Read Online Men in the Making by Bruce Machart - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bruce Machart
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one, because there's nobody around presently to tell you just how surely you're killing yourself. Thirty-nine years now you've been sucking on these things, and you guess you might as well pencil them into the
Can't Fix
side of the ledger. You lean against your truck awhile and blow smoke from your nose while the duster makes another low run, its engine drowning out the sound of the water you've set to flowing. And then it comes to you, something you haven't thought of once in your life without laughing. Until now. Somehow, even with the work all but done for the day and the sting of Malathion spray swirling familiar as cottonseed in the air, you don't so much as smile.
Fifteen years ago, when you could still polka three songs in a row without stopping to catch your breath, in the truckâbrand new that summer, and shiningâwith your better half, stuck in traffic on a trip to the city, your wife, she points and laughs at a billboard above. VASECTOMY REVERSAL, it reads. GUARANTEED
.
"Look, sugar," she says. "Your sperm or your money back." You smile at the thought of something so silly, a fix for something that's already been fixed, and you remember that weekend some years back, after the birth of your second son, when the doctors had sliced and tugged and tied and sent you home to sit on the couch with your nuts propped up on a towel full of ice, your newest, most daring shave itching like chiggers dropped down your underpants.
You ease ahead in traffic and shake your head. She puts a hand on your knee. She's getting older, the lines cut deeper in her knuckles, but the question she asks and the shine in her eyes let you know she's not too old. Not yet, she isn't. "So what do you think, my little gelding," she says. "Wanna untie the knot?"
It's in her eyes. It's there and you don't see it.
But now you do. Now that it's fifteen years too late. Now that your second cigarette is ashed down to the filter and there's nothing left but to drive home and let this water you've set to flowing drain itself into the earth. Now you see it just fine. Through all the long days and short nights, you see it. She's in the truck, telling you with her eyes. One more, she wants. A girl this time. Someone to dress up Sundays in frills and patent-leather shoes instead of Wranglers and ropers. And the answer you need is right there in the cab with you, no need to root through the toolbox out back in the bed, but you don't give it. No, you shake your head and write the whole thing off as a joke. You sit there in traffic with her for an hour and it never hits you. You stand all but naked on your back porch less than a year later. You're sipping coffee after pulling a calf into the world, you're making jokes and still her eyes won't light up. You're waitingâjust this week at the feed store loading docksâsmoking and spitting and swapping stories with Grady Derrich, your friend of forty years. You've been farming your whole life, you tell him, but you'll be damned if you can get a lasting smile to grow on that woman's face.
You're getting back into your truck, and you'll be damned, but you'd always believed she never lacked for what she needed. The crop duster makes one last pass out toward the blazing horizon, and you'll be damned.
We Don't Talk That Way in Texas
T HE SUMMER I turned nine, my mother packed my suitcase and drove me to the Greyhound station in downtown Tulsa. "I've told you everything I can about your daddy," she said, nodding to the bus that sat idling in the morning light. "You want to know more, you gotta go do some of your growing up where he did his."
I remember the worrisome way she held on to me, the way she waved only once before turning away and wiping her face as the bus pulled out of the station, and I remember the way she stood there a month later, holding back tears when my bus rolled back into town, as if she'd been standing there all the while I was gone, holding her breath, afraid that if she left
Can't Fix
side of the ledger. You lean against your truck awhile and blow smoke from your nose while the duster makes another low run, its engine drowning out the sound of the water you've set to flowing. And then it comes to you, something you haven't thought of once in your life without laughing. Until now. Somehow, even with the work all but done for the day and the sting of Malathion spray swirling familiar as cottonseed in the air, you don't so much as smile.
Fifteen years ago, when you could still polka three songs in a row without stopping to catch your breath, in the truckâbrand new that summer, and shiningâwith your better half, stuck in traffic on a trip to the city, your wife, she points and laughs at a billboard above. VASECTOMY REVERSAL, it reads. GUARANTEED
.
"Look, sugar," she says. "Your sperm or your money back." You smile at the thought of something so silly, a fix for something that's already been fixed, and you remember that weekend some years back, after the birth of your second son, when the doctors had sliced and tugged and tied and sent you home to sit on the couch with your nuts propped up on a towel full of ice, your newest, most daring shave itching like chiggers dropped down your underpants.
You ease ahead in traffic and shake your head. She puts a hand on your knee. She's getting older, the lines cut deeper in her knuckles, but the question she asks and the shine in her eyes let you know she's not too old. Not yet, she isn't. "So what do you think, my little gelding," she says. "Wanna untie the knot?"
It's in her eyes. It's there and you don't see it.
But now you do. Now that it's fifteen years too late. Now that your second cigarette is ashed down to the filter and there's nothing left but to drive home and let this water you've set to flowing drain itself into the earth. Now you see it just fine. Through all the long days and short nights, you see it. She's in the truck, telling you with her eyes. One more, she wants. A girl this time. Someone to dress up Sundays in frills and patent-leather shoes instead of Wranglers and ropers. And the answer you need is right there in the cab with you, no need to root through the toolbox out back in the bed, but you don't give it. No, you shake your head and write the whole thing off as a joke. You sit there in traffic with her for an hour and it never hits you. You stand all but naked on your back porch less than a year later. You're sipping coffee after pulling a calf into the world, you're making jokes and still her eyes won't light up. You're waitingâjust this week at the feed store loading docksâsmoking and spitting and swapping stories with Grady Derrich, your friend of forty years. You've been farming your whole life, you tell him, but you'll be damned if you can get a lasting smile to grow on that woman's face.
You're getting back into your truck, and you'll be damned, but you'd always believed she never lacked for what she needed. The crop duster makes one last pass out toward the blazing horizon, and you'll be damned.
We Don't Talk That Way in Texas
T HE SUMMER I turned nine, my mother packed my suitcase and drove me to the Greyhound station in downtown Tulsa. "I've told you everything I can about your daddy," she said, nodding to the bus that sat idling in the morning light. "You want to know more, you gotta go do some of your growing up where he did his."
I remember the worrisome way she held on to me, the way she waved only once before turning away and wiping her face as the bus pulled out of the station, and I remember the way she stood there a month later, holding back tears when my bus rolled back into town, as if she'd been standing there all the while I was gone, holding her breath, afraid that if she left
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