Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

He’s right. The Maxima is a shit-bucket car. I wonder if they confiscate mine, if I’ll still be responsible for the payments.

“What else did they say?”

“Dave, I don’t-”

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Come on, Slippers, just tell me.”

“They said you committed an assault and…uh…intimidation?”

He nods, ashamed. “That was a long time ago. I had some anger stuff then. My ex-girlfriend…this older guy she was seeing.” Dave wipes his pocked cheeks again. And a little snot bubble forms, just like Franklin gets. “The funny thing is…I felt like I had my shit together…you know, before the accident? You make one mistake and then-” He shakes his head. “Did they tell you I gave her CPR after the accident? The girl?”

“No.”

“No,” he says, “of course not,” and he sighs. He stares down the hallway again. Shrugs. “Jesus, Slippers. How does everything get so fucked up?” And it’s all too much for him again. Dave’s head falls into his hands and he shudders with sobs. And I find myself stepping into the dark hallway, my feet crunching on the dirt floor, my hand rubbing his twitching shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s okay, Dave.”

Then Edmund AKA Dave Waller, manslaughtering, weeping drug dealer, turns back to me, his cheeks glistening, and says, through snot and tears, “Shit, Slippers. I’m never gonna practice law again, am I?”

IHAD A ROUND TIN of those little toy logs when I was a kid. All you could really build was cabins; still…I loved them, the feel, the smell, the way they fit together. In my dream, they’re just as small as I remember them being, but there are tens of thousands of tiny logs, and the cabin I build is massive, big enough for my family and me. It has room after room after room, opening one into the other, three floors of Lincoln Log sunken living room, bedrooms with Lincoln Log Murphy beds, home gym, log theater and game rooms and a Lincoln Log burglar alarm that beeps and beeps and-

– I wake alone, curled up on my side on the floor, staring at my glowing watch, which sits on the floor in front of me, beeping. Did I set the alarm? Did I know the watch had an alarm? The dregs of sleep blow away and I look around at the paneled walls and remember-I am in the basement of Weedland. I agreed to wait down here for an hour before I called Randy and Lt. Reese and told them I was quitting, to give my old dealers a head start-and so I sat down here on the floor, listening to them move around up there, their footfalls on the floor above me as they rushed around packing bags…and I must have-

I sit up, dizzy. Reach for the watch. Turn off the alarm. It’s seven-thirty. I glance outside: daylight. I remember. Dave took my watch. He must’ve figured out how to set the alarm, brought it down here, seen me sleeping and-

Funny. I’ve finally gotten a good night’s sleep, and it’s in the basement of Weedland. Sure. The door to the grow rooms is closed, paneling replaced. I don’t hear anything upstairs.

I groan and ache as I get to my feet. Make my way to the stairs. “Dave? Jamie?”

Nothing. They’re gone. You can tell when you’re in an empty house. I remember when I found Dad in Oregon. I packed up and set him carefully in my car-took one more run through his cold house. There was nothing there either-an emptiness that felt unnatural. I think about all of those foreclosures out there: an empty house is an abomination.

I find my phone and keys on the little Formica table. There is, of course, no sign of my money. I suppose that was asking a lot-getting a $9,000 refund from the dealers you’ve betrayed. I pick up my phone and check the missed calls. Two from my house: one at 6 a.m., and one at 6:30, both from Lisa. One at 6:40 from a number I don’t recognize. And one from Jamie about ten minutes ago. There are no messages.

My car sits outside alone, in front of the house where I pulled up last night. Even the red Camaro is gone. I hesitate before leaving, wondering if I should lock the door behind me. I look up and down the street, at the houses in Weedland. There’s a line of old diseased trees lining the road, their trunks flaking bark, the sidewalk rising and cracking from their roots. I lock the door and go.

I get in my car. I consider calling Lisa-but I’m not sure what to say, where to start. So I just drive. The highway winds and

straightens, flat farmland gives way to clusters of trees and I ease into the squat downtown of my city, a low fog hanging over it like a basement ceiling.

When I pull up to my house, there is a Stehne Lumber flatbed truck parked in front.

What kind of man was I?

I ease past the flatbed, pull into the driveway.

Chuck Stehne is standing at the end of my driveway, in a big brown work coat and brown gloves, thick arms crossed like rope. He looks uneasy, confused. Probably because he sees the same thing I see.

I climb out of my car. “What are you doing, Dad?”

It’s a stupid question; I can see what my father is doing. He’s doing what I should be doing: building his son a treeless tree fort. He’s got the plans open on the sidewalk, a brick holding the pages down; he’s just started to saw wood. An extension cord snakes out from the open front door.

I glance over at Chuck, but he won’t meet my eyes.

“When I pulled up he was already working,” Chuck says. “I told him you wanted me to take all of this back…but he told me to go to hell.”

Before I can remark on Chuck’s going to hell, Dad says, “Hold this,” and I take the end of one of the eight-foot posts and hold it over a corner of the woodpile while Dad scratches a straight line with one of Franklin’s Spiderman pencils. Dad’s hands are raw and red in the cold. He’s still wearing his pajama bottoms and his Go Army sweatshirt. He’s in socks. There’s no sign of his remote control. “Brace it with your leg,” he says. I do and Dad picks up a circular saw that I don’t own and makes a clean cut, straight down his straight line, the wood grain protesting at the end before it breaks and Dad’s end falls softly into the saw-dusted lawn.

When the saw is done humming, I say, as gently as I can, “Dad, where’d you get that?”

He looks up, confused. Then he looks at the saw in his hand. “Isn’t it mine?”

There’s also a framing hammer, and a heavy-duty electric drill. I pick up the drill, turn it over and see my neighbor’s name stenciled on the back.

Chuck Stehne shifts his weight in his work boots. So here we are.

Dad has just started work on the base of the fort, cutting the first eight-foot four-by-four in half. I breathe in sawdust and cool morning air. He hasn’t done enough to keep me from returning the wood, of course; I can always pay for a single cut four-by.

I take another whiff of sawdust. It’s a nice smell, like something cooking. I have a vague memory of the smell, but there’s nothing visual to go with it. “I’m sorry to make you come all the way out here,” I tell Chuck. “But it looks like we’re keeping the wood.”

Chuck nods and his cool, blue eyes drift up to the second story of our house, then back to the woodpile and the senile old man wielding a circular saw. He starts to move away, and then seems to stop; he hasn’t taken a step-it’s more of a flinch. “You know,” he says. “I could help…if you want.” He quickly adds, “Or not.”

Then Chuck Stehne sighs, looks once more at the house and says, quietly, “Look. For what it’s worth? I didn’t tell her about…you know…the whole pot thing?”

I have no idea what to say. Thanks seems a little much.