Percival Everett - Half an Inch of Water - Stories

“Why would he shoot his own animals?” Karen asked.

“Insurance. They weren’t his best animals. I could see that he’d switched ear tags. Probably would have done that anyway. He’s up there now dressing out those steers and saving what meat he can.”

“What are you going to do?”

Gunther shrugged. “Nothing. It’s fraud either way. The insurance agent will come around and I will confirm that the stock were shot and that will be it. I hate this fucking job.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. “You want some more?”

Karen shook her head no.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like that nothing ever happens around here. I hate that all I do is put people I know in lockup for DUI. Remember that song ‘Lineman for the County’? Well, that job’s a hell of a lot more interesting than mine.”

“But you’ve got me,” Karen said.

Gunther leaned over and kissed her forehead. “That is true, isn’t it? I don’t know how it happened, but it’s true.”

The next morning Gunther left his wife asleep in the bed, dressed, and left for his office. He stopped on the way and walked into the Square Wheel Diner. It had been called the Wagon Wheel, but so much of the business now came from the RV park across the road that the owner changed the name. The RVers could walk over and at once identify with the reference to having to wait for their tires to warm up on the road on cold mornings before assuming any roundness. The locals came in, too, and Gunther sat at a table with Dorothy Wise and Danny Denton.

“I’ll start with some coffee, ma’am,” Gunther told the waitress. “A little milk with that.”

“So,” Wise said.

“So? So what?” Gunther looked at the menu, though he knew it by heart.

“Why bother looking at that?” Denton said. “You order the same thing every time. Hell, they’re back there cooking it right now.”

“I could change.”

“So, are you going to let him get away with it?”

“Let who get away with what?”

“Rakes,” Wise said. She was a big woman, broad shouldered, but not fat. She lived alone on her family spread and raised cattle.

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that,” she said. “You know he shot those beefs.”

“And I can’t prove it.”

“He’s gonna get all of our insurance rates jacked up,” Wise said.

“That’s for sure,” Denton said. Denton was an accountant and had an office attached to his home in town.

“You don’t have stock,” Gunther said to Denton.

“No, but I know insurance companies, and they use any excuse at all to raise rates.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“What can I do? He called me out on a rainy day and told me somebody shot his animals. His yard was like a hogs’ pen in that rain, nothing but slop. No footprints, no tire tracks. Just two dead steers and his word.”

“But you know he did it,” Wise said.

“I think, Dorothy. It’s up to the insurance company. I’ll insinuate what I think, but I can’t make any accusations. I mean, what if he’s telling the truth?”

“Ha,” Wise said.

“What she said,” from Denton.

The waitress brought Gunther his oatmeal and wheat toast. He looked up at her face.

“Were you going to order something different?” she asked.

“Thank you,” Gunther said. The waitress left and Daniel returned his attention to Wise. “What would you do?”

Wise looked at her coffee. “I don’t get paid to do your job.”

“I see.” Gunther pointed his spoon at Denton.

“Careful where you point that,” Denton said.

Gunther put the spoon back in his oatmeal. “What about you? Any ideas?”

“I guess not.”

“You two are a lot of help.” He drank some coffee. “I’m going to eat my breakfast, then I’m going to go write up my murder report on two beefs, and then I’m going to fill out my usual nothing-happened-this-week report and send it to the state of Wyoming to be filed with the rest of such reports.”

“You need a vacation,” Denton said.

“From what?” Gunther ate a bit of oatmeal and put down his spoon. He looked out the window at the RV park across the road. “Hell, those RVers don’t cause any trouble, ’cause they’re all eighty years old.” He looked at his friends. “Well, I’m going home to tend to my wife’s horse’s hooves.”

“You’re not going to the office?” Wise asked.

“How can I put this?” Gunther said. “Fuck the office.”

“Howard,” Wise said.

“See you later.”

Gunther, in fact, did not go to his office. He did call his secretary, Grace, and tell her he wouldn’t be there; there was no point in worrying an old woman and even less reason to get her mad at him. But he didn’t drive home. Instead he drove up into the mountains to an abandoned fishing and hunting lodge. The building had never been completed. It had hardly been started. There was some of the large foundation dug, but the rest had only been staked and strung. The blue plastic string was gone now except for where the ends had been tied. The people who had started it ran into legal trouble, then investor trouble, and bailed. He fantasized about buying the property and finishing the project himself, but he knew that wouldn’t happen.

He wondered if he was really that unhappy with his job. He’d run for office because he could, because he was retired from the Marines and thought the job would be easy. And in fact it was. It was too easy. It was boring. He was fifty and bored. He had a nice wife who was perhaps more capable than he was in more ways. He had a teenage daughter who pretended to like him on occasion. He had a twenty-five-year-old son who lived in Denver who never bothered to pretend. Here he was shirking his duties to daydream on a mountain and not a great daydream at that, it having drifted rather seamlessly into self-pity.

He was depressed. He was not simply sad. He wasn’t simply bored. He felt a weight on his chest that made him want to cry. Sometimes in the night he did. He would discover himself crying and that discovery worked as fuel for more tears. He was embarrassed by it, then embarrassed for feeling embarrassed. His wife would understand, he thought. If she knew he was crying she would hold him, stroke his head, and make soothing sounds, but he didn’t want that. He hated feeling so low and yet could not deny a desire to wallow in it. He felt selfish. He felt small and he felt more lost than he had ever felt in his life. He looked at the unfinished foundation and saw himself, once strung taut, now just a mere suggestion of defined space.

Gunther arrived home to find his daughter and wife sitting on the porch. Their faces were blank, somewhat sour, showing fear perhaps. He walked toward the porch, his eyes asking, “What?”

“Tell him,” Karen said.

The girl looked at the sky.

“Tell him,” Karen repeated.

“What is it, Sarah?” Gunther asked. He was lately always out of the loop, but now he felt high tension. Karen was frightened as well as angry. “What’s going on here?”

“I’m pregnant,” Sarah said, flatly.

Gunther stepped away, turned, and sat on the first step. He understood the words and yet they made no sense. He looked at his little girl. He wasn’t angry. He was confused.

“Did you hear your daughter?” Karen asked.

He said nothing.

“Did you hear her?”

“I heard.” He didn’t know where to go with this news. He might have been angry. He might have been scared. He didn’t know. He decided to not be angry and so put his hand up. “Come here, Sarah,” he said. He felt her hand find his and led her around to sit beside him, put his arm around her.

“Are you scared?”

The girl started crying.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “Everything will be okay.” He thought about the father. He had no idea who he was and felt himself getting angry. He stopped. His daughter was terrified. He looked up at his wife.