Ike Hamill: Migrators

He hung up his shoes and carried the rest of his clothes in a dripping bundle to the washing machine. After a shower, he put away the rest of the laundry from the line. Clouds were starting to build in the west.

When he walked out back to get the truck, Alan was on high alert. He imagined the carpenter watching him from the woods as he turned around in the field and drove back towards the barn. By the time he put the truck away and started getting ready for dinner, he’d managed to forget about the man.

Alan pulled a steak from the freezer and set it to thaw on the counter. She shucked corn, snapped green beans, and mixed a batch of cookies. He was sweating as he waited for the oven to heat up. Alan looked at the clock for the twentieth time. It was 4:30—where was Joe?

He did the math again. Extended day ended at four, when the day shift at the woolen mill ended.

Out at four, fifteen-minute bus ride home, five minute walk from the place where the bus turned around, and it all added up to where-the-hell-was-Joe o’clock.

Alan shut off the oven and headed down the hall.

He stopped with his hand on lever of the screen door. Alan decided to give his son another twenty minutes before he went looking.

He crossed the hot kitchen and turned the oven back on. A few minutes later, it beeped to signal it was up to temperature. Alan put the cookies in and waited. He stood, looking out the window at the quiet yard as they cooked. The window over the sink looked across the driveway to a lonely maple tree that shaded a sundial. He wondered why anyone would put a sundial in the shade and then he noticed the handles on the concrete pad. It was the cap for the septic tank. All their waste would collect in some tank in the ground. Country living.

The timer went off. Alan pulled the cookies from the oven and set the trays down on the stovetop.

He dropped the third one when the screen door banged shut.

“Shit,” Alan whispered.

“Dad, you shouldn’t say that,” Joe said. He flopped his book bag down on a chair.

“Pretend you didn’t hear that,” Alan said

“Okay,” Joe said.

Alan used a spatula to scoop the floor cookies into the trash.

“Can I have one?” Joe asked. He sat at the kitchen table. “It’s hot in here.”

“You can have one after dinner. How was school?”

“It was okay. There are two other kids named Joe in my homeroom, so the teacher said she was going to call us by our last names. One of the kids wants to be Joey though. How come you never called me Joey?”

“That’s a kangaroo name,” Alan said. “We were afraid you’d hop everywhere.”

Joe laughed.

“Where’s mom?” Joe asked. He swung his feet beneath the table and squeaked his sneakers on the floor.

“Not home yet,” Alan said. “Didn’t you get out at four? Why did it take you so long to get home?”

Joe was unzipping his book bag. He pulled out a notebook and slapped it on the table.

“The bus dropped me off last,” he said.

Alan nodded. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said.

“You have any homework?”

“I did most of it in extended day. They give us time to do homework if we want. I just have to finish memorizing some vocabulary words, but there’s no test until the end of the week.”

“The end of the week is only the day after tomorrow,” Alan said.

“I know.”

Alan sat down at the table and picked up one of the books Joe had stacked there.

“Didn’t you learn algebra last year?”

“Some of it, but I think this book goes farther.”

“Maybe you should move up to eighth grade.”

“Dad, you promised. I already know kids in my grade and all the eighth graders are bigger than me.”

“Relax, relax,” Alan said. “I didn’t mean it.”

He set the book down. There were two private schools within twenty minutes. One was for boarders only, but the other allowed for day students. If they had money to burn next year, maybe they would have the conversation again. For now, public school was their only option. Buying the house from Liz’s cousins had boxed them in substantially.

“Did you meet any new kids?”

“Yeah, a couple,” Joe said. He was flipping through blank pages of his notebook. He found his way to a list of words spaced evenly down a page. “Do we have a dictionary?”

“Yeah, of course,” Alan said. He pushed away from the table and stood up. Down the hall, at the front of the house, the Colonel’s study was still populated with the old man’s books. Alan pulled a worn book from the shelf and turned as light flashed through the window. He expected to see the carpenter standing out there on the road. Instead, he saw his wife’s BMW turning into the driveway. Alan walked back towards the kitchen.

“Mom’s home,” Joe said as Alan set down the dictionary.

Alan watched through the window as his wife pulled up to the barn. The building was huge—there was space for five cars and a boat in there—but it seemed strange to watch such a modern machine pulling into the old red structure.

A few seconds later, Liz emerged from the barn. She held her briefcase in one hand and her phone in the other. She paused in the middle of the drive while she talked on the phone. Her face was all business. Alan couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was clearly still in lawyer mode.

Liz took the phone from her ear, stabbed the screen with her thumb, and turned towards the shed door. The shed ran all the way from the house to the barn, but Liz always walked through the driveway. She said there were too many spiders in the far end of the shed. Alan heard the screen door groan and then slam shut as Liz came up the hall. Joe was flipping through the musty old dictionary.

The woman who came through the door to the kitchen had a totally different demeanor than the lawyer who had been arguing to the phone out in the driveway. That was one of the things that Alan loved most about his wife. No matter how much of a hard-ass her career made her in the real world, when she was with her husband and son, she was as sweet as a spring breeze.

Alan smiled and Liz beamed back.

“Hi, beautiful,” Alan said.

“Hey, handsome,” Liz said. She set down her bag and jacket and bounded towards Alan. He caught her in his arms and twirled her in the space between the cabinets and the refrigerator.

They smiled into each other’s eyes and then brought their lips together in the middle for a quick noisy kiss.

“Gross,” Joe said without looking up from his homework.

Alan set Liz gently back to her feet.

“What’s wrong with this one? He doesn’t hug anymore now that he’s a seventh grader?” Liz asked.

“He didn’t hug me either,” Alan said as Liz crossed the floor to their son.

She grabbed Joe around the back of his shoulders and squeezed him tight while laying her face against his. Liz took the seat next to Joe and picked up his math book. Alan turned his attention to wrapping each ear of corn in its own sheet of wax paper.

“It smells so good in here. What’s for dinner?” Liz asked.

“Corn, green beans, and you guys are having veggie burgers,” Alan said. “Cookies are for dessert.”

“You know what the Colonel used to say about string beans?” Liz asked Joe.

“All string, no beans,” Joe said. He was copying a definition from the dictionary to his list of vocabulary words. He didn’t look up to deliver the line.

“I guess I’ve told you that one before?” Liz.

“No,” Joe said. “I just guessed.”

Alan smiled—his son had inherited his mom’s dry wit.

“You did?” Liz asked. She grabbed Joe’s hand in both of hers. “Oh my, do you know what this means?”