Mom’s was a vast house with nothing on the walls. New floors had recently been installed, too–well, a decade ago–and they were protected from the sun and other indoor elements by what seemed to be the entire contents of a rug emporium, as well as some old t-shirts ripped open so she could maximize their coverage. Dust wafted over your shoes when you walked on the rugs. They had never been vacuumed because you can’t vacuum scraps like that good.

She never shook them out, either.

The shirts were sometimes laundered.

Let me get a light, mom said, handing me a picture.

The blinds were always drawn here.

When the side table’s lamp came on I was looking at a four-by-six glossy of my brother on the very couch I was sitting on.

That’s just this year.

He was asleep in his underwear with his mouth open and a book open on his chest, Hillbilly Elegy. Dumb Kampf I’d heard it called. And that was my first impression in ten years of my brother.

He’s still got those feet, mom said.

Sure enough, I said. Hasn’t changed his feet, I said.

Immediately I hoped my sarcasm wasn’t detected. I swore I’d be kind about everything no matter what this visit. It’d been four years.

Let’s get another picture, mom said.

She rode a dust cloud to a glistening hutch and opened its creaky door and pulled out a shoebox, faded orange Nike from God knows how many decades ago. She set it next to me and sat next to me and took the lid off and set it down beside me. I was surprised just then to notice the couch had no covering.

Hm, I said.

Are you looking at your cousin? mom said.

I think so, I said.

That’s your cousin, she said. He wasn’t on anything then, she said, drug free. Do you recognize the church?

There was a church in the background. The white paint on its siding was peeling and cracking like a desert floor. Things were old when I was young. Now they’re all so new.

You were baptized there, she said.

Then I probably don’t recognize it.

We went there till you were in kindergarten. Well, the CRC across the street. We went to this one sometimes, too. They had that sunrise service. Nice and cool in the summer. But not much. We didn’t go there much.

I don’t remember.

Your grandpa and dad were on the reroofing committee. Well, the consistory. When it was time to reroof. No one in the church had time. It was harvest, you know.

I don’t know.

So they did it all. They upgraded from twenty-five-year shingles to forty-five-year shingles. Can you believe shingles last that long? Farmers here are so generous with what little they make. And look how the Lord rewards them.

My cousin’s thin arm was covered in bruises. He was a cutter. Not suicidal according to my family, but he couldn’t help himself with his hatchet. It had a heavy head, I was remembering, and he would let it drop on his forearm just begging it to slice him open and even when the blade had been sharpened it didn’t penetrate his skin, not to bleeding anyway.

You can have these, mom said.

What am I going to do with them? I said, and regretted it.

You can have the memories, she said.

I have the memories already. I don’t need the pictures.

You forget little things.

What am I going to forget?

Your cousin had such small arms. He had a hard time holding you up. It looks like he’s smiling here, but he’s struggling. I forget those little things.

Then you should keep the pictures.

I forgot how much he struggled to keep you up.

Now that I know that, I won’t forget it. My memory’s okay.

Were you a heavy baby?

How should I know?

Let me get a bag to protect them in.

She stood up and dusted the walls all the way to the kitchen, where I could hear her open a drawer and pull something out. When she came back she was holding a plastic grocery bag.

They make these so thick now. The only good thing to come from all this environmental protection stuff. You can use these for all sorts of things.

She folded the bag in four and stuffed it under my leg.

I don’t have any room in my suitcase, I said.

You can put them in the overhead, mom said. That bag is strong.

Fred

Fred pulled up on his Suzuki 350 Whatever and I went outside before mom could say hello to him. Not sure why I was afraid of that. I wasn’t embarrassed. Everybody knew what my mom was like. Maybe I was just done with conversations with her for a little while. Fred was good for that, for being done with conversations. Hanging out with Fred was going on dirt bike rides in his dad’s alfalfa and shooting gophers in dry pastures and calling it a day when it was lunchtime or dinnertime, whichever one was about three hours after we’d started. No awkward goodbyes or welps.

Thanks for saving me, I said.

Welp, nothing else doing, he said.

He was the kind of slow talker who wore a braided belt and tucked in his shirt. His entire torso was taut, too. I felt like I was grasping a fleshy tree trunk when I mounted his bike.

My dad’s is the only other bike we got running on the farm right now, he said into the wind once we were on the road. You either don’t get a scratch on it or you ride the three-wheeler instead.

You still got the three-wheeler? That thing almost killed you.

Yep.

You know they make them up to four wheels now, right?

You want to ride out to the pasture or not?

Five wheels into the hills!

Good to see you, Shitboy.

He patted my leg and sped up and popped the tiniest wheely. We’ll talk about how I got the name Shitboy in another blog.

Or not.

I can’t decide.

You want a nip? Fred said.

Can’t hurt, I said. Little early, I also said.

Early bird gets the worm.

He passed me a flask shaped like binoculars with tequila in it and I was afraid then I was going to reek of booze when I got back for dinner. We were having elk burgers, a special meal to celebrate my brief visit.

Three-wheeler

The three-wheeler was a two-hundred-year-old Honda ATC with bald rear tires and a perilous, brand new front tire. One fast brake and I’d be over the kettle with the machine on top of me.

That front tire’s not gonna pop on you. Highway friendly if you’re worried. One of the back tires might go, but you’re just gonna spin.

Gosh, you’re so hospitable.

You won’t flip.

You think of everything.

I’d know.

You rode the thing lately?

A thousand times. Stays upright if you know how to control her.

I like an even number of wheels.

Heck, we’ll cut across Gare’s alfalfa, then, if you’re pissing yourself so much. He’ll shoot your tires out, but at least you’ll crash in the dirt.

I don’t like where this is going. I’m going to wreck, aren’t I?

I don’t believe in jinxing.

Maybe I’ll take your dad’s bike.

Looks like he’s got it out, Fred said.

There were no other vehicles in the shop other than those on blocks.

He’s not taking his afternoon nap? I said.

His gun’s gone, too. Looks like we’re sharing the .22.

There was an empty space on the shop’s gunrack. Beneath a .22 and above a dusty BB gun.

Gare’s field

We had a half mile stretch of highway before Gare’s field and it felt like a marathon’s worth of road. The three-wheeler’s front tire kicked up rocks into all the wheel wells and into my shins and the brand new tire farted like a rumble strip. The engine was revving high, too, and already hot. I kept thinking I had one more gear to go, and I kept letting off the brake and trying to go up, but I was going as fast as I would go.

Fred had glugged me a little vodka into a water bottle because I expressed to him that I didn’t want to smell so much like tequila when I got home to mom and he was kind enough to steal the vodka from his dad and get hell for it later. I wanted to take a sip from the bottle now to steel my nerves but you flip on your face as soon as you let go of a three-wheeler’s handlebar. It was already teetering and rocking on me like a spaceship entering the atmosphere. I was carrying the gun, too, on the back rack, and it was loaded and I didn’t trust the safety and I imagined it falling off and hitting the road and firing a bullet dead in the back of my head.

So I slowed down with both hands after about three-eighths of a mile to celebrate how far I’d come without breaking my legs and came to a stop by a dead deer. This small road was famous for decomposing wildlife that had taken out bumpers in their final act. I was still nervous about the .22 bullet in the .22’s chamber so I emptied it into the deer carcass. It ripped right through the leather belly and into the ground and ricocheted back at me and I could hear it split the air next to my ear.

Oh shit! I said.

What the hell are you doing! Fred said. He was stopped by the entrance to the pasture.

I didn’t want one in the chamber! I said.

You’re a lunatic, Shitboy! Fred said.

I took a pull from the water bottle.

A car flew past me without moving over a lane. Just whizzed right by my elbow. I got the feeling it wanted to honk. You know these things sometimes. It’s like the feeling of deja-vu or of a premonition but it’s taking place in the present, not the past or the future.

I rode on to Fred. The alfalfa field was a welcome path. The air that kicked up from beneath the plants was cool as a stream and the dirt path was smooth. I even had the freedom to wiggle my handlebar a little, so I drank as I rode.

Scope

We’d only spit out three bullets into the hill opposite us and hadn’t killed a single gopher as we lay there like dumb riflemen in the dust and dead grass. The late summer sun was killing my neck, I could tell, and I kind of wanted to get home, but I wanted to finish my vodka more.

Scope’s off a little, Fred said. I didn’t tell you.

That’s why I’ve been missing?

You been missing right. It’s off left.

Maybe I’m overcompensating.

About something you don’t know nothing about? he said.

There’s one over west, he said. He was looking through binoculars, real ones.

Let’s talk left and right, please. I don’t know my directions here anymore.

Left.

I found the gopher in my sites and squeezed a round out. I didn’t compensate for the scope because I wasn’t a good shot anyway and plus I didn’t feel like killing anything.

Got him! Fred said.

Really?

Look.

The gopher was shaking and twitching in the dirt by his hole. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive or just rattling.

Wait with your sites right there, Fred said. The others are gonna come to check on him soon.

That’s grotesque, I said. I feel like a school shooter waiting.

School shooters don’t hole up like this.

Good point.

Wasn’t your cousin a school shooter?

You wouldn’t be asking if he was.

He’d have shot me? He didn’t live here.

You’d have remembered that, I mean.

I remember him. He took an ax to a teacher.

Threw a hatchet at a boy. Missed him. He was homeschooled after.

Your cousin?

And the boy.

Homeschoolers are messed up, man.

They’re not exactly adjusted.

What was he like?

I never saw him. I never saw anybody in my family.

Until now.

For two days with mom.

The prodigal son returns.

Prodigal without all that pesky success.

You got the accolades, though.

Fred was right. The gophers were gathering around the dead gopher.

I think you mean notoriety, I said.

I leveled the gun and watched them through the scope. They were sniffing mostly. I was waiting for one to take a lick. I’d heard they cannibalized their own, at least the ones that were roadkill. That’s how so many die in one place.

Notoriety or whatever it is, you got it in spades around here, Fred said. Everybody knows you’re back.

Do they know I can’t leave fast enough?

You just looking at ’em, Shitboy?

I’m not looking at all, I said, and without looking I fired a round. It went way far left and beyond and hit nothing but an irrigation mainline and you could hear water suddenly spraying at the ground.

Oh hell!

What?

Leper’s gonna kill us!

Leper was an old man who survived cancer three times, maybe four by now. He was rail thin and had had eight different decades in his face of fifty years. He was known for shooting at anything on his property.

He’s gonna frickin’ kill us!

Moving pipe

The hole in the mainline was beginning to tear now. It must have been shot just along the bottom because we couldn’t see the water but it was a tide getting louder and louder, thudding against the ground.

That’s a shit ton of pressure! Fred said.

And the pipe tore upward and the water fanned out. There was probably a rainbow somewhere.

You fucked that thing up, Shitboy! She’s gonna spray a well into the ground! Set the gun down before you kill somebody.

Then Fred hopped up and onto his bike and kicked it started. Didn’t bother with the weak electric start since it was old and would’ve added a few extra seconds to his journey with no seconds to spare. He went to the head of the field, what I’d come to understand was west, and there was a pump up there, I assumed, or a valve he could turn off. And there was and he did because the fan of water disappeared. Then Fred hopped on his bike again and kicked it started again and he flew further up the ditch and the field and there was grass festooned with sparkles from the sun up there and he was a silhouette and he stopped and dismounted and reached into the grass and pulled out about twenty feet of mainline pipe and spun it around with him as he turned and he balanced it on his shoulder as he mounted his bike and this time used the electric start and he lurched a little forward but he kept the bike running and held the pipe in place with his massive forearm and bicep and his strong trunk and he rode one hand on the handlebar slow and steady to where the bullethole was.

He tossed the pipe off and yelled down to me.

Get up here! It’s your hole!

I hopped up and hopped on the three-wheeler and cut through the alfalfa toward the bullethole while Fred was waving at me to use the edge of the field probably. But I wasn’t thinking clearly today and considered it too late to back out and do everything right.

Leper’s gonna kill us, Fred said when I arrived.

Blame it on me, I said. I leave tomorrow.

Who else? Fred said.

He took a pull from his binoculars and I took one from the water bottle.

Get on that end and release the clasp.

He was pointing at the far end of busted mainline.

You remember how to move pipe? he said.

I sauntered over in the mud and bent over the pipe and released the circular binding holding the pipe together. Sand cut into my hands. I was near enough to the bullethole that the mud was over my shoes and I thought about them being the only pair I had. The pipe kind of separated a little where I’d loosened the clasp and water gushed over my shoes fully and now my socks were wet, too.

Get on it and pull it to the south. Er, uphill from you. I’ll pull north.

We’re gonna bend it.

We’re gonna release it, retard. Just go.

So I went uphill, just spinning in the mud, and Fred eased himself downhill till the pipe came out and water gushed out but Fred kept himself dry as a bone.

The top of the field was flooding now. All the mainline’s water was rushing to us. The Leper was going to have our heads on stakes.

Once the water was down to a trickle we took the pipe Fred had carried over and squeezed it in the broken pipe’s section and I clasped it in place and we pulled off our liquor containers once again.

You know how to fuck this place up, Shitboy.

I’m gonna have soggy feet on the plane.

Where’d you leave the .22?

In the dirt.

You’re a shitshow.

You don’t have to tell me.

Ha! Leper’s probably gonna call your mom.

He kept laughing until he kicked his bike started again, then he calmed down, or at least rode away. He rode with the broken pipe to the end of the field next to the pump and the valve. He cranked the valve open a little and then he started up the pump. Once the mainline was full he cranked the valve the rest of the way and the wheel line heads downstream were chip-chipping and circling around and it smelled like dirty rain from the mist that had kicked up when the pressure hit.

When I got to mom’s I took my shoes and socks off on the porch and rolled up the soggy part of my jeans to protect the floors. There was a rectangle of dust on the couch cushion, where the shoebox had been, and a smell like burned meat in the air.

I broke down and cried. Like I was a kid. Like I was in trouble. But it was a big house and I would get myself under control by the time I saw mom.