Bright Before Us (25 page)

 

A few days after I arrived, I walked into the barbershop. Inside was a man whose own hair had long since departed.
Can I work here?
I said to him, my words sudden, barely planned—after so many days of silence my own voice was unfamiliar.

He wagged a straight razor through some kind of solvent in a mason jar.
Can you, or may you?
he said, winking.

It was an unexpected relief, being spoken to like a child.

He looked at my clothing, his smile faltering. I shifted my feet, holding the burned place on my wrist.

I could use some help,
he said.

His name was Martin. He asked me to sweep the cut hair into piles and then empty the metal dustpan into a burlap sack in a shed out back. What he did with the hair I never knew. Each day I walked from the burned house to the barbershop, rising early to cover the few miles before the sun fully awoke. The May breeze was more forgiving in the hours before noon, and sometimes I closed my eyes and listened to the distant whir of the tractors in the fields. Martin opened up shop seven days a week at nine o'clock exactly, a bell trembling in the doorjamb. When no customers came for a haircut or a shave, I swept anyway.
You'll run a broom-shaped groove into my floor, son,
Martin said, chuckling. Other times I sat in his back office and organized his desk, which was already tidy and probably had never been used anyway. My fifth day working for Martin, without looking me in the eye, he passed me a razor and a baby food jar filled with shaving cream. That night, small clumps of my beard fell into the bar's bathroom sink like miniature rodents. Sometimes I washed the shop's windows, or wiped down the vinyl barber chairs. In the evenings, staring up the staircase of the burned house, I would think of ways to keep busy at
Martin's; I refused to stand idle. Every day, Martin gave me a five-dollar bill at six o'clock and said,
Here you are, son.
He never called me anything but son. I would thank him and, calling good night over my shoulder, step into the orange dusk. Some days I would head to the pay phone beside the post office, ready to call home. And then I would change my mind, the receiver still in my hand, the moment gone.

I always brought a change of clothes with me to the barbershop. When I left, I would stop at the lake to bathe. I hid behind the willow branches that dangled above the thick skin of the water, closing my eyes and floating naked on my back. I washed my sweat-soaked clothes in the water and changed into the fresh garments, sitting on the same damp rock at the water's edge. My clothes had a green cast from the algae of the lake. I smelled faintly of mold.

Three weeks passed this way—and they passed so quickly I marvel thinking of it now. I marvel to think of that time at all, really. Every morning, I awoke in groggy misery: the familiar pain, the default terror. The existence I had grown so accustomed to. Resentments and regrets and the certainty that I wasn't good enough. And then my eyes would adjust to the light, and I would watch a small bird dart overhead, and I would snap back into the present—remembering where and who I was, remembering that I had left all of that behind. And the pain would lift. It was the most peaceful time of my life.

On the first day of June, I showed up to the lake one day and found it surrounded.
What's all this?
I asked somebody.
Fishing derby,
the man said, adjusting his ball cap. So that night I bathed beside the burned house, in the
stream of a garden hose; the metallic taste of its water was like a portal to childhood.

 

At the barbershop, an old man named Dale was a regular. He came in almost every day, to sit in one of the boosted chairs—there were two, though Martin was the only barber—and speak slowly and carefully about the high school football team, bird watching at Lake McConaughy, the thirty miles he drove each week to the Wal-Mart in Sidney. He rocked as he spoke, nodding in time like a bobbing oil derrick. He brought his grandson each Wednesday—a small, sullen boy named Peter, no older than seven. When Martin and Dale got to talking, Peter would slink to the shed behind the shop; there, a child going off without disclosing a destination went unnoticed by adults.

One afternoon, he was in the shed when I went to empty my dustpan. Outside, the air was stiff with pollen and dust. I knocked at the shed door, and Peter's tiny voice came back muffled:
Come in.

I entered. Light came in through the burl holes in the wood planks and a small window. The shed was about ten by six, and though I brought discarded hair there each day, I had never stopped to look around closely: two lawn chairs sat unfolded in the center, and tin Coca Cola signs were nailed to the unfinished walls. Beneath the usual gardening implements, hung on hooks, were plastic tubs, their lids open, full of cheap baseball cards, jacks, Ping-Pong balls—a sea of little boy curios, clearly forgotten: astride one ballplayer's face were hairy black corpuscles of mold.

Are you hiding?
I said.

Peter shook his head no.

No,
he said.

He looked up at me expectantly, waiting to be commended for his bravery.

I wanted to commend him. But instead I emptied the hair into the sack and said nothing, keeping the door slightly ajar behind me when I left.

About a week into June, Martin turned on the radio.
Thought I'd listen for the weather report,
he said.

I glanced outside.
It's sunny every day here.

They'll announce visibility,
Martin said.
Tomorrow's gun day.

In June of '44,
Dale began,
a plane on its way out west caught on fire in the sky ...

I set the broom against the sink.
I know the story,
I said.
I've seen the crosses.

Martin adjusted the radio dial.
My second cousin was on that plane.

Martin's from Stromsburg,
Dale said.
About three hundred miles out.

Vance C. Johnson,
I said.
Stromsburg, Nebraska. I've seen the marker a dozen times.

Martin looked up from the radio.
He was my second cousin. A few years older than me, only eighteen when he died.

Stromsburg's off of I-80 too, out toward York,
Dale said.

Can you do without the five dollars tomorrow, if I pack you a lunch?
Martin said to me.

Dale looked at his hands.

I can,
I said.

 

Every year on the anniversary of the crash, Martin shot the twenty-one gun salute in the fields south of the burned house.
I'd do it at the crash site, but Miller's got his livestock out there,
he said. He had asked me where I lived, and when I didn't answer fast enough he offered to pick me up the next morning outside the barbershop. I don't know what he thought, exactly, but I could guess. The nearest town was miles away, even smaller than Chappell. They were the only two towns in the county. Maybe he thought I was a hitchhiker. I'm sure whatever he thought, he knew I had come in from the highway. To get to the field we passed the abandoned Texaco station, and I cursed silently as I saw my car parked in the lot—its California license plate, its grimy exterior. But if Martin noticed it, or believed it to be mine, he said nothing.

Do you bring someone with you every year?
I asked him as we parked. He had four guns secured in the truck—two handguns, a thick shotgun, a spindly rifle.

No,
he said amiably.
I fire all twenty-one rounds alone.

Also in the back of the truck was a big wooden crate full of junk—orange plastic detergent bottles, a semi-deflated basketball, a half-dozen gallon jugs of water.

Martin pulled out a triangular-folded American flag, nestled in a wooden case, from the cab of the pickup.
He's got arthur-itis. The kickback hurts the joints.
He unfolded
the flag. On the starred end were two metal eyelets, and he fitted them over two nails he had hammered into the wooden cage attached to the truck bed.
We'll start with the Luger.

I stared at the small arsenal.
Which?

He peered at me.
Your daddy didn't teach you how to shoot?

No, sir,
I said.

He waited a moment for an explanation. When he saw that none was coming, he pointed at a thin-nosed pistol.
That one there's the Luger.

I picked up the gun like any second it would turn on me. I held it out to him, anxious.

Good boy,
he said.
Every firearm ought to be treated with respect.

Okay,
I said.

Say it—every gun's a loaded gun,
Martin said, loading it. He handed it back to me.

I took it, the textured grip rough against my palm.
Every gun's a loaded gun.

Good boy,
he said again.

 

Wielding a deadly power wasn't something I thought I could get used to. And then I did. Because after a moment, shooting that gun just felt good. Everything I had ever felt about the idea—the associations most city kids carry—melted away. I had no idea how many bullets the thing held and didn't keep track as I fired, so I would just keep going until Martin stopped me to reload. I slipped into an unmediated state, one without running commentary, pulling the trigger again and again. It wasn't bloodlust; it wasn't Freudian. It
was just something I had never done before. And I was doing it in a place I had never been, with a person I didn't know. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger, thinking, What would I be doing right now, in my other life?

 

Let's count off the twenty-one,
Martin said.

Taking turns, we fired ten shots each in succession, aiming toward a lanky cottonwood tree. I had the Luger and Martin shot the air rifle; sound-wise, mine made a blast and his made a crack.

How's it feel?
he said.
Accurate, that one is.

I wasn't aiming at anything,
I said.

Well,
he said.
The Luger is a fine gun.
He began reloading the rifle: sliding the ammunition inside it, the gun bent in half. He straightened it with a resounding snap and looked through the sight.
One more shot left,
he said.
That'll make twenty-one.
He paused, changing his mind, and stepped toward the truck bed. He set the rifle down and returned with another weapon, nearly as thick as my arm. He held it up to me.
This is a Remington 870 Wingmaster twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun,
he said, like he was introducing a friend at a party.

Holy shit,
I said.

Martin squinted into the distance.
We ought to watch our language.
He held up a shell the width of my thumb.
In honor of the day.

Something inside me ached.
I'm sorry.

He shook his head.
You didn't mean anything by it.

I took the shotgun in my hands.
It weighs a ton.

Go on,
he said.
You take the last shot.

You go ahead,
he said, smiling faintly.
Finish the salute.

I lifted the shotgun, wedging the stock in the groove of my armpit, the vinyl flag flapping sluggishly against the truck's cab. I listened to myself breathe. Every second I didn't shoot I grew more apprehensive. I knew what kind of power I was holding. The sound, the force it was going to send through my body. I was scared.

You've got this, son,
Martin whispered.
You've been shootin' like a pro all—

But I cut off that last word, pulling the trigger the second I felt able. The birdshot went who knows where—we weren't close enough to any target to note a result—but what stayed behind was the cracking recoil. Martin took the gun, and I clutched at my bruised flesh.

I lifted my shirt over my head and looked down: blood vessels had broken in red, pointillistic bursts beneath the skin. It looked as though I had been misted in the armpit with a paint sprayer.

Martin lifted the shotgun, resting it on his shoulder so the barrel pointed skyward. He turned to the flag hanging from the truck, raised his arm, and held a hand to his temple in salute.

My shirt was on the yellowed ground, but I stood straight and saluted too. That was when I finally made the connection.
It's the seventh?
I asked him, our hands still poised at our heads.
Today's the anniversary of the crash?