“You’re going to help me clean these bass,” he shouts up to me, and all of a sudden I’m sick of it, I’m so sick of it. He knows I hate cleaning fish: the dead scales sticking to my fingers, the fish blood on my hands. And of course my mom’s just sitting there, saying nothing.
Once, when I wrote to my Dad and told him how crappy things were and begged him to let me stay with him, he wrote back that life is about adjustment. I couldn’t tell if he was talking about me or himself. He went on about Corporal Edwards, saying how when he returned home from the war, he found chickens roosting in his cabin, his wife run off to New Orleans. But I’m not dead, I thought, and I’m not going to be in some book.
The shore’s rushing toward us, and I’m about to mouth off when it comes to me, the daydream from my other fishing trips. Me tumbling over the side, my mom and my stepfather seeing it all and springing into action to save me. I picture how they’ll worry, the quick sad flash in their faces. And then it’s like, why not? I mean, what if this is the thing, the one thing that’ll make everything else OK? And then it’s like I can’t not do it. I look around. The lake’s clear. I think about it, and then I stop thinking about it. I ball my legs and grip my knees, and I go.
Halfway over, I hear my mom shriek. I’m in the air, and my stepfather’s killed the engine. For a split-second it’s like it’s all falling into place. They’re watching, I know they’re watching, and I want to keep this moment forever, the quiet, the smell of the lake below me, the wind twisting in my hair, everything belonging, me belonging, just like I wanted.
Then I glance back, and it’s all lost. They haven’t seen me. That pink hat has flown off my mom’s head. That’s why my stepfather stopped the boat. They’re looking the other way, watching as the hat floats on a breeze. And it’s like, really? Really? I take a breath, but before I can shout to them, the lake reaches up to slap me and pull me in, and I’m gone.
Ben Stroud’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, The American Scholar, Subtropics, Boston Review, and other magazines. He has received residencies from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and while a graduate student at the University of Michigan won three Hopwood Awards: for short story, novel, and essay. Originally from East Texas, he has most recently been living in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Fishing always seems to be treated as this wondrous, spiritual event in fiction. I guess we have Hemingway to thank for that. I’ve got nothing against fishing itself, but I’ve never been very good at it, and part of me thinks of this story as my “anti-fishing-story” story. It grew out of memories of my own fishing trips with my parents, but I didn’t get the idea for the story until a few years ago when I attended a reading by Jim Shepard. I was inspired by the energy of his voice—something about hearing other people read their work always helps me with my own. With this story, it all came at once: the fishing trips, the landscape of that lake (based on the actual Martin Creek Lake), the kid’s voice. By the end of the reading I more or less had the story blocked out—though it took me several years to get it right.
Kevin Wilson
HOUSEWARMING
(from The South Carolina Review)
Mackie’s son needed help with the deer. “It’s in our pond,” Jackson said to his father, “and we’ve got a housewarming party tomorrow afternoon and this damn deer is in our pond. It’s dead, by the way. I don’t remember if I told you that.”
“I assumed that,” Mackie said. “This is the first I’ve heard of a housewarming.”
“It’s just some people from work,” his son said without pausing, “It’s no one you would want to be around.”
“How did it die?” he asked.
“Well, it drowned, I guess. It’s floating in our pond. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“You want me to come up there?” Mackie asked.
“Why do you think I’m calling?” his son replied, and both of them hung up the phone without saying another word.
Mackie had driven the route from his own house to Jackson’s cabin over a dozen times in the last month. Since Jackson and his wife, Cindy, had bought the house in November, Mackie had been coming by to help renovate, make it livable.
Two weeks after closing, his son called during his break at the factory, and told him, “Cindy says we should put new tile in the kitchen before we move in, since we’re doing all these other projects at the same time.” Mackie showed up at the empty cabin, Cindy was staying with her sister until the repairs were finished, and found the boxes of tile waiting in the kitchen, the old linoleum pulled up and curled in the corner of the room. He started mixing mortar, snapped on his kneepads, and got started. The house smelled of new paint and wood chips, and Mackie wished he’d brought a mask for his face. When his son got off of work, his truck winding down the long driveway, headlights flickering through the trees, Mackie was cutting tile with a wet saw he’d brought from his own house. With each cut, the water shot into his face like sparks, his eyebrows dripping wet. “We’re making good progress,” Jackson said, peering inside the house at the kitchen floor.
“We are,” Mackie replied, drying the reformed tile with a towel, touching the new shape along the smooth edges.
Mackie’s knees ached from the constant kneeling, fitting the tile into place. His son was standing over him, his pockets filled with foam dividers to place between the tiles. It was good to work together, Mackie feeling his son’s eyes on his hands, learning how to make things work. Another piece had to be cut and he did not want to stand again, to walk to the front porch and lean against the saw. “Jackson,” he said, “hand me a tile.” Jackson walked gingerly to the box and brought one back. Mackie took out his red pencil and marked off the section, handing the tile back to his son. “Make that cut,” he said. Jackson went outside and Mackie listened to the whine of the saw as it started, the sound of metal touching ceramic, and then he heard his son shouting, “Goddamn it all.” Mackie shot up, immediately blaming himself for not doing it to begin with. He was already hoping for the best of the worst, just a finger, not his thumb.
“Motherfucking, son of a bitch,” his son was screaming, down on one knee, facing away from Mackie. The wet saw was turned over, the dull gray water pooling around it. When Mackie knelt by his son, Jackson stood up and pushed past his father, back into the house. Mackie looked around for a digit, blood, but he didn’t see anything. He ran back to the house and found Jackson in the bathroom, water running, examining his face. “A goddamned piece of tile popped up and hit me in the face.” Mackie looked at his son’s reflection in the mirror; a small cut was bubbling blood just under his right eye. “I could’ve been blinded,” Jackson said, staring angrily at Mackie. “Don’t we have any son of a bitching goggles?” Mackie shook his head. Jackson turned off the water, took out his handkerchief and pressed it against the cut. “Well I’m driving to the Wal-Mart to get some then.” His son was out of the house, into his truck, and pulling out of the driveway, while Mackie stood on the porch, lifting the wet saw upright. He worked until midnight, waiting for Jackson to return, and finally gave up. He rolled out his sleeping bag and slept in his clothes, waiting for morning, listening to the house settle around him.
The next day, Jackson showed up with a bandage covering the wound, a pair of goggles resting on top of his head. “Got to be safe,” he said. “We can’t get hurt anymore.” Mackie nodded and they worked into the evening, finishing the job.
When he got to the house, Cindy was waiting on the porch. “He’s waiting for you,” she said. “It’s awful, that deer. You can see it from the house, just floating in the water. Its eyes are open.” She hugged him and then pointed towards the trail, which led down to the pond. “Don’t let him get too angry,” she said. “He takes everything so personally. This isn’t his fault, of course.” Mackie nodded. “I know,” he said.
Jackson was throwing rocks at the deer, which was floating about ten or fifteen feet from the shore, its swollen belly rising above the surface of the water,
a small island. Mackie stood and watched his son for a few seconds without making his presence known. His son had surprisingly good aim, the rocks cutting through the cold air and thumping against the belly of the deer. “Fucking deer,” his son said to no one. Mackie wondered if Jackson was trying to sink the deer, trying to get it fully underwater and hidden. He stepped out from the trees and waved to his son. Jackson nodded, then threw another rock. “This isn’t going to be pleasant,” Jackson said. “I know,” Mackie responded.
Jackson had come back to Tennessee last year, to stay, Mackie hoped. After high school, Jackson had left to work as a mechanic in Hunstville, and then moved around the southeast for the next eight years, never staying long in any one place, Mackie’s letters to him bouncing back with no known forwarding address. He would wait until Jackson’s next phone call, locating his son for the time being. Sometimes he would get calls from prison, Jackson asking his father to post bail and Mackie would be in the car, driving for hours to Louisville or Mobile or Daytona Beach to retrieve his son. This particular time, Jackson had shot out the tires of his neighbor’s car. “He’d cut me off a few days before,” Jackson had told his father on the drive back from the police station. “Cut me off and nearly made me slam into him. I yelled at him and the son of a bitch smiled. Smiled.” Mackie could feel his son’s anger vibrate within the car, as if the event was happening all over again. “Well,” Mackie said, “he probably don’t remember that.” Jackson smiled, his face white from an oncoming car’s headlights. “I know that,” he said. “That’s why I shot his tires. To remind him.”
“We need a boat,” Jackson said. Mackie agreed with him, but they didn’t have a boat. He walked toward the edge of the woods and dragged a fairly long branch back to the shore, something to work with, a tool. He sat down on the ground, which was wet from the melting frost, and took off his shoes and socks, rolling up his pant legs. Jackson was still staring out at the deer, as if waiting for it to show signs of life, to swim to the shore and jump into the woods. “Okay,” said Mackie, but Jackson still didn’t move. “Okay,” he said again, “here’s what we’ll do.” Jackson turned and saw Mackie, barefooted. “Good lord, dad, it’s thirty degrees out here.”
“We have to get in there, Jackson. We have to wade out there and get that deer. Then we’ll take it somewhere else. Hell, we’ll just toss it on the side of the road if it comes to that, but we need to get it out of your pond. That’s why you called me.”
Jackson looked at Mackie’s feet again, then back at the deer. “Maybe we should call animal services or something,” he offered. “It might be diseased. We should get an expert out here.”
“Son, they’re not going to come on a weekend. This house-warming you’re having for your friends? It’s tomorrow. If you don’t want them to see this deer in your pond, we’re going to just get in the water and fish it out. Now take your shoes off, so they don’t get wet.”
Jackson kicked at the ground. “Let me hear the rest of the plan first.”
“It’s pretty simple. We’ll wade into the pond, and I’ll take this stick and move away from you. Then I’ll direct the deer towards the shore and you get a hold of it and then you drag it in. Then we’ll both pull it onto land and get rid of it.”
“Maybe I should be the one with the stick,” Jackson said.
“Son,” Mackie said quickly, a flash of irritation striking his voice, “just take off your shoes and let’s go get the damn deer.”
Jackson had last been in Raleigh, painting houses or working at a guitar store. Mackie had received a postcard. Got a job and a girl, it read, and my probation for the dog thing is done. A few weeks later, his son called. Mackie had been slightly shocked to hear his son’s voice, “Hey, Dad,” without the usual mechanized voice intoning the particular jail where he’d been locked up which usually opened any phone call he received from Jackson. “You okay, son?” Mackie asked. “Better than okay,” Jackson answered. “Much better than that.” Mackie was glad to hear it, but he still would not allow himself to believe it was true.
“Amy’s pregnant,” Jackson said.
“Who?” Mackie asked, worried again.
“Amy. The girl I told you about in the postcard,” Jackson said, his voice rising. “She’s pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
“Did you marry her? Are you already married?”
“You don’t have to be married to have a baby,” Jackson answered, the connection fading and then coming back.
“I know that,” Mackie said, feeling stupid for having asked, complicating things. “I just wanted to know if I’d missed anything. Congratulations.”
“If it’s a girl, we’re going to name it Carla, after mom.”
“That’s a nice name,” Mackie said, remembering his wife. His son was just a boy when she died, and it made him happy to hear that he still thought of her. “What about a boy?”
“Jackson Junior,” Jackson said, “Jackson Junior for sure.”
Mackie asked to speak to Jackson’s girlfriend, but she was taking a nap. “I’ll wake her,” Jackson said, and before Mackie could stop him, the phone was set down and there was silence, humming. Less than a minute later, a voice, barely a whisper, a sore throat, answered. “Jackson said you wanted to speak with me?”
“I just wanted to say hello and to tell you congratulations.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, her voice still quiet. When she didn’t offer anything, Mackie continued, “And I want you to call me if you need anything. If you need anything at all, you give me a call, okay?”
“I’ll do that,” she said, and then hung up.
It wasn’t working. The branch he’d found, substantial enough to steer the animal towards Jackson, was too heavy and Mackie couldn’t control it, the water up to his armpits, the shock of the cold taking away every other breath. Jackson was shivering, waist deep in the water. “I’m gonna have to get out of the water soon,” he shouted, and Mackie understood that he hadn’t planned this well. He felt the situation falling out of his control, into a place where Jackson’s anger would surface and take over. Mackie tossed the stick into the water and began swimming towards the deer, kicking his legs under the water, his clothes weighing him down. “I’m going to push it towards you,” he shouted to his son over the sound of the water splashing around him. “Wade out a little further and grab it.” He finally reached the deer and touched its fur, which was unexpectedly colder than the water. It was heavy, but he’d anticipated the weight of this dead animal. The bad things he’d carried in his life had always been just as heavy as he’d expected, always measuring up to his worst expectations.
“Keep swimming,” his son instructed. “Just swim a little further to me and we’ll be done. C’mon, Dad.”
Jackson’s girlfriend called Mackie three weeks later, at two in the morning. When Mackie answered, he immediately said, “Jackson?” anticipating another phone call from jail, another thing to fix. “It’s Amy,” the soft voice replied. “Jackson’s girlfriend?” she offered helpfully. “What’s wrong?” Mackie asked. “I lost it,” she said, crying. “I lost the baby.”
“Oh god,” Mackie said. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“And Jackson,” she continued, “he thinks I did it on purpose. He says I did something wrong. He keeps hitting me.”
Mackie sat up in bed, felt his neck stiffen and jerk to the left, a tic he’d had since childhood, as if the danger was just over his left shoulder. “He hit you?” he asked, to be certain.
“He hits me,” she answered.
“Put him on the phone.”
“He won’t talk to you. He doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”
“Amy, you need to go to a motel, or go to a friend’s house. We’ll figure this out, but you cannot have him hitting you. That’s got to stop.”
“I don’t want to call the police, but I might have to.”
“Amy, call them if you need to. Let me think and I’ll call you back.”
“I don’t w
ant him here anymore,” she said. “I don’t love him now.”
Mackie hung up the phone and was already out of bed, putting on his clothes, grabbing his keys off the dresser. Before he knew it, he was in the car, on the interstate, going to see his son.
•••
“I’ve got it,” his son announced, the weight of the dead animal shifting from father to son. He watched Jackson tug the deer by its legs towards the shore, a tiny wake trailing behind it. He watched the white tail of the deer and then saw a jerk in the movement, a hesitation and then there was a splash. Jackson was under the water, flailing, the deer spinning just slightly, and Mackie waded through the water to reach his son.
Jackson was thrashing around in the water, his feet and arms surfacing and then submerging, splashing water everywhere. When he realized how shallow it was, he stood up again, soaking wet, the leg of the deer in his hand. “The fucking leg fell off,” he screamed. “You told me to just drag it in,” he said, staring at Mackie, “but it’s decayed.”
“Let’s get it to the shore,” Mackie said. “Then we can get angry at each other.” Jackson stared at his father a little longer and then turned and threw the detached leg onto the shore.
“I’m grabbing the antlers this time,” Jackson said. “Pull his damn head off.” Mackie pushed the hind end of the deer towards the shore. “Let’s just get it out of here,” he whispered.
Eight hours and he was in North Carolina, staring at his son’s house, the car idling on the street in front. He saw his son look through a window and then quickly close the blinds. A few seconds later, Amy looked out the window, shaking her head. Mackie thought about what he would say to his son, how he could fix the situation. He felt foolish for driving this far without having a plan, some way to help. His son was now coming down the steps of the porch, pointing at him. Mackie still couldn’t think of anything to say. He got out of the car.