Forrest Gander - As a Friend

Even with the canoes hoisted onto the racks in the pickup, the orange theodolite and station cases and wet bundles packed away, with everybody pulling warm Cokes out of the cooler and Quinton preening his belly-hair for ticks with the silent absorption of a gorilla, there wasn’t any feeling of deliverance or satisfaction. Not only were we going to have to come back out here, but I knew that Quinton would have me putting in overtime after that.

If Les hadda been here, Quinton started. He didn’t finish the sentence.

I hawked and spat and turned away and pulled myself into the truck bed under the canoes.

* * *

With our work boots tracking little hexes of dried mud behind us, we trudged into Lana’s Café in the same order we’d walked most of the day, Quinton, me, and the two part-timers, Brady and Alike.

Brenda came over with four bottles of Budweiser. Usual? she asked. Or you want to see the menu?

Quinton was wagging his thumbnail across the bristles of his chin and looking at the door as though the act of speaking hadn’t caught up with him yet. The air conditioning hummed, but it was still warm and humid inside.

I ordered the special and got up to take a leak, passing the pay phone on the way to the men’s room. When I came out again, I walked straight to the register where Brenda was cashiering someone out. I took the fifty-dollar bill I always carry in my wallet — considered for a brief moment the weed I wasn’t going to be able to buy now — and asked Brenda for change.

Without turning, she reached behind her and wiped her fingers against the condensation at the side of the ice cooler. Then she counted out my change.

Four tens a five and five ones? she asked.

How about you keep it all and do me a favor.

Her eyes dilated and she tilted her face to the side, half flirtatious, half suspicious.

Depends, she smiled.

Here’s the thing, I said. Just next time Les comes in, it might take a couple tries, see if you can make out the number he calls when he uses the phone.

She looked over my shoulder at someone who must have raised an arm for her attention.

How am I supposed to do that? She sounded disappointed.

I don’t know. That’s why I’m giving you fifty bucks. Go to the bathroom or something when you see him pick up the phone.

I took a mint patty from the bowl on the counter and turned back to the table and she didn’t say anything special to me or treat me any differently for two weeks, although I was there almost every other night, sometimes alone, sometimes with Quinton and Les and others.

It was clear to me that Les could only hold his multiple lives in suspension for so long.

On Friday, the end of June, I went up to the counter and paid. And Brenda called my name as I was turning for the door.

Got something for you, she said.

* * *

Working alone on Sunday, I walked back to the truck, put a foot on the bumper, and pulled myself over the tailgate. I squatted by a broken bundle of pantile lath and rummaged around through the toolbox. I took out a Phillips head, climbed down, and unscrewed one of the reflectors on Quinton’s tailgate. I swiped the grime against my army pants and went over to the tri-station at the curb and propped the reflector on a stone. Then I walked back toward the truck where the transit was set up, the electronic distance-meter clamped to it. Squinting through the sight at the reflector, I started to adjust the mirror for light and I fiddled with the fine-tuning knobs and the locks. Finally, I shot the distance, took the read-out, and pulled the field book from my front pants pocket. A couple of nails fell out — a long one for dirt and two short concrete nails — and I bent to pick them up and slipped them back into my pocket. I recorded the distance in the field book. After that, I recorded the zenith angle. Something the size of a sparrow came flying out of nowhere and hit against my shoulder and clung there. I stood still, slowly turning my head to look at the praying mantis. The praying mantis raised the axes of her arms and swiveled her head and seemed, with both of those stalked grape-shot eyes, to look me fully in the face.

* * *

What happened wasn’t engineered, never is. What happens always does when I’m not paying attention, when I’m looking at my shoelaces, taking a dump, when I’ve let my guard down. It’s as if every time I start to do something I’ve planned for months, I get hit in the back of the head with a bottle someone chucks from a passing van. And I abandon whatever it was I meant to do, I’m already in motion, I’m doing something else, just reacting, and whatever I planned is payed out way behind me.

* * *

Quinton was putting the equipment in the truck on Monday morning. I slipped into his private room and made a long distance phone call on his office phone. Then I bolted out into the summer heat almost trembling. I didn’t want Quinton to catch me on his phone and I was already pricked by a sense of menace and malaise. I left behind my cap and the can of Off.

By late morning, sweat darkened Quinton’s t-shirt in huge patches. The backpack straps were gnawing my shoulders. We walked through a pasture surrounded by forest, picking ticks from our arms, an orb of gnats over our heads. Quinton wore his Stetson, which drew the gnats up above his face, but I was having to swipe at the air every few steps. I kept my lips tight, but the gnats crawled up my nose and I could feel them clotting the back of my throat. We worked for most of three hours without speaking much. The phone call I’d made kept replaying in my mind, the gnats were glomming to the corners of my eyes and I couldn’t stay focused.

Quinton would forget to use the two-way and resort to shouting, motioning with one hand while he aimed the gun and took his reading.

Left, left. No! YOUR left! Wake up! Left a hair, left a hair. Left some more. Left, left.

A killdeer circled, its dee-ee rising. A plane droned, invisible. I was a good sixty yards away from Quinton in green fescue. There were milk-weed plants here and there and I knew they would ruin the hay — it’s toxic to horses. But it wasn’t my problem.

Step out the way of the pole, Quinton called. The point’s about two feet toward me.

When we toggled up to the next site, I set up the theodolite and tightened the leg screws. I stepped on each of the tripod’s feet to dig the points into the soft dirt, and I sighted down to the nail and set the angle, trying to stay on task. Quinton was consulting his notes and punching numbers into the data collector. The phone call I’d made was still looping in my head. I kept adding things I might have said, changing my tone, making it more and less succinct. I picked up the bag and started down the slope toward the barbwire fence. Then I went back for the prism pole.

The peninsula of pasture we were in was mostly surrounded by oak forest.

I dropped the bag over the barbwire fence and rested the pole against the wire on the other side. In the splintered knots of the fence post, I could see swatches of brown and colorless fur. Deer or— more likely — cattle. I took a few more steps and the trees closed around me.

Quinton’s voice crackled over the two-way. What’s it look like out there?

Can’t see you, I answered.

Some shot. We’ll have to hack through to each other. Is it all briars there?

Not really.

A minute passed. Then the two-way crackled again. Yeah, that looks OK for a line, Quinton was saying. Give me a wave. I’m trying to focus on you. Keep waving. Whoa. Right a hair. Right, right, right. Face it the other way. Left a hair. Ho!

I couldn’t hear the gun beep, but I knew it had and that Quinton was punching in the horizontal distance. I waited, wondering what would come of my phone call. I kept pulling my eyelid down over the bottom lip of my eye to try to strain out a gnat that felt big as an acorn, but my fingers were filthy and I couldn’t dislodge it.