Michael Bunker - WICK

“And I was also thinking of you, young man!”

Veronica turned to Calvin, who looked startled. “You’ve lost your father. Anyone who has eyes to see can see that. My son has lost his father, too.” She paused, and looked at Stephen. “And I have lost a husband. But, we become strong at the broken places. Even here.” She placed her hand to her heart, her hand in a fist. She tapped her heart two times. Calvin looked at her, and he wanted to say something, anything, to let her know that he understood.

“And here you are, young man. You have been given to us a second time. First, with the truck and now, well, with the truck again.” She indicated with her hand to the tires. “You know how to do this good work, because your father passed that knowledge down to you.” She looked at him as if to say that Stephen would be his brother now. As if they would look out for each other, and she would play mother hen. “So… Do you see?”

She pointed to the tires, ground down to the nubbins. She pointed to a toolbox and a jack that she’d pulled out for them. She pointed to the ruts in the ground and the tires buried in them. “Strong in the broken places.” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go. Let’s get this done!” The boys grinned. They were laughing to see her happy. She had the kind of smile that made a person happy just to see it.

“Calvin, you organize. Stephen, help him and keep him honest. Do one tire at a time, and do it right the first time. Do you hear me? The first time! Lay it in thick. And tight. Pound it in with a rock… I am going to walk out on the road and keep a watch out. If you hear a shot, any kind of gunfire, hide in the forest and wait for me. Do you hear me?” The boys nodded. And with that, she was gone.

Calvin unfastened the green tarp, and then pulled it down from the bed of the truck. He laid it out on top of a small, raised area of grass that stuck up above the snow. The truck, sliding off of the roadway, had dug deep and muddy ruts into the snow, and now the brown ruts were stark against the frozen white. He and Stephen shoveled wet mud onto the tarp until they had a good coating covering the center of the green, maybe three inches thick. Then they walked over to the fence line and anywhere else where the grass grew up through the snow, and they gathered armloads of organic material… grass, straw, weeds, and hay… anything.

Then they did the mud dance.

They stomped on the mixture for five to ten minutes at a time, then Calvin would pull one end of the tarp and then the other to flip over the thick, heavy “dough” that they were making, then they’d stomp it again. As they stomped, they talked and laughed like brothers. They made up a rap called the mud rap, and each one added a verse each time as they stomped heartily in the cold morning.

When the straw and mud were thoroughly mixed, they dumped the whole pile near one of the rear tires of the truck, and then began the whole process again.

This process went on for over an hour, and at the end of that time, they had enough mud/cob mixture to fill the tires.

Next, they jacked up the truck and removed the tires one at a time. Calvin showed them how to use the tire iron as a lever to remove the rubber from the bead without pulling off the whole tire. Then they stuffed. They stuffed and stuffed. And they pounded. Pounded and pounded.

When they could not get another ounce of cob into the tires, they finished, remounted the tire, and went to the next one.

“When we drive down the road, the cob will heat up and expand and fill what’s left of the cavity,” Calvin said.

“Are you sure?” Stephen asked.

“No!”

“You aren’t sure?”

“Nope! I’ve never done this before! I just told you that my father saw it done. It’s supposed to work, though.”

“Dude, your mom’s kind of intense,” said Calvin as they were pounding the cob down into the last tire with a rock that they’d found in the woods. The truck had slid down an embankment and down a smallish hill. They both knew it would take all the strength they could muster to get it up the hill, back onto the road, even under ideal conditions. They were working to better their odds.

“Yeah, she is.” Stephen looked into the distance, as if he were thinking of another time.

“What happened to your dad?”

“Oh, he was killed in a subway accident. Years ago. He gave up his life saving this woman he didn’t know. Jumped down on the tracks and lifted her up and…” He split his hands apart, helpless to find the words.

“Yeah, people called my dad a hero, too. He died to keep from hurting someone else.” Stephen looked at him blankly. Calvin continued, “It’s not really the same thing, but it is. Kind of.”

“Yeah, bro. I hear you.”

So, the conversation went on this way. The boys talked and worked. Occasionally, Veronica would come back to check on them, and she would encourage them through the process. She would always mix her little pep talks with object lessons. The boys would listen intently, and, as the sun crept across the morning sky and started to blend into afternoon, they completed their work.

The line of military-style vehicles pulled up in a straight edge on a long road that ran through the heart of Pennsylvania farm country. The lead vehicle, an odd looking RV that seemed to have some kind of plated armor that made it, from a distance, look like a spaceship or a dinosaur, pulled into a small rounded driveway. The drivers were driving with purpose toward a destination known, apparently, only to themselves.

They pulled into the small driveway and stopped at a checkpoint on the private driveway. The men driving the military vehicles showed some kind of credentials, and then there was a conference, and then the vehicles proceeded down the drive and dipped along a long winding road that led up to a farmhouse. They pulled in with practiced precision and lined up in beautifully stacked rows. The vehicles were orderly in their performance and worked together as one in a mechanical ballet.

The last few vehicles did not enter the driveway. They didn’t stop at the checkpoint and they didn’t follow the others up to the farmhouse. These few continued down the farm road, heading somewhere else.

The RV called ‘Bernice’ was parked behind the farmhouse, and inside the odd-shaped RV sat two men. One of the men looked like a cowboy, and the other looked like a leprechaun. A wee bit, anyway. They got out of the lead vehicle, the cowboy and the leprechaun, and they walked up to the doorway of the farmhouse. From a distance one could make out through the late afternoon haze the cowboy tipping his hat to the person who opened the door. The cowboy tipped his hat, and the leprechaun bowed at the waist. The leprechaun then did a little dipsy-doodle shuffle of his feet as he walked in behind the cowboy, and the door was shut behind them.

Red Beard looked at Clive. Red Beard’s real name was Pat, but by now we all know him as Red Beard. That’s what Clive called him, too. The two men found themselves seated in an old-fashioned drawing room. In the corner of the room was a small, simple table with a kerosene lamp. The light was evening out in fine shadows across the floor. Red Beard leaned back in his chair and said, “Let me tell you a story…”

Clive looked at Red Beard. “Tell it.”

Red Beard looked at Clive again. “Well, I think I will…” He gathered himself in order to give the story the weight it deserved.

“There was once this man who started a business. It was a small business. The man struggled. He scrimped and saved. He beat the bushes to find new customers and worked the ice cream socials at the local church. He joined the PTA.” Red Beard paused.