Bonnie Nadzam: Lions

“Hang on a second,” Dock called to Leigh. “You want to see this.”

Leigh kept her distance, but stayed in the shop to watch. John turned on the torch, lowered his helmet, and began to heat the steel. Dock lowered the shield on Emery’s helmet, then lowered his own.

“Torch it till it’s up to temperature,” John said over the quiet roar of the torch. Emery was transfixed. The metal glowed bright red, then pale gold, then white. John turned off the torch and waited until it cooled to purple, and turned to the steel drum of water beside him.

“The faster the quench,” he said, his voice deep and faraway inside his helmet as he held up the red-hot metal in the channel locks, “the harder the material.” He plunged the part into the horse tank and disappeared behind a wall of steam.

Dock lifted his helmet and grinned at Leigh. “Tell you what,” he said. “This old man’s a wizard.”

“I know it,” Leigh said.

John lifted the hood on his helmet and waved at Leigh.

“I’m stealing Gordon now,” she said.

“I know it, my truck too. Know what that’s going to cost you?”

She crossed the smooth concrete floor and kissed John Walker on the cheek. He put his arm around her and pulled her close in a half hug.

“Bring him back,” John said. “And tell him he’s got work out here.”

She met Gordon outside the shop beside the truck and they climbed in. The late afternoon sun picked out golden threads in the weeds around the gravel drive as he backed up and hit the frontage road.

“What were you doing inside?” she asked him.

“Watching a ball game.”

“You were not.”

“I was.”

“What kind of ball?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Bring something to eat?”

“Got us a couple beers and sandwiches.”

He touched her face. “You look good.”

“ You look good.”

“Sixty-three days,” she said.

“Not that you’re counting.”

“If I had two thousand dollars saved, I’d leave tomorrow.”

“When you’re there you’ll wish you were here.”

“Never.”

“You watch.” He reached over and interlaced his fingers with hers.

She rolled her eyes, and told him about the woman in the Lucy Graves. He slowed the truck and looked at her.

“Who was she?” he asked.

“Never seen her before. She had South Dakota plates. It’s creeping me out. Do you ever feel like that? What she said? Like something’s bargaining with you?”

“What,” he said. “Like the devil?” He set his gaze back to the road and smiled.

Leigh scooted to the middle of the truck. “These things come in threes, you know.”

“What things?”

She held out her forefinger. “One,” she said, and pointed out the window as they passed the ground where the man had buried his dog earlier in the week. She glanced at him, then lifted her second finger. “Two, the woman at the Lucy Graves. So, what’s the third thing going to be?”

“The lady today doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the only one who knew. Besides me.”

She agreed that something in the texture of it felt different.

“And if you’re not sure there’s a second thing,” he said, “then you can’t really call the first thing the first thing.”

“I guess not.”

“So no things coming in threes,” he said. “Come back to planet Earth. Blue pickup truck.” He pointed out the window beside her, and before them, the weeds and grass a pale yellow green, lavender green, and silver and lettuce and willow green, and Prussian blue and forget-me-not-blue and rose pink and gold.

“The thing is,” she began, and looked at him.

“Go on,” he said, “get it out.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like a tightness right here.” She lifted her fingers to her chest and throat. “Anxiousness. Like there’s something important I’m ignoring. But I can’t place it.”

Gordon stared straight ahead, not responding.

“Let’s drive out to the buttes,” he finally said. She studied him.

“Why weren’t you welding today?”

“There have to be a hundred kinds of birds out there now.”

“It’s a long drive,” she said, and put her arm across his neck and shoulders.

“Good. Scoot over.”

It was one of a string of perfect nights, like beads threaded on a brilliant necklace that isn’t yours to keep. They sat in the cab of the truck, his back against the driver’s side door, her back against his chest, his arms around her. They kept the passenger side window down, and spoke little.

“Let’s just sit here forever in the dark like this,” he said, and tightened his grip around her waist. Outside the truck the wind shushed through the grass and lengthening weeds.

“No morning?”

“No morning.”

“No evening? No factory? No school?”

“No. No nothing,” he said. “Just this.”

The evening slowly drifted west and shadows crept across the cool grass. Night bled into the trees. By the time they drove back around toward the outskirts of town, it was midnight. The yellow square of the Walkers’ kitchen window was hovering before them.

“Were you supposed to bring the truck back earlier or something?” She thought Gordon was in trouble. The stars themselves could set their clocks by the daily routines of John and Georgianna Walker. If John was up measuring coffee in his white shirt and blue jeans, it was 5 AM and the sun was just cracking the eastern sky with a long and even white line of light. If Georgianna was rinsing greens in the sink, it was 7 PM and silver white moths were on the wing. If the downstairs lights were on at this hour, something was wrong.

Gordon dropped Leigh off first, at her house a couple hundred feet away, then circled back around, parked the truck, and went through the kitchen into the house where he found his father on the floor breathing heavily, his bare feet on top of two end pillows. His brow was furrowed. Georgianna was in her flowered nightgown on her knees beside him, her long gray hair all around her. She looked up at Gordon, her eyes streaming tears. John shifted his glance to his son. Gordon squatted beside his parents, his heart beating fast and high in his chest. Tree shadows cast by the waning moon spread black veins across the faded wallpaper roses.

There were six rules in John Walker’s shop that comprised not a checklist, but a cycling number of items to be continually considered: be safe; be clean; plan ahead; check your power and connections; take care of yourself; and do the job right.

It was the first of these Gordon thought of as he drove from the clinic in Burnsville back into Lions to get a change of clothes for his mother, who’d gone in the ambulance in her nightgown while Gordon followed in the truck. The morning was the first promise of what would be a record-breaking hot summer, and under normal circumstances his father would have already been in the shop at this hour, black coffee made, in heavy work pants and a wool shirt. God, the hot days Gordon had spent as a boy in the shop dressed in boots, pants, and wool. The pitiful looks he’d cast at his father.

You can’t wear cotton and weld, you can’t wear polyester and weld, his father would say as Gordon flushed red and the sweat broke out in beads, a slick sheen on his upper lip and at his temples, under his arms. Set down your torch and get yourself another glass of water.

In the house Gordon gathered things for his mother: a dress, a light sweater, sandals, her toothbrush, and set them in the passenger seat of the truck. He went into the shop through the side door. No radio. No coffee. All the walls and pegboards painted white for visibility and safety were washed a pale gas blue by the early morning light. The metal of the wheels, wire brushes, cabinets, sockets, ratchets, and clamps gleamed from their ordered places. The cans of Derustit, ChemClean, and Bradford No.1 were all lined up with paint cans in the green metal corrosives cabinet. First-aid kit. Fire extinguishers, one in each corner. The old binoculars. The green and silver Stanley Thermos.