A Fine Young Day

First Edition

Published by Capacity Press (Ray Succre)

Copyright Ray Succre 2012

Cover art. Andrew David King

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A Fine Young Day

ray succre

This book is dedicated to Mary Morrison,

a loving wife and excellent mother.

Thank you for all of it.

A Fine Young Day

One

Tom woke to dirt-speckled eggs fresh lifted from the bucket Jan left on the porch each few weeks. Cracked and prepared on the Westinghouse oven, an ounce of water to level. Then a sovereign glass of milk as the breath from his slow sense waking left the blunt warmth that formed morning. Nine became nine-ten and there was television to watch. Some. The news was born swift and he ate hard boiled eggs incautious of heart conditions and allotments of salt. Meg went for the mail and came back with nothing in her hands.

The television news showed the Earth had shaken down tufts of India. Quake. Nerves a-trigger in crust. Indian soil pursed in fulgent kisses that rolled men down hills into an ancient panic. The television was full of shaking ground and illness, natural terrors and the various masks of domestic collapse. Capital was missing; money had become less with the coffers of most, and some profits were absent from the great industrial houses. The television lived in many places but these were always elsewhere.

She wore the hounded dress with seams drawn tight, fabric agglomerated in the inward places and taut with the rounded others. She had not rid her life of those garments her most recent body had begun to reject. Weight carried size amidst the deceleration of her skin, an age-induced relief of her drawn sinews into loose flesh and soft drapery. She had found no mail and mentioned the red metal flag.

Still up.

Comes late now, Tom said.

Mail comes whenever the postman brings it, Meg replied, so there’s no late until it’s been a whole day.

I guess so. Nice of Jan to bring these eggs.

Oh, they have so many, though.

They must get sick of eggs. I do.

You’re eating breakfast, aren’t you?

I know. I said it was nice.

Lips full as leaderboards and wary of certain meets against other lips. His. Meg’s head on a glide away from his own and the egg was too salty and perhaps his breath of egg and salt had caused their morning kiss to veer. The rise and dip of chins. Almost, but no touch. She entered the kitchen on a mangled thought of money. Behind him was the electric lift and drop of people against earthquake. India.

The waiting on cards in the mail was an unnecessary patience. Another of his birthdays was only a day off, but he cared little for hastily sent cards from the birthday aisle of department stores. The importance was not in receiving them, but responding to them. This was his reason for patience. A card in the mail meant a letter in return, something Meg enjoyed. It was a brighter day when Meg was pleased with something. The news flickered and he finished his milk watching her bullish rump as she cleaned beneath cans in a cupboard with damp cloth. She did this in a slower form of urgency. Each movement of her arms sudden and certain, yet her posture patient and settled. Age had taken the show that was her life and placed it in reruns. A sore spot here, a popping sound there. A series of hairstyles, just so, a few years each, repeating their order from the previous decade.

Ants had unlocked the sill for an invisible meal of sugar. The soda droplets were missed weeks ago and had no color. Easy to miss. The ants ate where all fell. Hunger was an unavoidable crib to life. Kept it going. Raised it up. The ants were swift. He admired their courier habit, watched the line carry off bits of sweet, minuscule debris. As the morning quickened, he ate his breakfast eggs, drank from the warm cup, and checked that his clothes were clean and still fit him.

He left the house and blended into work, had the day fair, stopping at the half to think over his breakfast, the cholesterol. His lunch contained neither egg nor salt. He drove home when there was no more work for him. This had become the crude of his latest days: Work ran out often, and with it the clock.

The driveway. Stepping out. Gravel beneath boots and the good, metallic scent of the idle truck. Red flag down. The mail had come, but only to ask him pay a thing. Key sounds and steps up the porch.

How was it? she asked.

Same. Scrounging for material. Pull those nails to save the wood we threw out last month.

Was there a party?

No. Birthday’s tomorrow.

Well, you’re off tomorrow. Thought they’d do it today.

You know there’s no reason for any of that. Parties.

But I thought they might. They did it last year.

Well, most of those guys are laid off, anyway. Only a few left out there. So no party. And I like it that way. No attention. Okay, just work.

The ants had gained compatriots and numbered in the stars. He watched his wife a little in the evening and then watched the ants harking to their nest through inconspicuous trails in the wall of the house. Wife on fire as he wanted her. Crawl of ants. He uttered something.

What?

I said we should find a way to keep these out.

Oh, I need to get a can of Raid, she said, End of Summer snuck up on me.

So clean. Workin’ like that. Maybe we should start feedin’ em. Whole colony of pets.

Don’t be silly, Tom. Unsanitary, is what they are.

The husband and wife ate a botched shepherd’s pie that had burned along the bottom. Phrasing entered his mind and he went over approaches. He had managed to pull for the two of them well enough, until things started drying out at work. He had fought against her taking a job in the past, but certain modes of this newest working world were designed for two. Kanell Materials was a husk in the sod. He knew this. His guilt was aside, but not enough to ask her just yet.

I burned it, she said, annoyed.

Burnt part tastes kind of nice, though.

They stayed near each other the night, slight talk and boredom approaching a late hour. They retired or just found their way toward the covers. She slept beneath cool sheets after some time of tuning out the sound of the bedroom television. He could not sleep, so watched copious action and magnanimous sex disguised as history. A plot based on a true story, meaning an imaginary tale. He was awake long after.

She turned and said something to someone who was not there. It was his birthday. He went quietly through the few channels and waited through commercials. Sheets growing too warm and the bed a busted instrument. Milliseconds between commercials making too much dark. On the way to work, day after his birthday, he would leave a little early and take a drive through town. Stop in at a place or two. Perhaps they were looking for someone down at Riter’s. Fourteen years had passed but they had always liked her down there.

A barrel out front held seedlings set in the Spring and forgotten. He wondered if his mother, arriving tomorrow, would recognize the barrel. Taken from her back yard as trash years ago. Kept. Sanded. Stained. His wife’s porch-side flower pot. He rose from bed and turned the television off. She surprised him by waking for several moments and a dazed statement:

Good, keeps me awake.

Then she was out again and he crawled back under. Minutes of blank time. Dissipating breath and domestic dark. He turned in his blankets and then atop her. A munificent congress of their capitols was so welcome. There was no presence of need for her, and little want in him, but the circumstance was beside him, and there were moments in the middle age, though rare, when the existence of mere circumstance was enough to ask a man to feel something. She woke and was so pretty. Her look of disruption faded into welcome. He entered her. Inebriety. Near this and past thin windows dotted in dripped old paint, a broad cow’s lull ranged. She would never say it, but they did not do this often enough. He spent quick with a nudge of shame and then closed his eyes on his side of the bed. Sleep.

Night failed to cool the outlying meadow and there were belligerent toads unusually warmed that brought him from his drift some time later. He would not allow himself to be upset his father was coming. The guise was a trip for their simultaneous birthdays, arranged by Meg and his mother, but the truth was always shook Tom up a little. There was no reason for his father to visit. Larry had no regard for Tom, and Tom had no wish to have that sensation come to visit, even if it only did so every few years. His father would speak little and infer nothing. The old man would be a bag of sand perched in a chair. Tom even knew which chair his father would take to sitting in while visiting; whatever chair a man of the house would sit in. Likely Tom’s own.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes clear, left the bed, the room. Two in the morning would be coffee. Why not? It was a special occasion, his heart was sound, and the night’s sleep was too distant to be found again. He opened the living room at the drapes. Overcast night but a hint of sky. Up the road he could see Maro’s house lit behind living room blinds. Seemed neither of them could sleep. Unless it was Maro’s wife in there. Could have been Jan studying her police books late. Criminal Justice was several of her days a week and the community college had grown busy with the occupational programs. Maybe things got shuffled from all the people, or Jan’s classes were just getting harder. Maybe she read nights now.

Tom lit the dining room and looked over bank statements. When satisfied with the clarity these caused him, the Sun had risen. He showered slowly with extra time. He was neither tired nor himself. She woke to his voice.

What time is it?

Still dark. Couldn’t sleep, he said.

Early?

Fishing early. Tide’s out.

I wouldn’t.

Need to use the checkbook, he explained.

Well you’re over on the… uh huh.

To buy some bait. I need to use the checkbook.

What?

Account’s clear; I checked.

Oh, the roof isn’t sturdy. Just stay off there.

He tilted his head and lifted the rare, amused smile. Her puffy night-dim face a resemblance to little girl pout. In essence exactly that.

You’re still asleep, he said, Okay.

No, you’re... Oh, you don’t know about it.

Back to sleep, mumbly. I’m gettin’ the checkbook.

Do whatever you want. I’m over here.

That was a dream’s permission, and it was enough. The book was beneath the laundry basket in a small folder of bills. There had been no reason to carry the checkbook on him after that first demotion. Cable was cut down to the free channels. He wore the same clothes twice before she ran the wash. Freezer’s meat went from steak to chuck. And fishing was for food now, not leisure.

No one needed a foreman when the workers were let go. They needed a man to do the work of four. That man was paid little. That or nothing. He had chosen little. He tore loose a check and folded it into his front pocket beside the key for the side-yard shed. The first check in two months now snug against his chest, he left the house, walking through the morning, still the night, to the shed where he kept his musty tackle. Maybe he could take the bucket of eggs Jan left on their porch every few weeks and start selling them. What shame if he was caught. Jan would judge him and Maro would offer money. Meg would be humiliated though not so much as Tom.

He discovered the light blown out. His bag of gear was easy to find on the floor near the entrance but he had no visibility in which to look for the hooks. He thought he had last set them on the dusty wood bench near the back, but could not find them there. No glint off trim plastic packaging. The road was dark a mile. Even Maro and Jan were finally dormant in a dim house.

Tom peered and felt about but came away with neither hook nor spare line. Perhaps he could buy hooks with the bait. They had food enough for awhile. Not enough for the bills, but the penalty was the same for being fifty dollars under as sixty. Maybe he could treat himself to bait, hooks, and even a six pack of beer. Who said he couldn’t? His parents would arrive some time before the light faded. There was dinner for four to think over and trout was a good meal, if he could catch any. Hooks with bait. Yes, and everyone knew bottled beer helped a man sit long and still enough to catch fish. Return deposit on the bottles, too.

Cheating with his perspective. She would be upset seeing that check missing from the register. More since he had taken it on sleep permission, his first time perpetrating this odd crime. A sneak. What if he didn’t catch any fish? He’d only be half-drunk on money they did not have. He was lucky in that she had taken it easy on him lately, regarding his job and the thinning of their finances. It would be cheap of him to muddy this favor by spending money now precious on a senseless and short-lived buzz.

When the trouble at work first started in on him, she had done the same, thought he needed to confront Lee about the demotion. Ask for his original wage back. Demand it. Meg didn’t know Lee, however. Getting more pay out of Lee Kanell was asking a busted bootlace to mend itself. The money wasn’t there to ask for, and Lee had it far worse than Tom did. Than any of them. Tom’s wage, shortened as it had been, came directly from the poor sale of Lee’s house, money he had thrown quickly back into Kanell Materials. There was no room to demand anything. There was only room to thank him.

Though the hard place Tom was in still pressed him toward an approaching, difficult decision, of leaving a job he knew and respected with the fervent hope he could find another, things had somewhat quieted while at home. It existed over their heads, in their breaths, always present in the rooms of the house, but Meg had been good enough to cease talking about the demotion. That was done, but he knew she talked about this in her head. He could see the thoughts and what they ate when she looked at him.

The money was bad. He had been the provider. Nothing was being provided but free eggs from Jan’s chicken coop up the road. The lessening of income inferred things about Tom. Frustrating things. The electricity was going to be shut off with another missed payment. The days were slight and the nights were cold. He had become the days. Meg had become the nights. Their companionship was most awake when rummaging in physical love and talking over the dealings of money. They did not take part in these things often. He wanted a beer, just one. It would reward him with the nostalgia of previous beers, things he had drank in modes of damn-it-all or simple relaxation. How he longed for either of those sensations to overcome him, just a little, even for an hour.

Another approach to brown glass bottles:

Fuck it. It’s my birthday.

The truck. One retread. Frame hearty as an iron skillet. A wide-wheeled arc to the right, some minutes distance to the left turn through Camas Swale’s outskirts and the eventual arrival at Latimer’s Grocery and Bait. Stop in. Pick up, for services rendered, walk out. Then the truck again. Haven Lake Road with talk radio sitting beside him in the cab. Bait on the seat beside, the single beer as give-and-take, clutch jittering but its teeth in the gear well enough.

The road through the wood was unsound and miring. Once a swamp, Camas County had been structured around the old route from Eugene to Lincoln, as a small-trade resting point in the insensate and wild Oregon path. Years had once digested much good luck from this inhabited rest area and the word ‘prosper’ became a flag of resident-speak. That was an era that did not see the Depression’s mull-headed approach and kept singing and trading. This ended slowly.

The road to Haven Lake was like the history of the town into collapse. Ambling, hole-spangled, the mud and moss creeping over the edges and propagating their kin in the cracks. The county had long ago subsided, fell into its small holes and let the fungus into every crevice. Tourists and those near retirement would come to look for this in time. A truck lot evolved for long-haulers. The old-folks home. Then Camas High School’s football team went 4A and started chanting go-fight-win. Things happened from time to time, but not much. In the swale was a small town nearly sickened beneath the peat and slowly jotted into the birth of an industry all about trucks and the chip they could haul. The trucks drove their loads to the southern Oregon coast, down into Coos Bay, where the chip was set into those big Korean ships that crossed the Pacific. Tom was reliant on a town life that lived on wood, in a swale surrounded by it.

The live talk was political and felt rushed. Radio full of lobbyists and anger and professions of party thought. What someone needed to change or keep the same. The someone was a president. The change was common. The anger, always welcome. Talk radio accompanied him to the rim of the lake, expansive hole of water flattened out before him like saran atop a deadly deep bowl. He parked. Walked. Bait and beer in one hand. Old rod. The talk of the lake was incurious and settled for anything.

The fish were few but captured beneath. They could not leave their muddy tomb any more than he could leave the fateless town. He tugged his cap down against his forehead and scratched briefly beneath an eye. Gentle laps of liquid stalled before his feet