow of traffic.

Amanda didn’t stop at McDonald’s, though; she drove another block and turned into the parking lot at the dingy Tops supermarket, which was surprisingly empty.

Billy looked at her. He seemed to finally be catching on, though it was clear that he still wasn’t sure how to handle it.

An awkward pause, as she waited for his reaction and he couldn’t decide what to do. After a long moment, Amanda asked, “You okay, babe?”

Another sharp breath when she called him “babe.” She put her hand on his knee to drive the point home.

“Yeah, I’m fine…” he began feebly. He did not look at her when he said it, but he slowly slid his hand atop hers.

“Okay,” she said, not intending to push. She gave his hand a squeeze. “You know you can always talk to me if you like, right?”

He looked at her and smiled, eyes open wide in a look of hopeful vulnerability like a dog that had just pooped on the floor. “Thanks, hon, I really appreciate that.”

He snagged slightly on “appreciate;” he may not have meant to say “hon.”

She looked at the clock, which read 3:31. “I see what you mean about the walk. You didn’t need to go anywhere else, did you? I’m up for a short drive, I don’t like being at home very much.”

“You either? I wouldn’t have guessed, you’re so smart and organized and perky all the time.”

Hey, maybe it’s working. “Thanks,” she said, demurely checking her sideviews as she reached for the ignition.

“Amanda?” He sighed, the thunderous sigh of the condemned.

She looked back up at him. “Yeah?”

He leaned forward and kissed her, his hand going to the crown of her skull as their tongues met, his hesitation vanishing as he found her accepting and encouraging. There’s something about the doing that Billy seemed to really like, transcending words and space and everything else, a transgression encouraged by those who know how difficult it is but don’t know why.

When they looked up, “Can you Feel the Love Tonight?” was on. “Really?” they said in unison.

“Well, I guess it wasn’t Kiss the Girl at least, that would be pretty awkward.

Like ‘listen guys; I already did, nothing to see here.’”

Amanda laughed. “Fearing the sea witch, are we?”

“More likely crafty Eric, leading the noble princess astray to the dismay of her family and friends.”

“Gotcha. Do you really feel threatened?”

He cocked his head at that and pondered before answering. “I didn’t know I was in position to be threatened.”

“Neither did I until right now.” She looked at the clock. “Listen, I better get you to work so you have time to eat.”

“Sure, but when can I see you again? How does the weekend look?”

“You know what, I have nothing going on Saturday. What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know yet. I figured we could go to the Diner for breakfast or lunch or something, chat a little bit. Maybe in words this time, I like your doodling but I’m not good enough to keep up.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She turned the car back on and looped around to McD’s.

When she dropped him off at work, he stepped out of the car, grabbed his backpack from the back seat, and leaned back in the front door to bid farewell. “Hey, thanks a ton for the ride. Can I call you when I get home?”

She smiled broadly. “Yes, you can. I left my cell number on the note I passed you.” She suppressed a snort as she realized how cliché that line of play was, then smiled a little as she realized she didn’t care. “I have to go do homework, and you have to work….but I really hope I get to talk to you later, okay?”

Billy grinned from ear to ear. “Definitely. Thank you, Amanda.”

She watched him practically skip into work, trip on the curb, and catch himself on the trash can by the restaurant door.

Arc of the Covenant

I went straight home last night after work. A couple times a week I go out with a few guys from the shop—there are some bars over by GE that have good food and serve late, and it's good sometimes to talk to people now that I got nobody to come home to—but I was beat. Teresa and I still haven't settled custody yet, or who's getting the house (or who'll pay for the house, though I imagine I know already that she'll be getting it and I'll be paying for it—I never did hear of a divorced man not getting taken for a ride by his wife), and I had a meeting with an attorney before work to figure out what to do.

Guys at the shop, and guys we watch football with at the bars, complain about how much attorneys cost. I figure a thousand bucks up front to represent my case in court is chump change compared to payin' the mortgage on a house I don't get to set foot in. My guy, he seems like he knows what he's saying. Although I can agree with their perspective that I'll be pissed if she gets to keep my stuff anyway after all this is said and done.

I grew up the middle of five brothers. We lived in a three-bedroom ranch house, maybe twelve hundred square feet. Mom would walk in whenever she happened to be doing laundry to grab our dirty clothes, and Dad would walk in whenever he needed chores done or when he wanted to know who'd been smoking out back and why they'd seen fit to leave their cigarette butts on the lawn. I never in

my life had my own bedroom until Teresa and I split up, though I guess sharing a room or not is something you get raised with.

I'm used to not having my own space. My brothers left their shit everywhere, which is why I got pretty crazy about making sure my things were on their designated shelf or in their drawer or otherwise somewhere I can fuckin' find them again when I need them. So I understand that a person getting time and space to themselves is a big deal. Brandon's young enough yet that I do keep an eye on him, but I leave the other two well enough alone as long as they don't misuse it.

I know my friends and I all did the most damage when we were chafing at our bits. I mean, there are things you need to tell people not to do and things you need to make people not do—it's sad, really, what you need to say to people these days—but it's always seemed to me like people only find ways to break the rules when there are rules to break to begin with. Kinda the way your dog just wants food and a pat on the head, and if you give him that and teach him where he's not allowed to crap he'll be a good dog—but if you yell at him for smelling the flowers and you put a sweater on him, you become the last thing he wants to see and the moment you turn your back he'll do whatever fool thing occurs to him.

At any rate, I got home about 11:30 or twenty-of, made myself two nice big sandwiches, and sat down to catch the end of the Mets game and some SportsCenter.

The game ran late, as I recall—it was close, but after I finished my sandwiches I was out like a light.

I woke up to a crash from upstairs and man yellin'—yelling—“POLICE,

FREEZE!” I wasn't thinking right, figured something real bad was happening—

Westfield's always been a nice town, you don't see police around here much, which could be because you don't see much need for police around here. I mean, other than maybe some graffiti on the park benches or kids out back of Family Dollar passing doobies, but shit, you got to be a kid sometime or you won't get to be a kid at all.

So I went outside and locked my door and started walking. I figured if something was up I should not be close at hand. I just moved into that duplex last weekend, and I don't know even how many neighbors I have, let alone who they are or what they're up to. You hear through the grapevine about all the small town meth busts and the meth shit goin' on in Pennsylvania over there—and Pennsylvania's not that far away, really—and it gets you wonderin' what—wondering what—the people you don't know in your small town are up to.

Anyway, there was one state car parked in the drive. The roof rack wasn't on, neither, which didn't seem right if there was all this to-do in the house. Again, after the day I'd had maybe I wasn't thinking straight, and it sort of made sense with what

I hear about meth addicts and dealers going crazy at the drop of a hat. Maybe they were there for something else and it just got out of hand, but I didn't want some junkie bustin' into my place and maybe comin' for me or getting me into hot water or destroying my stuff.

What stuff I have, you know, but it is my stuff.

So I walked up around the corner and down the street a ways to the BP there on Main Street. Not much else in this town is open twenty-four-seven (except

McDonald's, which I am not keen on). Plus I figured whatever sleep I was going to get was long gone, so if I was leaving the house I might as well get a cup o' coffee.

God damn it, there I go again. Teresa was crazy about my grammar. Making sure I said things a certain way, saying instead of sayin' and using this “see Spot run” order. Logic, she called it. And here I've been out of touch with her for two weeks and I'm already back to the old Bart who apparently couldn't speak properly.

I guess I've been out of touch with her for a long time, come to that, but we'll cross that bridge another time.

So I got a cup of coffee, and then I walked through that park downtown. I didn't want to sit down in case there was dew on the benches, but it's a nice park, and it's quiet. Westfield doesn't have that many bars, no night clubs or other college kind of stuff, so at night when all the good people of the town are asleep you can hear a pin drop.

That was a major difference between me and Teresa. I like being out of the house—especially in the fall, when the leaves are turning colors and the air is fresh and crisp, the way your sheets are the first time you sleep in them after you do laundry. Or in the springtime, when everything's turnin' green—turning green—

again and it's getting nice and warm out, like the kitchen getting warm when you bake something good.

Maybe it's just the feeling of home that I like, I don't know.

Give you an example. I took our middle son, Frank, to baseball practice this year. All his weightlifting sessions when I had to drive him through six inches of snow, his trips to batting cages and to fielding practice when the weather started to break. I didn't mind—Frank's a good son, and anyway I miss the feel of a good baseball practice—but Teresa didn't want him to play baseball, because it meant more laundry for her, and what if he tripped and fell and broke a bone? So she stayed home and watched TV and shopped on the internet.

Then we got mandatory overtime at work to fill a big locomotive order due for the Far East. Seven-day weeks of twelve-hour days. It was all I could do just to get to work, do my job as well as I know how, and get home. So Teresa had to take

Frank to his last few practices before the season and his first ball game—he's a freshman in high school, he can't drive yet.

I heard from some of the boys at work that Teresa was braggin' to their wives about being the glue that binds the family together, and how I was nowhere to be found when her son had someplace important to be.

Frank hit two doubles that night. The second one I guess drove in the tying and winning runs.

Teresa made sure everyone knew he wouldn't have been there to win the game if she hadn't driven him, even though Frank told me later that she bitched

about the roads the entire way there (even though it was sixty-five degrees, and sunny) and that they arrived during the National Anthem.

I don't know how long I was gone, but by the time I got back to my place I saw an ambulance and a few more cops, and let me tell you the roof racks were all blazing now—you could about see the lake the way my street was lit up. I wanted to go sit in my chair and watch some SportsCenter while my coffee was still warm enough to drink, but when I saw a bunch of cops standing on the lawn with their heads down I figured it was not a good time to try to get in.

Then I saw the gurney come out, and...goddamn. I mean, I never was a soldier or a doctor, and the fistfights I've been in were all out in the schoolyard over the kind of honor kids get into scrapes over, but this guy...I've never seen anything like it. His face wasn't really a face anymore, even in just the flashing of the roof racks you could see blood dripping off of it, and I could not tell his nose from his eyes from his mouth, it was all bruised up and swollen and bleeding.

That's when I said, the hell with it, I'm gonna come talk to these cops and see what happened. I just...I do not understand how I could sleep while such a tragedy was happening. I mean, I don't even know if he's going to make it. I don't see how he could with Hamburger Helper for a face like that. And I was asleep until I heard his door get kicked in.

After they loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, it pulled out with its lights blaring. They didn't hit the siren, though; in a town as small and quiet as

Westfield, there's nobody to get in your way anyway, all you'd do is wake the neighbors.

It was then I saw a second ambulance in the neighbor's driveway. A second pair of medics came out of the upstairs apartment, carrying a second stretcher. A girl was strapped to it—one side of her face was swelled up good, but she was talking as best she could to the medic carrying her. They had her in a neck brace and the medic by the back of the stretcher was squeezing up a blood-pressure cuff.

She looked directly at me, smiled, and gave me a little thumbs-up.

I couldn't look at her for very long. I mean, my daughter was with Teresa for the night, I'd spoken to her on my dinner break about a fundraiser her school volleyball team is doing, but still. The girl on the stretcher was slender, with long eggplant-colored hair, just like my baby girl.

It hit me then that I had seen her a couple times coming in and out of the house. I knew she didn't live there—my neighbors are a forty-something guy and his somewhat younger girlfriend. I hear them argue sometimes and slam stuff, but I don't know them well enough to say what they were arguing about ever, or who was winning.

Anyway, even when it's not your daughter on the stretcher, you want to think of her in her My Little Pony Halloween costume in kindergarten or smiling in the

prom court or as the light of someone's life. You want to imagine that someone, somewhere wants to take care of her and spoil her and make her world better.

A police officer walked over. His name tag said “MacIlroy.” He shined his flashlight on me, looked me up and down. “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

“Yessir. I'm Bart Hammond, I live here on the ground floor. What's going on?”

“Can I see some ID, please?”

I fished out my license out of my wallet with my free hand and forked it over.

Luckily I'd just gotten it renewed, so it had the apartment address on it. He nodded and handed it back. “There was a domestic incident in the upstairs unit. Have you been home at all this evening?”

“Yessir, I got home from working at GE just before midnight. Woke up to a loud noise, come out here and saw a state cruiser in the driveway, and thought I shouldn't be here. I walked over to BP for a cup of coffee.” I showed it to him—it was still steaming. “I come back here hoping it was a DUI stop or something quick so I can watch SportsCenter and head back to bed, and all this hoopla is going on.”

Officer MacIlroy nodded. “Is that all you saw? Nothing seemed off when you got home?”

I stopped and thought about it. All I could see was that poor girl on the stretcher, and suddenly I was embarrassed at having slept through whatever happened to her. “No sir, I was looking forward to dinner and a ball game. I confess I did not.”

“One more question, Mr. Hammond. What kind of car do you drive?”

“A maroon 2003 Subaru Legacy sedan.”

Officer MacIlroy sighed and nodded. “You mean like that one?” He turned to shine his flashlight down the driveway.

Sure enough, a big dinged-up green Silverado sat at an angle to the house, and my car sat at an angle to the pickup. The two vehicles together formed maybe a chevron. The rear of the Subaru was busted up where the truck had hit it—you could see the trunk had buckled up pretty good, the lid was bent into a tent shape and the fender had sorta—sort of—formed around the truck's bumper, and Officer

MacIlroy's flashlight caught shards of my brake light and turn signal scattered on the driveway like dollar-store Christmas tinsel. A little closer to me you could see the tracks in the neighbor's yard where the truck had hopped the curb before it got onto our driveway. The Subaru was also shoved partway into the garage, it had bent the garage door in and torn the bottom sections off their tracks.

I couldn't see enough of my car around the pickup and all the lights to appraise the it real good, see if the axle was sheared or the frame was bent or anything dire like that, but I had a feeling I was not gonna be able to drive to work in the morning.

“Fuck me, I just bought that car six months ago.” I shook my head. “'Scuse me—excuse me, sorry about my language.” I took a sip of my coffee, hoped Officer

MacIlroy would say something—I wasn't pissed at him and I didn't want any trouble. Least not any more than had already occurred.

Luckily for me he just chuckled. “Well, it does look too nice for the demolition derby, I figured whomever owned the sedan wouldn't be pleased about it. I can't imagine the landlord's gonna be happy about the garage, either.”

“With all due respect, Officer, what am I supposed to do? I have to get to work tomorrow, and between the loan I took on that car and getting divorced I can't just go buy something in the morning.”

He folded his arms and rubbed his chin. “I'm afraid I can't help you in the short term. The driver of the pickup was legally very drunk and this is not his first

DUI, so I'd get in touch with your attorney and start working on a lawsuit—you should be able to get compensatory damages in addition to paying for the car.” He took out his notepad and started scribbling. “Here's my full name, badge number, and a phone number you can reach me at if you need me to testify.”

I folded the note and put it in my wallet. “Thank you, sir. I have to call my lawyer tomorrow about divorce papers anyway, I'll talk to him about it.”

He nodded. “Of course. I'm sorry about all of this.”

“You're not the dick who smashed up my car. And anyway I'm glad I didn't have to clean up whatever mess was inside.”

He pursed his lips and looked at the door. “You and me both, man.”

As he spoke, another cop came out the door. He looked pretty upset, though I couldn't tell whether he was angry or sad or what. Officer MacIlroy offered his hand.

“That's my partner, I'd better see how he's doing. Thank you for your time, and again, please get in touch if there's something I can do to help clear this up.”

I shook his hand. “Thanks, I certainly will. You take care of yourself, sir.”

You’d think after twenty years of being married to Teresa my attention to detail would be better. Maybe she was right, maybe I do need to wake up. I don't give her proper credit. I don't know how I stayed with her for twenty years, but for all the bullshit she definitely brought that to the table.

I guess I should thank her for that.

Right after I figure out what to do about my car, that is. I guarantee you she isn’t going to help me with that, she didn’t want me to buy it and it stuck in her craw that I owned it.

At least once a day my boss finds some opportunity to say, “People value that which they pay for.” I don’t wonder if he’s talking about more than money.

Country Fried

New York State Highway Patrol officer Ray Kohl was on the evening shift, working from three in the afternoon to one in the morning between the North East exit and the Angola rest stop on Interstate 90. It was a lot of ground to cover, but with I-90 being a toll road and everyone being home after the long Easter weekend, it didn't seem like too much for a veteran trooper to watch.

Summer days in a car, with the windows closed so you could hear radio calls, got uncomfortable in a hurry. Kohl stuck to the wooded parts of the median when he parked; the shade in those loose thickets of old-growth kept the car pretty comfortable, so he didn't have to leave it running with the A/C on all the time, and it kept him hidden decently from the road without much impeding his own view.

Kohl was writing up a battered old pickup for improperly securing a load of rust-pocked laundry equipment—the driver protesting that the tow straps were good, even though electrical cables hung over the fenders like unwashed hair and the tailgate had been supplanted with a single slack chain—when his radio squawked with an APB.

He checked the time when he got back to his car—10:36. The fuck is anyone in Westfield doing at 10:36? “Ten-four.”

“We got a hit-and-run at Park Tavern in Harborcreek, missing vehicle reported to be a green Chevy Silverado, New York plates—”

Let it not be Randy. Let this be the one week he skipped taco night.

“—a New York Mets sticker on the tailgate and a black toolbox in the bed.

Witnesses say he’s a regular—”

Kohl picked up his radio. “Ten-four, be right there.”

“Suspect is no longer at Park Tavern. The truck is registered to—”

Kohl didn’t listen for the rest; Randy was the only guy in Westfield dumb enough to root for the Mets.

Kohl turned onto Maple Street to find a cruiser already in Randy’s driveway.

At a distance he didn’t recognize the officer climbing out of the car, but as he parked and the man approached he realized it was his buddy Mack.

Mack was a year younger than Kohl, but they’d made fast friends in Westfield

Little League, and their friendship survived Mack’s two years in Arizona State’s criminal justice program. Mack had been out there on a four-year athletic scholarship, but he tore up his knee trying (vainly) to rob a home run three games into his sophomore season; he came home to receive treatment from his family doctor and an uncle who’d gone into orthopedics and he got too comfortable being home to go back west.

“Ray, what are you doing here? I got this.” Mack spoke in a stage whisper. He didn’t really know Randy, but he’d noticed that Kohl got uncomfortable when their high school baseball coach spoke about him and that Kohl never wanted to go home when Randy was home on leave from the Marines.

“I heard a call for backup. You don’t not answer those.”

“He’s your brother, Ray.”

“You don’t get to pick the perp.” It sounded trite even as he was saying it, but suddenly he understood why it wasn’t.

Randy’s truck was in the driveway in front of Mack’s cruiser, its bumper twisted like so much venison jerky and the taillight hanging lenseless like the bowed head of a penitent.

Kohl turned to open the door, but Mack stopped him. “Ray, let me run point.”

“He’s a perp. I got this.”

“Your eye is twitching.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t do my fucking job.”

“And if he resists? You want to explain to your parents that you were doing your fucking job?”

Kohl pondered this, drumming his fingers on the butt of his gun.

Mack wasn’t sure there’d ever been a homicide in Westfield, but he was sure he didn’t want to be present for one, or asked to clean up after it. “You’re his brother. You were in Fredonia. You want people connecting those dots if push comes to shove? I‘m a cop, I‘ve never met him.”

Kohl shook his head. “I talked him down in Fredonia. If I hadn‘t been there he could‘ve gotten shot by a cop.”

“If you hadn’t been there he could’ve gotten twenty years instead of a DUI.”

“I’ll try to negotiate before we enter. Shit hits the fan, you hit the door and take the lead. How‘s that grab you?”

There was a weight to Kohl’s voice that Mack hadn’t heard in years.

“That works. I didn’t mean no offense, Ray.”

“None taken. Let’s serve him.”

Kohl tried the front door to Randy’s apartment. It swung right open. He raised his flashlight with his left hand, put his right on his pistol, crept as quietly as possible up the ramshackle staircase. Luckily it was carpeted, if minimally so. Mack followed two steps behind, pistol at three-quarters ready.

Audible through the door a man shouting, words shapeless through these peeling walls. A woman rebutting, or possibly pleading. The two cops quickened their pace, less concerned about the sounds of their footfalls now.

Kohl shut off his flashlight and banged on the door. Both voices vanished. The silence shrouded the cops for a minute like the lead apron on an x-ray tech.

“That doesn’t sound good, Ray. Let me give it a try.” Mack stepped around

Kohl and pounded the door four times. The old, thin timber flexed each time his fist fell.

From inside they faintly heard the man speak. Footfalls towards the door.

Snick of the lock opening. Dull squeal of the ancient knob turning.

A sliver of light as the door opened, a tall ruddy man appearing there. He was clearly past his prime, but not naturally. Confusion in the bloodshot eyes turning to panic at the sight of Mack’s badge turning back to confusion as he recognized his brother. “The fuck are you doin’ here Ray?” he slurred, a hitch before he acknowledged his brother and a shiver of dismay behind his eyes.

Even from a lateral distance of five feet and a vertical distance of closer to eight Mack could smell Rolling Rock on Randy’s breath. “Some folks recognized you at Park Tavern earlier, Randy. There was a hit-and-run. They think you might know something.”

“Well I don’t.” The door started closing.

Fuck.

Kohl reached forward and put a hand on it. “Randy, they saw you hit two cars. You can come with me and answer for a hit-and-run, or I can take you in for—”

The door slammed. The lock shot back home. Heavier footfalls now.

Kohl looked back at Mack. A vein pulsed in his neck. His nostrils flared. He unholstered his gun and thumbed off the safety.

Mack put a hand on his wrist while the gun was still pointed at the floor, then shouldered Kohl aside. “Easy, man. Let it go, we’ll go get a warrant and come back.”

Randy shouting again. A sharp yelp from a woman.

Maybe Ray was right. “Fuck this,” Mack said. He raised a leg and shot a perfect front snap kick through the door, heel landing beside the knob and toe pushing the shattered door in. “POLICE! FREEZE!”

The doorway was in the middle of the apartment. Mack’s momentum led him to land facing left, into a small living room, where a modest flat-screen TV blatted some kind of rerun into the deafening silence of the kitchen he stood in.

Mack raised his gun to shoulder level and crept slowly towards the TV. The living room was lit only by a floor lamp beside the entertainment center; this was

Randy’s house, and even if the booze made him clumsier he would have the advantage of surprise if he started any shit.

As he edged to the right side of the living room doorway and peered around to clear the room, Mack heard a sharp grunt and a clatter behind him. “Ray?”

He pivoted quickly to see Randy sliding to the floor, the Formica counter too slick for to brace himself against. Ray stepped forward and brought the muzzle of his gun down on Randy’s jaw.

“Ray!” Mack holstered his weapon and rushed into the kitchen. A puddle of thick maroon blood sat drying on the tile by the sink. Ray genuflecting, his right knee on Randy’s chest, gun raised and lowered and raised and lowered on Randy’s head, a fresh pool of blood on the other side of the kitchen floor now and some spatter on the front of the oven.

“What the fuck? Get the fuck up!” Mack grabbed Ray under the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. Then, quietly, hopefully quietly enough, “Get the fuck out of here.”

Ray still stared at the floor, not seeing Mack, or apparently Randy. It occurred to Mack that maybe it would’ve been easier if Ray had just shot the poor bastard, not least after all the trouble Randy had put the family through.

“Ray. I’ll take care of this. Get out.”

Ray nodded, not taking his eyes off Randy until Mack methodically cuffed him, then walking outside with visible effort. The cuffs were probably not necessary; between the alcohol and the head shots, Randy’s eyes were rolled back in his head and it seemed like all he could do just to breathe.

When Ray had closed the door, Mack pulled out his radio. “I’m going to need a bus,” he said.

Mack heard another feminine whimper and turned around.

There was a door behind him he hadn’t seen before, right next to the entry.

The light was on in whatever room was back there.

It occurred to him that Ray had probably not cleared that room.

Spring Forward

Amanda knew that Billy hated being home with his dad when he had to do the “every other weekend“ custody routine, so she popped into Mr. Kohl’s marginal duplex to alleviate Billy of most of the “weekend” part.

She texted Billy before she got out of the car; it being eleven o’clock on an

April Saturday, Mr. Kohl was either asleep or on his fourth shitty beer of the morning, neither of which made it wise for her to ring the doorbell.

Her text paid homage to Billy’s taste for online role-playing games; Im in ur driveway distractin ur neighbor. Though the divorcé downstairs was generally a nice dude, she’d learned the first time she met him the importance of buttoning her shirt all the way up. The neighbor reiterated the point for her on this occasion when, in his haste to wave hello to her, he walked his lawnmower into his mailbox with an audible oof.

With a snicker, Amanda checked her phone. She saw only its Hello Kitty wallpaper, but as she snapped the phone closed she heard the apartment door shut and saw Billy smile at her. “What’s up?” he asked as he stepped out.

Billy closed and locked his door gingerly so as not to wake his dad, but she could see him standing up straighter as he approached and his forehead smoothed as he came nearer to her.

“Better now,” she replied, stepping forward to hug him and kiss him lightly, enough to keep him off guard but not enough to lead him on.

As they stopped kissing, they heard the neighbor’s mower sputter out, followed by a sigh and a weak “God damn it.” They both grinned and hurried into

Amanda’s car so he wouldn’t hear them laughing.

Amanda shook her head. “That guy…”

Billy shrugged. “Bart’s not a bad dude. A little lonely, but not bad.”

“Maybe, I just wasn’t sure if I should be amused or freaked out that he can’t look me in the eye.”

“It is difficult, what with them being such a rich shade of hazel and all.”

“ I really prefer umber, thank you very much.”

“As do I, for what it’s worth.”

She punched him in the arm. “I know, silly.” She put the key in the ignition and started her car. “So where would you like to spend your day off?”

“Not here. Outside someplace, since it’s nice out and all.”

“Let’s go to the park and check out the farmer’s market.”

Westfield, New York looked like a scale model of Paul Revere’s Boston; though the sign on Route 20 said “Village of Westfield,” the area was so heavily wooded that the few modest houses dotting the road looked uncomfortable to be there, so unassuming and quiet that the two brick plazas between the two traffic lights seemed to be fading intentionally to blend in with the earth they stood on.

Near the western traffic light there was a park across about half the block, perhaps the size of the shoe section at any given Wal-Mart. A few trees shaded a few

lawns separating a few sidewalks, enough concrete to walk comfortably but not enough to overwhelm.

Amanda parked by the Westfield Diner, on a small side street near City

Hall—parking was scarce on Route 20 when the farmer’s market was open. The maneuver made her glad she owned a Nissan—she had to parallel-park for the first time since she’d taken her driver’s test, nudging her car between a double-parked minivan and a decade-old Sedan DeVille whose front tire was actually on the curb.

“How’s the bitch handle holding up, Billy?” she asked.

“I’m okay, thanks for asking.” He looked up at the ceiling and feigned horror at a tear in the fabric that they both knew was there when she got the car. “I may be alone in that respect, however.”

“I’ll ask my car later.”

“Your priorities are really inspiring.”

She smacked his butt, much to the chagrin of two passing crones clad in

Nixonian suits. “You’re pretty much the shit, just so you know.”

“Birds of a feather, and so forth.” He put an arm around her lower back.

“If you say so.” She sidled as close to him as she could without tripping them both. “So how’s your mom?

“She’s all right. Still working a lot, still trying to duck my dad.”

“How’s that going in this tiny-ass part of the world?

“She’s seemed pretty freaked out lately, which can’t be like a good sign.”

Amanda paused to examine a display of PVC ducks, assembled to appear to be mowing the lawn or reading Moby Dick or playing golf. “That’s a shame. She’s pretty great, I kinda see where you get it from.”

“She could have better taste in men, but then I guess I could say the same about you.”

Amanda looked away from the duck she was holding, which was seated on a spartan toilet, and raised an eyebrow. “There had to be a better way to phrase that.”

Billy blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

Amanda turned to give him a squeeze. “I know,” she said, as the duck shit into her purse. “You’re too easy to fuck with for me to not fuck with you, though.”

The duck vendor peered at her, unblinking, both hoping to prevent her shoplifting his wares and taken aback by her language.

She put the duck back on the blanket, having decided that it wasn’t worth ten bucks, and the couple continued walking.

“Oh, gyros!” she gasped, pointing to the stand. She began to root through her purse, hoping she still had cash handy.

Billy squeezed her shoulder. “I got you, babe. How many do you want?”

“You need to save your money for a car, not spend it to get me fat.”

“Yeah, look at you. You get much wider, I’ll be able to see you when you turn sideways. How many gyros do you want?”

She looked him directly in the eye, saw his helplessness and her own, decided to give him a win he really needed. “Two would be fantastic, I didn’t get breakfast today,” she replied.

As he waited for their order to come up, she tousled his hair and kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Anything for you, you know that.”

They found a park bench to enjoy their grub.

“These are really good,” she said.

“I’m glad you like them,” he said, wiping some grease from his mouth with a wet nap. “I’ll have to take you to this place Coney Island over by Behrend, I don’t love the service but their Greek sauce is incredible.”

“For sure. We’ll bring some back here if they do take out, have ourselves dinner and a movie. Or hit that beach in North East and have a big fat Greek picnic.”

“They don’t sell ouzo or that might work.”

She savored the last bite of her lunch, washed it down with a decent swig of

Diet Pepsi. “We’ll have to hurry up and do that before you skip town.”

He frowned a little, more puzzled than upset. “Why? I’m going to Behrend for

MET. I can take all those classes in Erie, I don’t have to go to main campus if I don’t want to. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why Behrend, of all places?” She didn’t ask why he, who needed help in algebra II/trig, might want to go into a field where his classwork would be all math.

One thing at a time.

“My family is here. You’re here. I have friends here.” He looked at the ground, sipped his Dr. Pepper.

“What about Texas Tech?” He had gotten accepted to Texas Tech about a week before he’d been accepted to Behrend, even said he’d gotten a partial scholarship, though she wasn’t sure how much. “We talk all the time about how much it sucks to live in bumfuck nowhere, and Pennsylvania’s the same bumfuck nowhere as this place, just with more deer and douchier football fans.”

“You really think Texas Tech is close to anything, or that their football fans aren’t shitty?” He stared at her while he spoke, as if he was trying to convince both of them.

She sighed, and squeezed his leg. “What’s this really about?” she asked, as gently as she could manage.

“I’d miss the fuck out of you. And I don’t want to leave my mom hanging, or

Brandon. The degree is a piece of paper, right? It’s not like I’m going to SUNY-

Oneonta to major in basketry with a minor in beer pong, Penn State’s just as good a name as Texas Tech.”

“I know. Just don’t fuck your life up for me.” She didn’t say that the high- school sweetheart thing was part of the Pleasantville-style bullshit smarm they both wanted to leave behind, but it didn’t seem like she had to.

“I applied for Texas Tech because the guidance counselors at school said to aim high, and to apply at multiple schools so you had leverage with the financial aid

offices. It just felt less retarded than applying to Stanford or MIT and I didn’t know who else was great for engineering.”

“You were super fucking excited when you got in though.”

“Yeah, because I got into college. And a good college. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I’m not even sure if I’m going to go college, I don’t know what I’d do, and it costs too much to just try it and see what happens. I’ve got a year to think about it, and maybe I’ll take some time off after that if I have to.”

“Seriously. Edinboro University has a great art program, I have friends who are going there for like graphic design and art education, and you’re a fantastic artist, and that’s like an hour from here and pretty cheap.” He was talking faster, as though he was trying to convince both of them of this.

“I don’t know what I want to do, Billy. I just know that I don’t want to do it here. I can‘t work at Tops for weed money for the rest of my life.”

“So don’t. Start putting your art out there. Get a table at the farmer’s market one of these Saturdays, or there are places in Pennsylvania you could do that, the art museum in Erie does shows and there are all those county fairs you could get a table at. Worst comes to worst see if any tattooists will buy your work. I haven’t seen that many tattoos living out here but the ones that make magazine covers and that athletes get and shit are all the really vibrant crazy ones, you could just sketch and doodle and make weird shit and they’ll probably eat it right up.” Even faster now, hard to follow, like maybe he was trying not to cry.

She nodded. “Yeah, maybe. The weather’s getting nice again, it feels good to sit outside with a sketchbook and let it go.” A sigh, and a glance towards the ground.

“Plus it gets me the fuck out of the house.”

A plump old woman walking past turned to glare at Amanda’s profanity, shifting so as not to upset a basket of fresh tomatoes when she put her torso into the gaze.

Billy put a hand on Amanda’s knee, squeezed a little. “I was planning on getting a dorm when I start school. Maybe I should get an apartment instead, you could come crash with me sometimes.”

“Maybe. I hear landlords near colleges like to gouge the shit out of students for rent though. And you still don’t have a car.”

“I’ve got about enough money, plus if I can find someone who will take payments I can pay over the summer and have something paid off before school. I’ve got my eye open. You know how people are around here, though, they either want to scrape some money out of what’s really a field hoopty or they want real money for an average car.” A little calmer, now that plans were coming to rest.

“Yeah, plus you’ve got a graduation party coming up, that’ll help.”

“I don’t want to rely on other people being generous though.”

“Of course not, but you’re a great guy and people know you’re not going to fuck around with the money. “

A tall man and a pretty brunette walked hand-in-hand through the park, she carrying a basket equally laden with strawberries and blueberries. The man

hollered to a kindergartner some twenty feet ahead of himself that the child should stop running; the child turned to hear his father, missed a divot in the sidewalk, and pitched forward. When the father picked up the child, wailing and cradling a scraped-up elbow, the child’s torso turned out to be the same size as his father’s upper arm.

Billy considered his empty tray, the cardboard so drenched with grease that it felt and looked like a Fruit Roll-Up. “So what do you want to do?”

“Let’s go to the gorge.”

“That’s not really what I meant.”

“I know.”

Whitecaps

Teresa stared out the window of the Kwik Fill at the intersection of Route 20 and Interstate 90, hoping the second half of her split shift would be more interesting than the first. Maybe two dozen cars had stopped since she got to work at 1:00pm; all of them had paid at the pump, and only two customers had actually come in the store for anything. Her total sales for the afternoon; two large coffees, one one-liter bottle of Pepsi, two sixteen-ounce cans of Full Throttle, and a Family-Size bag of

Doritos.

Two customers. Seventeen bucks. They’d even paid with cards, so she hadn’t had to open her drawer yet.

One had been a MasterCard and the other an American Express. Teresa recalled Visa’s hopeful-sounding slogan “It’s everywhere you want to be” and wondering if she was missing something.

Yawning, she slouched over to the coffee machine and helped herself to her fourth cup of the day. As she filled her plastic mug, she gazed unseeingly at the “Air and Space Museum” logo that was chipping off the side and wondered if her husband had picked the kids up from school like she’d asked him to.

She got back behind the counter just in time to see a pretty, slight young girl walking up the sidewalk. Before the girl entered the building, Teresa noticed that she was wearing a pink hoodie with some kind of white squiggles on it. It looked a lot like her fourteen-year-old daughter’s Hello Kitty hoodie, and the way the girl’s dark hair hid her face the thought crossed Teresa’s tired mind that it might actually

be her daughter. Frustrated that Rebecca had cut school again, she prepared a tirade.

As the child entered the building, however, she looked considerably older; her face was devoid of the baby fat that still clung stubbornly to Rebecca’s, and the squiggles turned out to be the tops of the tall letters of “Penn State-Behrend,” not

Hello Kitty’s ears and bow. A wave of stale cigarette smoke preceded her, unrolling itself like a red carpet before a monarch.

Teresa blinked. Her mother had smoked a pack a day until her thirty-fifth birthday, at which point she began sporadically coughing up blood. A week later, at

Teresa’s high school graduation party, she’d collapsed. The medics rushed her to the hospital, but the tumor in her lungs had already spread to her spine and stomach. All the doctors could do was keep her on a morphine drip until the cancer overwhelmed her.

Teresa never sat within shouting distance of any restaurant’s smoking section, never went to the bar to watch Monday Night Football with her husband

(even when their beloved Buffalo Bills were on), and always placed the packs of cigarettes she sold at work with the Surgeon General’s warning facing up.

The girl ambled to the food counter and ordered a sub, then filled herself a large coffee while her sandwich toasted. The smell of the warming bread wafted over to Teresa. She smiled, reminded of happy lunches at McDonald’s with her three kids when they were younger.

Her eight-year-old son was still fun to eat out with, eating his cheeseburgers with adorable gusto and adopting a clown’s surprised gape at whatever toy came in the Happy Meal. Especially if it came in the box—he loved the boxes, he was always careful to not get ketchup on them and insisted on taking them home to re-use as lunchboxes the next day (which she was fine with—it saved her a little money and time on brown paper bags, although she wasn’t sure if it saved him the shame she’d felt herself as a child when she had to save the paper bags and re-use them).

Her two teenagers, though, could not stand being seen with their mother, and she was sure they only came along for the free meals.

She had never taken them to the restaurants with the PlayPlaces; she never forgot about the time her younger brother had tripped on his shoelace and cracked his forehead against one of the jungle gym’s pillars, creating a wound that took six stitches to close.

She shook her head at the memory. Judging by the girlfriend he’s got now, I don’t wonder if maybe he needed more than stitches.

The girl stepped up to the counter, set her coffee and a grease-stained paper bag on it, and reached for her purse. Teresa scanned the receipt (an Italian club, no tomato) and rang up the coffee.

“That’ll be $6.02, hon,” she said. Her voice was somewhat raspy, as she had not had occasion to use it in almost five hours.

The girl looked up. “The sign on the door says we get a discount if we use our student IDs, right?”

Teresa peered blearily at the door—she usually worked afternoons, so she didn’t get that many college students, not when they should’ve been in class or having supper with their families. Sure enough, a sticker the size of a small dinner plate of the Nittany Lion sat right above the door handle.

Teresa glanced at the ID card the girl presented, looking for a birthdate before remembering that fries and coffee are perfectly acceptable things to sell to minors. She punched the student discount button on the register, taking ten percent off the ticket.

The girl smiled. It reminded Teresa very much of her daughter.

Teresa smiled back warmly, and handed the girl her ID card. “Tha’s $5.49 now, hon,” she said, trying vainly to stifle an oncoming yawn.

The girl dug some scraggly bills and a few coins out of her purse. “I’ve even got exact change,” she said as she handed it over.

Teresa chuckled. “Makes my job easier.” She opened the drawer and divided up the money into it.

The quarter Teresa received from the girl was not the quarter she was used to. It had George Washington on one side, but rather than the familiar bald eagle, the other side had some kind of design on it; it looked kind of like Arkansas, or maybe a poorly-done shamrock.

The top of the quarter said “New Hampshire.” Teresa was curious as to why either a shamrock or Arkansas would be associated with New Hampshire.

“This quarter is different,” she remarked.

The girl nodded. “Yeah, it’s one of those state ones. It’s supposed to have some kind of homage to the colonies on it or something.”

Teresa nodded, impressed. “Neat!” She fished a generic quarter out of her pocket, threw it in the register, and pocketed the New Hampshire one—she’d been trying to collect all fifty of the state quarters and she was pretty sure she didn’t have that one. She tore the receipt off the register and handed it to the girl. “There y’are, hon.”

“Thanks,” the girl responded. “Have a nice night.”

“You too,” Teresa said, smiling.

She watched the girl drive off, sipping her coffee, wondering if her kids were doing their homework yet. Checking the lot for customers (none) and Route 20 for oncoming cars (none), she got her cell phone out of her pocket to call her husband and ask him.

Sabra

I don't know why my wife waited til after we bought a house to demand that

I replace the truck. It would've been much easier, money-wise, to buy it when we owned the house in North East—I could've bought something brand-new and paid it off in a year or two.

I miss coming home to her and having actual conversations. Her being happy to see me. Us eatin' a good meal—before we had the kids maybe even a Manhattan.

After the kids a trip to the beach when the weather allowed, a movie night when it was bad out.

In North East that meant a lot of movie nights. If we were careful then I could buy one movie every paycheck, but sometimes I lucked out and we wouldn't have to.

Like with the first couple “Harry Potter” movies—I think we got a month out of the first movie, they watched it at least a dozen times. By the end of that month I think I knew Harry's lines better than he did.

I don't know why she couldn't be happy with what she had. She never knows what she wants anymore—she just knows she doesn't want whatever's actually here.

I'd meant to do something about the garage for years. To begin with I just wanted to fix it—the foundation was a little old and the floor was a mess, the timber and siding were maybe five years old when moved in but I think the concrete was original from when the house was built in the '40s. I know we bought it from a

veteran and his wife who were retiring and moving to Arizona—he told me that after he survived both the Battle of the Bulge and Korea, it would be a waste for him to choose to die in the snow. Between his age and some obvious injuries and scars, I doubt very much he'd been able to fix the concrete in recent memory.

Teresa and I shared my car then—it wasn't around the house enough for us to make the garage a priority—but as time passed and we bought another car and I stocked a toolbench and so forth, I realized I should make the garage at least decent so we could do something with it.

Then Teresa refused to fix the garage floor—she didn't want me putting my stuff in there. I guess she'd have had to get rid of the piano she didn't play and the bassinet we're never going to use and her dad's bike that nobody rides. Of course she still complained that it looked like crap and was dangerous, as if she could have it both ways.

Eventually one of the corner studs started to give. She'd put some baby clothes over there, and a colony of mice lived in them—I don't know if they started dying in there or if something larger tried to get in and eat them or what, but one day I come out to get in the car for work and the front corner of the garage was sagging. The stud had broken about six inches above the ground and was bowing slightly out—it hadn't damaged the siding, but it had kicked off the corner guard, and I needed to fix that before rain got in there and ruined the wood entirely.

I had just gotten the floor jack set up—not a permanent solution, but it would hold that corner up until I could figure out what to do about the busted lumber— and was headed in for a beer when she walked out to the yard. “What are you going to do with the truck?”

We'd argued about it before, but she'd never come right out and said anything to me. I guess this question still wasn't really saying anything, it was just another opportunity to be wrong, but I was sick of arguing and I bit. “What am I going to do without the truck? I own it free and clear.”

“You're going to save money on gas, you fill it every week and you're driving half as far as you will be when we move.”

She had a point there; even though I settled for the V-6 Ranger instead of a V-

8 or V-10 F-series, the truck still only got about 22 or 23 miles to the gallon on the highway. That's in two-wheel drive on good pavement, too, and good pavement was never certain by either the old house in North East or the new house back by our families in Brocton, with the DOTs being iffy about patching potholes.

Still, it's my truck, God damn it. “It's got four-wheel drive. What are you going to do the first time I go skiddin' off the road in the winter?”

“If you do go skidding off the road, it's because you drive like a maniac.”

I never could figure out why she had to correct every petty stupid detail. I knew she was smarter than me, she didn't have to rub it in.

“Fine, I guess I'll get rid of the truck, but if I'm driving the new vehicle every day I'm going to trade the Ranger in on what I want.”

“Yeah, you get whatever you want. It's all about you, isn't it? It always is.”

She usually got me to put my foot in my mouth when we were arguing by pissing me off, but for whatever reason that time that remark was fucking it. “You mean like this house you picked out? Or—”

I never even got to bring up her dog, or her furniture (all of it, I didn't get to pick any), or her gazebo in the yard (which she never even entered, but always reminded me wasn't level), just for starters. “The house I wanted? You're the one who had to pal around with the realtor and just give him a commission. You're the one who had to have an attached garage--” she'd started counting on her fingers at that point, looking at them instead of me, which I guess was a bonus “--the patio, the fireplace, all that 'keeping up with the Joneses' shit. I just want what's best for the family.”

By then I didn't even know how we got from a discussion about getting my truck inspected to this. “Well, if getting rid of the truck is what it takes, I'll do that.

But that means I have to go buy something else to drive.”

She glared at me from across the lawn. “Don't expect my help if you've got to have something that looks good at work.” Her eyebrow arched at “looks good at work” like she was accusing me of cheating.

I left before the fireworks really ignited.

Since I guess bringing home ninety percent of the income in the house and doing most of the chores wasn't what was best for the family, I bought a 2003

Subaru Legacy sedan. The Legacy still had the four-wheel drive for the wintertime, but it got a couple-six more miles to the gallon, plus it had more room in the backseat than the Ranger, which I thought would come in handy when the kids got around to their growth spurts.

Of course, I'd barely pulled into the driveway but she was scowling out the front door at me. She saw that it was red and had a spoiler and went off about how badly I wanted something that looked sharp and how I didn't give a damn about how it ran. Because a secondhand grocery-getter is way sharper than, say, a

Mustang or a Tiburon. Both of which actually would have been cheaper than the

Subaru, for the record.

She also complained when I put the Ranger in the Erie Times for three grand or best offer. New Motors Subaru acted like fifteen hundred was stretching it on trade, even though both Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book valued it around twenty- eight hundred resale and almost two grand trade-in.

And yet, for all the shit she gave me about getting rid of the truck, a couple guys in my building at GE told me they called the house to ask me about it while I was out with the kids and heard her say, “It's his truck, you'll have to ask him about it.”

So I was kind of relieved when this lady showed up one morning already sold on the truck, making herself right at home as soon as she sat in it and marveling at

how well laid-out the controls were and all that. I mean, I liked the truck, but there she was talking it up like it was a Maybach, fitted to her at the factory.

We took a short test-drive from my house in North East over Route 20 all the way to Ripley. “I drive on the highway a lot,” she told me. “I want to know how it feels doing sixty. My last car, this little Corolla I had, the steering wheel shook when

I broke forty with it. It was sort of like an egg beater though, once I knew how to work around it wasn't too bad.”

“What happened to it?”

“You know how we always get a Halloween blizzard?”

Always seemed like a stretch, but not much. Plus I really wanted to be rid of the truck so the wife would get off my ass. About the truck, at least.

“Yeah, I hear the four seasons in Pennsylvania are 'almost winter,' 'winter,'

'still winter,' and 'road construction,' and I would say we've cleared 'road construction' for the year, unfortunately.”

She laughed a little. I couldn't tell if she was just being polite--all three of my kids roll their eyes at that joke and the youngest one is eight--but hell, it felt good either way. “I'll have to remember that. Anyway, both the Corolla and this dude with the whole 'Fast and the Furious' get-up on his car lost braking power at the TA in

Harborcreek. 'Lost braking power' is what the insurance adjusters called it. I was pulling in for work and he was leaving, so it was officially his fault cause I had the right of way, but right of way or not the Corolla got totaled and now I need something to drive.”

“Kids these days. I mean, I like a nice-lookin' car, but give me a '79 Stingray or an old wood-grained Nomad or something.”

I stopped at that point; my wife would have been sniping at every part of my reply. I realized that I was bending to this lady whether I meant to or not.

Luckily, the lady driving the truck was nicer about it than Teresa usually is. “I know, right? I mean, I'm partial to Italian cars—I was a big fan of the Countach when

I was a teenager, I've always wanted a car with gull-wing doors—but I don't get all that sh—all that with the crazy rims and huge spoilers and what have you.”

She blinked and turned a little when she caught herself swearing, the same way my eighth-grader has when he's noticed me checking in on him playing computer games. I thought it was cute that she had the same respect for me that my kids do, and I was glad we'd just been able to talk. The kids don’t hardly say anything during our conversations, and the wife would be reminding me about the time I lost my wallet on our honeymoon.

We were just coming back to downtown North East (such as it is) when that exchange dead-ended. Since we'd both paused, she went right into “So three thousand or best offer, huh?”

As a kid, I learned from my parents as they stickered stuff for yard sales to mark your goods a little high, so when the buyer wants to negotiate, they'll feel good about talking you down to the price you really wanted. Kelley Blue Book and

Edmunds both valued my truck at $2700 and change, and I heard the little emphasis

she put on best offer. “That's right. I was hopin' for three thousand, it's a good solid truck and I took good care of it.”

She nodded, and she started to say something, but I interrupted her to point out my house so she wouldn‘t miss the turn.

I felt bad about speaking out of turn. “Sorry, what now?”

She didn‘t seem to mind, as some women do. “Oh, I just want to have a better look before I throw a number at you. It feels pretty good to drive, but it's what, a

'98?”

“Yes ma'am.”

She flushed a little. “Ma’am? I'm only thirty-three, you know.”

“I know better than to ask a woman her age, but I'm afraid I've forgotten your name.”

“Deirdre. Although, in your defense, I've also forgotten yours.”

“Bart.”

When we got out, she gave the truck a pretty good once-over—she opened the hood so she could check the belts and the alternator, then borrowed the flashlight from the cab and looked underneath the body. I saw her pay special attention to the exhaust—I just replaced it a couple years back and I hose it off regularly, but the way she paused on it I gathered she’d had the same issue before.

I waited a couple feet back, closer to the house. I wanted her to have some space to check the truck out. I'm not out to deceive anyone, she can see what she wants to see.

She put the flashlight back under the passenger seat, then came back around to close the hood. She looked at me, forearm on the hood of the truck, then looked at the ground. She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. The whole deal was probably going to go on what was said next and she clearly didn't want to botch it.

I wasn't sure if I'd been flexible enough, so I moved first. “How's it lookin'?”

She nodded and started to smile. “Pretty solid. I like it. I think for three grand

I'd like an automatic though. Have you had the clutch done?”

Nice move, and an opening to make the deal. “You know, it's never given me any trouble, so I've never messed with it.”

“I'm kind of on a budget—obviously, if I'm looking at '98 Ranger. The rest of the truck looks real sharp, but you know how clutches are to fix.”

“Yeah, I took good care of my truck, but you're right. I'm not trying to rip you off, but I am trying to not lose my shirt, either.” I stopped for a minute; the ball was in my park, I had to make her an offer she'd think about.

Hell with it. The wife wouldn't be happy no matter how much I got and I wanted the truck off my lawn. Plus Deirdre seemed nice enough and clearly knew vehicles to look at the truck the way she did, and maybe it wasn't charity as charity should be, but I felt good somehow about her having the truck, that it would be in good hands. “How does $2500 sound to you?”

She pursed her lips for a second and looked away, then grinned at me and said, “Sounds to me like you got a deal.”

“Would you like to rubber-stamp it now? Sue's Notary over on Buffalo Road is open eight-to-five. Or we could do it another time, if you prefer.” Careful to pronounce it prefer instead of perfer. The wife was in my head. Again.

“Let's do it now, my ride situation is spotty and my work schedule sucks. If we take the truck there together, I'll bring you back here after it's done.”

I checked my watch and saw that it was already past one. “I appreciate that, but I work second shift at GE, I'll be late for work if we ride together. I'll follow you there.”

While the notary was extracting Uncle Sam‘s “share“ of the deal, I noticed

Deirdre signing everything “Deirdre Kohl.” I played ball against two boys named

Kohl in high school—the younger one, Ray, started for the varsity team as a freshman and hit three homers in a playoff game off my kid brother when they were both sophomores.

I didn't think they had a sister, but she was a good decade younger than me and I lost touch with the Kohl boys after school—the last I heard, both boys had entered the Service, Ray into the Army and the older boy Randy into the Marines. I remembered them being decent guys in high school, though Randy had some trouble holding his liquor.

I was curious, for old time's sake, so as we left the notary I asked. “So you're a

Kohl?”

She made a face, and I realized I'd made a mistake, but it was a little late to take it back. “Not anymore. Randy and I are divorced, I just haven't scraped up the money to change my name back.”

She wouldn't look at me when she set me straight, which made me feel even worse. “I'm sorry to hear that,” I said, but it felt half-assed somehow.

She nodded. “Thanks. I'd be doing better if he paid child support so I wouldn't have to choose between a ride to work and my pride. I mean, the kids have a home and food, but this is not the childhood I wanted for them.” She shook her head and offered a handshake. “Sorry, you have to get to work, you don't have time to hear my life story,”

I felt terrible for even asking; maybe the wife had a point, I could stand to watch my mouth better, or think before I speak. “Hey, it was rude of me to ask, I'm glad you were so nice about answering,” I said as I shook her hand.

I realized then that I'd also forgotten to hand the spare set of keys over. She had one set to drive to the notary, but she probably wanted the other one. “As long as I'm forgetting things, I should give you the other set of keys,” I said. I fished my keychain from my pocket, with the keys and fobs to my Subaru and my wife's van and the Ranger, the keys to the back and front doors to the house, and the key to a

Master lock I wasn't sure I even still owned. “The Ranger is all yours,” I said, handing over the key and trying to change the subject.

She laughed and took the truck keys. “Thanks. Glad to know I'm not the only one having an off week.”

When she turned to look at me and take the keys, it looked to me like her make-up was a little thicker on her left eye and cheek. Could've been the light—it was one of those Pennsylvania fall days that was warm enough to still feel like summer, but cloudy and gray enough that snow felt like a real threat.

Maybe it was just me. Teresa hasn’t gotten all done up in years. Sometimes it occurred to me to be glad that she left the house.

I hoped Deirdre didn't notice me stop to think. I may have been less careful than I should be about my speech, but I didn't stare. “Well, now you've got a sweet truck, at least. I'm glad it's in good hands. I put a Rhino liner in it for camping, so if you and your kids are outdoorsy you've made the right choice.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

I knew then that I had to retreat. “I better get to work. Thanks for buying my truck, I appreciate it. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will. You as well.”

I watched Deirdre drive away in the Ranger. My “I’m proud of my Webelos

Scout” bumper sticker was still on the tailgate. I wonder if Deirdre has a Webelos

Scout, or if her boys are into other pursuits.

I checked my phone. Three missed calls. All from Teresa. Three voicemails, also from Teresa.

I decided to listen to them later. I had just enough time to get to work, I couldn’t run any errands for her beforehand, and there was no sense in getting riled up on the way into the shop.

Braille

Bart stood in the kitchen and scraped a tepid confetti of green beans and potatoes au gratin and the rind his youngest son had peeled from a ham steak from four plates. Brandon wouldn’t eat the edges of any food—he shared many kids’ distaste for bread crust, for instance, but he’d scrape the frosting from his birthday cake and he’d pitch the breading from his chicken nuggets, and God help the poor soul who tried to feed him tacos.

His own plate needed no scraping. Bart was the middle child of third- generation grape farmers; there had never been much to share, but as long as nobody wasted any there was enough to go around.

“Make sure you don’t miss the garbage can,” Teresa called from the living room. “And try not to clink the knife on the plates so much.”

Bart was using a fork.

He nonetheless tapped the last plate (hers, he noted sourly) against the inside of the garbage can; her having taken her customary full plate and eaten her customary two bites of each food, the weight of the ham dragged the potatoes into the garbage as the beans free-fell.

It reminded him of the old Atari game Space Invaders, but backwards, the thin projectiles fleeing the air force instead of resisting it. He chuckled, amused at the visual, but a little sad about how long it had been since he’d gotten to play Atari with his brothers, or how little he’d accomplished in those thirty years.

By the time he got an Atari, of course, all his friends had Nintendos,

On the other hand, it beat the hell out of Lincoln Logs.

Bart rinsed the five plates, then the attendant silverware and cups. He put the place settings into the dish machine, but did not start the wash cycle. Teresa always had a beverage after dinner--on warm days a Coke, on this brisk fall evening a steaming mug of Swiss Miss with the little marshmallows in the packet—and who knew what bowls of French onion dip or cereal or ramen noodles had been forgotten around the living room and the den.

Bart tapped the sludge from the pans into the trash—fairly simple with the fatty ham, more arduous with the baked-on cheese—then put the pans into the dish machine. He took his time, hoping Teresa and the kids would bring their dishes out, even though he was pretty sure they wouldn’t.

He dried his hands on a clean dishtowel, one chosen by Brandon for the dapper squirrel imprinted on it, and hung the towel through the handle of the fridge.

He took a brief detour into the attached garage for a bottle of Rolling Rock out of the mini-fridge under his workbench before heading into the living room to watch the news with Teresa.

She was not watching the news; she was watching a Hallmark movie. Bart recognized only the distinctive crown in the bottom corner of the screen—he had not watched a movie with her since before Brandon was born.

It did not occur to him until he saw the crown and the half-assed cursive how long that actually had been.

“Whatcha watchin’?” he asked as he sat into a recliner.

“I’m watching ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”

Ooookay. He nodded, sipped his beer and reached between their two recliners for the day’s paper. His eager anticipation at seizing the Sports section faded when he saw that it was last Friday’s paper. “Where’s today’s paper?”

Teresa shrugged.

“Did we even get a Sunday paper?”

Nothing.

He sifted through the papers for a moment before she snapped. “Would you keep it down? I’m watching a movie here.”

Nope. Not this time. “Is it not reasonable for me to think that the topmost paper on your little nest right here would be today’s?”

“Your little nest” got her attention. “My little nest? With everything I do around here, who are you to tell me how to keep my house?”

“Your house? I--”

“I drive our children to school and work and to basketball practice and to Cub

Scouts and to dance. I put food on the table and in the fridge.”

“And who pays for the cars and the food? And the table and fridge, for that matter?’

“What do you think I do at Kwik Fill? Do you think I stand around doing crossword puzzles and listening to the radio?”

“I know you work, but tell me what part-time work does for the family.”

“I just did.”

Bart blinked, swigged his beer, took a deep breath.

“Yeah, drinking beer is a great answer.” Teresa turned back to the TV, scowling, arms crossed. Huddled under layers of bathrobe and blanket, her glare looked an awful lot like the Easter Island statues.

“For Christ’s sake--”

“Watch your language around my children,” Teresa said, nodding toward

Brandon and his K’Nex workshop in the middle of the floor.

Wow. Bart took another sip of his beer and got up to leave the room..

“That’s right, drink your beer and leave. You can go all the way out if you want.”

“I have kids to look after. Maybe they need my attention more than a God damn TV movie does.” He noticed then that Brandon was scowling and making effort to look only at his K'Nex pieces, carefully selecting pieces out of the Sheetrock bucket he kept them in and fidgeting more than seemed necessary with the bulldozer he was building.

“I’m not going to tell you again, Bartholomew, watch your mouth in my house.”

“Your house? You go ahead and try to maintain this house on twenty hours a week of Kwik Fill--”

“I will. Get out.”

He was glad she cut across before he could say “bitch work.” He went to the garage to get his flannel jacket off the coat rack.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“Out, like you said.” He didn’t know where he’d go—maybe Park Tavern in

Harborcreek, maybe out to Wal-Mart where he could just walk around, or maybe he’d call some friends and see if anyone wanted to watch the Bills lose to the

Patriots on ESPN at 8:30.

He was debating how to say goodbye to Brandon when he heard her call,

“Maybe you misunderstood me. If you don’t get your stuff out of my house, I’ll put it on the curb.”

Pay it Backward

I woke up this morning and Mom was getting ready for work, so I had to wait so long for the bathroom that I didn't get to take a shower. I put on extra deodorant and this awesome cologne Amanda gave me (it is awesome partly because Amanda gave it to me), but I don't know if it helped. I certainly didn't feel clean, or even presentable.

Then on the bus my iPod battery died. So instead of listening to Five Finger

Death Punch and Murderdolls and Sevendust, I had to listen to the ninth-graders behind me bitch about their boyfriends and talk about True Blood and generally be retarded. I'm surprised they even have boyfriends. Mom didn't let me date until I was sixteen, and even then I was too busy trying to keep up with honors classes and get a job and do other productive stuff to be too concerned with girls. I mean, I met

Amanda by accident, and God am I lucky she settled for me.

I don't know what women think about, and it makes me dizzy to even try to imagine. I just treat Amanda as well as I can and really hope she's not disappointed.

So far it's working, but I don't know how well that'll go long-term. Or if I'm even ready for real long-term (like with a capital-L), or if she is.

Don't tell her that, okay?

Anyway, so after that bus ride—and I only have to ride the bus because I haven't saved up enough for a decent car yet, which is also annoying—I got to school and Amanda texted me. Sry hun I just puked up my breakfast. Puking up eggs is the worst! :(

I replied :( did u forget toast? YEAH TOAST! She loves that skit from “The Bob and Tom Show,” I hoped that would help her a little.

A few minutes later, she got back to me. FRENCH TOAST lol

I got right back to her—lol does this mean ur coming to school? I didn't think

I'd get to see her that day, which I wasn't happy about—lunch with her was the high point of my school day—but it seemed worth asking.

Right away she shot me down—No babe im still puking :( Could u please let me know what trig hw we get?

All I managed back was :( sure, feel better! xoxo

Right before the homeroom bell rang, she replied Ty i hope so! xoxo

I kinda wish I was old enough to live with her, or at least lived closer to her, so I could help her out with stuff. She doesn't let me do anything for her, but I still wish I could, because she's awesome, and I want to be that awesome for her.

Then it turned out we had a quiz in trig. I totally fucked it up; I've been having a lot of trouble with proofs, and it doesn't seem like it matters how much time I spend talking to teachers or doing extra problems or even looking trig stuff up on the internet, I always blow tests and quizzes.

I usually can correct my own mistakes when they get handed back, too. It's like I can't handle the pressure, even though I study and prepare and make sure I do whatever's thrown at me beforehand to get ready.

So I texted Amanda to let her know U missed a quiz. Good timing! Making up quizzes sucks, but I hoped the warning would help.

She texted me back immediately. Oh no! :(

Lol, u feeling better yet?

I was, but not now that i have a trig quiz to come back to, lol

U know u will do better on it than i did, so u cant be more than 2nd-worst lol

Oh hush, that means u r down to a mere B?

She has a lot more confidence in me than I do. Lol if only, my guess is 50%

Lol so u got 99 problems but cosines aint one?

She always knows just what to say to make me feel better. Lol of course, but

99 problems is 10 quizzes. It felt lame when I sent it, but I hoped it would cheer her up anyway.

Then I was trying to leave school and my backpack wasn't zipped right, I guess, because it fell open and all my shit—my books, my notes, some origami birds

Amanda made for me—fell out.

And it was raining, so they got all wet. I spread all of it out on the table when I got home, but I wasn't sure how well it would all dry out. Especially the birds—I know origami can be done with literally any piece of paper any time, but Amanda made those for me in various classes when we were bored and just trying to get through the day, they each have some notes on them that make them special to me somehow.

Like Amanda doodles all the time, so I have her sketches on my book covers and my notebooks and even Frylock (from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) carved into my dresser from the one time Mom wasn't home (don't tell Mom, okay?), but something about the fact that she drew all those things for me makes me want to hang on to them. Especially with the birds—she drew Ren and Stimpy singing the Log ditty onto some of our math homework, and there's a part of our Earth Sciences homework about traps in geological formations where she drew Admiral Ackbar

(and then drew a bunch more Admiral Ackbars—one with a pillow shouting IT'S A

NAP, and with a cup of coffee and yelling IT'S A FRAPPE, and—my favorite—him standing next to her hoopty car and proclaiming that IT'S A SCRAP).

And then she took the extra time to fold them all into origami for me.

I wish I could do stuff that cool for her when I was thinking about her, but all

I can ever think to do is say stupid sappy things and buy her stuff.

I mean, her birthday is in late March and our six-month was over Easter break, so I scraped up fifty bucks and hitched a ride into Erie and made her a Build- a-Bear. I mean, it was her birthday and our six-month back-to-back like that—I got this tan lop-eared bunny, and then I put a Batman costume on it, and I got galoshes

(because the Batman costume doesn't have shoes, and fuck if Batman's doing anything barefoot, right?), and then I put a skateboard in there too because skateboards are great.

They make you name them, so I called him Adam Westfield, and then before I gave it to her I put a Post-it on it telling her that I want to be her hero, but in the meantime I hope this one will do.

God, I wish I could make her smile all the time the way she did when I gave her the bunny. (I'm glad she didn't cry, though—she looked like she was going to, and I can't handle watching a girl cry for anything.) I know everything she does makes me as happy as she looked, like there's nothing else going on in the world but her and me and whatever we've got in our hands right there.

Then I got to sit on the bus in front of these fucking freshmen again talking about their boyfriends and Taylor Swift and that. Freshmen are so terrible. I hope I wasn't that annoying, but man, I don't know anymore.

And I realized I'd left my history book at my dad's place and there was a test in the morning. So I texted Amanda and Mom and asked if one of them would go get it while I was at work. I did offer a large iced coffee to whomever ran over there to get it, but a trip to Dad's is not worth any amount of iced coffee. I should've offered a meal at least.

So then I got home and changed for work, and I had to hitch a ride with

Tracy, this dude from work. He goes to Mercyhurst-North East, but he lives in

Ripley, so he's cool enough sometimes to come out and get me if I really need it and I ask nicely. (Again, I'm the dumbass who hasn't bought a car like most of the upperclassmen at school, but who's counting?)

I got into Tracy's car, and for the first time I can recall in the year I've worked with him he was not wearing a hat. When we ride to work together he usually wears his McD's hat; the couple times we've hung out outside work he wears a 'do rag or a beanie. He was sort of looking off into the distance, too, like he was thinking about something.

He only nodded when I said hello, and didn't say anything on the way to work.

Once he looked down when his phone rang, buzzing around in the cupholder; he saw the number on it, looked back up, and put his hand to his nose like he was going to stifle a sneeze. I noticed then that what I'd thought were birthmarks or something around his eyes were actually smudged teardrop tattoos. (I don't mean to be an asshole saying this, but Tracy's black, like Terry Crews black—marks on that kind of canvas would be pretty indistinct.)

They looked like prison tats.

I'd wondered why a guy like him, twenty-five and smart and pretty organized, would be working at McD's and going to a shitty local college. A prison record would make that make sense, though I knew from working with him that he wasn't the type to steal and I couldn't imagine what else he might have gone in for.

When we got to work, before we got out of the car, he turned to me and said,

“Benjamin Franklin once said that those who sacrifice liberty to achieve security deserve neither. Don't fucking do it, man. Whatever security you got here in town or

with your fucking girl or whatever, keep your liberty. You can make your own fucking security, but once you're cornered, man, you're fucking done.”

I just kind of looked at him, I guess. I didn't know what to say—I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I mean, I knew he was a history student, but that was kind of random, I thought. It made me wonder who had called him, and why.

He shook his head and looked back out the windshield. “I'm just saying I can't leave this place now. You still can, Billy—you're seventeen, and you got work ethic and you're smart, which is a combination you don't find a lot in this world anymore.

Get the fuck out of here before it's too late.”

Then we got destroyed at work. I don't know what was going on that everyone and their mom wanted McDonald's last night, but it was a nightmare. We ran three $700 hours and a $500 hour, and then of course all the GE guys come through late when they get out. Plus we got our truck, and somehow the truck always shows up when we're busiest, so customers were getting pissed waiting for this guy to push the hand truck into the store, plus then when I need to run back and grab fries or make a salad or whatever there's shit all over the place, and there's never space to get around it easily.

So our timer sucked, and it was frustrating trying to fill all these orders, but at least we got through the night without fucking up too badly.

I got out of work to see Call me from Mom and a few miscellaneous texts from

Amanda telling me she'd go to Dad's (she knows where he keeps his spare key—I'm

a dipshit, I've done this a couple times before and I told her where it was). U goofball, u know i'd study with you if you just asked, lol. U don't have to make me bring u ur book. Ur lucky i <3 u.

I texted her back Lol, I would study with u but i dont want to ruin ur grades.

I am lucky she loves me. I don't know what I'd do without her. Maybe we should do the long-term thing. I don't want to hold her down though.

So I got her a tall iced coffee, like I said I would (with extra chocolate sauce— it's her favorite part). She hadn't gotten back to me yet, so I texted her again. Where r u? I got u a tall iced coffee (sry i dont know the fancy italian name, lol, we dont use those at mcd's)

Five minutes later, when Amanda still hadn't gotten back to me, I called Mom like she'd said to.

She answered before it even rang. “Hello?”

“Hey Mom, what's going on?”

“Oh.” She paused for a second. “Hi, honey.”

I don't know why she asks me to call her and acts surprised when I do. “You said to call you?”

“Oh, yeah. Do you have a ride home?”

I hate it when she does that. I'm seventeen, she doesn't need to treat me like a fucking kindergartener.

“No, Amanda's not answering her phone and Tracy's working late. Would you—“

She didn't wait for me to finish. “Sure, I'll be right there.”

I realized I had nothing for her though, so I grabbed an apple pie for her. My brother Brandon doesn't usually stay up that late, so instead of food I just grabbed a couple toys for him—we had some Transformers shit I thought he'd like, a

Bumblebee and an Optimus Prime. (The good Optimus Prime toys from the store are like thirty fucking dollars, which is why he doesn't have one, unless Mom's sandbagging one for Christmas this year.)

Mom didn't say anything when she got there other than thanks for the pie.

She wouldn't look at me, either. Usually she talks too much when she drives, which is one reason I usually prefer to ride with Amanda or Tracy.

We got about halfway home before she said “So listen...I know you know I don't get along with your dad, but I don't want this to sound like bullshit.”

She doesn't usually swear around me, and she gets really upset at profanity in the house, which is why I keep my CDs at work. So I just shrugged—I didn't know what to say.

“There's...some shit going on at your father's place. It isn't good. The cops are there. Including your uncle.”

Uncle Ray is cool by himself, but he's always really quiet at family events, when he's there at all. I'm told he works a lot because the police can't take a day off.

I'm told a lot of things, though.

“Your dad got taken out on a stretcher. He's not in good shape. They took him to Jamestown for surgery. He was drunk, and you know booze is a blood thinner, so he needs transfusions in addition to whatever it takes to wake him up and fix him up and so forth.”

I don't remember much about Dad, but I know he drank like a fucking retard and I know he's a ridiculous douche when he's drunk—Mom went through a lot of mascara trying to pretend everything was okay—so I wasn't really surprised. I didn't say anything, though—what do you say when your dad goes to the hospital?

Mom sighed. It was a shaky sigh. I understood that the conversation was not light, but man, I can't watch a girl cry, and I wasn't looking forward to seeing Mom cry again.

“They took Amanda in a different ambulance.”

Mom would always send me and Brandon to our room when she and Dad were about to have a “discussion.” We didn't have a TV in our room to drown them out, the way Dad would turn up the Giants games (or the Mets, depending on the time of year) so he didn't have to hear us playing or Mom telling him rent was due.

So we'd always play with Hot Wheels during their “discussions.” I always had a bunch of sports cars to rev up and race, and a bunch of cop cars and fire trucks to

save the day when things went wrong. Brandon had every construction vehicle

Mattel ever made, plus this huge gravel pit kind of thing Grandma gave him the only

Christmas he remembers of her.

He didn't open his other gifts for a week when he got that, he loved it so much. Mom had to remind him that he'd even gotten anything else, that he didn't have to choose between that one thing and everything else he'd been given.

It was awesome how much he liked it, I was just worried he was going to break the crane—it was that flimsy plastic they make grocery-store Easter baskets out of. That or he'd destroy the roadways on the base. He liked to push down on his dump trucks as if they were mud-bogging even though the thing clearly wasn't wet or mushy.

One day he took it into the living room to play with it—I was in eighth grade, studying for my PSATs, and he wanted to give me some privacy. It was nice of him—

I mean, a couple of hours of the gravel clattering around or him clanking trucks together could get old, but it was his room too. I'd have gladly gone to the park or

McDonald's or someplace to study if he'd wanted.

Anyway, Dad came home from work pissed off that day. Mom and I know not to ask, and Brandon was all of seven, he wouldn't have bugged Dad about it (though even at that age he wasn't happy to see Daddy come home like kids are on TV).

But Dad came home angry, and he had a few beers “just to cool down,” and I came out of our room to pee when I saw Dad pick up the gravel pit and snap it clean

in half across his knee and tell Brandon “go outside and play in the goddamn dirt, there's plenty of it out there.”

Brandon just sat and stared at Dad. When Dad left the room to throw the pieces in the trash Brandon stared at the chair where Dad had been. He didn't cry or yell or whine, he just stared. It struck me as being a lot worse than if he'd thrown a loud tantrum—he looked like a widower at the funeral, like he wasn't sure if he was lost or scared or angry or what.

It wasn't long after that that Mom took us to Grandpa's house and left Dad.

Grandpa must have heard what happened, he bought Brandon another gravel pit and a couple other little playsets (like a gas station and a McDonald's and a car wash, so he could set up a little town), but Brandon wouldn't touch them. He'd go in the closet for his shoes or his coat or something and see them, and he'd just stand for a minute and sigh.

Mom got her distaste for swearing from Grandpa—you never heard profanity at my grandparents' house, or at least I never did. I'll never forget the time after

Mom got her second job, when Grandpa came in to help Brandon get ready for school and saw him stand at the closet like he did. He helped Brandon put on his shoes and sent him out to eat his breakfast. Grandpa watched him go, with that same dejected stare, and he said, “Billy, Deirdre gave your grandma and me a lot of trouble, especially on your father's behalf, and maybe there's something to be said for lying in the bed you make like she is right now.”

He turned and looked me in the eye. “But I would see that cocksucker dead for how he treated you boys.”

Somehow I hoped Dad didn't make it. I couldn't see straight. It's one thing to fuck with your ex, or even your kids—if you don't expect anything out of your family, who will? And how will they know what's expected of them, or why?—but

Amanda didn't ask for my shit.

I don't know how you root for your dad to suffer and die, but I know he'd do anything when he was pissed off and drunk. I've heard from people around town that he's got a record for something he did in Fredonia in college, but when I ask what it is they abruptly change the subject, and there's no way I'd ask Mom or

Grandpa.

I don't know what he did this time. I couldn't ask Mom—she already was too choked up to talk.

I tried not to think about whether he'd hit Amanda, and if he'd hit her how hard or how much and what it might mean for her, and what it might mean for us if she'd gone so far out of her way to do me a favor and she'd gone to the hospital as a result.

Of course, once it occurred to me that he might have hit her, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Amanda's like 5'3” or 5'4” and thin (I know better than to try to find out how much a woman weighs, but if I had to guess I'd put her around 110),

Dad's over six foot and you can still tell he used to be in the military—I mean, he

drinks like a twelve-pack a day or maybe more and you can tell by looking, but he's also the kind of guy who if he had to hang drywall would just pick it up and carry it somewhere. You can still see a lot of definition in his arms when he jacks up his truck to fix whatever he fucked up on his last bar run.

If he hit her at all, I know he broke a bone or a couple bones.

I had a regular at work for a while who frequently dropped his drinks and other stuff—we eventually learned it was a chronic issue and started carrying his tray to his table for him. Turns out he'd gotten hit in the head by a falling piece of sheet metal while he was welding at GE. The sheet metal weighed like a hundred pounds, so even though it didn't fall far, the blow apparently detached his retina. I saw him every couple days for a year or so, and he hadn't been able to find a doctor who could fix it at all—that eye is just totally useless.

Christ. Dad's a lot bigger than Amanda. I hope he can't hit that hard. What if he blinded her? I'd carry everything in the world for her, but holy shit—she was just trying to help me out.

I shouldn't even have left my book there in the first place, let alone sent someone else in to get it for me.

I really tried to not think about what else might have happened her; Amanda does look like his girlfriend Sarah, if in a little better shape, and I guess it had never occurred to me before right then what exactly he might have done to Mom when he was drunk. Suddenly I couldn't speak, either, for what I didn't want to imagine happening to Amanda or Sarah, or what Mom might have gone through before she

left him. Not to mention what Grandpa may have been ignoring, or trying to put out of his mind, when he said all that about Mom lying in the bed she'd made.

Of course, then I have to wonder; if I hate being at my dad's house, is there something I should know about Grandpa that made Mom deal with so much shit before she gave in and moved back into that house?

Amanda was just trying to help me. She was just trying to cover my ass after I made a mistake.

Whatever Dad did, he shouldn't have done to her.

He should have done it to me.

Angel Hair

Within ten miles of Lake Erie you can't count on the weather between Labor

Day and Memorial Day—you might have seventy degrees with no cloud cover or thirty degrees with endless sleet, sometimes on the same day.

The worst days are usually in late April, when that world can't decide whether it's still winter or beginning summer, on those days when it's sunny enough to feel warm if you're not in the shade but frigid enough to hunch your shoulders in the shadows (or when the stiff lake-effect winds pick up).

In Westfield, the intersection of state route 394 and US route 19 is about a mile from the lake. If you are on the second floor of any of the buildings here or (God help you) trying to roof one of them, you can see the lake clearly, along with beaches scattered along the shore like the rice thrown at a budget wedding.

Sarah Connolly lived in the upper floor of a duplex on Maple Street, one block east of 394, with her boyfriend, Randy Kohl. The sun had warmed her car during her long workday at the bank—driving home, it gave her the tingly contentment one feels about a half-hour after Thanksgiving dinner—but it had not warmed her yard as effectively. She regretted having worn only a turtleneck to work as she shivered in the doorway beneath an oak tree older than the town, and her fingers had gone numb by the time she unlocked the door.

Most weekdays the door would be unlocked by now—Randy got home before her in the winter because you can’t do construction work in the dark and in

the summer because you have to mind the heat, thick and damp like comforters on the sick—but Wednesday was taco night at Park Tavern, a homey little corner bar a short ways across the Pennsylvania state line; tacos were seventy-five cents, and they were probably good enough to justify the half-hour drive.

Park Tavern was also far from Randy’s childhood home just north of

Fredonia; she knew he went to Park to try and escape all the townies he’d spent his childhood with, especially since he still often saw them when he was contracted to patch their roofs and plow their hundred-foot driveways and not scratch their vintage Corvettes when he jacked up their garages to make way for new foundations. After dinner when he was watching the Mets lose, he’d refer to his customers as “burge-wah” and toast them in absentia with his Coors.

Sarah climbed the steps carefully to skirt all the shit Randy left on them— pulling his work boots aside with her free hand and gingerly skipping that step to keep the mud off her heels, picking up his Coleman lunch bag to take to the kitchen and blanching at the sweet pungence of the apple he didn’t eat for lunch.

She stepped across the small entryway into the kitchen and dumped the lunch bag into the trash, an adobe-hued apple, a Cheetos “HUNGRY GRAB” wrapper and three Iron City cans falling into the trash. She thought about getting the cans back out of the trash so she could recycle them, but you don’t get a deposit when you buy Iron City; you get the musky beer and the hokey logo and they’re yours, nobody else wants them after you’ve staked your claim.

* * *

As she reached down to take off her shoes, she sat on the taupe couch

Randy’s parents had given him when he tried to go to SUNY-Fredonia. The thing was forty years old and had not even been considered attractive when the man was conceived on it, but Randy revered this relic of his childhood.

One taco night, with nothing to eat in the house and knowing he wouldn't bring leftovers home from Park Tavern, Sarah had a salad from the nearby

McDonald's. It was one of the salads you're supposed to put the dressing on and then shake (at least, that's how she thought you were supposed to do it), but the plastic dish did not seal terribly well and she spilled some Italian dressing on the couch. Even her immediate, thorough application of a Lysol wipe did not prevent a stain.

After taco night, Randy invariably wanted to watch SportsCenter; there was no hiding the stain from him. He was furious, and though she felt that it was just an ugly old couch and they needed a new one anyway, she understood that she needed to take better care of the place. With her parents both dead and her brother high enough up at General Electric that he didn't even keep a home in the United States

(at the time, he was working on a project in Egypt that would keep him in Cairo that entire year), she had no place to go if Randy kicked her out.

She’d had some trouble describing the fight to coworkers the next day— everyone in Fredonia knew about his rap sheet and his stint in the Marines, and the extra make-up was an obvious red flag—but then she came home to find the dishes

washed and the kitchen mopped and the trash taken out. He’d cleaned the house so she wouldn’t have to.

She went to the bedroom to change out of her work clothes and found on her pillow a little teddy bear holding a box of chocolates, with “I’m Beary Sorry” embossed on the box’s gold foil wrapping.

At that moment she was so touched by the appearance of the bear that she could not imagine her life without Randy. That the box contained chocolates filled with peanut butter, to which he'd forgotten that she was fatally allergic, did not change the matter for her.

It was the thought that counted, after all, and like it said on that ridiculous

“Footprints in the Sand” plaque everyone's parents had hanging in their house, some things only make sense in retrospect.

Knowing that Randy would eat too many tacos at the tavern and go straight to bed when he returned, Sarah took advantage of a rare opportunity to cook for herself, and decided on chicken Parmesan.

She turned the television on to a Scrubs marathon to chase the silence as she cooked. The apartment was large enough only for the couch and one pilling La-Z-

Boy and his fifty-two-inch plasma TV; somehow some noise, any sort of presence, made the apartment feel less like an enclosure and more like a home.

She preferred that the sound and light came from elsewhere. It was a visitor she could summon whenever she was lonely and evict when she tired of its

company, and it did both instantly and gracefully, entering and swirling in space and disappearing back into the world beyond like a figure skater.

She knew she could have the chicken any way she wanted, but she set the timer to thirty-three minutes and began to reach for the bag of breader before she entirely realized she was still standing at the stove.

When she cooked pasta for the both of them, Sarah always told Randy it was spaghetti, and really he didn’t give a fuck what she called it as long as it was on the table when he got home from work, but she always had angel hair in the house. Just the name angel hair made her feel better; alone in the house, she could and did say

“Angel hair” aloud as she got the noodles out of the cabinet.

As Sarah tidied up the kitchen after her meal, and Turk ignored his lingerie- clad wife (the camera panning out to reveal his cry of “that's the sexiest thing I've ever seen” being directed to a lackluster turkey-on-rye sandwich instead), she heard the door open downstairs.

The odds that Randy had not gone to taco night were low—it was a rare chance for him to get out of Westfield and away from all the townies to a place where not many people knew him—but it happened occasionally, and for reasons he never bothered to explain.

It had not occurred to her until that moment how messy it can be to make marinara sauce, or how many dishes a simple meal of pasta can create, and she rushed to rinse the pans.

She heard keys brushing against the door.

The door was not locked, but for some reason the tumbler clicked as the key was inserted and there was a slight thuck as the key, without resistance from the lock, turned faster than the bearer intended.

The door opened.

A pretty, slight brunette stepped in. She started at the sight of Sarah.

“Ohmygod! I'm so sorry—Billy didn't say anyone was home, I would've knocked!” the girl said.

Sarah cocked her head slightly and regarded the girl. On the one hand, it wasn't Randy, which got her off the hook in the short term—this girl probably did not come over to eat and certainly didn't care what the kitchen looked like.

On the other hand, Billy seemed a little nerdy to have a girlfriend. And this girl looked to be at least eighteen—Sarah didn't remember how old Billy was, and though he was cute for a teenager she thought this girl could do better.

Sarah was Randy's second upgrade since his ex-wife; though the kids' mom had left him, Randy had started dating Sarah while his last relationship was on the rocks, which is how he'd decided to end that relationship and commit to her.

The girl was looking down towards her own feet. “Billy said he left his history book here. Have you seen it?”

Sarah sighed; the girl did look regretful at walking into a house not her own, she must really have come here out of devotion to Billy. If she'd been looking for

Randy, she would have been more comfortable walking into this place. “I think so, now that you mention it.” Billy had to sleep on the couch when Randy had him for the weekend, the apartment had only one bedroom—and there'd been books on the coffee table Monday when she cleaned house, which had to be Billy's.

Sarah was embarrassed for her misjudgment and let her guard down a bit.

“I'm sorry, hon, I'm Sarah. I'm Randy's girlfriend.”

“Nice to meet you, Sarah—I'm Amanda, I'm dating Billy.” Amanda stuck a hand out to shake, and as Sarah accepted it she noticed Hello Kitty nail appliques.

Maybe Amanda was Billy's age. “Seriously; I'm super sorry to barge in on you like this. Billy said his dad likes to eat in Harborcreek on Wednesdays, and I didn't know he lived with anyone.”

“It's okay, I know Billy doesn't get along that well with Randy.” Sarah thought for a moment and chose to extend an olive branch. “I was just thinking about having some hot cocoa, it's so obnoxiously cold outside. Would you like a cup?

“I just came to grab Billy’s books, I’m not trying to mooch or anything.”

“I boil the water on the stove, it's not any extra work to put two cups’ worth in the teakettle.”

Amanda looked towards the door, as if weighing an escape, then shrugged. “Sure, that would be awesome. You’re right, it’s not fair for the sun to be out if it isn’t going to warm anything up.”

The girls took their drinks into the living room; Randy did not own a dining- room table and Sarah had not saved up enough for a decent one. As the couple seldom had company, this was only an issue when they had anything that might be spilled on the couch.

“For some reason Randy loves this goddamned thing, so don't spill any cocoa on it, please. We had a huge fight a few months ago after I dropped like a tablespoon of Italian dressing on it. You can't even see the stain anymore unless you really look.”

Amanda pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay, I'll be careful.”

Sarah wondered what Billy had told her about Randy. Or herself, for that matter. “Thanks. I mean, Randy grew up with the thing, and it was free, but seriously—you gotta let go of your childhood sometime.”

“Not around here, you don't.”

Sarah chuckled. “Yeah, I guess not.” She took a sip and thought for a minute.

“So do you know Billy from school?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. How soon do you graduate?”

“Next year.

“Nice. Are you thinking about going to college?”

Amanda looked away. “I haven't decided yet.”

Sarah nodded. “It's not something you rush. Do what's best for you. My parents always wanted me to go to college. So I went, even though I didn't know

what I wanted to do. I just racked up a ton of debt, wound up with a communications degree that I can't use around here, and now I work at a bank thirty hours a week so

I can live in a duplex in podunk nowhere, New York.”

“Yeah, that's what I'm trying not to do. No offense.”

“No, I wish I wasn't stuck where I am. The upshot of it is that neither of my parents lived to see me get my degree—I was sort of their mid-life-crisis baby, they were pretty old by the time I finished high school. They ask you in kindergarten what you want to be when you grow up, and nobody says 'bank teller'.”

“I think when they asked me that, I wrote that I wanted to be a panda. I don't know if I've changed my mind yet.”

Sarah laughed. “If you could grow up to be a panda, I think a lot of people would do that.”

Amanda nodded. “It would get you out of here, for sure. Someplace that has jobs, and houses that have been fixed in the last thirty years. I keep telling Billy that, but he doesn't listen very well—he wants to go to Penn State-Behrend.”

“Well, Penn State has a good reputation. He can do a lot with that on his diploma. What's he thinking about studying?”

“He says engineering, but he doesn't sound thrilled about it, and he's having a hard time with trig. I mean, he comes to me for help with trig, and I don't even really know what I'm doing.”

“He'll figure it out. Boys are like that. You gotta let them do what they're going to do. Sooner or later they'll come around, but if you say 'I told you so' you just end up pushing them farther away.”

Both women seemed to realize about simultaneously that they were done drinking and had been holding empty cups while they spoke. They nearly bumped into each other trying to get to the kitchen to put their cups in the sink.

“Oops, sorry. Can I help you clean up?” Amanda asked.

“No, but thanks.”

“I'd prefer to not be a freeloader.”

“Well, thank you. But really, you can sit and relax. Unless you're in a hurry— let me clean up and I'll help you find Billy's books, I know they're around here somewhere.”

“No no no, I mean, I just need to get them to him by the time he gets out of work around eleven.”

Sarah rinsed the dishes and went to put them in the dish machine only to discover that it was full. “So you're picking him up from work then?” she asked, as she opened the cupboards.

“Yeah, he still doesn't have a car, it's so easy to get f—to get screwed buying a beater around here and he hasn't saved up enough to go to a dealer. Plus it sucks having to get a car inspected twice a year if you don't know a mechanic who will help you out. I told him my mechanic is cool about inspections, and you know a

mechanic is cool if he isn't cheating a seventeen-year-old girl, but Billy's still really worried about keeping up with a car on what McDonald's pays.” Amanda reached to put her cup in the dish machine, saw that the machine was full of clean dishes, and reached down to help put them away.

“Oh thanks, hon, you're sweet. Yeah, that first car is scary, but it's one of those things where once you've got a car, you can't remember not having one, and it's not so bad after all.” Sarah chuckled as she put away Randy's Bud Light pilsner glasses.

“Cool. So what happened to your first car?”

“It was rear-wheel-drive, I wrecked it on the way to work during our annual

Halloween blizzard. The car had nice creature comforts to it, but since then I've always gotten four-wheel drive, at least when I had money to be picky.”

“That sucks.”

“Well, driving a two-door sort of hampers trips to the drive-in, if you know what I mean. Although if you watch TV anymore, you see a lot of those old cars getting restored and pimped out and whatnot, maybe I could've turned a good buck for the thing, so there's that.” Sarah shook some water off the bottom of a coffee mug, then grabbed a towel out of a drawer and dried the mug. “It sounds like you're serious about him.”

“Yeah...” Amanda stopped to consider the plates she was holding. “Billy's different. He's adorable, and he respects me more than...” She stopped again, turning the plates in her hands, looking at the counter.

Sarah thought she saw some of Amanda's shame, and saw herself at eighteen and nineteen and twenty, following her parents' dream of herself in college and her own dream of having something to be proud of. She also saw the wasted year of biology classes she failed trying to become the LPN her mom always lamented her not being, and the semester she lost to a baby that rewarded her by being born both premature and dead. “No, it happens to the best of us. I dated a lot after my dad died.

I was kind of a mess for a while after that, even though we didn't really get along while he was alive. Sometimes you do just need to be close to somebody. And to feel like someone values you. You should make sure they really do though. Learned that the hard way.”

It occurred to her then that Randy knew none of this, and she was glad

Amanda was not on good enough terms with him to repeat it.

“Sorry.” Amanda looked at the floor, like she understood but didn’t know what to say.

Sarah remembered finally that she was holding plates for a reason and reached up to put them away.

“But yeah, Billy's great. He always just wants to hang out—he really enjoys being around me, and he always wants to do stuff for me, like every time I pick him up from work he makes my favorite iced coffee or grabs a meal for me, and the last time I was sick he brought me ginger ale and a loaf of cinnamon-swirl bread so I'd have good toast.”

Sarah smiled, with a little effort she hoped wasn’t visible. “Aww. He must have gotten it from his father. Randy let me move in here after my mom passed when I didn't have a job and had nowhere to go, and he brings me surprises like that sometimes.” It occurred to Sarah that it had been a while since Randy had brought her anything on a whim—probably not since they fought over the couch—but

Randy had said that contracting work was drying up and money was going to be tight for a while, and anyway a place to live was plenty to give to a woman.

“Funny that they wouldn't get along then. Billy doesn't seem to like being over here, and you're pretty cool, it can't be you he doesn't like. He doesn’t talk about his dad, but he always gets kind of pissy when he's about to come here for the weekend and he always wants to go on a date the moment he's back at his mom's.

To decompress, he says.”

“Yeah, Randy and I fight, but I think every couple does. Randy's right often enough, and I know I'm not perfect—how am I supposed to be better if nobody tells me when I'm wrong?”

Amanda picked up a couple cookie sheets out of the dish machine and looked up to see where to put them. “Well, yeah, but you can't take all the blame all the time. I learned that the hard way with the boy I dated before Billy. Although Billy's setting a high bar, now—he gave me a Build-A-Bear for our six-month anniversary.”

It’s hard enough to imagine Billy with a girl—they’ve made it to six months?

Especially if he’s jumped straight to a Build-A-Bear that fast? “Congratulations.”

Amanda smiled a little. “Thanks. It was so cute, he put a Batman outfit on it and called it Adam Westfield, and he wrote me a little note saying he wanted to be my hero but he hoped this one sufficed for now. He actually used the word 'suffice,' like anyone says that anymore.” She reached up to put the cookie sheets away, but being several inches shorter than Sarah she had to stand on her tiptoes and reach to get them to the top shelf with their mates.

Sarah, shaking the water out of a Tupperware lid over the sink, did not see

Amanda straining. “That's adorable. I wouldn’t have guessed that, but then he's a quiet kid as far as I can tell.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, almost apologetically. A clatter, as Amanda lost her grip on the cookie sheets and another two pots came down with them. “Fuck!”

Sarah turned sharply to see Amanda cowering away from the falling dishes, but she couldn't quite reach them in time to keep them from falling on the girl's head. “Oh shit, I'm sorry, you should've said something. Are you all right?”

Amanda was holding her forehead. “It doesn't hurt very much, but it feels like it's bleeding.”

Sarah looked down to see some blood on the corner of one of the cookie sheets. When she looked back at Amanda, there was blood oozing between her fingers. “Oh, honey, I feel so bad. Come over here into the bathroom and let me patch you up.”

“Don't feel bad, I'm the idiot who lost my grip. I shouldn't have been reaching that high anyway, I know I'm short.”

“Hush. You don't have to apologize for being helpful.” Luckily the bathroom was adjacent to the kitchen, about two steps to the right of the offending cupboard.

Sarah ran some warm water, grabbed a washcloth, and made a compress. “Here, hold this to it.”

When Amanda moved her hand, though, it was clear she'd need stitches; the thin edge of the cookie sheet had gashed her forehead about the length of her eyebrow, and though the blood wasn't quite gushing it was clearly more than a gauze pad could handle.

It had only been a couple months since Sarah had fought with Randy over the couch. Randy's reputation locally was poor enough that she didn't want to take

Amanda to the emergency room in Jamestown, and she didn't have enough gas in the car to get into Erie where nobody really knew him.

“Hang on a second, hon. That cut's pretty deep. I'm going to call someone and see about getting you stitches.” Sarah handed over a bath towel. “I feel so bad. If you want to wash the blood out of your hair or anything, all my shampoo and conditioner is over there on the corner of the tub, or you can just hold the towel to your forehead if the washcloth gets gross.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

“You hurt yourself cleaning my house, it seems like the least I can do. I'll be right back.”

Sarah didn't want to call Randy—she was not looking forward to another fight, and she was sure that injuring his son's girlfriend was not likely to please him—but she didn't know what else to do.

When he picked up, she was surprised to hear only his voice. “What's goin' on, Sarah?”

“Uh, not much. Where are you?”

“I'm at Park Tavern for tacos, why?”

“Oh, I didn't hear any bar noise behind you, is all.”

“Yeah, I came outside. You're important, I can do that for you.”

She was touched, which made it all the harder to deliver the bad news.

“Look...Billy's girlfriend came over to grab some schoolbooks he left here, and she stayed for a cup of cocoa, and after drinks she went to help me put the dishes away and some pans fell on her and she cut her head open.”

She heard the whirr of a diesel engine starting near him, the grumble of the vehicle backing up, the pronounced roar of first gear subsiding into the distance.

“How bad?”

“A couple-two inches long. It's bleeding kind of hard. I'd like to take her to get stitches, but I don't know if anyone will buy that she hurt herself in a freak kitchen accident.”

A moment passed. Sarah heard a vehicle start near him, rev high, and shift into low gear; Randy must really have been in the parking lot. “Let me clear up my tab and I'll be home in twenty, don't you worry about it. We'll figure something out.”

“I'm sorry, Randy.”

“You just keep her comfortable, okay? She's a good kid.”

“Okay.”

“Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I'll see you in a bit.”

Sarah went back into the bathroom to see how Amanda was doing.

She had switched to the towel and tossed the blood-soaked washcloth into the tub. It looked like the bleeding had slowed down, but she clearly needed medical attention.

Sarah noticed that she was trying to rinse the washcloth. “Oh, don't worry about that. How are you feeling?”

“It's sort of just throbbing. I'm not like woozy or anything.”

“Well, that's good. I don't know how to check you for a concussion or anything. I don't have insurance so I can't afford to take you to the hospital, but

Randy does and he'll know what to do. He should be home real soon.” She felt bad omitting the truth to Amanda, but if the girl really didn't know much about Randy this did not seem like the time to set her straight.

“Thanks.”

“Of course. I just wish I could do something for you right now. Can I get you something to drink?” Sarah remembered that the blood bank always offered cookies and sugary drinks right after you donated. She wasn't sure if it did measurable good or just gave you something to look forward to, but in the current predicament it seemed like it couldn't hurt.

“A Coke maybe?”

Randy kept Coke in the fridge for when Billy was due to visit; sometimes he drank it himself when he was out of beer, but Sarah was relieved to find two cans in the fridge.

A loud bang issued from the driveway, followed by a crunch. The two looked at each other. “That didn't sound good,” Amanda said.

“No, it didn't. Hopefully it's just the garbage truck emptying the dumpsters across the street.” Sarah knew even when she said it that this was implausible, but she also knew Randy's rap sheet included at least one DUI; another would result in a huge fine they couldn't afford and probably jail time, which would lose him his job, which they also couldn't afford.

She drew a breath and decided to deal only with what was directly before her.

Sure enough, Randy stumbled into the house moments later. He didn't appear to be drunk, but even around the corner she could smell beer on his breath.

“Sarah? Amanda?” he hollered.

“We're in the bathroom,” Sarah replied. Her voice shook a little; she did not know how he was going to handle his son's girlfriend getting injured on her watch, or how they would get her to a hospital discreetly and cheaply.

When Randy peered in, he did a double-take at the sight of Amanda. “Holy shit. I'm sorry about this, Amanda. How you doin'?”

Amanda tensed slightly; Sarah could tell she was thinking about how Billy handled being around the man and automatically on alert. “I'm all right, Mr. Kohl.”

“Please, kiddo, Randy is fine. You don't look all right, unless that towel was red when Sarah bought it and nobody told me. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“Okay. I really don't mean to be a bother, I don't know if I have insurance anymore. I don't know if it's like car insurance where they raise your premium every time you make a claim, my mom's premium like doubled when she totaled her car last spring and we had to cancel the cable for a while.”

Randy chuckled. “Not in my experience, it doesn't. You do need a doctor though, I can't sew anymore now that I'm not in the military and I don't believe you want that stapled.”

She smiled a little. “No, sir.”

Randy walked into the living room. Sarah heard him call a doctor, though he asked enough questions that clearly he did not know whomever he was calling.

Finally he came back to the bathroom. “The doctor said to apply pressure to the wound until you can get in to see him. We should go now, I don't want you passing out on me and you look to be bleedin' pretty hard.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Really, Randy is fine, girl.”

Sarah stood up. “Where are we taking her?” she whispered.

“There is an Urgent Care in North East. Should take us about a half-hour to get there. Maybe you ought to drive, though; I probably shouldn't have even driven here.” His words were beginning to slur together; he wasn't drunk by his own standards, but he did seem over the legal limit.

“Okay. Thank you. I thought you'd be upset.”

“I feel bad for her, is all.” He hugged Sarah. “I love you. Don't worry about it.”

She relaxed a little. “Thanks. I love you too.”

Just then someone pounded on the door. Randy frowned. Sarah shrugged. “I didn't even expect her, let alone anyone else.”

Randy went to answer the door. Sarah peered around the corner to see who it was, but she saw his face curl into a familiar mask of anger and she turned back into the bathroom.

“Who is it?” Amanda asked.

If Amanda didn’t know Randy, it was safe to say she neither knew Ray nor knew anything substantive about the relationship between the two men, and there had to be a better time to explain this than while she was already hurting and confused. “He hasn’t let them in yet, I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Randy came here in kind of a hurry, maybe he parked in our neighbor. I don’t know much about the guy, he works nights—”

Just then they heard the door splinter and a shout of “POLICE! FREEZE!”

Sarah’s heart stopped. The voice wasn’t Ray’s, at least, but with Randy’s record, the presence of any police was not a welcome development.

Amanda gasped loudly, then covered her mouth. This reflex caused her to drop the towel, and a fresh bubble of blood welled up in her eyebrow.

Sarah started and looked back to the girl, then automatically reached into the cabinet for a fresh handtowel and covered the wound again.

As she moved the girl’s bangs out of the way, her palm brushed the cut, a smear of blood swabbing the meat of her thumb and her wrist.

When Amanda reached up to hold the towel, her hand brushed Sarah’s.

“Thanks,” she said, and she visibly relaxed, as if she took solace in having the defined task of holding the towel.

In that moment Sarah saw suddenly a scared, hurt child, and felt a pang of shame (which she fervently hoped wasn’t visible); it struck her now as ludicrous that her first impression on Amanda’s arrival could have been that this was a woman here to fuck Randy, and she decided to take charge and make things right, if indeed they still could be right.

“Shh, you’ll be okay,” she whispered, hoping this wasn’t a lie. “I’m going to go see what’s going on, I’ll be right back.”

She stood up to go address the officers and realized that, after she’d rearranged Amanda’s hair, she’d been cradling the girl’s head while she spoke.

Sarah stepped out of the bathroom and turned to see one cop in the living room with his gun up and Ray stepping through the front door.

Ray carried himself in social situations with the clinical efficiency that cops have, with no effort ever wasted and the endless calm of spring rain; the few times she’d run into him around town without Randy around, Sarah liked that she could just talk to him and not worry about him snapping about an innocuous comment, that they could have a conversation without an argument.

He was kind of cute in a polo shirt and jeans, too, in a way that men who work with their hands tend not to be.

In the black uniform of a cop, with the black radio and black pistol jutting at angles from his hips like the shoulders of a hawk and the badge glaring from his chest like a lighthouse through the fog, he seemed larger, and dangerous in a way

Sarah couldn’t quite put her finger on, possibly because in his official role he now had control of her home.

She stopped and stared at him for a moment, wanting to assure him too that everything was okay but not really sure that was true, and in fact becoming more convinced that it was not.

Ray turned, looked her in the eye, and opened his mouth to greet her, but no words came out.

It occurred to her then that she had not washed up after tending to Amanda

(being, of course, not finished tending to Amanda), and they both simultaneously

looked down to the blood smeared on her hands and then to the blood spattered on the floor (which, having sat for some time, had darkened to the maroon of an overripe tomato).

Ray looked up at her, a vein pulsing in his throat, then looked up at Randy and blinked once.

Sarah retreated into the bathroom and closed the door.

Amanda hesitated at the footsteps, but looked relieved to see Sarah. “What’s going on?”

Sarah heard the cupboards clatter and a heavy thud. “The cops showed up.

One of them is Randy’s brother. They don’t get along well.” Another heavy thud. “I came back in here to stay out of their way. I didn’t recognize the other officer, and he went in the living room for some reason, so I didn’t find out what they’re doing here.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

A strange male voice hollered “Kohl?” Presumably the other officer. Then, more urgently, “Ray! What the fuck? Get the fuck up!”

Sarah sat on the edge of the tub and sighed heavily. “Fuck.”

Amanda reached over and put her free arm around Sarah’s shoulders as best she could.

A sharp knock at the bathroom door. “Police. Please open this door.”

Marine Biology

I joined the military to get out of Westfield. I'm the third guy named Randy

Kohl, and so in addition to people looking at me and seeing my dad and grandpa, I also get “III” instead of “Junior.”

People see “Junior” and think it's cute or whatever, and then you even can get people to call you “Junior,” so you sort of get your own fucking name. With a “III” people think you're either old money or white trash.

We ain't old money.

I've had a couple-four beers, please excuse me if I fuck this up—if I sound unpolite. I learned a long time ago that I can't hold my liquor, when I woke up in jail

(which I do not recommend as a way of solving your problems), but I do like the taste of a good beer.

People tell you not to live a champagne life on a beer budget, so I don't get why on a beer budget I shouldn't have beer. You don't set aside part of your paycheck to put gas in your car and then not drive anywhere, right? People in this town confuse me.

What I aim to say is, I know from experience that I'm not college material, but

I respect you. Maybe I even like you, although the circumstances don't help. In any case I don't want your job to be any more unpleasant than I've already made it.

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Anyway, I joined the Corps to get out of here and start over, maybe learn a trade or use my GI Bill to give school another go. I had just gotten put on probation, even though everybody (except the judge, I guess) knows I deserved worse, and I wanted to use that piece of good luck as a chance to get my shit straight—my shit together—sorry, get my life together. Every man in all the generations before mine—my dad and uncles, my grandpa, even the couple of times I met my dad's grandpa before he passed—always talked about “the service” like it was Boy Scouts; they bitch about the weather in Korea (they always just call it “Korea,” even though I do believe there are two Koreas) and talk about the pranks they played on each other and reminisce about how many potatoes they had to cube on KP duty, like it was a Memorial Day picnic, but held around the world instead of in Grandpa's yard.

Even my grandmas called it “the service.” I guess in their day it was a service.

Look what it made Dwight Eisenhower and John McCain, and if I recall correctly

Teddy Roosevelt, and Ul-isses—Ulyssis—President Grant before that. You don't find a lot of men like them anymore.

It's not because we don't want to be.

My mom had an uncle she didn't talk about.

My grandparents didn't talk about him much either. He showed up sometimes for holidays, Thanksgiving and Labor Day, anytime he could grab a free bite to eat, but my mom and dad and her brothers and sisters all just sort of kept an

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eye on him. I wasn't supposed to talk to him, nor were either of my brothers or any of our cousins to talk to him.

Which was fine, because he kept the same kind of distance. He either acted like we weren't there or kind of stared at us, like more than just to understand that we were there and to recognize who we were. It made you shiver, and put the frisbee down and walk closer to your mom.

I found out later from Grandpa that Uncle Bill served in Asia in the forties.

Survived Bataan, spent three years in a camp before the Australian military liberated him.

You only ever see that kind of thing on specials on TV and in books written by old farts who seem like they can’t let go. It never occurs to you that your own forebears were in the shit. I mean, somebody must have been, but everyone shows it and talks about it the way they talk about the good times—they talk about it like you had to be there, like there’s a barrier between now and then that you can’t cross.

Grandpa got this funny look when he was telling the story. He started off with this huge sigh, like he was about to announce a death in the family, then rattled off the facts of the story real fast without any bullshit—without telling me how he felt about it, pardon me.

Uncle Bill was one of three guys in his company of about two hundred who survived the March. The Japs—the Japanese actually killed a few of them in front of him, stragglers whose only crime was thirst, Grandpa said. It was supposed to show him that you should be better than your body, that when you are told to march you

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must march, and that there was no honor in being limited by your body, Grandpa said.

When they got to the camp, Uncle Bill got stuck in a cell the size of a coat closet. He couldn't fully lay down to sleep—he had to sleep sitting, it wasn't wide enough for him to curl up in a ball either, Grandpa said.

They didn't even talk to him for a few days, they just let him watch as they interrogated other people so he'd know what he was in for. He had to watch a bunch of Japanese soldiers take their turns with a woman, then put a rifle in her when she still wouldn't talk, he said.

The rifle still had a bayonet on the end, he said.

At this point Grandpa closed his eyes and looked away, and did not speak for a minute. At least a minute—I guess it may have been longer, I just felt so much for

Uncle Bill that I confess I was not about to check my watch.

It made me wonder what Uncle Bill had been thinking while he was staring us down all those years, and why he didn’t feel comfortable talking to any of us.

We’re all family. You’d like to believe your own uncle could come talk to you if there was something he needed to get off his chest, or even to just bitch about the Patriots to blow off some steam.

He said the Japs—the Japanese—tortured Uncle Bill for days—he did not say how many days, or what they did, though it was pretty obvious that he knew. They were brothers, and being both blood and your own age a brother may understand

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things in a way that escapes your parents and your woman and your kids. I would be surprised if Grandpa didn't know more details than he cared to.

Anyway, Grandpa skipped over whatever happened while Uncle Bill was gone and went straight to the homecoming. Though he did put special emphasis on it being the Australian Marines that busted him loose—I guess Uncle Bill was sore that his American buddies were abandoned in the Philippines to die and that he got no help from the Army he'd sworn to live and die for, but these Australians, people who lived in the opposite corner of the world, who didn't have what we had, put everything on the line for him and got him back to his family.

The only time I ever talked to Uncle Bill, at a family picnic, was when I was nineteen, after I'd joined the Corps but before boot camp.

He ranted about how Australia got fucked by the Brits so much harder than we did, that they were left in Australia to die for sins they didn't necessarily commit, or were committed with good intentions. That the colonists were whiny cunts who should've just bought the goddamn tea, and how white are they to have a fucking revolution just because they don't like how much their bitch drinks cost, and do they not see the fucking irony in dressing like the people they fucking murdered in order to safely enjoy those bitch drinks.

Please forgive the French, I'm quoting him here.

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I think Uncle Bill's point was that giving up your life for no reason sucks. He was eighteen when he got stuck in the March. He'd been drafted right out of high school. His brothers and his dad had been in the military, and everyone told him that fighting was the right thing to do, that we couldn't let the Japs take over the world, that it was only right to help those less fortunate than us.

He was almost twenty-two when the Australians busted him loose, and had just turned twenty-two when he got back to Westfield, with nineteen stitches in his ass and a grade-three concussion (which he suggested might be called “grade three” because it made you feel like a fucking eight-year-old). His whole life had begun after high school, and his education was the end of him.

This is what he said to me when I spoke of joining the Corps. I will never forget what he told me when I said I had enlisted; “Get the fuck out while the getting is good. You don't know how raw the deal is until your ass is burned shut. Whatever they tell you, focus on what you're coming home to.”

I had joined the Corps already, and I didn't really know how to handle what he'd told me. When you have a bunch of stories on one side and one vote for the other side, it's not real hard to go with the majority, especially when you have that

GI Bill to look forward to, and again when my life was going nowhere it seemed like a ticket to someplace where I could live a little, someplace where nobody who noticed the “Randy Kohl” would care much to include the “III.”

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I got to boot camp, and my drill sergeant was named Randall.

Go fucking figure.

I joined the Corps because I had family already in the Army and Navy, uncles and grandpas in addition to cousins and brothers, and I wasn't smart enough for the

Air Force.

I would say that makes the Air Force seem like the party here with the best judgment.

Nobody told me till after boot camp that the saying is “to be a Marine, you have to be built like a brick shithouse, and about as smart.” I mean, I know this—I am forty-one and still a contractor, after all, and not my own contractor either—but when I was nineteen I thought I was going to get out of this town. I thought I could make something of myself. I mean, in those days there was even still industry in Erie

I could have come home to—they love veterans in Erie—or maybe I could have gone to Buffalo, far enough away to not be here but close enough to tend to the couple people I care about.

I was nineteen twenty-two years ago. That's a whole 'nother lifetime, in- between.

That first lifetime didn't go so great, and that second lifetime was certainly worse.

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Here's hoping I got a least one good lifetime in me, but I don't know how long you can allow yourself to hope.

I'm sure you've heard about SUNY-Fredonia, everyone has. I don't really want to talk about that. This is how I learned I couldn't hold my liquor, and woke up in jail, and realized I needed to put my life back together.

I would give a lot to be able to undo that—it is my single greatest regret—but it led to me getting into the Corps and beginning to get back on track, to chase a dream and to learn the skills that I would use later. I mean, I hate contracting for people who just want someone to yell at because their own lives are going nowhere, or because their own lives have gone nowhere (there are a lot of retired people in the area who did what I've done, done a turn in the military and then fit some kind of bill until they were too fucking old—too old to keep on, and you can tell by the stories they share that they got more regrets than a Johnny Cash album), but I love the feeling of building something. I can point to a roof I've done or a driveway I've poured or a garage I've built and tell my kids that I put that there.

I should be able to say that about my kids, too. I’d like to be able to point at them when Brandon hits home runs in Little League, or when Billy starts college here soon, and tell other people that those are my boys.

I am sure they will outlast me. I have to imagine they will make someone's life better.

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I have realized, since Deirdre left me, that they made my own life better. I've been trying to re-connect with Billy, but he's old enough to remember why Deirdre left and he can't wait to get away from me, he can't wait till he's eighteen so he doesn't have to see my fucking face anymore.

I am sorry about my language. I'm trying not to sound like a Marine.

I can't describe the way it hurts to know that your own son wants nothing to do with you, though, that you have lost the trust of someone who looks up to you, that you have failed someone who believes in you.

I don't know why it still hurts, though. It's not like it's the first time, and the way things are going I don't believe it will be the last.

You did not ask me for all of that, though. You asked me what happened the night Ray showed up on my doorstep.

There's this great little bar in Pennsylvania called Park Tavern on Route 5, maybe a half-hour away from my place. They do seventy-five-cent tacos every

Wednesday. The tacos are pretty good, too, so it's not just like Taco Bell where you can get full for cheap but you regret it later.

That and the atmosphere is great. You've seen Cheers? It's a little hole-in-the- wall like that. It's dim and cluttered enough to seem like your memories of your childhood home, but the service is good and the food is good, and they know you

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enough to be happy to see you but they don't know enough about where you've been to hold it against you.

So I guess it's like being a kid, but it costs a little more.

Anyway, I go there after work every week to have a beer and catch a game with my work buddies. Sarah (my girlfriend) and I don't have much hanging-around money, but if I'm careful I can manage dinner at Park Tavern most Wednesdays, five or six tacos and a couple beers and then as a table we split a couple orders of fries.

I actually like Larry's better, but everybody who goes to Larry's knows who I am, and then I get that fish-eye Uncle Bill used to give me, and I do not appreciate it.

So I have to pick my spots, go there when I suspect business will be slow and sit in a certain corner where I will not be noticed.

So we went that Wednesday—what are you saying, two weeks ago? I'm not clear on the date, myself—we went to taco night, we'd just put a roof on this lady's house in North East and we figured we were right there anyway. We were all famished—you think when it's sixty out it'll be comfortable to work, but with no real cloud cover and us crawling across that black paper you get hot fast, you got to stay hydrated. (That's what they called it in Desert Storm, anyway. “Hydrating” meant drinking a whole bottle of water in one go, they made us do it eight times a day during training. “Dehydrating” meant pissing—taking a leak, since even in that kind of heat that's more water than you can sweat off.)

We'd gotten into a good rhythm though—I’ve been with that crew for about two years, start in the spring when the ground's dry enough to work construction

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projects and go until about Halloween when it gets too cold to work outside, plus some indoor projects during the winter like hanging Sheetrock or changing out insulation. I love working with those guys—it's a small outfit on 394 down by

Mayville, middle of nowhere, but somehow I got put on a crew with three other guys who are all ex-military. Two of them used to be in the Corps too, though they're younger than me by enough that we didn't serve together.

The three of us give Don—the fourth guy—a bunch of shit—guff about having been in the Navy, but it's all in good fun, and anyway we all agree that at least he wasn't in the Air Force.

I also like that they're all from Mayville, born and raised, and other than their respective military bases they've lived there all their lives, so far. Mayville's a good little town, the guys are quiet and no-nonsense. Not like they are over the state line in Bradford and Warren, by “no-nonsense” I mean you can trust them to get a job done, but the Mayville guys you can joke around with, they ain't afraid to smile.

It also means they only know the Randy they work with, they don't know my dad and grandpa, and they sure don't know about SUNY-Fredonia.

So we were roofing this little Cape Cod just across I-90 in Pennsylvania—not a bad little house, but I kept wanting to go down and fix the driveway long as we were there. It started out as concrete but now it might as well be gravel. Being a

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Cape Cod it wasn't all that big and the garage was not attached, so it was one day to peel off the old roof and one day to lay the new one.

The day just flew—we work together enough that we have a method going, and we were all talking about the Mets while we were working—and we cleaned up around dusk and let the lady of the house know we were finished, I want to say 6:00 or 6:30.

We like Park Tavern anyway, and from there it was a hop-skip-and-a-jump, so there was no question, we drove right over. We lucked out and found spots towards the back for both of our trucks—taco night is busy, you get there between

5:00 and 7:00 and the lot will usually be overflowing.

Sarah and I were a little tight on money that week, she'd just needed her head gasket done. I'm all right with cars, but I don't have the space or the tools to do something like that, and even going to a garage my old Corps buddy runs so that we could pay under the table, it still cost us half a grand.

So I only had two beers and four tacos. I had Keystone too, it's the cheapest thing they serve, and you can tell when you drink it—I'm usually a Yuengling guy.

When times are better I might drink a Stella or a Dos Equis.

I'd just finished my tacos and was halfway through that second beer when

Sarah called. She sounded scared, and at Park it's too loud to hear much, but I caught that she said Billy's girlfriend was at the house and in distress.

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I would not have my son look at me and this town the way I once looked at my family and this town. As bad as I did by his mom—I was a mess when I got home from the desert, and it cost me a good wife to figure out how to clean it up—I'm glad he's not in position to learn from my bad example, but I'd like to be the good example for him to look up to, and I'd like there to come a day when I can tell him what I would give to undo the damage.

So I told the guys I had to go. I don't ask for much, I feel like I got more than my share of favors when I was younger and a knucklehead, but Sarah and Amanda needed my help, so I didn't feel like I was asking for a favor for me so much as for the girls. I guess they agreed, they just told me to take care of myself, and they looked concerned like they expected a recap in the morning.

I rushed home about as fast as I could, though with my history I try to stick to the speed limit.

I told you we were not hydrated, right? I drank what I thought was my share of water on the work site, but none at the bar, and I guess those two beers hit me harder than I thought; I was a little light-headed by the time I got home, and I pulled into my driveway too fast trying to avoid oncoming traffic.

It was a little wet out and my truck's tires aren't in great shape, I skidded into my neighbor's car. I felt bad about it, but I figured I'd knock on his door and clear it up with him after I took care of the girls. Hopefully work something out so I could fix the car, not get my insurance raised or get the police involved—he just moved in

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around Labor Day and he works nights, but I've run into him a couple times when I was out working on the truck and he seems nice enough.

I didn't see any ring on his finger either. He's about my age, and every guy of my generation either is married or was, so I'm guessing he knows a thing or two about getting fucked—getting the short end of the stick.

I got into the apartment and saw a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor maybe the size of an orange, and little drips leading into the bathroom. The bathroom door was open, and I could hear a little chatter and the sink running, but I still knocked on the door frame—I didn't know what happened and I didn't want to embarrass Amanda if she was in some state of undress.

Sarah came out and gave me this look like a scared rabbit, like she knew she had to say something but she didn't know what to say. “Amanda came by to get

Billy's homework and I was making hot cocoa so I invited her to have a cup and then she tried to help me put the dishes away and dropped one on her head and now she's bleeding,” all fast like that, like she wanted to say it all before I got pissed off.

I've gotten pissed off before and reacted poorly. I've tried to be better about it with Sarah than I was with Billy's mom—hell, it'd be tough to not be better about it than I was with Deirdre—but we've had a couple altercations.

I genuinely feel bad about that, so I've been trying to curtail my drinking, drink only beer that tastes good and only when I want the flavor, and I've tried to be

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a more active parent (such as Deirdre will allow), and I compromise with Sarah as best I can. She's a better woman than I deserve to be with, after all the wrong I done in my life.

So I understand her nerves, but it still hurts, and I would like to get to a point with her where I don’t earn that.

In the Corps we learned a certain amount of minor triage which we could use to help a buddy survive until the medic arrived, or which you might use to get by until you hit camp so the field medic could get to the guys who really needed him.

I keep some stuff in the bathroom cabinet for this reason—I have a kit in my truck too—in case I hurt myself out in the yard or whatever. So I asked Amanda to lean over the sink a little for any blood loss to run into and to move the towel she was holding to her head—though the towel was pink enough to give out on

Valentine's Day, and I do not remember ever buying pink towels for my home.

Sure enough, she put the towel down and blood ran straight down her cheek back toward her temple, she was cut over the left eyebrow pretty good. You couldn't see the skull, but the cut looked about finger-width—and I'm not set up to do stitches.

I told her I'd have to call a doctor, and cracked a stupid joke to make her feel better. She laughed at the joke like she really thought it was funny. Broke my heart—she's a sweet kid, and I don't know what Billy's told her about me, but you could tell before she started laughing that she had no idea what to expect.

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I was not inclined to face questions at the Westfield hospital or in Fredonia— hospital workers here are lifers, half of them remember me and the other half know me from around town. There's an ER in Harborcreek that treated Don real well the one time we were working in Pennsylvania—he dropped a can of paint on his foot and needed a cast, and the nurses there got right to us and were real nice.

So I called to explain the situation. I guess a cookie sheet fell on her—in which case I am glad it hit her forehead, I would have trouble forgiving myself if she had lost an eye in my house—and I specified that it was non-stick or Teflon or whatever. I know for other metals they give you a tetanus shot to be safe, but I don't know what the protocol is for Teflon.

They said it was good that we'd put pressure on it, and to keep pressure on it till she got there, and to keep her hydrated to offset the blood loss.

When I told them I lived in the county and we may not be there for a while, they advised me that it was no problem, that they were open all night, and actually that it was a slow night.

As I hung up the phone, I realized I needed to do something about the truck— if I just left, I'd get another hit-and-run, and maybe another DUI to go with it if there was still enough alcohol in my blood. I went to explain the situation to Sarah and ask her to go talk to our neighbor for me when I heard a knock at the door.

I hoped it wasn't my neighbor asking after his car—I truly felt bad and wanted to make it up to him, but with an injured child in the house now seemed like a bad time to me. I opened the door a crack to see who it was.

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Turns out it was my brother. I guess I peeled out of the lot at Park Tavern and damaged two more cars, and they wanted to bring me in.

I wanted to explain the situation at hand so they'd let me take care of it first, but Ray looked as angry as I have ever seen him, and I could not tell how you felt, but I was in the Corps and I know how you do for the men you fight alongside.

I told him to give me a minute and shut the door. I wanted to fix this, to prove to Amanda that I'm not the shitty dad Billy remembers, or that if I am it isn't because

I want to be, and maybe to prove to Billy that I have changed.

I guess I also wanted to know that I have changed. They tell you in AA that alcoholism never really goes away, that controlling your drinking is not a question of permanently fixing something that broke. I am in the business of fixing things, and

I can't say I like knowing that the thing I want to fix is the thing I can't.

In the interest of honesty, I do not remember what I said to Ray. It probably was not as pleasant as “Give me a minute.” I was already trying to solve a problem, and Ray appearing gave me a variety of new problems which I did not see a solution for at the time.

* * *

So I turned to talk to Sarah, and I heard the girls talking, and then Amanda gave a little yelp. I leaned around the corner and saw Sarah give her a fresh towel, and toss the old one into the tub to rinse out some other time.

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Soon as I leaned around the corner I heard the front door bust in. I turned around to see you head into the living room with your gun up, and then Ray come in, and he somehow looked angrier than he was when he knocked.

He didn't even say anything. He saw me, and he saw the puddle of blood on the floor close by me and the blood trail leading to the bathroom. Then he looked at the bathroom and saw Sarah, scared and staring at us, with blood on her hands and shirt.

Then Ray hit me with his gun.

I'm glad he hit me. I couldn't say how many times—he knocked me out three times that I remember, and woke me back up two of those times hitting me again— but just getting arrested would've put me back in a place I don't want to be in.

The look on his face...that must be how I looked to the boys when I was hitting their mom, what Sarah must have seen the couple times I lost it with her.

The difference is that none of them deserved it from me, but I certainly deserved it from Ray.

Now I just have to figure out how to apologize for bringing that to bear on my sons and my girlfriend. If I can apologize, that is, because I don't believe I deserve forgiveness either. It makes me wonder what forgiveness even is.

I just want them to know that I have changed, that I am sorry I wasted their love when they saw more good in me than I did, and to explain that I see the good in me now.

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I want to fix the only thing I can't fix.

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DOT

Once you leave Penn State’s Erie Campus (or Penn State-Erie, the Behrend

College as their official stationery says, or just Behrend as the locals say), you can go in three directions.

To the right, state route 89 takes you to I-90, and then to Wattsburg, one of many places in Pennsylvania which still has an annual county fair, with 4-H competitions and a tractor pull you’re hard-pressed to get tickets to watch and trailer-mounted thrill rides that look plenty shiny but have probably not been inspected in your lifetime. Past Wattsburg you get into the depths of rural

Pennsylvania, which for anyone not from the area feels an awful lot like Kurtz’ entry into the Congo.

To the left is the Bayfront Connector, from which you can get to Erie proper

(for whatever the fuck “proper” is supposed to mean). Corner bars dot nearly every block, sometimes sharing brick McKinley-era storefronts with barber shops and thrift stores, other times in houses where you often can still rent part or all of the upstairs as an apartment. Between Wesleyville and Erie, just past GE and Curtze and some small auto repair shops, a bridge spans a vast scrapyard; the scrapyard wasn’t meant to be a moat, but after you cross the bridge there are several square miles of neighborhoods full of the hopelessly poor, immigrants and minorities and manual laborers in a city with no manual labor to do, people whom the Erie police barely deign to protect but always hasten to corral.

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At the traffic light as you leave Behrend, though, none of this is visible, just a well-kept modern four-lane highway cutting a swath through a pleasantly lush forest. If you go straight at the light, Station Road nearly immediately curves left and heads into Wesleyville, unless you want to go to the small complex of Behrend dorms or the Hungry Howie’s at this particular intersection.

From the upper floors (or, God help you, the roofs) of many of these houses, and the dorms and the Behrend Library, you can see Lake Erie. Like an oasis, it seems unrealistic until you actually dip a toe in; unlike an oasis, your chances are good of getting e. coli or another illness via that toe.

Be careful what you wish for; you might struggle and strain with everything you have until you get to it, and then find that it wasn’t worth the pain.

Buffalo Road is littered with small local businesses, close together in the vicinity of GE and sprinkled among chain restaurants east of the factory before you get to the high school and the vineyards and New York. GE having long been the biggest employer in the county, houses spread back from that part of Buffalo Road like the grimy apron of a short-order cook.

Residences closer to Behrend and Harborcreek High School tend to be nicer, but over by Bates Collision the neighborhood’s all right, and it’s five minutes by car

(or ten minutes by city bus) to Behrend. Plus there are sidewalks, so you don’t need to worry for the lives of yourself and your friends when you walk to the convenience store for Doritos and Red Bull.

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It also bears mentioning that landlords closer to the college charge by the head—even at those dorms across the Connector from Behrend cost about $2000 per semester (not counting a meal plan), and it’s not uncommon to pay $400 per month per kid for a three-bedroom Cape Cod. Travel a mile in either direction and you could buy that house for sixty grand, or get a duplex with a friend for $500.

Overhead isn’t an issue when it’s not your money you’re spending, but when you work 25-30 hours a week at McDonald’s and your parents aren’t pitching in, you find yourself bargain-shopping an awful lot.

My dad’s neighbor Mr. Hammond works at GE. He suggested this—I guess he lived in Lawrence Park for a while, and he said he half-wishes they’d stayed there, or at least kept the house and run that exact scam.

Mr. Hammond called it a scam. Maybe it is. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s the value of a buck; get them while they’re there, right? People around here haggle so much.

Except Mr. Hammond, apparently. I can’t remember my parents ever agreeing on anything else, but Dad worked on his roof once and Mom bought her truck from him, and they both agreed that he’s a good guy. Mom said he cut her a break on the truck, and the couple times I’ve been up to Dad’s apartment on the weekend I’ve seen them in the front yard chatting about the Mets or reminiscing about high school or whatever.

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I’ve only talked with Mr. Hammond a little bit myself. He seems kind of lonely—he talks a lot even if he has nothing to say. I’ve heard him talk a little bit about his ex-wife, and it’s not the way I’ve ever heard Dad talk about Mom. I mean, he complains about Mrs. Hammond (or whatever she is now, I guess they’re divorced), but he kind of looks away when he’s talking about her, and he always ends with “she wasn’t always like that” or “I don’t know what happened to her.”

I don’t know what happened to her either. Maybe he talked too much.

Then again, maybe the guy is too nice.

Mom got a second job a few months ago, working nights at Wal-Mart. She wants to buy a house—she grew up sharing a Cape Cod with four siblings, and then

Dad was always broke until he was gone, so we always lived in duplexes or stayed with Mom’s parents. She wants some space, and she wants Brandon to have some space, a yard so he can play catch with his friends and a porch she can sit on to read

People every week.

So she’s working like sixty or seventy hours a week, and sometimes she goes straight from one job to the other. Sometimes it’s cool—she likes Amanda, so

Amanda gets to come over and babysit, and then I get to see her and she makes a few bucks.

Sometimes it’s not cool, like when it’s Dad’s weekend with Brandon. Mom set up a deal with her day boss so she’d have time to drop Brandon off those Fridays, but last week somebody called off and she had to stay late.

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She texted me Friday afternoon. Hi honey, can i ask a favor?

Mom doesn’t ask me for much, so I don’t mind helping out when she does.

Plus school doesn’t start for a couple more weeks, and Amanda was supposed to work, so I was just playing xBox anyway. No prob, what’s up?

Can u take Brandon from daycare to Dad’s? I’ll give u gas $.

Sure thing Mom. I wasn’t sure if I was going to take the gas money—I do stuff for Mom because she’s my mom, not because I want payback, you know? Plus sometimes Dad works late, and I like Sarah (you know, like to talk to and stuff, not like Amanda has to worry about anything, that would be weird), so dropping him off might not be a problem.

If Dad was home, though, I might take the money. He’s been kind of weird since he got out of the hospital. I don’t know if Uncle Ray fucked him up permanently or what. Dad’s not an asshole like he used to be, and he had to stop drinking because of his meds and because of the DUI, but he gets this look when he talks to me like he doesn’t know who I am, and he’s tried to hug me a couple times on my way out the door.

I hug him back, because he’s my dad, and Amanda said he was nice to her when she had to go to the hospital (and she was there to get my books, which makes it kind of my fault that she was there to begin with,) plus Dad got the DUI and a hit- and-run rushing to help her, which I appreciate, but that one really cool thing he did doesn’t make up for the rest of my childhood of his bullshit.

I don’t think it makes up for the rest of my childhood.

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Anyway, last Friday I picked Brandon up from day care and took him to Dad’s apartment. It wasn’t a long drive, half an hour in good weather, but I’ve spent enough of my life walking where I needed to go that it felt like forever.

I got to the apartment intending to pull into the driveway, but I had to park out front—Mr. Hammond had parked at the end of the driveway. When Brandon and I got out of my car, Brandon went running into the apartment, but I saw

Amanda’s car in the driveway with the hood up and I stayed outside.

I didn’t see Amanda until I got over to the car—she was standing by the front bumper, and back a few feet. Dad and Mr. Hammond were elbow-deep in the motor and frowning.

I walked around them and gave her a hug. “What’s up, hon? I thought you had to work.”

“I did, but my car just sort of stopped working when I crossed the bridge. I coasted into the parking lot behind Larry’s. Your dad saw me and pushed my car over here, and then Mr. Hammond saw us and came over to help.”

“It stopped working?”

“Yeah, the whole thing stopped working—I pushed the gas and the car didn’t speed up, and the radio conked out, and everything.”

Dad looked back at us. “The radio conked out?”

“Yeah, why?”

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Mr. Hammond looked concerned. “Let me go get my battery tester, I hope it’s just your battery.”

Dad scratched his scalp. “Yeah, here I was looking for a bad belt and checking your spark plug wires. I hope it’s your battery...” He leaned down and reached across the engine. “Battery wires look fine, and the battery’s not two years old yet. You leave the auxiliary on much?”

Amanda looked at me. I shrugged.

“You know, when you turn the key and the electric is on but the motor’s not?

Like to listen to the radio while you clean the car, say?”

“Oh no, I turn it on and drive it and turn it back off. I mean, I left my headlights on once while I was in school and had to get a jump, but that was just the once, and it was like the week I bought the car and I didn’t know where all the buttons were yet.”

Dad sighed and wiped his brow—it was decently cloudy and there are two trees shading the driveway, but it was still that part of summer that isn’t ready to be fall and it was muggy as fuck outside, like when you walk past the dish line at work.

“We’ll see what Bart says, maybe it’s just a bad battery. That would be good. It’s a

Duralast, so if that’s the problem we’ll run you to AutoZone and exchange it, they got a replacement guarantee.”

Mr. Hammond appeared then with what looked like a vintage walkie-talkie, but with jumper cables on it. He hooked the clips onto the battery terminals, stared at it for a minute, then shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo, you’re battery’s good.”

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Amanda frowned. She hates being called “kiddo,” but also it was kind of weird for him to apologize for part of the car being in good shape. “Why are you apologizing for the battery being good?”

Dad turned to us. “If it’s not the battery, that leaves the alternator. They’re a huge fuckin’ pain to fix, it takes like six or eight hours, plus the alternator itself is about one-fifty. And your best bet is to take it to a mechanic, I’d do it if I could, but you need tools I don’t have.”

“There’s a junkyard in Harborcreek that rebuilds alternators, I think they’ll sell you a rebuild for eighty bucks or so,” Mr. Hammond offered, grunting a little and unhooking the clips while he spoke.

Dad raised an eyebrow and nodded. “That’s a thought. If it was my car I wouldn’t fuck around with a junkyard alternator and risk being in this position again anytime soon, I’d take a new one and be set for a while, but it isn’t my car or my money. And you may well get a few good years out of a rebuild.”

Amanda sighed; that’s like a whole paycheck for her, you know? And I’d totally have helped her out with it, but I didn’t have the money either, I’d just bought books.

At that point I would have worked on it with Dad and Mr. Hammond; besides the fact that I’d do anything for her, it occurred to me that Dad and I had never worked on a project together, and that maybe Mr. Hammond was out there helping us because he didn’t get to work on projects with his own family anymore either.

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That’s what I like about working at restaurants, and why I’m closer to my work friends than to most people—working with your hands on something, something you can point to and be proud to have made, is satisfying in a way that math homework and video games and other theoretical shit isn’t.

Anyway; Amanda looked pretty upset. I put an arm around her, but I didn’t know what to say.

Dad looked at the ground. “Hey, y’all come in the house and have a pop or some coffee. Bart, I think I got a couple beers left, I can’t drink them but I keep them for when I get company.”

Mr. Hammond smiled. “Sure, thanks. I would like to wash my hands at least.”

We all trooped up the stairs.

Sarah was on the floor in the living room playing Mousetrap with Brandon.

I guess I assumed he hated it here as much as I do, but he was just sitting on the floor with her, laughing too hard to drop the marble and trap her. She was laughing too, like she didn’t care that he was winning as long as he was happy.

It occurred to me that I’ve never seen him laugh like that with Mom. Not that

Mom’s not great, just that she works so much that she’s barely around anymore, and when she is home she’s too tired to do more than read to him.

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I understand her exhaustion, given how hard I have to work to share a duplex with a fellow engineering student and drive a pick-up with 139,000 miles on it. I’m just not sure how it’s going to work out for Brandon.

I turned to ask Amanda how she was holding up and saw Dad staring into the living room too. He looked a little sad, for some reason, the way he does when he watches the Mets.

I wanted to tell him how great Sarah is, that I think it’s pretty cool that she’d not only hang out with Brandon but let him win the game like that, but I don’t know how he’d take that. She’s not that much older than I am, you know?

Amanda said it for me. “That’s amazing. Sarah’s pretty great.”

“I know, right?” Dad smiled a little then.

It sounded exactly the way I usually say it about Amanda.

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