Chris McCormick - Desert Boys

“Hand me a plank out of the bed,” he said, reaching out for it prematurely, the way Charitye had seen doctors do in hospital dramas.

After she’d handed him the plank, Reggie wedged it behind the front right tire — the one more deeply embedded — and told her to stand clear as he backed the truck out.

“Wait,” she said. “I got it stuck, so let me back it out. Please?”

A gust of wind nearly knocked Reggie off-balance. The straw hat on Charitye’s head went tumbling into the bank. She chased the hat down and, when she caught it, pressed it to her head. Sheets of sand slapped their faces. Reggie tongued granule after granule in his teeth. “Okay,” he said. “Give it a try.”

Charitye looped around the truck and stepped in behind the wheel.

When she’d backed the truck out far enough, Reggie heard her crank the gear into neutral, as he’d shown her. She leaned over the seat to punch open the passenger-side door.

Tipping her hat, she said something Reggie couldn’t make out over the noise of the wind and the engine.

“What’s that?”

“I said, ” she said, “Need a lift, cowboy?”

* * *

In the afternoon, Keith called.

“Yeah,” Charitye said into the phone. She spun in place, wrapping herself with the helix of the cord, and then spun the other way to unleash herself. “It’s fun,” she said. “We’re having fun. I’m getting a lot done. I’ve learned a lot.”

Reggie tried not to eavesdrop. He sat down at the table near the window and looked out at the sun damage growing white across his truck’s red paint like a beard. I’ll have to get a new truck soon, he figured to himself, if I plan to drive into town for groceries or to lecture the Future Farmers at the high school for much longer. The truth was he didn’t want to leave the farm ever again, for any reason. He could get some livestock, he thought, plant new crops for food — he could learn how to self-sustain. The Future Farmers could meet here if they really wanted to learn about farming, which he doubted more and more every session. If he stayed put at the farm, he could give his truck to Charitye. He enjoyed the pun, inscribing it to his memory for when he’d make a speech at her next birthday party or at her graduation ceremony. He’d be welcomed into the family’s celebration, having wrapped one of those giant bows around the truck. Someone might click a knife against a glass: Uncle Reggie wants to say something! Then he’d stand up and tell the story of how he first came up with the idea: You know, originally, I planned on giving this truck over to charity.…

The sound of the phone meeting its cradle broke his line of thinking.

“How’re your parents?” he asked from the window.

“Sounds doomed,” Charitye said. “I think they’re getting divorced.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Maybe it’s the best thing for my poems,” she said, joining him at the table.

“That’s one way to think about it.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m trying too hard to seem like a poet to actually be a poet.”

“Sometimes,” Reggie said, “you’ve got to act the role before you can reach the goal.”

“I’ve been doing that with swimming,” she said. “Getting pretty good, too. My mom’s been making fun of me, though, so we’ll see if I stick with it.”

“What’d she say?”

“Said, ‘ Sweetheart, you’ll never grow breasts.’” She impersonated her mother in a vaguely European voice, laughing in a way, and then: “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Reggie. How come you never had kids?”

“Oh,” Reggie said, drawing it out like a sigh. “The short version of that story is your aunt didn’t want them. And I hope I’m not spoiling the surprise by telling you it takes two.”

“What about adopting? I mean, now? I mean, after she passed?”

“They don’t look at farmers as foster parents so much as employers.”

“That’s sad,” Charitye said. “You’re acting the role well. Of a dad, I mean.”

For a moment, Reggie let himself feel pride, the steam of it, before cooling. “You know, I’ve got the kids at your high school. I get it out of my system with them.”

“You deserve better.”

He let out a little laugh. “They do act up a bit, don’t they? Especially when I mention the aqueduct. What’s so funny about the aqueduct?”

“Well,” Charitye said, “for one thing, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to an adventure out here. The river’s man-made, obviously, but there’s fish, so there’s fishing. People spread out on the cement slopes so they can tan. A lot of couples go out there to do, as you’ve said, whatever they can with each other that they can’t do by themselves. And then, there are the swimmers.”

“That current’s pretty strong, though.”

“That’s the point. It’s a dare. If you can swim from one side to the other without getting dragged to Long Beach, you win.”

“What do you win?”

“The prize of not dying.”

“See,” Reggie said, “a benefit of not being a parent: I never have to worry about my kid doing something so stupid.”

“I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“Don’t, please.”

“I bet I could,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how I am a prih-tee good swimmer.”

Again the phone rang.

“Hold that stupid thought,” Reggie told her, leaving to answer the phone. For the second time that afternoon, it was Keith.

Charitye took the phone. After a minute, she put her hand against the receiver so her dad couldn’t hear her. “Apparently, he’s coming to pick me up now,” she told Reggie.

Reggie felt a brief but unshareable disappointment, like being alone the one time you see a UFO zigzag between the clouds. Before Charitye arrived, he’d just gotten used to living alone, and now he was just getting used to having someone else around. For how many people, he wondered, was life only a succession of moments you were just getting used to?

“Keith,” he said, having taken the phone from Charitye.

“Sorry,” Keith said, “for the sudden change of plans. Lucy’s decided to leave for a few weeks in the morning. She’s come around to the popular opinion of women everywhere of hating me. She wants Charitye home tonight so they can leave together first thing.”

“Hate to hear you couldn’t work it out.”

“Tell him I still have work to do here,” Charitye said from her tiptoes, loud enough for her dad to hear.

“Look,” said Reggie, “the girl wants to stick around for a bit longer. She’s getting some poetry written out here, is the thing.”

“I respect the arts, Reggie, I do. But she can jot down her feelings anywhere, so poetry’s not the best excuse you could’ve come up with. Anyway, Lucy’s got this plan—”

“What about one more night?” Reggie said. “Her mother can pick her up first thing in the morning, no hitch in the plan.”

Charitye nodded approvingly.

From Keith: “Hold.”

“Reggie?” A woman’s vaguely European voice.

“Hi, Lucy.”

“She can spend the night so long as you promise me she’ll be packed and waiting for me outside at seven in the morning. If I have to so much as honk, I’ll crash my car into your house and drag her out of the wreckage.”

“Okay, Lucy, thank you.”

“Oh, and Reggie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do I have to tell you again to keep her away from that horse?”

* * *

Reggie lived far enough from what we call society to feel sorry for himself with neither shame nor showmanship. His thoughts on the matter were: If the only person you love gets a fatal kick in the head from a horse, you’ve got that right. Feeling sorry for yourself is a problem only if you do it around other people who don’t feel sorry for you (as you intended), but start feeling sorry for themselves. It turns out self-pity is contagious, but not in the way you want it to be.