There are a lot of good things to remember.

A lot dumb things, too.

I remember little things, and I don’t know if they’re good or dumb.

They’re not bad, I don’t think.

Ravens have always tilted their heads when we make eye contact.

Crows must, too.

I can’t tell them apart because I don’t see well.

You can extend a faucet’s life by easing it shut.

Hold a 30-06 close to your shoulder before you squeeze the trigger or it’ll hurt.

Take a breath, too.

When you kill a mammal its pain enters your stomach and you are unable to shit or retch for days.

Some things are useful.

More true to some than others.

Some are true to you.

The 2026 Seattle Mariners are an easy team to strike out.

That one’s undeniable.

Animals attack in autumn. After enduring too much summer. Winter’s reprieve a distant dream. Spring never happened.

The world holds more than eight billion people.

The oldest man in the bible was almost a thousand when he died.

You don’t hear much about women’s ages in the bible, except when you’re talking about their virginity.

Vinegar confuses ants.

Mr. Huizinga liked to wear his socks a day old, sometimes two or three.

First day they’re too tight, he’d say. And he’d wink and he’d say, but if you put them on the floor for a night they’ll stretch out for you. I worked for him for only one summer because I didn’t like the work. My next summer, with another farmer, only lasted a summer, too. Turns out there wasn’t much work to like.

Still isn’t.

End of summer Huizinga had me spraying potato cellars, mostly. The farm had seven or eight of them. I was power washing them with this gas-powered power washer with a stiff hose and you had to get the dried mud off the walls and dust off the ceiling and the caked stuff off the floor. Water with pink liquid in it dripped all over you while you worked the sides and the floor if you did the ceiling first, but you had to do the ceiling first because you couldn’t let that dusty water drip all over your floor after you cleaned it.

I took too long on these cellars.

Not that I was told that, but I knew.

It’d take me four or five days, usually. Mr. Huizinga sent his sons in to help me every fifth day. They could knock one out in one.

You had to spray the plenums, too. Those were just dusty unless potatoes rolled in them but they usually didn’t, so you didn’t have all the cake and dirt to contend with, but you’d be surprised the amount of dust you had to spray out. I saved the plenums for last because you had to crawl or crouch in them all the way down the length of the cellar to get them completely disinfected. Your knees got all wet even though you were wearing hip waders because the waders would inevitably scrunch down your legs because you never attached them to your belt or belt loops by the straps. We always cut the straps off.

I encountered a raccoon in a plenum once. Shat my britches.

Every raccoon has rabies.

One time the two brothers came to help me on a Friday at the same time. Well, not exactly the same time. The one closer in age to me came first. He was sunburned, you could see in the shaded deep of the cellar even.

It’s going in here, huh?

It’s going.

Best to repeat what they said when they were sunburned.

Dad sent me down to help.

He sent you down?

You could answer with a question, too.

He sent Vinny down.

He sent Vinny down?

He’s not here yet?

I haven’t seen him.

Is he here?

I’ve been in the plenum.

Any raccoons this time?

Nothing.

Good.

He assessed my progress.

I guess you’re taking your time on this one.

I guess so.

You’re missing roguing, he said. But I you don’t rogue good.

I don’t see very good, I said.

You seen my bike? he said.

He had a new Suzuki 650. Washed it every night. It was the fastest bike on the farm and I was surprised Vinny hadn’t beat his brother here if he was on it.

That’s what this was about.

It wasn’t to help with the cellar.

Vinny’d stolen the bike to ride the highway, probably, but if he’d taken the fields, which was fun, too, then he’d got it muddy. If the highway’s what was taken, there’d be hell to pay. If the fields were taken, the gates of hell were open, and all the fallen angels were out to destroy the world with havoc.

We’d see the mud on his waders, if that’s what Vinny’d taken: the field.

You got that wrench? Your nozzle’s leaking.

It was leaking.

He fixed it and sprayed the floor while we waited for Vinny.

***

He came into the cellar yard like he was on a steed. Vinny was best on the farm at wheelies by a mile. He could probably ride one a whole mile.

A mile’s how long it felt with his brother watching him.

His name was Cole, by the way, the brother in the cellar with me. I don’t know why I haven’t been using his name. It’s not like I’d forgotten it or thought he didn’t deserve one or something.

Cole was heating up his sunburn from beneath his skin watching this dirt bike stunt show.

I can’t remember if there was mud on it or not.

Didn’t matter now.

Vinny dropped the front wheel, finally, and slowed down and then twisted the accelerator and then lifted the front wheel again. He dropped his feet to the gravel and roostered a shower of stones into Cole’s wheel wells.

Thanks for buying me this thing, he said. It’s awesome, he said.

Put my fucking bike down! Cole said.

It was the first time I’d heard fuck in a year.

Vinny was definitely going to tell on Cole later.

If he wasn’t in a coma.

Cole picked up the wrench off the pressure washer and he was hot enough to boil the puddles he was walking through and he huffed like a shackled dragon toward the front of the cellar and a sound like a gargling banshee echoed off the muddy walls. I was in a cave of whole other worlds of horrors.

Hell for sure got out.

Vinny saw the wrench glint in the light off some reflection in the yard, so he hopped off the bike and knelt behind it to shield himself.

But Cole wasn’t going to just hold his wrench to save his bike. No, killing his brother was all that mattered now.

Be careful! I said.

Shut the fuck up, Jay, Cole said.

It was the second time I’d heard fuck in a year.

I’m going to kill you! Cole said. He meant Vinny, not me. Not that I didn’t piss my waders anyway.

Stop it, Cole! I’ll tell Dad!

Give me my goddamn bike back!

I didn’t mean to take it!

If there’s even a scratch in the wheel wells you’re a dead man.

There’s nothing!

And Vinny stood to look at the rear wheel well. He hadn’t put the kickstand down, though. He’d forgotten to remember that little thing. So when he let his hands off the handlebars to make a full show of checking for scratches the bike fell against his knees. It surprised him a little and he stepped back out of its way. It crunched the gravel and a mirror bent and the front wheel stood up staring at Cole like a middle finger.

I saw the wrench from the power washer doing cartwheels in the dead air like a hatchet.

If it hit Vinny just right, it could lodge itself in his skull.

Cole had a pitcher’s arm.

But he had a pitcher’s windup, too, and a pitcher’s release, which you can’t hold on a floor slick with soap slime and mud and disinfectant.

He dropped facedown on the cellar floor. Muddy water splashed up and soaked his back and he had to be hurt.

There was a good chance he’s broken a leg, I thought.

I can’t remember now if I was right.

The wrench landed in the yard past Vinny. To be hidden in the gravel until it was rusty.

Vinny picked up Cole’s bike and electric started it and drove it off into the noonday sun without coming back for his sunglasses, which might have been crushed anyway.

I don’t remember much about this part of the story except Cole was squirming and there was blood in his mud puddle.

Mr. Huizinga took him to the Urgent Care in Belgrade later. He had a concussion and had a worse temper than usual the next three weeks and he didn’t ever sleep. I stayed away from him and finished cleaning my next two cellars in a day apiece.

Vinny washed the Suzuki 650 every evening for a month so he wouldn’t get his ass beat.

***

I once told my best friend it didn’t matter if you put the dishwasher soap in the dispenser or if you squirted it all over the door carelessly.

When he died I regretted this because I learned about the enzymes in detergent that can eat away at enamel and scratch glass up.

Some hummingbirds live more than seventeen years.

Five milligrams of melatonin is more than sufficient to fall asleep sober.

A grizzly’s top speed is thirty-five mph.

The third or fourth time I called the 988 Lifeline the call handler talked me down by telling me about the great season Kyler Murray was having. Murray started for the Cardinals then. He’s on the Vikings now, my team, and he’s a hot topic in Minneapolis.

Mr. Huizinga and my best friend are dead.

I am not and Kyler Murray is not.

Nor are the brothers in this story.

***

There’s a haiku in this story. Perhaps there are haiku in other stories, too. This story (with its haiku) is part of a larger project. I appreciate your patience as I write it.