sagging; they looked like they might not make it through the coming summer, but Dennis was determined to see how long they’d last. The cardboard container that held the three remaining full cans of beer lay on the splintered porch floor, within easy reach. Two empties were crumpled up beside it.
“Returnable cans be damned! Who needs the fucking nickel?” Dennis whispered as he tilted his head back and guzzled from the can he held.
When he patted his shirt pocket, feeling for his cigarette pack, his hand froze in mid-motion. Letting out a sigh that hung like a frosted mist in the night air, his fingers clamped around the small piece of paper and pulled it free. In the dim light from the kitchen window, the piece of paper looked sickly gray; but earlier that day, when Bo Wilson, his foreman at the mill, had handed it to him at the end of his shift, it had been a different color.
Pink.
Bright pink.
A pussy color , Dennis had thought at the time.
“ NOTICE OF TERMINATION ”
That’s all it said at the top, both earlier today and now, as Dennis unfolded the paper and looked at it in the fading light. There were more words in the space below, but they all added up to the same damned thing. He’d been fired . . . “down-sized,” as Wilson had repeatedly said.
“Bullshit . . . bull shit . . . bull- fucking -shit!” Dennis sputtered.
His hand crinkled the paper into a tight little ball, which he threw over the porch edge and off into the darkness. He heard it land with a dull plop somewhere in the mud slick that passed for his driveway this time of year.
“You say somethin’, honey?” Sally, his wife, called out from the kitchen. She had the window open just a crack to let in the fresh, spring breeze.
Dennis twisted around to look at her through the window. She was wearing that same damned baggy gray sweater she had worn all winter, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she stood at the kitchen sink, washing the supper dishes. She was half turned around, and he could see the watermelon-sized swelling of her belly. Her thin, mousy brown hair dangled down over her pasty, pimply forehead. The dim light made her look much older than her twenty-two years.
“Ahh, no. I didn’t say shit !” Dennis said, scowling as he took another swig of beer. After draining the can, he crumpled it up and dropped it to the floor with the other empties before taking a fourth can from the box. He had popped the top and was just leaning back for a long pull when he heard . . . music.
Jumped-up Jesus H. Christ! he thought, turning again to look into the kitchen.
Has she got that friggin’ rock ‘n roll station from Auburn on again? Before she knows it, she’ll wake up Dennis Jr., and it will be another night of the baby howling and her complaining how she’s so big now she can hardly move. And who will get puked and peed on? Why, me, of course.
“Yeah, good ole’ Dennis,” he whispered, and then spit viciously. “Christ on a cross! I might’s well be up all figgin’ night, now that I ain’t got no goddamned job to go to!”
But as he listened, the music grew steadily louder, and before long Dennis realized that it wasn’t coming from inside the house; it was coming from Moulton’s Field, across the Androscoggin River. Dennis leaned forward in his lawn chair and peered out over the porch railing, almost smiling as the music drifted to his ears out of the darkness.
“What the hell? Why, that’s friggin’ calliope music!”
Through the line of trees along the river’s edge, he could make out a line of headlights, winking and bobbing as the caravan of trucks and trailers spread out across the wide, flat field. Taillights flashed, mixing with the glow of headlights to stain the nearby river with bloody red and goldenrod-yellow smears. The calliope music didn’t sound like the real thing. It sounded more like a tinny recording, blaring from a speaker system mounted on one of the trucks.
“Well I’ll be
“Returnable cans be damned! Who needs the fucking nickel?” Dennis whispered as he tilted his head back and guzzled from the can he held.
When he patted his shirt pocket, feeling for his cigarette pack, his hand froze in mid-motion. Letting out a sigh that hung like a frosted mist in the night air, his fingers clamped around the small piece of paper and pulled it free. In the dim light from the kitchen window, the piece of paper looked sickly gray; but earlier that day, when Bo Wilson, his foreman at the mill, had handed it to him at the end of his shift, it had been a different color.
Pink.
Bright pink.
A pussy color , Dennis had thought at the time.
“ NOTICE OF TERMINATION ”
That’s all it said at the top, both earlier today and now, as Dennis unfolded the paper and looked at it in the fading light. There were more words in the space below, but they all added up to the same damned thing. He’d been fired . . . “down-sized,” as Wilson had repeatedly said.
“Bullshit . . . bull shit . . . bull- fucking -shit!” Dennis sputtered.
His hand crinkled the paper into a tight little ball, which he threw over the porch edge and off into the darkness. He heard it land with a dull plop somewhere in the mud slick that passed for his driveway this time of year.
“You say somethin’, honey?” Sally, his wife, called out from the kitchen. She had the window open just a crack to let in the fresh, spring breeze.
Dennis twisted around to look at her through the window. She was wearing that same damned baggy gray sweater she had worn all winter, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she stood at the kitchen sink, washing the supper dishes. She was half turned around, and he could see the watermelon-sized swelling of her belly. Her thin, mousy brown hair dangled down over her pasty, pimply forehead. The dim light made her look much older than her twenty-two years.
“Ahh, no. I didn’t say shit !” Dennis said, scowling as he took another swig of beer. After draining the can, he crumpled it up and dropped it to the floor with the other empties before taking a fourth can from the box. He had popped the top and was just leaning back for a long pull when he heard . . . music.
Jumped-up Jesus H. Christ! he thought, turning again to look into the kitchen.
Has she got that friggin’ rock ‘n roll station from Auburn on again? Before she knows it, she’ll wake up Dennis Jr., and it will be another night of the baby howling and her complaining how she’s so big now she can hardly move. And who will get puked and peed on? Why, me, of course.
“Yeah, good ole’ Dennis,” he whispered, and then spit viciously. “Christ on a cross! I might’s well be up all figgin’ night, now that I ain’t got no goddamned job to go to!”
But as he listened, the music grew steadily louder, and before long Dennis realized that it wasn’t coming from inside the house; it was coming from Moulton’s Field, across the Androscoggin River. Dennis leaned forward in his lawn chair and peered out over the porch railing, almost smiling as the music drifted to his ears out of the darkness.
“What the hell? Why, that’s friggin’ calliope music!”
Through the line of trees along the river’s edge, he could make out a line of headlights, winking and bobbing as the caravan of trucks and trailers spread out across the wide, flat field. Taillights flashed, mixing with the glow of headlights to stain the nearby river with bloody red and goldenrod-yellow smears. The calliope music didn’t sound like the real thing. It sounded more like a tinny recording, blaring from a speaker system mounted on one of the trucks.
“Well I’ll be
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