Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

Benny didn’t care much about the junk. He had a blister on his finger, and his back hurt from bending. His progress slowed after a while, and finally whenever he knew the Bear couldn’t see him, he quit digging completely and sat against the wall and stared out at the mountains rising hazed in the distance. The Bear was flagging too, until his screwdriver hit something that made a hollow sound. In a few frenzied minutes he’d scraped away enough dirt to reveal the remains of a wooden door. Hey, he called, hey! eager for Benny to know they weren’t wasting their time. The kid came running, and they yanked at the rotten boards until they gave way, but all they got for the effort was more mud. The basement was full of it, up to the ceiling.

The Bear had built up so much momentum by now, he couldn’t stop. He and Benny worked together, him breaking ground, and the kid carrying off the muck. After an hour of this they’d exposed only the first two steps of the stairs leading down. Benny took a break, went up and sprawled on what had been the porch of the house. An object half buried in the mud got his attention, its color a brilliant blue that flashed against the infinite drab surrounding it. He wiggled the thing free and dragged it back to show the Bear, who, even after he pawed the sweat from his eyes, didn’t see the meaning of the mangled sheet of siding until Benny pointed out the numbers painted on it: 412. You got the wrong place, Benny said.

THE BEAR BUGGED then, started punching the mud and screaming, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He kicked the siding out of Benny’s hand and stomped off to another house on another street and knelt to dig there in the full sun, stabbing wildly at the earth. Benny returned to the porch and watched him give up on that ruin and move to another, then another. The wind rushed in, and with it the dust, which stung like bees when it hit bare skin. Benny took cover in the crevice he and the Bear had excavated. He hunkered down with their bedrolls and rucks and struggled to keep them from blowing away. A moaning filled the air, violent gusts shook the vestiges of the town, and the light of day was choked down to almost nothing.

The Bear welcomed the storm. It gave him something to do battle with. He was half crazy and knew it, digging here, digging there, first with a gambler’s determination to turn his luck, and then, finally, merely in defiance of the blow. He swallowed mud; he made his hands bloody claws; he flew from ruin to ruin, stabbing, scraping, and growling. And when the wind ceased and the dust settled, he collapsed in such a broken posture that Benny worried he’d died. He lay where he’d fallen until the first stars showed themselves. Benny ignored him when he finally limped into camp, sat with his back to him and sucked on the last of the soldiers’ candy. You didn’t know how it’d be, the kid said without turning around. Ain’t no shame in that. The Bear stretched out on his blanket and fell asleep tonguing the dirt and sweat off his lips and counting a coyote’s yips. Benny sat up in the busy dark, pretending he was alone, testing how it felt. It was nothing he’d choose, he concluded, but something he could tolerate.

THEY BOTH WOKE raw and peevish, as if their dreams — the Bear’s of the past, Benny’s of the future — had butted heads all night, warring to a stalemate that left the dreamers stranded in the dreary present with neither nostalgia nor expectation as a balm. After a polite breakfast, the Bear gathered his tools and made ready to go to work. Benny rose to follow, the muscles in his back and legs groaning, but the Bear waved him off. You take it easy, he said, and walked by himself to the town’s main street, where he ducked into the first structure he came to and began to probe the dried mud that covered the floor and to chisel at the walls. Benny got bored sitting by himself, got hot, and eventually scuffed over to join him. He found the Bear pulling wire out of a hole in the ceiling. The Bear showed him how to coil it by laying it across his palm then wrapping it around his elbow again and again.

They went from ruin to ruin in search of salvage that had survived the flood. Benny had no eye for it, so he waited for the Bear to point him to a spot. If it was a wall, the moldy plaster gave way to reveal a length of pipe. If it was the floor, there, hidden under six inches of dirt, was a stack of plastic funnels or some lead sinkers. It was as if yesterday had never happened. The Bear had his magic back. They scrounged the gas station, the grocery store, and the little Baptist church, then started on the houses. The heat was against them again but didn’t seem so awful today, with all the booty they were piling up. Still, Benny worked himself dizzy and had to lie in the shade for a while. He woke from a surprise nap, and the sun was sinking fast. The Bear was crouched in the street, sorting the haul and stuffing the best of it into Benny’s ruck. Go on and gather some wood, he said. We’ll have a fire tonight. Is it safe? Benny asked. You don’t trust me? the Bear said with a laugh, then tossed Benny two cans of chili he’d hauled all the way up from Bako. They were supposed to be the celebration when they found the Krugerrands, but they’d squeezed enough something out of nothing today to have earned a feast.

THE BEAR CHUCKED more wood onto the fire, and what was already burning snapped and sparked and spit. He’d just told Benny he wasn’t going back with him the next morning, and tending to the blaze was his way of avoiding any discussion. But the kid wouldn’t be bullied. Why? he asked. What’s wrong? The Bear opened his shirt for an answer, had Benny feel the lumps under his arms and on his neck. Picker cancer, he said. It came on quick and’s been getting worse. You ain’t seen it kill a man, but I have, and I won’t do that kind of suffering. Benny was stripped of words. He sat there and toed the dust, shaken by new vistas of sorrow. I’d hoped to leave you and yer ma something, the Bear continued. The gold’s a bust, but what’s in that ruck’ll trade for a new roof. You can have my bike too, and the trailer and everything in it. And yer gun, Benny said, hand that over too. Ha! the Bear said, lifting the pistol out of his pocket just enough that Benny could see it. I appreciate the sentiment, but I got my mind made up.

The flames leaped for an instant and caught the two of them staring into each other’s eyes, but then the flickering darkness returned, and Benny was alone on his side of the fire, trying to reconstruct his world without the Bear in it, while the Bear on his side batted away a few regrets. I don’t know what to do, Benny wailed. It’s simple, the Bear said. You follow the road back to Bako. You get a job in town, something regular, no picking. You meet a girl, get married, have kids. You get a house. You get electricity. You hope. Simple. Benny fell asleep eventually, wrapped in his blankets by the fire. The Bear smiled, remembering what it was like to be that kind of tired and to wake in the morning a clean slate. The flames died, and the last of the wood burned down to pulsing embers. The Bear saw castles in them, jewels, and dancing women. At dawn’s first pinking he struck out across the lake bed for the high mountains to the east. A day or two and he’d find what he was looking for, a prettier place to put an end to it.

ON HIS WAY back, Benny stopped at the cabin at the bottom of the canyon. The graves were shallow, and it didn’t take him long to dig them out. He found nothing in either but bones, bones he dodged in his dreams that night, bones that clicked and clacked and kept coming for him. The second day he got it into his head that he was being tested, the Bear spying on him from the bushes to see how he did on his own. Show yourself, he shouted when he could no longer stand the feeling of being watched, but not a leaf stirred and no silver-bearded mug appeared. Benny walked on, whistling away his disappointment with two Irishmen, two Irishmen and Jesse James and savoring a vision of a hot meal, a soft bed, and a once-dark room livid with incandescent light.