Hazy orange sunlight glanced through finger-width gaps in the barn wall, illuminating shiny particulates that hovered lazily in the air, like pixie dust.
My breathing had been raspy, interspersed with some grunts and coughs. Dust always seemed to have a bad effect on my lungs and sinuses, particularly in closed spaces.
Everything was so thick and trapped, here. Cloying. Dust stuck to every sweaty, exposed surface of skin, creating a waxy film that only a hot shower could clear away. If I so much as looked at the barn, though, it would be back.
I had tied a bandana around my neck, but that was beginning to feel like a symbolic gesture more than anything. Covering my mouth with it just made it harder to breathe, which was really my entire issue in the first place. Breathing.
Luckily, I was almost finished.
A brown and white mottled cow yelled at me from inside her pen. It was a long, fitful yell, rising in exclamation before tapering off dramatically, going quiet. Then she just looked at me expectantly with those giant cow eyes.
Cows didn’t “moo”. There wasn’t a single thing alive in the world that “moo-ed”. That was the most made-up thing I’d ever heard. Cows yelled. Mostly they yelled at each other. But once they realized that you were the magic man that brought the food, they yelled at you, too. It was just about the only thing they seemed to know how to do.
“Easy, Paprika.” I said. I liked to make up names for them on the spot. Usually, I forgot them and had to make up new ones, but that was part of the fun.
Paprika was packed in with twenty or so other cows that had wandered inside, none of them giving me quite the degree of attention as her. So she got the name. Paprika.
Flexing my fingers inside my work gloves, I grabbed the pair of bale hooks hanging off a nail on one of the support beams. I hooked them through the twine of the nearest bale of alfalfa hay. It was a janky-looking thing, with one of the rolls of twine edging its way off of one of the corners. I figured it would stay together for a couple seconds of movement.
It didn’t. As soon as the twine pulled off of one of the corners, the whole thing flipped and came apart. Alfalfa dust plumed, kicking up into the air, joining the dust and junk that was already there in a thick constellation of respiratory issues.
I coughed until I hacked something dark and green onto the barn’s cement flooring, like a bug’s innards on a windshield.
I caved, pulling the bandana up over my nose and mouth. I tied it tight against the back of my neck. I got down on my knees. I lifted up bits and flakes of the hay bale, standing and dropping them along the length of the feeder.
Paprika’s face was in there immediately, biting and chewing, breaking apart the chunks.
It took a few trips down on my knees and up again before I had the majority of it off the floor and into the feeder. I snatched up the bale hooks again to grab another bale. This one actually stayed together. I set it next to the feeder, snapped open my pocket knife, and cut each length of twine. They both made a loud POP sound as I slit them. The bale expanded lengthways, but stayed in order. I pulled it apart in thick flakes, neatly stuffing them into the feeder.
The glows of light bursting through slits in the side of the barn were getting low, darkening. Breathing heavy through my bandana, I wrenched off one of my work gloves. My bare hand glistened with lukewarm sweat. I wiped it on my jeans, pasting muddy dirt against my palm. Immediate regret.
I sighed, scraped my palm against a support beam, and reached into my jean pocket, pulled out my phone. I clicked the button on the side. The screen lit up the immediate area and glared my eyes. It was stark against the shadowy interior of the barn, and even the gleam of the rapidly descending sun.
The digital clock in the center of the screen read: 6:49 PM.
Underneath the clock was a notification of a text from Oscar. “Where you at?”
Crap. I was supposed to be on the road a half hour ago.
I stepped outside, into the cold April evening. My work boots crunched on the gravel path just outside the barn, leading past the garden and toward the house. I passed tomato plants, twisty grape vines, and the cool, slanted shade of some raspberry and blackberry bushes. The blackberries were nice to look at, but they were kind of a pain in the ass. They liked to get around, like weeds. Every year I had to help prune them back, keep them contained.
We usually didn’t sell what we grew in the garden. It was just some odds and ends to pick and use. It gave the space something to do. And Evelyn liked to look out the kitchen window and see stuff growing in the field.
The real money-maker was the milk. The milking shed was on the other side of the garden, connected to the same field as the barn. It was smaller than the barn, but every inch of it was put to use. It was industrial and efficient, packed with stalls, milking equipment, machines for filtering and processing the milk. I would be out there with Evelyn at four AM the next morning, just like I was every morning. Every morning since I’d arrived there, and probably every morning until the end of time. I would be out there before the sun was up, helping my aunt set up for the milking, and while she was putting the cows away I would be using a pressure washer to hose down the grates as quickly as possible so I could get on with my other chores.
The period in between my morning and evening chores was for homework. This freed up the evening so I could spend time with Oscar, who got to go to an actual school. Lucky dog.
As much as I would have preferred a normal life and a normal school—something like my old life anyway, before the collision on Interstate 90–it hadn’t been much of a choice. My dad’s side of the family were the type of people that believed kids needed to earn their keep. Evelyn was no different.
There had been that brief, intermittent, impossibly long period of physical therapy. My body had gone through serious trauma.
I never completely understood it. The more doctors tried to explain it, the more confusing it became. My body was broken, and wracked with pain, but in a way, so was my mind. They didn’t just need healing. They needed to be fused back together.
I’d never had to fight so hard for anything. At the time, I wasn’t consciously aware how I was even doing it. How do you push yourself, make your body do what’s necessary, when it doesn’t function like it used to? When it takes all your strength and willpower to cross the street, and even then it’s with crutches, and a caretaker walking you through it?
I say ‘caretaker’. At times, it was a professional at a physical therapy clinic. At times, it was Evelyn.
I got better. I got worse. I got better again. All the while, Evelyn was there, patient with me.
I just had to be patient with myself, living life in a sort of frantic tunnel vision. All I knew, every day, was that I had to get better.
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The romantic in me wishes I could say there wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t think about what happened on the Interstate. But sometimes—often, really—I would forget. It just didn’t feel like it was a part of my life. The same way that any current stage of life—the now—feels like it’s the only version of you that’s ever existed.
Of course, inevitably, it would come to me, like a door cracking open in a dark corner of the house, leading to a room full of objects I used to own. And I would be like, Oh...yeah.
When that happened, the memories would seize me
(all or nothing, baby)
and my mind was helpless but to replay those last few moments before the crash, right up to the milliseconds, when my mom was laughing and teasing my dad, and he was insisting that if they were going to listen to James Taylor, they needed to listen to all the hits, because it was “All or nothing, baby.”
All or nothing
All or
Nothing
All—
My hand was frozen on the knob connected to the back door of the house. The door was red. I helped paint it last summer. There was a small section of paint that had been chipped, somehow, and was barely connected anymore, falling away. I could see the white material underneath. I turned the knob.
I began taking off my boots and gloves in the mudroom. I couldn’t see the kitchen, but there was water running in the sink. The pungent garlic-and-tomato smell of homemade marinara wafted down the hall.
By the time I got to the kitchen, Evelyn was lifting a strainer full of pasta out of the sink. Her biceps flexed. Membranous muscles corded her sinewy arms.
She had that tired smirk as she looked sidelong at me, the one she got at the end of the day, when the work was finally done. A brief section of time where she would finally start to relax, winding down for bed. Even without the smile, I could always see it in her posture. At the beginning of the day, she was always straight-backed, tight and focused. Over the course of the day, that tension slowly receded, and she started to hunch, almost like she was curling in on herself.
She set the strainer down and leaned against the counter. “Your jeans are filthy. Change them before dinner.” She turned her back to me as she started dumping the strained noodles back into the hot, empty pot. “I’ve got some blackberry cobbler in the oven. Should be done any minute, now.”
“I’m meeting Oscar, tonight.” I unwound the bandana from around my neck. At some point I had hacked up a nice chunk of phlegm into it. I grimaced as I folded it up, balling it in my fist. “I’m already late, actually.”
Evelyn turned back around, appraising me. “Again?”
I nodded.
“Try not to be gone so late. You know I need you fresh for work in the morning.”
I nodded.
I started to step out of the kitchen, then stopped. “I was wondering if I could get another fifty bucks.”
Evelyn set down a ladle she’d been using to stir the pasta. “We already agreed on your allowance. You get paid again next week.”
“I know.” I said. “This would be an advance.”
It seemed like she was considering it, but that tension was slowly creeping back in her face. Wrinkles formed, making her a good ten years older than she actually was.
Money was always tight. If I wanted to know how bad it was on any given week, I just had to count those wrinkles.
Truthfully, I did feel guilty. It was my fault, after all. Years of treatment and physical therapy don’t pay for themselves. Working on the farm ten hours a day, every day, was the least I could do. Because of Evelyn, I had at least some semblance of a life.
Still, for me, it just wasn’t enough.
“What do you need extra money for, anyway?” She said. Alarmingly, one of her hands had moved down to her hip. Not a good sign. Not with her.
Take it easy, man. She’s just probing. Just trying to be a part of your life. She doesn’t know.
“Sometimes Oscar and I like to go out to the arcade.” I said.
It was a lie. We always went to the arcade. We hadn’t stayed in to hang out at Oscar’s house in months.
“We buy some sodas. Play Pac-Man. Visit with some of the kids in town.” Socializing. She’ll like that. It’s perfectly normal to want to get off the farm.
And yet, also a lie. They never got sodas. Never played Pac-Man. And they certainly didn’t visit with people in town.
“Besides, you know how the truck is. It’s a gas guzzler. Going in and out of town adds up.”
This was true. But not so true that I would need a hundred dollars in one week.
Still, Evelyn seemed to be considering it. Her face softened. Some of the wrinkles disappeared.
“Are you sure you didn’t...meet someone? You can tell me, you know.”
“I...have not.” I said, suddenly uncomfortable for this entirely new set of reasons. “But I will keep you posted...on...that.” Is it ever not weird when an adult asks a teen about their dating life?
Why does it have to be so awkward?
A smile broke out on Evelyn’s face. A wide, real smile. “It’s more than normal for someone your age. Just be sure to let me know if you do. And make sure you’re safe.” She wagged a sauce-covered spoon at me.
I nodded. I decided not to ask her what she meant by “safe”.
Maybe I should start going on dates. Maybe that would make my outings less suspicious.
But I knew I wasn’t going to do it. I needed money for completely separate reasons, and I wasn’t willing to start dividing my already limited time and resources. Not quite yet.
Not that there weren’t cute girls in town. And not that I hadn’t thought about it. But they usually weren’t the type of people who wandered into the arcade. And honestly it just seemed like a lot of effort.
Evelyn set down the spoon and folded her arms. “Next week.” She said. “I wish I could give it to you now, but we need that money for groceries. The budget just won’t stretch that way. Okay?”
“Got it.” I said. I gave a little, half-hearted thumbs up. “I’ll just have to make due.”
In a moment of surprising warmth and empathy—with Evelyn, you could never predict when one of those was going to strike—she grabbed me and planted a kiss on my forehead.
She frowned. “You’re still dirty.”
“That I am.”
Evelyn spat into the sink. “You better clean up. They might not let you into that arcade.”
“That I will.”
I hopped up the stairs.
I passed Evelyn’s room. The door was cracked open. Her wallet was on the mantelpiece. She never used a purse, just a black leather wallet, fat with gift and membership cards, a square lump in the tight fabric of her woman’s jeans pocket.
I froze in the hallway. Evelyn was still in the kitchen. I could hear the springy squeak of the oven door opening, then slamming closed.
I slid into her room and flipped open the wallet.
There were three fifties in there. I leafed through them, stalling. A month’s worth of grocery money, if we were careful.
Just grab it. You’re already this far. You need this money.
No I didn’t. I wanted it.
I hesitated, a fifty dollar bill in my hand.
“Kit?” Evelyn called from downstairs. I heard the floor creak at the bottom of the stairs.
My heart jumped up into my throat. I lurched out into the hallway, the fifty crumpled in my balled fist. “Yeah?”
Evelyn’s head poked around the corner. “You tracked some dirt in here. Be sure to clean it up, tonight.”
I nodded. “I will.”
Her head disappeared, and I was alone at the top of the stairs, still holding the fifty dollars.
My heart rate fell back down to a semi-normal cadence. The feeling of panic faded, but it was quickly replaced by something worse; a growing sense of guilt and dread. And a new revelation. It had taken this very act to see the situation in it’s full context.
I didn’t just want to synchronize. I needed to.
You’re being dramatic. Rithium isn’t mainstream, yet, but anyone who realized how special it is would understand why you need that fifty dollars. Even Evelyn.
It was a flimsy thought, but there was a spark of truth, to it. Rithium was special.
I decided to push those feelings aside. For now.
I would put it off. That was a normal, human thing to do, right? To put off problems? Even for “functioning adults”. Maxing out credit cards with no feasible plan to pay them off. Staying in a toxic relationship when they know full well they need to move out, or get divorced. It was the way of the world. Why not get used to it?
But the feeling lingered. Even after I’d showered, and changed. After I walked past Evelyn’s room on the way downstairs.
One last chance to be good, take it or leave it.
I left it.
After giving Evelyn a goodbye peck on the cheek while she watched Jeopardy on the tube TV.
After stepping outside under a pale violet sky and zipping up my jacket.
After slamming the pickup door and starting the engine, which thrummed loudly and made the seat vibrate, I put my palm on the gear shift, and a thought came to me. It was an insane, disjointed thought, but it was as clear in my head as if someone had said it out loud in the passenger seat next to me.
“It’s all or nothing, baby.”