Lions

~ ~ ~

Gordon returned from the north country at midnight days before they were to leave for school, and woke the following morning in his room to the sound of Leigh’s voice. A distant buzz, the sheets over his bare legs. He understood she was speaking from far away. Downstairs. In the kitchen with Georgianna. Their white faces floating in the early morning light as they talked over toast and coffee. Their voices pulsed like a radio signal moving in and out of static.

“. . like his father. .”

“I know.”

“. . to be alone.”

“But supposing. .”

“. . a little patience.”

“But supposing.”

A silence. The ringing of spoons against coffee cups.

“. . John’s father, too. .”

“. . like a ceremony. .”

“. . like sleep. .”

“More toast?”

A silence, the scrape of wooden chair legs across the floor, and he went back under, the women’s voices leading him on a filament of words like a path that loses itself in the dark.

In his dream his father handed him a dull and dented old copper cup — the kind you’d find in the junk shop — and told him to drink. Gordon took it for whiskey, and perhaps it was.

“What is it?” his father asked when Gordon had tasted it.

“Bitter,” he said, and let the taste of it stain his tongue and the back of his throat. “And good.”

When he woke again, his mother was beside him. Shadows circled her eyes like holes burned through white paper.

“You slept all day again,” she said.

“I did?”

“Leigh was here.”

“I know.”

“I have a can of soup heated on the stove,” she said. “Tomato rice. You need to eat.”

He sat up. “Did you have any?”

She put her hand to her stomach and shook her head.

“Sick?”

“And a headache.”

“You look skinny.”

“So do you.”

“You need to eat.”

She drew her lips into her mouth and nodded. “It’s hard to be here in the house, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Shop, too.”

“He worked so hard, Gordon.”

“I know.”

“Too hard.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“No one appreciated it.”

“Sure they did, Ma.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

“People say things about him.”

“No they don’t.”

“They say he wasn’t good to us.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“They say he should have moved us somewhere better.”

“Did Leigh tell you that?”

“She wants the world, Gordon.”

“I know it,” he said. “It wants her back.”

“Have you asked her to stay?”

“I don’t think she can.”

“I always thought she’d be able to.”

He rose and left the room. He brought up two mugs of the warm, reddish-orange soup, and two slices of buttered sandwich bread. Two old metal spoons. He carried it up on the tray his father had used for Georgianna on Mother’s Day and her birthday, a golden brown wicker tray with woven handles of dried willow.

They sat in the quiet and ate their bread. The moonlight cast a slant, pale blue window frame across the scratched wooden floor. It was past midnight. No birds. No sound at all. Georgianna sat with her hands around the mug in her lap. Her hair seemed no longer steel and iron but silver and white. She used to clip up the sides, but now it hung all around her. It was so long. He’d never realized it was so long.

“I can’t sleep in that bed, Gordon.”

“It’s OK.”

“I’ve been sleeping here,” she said. “In yours.”

“I know.” He took her hand and pulled her from the chair and she curled up beside him. “It’s OK.”

“Sometimes I think I’m having a heart attack, too,” she whispered.

He shut his eyes and held his breath high up in his chest. “Me, too.”

When he was sure she’d fallen asleep, Gordon stood and crossed the yard to the shop where he stretched out on the floor, lengthwise beside the workbench.

Dock and Emery were there just after dawn, ready to work and knocking on the door. Gordon rose stiffly, rubbed his eyes, and opened the side door. He reached out to shake Dock’s hand, and Dock pulled him in for a hug.

“Where you been boy?”

Gordon smiled and hugged back. Emery stepped up for his turn, nearly crushing Gordon’s rib cage with his wiry arms.

“Sorry to barge in on you,” Dock said. “Emery’s been chomping at the bit to get in here.”

“I’m sure, I’m sorry.”

“You been out on the road some.”

Gordon nodded. They were almost of a height, but Dock was twice as wide.

“You holding up?” Dock let go, and surveyed his face. “Eating?”

“Some.”

“Sleeping?”

“Some.”

“Want me to pick up a customer or two you have out of town?”

“Nah,” he said.

Dock nodded. “OK. Look, no pressure, Gordon, but Annie and I talked all this through with your mother.”

“I know.”

“If you want to stay, you should stay. But if I were you I’d follow that girl. She knows where she’s headed, and she’s not bad-looking company.”

Gordon laughed and touched his forehead. Emery laughed and touched his forehead.

There were two unfinished projects on the floor out back: a spray rig and double tilt utility trailer.

“So tell me what’s happening in the shop these days.” Dock stepped inside. “But consider yourself warned,” he said, as Emery overtook him and pulled on his welding helmet. “This boy is full of beans. I mean he ate three cans of pinto beans last night.” Dock mimicked a man eating beans out of a can, circling an imaginary spoon in his fist from can to mouth. “Safety hazard. Keep him away from the torches.”

“Ha,” Gordon said. “Thanks for the tip.” Emery laughed again and drew back his lips to show them his teeth, like a wild animal. They stood in the cool space, the smell of burnt minerals and cleaning fluid sharp in their nostrils.

Dock told Gordon that other than a few passes on scrap metal with stick electrode, and the couple of minor projects he had watched John do and assisted with, he hadn’t done much more. Gordon told him it had to be five hundred more than a few passes, and that Dock had learned more than he realized while working on the single engine stand.

“It’s still in working order, isn’t it?”

“It’s pretty solid,” Dock admitted, his cheeks red.

“That was all you. I saw every piece of it. I was right back there,” Gordon said, and together they said, “working on the disc cultivator.” It’d come in rusted pieces like a bolt’s worth of moth-eaten reddish brown fabric — a never-ending project to restore.

They stood beside each other looking out of the shop toward the Gas & Grocer.

“So how long do we have you, young Walker?”

“A few days,” Gordon said. “If I go.”

“Don’t get started on me,” he said. “You’re going.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Whatever you need to be here for, you can do a little less often.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“What am I supposed to do all day every day if you don’t go? Isn’t enough work for two men.”

“You’ve got me there,” Gordon said. “I know you’re up for the work.”

“We all love your mother, Gordon. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“She won’t be alone. Heck, May talked about hiring her on, just to get her out of the house a couple times a week. She’ll need the help when Leigh’s gone.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Be good for her,” he said. “Coffee?”

“We’d better.”

Gordon filled the machine with water and scooped the grounds into the filter.

“You know, Gord,” Dock said. “It’d mean the world to us to have a little steady work aside from alfalfa and hogs.”

“I know it.”

“Alfalfa’s not great. Everything else is glutted. Wheat’s too cheap.”

“It’s OK, Dock.” He wanted Dock to stop talking.

“I know you think you have responsibilities around here.” He nodded out the window toward the horizon, and held up a hand. “Hear me out. Try it for a year. It’s only a few hours away. You can come back whenever you need to. Or if I get stuck. You’ve got a good truck right?”

They laughed at that. That truck had had four transmissions in its five-hundred-thousand-mile life.

“Would give us a year to save a little from whatever work comes through here to get Annie and Emery back to her family in Kansas.”

“You’d go?” Gordon looked stricken.

“Here you were thinking you had to hold the town together like your father did, but the town’s disappeared on you,” Dock said. “You’re free.” He extended a hand, and Gordon gave him his own, and they shook. Dock’s face broke open in a smile of relief. “Boy howdy,” he said, “am I ever going to have Leigh Ransom on my good side. Guess who’s getting free peach pie for the next couple days before she leaves?”

Gordon handed Dock a coffee mug, and they looked outside. The morning was yellow and sere. Horseflies glinted over the browning turf and thick, needled weeds.

“Not much left to it, is there?” Dock said. All they could see from where they stood was the closed Gas & Grocer, one broken window and its lawn already overgrown with thistle. “Maybe it’ll get a second wind.”

“What’d you bring?” Gordon asked, looking at the trailer hitched to Dock’s rig.

Outside Dock had some rusted-out lattice and a broken axle on a tractor trailer — parts for a refurbished ATV for Emery.

“New used.”

Dock nodded. “You got it.”

“You know what Dad would’ve said.”

“‘That’s a good man.’”

They both laughed.

“Be expensive to do?” Dock asked.

“Only if you charge yourself. You’ll be the one doing it.” Both of these sentences were John Walker’s, verbatim, and Dock wanted to laugh but Gordon was serious. “Whatever you can’t find in the scrap metal pile we’ll have to purchase, and then there’s the cost of the electricity.”

“That’ll be it?”

Gordon nodded.

“How do we start?”

“Prep and clean up. That’ll take a full day.”

“Like your father.”

“Yes, sir. What do we need from the back?”

“Metal.” He grinned sheepishly.

“But what kind?”

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“You start. Any ideas you have.”

“Can we reinforce the ramps with angle iron?”

“We could.”

“But,” Dock considered, watching Gordon’s face, “rectangular tubing is stronger. Do the job right.”

Gordon nodded. “What else?”

“We’ll need enough plate for fenders.”

“Quarter inch?”

Dock stooped down and felt the ramp hangars. “Quarter inch here,” he said. “Eighth inch for the fenders.”

“Let’s go check the scrap,” Gordon said. “See what we’ve got.”

The pile was out back in a circle of blinding sun. A sheet of metal so rusted it looked like copper-colored eyelet; sections of cemetery gate; curled edges of warped, corrugated steel; a bicycle wheel; six bicycle frames and four spools of wire and railroad spikes, chain-link, two bulldozer buckets, hubcaps, trash bins, iron piping, steel piping. The pile was twelve feet wide and organized by metal and by function but still half as many feet high. Bright, upright stacks of sheet metal like mirrors flashed in the daylight and they held their forearms up against their eyes.

“He never threw anything away,” Gordon said.

Dock nodded at the pile. “Think we can use that?” He picked up a sheet of low carbon steel and miller moths lifted from beneath its shadow and batted softly against their faces and shirts.

“Perfect. How are you with a torch?” Gordon asked.

Dock unraveled the loops of gas hose and turned on the acetylene, then the oxygen. He checked the pressure, tapped the regulators with his index finger, and Gordon pointed to the wall. Dock retrieved two face shields and began again. He cracked open the valve on the torch, spark-lit the acetylene, and black smoke woofed up between the two men. He slowly cracked the oxygen to make the flame cleaner and shorter, and the smoke disappeared. The torch had its own distinctive roar. As he adjusted the oxygen down several blue points of flame jetted from the torch nozzle. When they were tight against the nozzle, the torch was ready to cut.

“Now let’s turn it off,” Gordon said, “and clean up some rust. You need to grind that area smooth and remove the paint from the area where we’ll have to weld. First job is always to prepare the joint — no rust, no paint, no dirt.”

“God help me, I know. But when we do start welding?” Dock returned to the torch and stepped toward the machine.

Gordon nodded. “Go ahead. Show me. Check your connections.”

“Check.”

Dock showed him: socks pulled up beneath his pants, which came down over the tops of his boots. Sleeves rolled down. Helmet on, hood lifted for the time being. He pointed to the lifted shop door. Ventilation. Dock pointed to the ground beneath his feet. Dry. He turned and showed Gordon his back pocket: work-duty gloves, ready to go.

“God,” Gordon laughed. “Where was I when you learned the routine?”

“School,” Dock smiled. “He put me through the wringer. Once I poured water over a couple spot welds on a broken johnny bar and I thought he was going to punch me in the gut.”

“You poured water on them? Mid-project?”

Dock winced. “Alright, alright. I know.”

“OK, next. What’s your material?”

“Gordon. You remind me so much of your dad.”

“OK.”

“Don’t feel bad about going. It’s the only choice,” he said. “And you know I’ll need you. There’ll be a long line of customers with money in their hands, right?”

“Sure, Dock.”

“And I’ll call on you.”

* * *

That night in the factory Gordon told Leigh about the morning with Dock, and that he’d get his things together. He was leaning against the brick wall and she took her place in his arms, her head against his chest, and took his hand in hers.

“Aren’t you happy?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, but was surprised not to feel anything as she said it. It used to be that her words created the feeling they described. Now she sensed the gap between the two, and wondered if it’d always been there. She wasn’t sure what she felt. “And you?”

He was quiet a full minute. “Happy.” He bumped his tennis shoe against hers.

Tonight he was a mile farther behind that line he’d never let her cross, had never crossed for her. When she closed her eyes, she couldn’t picture his face. Something else had claimed him. She thought maybe they could still outrun it.