Erin Fisher - That Tiny Life

He starts to follow the tractor path back then stops. The barn looms, even at a distance. Melanie will be there, she likes it better than home. He plans to apologize, has an apology idling in his head, has this big sorry ready, but when he talks to her he only gets as far as the shit he’s done, and then thinks what’s the point? He wants to say, What I’m doing to you is worse than the stories I’m telling. Worse than squeegee-ing out the boxes in the morgue. He wants to tell her he wanted to care for her even before she lived with him, before her mom got involved with that nurse and started another family. Remember, he wants to say, when you were little and I picked you up for breakfast — you were so excited you threw up all over your birthday dress. After you finished crying and got changed we drove out of the city instead. Through the suburbs and the big ranches — there were cows then too. But he can’t get that far. Not even in his mind. Only gets as far as, A few nights back I shaved your head, and then he gives up.

Melanie. What was she like back in the city? Can’t recall. Instead what comes to mind is the loner whose hand burned when he was a teen. That kid running a stick along the chain-link fence every lunch hour, and one particular time when — a month or maybe a year after the fire thing — the kid broke. The kid had stayed out past the bell, and the teacher had gone to fetch him. Milo’d watched through the window as the kid yelled and ran. Looping around the monkey bars, the swings, then sprinting out into the field. The teacher frozen — surprised, probably, like the rest of them, that that timid kid could tear around so fast. Yelling, hollering like his life depended on it. A real roar. That kid, a boy with parted hair and sweaty pits — possibly born cleft palate, one nostril was larger than the other — that’s what Milo remembers: staring through the school window. The whole class fascinated. Filled with a weird mix of fear and curiosity. His daughter is that kid, now, he realizes absently. His fault again.

Earlier the clouds were like a tarp, hung low over the field; now they drag south, blackening the moon above the river and leaving for light only the stars and the open barn door. The glow breaks over the snow and mud and on the tufts of bent grass in the pasture. Melanie, setting up the night’s milking. The power’s fixed.

And suddenly, standing alone in the black expanse of the field so far from his daughter, he’s not alone. The cows. Shocking to notice, to remember those huge beasts, their bulk and breath so close in the dark, having been so close all along. Only now they move, a shift like a tide, passing him by on their way to the barn. The heat of them as they walk by in the dark. They were right there, are right here, then they are gone.

Again, all she has to do is vacuum the milkers to the teats, then there is the grind of chewed cud and the flick of tails and the soft drop of cow pats. She runs her hand over the hip bones of the animals as she walks by their stalls. So big. They’ll keep them inside now, for the winter. The grass is snow-covered, and she learned about laminitis last year. So there’s those reasons. But also, inside, the bus can’t scrutinize them every morning on its way to school.

She climbs up onto the rail of the last stall, swings a leg over, and straddles it so that one foot hangs in the pen. The cow raises its head. Big brown eyes and light hair. Tan down the muzzle, grey on the nose. She scratches its ear.

“Why so sad?” She swings the other leg over the rail too, so that she sits facing the cow, and runs both her hands down its face. There’s blood on her knuckles. The garage door rumbles open beyond the wall. Milo. That girl, the one who puked, afterward Candice had whispered, I know you were in there, I know you left her. All she did was deny it. Kept spouting self-defence — I didn’t see her, I didn’t.

“I hate myself,” she says. She waits for Milo’s clunks and scrapes beyond the wall to stop before she hops off the rail and opens the adjoining door. The still sits dormant at the back of the garage. The boiler, with its polished copper and circular window, is thankfully off. When active, it looks like a bathysphere, only the water roils around the window on the wrong side.

She turns to go back into the barn, then glances out the garage door and doesn’t. Milo stands beside the slurry, jars and pails of spirits next to him. He pours bucket after bucket over the pit and tosses a match to it. Blue and fierce — alluring like the bug zapper in summer. He means well; he won’t be able to help himself.

The mattress in the spare room is shiny, grey-silver with royal-blue floral stitching, and the woven vines and leaves make the bed look like a Dutch plate. He and Kendra stretch a faded mint sheet over it. The creases stay even when the edges of the sheet are tucked under the foot and sides of the mattress. The bedspread, at least, is happy — lively orange and pink and blue. South American, maybe. Wool. Kendra tosses a pillow on it.

“You going to be okay sleeping here?” she says.

“I’m good.” He sits, traces a stripe on the blanket, then touches his swollen eye.

Kendra reaches down and opens a cardboard box from a stack of boxes along the wall. Feathers. Bells. Leather. Envelopes of unlabelled photos.

The skin around his eye is taut, not soft like he’d expected, more like his thumb when he slammed it in a car door. “I’m going to wash.”

“Sure. This will take a while anyway.” Kendra sits cross-legged on the floor and picks out a skull. Her hair is braided again, and now that they’re inside and the cold has gone from her skin her freckles have returned to her face, neck, and hands. They’ll be the rest of the way down, too — breasts, butt, thighs, toes. She balances the skull on her fingertips. “Crow. Neat, hey?”

In the hall, he stops at the phone. Her machine answers. “Mom. I know you’re there.” Maybe Aunt Jen is there too, baking apples, or curry, and they’re both around the stove and the fan is drowning out the phone. “Mom.” Nothing. “Mom I know you’re listening.” If she is, she’ll be in the bathtub or curled next to a heater in the dark. There’s no way Aunt Jen is over. “Pick up, please?” She doesn’t. “Well,” he says. After another minute of silence he hangs up.

The bathtub is full of Axel’s soaking clothes. But there was that shower outside.

He strips down, folds his kilt and sets it on the toilet. Can he even ask Axel to take it to the dry cleaners? Underwear, jeans, shirt, and sweater get added to the tub. He takes the biggest towel from the bathroom closet — one that reaches from his armpits to his knees when tucked around him — and puts boots on. Axel sits with his back to him, absorbed in hoods.

He walks down the drive to the hatchling barn and the outside stall. The shower’s hot. A damp cloud forms instantly, thickening the air and hanging. The heat and steam clear his nose. He washes loose scabs from his nostrils.

Up the mountain yesterday. He drops the soap. He was stupid to show her the postcard. What can she do? He shuts off the shower and immediately shivers. There’s a sense of urgency to the dark as he crosses back to the house. Like, shifting. Like it has pieces, like a great glom of ants. Like he might shake apart in the cold. He climbs the porch steps and stops. He’s going to have to live across from that girl.

The power’s on, but he sits in the rocker with the light off. Him and his old man and a lingering jug. There’s fragility to the alcohol in the Mason jar; the way it sloshes makes it seem clearer than water. He sets it on his knee. Out the window the clouds have pulled back entirely, and the light from the moon, circling low above the highway, will soon breach the room. “I’m here.” He runs his thumb over the lid and metal band. The old man breathes under the quilt. “You got me.” He leans back, rocking the chair, and bumps the bookshelf.