Slide - Kyle Beachy [34]
Summer was gathering force. I spent the better part of a day in Illinois at a series of small churches Dennis the bigot refused to visit, out of racial concerns. I added bottles to each delivery, and thus the list of people in the region who thought me generous grew by the day. On my way back into town I hit gridlock on the bridge and stuttered forward with my eyes locked on the Arch's legs as they appeared to close, briefly become one, then open. Thick wet warm air swirled like convection through the van, the smell all semi exhaust and hops. Soon the heat would be too much, and people would venture outside only when abso lutely necessary, birds singing to no one but themselves. My forearms were thickening into something like extremely low-gauge wire, tumid and strained from the repeated labor of lift.
Right now I was at the point in the system when I left downtown and went back to retrieve the cooler I'd left at the Worpleys’. But of course since there was no inventory at Pine Ridge, or official review, this was just an excuse, my own little contrivance, of which I was eminently aware.
I parked the van by the sidewalk and walked the dirt path, stopped short where bits of cement detritus littered the dusty yard. Like the first time, a mélange of high-pitched screams and crashes streamed from the television and out of the home. Something was going to happen here. Either the skinny son or world-weary father would come to the door. I knocked on the frame of the loosely shut screen door, wiped my brow, and waited.
It was the son who answered. He held one hand against the door, not pushing, just touching the screen.
“Hello,” I said. “I was here about a week ago.”
“Yeah, I remember. You brought the cooler and then ran away like a girl when my dad got home. It was funny.”
“The thing is that I need to get that cooler back.”
“Figures.”
The kid turned and left me standing on the porch. I let myself inside, where all the same feelings from the last visit were reiterated. The young Worpley's feet crackled as he walked, the slappy-click of bare steps across a licked-lollipop linoleum floor. The old fridge had been replaced by another old one with a door. The cooler was in the corner, emitting the faintest buzz as it tried its best to do its job. A bold orange extension cord trailed out the kitchen's back door like some sort of pathetic tail.
“Go on and take it if you have to.”
“You plugged it in,” I said.
“Dad said I could use the cord until he needs it.”
I thought about taking the boy instead of the cooler. Leave it standing with no bottle and throw him over my shoulder. Carry him to the van and tear the lone side-view mirror from the passenger door so he wouldn't have to look back, and then go.
“My name's Potter.”
The boy stared at the floor. “I'm Ian.”
A dog somewhere began barking, and soon at least two other dogs were barking back at it. A woman's voice screamed for them to shut the hell up, and they did. The cooler hummed in the corner.
“Where's your dad?”
“He works every day but Wednesday. He works for the city On the roads.”
And you're here alone the rest of the time?”
“Sometimes he gets to work the jackhammer. And not one of those wimpy little fifty-pound things but the eighty-pound ones. He says you can feel your teeth jiggle.”
“What are your thoughts about being alone for so long?”
“It's only seventy-four days, then school starts back up.”
I dropped to a knee and separated the orange plug from the black end coming out of the cooler. The motor wound down in an extended sigh. In its absence, the silence in the kitchen felt far more audible than the idle hum there before.
“Dad says most people don't get how heavy eighty pounds is. You know what my dad says is the heaviest thing an adult ever carries?