C. Morgan - All the Living

Once, after a few of these sessions, she said, And cows and steers are related how?

Walking beside her, Orren made a motion like falling asleep into his hand, tucking his chin and pressing his splayed fingertips to his forehead. But he said, Now a steer is a boy cow that’s cut.

Well sure, she said.

Then she said, But then what’s a bull?

He cleared his throat, looked up once at the sky. Them’s the ones that still fuck, Aloma.

Oh, she said, a grin. Where are they at?

We ain’t got one.

How come?

Sold it. I already got a calf coming. Too much trouble, it was Cash’s thing. I don’t want no more cattle but can eat up this grass. Just lawnmowers that shit. I ain’t got time for no cows right now.

Then she and the cows walked with Orren to the barn where he gestured Aloma to remain outside while he fetched hay — he did not want her to tangle with his rooster — and then he returned, padding the outside troughs with hay and dried corn and turning the spigot so the well water came up cold and splashing brilliant into the concrete trough. Then, finally, with the cows in the pen and the sun falling, he followed her with dragging footsteps up to the house so that he too could rest and eat.

One morning in July, as she mopped the kitchen floor, Aloma heard Orren’s truck start up and when its thrumming disappeared around the front of the house instead of dropping into the field, she flung aside her mop on a wild urge and tore out the front of the house waving her arms. Orren, catching her frantic motions in his rearview, floored his brakes and the truck skiddered hard in the gravel, flung up spitting stones and dust. He’d thrown open his door and had one foot on the ground before she ran up and said, Take me with you.

He tossed back his head. Goddammit, Aloma, he said. You like to scared me to death.

I want to go, she said, gripping his open door.

Sure, sure, he said. He shook his head.

He drove across the county line and into Hansonville directly to the bank and Aloma stared out the window, her eyes clutched at everything they passed as if it all could be possessed if stared at hard enough. She was silent beside him, her mouth open slightly, her hand held tight the handle of the door. She liked everything she saw.

Once Orren took care of business at the bank, they drove back down along the main street, and Aloma’s head swiveled from side to side, taking in the double-story buildings set so close to one another that some did not have even an inch of space between them, full glass windows, dates engraved above their doors that surprised her vaguely. A park with four empty swings, a mother and her two shoeless children walking there, the sun rinsed their hair with light as they moved, as the truck moved. Orren drove on past a glass storefront with the words The Restaurant written in curly hand on the glass. Aloma whipped back around.

Can’t we do some more errands? she said.

Orren cocked an eyebrow at her.

Like go to a restaurant or something? she blurted, abandoning guile.

No, Aloma, he said. No money.

Her face wrinkled up. But there’s so much I want to do and I never get to do any of it, she said and her eyes actually began to smart.

What, ain’t you ever ate in a restaurant before?

A couple times, she said.

They God, he said and he hit his brakes. Are you serious?

Well, she said.

Alright, he said. That’s shameful. Sometimes I forget you ain’t had a real life, and he turned the truck around in the middle of the block and gunned back to the restaurant. He counted the singles in his billfold before they went in.

The inside was draped with red and white and blue ribbons. Old men sat hunched at the front counter, all in a line. Old couples in the booths and two children, a girl and a boy, ran up and down a far aisle repeating a shrill word game over and over, their voices high like birdcalling. The girl’s face was inlit with an expression of almost frantic joy. Aloma watched her without moving until Orren tapped her on the wrist with one finger and pointed to the menu. She settled on pancakes. When they came, she ate them with a deliberate attention as if seeing them for the first time, lifting one to inspect the brown circled underside, using the spine of her fork to separate the two plats to peer at the holed batter.

You know, I could learn to make these, she said. Orren looked at her long and then he rolled his eyes. He ate in silence and Aloma sat opposite him with a silly growing grin on her face until a waitress walked by and Orren’s narrowed eyes followed her. Then it happened again. Aloma turned around to look at the tall girl with pretty skin almost the color of a pancake, Aloma thought, and who wore her apron up high and tight around the small of her waist, which made her breasts look bigger. With one bite left of her pancakes, Aloma returned her fork slowly to the ceramic plate.

What are you looking at that girl for? said Aloma.

What? His eyes focused blue on her.

I saw you looking at that girl.

He shook his head, his mouth twisted. No, he said. He looked down.

Shit, she said, her voice gearing up.

Aloma, he said. Quit.

She glared at the girl, she glared at him. Shit, she said again. Who is that?

Nobody, he said. Just somebody ahead of me in high school is all. Aloma watched, but the girl did not look over once and averted her head each time she passed. Then Aloma sat back in her booth hard so that the wood made a single hump sound on the floor, she crossed her arms over her chest.

Ain’t you hungry? said Orren, who began to eat again, hunched.

No, she said and she did not touch her food again, even flicked her finger so her nail hit the side of the plate with a ping.

You ready? he said.

She raised her eyebrows.

Do you wanna go, Aloma? he said slowly, weary-sounding.

Well, I guess I do.

Orren shoveled his last bites into his mouth, and her bite too, before he rose up and walked to the register, reaching for his billfold with Aloma at his unhurrying heels and then the figure of the girl appeared. Aloma peered hawkish around his shoulder and she saw it, she saw the girl try to slip into the back server station before Orren recognized her, but he looked up and their eyes met and the girl blushed red and hot even across the thin bridging of her nose.

Hi, Orren, she said.

He nodded and said nothing, but neither did he turn away but looked hard at her, waiting, one hand still on his back pocket touching the edge of his billfold so that half of him appeared ready to turn and go, the other to fight.

I — she said, and looked at Aloma, blinking as she saw her for the first time. I, uh, I’m real… I am so sorry about Cassius, Orren, and your mother too. Cash was just the nicest guy. He was so funny. Then she screwed up her pretty young mouth so that her red bottom lip protruded out in a display for Orren. Orren looked at the pity of that lip. But his own mouth did not give way in return, he only looked at her and a brevity of dislike passed through him like a shiver for the girl who would avoid him as though he were not even there, as though he were the one who had died.

The nicest guy, the girl said again into the silence and she smiled weakly at Aloma — a smile that turned down at the corners of her mouth — and turned away to free herself; she strode into the back where, because she could go no farther, they could still see her. She turned her back and looked down at her server pad.

Still behind him, Aloma reached out and edged Orren’s unmoving hand off his billfold and patted him on the rump and said, Let’s go, and he seemed to wake and dropped his dollars on the counter and they left through the propped-open door. The noon sun raged against the prone and passive day. In the truck, she sighed loud and said, watching him carefully, That was good food, huh?