Annie DeWitt - White Nights in Split Town City

The next morning we woke to the sun in our eyes. There was dew on our faces. Everything around us was wet. Fender was on his feet with a cigarette. I wiped the dirt from the backs of my thighs. “I’ll get you home,” he said. “Before they come looking.”

I walked over to the pit where the ashes were smoldering and extinguished the embers with my foot. The whole place smelled like whoring. It was the horsehair or the kerosene. I tapped the corner of the Shetland’s blanket with the corner of my toe to stir up the last of the coals.

At the bottom of the pile there was a small metal bit. “Dead weight,” Otto had described the old snaffle to me once. “Barely pulls any at the corners. Every now and again you massage his tongue with it to remind him to turn. When an animal takes to gumming the metal, he’s already broken. Best thing to do is turn him out to pasture and let him cut his teeth on the brush.”

He was an old pony that Shetland. I remembered how easy he’d taken it in the mouth.

“It’s too much,” I said to Fender as he came up behind me.

“What is?” he said.

I looked at the ashes still lighting up off one another in the fire pit and thought of the remains of the old Shetland decomposing in the pasture. And of the bodies coming home from the Gulf whose names were announced on the news. And of the eerie quiet of the Bottom Feeder in Mother’s absence. The games of Pick Up Stix with Father on the carpet. The empty couches surrounding us stripped of pillows so Birdie could build her jumps like trenches in the doorways. The house itself looked like something had exploded from within.

“All this warring,” I said.

Callie kept a frozen chicken in the cupboard over the sink. The flesh was stacked on the pile of china next to the whiskey and the boxes of bullion. She kept a Styrofoam tray wedged between the plate and the bird to catch the runoff from the thaw. It took a day for a bird like that to shed all its ice.

The evening after the bonfire at the butte, Callie’d invited us to a meal. Birdie and me and Father along with Callie’s husband, The Little Wrestler, and their three young brutes. It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived. The previous night was still heavy on us. I could tell Father felt it too. “You look tired, Jeanie,” he said as we got out of the car. “Why do you look so tired?”

We gathered around the table in Callie’s kitchen and watched her prepare the meat. Never has a woman performed such surgery. She massaged that carcass like she was trying to resuscitate some old heart. After each cut was slick with dressing she floured both sides with cornmeal.

“Test the fryer for me, baby,” Callie said to me, motioning toward the pan. “Toss a little water in with your fingers and see if it sizzles.”

We were there under the auspice that Father knew something about pipes. There was a clog in her disposal. Callie said one of her boys had stuck an action figure in it again. “They’re trying to replicate war,” she’d said, motioning toward the battlefield enacted by the G.I. Joes in the living room when we’d come in. The disposal had produced a realistic mangling to the leg.

“What do you make of my handiwork?” Callie’s husband said to Father as he entered the kitchen. “I was just under there a few days ago.”

“A fine job,” Father said from where he lay on his back with his head under Callie’s sink. “I’ve never been much good with my hands. Just thought I’d lend an eye to it while you were out.”

“Don’t they teach you professor types which way to turn a screw in law school?” the husband said.

“Rick’s an engineer, Rod,” Callie said looking down at Father as he pulled himself out from the cabinet.

“That explains why he’s fixing my drain pipe,” the husband said.

He laughed then. “Next time she’ll bring a damn preacher to teach our sons to shoot hoops. If you need me I’ll be out in the yard with the animals.”

Rod let the screen door go behind him as he made his way into the yard. It slammed a little on its hinges. The spring was still tight.

“Why don’t you put all that away, Rick,” Callie said gently.

“I’ll get you a clean towel.”

“I suppose it would be good to freshen up,” Father said, brushing his hands against his knees as he righted himself in the tight space of her kitchen, ducking so as to avoid the low-hanging lamp.

Callie handed me a plastic spatula and motioned toward the chicken where it fizzled in the pan. “Let them golden,” she said. Father followed her down the hall toward the bathroom.

I watched Rod through the window over the sink as he made his way into the yard. There wasn’t much anger in him. He had a flatfooted way of walking which betrayed his low center of gravity. According to Otto, Rod had been a wrestler. Callie had met him while he was out on the circuit. “Back then she would follow anything around with a Harley and a helmet,” Otto had said. “First it was the rock bands, then the bikers. Eventually she landed with a crew of wrestlers who frequented the bar where she worked. Rod was short. It was all she could do to show herself off to him.”

The way Rod shot hoops now with his sons you could tell Callie had taken the lay out of him. He had that short guy’s way of aiming high so the ball bounced off the backboard and rebounded on the front rim before meeting the hoop. He tossed one after another like this. I’d seen carpenters nail a board with more energy.

Their house was a one-story ranch. It sat back from the road on a plot of land next to the commuter highway. An old swingset floundered in the front yard. One of the swings was broken. They’d strung it up with the chain. In back there was a tool shed that Rod had turned into a barn where he kept a few chickens and a small brown cow. In front of the barn he’d poured a square of blacktop at the end of which stood an old basketball hoop. Several dirt bikes were parked in the knoll under a tree.

Birdie was outside on the blacktop with Rod and his sons.

“You get too close to the thing,” Rod yelled as the largest of the boys landed under the hoop, bending backward and hurling the ball over his shoulder with a clumsy underhand. While the boys shot around, Rod took Birdie up on his shoulders. Every third throw he’d walk her over to the hoop and let her shoot. She reached for the rim like she wanted to hang for a minute. One of the older boys came over and lifted Birdie up under the arms until she was standing on his shoulders. He stood under the hoop while she lunged. She made the catch and hung like that for several seconds, pumping her legs.

Down the hall Father ran the water in the bathroom. As the faucet clicked off, Callie called out to him. “I’m in here if you need a towel.” Father followed her voice. I could hear him lumber into the hallway and down the hall a few strides. He paused and then turned. I waited for a few minutes, listening to the chicken fry. The flesh was still pink in the middle, not yet cooked through. I put the lid on and slipped down the hall after Father.

Father had left the door to the bathroom ajar. The window above the toilet was shaded by a curtain covered in a layer of dust. The bathroom itself was from another era. Thick yellow tiles lined the backsplash. The linoleum around the sink was worn and brown in patches. A canister of room spray glowed a sea-sick green where it was plugged into the wall. The muted blue acrylic of the shower stall — clearly a recent addition — shone in contrast to the faded seventies veneer. Around the mouth of the tub was an assortment of plastic action figures. A single naked Barbie hung upside down from a string around the spigot. I wondered which of Callie’s young brutes played with the doll in his bath.