Soil (24 page)

33

Chipper sensed them a mile away. No dog had ever been so glad to find its boy. He was howling when they came up the drive, scratching at the door when they came in from the carport. They released him from the laundry room and he tackled Jacob, licking him thoroughly. Watching the boy and dog tumble on the linoleum, the late sun streaming through the windows, the house alive again for the first time in ages, Jay wondered how he could have wished a cruel fate for this animal.

They pitched the tent in the pasture where the ghosts had left. Jay taught his son how to build a proper campfire, how to light it with straw and a flint. They roasted hot dogs, and after dinner they skewered marshmallows on straight-bent clothes hangers and let the flames brown them and mashed them between graham crackers and divvied-up chocolate. It was a particular joy for Jay to watch his son's marshmallow-strewn grin and believe everything was going to be all right.
These are the only concerns we need
, he believed.
Neither yesterday nor tomorrow, just a belief in the moment.

He caught Jacob transfixed by the flames. “I see you're enjoying caveman TV,” Jay said.

“Why do you call it that?” the boy asked.

“Because a long long time ago, before people lived in houses and drove cars and had jobs and went to school, they lived in caves and this is what they did for entertainment at night. They stared into the fire. It was like their television.”

The boy grimaced. “They must have been bored,” he said.

“Not necessarily. Watch it for a while. You may start to see pictures and stories as good as anything else on TV.”

The kid smirked and his eyes bulged in disbelief.

As night took hold and the fire nestled into the logs, they doused the tent in mosquito dope, zipped the mesh door closed, and spread the sleeping bags flat, making a wide pallet. They lay side by side under a quilt and talked for a while of inconsequential things, like what makes someone burp and why the leaves turn colors in autumn, and then they spoke of more serious things, like what it felt like for Jacob to see his grandfather unconscious in a hospital bed, and why he wasn't allowed to attend the funeral of his other grandfather, Jay's dad, all the while skirting around larger issues, which they were somehow addressing without speaking to them directly.

The boy rolled over toward Jay and clutched him suddenly, as if seized by an idea. “Dad, I don't know what I would do if you died.” He broke into convulsive sobs, and Jay gripped him in an assured embrace. He felt a flare of pride stitched with shame for taking comfort in the boy's fear and sorrow. He tried to console his son without lying to him, without insisting that he wouldn't die any time soon.

“Odds are,” he said, “you'll be older than I am right now when I finally die. I'll be an old, cranky man, and you'll probably be relieved.”

“Were you relieved when your dad died?”

“No.”

They lay awake in the dark, the conversation growing thinner until each of them drifted off. It wasn't a comfortable night's sleep. The junior dome tent was thirty-dollars big, and Jay had to sleep in an arc around the perimeter with Jacob curled up in the middle. Another quilt would have been nice, but it was too cold and dark to run inside and search for one. They got by on catnaps most of the night, and just when it seemed that the sun might forsake them, the birds began their early forage and daybreak found its way into the hollow. Jay crawled into the morning coolness to rebuild the fire, made coffee and fried eggs, which they ate with cold bread and jelly.

When the sun was up they walked down to the front field, and Jay told his
son about the flood and showed him how high the water had risen. He told him how he'd floated around on the field as if it were a pond. Jacob asked if they could take a boat ride, and Jay told him the boat was gone. It sprung a leak, he said. The boy wanted to find another boat, and Jay told him they would go fishing later and not to worry about it.

They walked along the edge of the field near the compost bins and Jacob got it in his head that they would need worms. The boy remembered all the worms wriggling through the compost, and so he ran to the bins and plunged his fists into the prime curing batch where Jay had spread the char and ashes.

Jay could see the black fibers collecting in the tiny hairs of his son's arm. “Let's not take those worms,” Jay said. “There'll be more down by the river.”

“Aw, why can't we have these?” the boy whined.

“Because these worms have a job to do.”

Jay explained how the worms chewed through the dirt and distributed the nutrients and kept the soil nice and loose so the plant roots would spread. The boy lost interest and went poking behind the bins, where he turned up a football-size watermelon in the weeds. “How do you like that?” Jay said. “There must have been a seed in the compost. Sometimes they grow on their own and don't even need us except to spit seeds.”

Jacob wanted to eat it, and Jay said it would be sweeter if they let it ripen a bit. He explained how composting was just making new dirt, which was built out of dead plants and grasses, rotten fruits and vegetables, ash and manure.

The boy maintained slight interest. “Manure is like dookie, right?” he asked.

“That's right.”

He considered this a moment. “Those hot dogs we ate, were those grown in manure?”

“That's tricky,” said Jay. “Hot dogs aren't grown in the ground and hence don't come into contact with any animal wastes. On the other hand, hot dogs themselves are most likely just the ground-up guts and buttholes of cows and pigs and chickens.”

“Gross!” Jacob cried and spat. “You didn't tell me I was eating butts!”

“I didn't know you had a problem with it,” Jay said, laughing. Ideally, he explained, they would one day be able to raise their own animals and produce their own food. That way they would know exactly what they were putting in their mouths. No butts, he promised his boy.

They ambled back to the house and messed around under the carport, sifting through boxes containing random, unsorted possessions, most of which would be put on the curb for trash pickup.

Jacob was excited by a plastic bag containing old coins and asked if he could buy something. Jay remembered the few coins, mostly buttons and trinket medallions, which he'd found in the bottom field when he first tilled it. He said these coins wouldn't spend, that they were most likely from the Civil War and maybe of use only to a collector or historian.

Jacob wanted to know about the Civil War, and Jay told him about how the country divided a long time ago and fought each other over their differences.

“Like you and Mom?”

“Kind of, but worse. When a lot of people disagree, sometimes they fight to the death over it. That's what happened. A lot of people died.”

Jacob's eyes glazed over in contemplation. “Dad,” he said, “did someone die down in the field?”

Jay considered the boy's tone and wondered if he'd overheard someone mention something. “What do you mean?” he asked finally.

“Is that why the money was there? Did someone die, or did it just fall out of their pocket?”

Jay studied the coins as if trying to discern the real answer. “I'm not sure. It happened so long ago, there would be no one alive to tell us.”

Jacob wanted to keep everything, and there was much negotiation over what was trash and what could be kept. The boy dug out a carton of copper BBs and asked if they were candy. Jay went inside, found the air rifle in the hall closet, and took Jacob into the backyard. He collected an armful of faded aluminum cans from a ripped garbage bag, waiting interminably to be dropped off at the recycler. He propped them on a pile of old tractor tires,
stepped back twenty yards or so and demonstrated how to load and pump the rifle, then levered and flicked off the safety. He gave his son a quick lesson on sighting and squeezing the trigger, then took the first shot. A satisfying ping resounded off the fallen soda can. The boy's eyes grew wide and he took to the sport instinctively, refusing to quit until they'd used up the whole carton of shot and left a massacre of cans.

“I love shooting,” Jacob said.

“It's a good skill to nurture,” said his dad. “Maybe we'll get you a .22 for Christmas.”

“Can I ask Santa?”

“You bet.”

Jacob asked his dad if he ever hunted. He'd seen a lot of shows on television about killing animals.

“My dad took me hunting when I was about your age,” Jay recalled. “It was a very important thing in my dad's life. I've hunted some recently. I think it's fine as long as you're hunting to feed yourself and not simply to kill.”

Jacob thought about this. “It's bad to kill animals,” he said. “If you kill an animal, you're killing God because God made all the animals and He is part of all living things.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Jay was surprised and intrigued. Had Sandy been taking their son to church?

“It's still fun to shoot em,” Jacob said.

Jay laughed. “Well, even though I don't hunt with a gun, I do love to catch fish. What do you say we go catch some fish?”

“Yeah!” Jacob shouted.

“Wouldn't that be a great dinner tonight? Instead of stinky old butt dogs?”

Jacob laughed, and they agreed it would be a fine meal, so Jay gathered tackle and fishing poles and a few bottles of water, and they stopped in the woods to root around under leaf piles and collected some earthworms in a short bucket, and with Chipper tagging along they hiked to the river.

In preparation for this outing, Jay found a slough along the river's edge where a fallen tree had made an inlet, the perfect bed for crappie and bream,
maybe even a catfish. He'd already set the poles with fresh lines, bobbers, and sinkers, both his cane pole and the junior fly rod he'd cleaned and rewound just for Jacob. He demonstrated the cast and let the boy practice a few times before he tied on the hook. Then he showed his son how to fix a worm to the hook, a nasty business but secretly the best part, next to catching a fish.

“Ooo,” Jacob wailed when the little poof of worm guts exploded from the hook puncture. “Let me do yours!” the boy begged.

With the sun behind them in the trees and the fall breeze off the river, it was really the most idyllic setting. They found their sweet spot and had already yanked out one nice crappie. Enjoying the easy rhythm of life, Jay finally felt like a legitimate dad as they engaged in one of the most natural pursuits a father and son could share.

With shorter patience, Jacob reeled and baited and recast frequently, so it was inevitable that he'd get hung up in the branches of the fallen tree. He tried to jerk the line free, but it wouldn't come. He turned the pole over to Jay, who could neither dislodge it nor break the line. He searched his pocket and the tackle bag for a knife or cutters but came up empty.

“Oh, wait,” Jacob said and dug into his shorts pocket. He pulled out a handsome Swiss Army knife.

“Whoa, this is nice,” said Jay, inspecting all the flip-out features. “Did your granddad give you that?”

“No. Danny gave it to me.”

“Who's Danny?”

“The policeman.”

Jay stopped. Shoals?
That
son of a bitch?

“How do you know him?” Jay asked. He tried to keep a calm voice but felt a waver.

“Oh, he comes to see Mom sometimes.”

So it was true. They were watching him. He felt like a dupe all over again.

“What does he do when he comes over?”

“Well, sometimes he plays with me. He gave me a Wiffle ball and bat and showed me how to hit. That was fun.”

Jay heard his own heart and tried to slow his breathing, drawing deep to keep from losing his cool. “What about him and Mom, what do they do?”

“Nothing, they just talk.”

“Do they talk about me?”

Jacob shrugged. “I don't know what they talk about. He just brings stuff like this knife and the Wiffle ball bat. He did bring flowers and a balloon once. And strawberries and whip cream, that was good.”

Sandy's favorite dessert. What the hell was going on? Jay's heart broke loose at a gallop. Were they here? He glanced around cautiously, watching and listening for clues, a glare off sunglasses or an errant walkie-talkie. He fought to keep a handle on his temper. He had a thousand questions. The boy would start to worry, maybe start lying, if he appeared too upset over this.

“Does he visit Mom a lot?”

“Not too much. He came to the hospital to visit Granddad.”

Were they seeing each other, for chrissakes? Or could it be that Shoals was trying to ingratiate himself with Sandy just to get clues about Jay? She was too smart for him. She would see right through his bullshit.

“I like his car,” Jacob added. “It's supercool.”

“Yeah?”

Goddamn it!
Was she angry enough to cooperate?

“He said he's gonna take me for a ride in it,” Jacob said.

“I know that guy,” Jay said, clipping the snagged line with the flip-out scissors. “I don't think he's so nice.”

Jacob was quiet for a moment. “He seems nice to me,” he replied.

“Yeah, well, he's nice to kids. But he's a trickster. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“He tells you what you want to hear and gives you good stuff like this knife and your Wiffle ball bat. And then just when you think he's your friend, he does something bad.”

“Like what?”

“You can never tell with a guy like him,” Jay said. “Maybe you say something you shouldn't have, or do something your mom told you not to do. He'll
be the one to run and tattle on you. Or maybe he comes to you and says, ‘Remember that knife I gave you? I want it back.' And he takes your knife and he just . . .” Jay folded up the blades and tossed the knife far out into the river.