without touching other expenses. Even if I had a mind to weather the storm, no one can get credit from the banks- fact it's the opposite, they called in my note on the cows I bought last spring when the prices were good.
Drought last year killed the rye we'd grown for cattle feed (since the cost of corn doubled). An e. coli outbreak killed a quarter of the herd. The melamine-tainted milk in China slashed demand there- even for safe imports. Analysts say local demand depressed because 40% of milk goes to make cheese, and 60% of cheese gets used up in restaurants, but with money tight all around, folks eat out less than they did.
My cows are leaving on a truck; I couldn't force myself to sleep in, so I take one last walk among them. I know these cows, each and every one of them, and they know me, from seeing each other twice a day for milking. And they feel the tension in me sure as my wife does; I stop to stroke the chin of a restless heifer and she catches my eyes. “Sorry, girl,” I tell her. She had years more of good milk to give; instead she'll be hamburger come this time next week.
Wife's already started looking for a job in town; with the money we get off the herd, we should be able to get my son the rest of the way out of law school. Beyond that, I don't know what we'll do, but I can tell you- it's a damn shame.
I'm Sorry I Got Caught In Your House
I could make excuses; I suppose for our friendship, perhaps I should. But I never intended any of it.
You've never met Rachel (at least, not before today), but she's different. In a good way, I think, today notwithstanding.
We've been together a month, so yes, we're still in the "like rabbits" phase of it. The other day she was looking at my keys, and realized I had more on the ring than she might have supposed.
She asked why that was; I told her I had keys to my mother's, and my father's, my grandmother's (who's since passed, though my brother lives there now), and of course, to your house. That took some explaining, actually, because she knew better than to believe when I left it at 'a family I'm friendly with's home'. But she wasn't mad, either, when I told her I dated your daughter; she was actually sympathetic when I explained how bad it had gone.
Perhaps that's because the idea had already struck her: to have sex everywhere my keys could get us. It's been the most exhausting week of my life since.
My mother's house wasn't too difficult, you see it's not that large, and she and my stepdad were both working swings this week, which gave us a pretty open window. My father's house, on the other hand... Suffice to say my knees still hurt. And my hips. And my right pinky toe (which is a story all itself). My grandmother's/brother's house was easy after that; all we had to do was buy him a case of beer and he cleared out for the day.
And then we came to your house; obviously, I was getting to that. We started in your daughter's room; I think actually being here, Rachel got a little... competitive. Then she asked where else I'd been with your daughter in the house. Check off the main shower and the master bedroom (before you moved in, actually, which I know, makes it a little creepier, using your dead father's bed). We hit a snag with the pool table, since you guys sold that, and then turned the pool room into your other daughter's room, but um, we improvised.
And of course, from there, you know we ended up here in the kitchen. So what I'm saying, I suppose, is I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I'd been meaning to give the key back ages ago, but somehow, I could never bring myself to come over, for fear well, you-know-who might have been here. So there, take back your key; I appreciate the sentiment, but I've had it too long as it is.
Of course, I'll stop by some time, next week, with some donuts; and of course, that time I'll be wearing pants. But thank you for being so understanding about this (and thank God I keep my work keys on another ring).
Red
My ears are still ringing from the IED; I think I hear a woman crying, but far away. A big lump of cold metal rests on my chest, makes it hard to breathe.
My mother was so proud when I joined up- she was full of small-town ideas and ideals about duty and country. I never had the heart to tell her it was the best job I could get without spending a lifetime in a mill (and even that was probably a fool’s dream- since most of the mills had been closing ever since I got out of high school). That doesn’t mean I don’t love my country, or my freedom, I just don’t think I’d die for either on their merits.
My hands tingle as something in the metal becomes familiar. The sound of crying was gunfire, closer than I’d have imagined; my fingers remember before me, slide the safety off. I don’t feel my legs, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to stand- even though I know it’s going to make it trickier.
I’m up on one knee, telling gravity I’ll win even though I know in my heart I won’t, when fingers grab my own, soft but strong. Her words come out in a burst I hear as automatic fire; I understand her second try enough to get “You must help me.”
I crawl to her through a puddle of blood, which is the first time I realize I’m bleeding, but it isn’t all mine- our blood is pooling between us. I try to pull her drapery away, but she fights me with all the strength she has left. I wish I could explain the virtues of chastity and modesty versus self-preservation, but all I can manage is “I must, to help.” She shakes her head furiously.
I feel the article, following the flow of blood in reverse to the hole. It’s wide- too wide for a bullet. I tear the hole wider, and it doesn’t surprise me to find a damn masonry nail sticking out of her. I fight every natural urge to tear it out- because my training tells me to leave it there and put pressure around the nail instead.
Her eyes are soft, and rolling around; her eyelids drop. I take one hand off her wound and I reach for her jaw. I miss; I’m woozy, and gravity almost wins before she reaches out to me. Her hand finds my pelvis, and a hole I knew had to be somewhere. Her head bobs, and this time I catch her jaw. Her eyes shoot open and she stares at me with deer eyes. “You’re not going to goddamned die on me,” I tell her in English, but if she doesn’t understand the words, she understands my eyes.
She smiles at me, a broken tension smile that comes with tears. “I love America,” she says in a harsh accent, but still in English. I laugh, and it’s light- no force left in my chest- and reply, “Me, too.”
White
Smoke, thick and heavy. Natural instincts shoot warnings up my spine- even insects know to move away from fire. Higher reasoning says I should wait for a firefighter- or at least a cop- but they’re already busy.
There’s a voice in the back of my mind that says I imagined the scream, like I’m sure I imagined that plane hitting the building. I stumble on a crumpled pile of plaster, and nearly slam my face into a marble countertop. As I push up from its cold surface, I tell myself I’m not disoriented, that I could retrace my steps back to safety if I wanted to; I’m not sure it’s true.
There’s another voice, one that takes me a moment to place. It’s my fire Captain, furious at me for coming in without telling anyone; “Two-in, two-out” doesn’t work if you go in alone and no one knows it. But the lesson’s old, from before I shattered my ankle on a motorcycle, which shattered any hopes I had of fighting fires. But I was already EMT certified, and nobody cares if an EMT has a crappy ankle.
I hear movement in the white darkness; my heart is a set of African drums at the height of some tribal ceremony, as I remember my Kipling and Conrad, and the snowy shadows take feral forms that silently stalk me. The sound comes again, and it’s almost a growl, and I’m a moment from a full run when I hear grinding stones fall to the tiled floor, and I run instead towards them.
There’s a cry again, too loud and near to be in my mind, and I stop moving. My fingers find a half-destroyed wall I was about to collide with. I feel for an edge or a doorway; in desperation I cry out, and the cry comes back to me. We call back and forth three more times before I find the hole in the wall. It’s too small to crawl through, but I manage to get a shoulder and my head in. The voice is quieter closer in, more muffled, a
nd somehow deeper. I thought it was a woman’s voice- I’m no longer sure- but there’s an excitement, and urgency, and I know I’m near.
I start to dig, careful at first, but more frantically as the cries from beneath grow weaker. My entire side aches, and the rubble slips away from fingers unused to labor now slicked with blood from a dozen lacerations and cuts.
I start to panic, afraid for all my certainty that I’m in the wrong place. I try to call out again, but my smoke-filled lungs can’t muster the force; in fact, I recognize that I’m having trouble breathing at all. The world is suddenly very small- or very large, but filled entirely with smoke, and I’m going to die alone here, with my ass hanging half out of a wall like Winnie the Pooh. I laugh at the thought and it grows to a big barrel laugh.
At that moment fingers break through the rubble and seize mine. I don’t know if we’ll die here, and in that instant I don’t care, because it feels like I’m saved- because I’m not alone anymore.
Blue
People assume I’m not that bright; I don’t fault them too highly, as it’s a mistake I made most of my life. It’s a mistake I applied to my mother, too. I assumed the work she did- and the work I do- was on account of a ceiling, built only so high on pillars of