The Ram (17 page)

“Dad, they say ‘calm’ like we do, but they spell it c-a-l-m-e-s.”

His father unknots his tie and slips out of a navy sports jacket. He ignores Riley’s bit of trivia. “If we don’t start you off with the foundations for pre-law in college, we have less of a legacy to show law schools when you graduate. It’s all about showing them you’re serious from the get go, as early as high school.”

High school graduation is years away, then another four years of college, and Riley gives in to the fact his father has his next eight years of life already micromanaged. And if his dad gets his wish, if the colleges note the effect of his father’s interest in law, he can expect an additional three years of academia. Part of him wants to start a fight with the tall man with broad shoulders who insists on wearing a tie, even on weekends. But he figures if he does what his father wants, he can smuggle in a few of his own dreams, too. His father might support them if he falls in line.

“But track is still on, right?” he asks his dad, completing his form. “I get to keep running?”

His dad hands him the list of classes and nods. “If you keep your grades up, I don’t mind if you run the rest of your life. It builds character and discipline. You’ll need it to succeed in the world of litigation.”

Riley sticks a flat piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth and squeezes the gum against his teeth. He’s okay with potentially hating his day job when he’s forty. At least he’ll have money, nice cars, maybe even a hot wife. He’s okay with the fact his father has decided to make his career choice for him. His father’s a smart man, maybe even a genius, and Riley trusts his judgment.

Besides, Riley may end up being an indifferent lawyer, but he knows what he loves. The feel of asphalt smacking the soles of his shoes when his heel hits the ground, the smell of a girl when she hasn’t showered for a day, the admiration, even jealousy of other guys when Riley shows the world how awesome he really is.

“Top of the pile,” he says out loud to his dad who responds by handing him a twenty. He promises Riley more money when he brings home an A in his Pre-Law class this coming fall.

“I hope you never chew gum in class,” his father says before picking up a magazine on Civil War miniatures. His father paints the tiny, metal figures in tones of blue and gray with dollops of red on weekend evenings at home.

“Never have,” he says, thinks about the last time he was caught chewing gum and sticking it to Ms. Jarret’s dry erase board. Each time he did it, he made sure he was found out. Each time he spent an hour in detention with her, alone, watching her grade papers at her desk, the opening of her blazer and her V-neck sweaters enough to keep his mind off lawyers and lawsuits and the satisfaction of his father.

Summer, 2014

48 Peach

Though the heat of the summer turns her car into a furnace, she refuses to roll down the windows of her Honda and let a bit of air in. She shivers, despite the warmth, and pops a stick of gum into her mouth to give her body something else to do aside from sending goosebumps up her forearms. Her car is stationary in the parking lot of a strip club she’s only ever driven by and frowned at with open disgust. Now she considers going inside the building and having a look around. If she’s done her research correctly, there might be someone inside who could be of interest and importance to her in several significant ways.

But she never touches the handle of the door and chews her gum until all the flavor of spearmint has dissolved down her throat and she’s left with a bit of rubbery matter mashed between her tongue and hard palate. She looks around the asphalt pavement littered with detritus, afraid someone will see her sitting alone in the car in the middle of the day. She wonders if she knows anyone who comes to the club and if they’ll find her in the parking lot. She has no story to tell them of why she’s there. She’ll likely just turn over the engine if anyone comes inquiring, speed away without giving them an answer.

“You can do this,” she pep talks herself. She turns on her engine and flips on the A/C but with the car in park, all she gets is stale, hot air. “You’ve got to get over what people might think of you, Peach. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. No one could understand, anyway.”

A woman walks out of the club. She wears cutoffs and a skimpy tank top. A man has his arm slung around her shoulders. He’s taller than the woman by a head and they turn in toward one another as they walk to a late-model sedan. When they get to the vehicle, the man fishes for keys while the woman leans her body against the metal of the car. Peach can hear her yelp as the flesh on her hamstrings gets scorched. She rubs at her legs and pouts for the man, her lips spread open, ruby like the flayed open belly of a newly-caught salmon.

Peach slides down a bit in her seat, hoping the couple doesn’t see her. They don’t know her, but she wants to stay invisible regardless. She reaches her arm over to the passenger side of the Honda and pulls a small notebook out from under the seat. Its cover is teal; a pen is attached to the binding via its cap.

Flipping open the Moleskine book, she thumbs through the pages and looks down to what’s written and drawn there. Then she looks back up at the woman who now reaches her arms up to curve them around the man’s neck. He puts his hands on her ass and lifts her off the ground, her feet dangling, dragged down by a heavy set of wedges strapped across her toes.

It might be her, is probably her, but she doesn’t want to be too cocky in her sense of surety. If it is her, she marvels at the odds of such a tangled connection. Peach needs to be dead on about this woman, has to check her research with a face-to-face encounter. But not today. She watches the man and woman get in the car after a minute of desperate groping in the parking lot and drive away. She keeps her position in her car, miniature notebook open in her lap until she can unfreeze her body and put her hands on the wheel.

“Next time I’ll at least get out of the car,” she speaks to herself. “After that I might go inside. Little steps. Baby steps. I have time yet to make my first move.”

Wednesday, the 8
^th
of April, 2015

49 Riley

It’s the same man with the bulging eyes partially responsible for his injury, his coworker named Newt, who asks Riley if he can do a pirouette when he limps into High Desert Trommel. The man demonstrates a spin, pitching up on one of his feet, his toes spinning on the short carpeting of the shop’s showroom floor. Riley knows the accident was more his fault than anyone else’s, but the man teasing him was also to blame. And instead of some remorse, sympathy or an apology, he dances, his arms flinging out in wide circles, to the snickers and guffaws of the other metal workers.

“That one was a bit of modern dance,” Newt informs and Riley looks away to a shelf of collapsible shovels.

“All right, boys,” Double Al tucks his shirt in at his waist, the tail coming untucked at the small of his back. His sizable middle is covered in green flannel and a tape measure is clipped to his belt. “Any of you could be in an accident here. Didn’t your mothers teach you any better?”

Riley had been proud of himself. He’d been able to leave his crutches in his Nissan and make his way slowly to the shop nestled between a furniture maker and an airplane hangar on the outskirts of West Boise. His day had begun well, and he thought he’d show off some of his resilience and fortitude with the visit to his workplace. But his coworkers were in their usual mood to mock him. Sometimes Riley felt as though the business was less about work and more about hierarchy and bullshit to these men. He felt like he was back in junior high school, except this time he wasn’t popular. And he needed another grown man to defend his honor.

“Did you keep them?” another of his coworkers asks. This man runs the front office when he’s not bending metal in the backroom. “Put them on a string or in a jar? It’d be sort of badass like
Lord of the Flies
.”

“Except I didn’t cut off my own toes or anyone else’s toes. I didn’t go on some homicidal, primal rage in the depths of a humid, island jungle absent adults. Also, I don’t think William Golding would refer to
Lord of the Flies
as badass. So no, it’s really nothing like that,” Riley says.

“Who is William Golding?” asks a different coworker with a smear of grease on one of his cheekbones.

Double Al puts a hand on Riley’s shoulder and presses him toward his office. Riley leads the way slowly, focused on putting his weight on his left heel when he steps and holding his chest high and forward. When Double Al closes the door behind them, he lets his confidence crumble just a bit and slips into a torn leather chair patched with silver duct tape.

“You wouldn’t have believed the crap they gave me when I started this business, son,” Double Al says and remains standing. He pops open a glass canister of cinnamon bears and offers them to Riley after tossing a few in his own mouth. “A man, a black man, who knew nothing of mining but wanted to make machines to turn soil and find gold? And in Idaho? Hell, getting good fabricators and blacksmiths in here took a solid six months.”

Riley waves away the candy and rubs at the knee on his left leg, achy from the tension of holding his foot just so.

“What I’m saying is they’ll all calm down about your past as a lawyer someday. Half of them never got to college. It’s jealousy, Riley, and you’d be good to just let it be.”

“I just wanted to stop and show everyone I was healing,” Riley explains, “not get a load of shit from them.”

The smell of cinnamon permeates the office and Double Al picks at a piece of red gummy stuck between his teeth. He changes the subject abruptly.

“I’ve been chatting with our insurance agent. Things should be okay for your medical bills. Especially since I said it wasn’t your fault.”

“Okay,” Riley hesitates, “but it was. I didn’t check the chain well enough.”

The candy jar is opened again, three more soft bears placed in Double Al’s mouth. He talks as he chews. “Son, as long as we corroborate, we’re golden. Faulty equipment. Something. You just follow my lead. Last thing you need is missing toes and thousands of dollars of debt.”

And like that, Double Al switches focus again, putting his hand up when Riley tries to speak.

“And I’m taking you to dinner on Friday night. Cancel your other plans to eat takeout and watch a soccer game.”

“I hate soccer,” Riley says and thinks of his plans for the coming Friday. They likely included a trip to Blaze Lounge.

But Double Al watches his face and chews away at his sweets. Double Al’s eyes close slightly, making him look even more amiable and understanding. Riley suddenly doesn’t want to let down his boss. Even if the meal will be an onslaught of reasons why Riley needs to come back to work, it’s the least he can do for the man who’s willing to lie a bit to make sure the accident insurance claim passes muster.

“And I’m not saying I’m coming back to my job,” Riley continues, “but I could definitely do with a dinner out.”

Double Al plucks one more cinnamon bear from the jar and walks to Riley. He drops it into Riley’s lap and smiles.

“Great, son. Eat a bear. With me, it’s always dessert first.”

50 Peach

She thought she would never come to this place on a lunch break. But with the incident of the sheep downtown and the lamb sequestered at home in her bedroom, Peach is feeling daring and ready to push herself harder toward her goal. Besides, her time to act is growing shorter.

Sev is at his usual spot, perched on a high stool at the bar. He holds a pen in his left hand and a glass of gin and tonic in his right. His puffy cheeks cinch back into a smile when he sees Peach. She waves politely at him and makes to walk to her usual table in the back of the room, but Sev motions her over and pats the cushioned foam of the stool next to his.

Peach checks the stage for Nell. She’s there, dancing to a nearly empty building. She doesn’t notice Peach’s entrance. In her purse are two twenties. Peach doesn’t usually give Nell money when she finishes a dance, but she wonders if that’s a mistake. It’s a difficult game. She doesn’t know if giving the stripper money will be normal, even flattering, or if it will seem disingenuous or insulting coming from her. Along with the daring comes the self-doubt and she’s annoyed they are such tight partners.

“Don’t you have a job?” Sev asks and pours Peach a glass of tepid water from a pitcher on the bar. A lemon slice bobs around in the carafe as he sets it back down.

Peach could ask him the same thing but doesn’t. She looks at the napkins arrayed in front of him and takes in the poems written on each one. They’re typically a few lines long. The common themes are heartache, money and blunt-force trauma. She likes the way he writes; his penmanship is strong and squat and he inks like his words need to be as black as a night without moonlight.

Sev lifts his glass and they clink bottoms. Peach takes a sip of water and it takes slightly of dishwashing liquid. “So, your girlfriend,” she begins, “is a talented dancer.”

“It’s not her, though,” Sev answers, his pen pressed down on a new, white napkin. “She’s going to be a dental hygienist and stop flashing her norks around. She could be an accountant or mathematician. She happens to be a bit of a savant with numbers, except she hates math. And I’m here to make sure she doesn’t stay around for more than the money. Keep her safe, you know. Keep her focused on her future. And I’m a bit of a dick with the men. The owner doesn’t mind as long as I don’t overstep. He understands tough love.”

Peach watches Nell bend forward. She’s topless, but her nipples are capped in flesh-colored pasties. The sight makes Peach shift uncomfortably in her seat.

“But is she a trained dancer? She looks so light.”

“Not as small as you, enchantress,” Sev says, appraising Peach’s body. “She’s not a ballerina or anything. But she’s fit, healthy. Could deck a prick if need be.”