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  My father pointed a finger at me. “What did I tell you about swearing?”

  “I’m nineteen,” I said. “I’m not really yours to discipline anymore.”

  “Okay, Mr. College,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve got against animals.”

  “Nothing,” I said, “but this is ridiculous. Mom’s not going to want them, and then what will you do? Join the circus? You can barely take care of yourself much less a little horse and a monkey.” From my vantage point, I could see Tulip nuzzling Pacman and petting her minimane. Tulip knelt down on her knees, and Pacman came just up to her breast. Isadora screeched and leapt from couch to chair to television to Tulip’s shoulder nimbly and with height.

  “You and your mother always gang up on me,” my father said. I realized, as he spoke, that he actually looked dirty, as if he hadn’t bathed in a while. He had a grainy face and looked beat. He’d been hustling a buck in the hardest possible way ever since I could remember. I wished he’d give it up, get a real job, and take it easy. But that wasn’t in his nature.

  “Okay,” Tulip called from the living room. “It’s now or never. Let’s get these guys caged.”

  My father went to help her, but I held back. I was not about to handle either animal, especially Isadora, who clearly hated me. I leaned against the dryer, still warm from its cycle, and decided to be helpful. I reached in and pulled out the load, intending to fold it while I waited. But among threadbare towels, faded washcloths, and checkered dishtowels were several of Tulip’s white briefs turned gray. Some of them had yellowish stains in the crotch panels, and embarrassed, I quickly shoved the whole load back in the machine. Instead, I wiped down the kitchen counters, which were coated with short gray hair.

  Back on the road, my father was pumped. He drove faster down gravel roads than the Gran Torino had a right to. The wheels flew over potholes and washboard bumps. Pacman rode in the very back in a molded plastic box with a little door and lots of air holes. Isadora rode in the back seat in a metal cage that allowed her to reach out her leathery humanlike hands and scratch at the upholstery. Each of them made high-pitched yelps whenever the car riled them.

  “Hang in there, guys,” my father said. “It won’t be long now.”

  I watched drooping electrical wires fly past outside the window. Fields were pocked with old snow, gray on black. I could see the New Prague water tower, pink and domed like a giant pencil top eraser. My acting professor was making me see everything in a new light. She told us we’d never be the same after her class. When one student was doing a scene as Macbeth, she’d stopped him midway through and asked him if he’d ever killed anything, anything at all, in his life. He said yeah, maybe a spider or something. “Then I want you,” she had said, “to come to class next time having killed something. A squirrel will do. A mouse. But I want you to kill it with your own two hands. Then we’ll talk about Macbeth’s sense of guilt.” We were all positively shocked, horrified, and thrilled at her daring. Also, we were all—at least the guys—pretty much in love with Babe Powers. She always, always wore skirts with little ballerina shoes and cardigans with matching shells. She was short, muscular, and quick. When we had to say what animal we were, she went last and said soberly, “I am an arctic fox.” We believed her.

  “So, you making a lot of friends there at school?” my father asked. He was driving with his knee while he fished out a cigarette from the pack and lit it. The Gran Torino still had an actual cigarette lighter that popped up and glowed orange.

  “A couple,” I said.

  “I suppose they all have their parents paying their way, huh?”

  “Some,” I said. I had a full ride thanks to my parents’ piss-paying jobs. I had loads of grants, low-interest loans, scholarships, the works. But to pay for room and board, I still had to work in the admissions office giving tours to prospective students. I also worked at a restaurant, Moose’s, as a bus boy. The bartenders there had introduced me to cocaine, so I’d been trying that off and on.

  “Any girlfriends yet?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “That’ll come,” my father said. “Of course I see Julie around town a lot. She seems good. She always says to say hi.”

  “Julie’s all right,” I said. “She’ll find someone else soon enough.” She’d been my girlfriend from sophomore to senior year back home. Her dad was a dentist and her mom used to be a hand model. We had sex junior year, and after that, almost every weekend. But Julie wanted big things out of me. She said a good job for me would be either dentist, doctor, lawyer, or if I really had to slack, pharmacist. We broke off right around graduation, and really, with both of us going to different colleges, what did it matter? But I sometimes missed her big spooky eyes and her flat little boobs. She was supposedly going into speech therapy, and I had no idea why.

  One of the animals seemed to have taken a dump then because the car smelled foul. In fact, it was strong enough to gag me. I had to roll down the window. My father laughed and tooted the horn. “Your mother is gonna die!” he said. “She is absolutely going to flip over these two. Don’t you think, Theo?”

  “Ah, yeah,” I said. “I think that’s the problem.”

  “Let me ask you something,” my father said. He put his right arm up over the bench seat, his fingers dangling dangerously close to Isadora’s reach. He still wore his gold wedding band, but on his right hand.

  “Okay,” I said. We were pulling into town, and I didn’t know if my father was planning to go to my mother’s apartment or the house.

  “Are you a homosexual?” he asked. He kept his eyes on the road. Isadora started to screech when a police car sped past us, its siren blaring.

  “Why?” I said. “Shut up,” I said to Isadora.

  “Just answer the question,” my father said. He reached his fingers back and let Isadora sniff them out.

  “No,” I said.

  “All right,” my father said. He turned right at Sugar Creek Road, named exclusively for the apartment complex where my mother lived. I felt my heart sink to my stomach.

  “Why do you ask?” I said.

  “What?”

  “If I’m gay.” I wanted to avoid another mother-father reunion fiasco, but it seemed I was destined to be in the middle of it this time. My father parked near my mother’s building, number 30, even though there were only three of them.

  “So you prefer the word gay over homosexual?” my father asked. He cut the engine, leaned back, and didn’t seem to mind that Isadora was chomping on his fingernails. I could hear them crunch in her little teeth.

  “I’m not gay or homosexual!” I said. The shit smell was really cloying, so I opened the car door and got out. “Christ.”

  My father got out of the car, too. The apartment complex was new and unimaginative. All the buildings were painted gray with white trim. Each had a little balcony, and now, in late winter, gas grills, bikes, lawn chairs, and strollers were all crusted with ice or covered with tarps.

  “What if I was?” my father said, sucking on probably his fifth cigarette since we’d left Tulip’s. “What if I said I was gay?”

  I squinted at him. “Are you?”

  “Nah,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was just seeing what you’d say.” He opened up the back hatch, where Pacman’s cage had slid up against the window. I felt sorry for the thing and for its shaky future with my father. “So these two guys could actually be a big break for you, Theo. Maybe we could get you on David Letterman or Leno with these guys. Do one of those crazy pet tricks or something. That could be your break.” He pulled Pacman’s cage onto his knees, then slid it to the ground. “You think you’ll change your name when you get famous?” he said. “Or keep it? Theo’s pretty good, I think. But I’m not sure about the last name. Rickers. Sounds a little weak. Hey, I could be your agent!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’d be great.” Isadora was clearly pissed off that she was being ignored. She leapt
back and forth in her cage, hissing.

  “How about Theo Prague? You know, put the town on the map.”

  He said it the wrong way and I corrected him. I thought of Van, how cool he was without even trying. He’d managed to rent a condo in South Padre on the Internet, which is something I’d have never thought of. Van said next year, if I could swing it, I could join him.

  “Hey,” my father said. “Remember what I said. Don’t get college on me now.”

  “Sorry,” I said. For the first time ever, I felt truly superior to my father. To my mother, too. In fact, to the whole damn town. It wasn’t an altogether pleasant feeling.

  “Hey,” my father said. “Why don’t you go prepare your mother for what I’m about to do?” He tried to push his hair back, but it didn’t look any better. I saw him run his tongue over his teeth. He clapped his hands at me and said something like giddy up.

  “Not this time,” I said. “It’s up to you.” I felt like I was playing a role but that I was almost overacting. I was the son who’d had enough.

  I did help my father schlep the cages into the complex and up the elevator, but I refused to be standing there when my mother opened the door. Instead, I listened from down the hallway, gathering material for a someday future scene.

  HILLBILLIES

  Denise and Larry Butters were only two weeks into their new house in the Cherokee Bluff subdivision when the Hillbillies moved in next door. That’s what Denise had started calling the three brothers who’d moved in a few days ago—“the Hillbillies.” No sooner had they unpacked their U-Haul and pickup trucks then they were shooting off firecrackers at night, blasting up and down Splendorwood Court in their mud-caked ATVS, and letting their three big dogs poop in everyone’s yards without cleaning up.

  On Friday evening, their third week in the subdivision, Denise had an idea. She went out to tell Larry, who was grilling turkey burgers in the back yard. Ever since she’d been pregnant with JenJen, Denise couldn’t stand the sight or smell of red meat, so Larry obliged her with poultry.

  “I think we should invite them over,” Denise said, “the Hillbillies.” She stood next to Larry in their huge, treeless, fenceless backyard. Their builders had promised them two two-inch trees in the contract but so far hadn’t delivered. Nor had they finished drywalling the basement. Nor had they cemented the driveway. Nor had they put up any trim in the bedrooms. “That way, once they get to know us and meet the kids, they’ll be less likely to disturb us. They’ll care about us.”

  Larry flipped the pale turkey burgers, which looked like crumbly oatmeal patties. He had absolutely vetoed veggie burgers in his household; that’s where he drew the line. “You think so, huh?” He reached for his beer in the grill’s built-in drink holder and took a swig. He’d taken to drinking dark, heavy stouts, which tasted, to Denise, like rancid root beer.

  Denise checked on Jen-Jen and Cole playing in what might be called a sandbox. So far, it was a pile of sand the builders had dumped behind the garage with no box. Cole scooped sand into a coffee can, then poured it out at Jen-Jen’s feet, who screamed as if she were being burned.

  “I think it would help,” Denise said. “It’s good to be neighborly, especially in a place like Cherokee Bluff. You’ve got to show you have class in a place like this.”

  Larry chuckled. “Well, they obviously don’t have any class.” Larry, a schmoozer, had done well for himself, despite being from a family of down-and-outers, two of whom were currently in jail. He’d barely managed a community college degree, then hustled his way into the hardware store business; he was now full owner of New Sweden’s Hardware Hank and was wheeling and dealing to open another in Waterfield. Denise was very proud of him, even if it did mean she had to live in a town with no real grocery store and only one restaurant, Kick’s, which served about ten variations of red meat.

  “Still,” Denise said. “I’ll walk over and see if they’re doing anything tomorrow night. Okay? Can you live with that?”

  Larry shrugged, nodded, and reached for his beer.

  * * *

  Denise trekked across the freshly sod lawn to the Hillbillies’ house. The smell of grilled hot dogs hung in the air, and everyone in the neighborhood had their two-car garage doors open for the weekend. The Hillbillies’ house was sided in beige vinyl with white trim. Denise remembered how there’d been five choices of siding: buff, beige, mocha, vanilla, and frost. As for trim: white, brown, or gray. Denise considered it a coup on her part to have gotten her builder to special order a dark evergreen for the siding with a tasteful sage green trim, even if it had cost them almost $5,000 more, and even if it had pushed the completion date back a couple of months. Every time she pulled her minivan into the driveway, she felt a surge of pride at her rich, green house among the neutrals.

  At first she thought the Hillbillies weren’t home. She heard the doorbell chime inside but saw no sign of life. She rang it once again, then knocked hard on the steel front door. She peered in through the window. It was roughly the same floor plan as theirs, only the kitchen had cherry cabinets instead of oak, and the sunken living room veered off to the right instead of the left. Still, it had the same pop-out kitchen design (a feature Denise loved) and the same tiled foyer with a step-up entry. She was surprised to see that their furniture was decent (a taupe tweed sectional) and their kitchen looked as if someone actually cooked in it. A blender and toaster were parked in the appliance garage (another feature Denise adored), and canisters of staples lined the counter by the stove. She pressed her face up to the glass to get a better look.

  She pulled back when she saw someone come bounding up the stairs from the first level (all Cherokee Bluff homes were four-level homes). It was the tallest and skinniest of the three brothers, and he swung the door open with absolutely no reservations. “Hey neighbor,” he said. “Come on in.” His face was pointy and pink, and Denise found herself feeling shy. She hung back in the doorway, though introduced herself and explained where she lived. He said his name was Ty. He didn’t wear shorts, despite the heat, but wore blue jeans with a red T-shirt, tucked in, belted. She wished she had brought flowers or a bottle of wine.

  “So, I was wondering if you and your brothers were busy tomorrow evening, say around six thirty, for a little grill out at our place.” She noticed a slightly acrid smell in the house, like burned toast. Ty held the front door open with his cowboy boot.

  He looked up at the ceiling (a soaring white cathedral, just like Denise’s), scratched his head, then looked at the floor. “Geez, I don’t think we’re busy. Maybe just gonna take the ATVS out for a while tomorrow. But I should ask Mort and Bigs. Sometimes you never know what exactly the two of them got planned.”

  Denise forced a smile. She would have preferred a simple yes or no. She wanted to get back to her own familiar house, to Jen-Jen and Cole, to the waiting turkey burgers she would serve on poppy seed buns with purple coleslaw (she could get the kids to eat it that way) and garlic potatoes. She noticed from the Hillbillies’ kitchen window they had a clear view of the kids in the sandbox, of Larry at the grill, and of Denise and Larry’s bedroom windows. She would have to be careful with the blinds. “So, do you want to think about it and get back to me ...?” Denise felt a mosquito drill into her ankle for blood and slapped it.

  Ty adjusted his ball cap, and Denise couldn’t believe how dirty it was, as if he’d literally smeared it around in the mud. His tawny blonde moustache twitched, and Denise shivered. “I’m just gonna say yes. Yes for the three of us. And I’ll tell Mort and Bigs that that’s what we’re doing tomorrow night. I won’t even ask but tell.”

  “Well, all right,” Denise said. “Just let me know if anything comes up, though. We can be flexible.”

  Ty squeezed his hands together, nodded, squinted his eyes, and for a second, Denise feared she was in the presence of a murderer, or at least an ex-convict. But Larry would say she was overreacting, as usual. She had insisted they install a high-tech home security system way out of their p
rice range. She had taught Cole how to phone 911 when he was barely toddling. She was suspicious of strangers and kept an unlisted telephone number. But really, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Ty or his house. Ty was polite enough, even if he did use poor grammar, and their house was clean and beige and just like all the others on the block.

  “Again, welcome to the neighborhood,” Denise said as she waved good-bye. “See you tomorrow.” She vowed next time to bring flowers in a cut-glass vase for them to keep. And perhaps a freshly baked loaf of honey wheat from her new bread machine.

  That night, Denise woke up to the sound of firecrackers exploding in the Hillbillies’ back yard. Later, when she got up to pee, she lifted the bathroom shade and could’ve sworn she saw a small bonfire over at the Hillbillies’ and the three of them dancing around it. Denise wondered if they were aware of Cherokee Bluff rules and regulations: no loud noise after 10:00 p.m., no inoperable vehicles parked on the street or in the driveway, no lawn ornaments without Cherokee Bluff Residents’ Council approval, and absolutely no garbage burning or fires of any kind on the properties.

  Denise sank back down into bed beside Larry. Their new pillow-top mattress and Egyptian cotton sheets seemed to allow Larry to sleep even more deeply than before. She reached over and touched his chest: strong, solid, hairy. She remembered in high school he’d had virtually no body hair. He’d been just a boy—tall, gangly, and smooth. He wore loose Levis and sunglasses and drove a rusty Subaru station wagon. He was plagued with acne and shy and always offered her cinnamon gum before heading off to parties with her.

  Now, unable to sleep, Denise could smell the garlic on his breath and could faintly hear the deep grumble of male voices next door. She wouldn’t put up with it, she decided. She hadn’t moved to a place like Cherokee Bluff for this nonsense. She was here because she and Larry had “arrived” here, and as for the Hillbillies, they seemed to have landed here by mistake.

  On Saturday morning, Denise heard Jen-Jen crying in her crib. “I poop!” Jen-Jen called out. Denise saw that Larry was already out of bed but was obviously waiting for Denise to change Jen-Jen’s diaper. “I poop! Mommy!” Denise could hear Jen-Jen pounding on the wall opposite her.