traveling.”
“The 100th was last year.”
“Right.” I can’t eat egg salad sandwiches. Shit’s nasty. “How’s their game?”
“Better than yours. What do you think about my egg salad? Never made it before, but I had a craving.”
“Not bad. Needs to be on toast though.”
“Toast? I’ve never had egg salad on toast. I’ll try it.”
He gets summoned to the other end of the bar. I pick up a paper and suck on a green bean. I flip slowly through the Journal Sentinel. After a while Judson wanders back and starts washing glasses.
I hold up the paper, turn an article toward him so he can see the headline and photo. “Did you see this about Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker on Saturday? Bizarre.”
“Yeah, the lineup’s fucked this year. I used to know more of the smaller bands. Now I barely care.”
We’re silent for a little while. It gets later. More people start coming in. They fill up the bar around me and the bartender gets busy. I read an article about zoning regulations. I read another article about various parking tribulations for Summerfest. I read part two in a three-part series about the zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes and its damaging effects on the ecosystem. I say to Judson, “Have you ever heard of an invasive species?” But he doesn’t answer. I keep reading. The mussels come from the Caspian Sea and other foreign ballast waters of oceangoing ships that come to port in Chicago, Detroit, and Green Bay. They make a hell of a mess of pipes apparently. I drink the High Life. The wet bottle makes rings on the newspaper. The bikers settle up and get on their way to wherever.
I move a coaster with two fingers like it’s part of an air hockey game. I say to Judson, “Whatever happened with Lacy?”
He rubs the back of his hand across his nose.
I’m hitting the coaster against the bottom of my beer bottle wondering if he’s going to respond when he says, “She decided to keep it.”
I look back at the red sand shovel left in the ice maker. “You gonna marry her?”
“Who? Lacy? Fuck no. I’m not marrying Lacy. Why would I want to deal with her shit for the rest of my life?”
“So what’re you gonna do?”
“Get a fucking lawyer, I guess.”
An hour goes by. Judson cuts the air conditioning and has me open up the windows since he’s busy mixing mojitos for some out-of-towners who had heard of them on “Sex and the City.” They probably aren’t great mojitos, but the girls seemed content to pretend. “They’re dirty with the satisfaction,” he mouths to me while the girls giggle together.
I tilt my head back and smile in recognition.
“When you get a chance, bring me a little more of this High Life, and those green beans. They’re great.”
He comes back my way, “I know. I grow the beans in an empty lot next to my house then I pickle them here. I use white wine vinegar, onion, garlic, about ten red chilies, some jalapenos, rock salt, and pickling spice. Boil it up. Two weeks in the cellar and they’re ready. My grandma used to make a pickle similar to it with all sorts of vegetables but not quite as hot. But I love these with a vodka or Bloody Mary. Nice offset for the flavors.”
“You should sell them to all these type of fucks, folks you know. They’d give you a fortune for ‘em.”
“Not my style. I like the Ball Mason jars. The lids especially. And I like the quiet morning making them couple times a year. I want a tradition, not another job out of it.”
Someone puts some money in the old juke box. Jimmy Cliff. Outside, a couple of guys tie a German shepherd to the stop sign and come in for a game of darts. I drink two more beers and watch the dog from the window as the evening moves on. The dog turns his head watching people walk by on the sidewalk. Then he settles down and falls asleep.
Conan has Emilio Estevez on as a guest. The TV’s muted so I have no idea what brought Emilio onto a talk show. But his chat washes by with the rest of it.
Then it is just me and Judson.
He says, “You think I’ll be a good dad?”
“You know you’re gonna be better than mine.”
He laughs.
I get off the stool, put the chairs up on the tables, shut the windows, turn off the neon signs, and check the bathrooms for anything vile while Judson cleans up the bar. He lays the stainless steel tools out on a clean towel to dry.
He sets a shot up on the bar, “For your troubles, man. Thanks.”
I drink the shot. “No trouble.”
He wipes the bar down. He wipes the tables down, wipes the metal work down, tosses the old white towels into the little stainless steel bar sink, fills the sink with cold water, and adds a splash of bleach. He swirls the towels and rinses his hands. “They’ll sit over night. You ready?”
JULY & THE BUFF ORPINGTONS
Before their necks are broken they are beautiful. These chickens live under a tent for a week in July. The heat wraps up and around the sides of the tent and hangs thick in the middle. The day is hot but it is hotter inside the tent even with its shade. The bird cages are steel mesh wire. Not big, flimsy hexagons but little, tight squares less than half an inch across. At the places where the wires cross over each other the metal is built up. There is a matte coating over it that hides the welds. Slow, scaly feet move easily over the open-work wires but are careful, intentional.
The fans are humming. They are old and rattling—real metal fans that hang in four corners of the tent. The air is heavy and even these industrial fans are ridiculous against such weight. Smells circulate but air barely moves with the fans’ futility. It is so hot for the birds that someone, some thoughtful caretaker, brought a plastic home-use fan. Everyone has a fan like this. It’s the kind that sits on dingy golden carpet in hallways, by sunken couches in living rooms, on cherry veneer tables beside beds where love gets made, and on top of endlessly-flashing-noon-‘cause-no-one-knows-how-to-reset-the-time microwaves in disinfected kitchens. So, having seen such fans everywhere else, it’s not so strange to see one in the poultry tent. Someone has pushed the darkest brown button and pulled the white peg up so the fan will oscillate on top of the middle row of cages. As the fan directs and redirects its effort, pink, purple, blue, and white ribbons sing out, fluttering enough to draw attention to particular cages. Those wire rooms for the birds are lined up as a single-file perimeter around the sides of the tent and two deep back-to-back down the center. Observers flow as if channeled through thick-walled ventricles of a heart.
Feathers move slightly as the fans push the air. There are bits of feathers gathered down around the wooden stilt-legs of the cages on the limestone gravel. There are feathers in the fans. And feathers in the cages. And feathers in the taut fraying jute ropes of the tent. Just downy white and gray pieces mostly. The few good, big, pretty, golden feathers are picked up quickly and swept away to shaft-stroking wonderlands with the giggles of little girls.
The chickens pick up their bony, intentional feet and slow-dance, sometimes even with flapping wings. They turn and their feet seem backwards. Then, not forgotten, the bodies turn. With short jolts, their heads betray nothing held in confidence. The eyes focus and then turn away. Strangers read names of the owners out loud and point, showing each other whatever they see as important. We do it, too. “Come over here and look at this one.”
For twenty years my mother has taken me and my father to the fair. We go through the sheep barn. We go through the cattle barns, dairy and beef. We look up at the names painted on the rafters: names of friends, and brothers of friends, and fathers of friends. Green paint on old white paint. We remember our head, our heart, our hands, and our health. Sandals fill with dust as we walk down the missing-lightbulb midway. We eat something familiar because it’s only once a year. There is no anxiety for goldfish swimming through food-color-dyed waters in dirty bowls and no mortal fear for the cheap stuffed nothings everyone wants to win.
We wander slowly through it all. It is hot, July. We stop. I want to watch the boys throwing dar
ts at a rainbow wall of slack balloons. Because there is no sense of impending doom for that child who paid for his three chances. He aims while my father crosses his arms over his chest and stares. We feel the imminent impact. We want the child to perform well, to win the biggest, best prize: the huge stuffed tiger. But who can really hope for so much? And what responsibility does this child have to our family? None. So. We don’t really care if the child bursts something nothing-filled. We don’t expect it. The first dart glances off the pulverized wooden board and drops into a metal collecting tray. He refocuses. Aims again. Then one, two steel darts pop big yellow flopping balloons as we cheer, congratulate, and smile. The child turns to us and smiles too. Dad walks on. We follow.
It cannot be that this will kill him. I look at my father, who stands with us eating a pork burger from the Rotary Club’s tent. He watches the people walk by. He speaks to the ones he knows. They don’t know yet, but we know. And still we smile and say hello. We laugh at the round-bellied kid in the little red t-shirt. And we ask the questions that you ask. But we don’t say, “He’s dying.” We will have to soon enough.
We walk through the barns where my projects once were. Barns I remember cleaning on cold spring days when you shouldn’t really use a hose yet. Barns I remember hiding in. At five and fifteen. They still smell the same. Hay. Dirt. Sunshine. Cement.