American Rust

to make your movements in peace.

You could go on forever if they ate you in small enough bites—he used to think that was beautiful, triumph of human spirit, wanting to go on no matter what. It was Shackleton going up mountains, a normal person could not endure it. Reason to hold the head up. The problem being it was only an outlook, a way of thinking that did not change reality. Reality being he was meat in a slow rot. A head hooked up to old meat, barely get your own pants off. Any other animal they’d put you down, lying in your own slops.

You’re just talking, he thought. Full of bullshit. There’s a nine-millimeter in the drawer for any time you get too tired, you can always talk to Mr. Browning, he’s got good advice when you’re ready to listen. But he’s been quiet thirteen years. Because you yourself are just talk.

He put down his TV Guide, there was no point. He rolled to his desk, he had caused the whole thing, it was the small slips of the mind that did you in. He’d gotten sloppy, left the money where the boy could find it. He should have locked the money up, hidden it somewhere else. There were bills all over, the hospital, he had another appointment, they wouldn’t schedule anything together, it was a bunch of shithead tailchasers, they wanted to get their twenty- five a visit. It was the bush leagues, you didn’t get good doctors at a little hospital like that, they were practically veterinarians. When they’d found that lump on his prostate, he could practically see their hands rubbing together, more tests and operations. He’d made another appointment with a specialist in the city, Indian guy, Ramesh, Ramid, barely understood what he was saying but he was good, a likable guy. Ramesh checked and checked but the lump was gone, probably never there to begin with. Told him: Doc, I never been so happy to have a man stick his finger up my ass. Took you the wrong way. Small careful man. Said I didn’t like it any more than you did, Mr. English. After that he wouldn’t look at you. Liked him except now you can’t go back.

He rolled himself to the window, there was a quarter moon, he could see everything, the skeleton of the neighbor’s house, Pappy Cross, gone twelve years. Moves to Nevada to be with his sons, within two weeks someone came and stole his gutters, security door, doublepane windows. Called him in Nevada to tell him, never got a call back. Whole house rotting to nothing.

There was a noise from upstairs but it was just Lee walking around. Soon she would have to go back, she would not wait around here forever as Isaac had. Admit it, he thought. A man would not have done that. What you did to that boy it is sacrifice yourself for your children, not the other way around. The boy was technically a genius, they’d had him tested but he had never told the boy 167, that was the number he’d scored, it was higher than his sister. But, he didn’t know, there’d always been something about the boy he was smart and stupid at the same time. As if he was meant to do everything the wrong way. Junior league ball, the boy was twelve, they subbed him in for the pitcher, good arm but he chokes, eight runs straight, loses the game. Afterward acting like nothing happened. It made no sense. The feeling that gave you, watching your son lose the game, but he just shrugged it off, didn’t care.

No, he thought, you never had any choice, Lee Anne left first and there was nothing more to it. And the boy could take it, he’s stronger than she is. She talks one way but inside she’s another. Would’ve killed her staying here.

Henry thought about it, he would have wheeled himself in front of a train for either of them. Went without saying. The boy was his son. It was normal to have a preference, his own father had preferred him to his brother, it was just the way life went. He did not have enough to give to both of them. No, he thought, that is a lie. You did not want to be alone and you made choices.

Either way it would have been time to let the boy go, make your final journey. Into the home with the old folks, men in diapers, cleaned by strangers. Last about two weeks. Life for a life. He watched the deer browsing around Pappy Cross’s old house, wondered if Pappy was even still alive, the house had been on the market twelve years and one of the sons had come back, stayed in a hotel, contracted someone to cut all the trees down, even the young pines, forty- dollar trees, sold them to the mill and got the money out that way. He wondered if Pappy knew about it. Rotting house in a stump field, soon enough there’d be no trace, a million places just like this, right now and throughout time. Earth is made of bones. From wood and back to wood and you’ll never know what came before you.

7. Poe

The new cell didn’t have a window and they never turned out the lights but at least it was his alone. He knew it was late morning sometime; they had brought him breakfast, that had been a few hours ago though he wasn’t sure even of that. It didn’t matter, though. They would all be after him now, everyone in the prison, black gangs and white, a coalition of the willing, he had gone back on his word and taken another man down to boot, he had taken men from both sides. He wondered how he had done that, a basic rule, choose your enemies. He had chosen everyone. He wondered if he had killed Tucker. It didn’t seem to matter much, it was the least of his worries, it was not a game of sums. No matter what you did in life, there was still your own death at the end of it. There was no question they would kill him, they would take their first chance.

He felt a shiver go through him and the sweat was coming fast now, he was drenched and cold where a second ago he had been warm. He was up on his feet and pacing around the cell, he was testing the walls with his hands, the bars, it was no use, the natural laws, he was going to scream, there were things inside that needed to escape. Only he would not. He would be a man. He would lie on the bed and calm his mind. He did. He was wet everywhere and his scalp was tingling, it felt like a heart attack, he would die there in his bed. After a few minutes the wave passed and there was a feeling of weakness and being emptied of everything.

And yet there was a way out. It was right in front of him, staring him in the face. He could tell the truth and change everything, his lawyer would want the same thing as all of them. That was the purpose of the lawyer. To get him out of here. To save his actual life.

Except it was not saving as much as trading. Isaac and Lee. But his life. Versus a promise he had made. Versus what he knew, there were good ones and bad ones and Isaac was one of the rare good ones. Him, Poe, from the natural standpoint he was where he was supposed to be, he belonged here and Isaac didn’t. Maybe not this exact place, maybe this was not exactly where he belonged, but he admitted it, he was not surprised, not really. He had nearly made a vacation here last year, and his mother and Harris had gotten him out of it. It was not some unfair twist of fate, he had not been born a refugee, it was his own choices, he could be a man about it. He could accept the consequences.

And yet—if a lawyer asked what happened, it would be difficult to withhold a description of the events, it would not be human thoughts but another part of him. If someone asked him, he would tell. He would have no choice. But if they didn’t ask him he wouldn’t tell. It was a fair chance, it gave equal weights to both sides. Except he knew they would ask him. It was an obvious question: who killed the man in the machine shop? Christ it seemed so long ago, ancient times, part of the past. But it was the reason he was here. They would ask it and he would tell them. It was the truth, was all it was. It was nothing more than the truth.

He was up and pacing again, three steps to the back wall and turn and come back. Before lunch, they had said, that was when the lawyer was coming it had been some time now since breakfast. Yes, he thought, that is who you are. If there is any bad luck you will find it only it was not just luck, there had been many ways to avoid it, he hadn’t taken any of them. It was hopeless, a lost cause. He had slept through life, let the currents take him. He had let the currents take him faster and faster and he had not noticed. He was at the end now, the big drop. It was not only college there had been other choices as well, choices that had revealed him to others, choices that half the town would have jumped at but he, Poe, had chosen another way. It was Orn Seidel calling him right after graduation, there was an opening at a company that did the plastic seals for landfills. Traveling all over the country. At new landfills they would lay down the plastic liners in preparation for garbage to be dumped there, to prevent leakage into nearby streams and such. At the old landfills they would seal them up, it was like a giant ziplock, a heavy layer of plastic overtop the garbage and then they blew them up with air to test them, just before they dumped the soil on top you could run across the acres of plastic, bouncing, it was like running on the moon, Orn said, it was fourteen dollars an hour to start. But it was not really running on the moon. It was working with other people’s trash. Technicians, they called themselves, but it was not really that. It was laying plastic overtop of trash heaps, it was hanging around city dumps. Your country is supposed to do better than that for you, he thought.