Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

But her brother came out of nowhere. He nearly got in serious trouble once when she was young. Charges were never filed, but they said he did something to a girl. The girl was one of Erin’s friends who had come over to the house. Jimmy played his guitar for her at her request, nothing more. Later when Erin heard what she was saying, she said, You’re lying about my brother. She was going around claiming he sexually assaulted her. Supposedly, the story was that she was so devastated that she had told her priest. Rather than reporting the incident to the police, out of a concern for privacy, the priest had called the girl’s mother. The girl’s mother called up Erin’s mother crying and screaming on the phone, and now it was all over the neighborhood and everyone knew at school. In the office at St. Andrews, the victim described her assailant’s body to the priest. Erin’s mother said she would talk to Jimmy. All she wanted was a fair hearing, not a lynch mob. She talked to him and now she was satisfied there were holes in the girl’s story. The girl had asked him to take his shirt off when he was playing. This she told the girl’s mother on the phone.

The woman drove up outside with some men in the car and screamed fucking rapist scumbag and threw things at their house.

I never liked her, Erin said. I never talked to her after that. She was a ho and I never trusted her no more after what she said about Jimmy.

JIMMY BECAME A UNION man in rubber coveralls, boots, and a World War I helmet, going down into the ground for the City. He’s made his bones, his mother said at the bar. The sandhog’s intricate patch depicted the figures of men inside a cutaway view of a multilevel excavation. The same families worked for generations on a dig. You would have father, son, and grandfather in the pit. At Feeney’s, Patrick had a shot with him.

Good luck down there, lad.

What began as grounds for celebration became his daily life. Autumn after summer, Jimmy drove a wide, dull gold Buick Skylark through the houses with gapped siding and the leaves turning to soil bounded by rusted fences. The irrelevant sun rose and fell over his windshield, as he drove to work and back, Led Zeppelin playing on the stereo.

He had a confined space certificate. The sandhogs changed into coveralls in a low-ceilinged trailer with beige lockers and an OSHA poster tacked to the fake-wood-patterned wall and trooped out into the sonic drone. The drilling equipment, which moved on train tracks, cost 30 million dollars. You could feel the rock being pulverized seven times per second. Under the noise frequency, an Irish voice and a West Indian voice sounded identical. They ate their lunches underground, by lantern light, Jimmy’s blackened hands leaving fingerprints on his white bread.

He wore death’s head silver rings on his fingers. After work, his eyes hurting in the daylight, he put his rings on again and put the Zeppelin on again, a mysterious version in another language of the great underground music of the drill. The excavation site was in Mid-town Manhattan by the river. He drove through the flickering channel formed by the suspension cables of the bridge and headed back to the rusted fences and dilapidated houses to a bar where there were union bumper stickers on the wood and the brogue was distinct. Still more music was playing. When he entered, Jimmy! they said.

How’s your father? they said.

Fine.

Jimmy went to play Keno.

He would go from the cave of the dig to the dark peat-hollow of the bar. Drinking opened tunnels in his head that led into the third tomb of the night.

He watched an amateur video of guys doing stunts on bikes, set to hip-hop by a white DJ crew. They did wheelies, burnouts, endos. The backdrop was a heavy tree line. Jimmy put his hand in the plastic bowl of Doritos. The guy whose house it was came in from the kitchen and sat down in his chair and said to the TV, She’s making hotdogs. They watched without speaking. Not taking his eyes off the screen, Jimmy rubbed his fingers together to brush the salt off. A helmeted rider tilted his bike forward, elevating his rear wheel, and drove past the camera balanced on his front wheel. Dismounting, he pointed to the Wheelz logo on the back of his jacket. That’s dope, the guy whose house it was said. In the kitchen, you could hear a woman boiling water.

The TV was an enormous sleek cabinet-sized piece of equipment. The picture was very bright and sharp. A set like that cost fifteen hundred dollars, assuming you paid for it. The three men watching it were Jimmy, a plumber, and the guy whose house it was. The plumber was the intermediary who knew both of them separately. To Jimmy, he had said why don’t you come out? We’ll hang out, smoke a bone… He sat between them now, wearing a black-and-white sweater over an iridescent green shirt, having placed his beer on the carpet next to his feet in white Nikes.

One of the riders lost control and wiped out and his bike flipped over. It landed on him and went sliding down the road. All three men said, Whoa! That’ll leave a mark. Holy shit. That hurt my balls from here. Hahahahaha.

Where do they do this? the plumber asked.

Bay Shore. That’s my boy filming it. He gets money from like the promotion.

The money these guys can get in Vegas is unreal.

Watch this. He’s gonna wipe.

Oh shit.

Hahahahahaha.

Oh shit, my man came down hard. Homeboy’s out.

Here they come. They’re gettin him up.

What you gotta say about that, Jim-bo?

He got messed up.

Here’s the next one.

The guy whose house it was’s woman brought out a tray of hotdogs and set it on the coffee table, which was behind them. The plumber turned around and said thank you, hon.

There’s relish, she said.

She sat down on the couch, which was behind the coffee table, and spooned relish on a hotdog and bit into it with her hand cupped under it and chewed.

You want one? she said to the back of her guy’s head.

No.

The video was ending. The words Strong Island Wheelz scrolled by on the screen. The guy aimed the remote at the TV and the game came on.

Who is it? she asked.

Philly, he said.

The plumber said: Darius Johnson, number 44. Fastest man in the NFL.

Yeah, but Capslock would go right through him.

Not if he can’t touch him, bro.

The woman, who had high hair and a judgmental nose and lips, had left the room. The plumber took out a flask of Captain Morgan and they all drank Dixie Cups of it. The guy whose house it was lounged in his chair with his knees open, the ceiling light reflecting off his eyes. His clothing was clean, like his house. His jeans, with a loop for a hammer, appeared freshly laundered. Speaking to the ceiling, he said:

I’m getting the phattest street bike… There’s a chapter right here… Take it to Virginia Beach…

The plumber remarked that he used to ride in the Air Force. Vegas, Lake Havasu. I used to meet a lot of women, boy. I wore the mirrored shades… They called me CHIPS.

We oughta all ride together. He looks like a biker.

My man Jimmy’s got the look.

It’s how you carry yourself, Jimmy said.

Straight up.

The men regarded him, their eyes at half mast. He took a hotdog off the tray with his silver-ringed hand, his jaw opened, and he bit it in half. He licked as his teeth chopped together, resembling a wolf eating a camper’s rations surrounded by twilit snow.

My man Jimmy over here. Look at him. Them hotdogs don’t stand a chance. Don’t worry about it, my man. He’ll tell his old lady to cook more. Hahahahahaha.

He’s union?

My man’s a sandhog. He’s on the biggest dig in the city after the Holland Tunnel.

There’s a lot of money in that.