Theodore Wheeler: Bad Faith

“That isn’t necessary.”

He looks up at the house, standing on the porch. It was a wedding present from her parents, a bungalow with white vinyl siding. There’s a chimney on the roof that pumps out steaming exhaust from the furnace and through the curtainless windows Chadron sees Alex and Jeff on the sofa watching TV, their guts stuck out as they sip Kessler.

“Will you please get in the car?” Amy is across the lawn, next to the Neon.

“What’s that?” Chadron asks. “Where are we going?”

“Get in the car.”

“I’m coming.” He hurries down the walk and slides into the passenger side. “Don’t you want me to drive?”

“No. You’ve been drinking.”

“But, Amy. So have you.”

“Put your seatbelt on,” she says. “You’re not going to drive my car.”

Days later, Chadron will remember that it was his wife who told him to get in the car. It was her idea from the beginning.

Chadron and his roommates had eaten an early Christmas dinner in the basement of the Unified Presbyterian Church earlier that week. The UPC Men’s Club organizes meals on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. In December it’s honey baked ham, beans, scalloped potatoes, white bread, mincemeat pie. The year prior a farmer shot them a goose.

Some parishioner on the serving line handed Chadron a loaded tray and pointed to where Alex and Jeff had already settled at a card table near the exit. The three of them wore their uniforms from the Dog Shit Factory, having seen to the mutts that morning on their way to the church. They smelled earthy and acidic, like the sick animals they played with, and vaguely of the previous night’s liquor in their skin. Alex wore a cigarette behind his ear.

Most of those eating were familiar to Chadron, people from AA, some who worked in the feedlots with him, when he worked there. Mistletoe hung from a doorway and the men jokingly pushed each other under it, calling the younger men faggots if they didn’t move away quick enough. Chadron and Amy had been to this church for Sunday services before, when they were first married three years ago. These people knew all about him, probably more than he knew himself.

“You call Amy?” Alex asked, stirring his green beans in with the potatoes.

“Yeah, you call her?” Jeff echoed. This was something they each had an interest in — whether Chadron would reconnect with his deed-holding wife, or if they could hold on in her house a while longer without being harassed.

“Not yet,” Chadron said. “I meant to. I call her every week.”

He tore open a packet of salt and poured half of it over his plate, then Jeff took the packet and poured the remainder on his bread and potatoes.

“What do you see in that woman anyway?” Jeff asked.

“Chadron likes Amy,” Alex explained, “because she’s a smart woman and mouthy. He’s seen these attributes in women, of course, but before Amy, he’d never been asked out on a date by one.”

“That’s not true,” Chadron said.

“It’s pretty simple, isn’t it?”

“She’s too good for him,” Jeff answered.

“She isn’t that great of a woman, really, but Chadron doesn’t know that.”

“She’s still too good for him. Any woman would be. He knows this.”

“That’s why he worships the ground she walks on. That’s why he follows orders.”

“It’s not that complicated.”

“He knows she’s too good for him. That’s why he likes her. It’s like getting something in exchange for nothing.”

“That isn’t true,” Chadron said. “I love Amy. That’s what it is. We love each other.”

“Hey,” Jeff said. He put his hands up. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Alex and Jeff picked on Chadron a lot. They enjoyed a sense of superiority over most everyone in town because they were from rich Lincolnite families. They’d known each other in college, had lived in the same fraternity, and were expelled for ethics violations related to a cheating scheme they devised as a means of passing calculus. Alex was Pre-Med when they were expelled, he’d wanted to be a psychiatrist; Jeff was Pre-Law. They were too smart to work at the Dog Shit Factory — they let anyone who’d listen know this — and were only there because it was an easy paycheck. For some reason they acted like this was a temporary state of affairs, that it was only a matter of time before they transformed into Dr. Alex and Jeff, Attorney-at-Law . Even Chadron understood those ships had sailed.

“Look alive,” Jeff said. “Here comes the clergy.” He inched his chair closer to the table and hunched his shoulders over himself.

“Shit,” Alex said. “No such thing as a free meal.”

“Afternoon, gentlemen.” The pastor sat at an open folding chair at their table. He was jowly and had a potbelly that stretched the fabric of his sweater. Amy’s father was old friends with the pastor. He was the one who’d helped Amy find work in St. Paul. “I trust this meal is serving you,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“This is good food,” Chadron said, holding up a slice of bread to prove it.

“Good, good,” the pastor said. “I’m glad you’re enjoying what we’ve provided.”

He put his hand on Chadron’s shoulder. “There’s no delicate way to say this,” he began. “I probably shouldn’t say anything.”

“What is it, sir?” Jeff asked.

“Well,” the pastor said. “Chadron, I was down at the café yesterday and noticed Amy is in town.”

“Is that right?” Alex asked.

“That’s news to us,” Jeff said.

“Now, Chadron. Do what you will. Just thought you would want to know. Not that it’s my business—”

“Thank you, sir,” Chadron interrupted. “I appreciate it.”

“I didn’t speak to her personally, but—”

“He understands, sir,” Jeff said, winking at the pastor. “We didn’t hear it from you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” The pastor lowered his voice. “She mentioned that she isn’t coming back — that her intention is to move permanently to Minnesota.”

“That a fact?” Alex said.

“It is,” the pastor confirmed. He clapped Chadron on the shoulder as he stood. “Just thought you would want to know, there’s some papers she wants you to sign.”

Chadron lies in the back when they’ve finished. Her coat draped over his naked legs. Amy sits in the front seat, her clothes back on, applying lipstick in the mirror. She pulls a folder from her bag and sets it on the seat. “Put your pants on,” she says. They’re parked on an access road north of town, between an irrigation pump and some railroad tracks.

“I haven’t been with a woman since you left,” Chadron says. After a moment, he asks, “Do you still want me to sign?”

“Put your pants on,” Amy repeats. She kills the ignition then pumps the clutch with her leg and wiggles the stick into first gear. “We’ll go for a walk first.”

Chadron and Amy follow the tracks for a good while. It’s a cool night but not bad for December. “Compared to Minnesota,” Amy says, “this is nice.” The fields nearby are plowed under, black clods of soil stretch for miles in every direction. This is a spot they’ve been to many times, mostly in the days before their love went public.

Chadron moved to Aurora in order to apprentice as a machinist at the Goertzen plant, but it didn’t pan out. Young and strong, just out of high school, he was better suited to work stock and ended up at the feedlot, where Amy had a job in the office. She was a few years older than Chadron, she’d just quit college a couple years short of a degree. Her father managed the office, that’s why she took the job. It was never her intention to move back to Aurora, she just needed a steady paycheck. “You don’t seem like such a shithead,” she told him when they first met, standing in the doorway of the dusty, wood-paneled office. “Give me time,” Chadron laughed. “I’ll prove you wrong.”