Bud Smith - F 250

We used to throw pennies into his aunt’s swimming pool and scoop them off the bottom. The person who came up with the most won. The loser had to vacuum the pool.

I wondered how many things were gonna remind me of my friend … and for how long?

We were catching our breath. A slew of guys showed up in the yard. It was a regular hit squad: two wielded weed whackers and wore long-sleeved shirts, gray jeans, and wide-brimmed hats, while a funny-looking white guy with a big beard and wrap-around rainbow sunglasses pushed a large commercial lawn mower. I watched in wonder.

It seemed so weird, having people come to your house and do all this stuff for you. Couldn’t this investment banker guy do anything for himself? I wondered if he had to hire somebody to come and fuck his wife for him.

Just then, June surfaced and threw another handful of pebbles in the wheelbarrow. Trish and Feral and K and I looked at the yard workers. June screamed, “NO!!”

She jumped out of the swimming pool and ran out onto the lawn. “STOP,” she screamed, waving her arms frantically.

The guy on the riding lawn mower was forced to hit the brakes. He killed the engine. The weed whackers kept going in the distance.

“What? What is it?”

“Babbits!” she yelled, meaning bunnies but (mostly) saying rabbits. She pointed at the lawn at the base of the blades. “There! Stop!”

She opened up the burrow and scooped the terrified animals out. They curled into tight balls in her wet hands. She held them close to her heart for protection, while they trembled at the sound of a leaf blower being fired up just beyond the remaining white stockade fence.

After we got all the pebbles outof the pool, we went back to work. It wasn’t half an hour until Feral dumped an entire wheelbarrow of cement into the swimming pool. I put my head in my hands and just shook my head. The clear pool was now a gray cloud of filth. There was no remedy for that either. It happened. I just had to roll with the punches, as if life was just one long series of sucker punches delivered accidentally by an idiot who hadn’t meant to hurt you in the first place.

“I think we’re done for the day,” I said, to everyone.

They folded up the chairs and dried off. The night was getting chilly anyway — almost too cold for swimming. When I looked up at the moon, I saw two of them. It was time to sober up. Dry out.

The A-Team van wouldn’t start. None of us knew what the hell the problem was. We all looked under the hood only to scratch our heads and say, “Yeah, that looks like an engine.”

June was in the driver’s seat, cranking the ignition and pumping the pedal. Not much was happening, just a sickly wheeze.

“Kick the tires,” I told K Neon.

She laughed and booted the tires. Nothing happened except that she hurt her foot a little bit.

We were far too drunk to solve any of the complex problems of the universe, let alone something as astronomical as a Chevy Econoline that wouldn’t start.

It was near dusk, and the work was about halfway complete. The day had taken a turn for the worse after the accident with the thousands of small pebbles falling into the pool.

June and K rode in the truck with me, clutching the rabbits. Feral and Trish lay flat on their backs in the bed of the pickup, like corpses, praying that I wouldn’t get into a car accident. What a thing to pray about.

I took the girls to Studio Mike’s with the rabbits. Then I drove Feral and Trish back to Lagoon House. They were quiet in the cab of the truck. It’d been a long day. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to that house, but I decided, “One last visit.”

The marshes were thick with reek. Low water. The smell of death rolled off the bay.

“I won’t miss that smell,” I said, “as long as I live.”

Feral just made a guttural noise. I looked over. He was as white as a ghost.

“Are you gonna get sick?” Trish asked.

He leaned over her, rolled down the window, and heaved out the side. Vomit sprayed all down the side of my truck. I didn’t comment. I just pulled over and idled. He continued to heave into the cattails.

“You done?” Trish asked after a while.

Feral laughed and then wiped the gruel from his chin.

“Yeah, for now!”

Trish pointed into the marsh.

“Lee, remember when you crashed this truck in there?”

“Oh god, how could I forget it?” I said.

“I’m surprised you still have a license.”

Coming from the other direction, making the marsh grass sway, was a pretty serious-looking line of trucks: two massive dump trucks and a flat bed with a large bulldozer chained to it. I wouldn’t have given the convoy much thought, but I saw something sticking out of the top of one of the dump trucks, Captain Cock — our rooster weather vane.

I pulled the F-250 up alongside of the house where I used to live and couldn’t believe what I saw.

Half of it was gone. Torn down.

The living room, the kitchen, and the dining room. Gone. Demolished and removed down to the concrete foundation.

“What the fuck,” Feral hollered.

The front door was gone too, but there was a note hanging on a nail in some of the remaining vinyl siding beneath the window that used to be mine.

“guys, hey, we moved yer stuff into the other rooms. I’m sorry u didn’t take me seriously. the day after tomorrow, the rest of this dump comes down. please have all yer stuff out by then. this house’s been sold for the lot only. get out, for real — j disanto”

Feral ripped the note down and crumpled it up as if all of this was a surprise.

“I didn’t think that joker was serious,” Feral said.

Trish said, “Yup. Apparently.”

The electric and the water for the house were cut. Cords terminated. Line plugged. We walked into the open shell of the small house. We were stunned but shouldn’t have been. We’d been warned, right?

Feral opened up my old room. It was packed solid with boxes. You really couldn’t get in there. A wall of cardboard boxes filled to the gills. Records. Tapes. Posters. Figurines. Trinkets. “Everything there?” Trish asked.

“EVERYTHING HERE? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW FROM LOOKING IN THE DOORWAY?”

“What an asshole you are,” Trish said. She walked into their bedroom. “I found the TV, so that accounts for all of our valuables.”

I went to sit down at the dining room table (force of habit), but it was gone. So I just stood there, uncomfortably, in front of the invisible dining room table. No dining room either. The wind blew a plastic bag off the street and into the house.

I heard the house phone ring. It was unmistakable. Quacking. Trish answered and then yelled my name.

“For me?”

I took the duck and put its ass to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Lee?”

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Mark,” the voice said, “Seth’s brother.”

He was wondering how I was doing, what was going on in New Jersey. I looked around at the house that was half leveled to the ground. Right beyond my feet was the concrete foundation. Twisted electrical wires with plastic wire nuts were poking out.

“Things are good,” I said.

“I’m glad. Look … this is awkward, but you’re a stone mason? My brother said that. He said you do great work.”

“He was just being polite,” I said.

“Seth wasn’t polite.”

“So, what, you want me to make a headstone?”

“Was thinking.”

“Sorry, Mark, I sold my saw.”

“I understand that you feel weird being asked.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“When we were kids, we used to go to my grandfather’s cabin in the mountains and sail on his boat up there. Seth was always happy there.”