Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

Pete was already up in the freshly broken dawn boiling water and watching out the window for whatever was there. There were times he saw down through the tamarack to the meadow a whole gang of elk, steam and reedy cries issuing from their throats as they moved through the sheets of mist. He scanned the woods, the morning light not yet lancing through, the tree boles black in the dark morning. No elk. No bears, problem or otherwise.

A time in his childhood when he went to Yellowstone Park. His father paid for them to sit on a bench in front of a dump with about fifty other people. The garbage trucks rumbled up and emptied themselves, and the grizzlies lumbered out of the woods one by one or paired with cubs to nuzzle through the trash. Their tongues scoured the insides of tin cans. They devoured cardboard boxes whole for what had once been inside. Sometimes they scuffled explosively, their fur coats shuddering as though they could throw off their carpets of fat, and thus disrobed show what bears looked like underneath all the garbage they’d been eating. No one said these bears had problems.

The kettle whistled. He turned to get it and when the whistle died, he heard a truck clattering up the road. He went to the kitchen window to see it was his brother coming. He set the kettle on the counter and massaged his face. The things his brother kept in the bed rattled and the diesel engine knocked as it quit.

They met one another out front, Pete on the porch in a T-shirt and robe, his brother down from it, in a plaid jacket and his hair combed flat across his skull like he was just from an interview or court date. The porch boards were cold on Pete’s naked feet.

“What do you want, Luke?”

Luke smiled. It was Pete’s smile — Pete’s body just about too, the same wiry frame and rib cage and the same derelict heart underneath.

“I need a little money.”

Different kinds of dereliction.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m kidding. You gonna let me in?”

“No.”

“C’mon. I ain’t high or nothin.”

Luke pulled at the skin under his eyes to show Pete the whites.

“You don’t need to be high to steal.”

Luke shook his head and smiled with one side of his mouth and frowned with the other, wry and bittersweet.

“Why don’t you just get yourself back in that truck,” Pete said, but Luke slunk up onto the porch, made for the front door. Pete intercepted him. Luke grabbed Pete’s hand where it pressed on his chest. They were identical in height, but Luke was bigger in the arms from mending fences, bailing hay, and other handywork. Jobs he could land on parole.

“I about kicked your ass last time, big brother,” Luke said.

“But you didn’t.”

“I’m feeling spry this morning.”

Luke poked Pete in the gut smiling. Pete knocked away his hand, and Luke tried a short roundhouse that glanced the back of Pete’s ducking head. Pete slugged him in the ribs, and Luke gasped and jabbed Pete square in the face, setting him back, and then Pete charged at him, robe billowing out behind him like a cape. Neither landed a good blow in the following short volley. They breathed heavily a moment, and then Pete closed on his brother, shoved him into a porch post, palmed his brother’s entire face, knocking his head against the support. Luke had gotten his hands onto Pete’s head and endeavored to peel away his cheek like one might a rind. A coffee can of nails went over into the dirt. Pete yanked himself free of Luke’s grip and they got one another by the nape, their heads joined at the ears like a pair of hung-up deer. They panted there. Pete’s face was numb on the one side.

“Will you just get back in your truck and go?”

Luke twisted away, and they stood apart, each of them trying not to show how winded he was, rolling his head on his shoulders, shaking out his arms, sideways to his brother like a pair of prizefighters. Then they slowly lowered their arms. Luke pressed his mussed hair flat against his skull. Pete pulled his robe back around his shoulders. He searched for the belt like a dog after its tail, and angrily knotted it after he found it. They panted still. Regarded one another across the six feet that separated them.

“May I sit on that milk crate at least?” Luke asked.

Pete kicked the crate over. Luke sat, yolky sunlight leaking through the trees now.

“There’s two reasons you ever come to visit,” Pete said, breathing heavily. “To get something out of me… or to tell me about Jesus and get something out of me.” He paused to catch his breath. “Even though I ain’t interested in neither one.”

“I know it,” he said. “Mine’s been a crooked path.”

“Don’t romanticize it. You’re just another asshole—”

“Pot, meet kettle.”

“—and a thief. I told you we were done. I meant it.”

Luke rubbed his face, pulled his hands across his eyes.

“I know. You’re right. You’re right . I can be frustrating.”

“At this point, even Jesus and Satan just wish you’d choose a fucking side.”

Luke uncrossed his arms and nodded. Ran his hand through his hair and then remembered that he wanted it flat, and pressed it back down.

“I know.”

Pete abruptly went inside. He returned rolling a cigarette.

“How’s your old lady?” Luke asked.

Pete pointed a wooden match at him.

“Leave it alone, Luke.”

Luke sat up straight and looked off into the woods. There was nothing out here except trees and stones and animals, and though the forest was alive with the sound of those trees swaying in the wind and the small critters moving in them, you could tell he was bored already of it. The woods made him antsy. Land and nature gave him no peace. Never did.

“It’s nice out here,” Luke lied. “I wish I’d have gotten my shit together to get a place like this.”

Pete turned a large piece of firewood on end and sat unsteadily on it.

“Bullshit. You hate it in the sticks.”

“So do you.”

“What do you want?”

Luke grinned a private grin that Pete knew hid a secret he was about to hear. Something Luke connived.

“Should I bother asking?”

“Bunnie wants you to come out to the house. Dad’s been sick. That cough.”

“Gosh, he has a cough ? Why didn’t you say something?”

“You should go see him. Bunnie and him.”

“Let me just get my coat,” Pete said, dragging on the cigarette.

“You need to check up on them,” Luke said.

“You check up on them.”

“I ain’t going back that way.”

“Here it comes. I fuckin knew it. What’d you do?”

Luke ran his hands over his thighs, his fingers arched into tines. It was something bad.

“I knocked out my parole officer.”

Pete began to cough, he was laughing so hard. So hard he dropped the cigarette and stepped off the porch and gripped his knees.

“I had a knife on me that I’m not supposed to and Wes saw it and started talking all this shit. ‘Serious violation of my parole.’ Fuckin asshole. Way up in my face. Way up, Pete.”

“So you clocked him.”

“I beat the lovin hell out of him. I couldn’t stop my fists,” Luke said, holding up his hands with some wonderment.

“You dipshit.”

“Stop laughing. I had to spend two nights in the damn woods. It ain’t funny.”

“Yes it is. Yes, it truly is.” Pete got back up on the porch and just beamed at his brother. “This beats everything.”

“I ain’t going back. I can’t do no time again, Pete.”

“Shit, it can’t be that bad. Eighteen months? What are you gonna do instead?”

Luke stood and rocked back on his heels.

“Right. You have a plan ,” he said.

“I need someone to know where I am. In case anything happens. With Dad.”