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Title: Ollie Ollie, In Come Free (2/4)
Part one.
The last room he’d rented in the city, a dingy loud-at-all-hours place right above a bar, got snapped up by some struggling artist a few weeks ago, or so the owner said. It took a bit more searching through the papers and around the city but Dan found a tiny place a couple days later, a set of rooms two stories above a diner that needed another dishwasher for some of the hours he had free from the fields. It was a bit farther from where he wanted to be, but cost about the same, and he’d learned a long time ago how to get by with less: less food, less sleep, less everything.
He still celebrated the way he always did when he got a bit of space to himself, which was a bowl of chocolate ice cream at the nearest place selling it, that this time happened to be underneath his bedroom. This time, the ice cream was in a real ceramic bowl, with a real metal spoon – there’d been a couple of times both had been plastic, matching the feel of the tables and chairs. This place was a better sort of eatery, a few shades above a greasy spoon that knew what its customers wanted to eat and didn’t need to make a fuss serving it to them. He liked that about it, and when he told the server he smiled back and told him to wait one minute, and Dan gave him his special twinkle-in-the-eye grin when he got back with a tiny plastic cup of rainbow sprinkles. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothin’. Just enjoy ‘em.”
“I will.”
He’d had chocolate bars before – one of the first things he’d bought right out of the gate, right after he’d left – but there was something special about sitting down to ice cream, one of his favorite things already. It being chocolate made that much more special. There’d been just a few times he’d asked his parents about ordering it and they’d explained why it wasn’t for their family, and the idea of teenage rebellion through chocolate just hadn’t occurred to him since it wasn’t outright unclean the way oysters and cheeseburgers were. Mostly it was just another food his family didn’t eat. Not until he came along.
It took him three weeks of living away from home to get the courage to walk into a drugstore completely across town from campus and put down two bits for a cheap little bar that he gobbled down in an alleyway, and he brushed his teeth over and over when he got back to the dorm just in case Jim could smell it on his breath. It was the first thing he bought when he got across state lines, just because he could, and he still remembered the first time he had chocolate as ice cream, right after he’d come home for summer after freshman year and went to the annual carnival on his own, stood in line and waited for people traveling through town to serve him a scoop of the stuff.
The diner wasn’t as hot and humid as the fairgrounds were, and he was sitting down and not trying to hide from anyone, not more than he normally did. This was better stuff, too, not as grainy and probably made with real cream instead of some fake powders, and he didn’t need to lick off his fingers once he was done. But it took him back to straw under his feet and troupe of pixies dancing on stage and that same rich, full taste with every single bite. He ate it slow, to make it last, and scraped the bowl as clean as he could when he was done.
It was nearly eight weeks too late to be birthday ice cream, but it tasted great just the same, good enough that he smiled all the way up the stairs and through the shower, and kept licking over his teeth even after he brushed them, trying to catch the last traces of its taste.
He took Alpert up on his invitation to go out two weeks later, after plenty of snatched conversations, the same kind they’d used to first get to know each other last year. They ended up at a bar near downtown, somewhere much more expensive than most of the places he went when he wanted someone to serve him a drink – live music playing from a decent local band and a few couples out on the dance floor.
“I like to watch them dance,” Alpert explained when Dan asked him why he liked this place, with a still-around-the-eyes grin of his own. Dan could tell there was more to it than that, but understood enough not to press.
The bar’s snacks were better, too, and whether or not Alpert didn’t notice or mind Dan was eating most of the basket’s contents, he didn’t much care. “So really, where have you been?”
“Around? Out? Let’s go with ‘around.’”
“I’m serious here, I really did not think you were coming back.”
Dan took a long pull off his beer. “I didn’t know if you’d meant it. I mean,” he fumbled to make Alpert’s sour expression change back, “you have so many people coming through, they’re all working for you, you know every one of them, but I’ve worked for guys who’ve said they’d have work for me next year and I could tell they said it to everyone.”
“And you think I’m just like everyone else?”
“I think you do a decent impression.” That got his smile back, and a cheerful clink of bottle to glass before both got drained and slammed down onto the bar. There was another bottle, then another, and Dan had to politely refuse an invitation out onto the dance floor so he could get to bed at a decent hour, which made Alpert laugh and call for a final round and a taxi to send Dan back home.
He woke up feeling fine, almost tempted to come in late but decided against it – even if the boss was his friend that didn’t mean anything when it came to meeting the bottom line – and caught the bus that let him off a half-mile from the offices and walked the rest of the way, reminding himself the same way he did every morning to see if there was anyone living near him who’d be willing to give him a ride to work.
The offices weren’t as busy as they’d been for the past couple of weeks, and Dan was quickly sorted into his own tasks for the day, more work that machines could do but humans and animals could do with more care. He caught a glimpse of Alpert talking to someone, probably a dealer, and let the moment slide away as he got swept along between the trees out to the edge of the planted fields, where clearing the land was more of a priority than wondering who his boss and friend was chatting with, never mind that he’d somehow gotten to thinking of him as both of those things.
It turned out to be a woman selling beehives, not to rent them for a few weeks like Alpert had done before but install them permanently on the property. There was the possibility of Alpert expanding them to a side business next to the nectarines if the bees did well enough on their own. Permanent hives had been something Alpert had been looking at for a couple of years now but only just got the time, money and certification to pursue. When Dan next talked to Alpert, he was smiling about it, more than ready to start blabbing on about terms Dan knew he’d never hear outside of this sort of office, the kind that was out on the fields and right underneath a tiny apartment set-up that let the person living there rush out into the fields at a moment’s notice. Just in case an arm got caught in a motor, or an angry dog had run into the driveway, and watch while one of his itinerant workers manage to calm it down before he could run back inside and get his gun.
As ways to get to know his boss went, Dan had a hard time thinking of a more memorable one.
-
Getting into the routine was easy enough, always having a place to go and some sort of responsibility waiting for him when he had a moment – he could catch a few minutes to do nothing in the fields but never for long since there was always someone else around. The idea of quitting dishwashing occurred to him a couple of times but never seriously, and never stayed for long; it was close enough to where he lived that he could stagger upstairs, shower, and fall into bed a half-hour after his shift ended, and besides, the pay from that went to making sure he had a place to keep a bed for a while. Alpert paid better than some others he’d worked for, but he needed that money for winter. Or what passed for winter in the South. If it didn’t get cold enough to for real snow then some part of him knew it wasn’t real winter, just the fallow part of the year. And it was still a ways off, plenty of time to save up for it.
Still, it would’ve been nice to get some reading done. It’d been ages since he’d been able to pick up a book, and the time he got off from the sinks and orchard wasn’t enough, and just going to a movie wasn’t the same.
Laurence stood beside him at the dish sink and laughed deep as he rinsed out another link in the endless chain of coffee cups. “Who’s got time for books anymore?”
“Vernita’s working on the Rings trilogy.”
“Vernita’s part-time, but okay, one.”
“Marlon’s got that book group for skiffy stuff.”
“Marlon ain’t a dishwasher.”
“So then it’s just us that don’t have time.” He plunged his hands back into the suds. “Us lowly dishwashers.”
“Yeah,” Laurence smiled again, “I guess.”
At least it was easy to talk to everyone, in the kitchen and on the fields – he wasn’t the only one in either place working all the time, and he wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t be around a few months from now. Dishwashers came and went. Janitors filtered in and out. Waiters and waitresses were a constant flow. Some stayed, more than he’d thought at first, but enough that it didn’t faze anyone when he said he wouldn’t be here this time next year. Most of the people in the kitchen itself had been there for a long time, and had the burns and scars to prove it, marking their hands and arms in all sorts of constellations, weird star charts of tiny injuries and bragging rights about fishing stuff right out of the pan and grabbing something right off the fire and always slipping with the same knife in the same spot.
Dan remembered how his hands had blistered and bled and callused and cracked again over his first few weeks out working, not backbreaking work like digging a ditch, but rough work still for hands that hadn’t done more than rake leaves or shovel snow. He’d tried wrapping them in an old shirt and that’d helped a bit, biting off the callouses at first helped him feel better, breaking down and buying some lotion worked all right but not for long, and in the end he’d given up and learned to live with rough hands. It was just before Passover his second year out that he’d remembered and realized his grandfather, his dad’s dad, had hands like this. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten hugged by him or see his face but he could suddenly remember when he was five and moved up North, running his small hands over the rough patches and old, smoothed calluses from so many years of building houses, and even his paws were rough, the scars carrying over. He knew that even if his grandfather was alive he probably wouldn’t ever see him again, and if by some miracle that next year in Jerusalem they got to share the four cups together he’d be able to talk to him about his own hands and earning his life from them.
He’d read about earning his life through his hands in textbooks and old novels, and it wasn’t until he’d started doing it that he’d understood what they’d been talking about. Thinking back on them while walking back to the bus stop after another long shift made him consider how much they’d gotten right and wrong. He’d have to look some of them up when he got the time, but they seemed to be pretty much dead even.
Some days he wondered what his brothers were doing, if they’d gone off to med school and a juicy internship like they’d wanted, if they were earning their lives with soft hands, if they’d ever gone out West like they’d talked about as soon as they’d all gotten their drivers’ licenses and maybe settled down out there once they’d arrived, or if they were still on the East Coast somewhere to be close to Mom and Dad to help hold down the fort in case he came back. It’d been eleven years since he’d seen his family but he knew how his brothers would act. Even if he’d left them a note before he’d left, it wouldn’t do shit to keep them from doing that.
Well, maybe Reuben. But not Jimmy. Oh, hell, not Jimmy.
-
The bees did their job just fine and then some, buzzing around and ignoring the people testing the soil, checking the blossoms and bark for the flowers that’d just come in. The summer humidity was doing its job too, and some nights he’d spray himself with the faucet’s nozzle in between plates and bowls, which nearly always got a laugh from the person working next to him, maybe Laurence, maybe Nelson. He always shook the water from his hair – he needed a haircut something terrible by now – and made little growling noises for extra effect. It almost always got a laugh, sometimes a slap on the back, and maybe a cup of coffee gratis, which he’d always gulp down hot no matter what time of night it was. But he usually just bought one up at the counter if the bus was early and he had a few minutes.
“So how’s work out there?” Len – who still sometimes joked about the sprinkles – offered the pot; Dan pushed the mug over, letting him fill it back up. Bottomless was worth the extra fifty cents.
“Long.” He poured some cream in, let it mix, and sipped. “Picking’s coming up, and that’s always a lot of work, and Alpert’s got the buyers coming in to check the stuff out early.”
“He sells them to canneries, right?”
“Some, not a lot. He wants to sell them to supermarkets, you know, ride the organic produce wave, maybe make his own jam line if the bees work out.”
Len whistled. “There’s no way you could pay me to work next to bees.”
“Scaredy-cat.”
“For things that sting, damn straight.”
“Still not over those wasps?”
“Hornets, Dan, hornets. Oh,” the bell over the door jingled, more late-evening customers coming in, “Hold that thought, hey there, can I get you anything?”
“Just coffee.” The voice made Dan turn around on the stool. He sighed and immediately pulled his shoulders up and back, not in a mood for it but without a choice.
“Hey!” He grabbed his cup and went over to their table. “What’re you doing here?”
“You know them?” Len asked.
“We work together at Alpert’s. Mike and Eddie.”
“Pleased t’meet you.”
“You too,” Eddie nodded. Mike took the menus as Dan sat down and Len moved off.
“So what brings you here?”
Eddie shrugged. “Change of scenery. And you talk about this place sometimes, so we thought, why not give it a shot.”
“If you went out drinking, where’s everyone else?”
“Aw, we’re not drinking, we’re here to eat. Then we’re drinking. You wanna join in?” Dan jerked his thumb over towards the kitchens and Eddie nodded. “Ah, gotcha.”
They kept talking, not over much, and when Len came back he didn’t need to stand there long to get any attention.
“You do breakfast all day, right?” Mike asked.
“As advertised.”
“I’ll get the pancakes, some hash browns, and a glass of orange juice.”
“Ham-and-cheese omelet, coffee with two creams one sugar, and a side of toast. Dan, you want anything?”
“Oh, un, uh, sure.” He shook his head to clear it. “Wait, is this…”
“We gotcha,” Mike said.
“Oh,” Dan grinned. “The breakfast burrito, no bacon, side of hash, to go.”
“Coming right up.” He clicked his pen and headed off to the back.
“Man, I’ve never seen you eat bacon,” Mike chided.
Dan laughed, took another sip of now-cool coffee. “I’ve seen where pigs sleep, it’s where they shit. I’m not eatin’ something that lives in that.”
Eddie smiled. “If you had some you wouldn’t care.”
“So I won’t, then.”
“And if we gave you bacon without you knowing it and told you it was something else?”
“Then you’d be lying.” Both of them laughed at that. By the time the food came out, his shift was five minutes away, so he just had Len stash it in the fridge until he could have it for breakfast and said good-night to everyone before tying on his apron and getting back to the suds.
-
Last year Alpert had explained how harvesting was different from one farm to another depending on what it was. He’d described the huge orchards that sold to supermarkets around the country, the smaller ones that got by on tourists and local supermarkets, and as he’d ladled out another serving of dinner – “it’s the least I can do for you after what you did today, you’re not saying no” – in his tiny kitchen he’d talked about being careful about expansion and the cost of getting too big.
This year Dan knew what to expect, not just from harvesting fruit before, but from having harvested fruit in these orchards before. There were still a few littering the ground here and there, some ripe and some not, leftovers from the last round of harvesting. He kicked at one that the bees hadn’t gotten to, a rock-hard piece that’d fallen out of someone’s basket, and glanced over at the rising moon. Full and rising low on the horizon; he’d been restless this week and that was just one of the reasons why. Maybe he ought to take Alpert up on his invitation again; he was too busy these days to get drunk, something he’d almost always found the time to do when he’d had a place to get drunk in. At least tonight he could finally take him up on his offer for dinner at his place.
Thankfully, as he found out just after sitting down in the kitchen, Alpert kept a few beers in his fridge, one of which was uncapped and set down on the table with no questions asked. Alpert didn’t get one for himself, waiting to fill the teakettle and turn on the burner before sitting down across from Dan.
“So the bees are working out,” Dan said.
“Yeah, they’re, they’re doing their job.”
“You don’t need a license for them?”
“Not to keep them – if I want to sell the honey, yeah, the state government’s got its regulations.” He laughed. “Eight months ago I didn’t even know there was the word ‘apiculture.’ Isn’t that a great word?”
“A word just for beekeeping?” Alpert nodded, and Dan took another drink. “That’s a pretty good word. Maybe not as useful as ‘nimble,’ but if the situation calls for it, then I guess it’s just the right one.”
“Nimble?”
“Or ‘joyful,’ whatever. Something that comes up more often.”
“Point taken.” He got up just as the kettle went off, grabbed a mitt and poured himself a cup of something rich and spicy-smelling. “It’s one of those words you don’t know you need until you know it.”
“I’ve known a few words like that.”
Alpert smiled, sitting back down and wrapping his hands around the cup. “English always surprises me. It’s got so many ways to put words together, and it’s always so full of things, but it doesn’t always have the right words for, you know.” Dan nodded, giving Alpert the space to finish his thought. “People that aren’t typical people.”
“Most of English isn’t English. It steals from everything.”
“That is true.” Alpert took a sip. “Just, I know if other people knew the right words, even if they’re not English, things would be a lot easier.”
“Some things don’t translate one-for-one.” He took another long drink of the beer, almost finishing it.
“Yeah.” They drank in silence for a while, sipping quietly, before a timer dinged and shook them out of the trance. Alpert got the chicken out of the oven, turned off the rice cooker, and finished setting out the dinner he’d promised. They kept talking through it, about this and that and other things, but never getting back to that question of the words for being almost normal, not even during dessert and a couple of rounds of cards.
“No way, I’m not letting you catch the bus.” Alpert smiled, grabbed his keys, and gently prodded Dan down to his car.
“They’re still running,” Dan protested out of habit.
“This time of night you’ll be out there for at least a half-hour before one comes and I can get you home by then. Come on.” He held the door open for Dan, who stopped grumbling as soon as he got in. Four beers wasn’t a lot for him anymore, but getting into a moving vehicle right after the last drink of the night wasn’t something he did much, everything moving around so much more thanks to the alcohol. He was glad Alpert didn’t want to talk, happier to lean his head back and to the left, stare out the window and watch the stars turn into lampposts turn into streetlights turn into apartments, flowing into each other, cars next to them going their own places with their own people inside. But not almost-people inside. Not even almost-almost-people inside. He was drunk enough to know for sure.
“Night, Dan.”
Dan smiled. “Good night, Isabel.”
Alpert laughed. “Go get some sleep.”
“I hope to.” He closed the door and waited to see Alpert drive off before heading inside and upstairs, not bothering with a shower, stopping just long enough to strip everything off before getting into bed. He’d learned how to sleep with his shoes on a long time ago, but messing up sheets – even pre-stained eight-buck-sets from thrift stores – still bugged him. He knew Jim and Reuben always slept on top of the covers when they were on all fours. It was kind of like that.
He flipped over, staring at the ceiling fan making quiet circles, and thought about Alpert and the way he’d pulled his shirt up and pants down to show Dan his oophorectomy scars, not looking him in the eye but talking clearly, and Dan had recognized that tone of voice. Everyone in his family used it when they had to explain themselves all over again in words other people understood. He’d gotten his own speech memorized by the time he was eight and knew his parents’ explanation for him by heart too. Being a special person who couldn’t do what it was that made them special – English didn’t even have the right words for Isabel –
The next thing he knew it was morning and definitely time for breakfast with almost no time to eat. He skipped it to shower, waiting until lunch to stop his stomach’s grumbling. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember how to not eat for a few hours. Long days at the end of summer meant more work hours, and maybe he should’ve thought ahead and brought a change of clothes with him yesterday, but sleeping on Alpert’s couch felt like it’d be too much, at least while Alpert was still paying him. Dinner had been different, dinner had been a chance to lose a night’s pay at the sinks and trade that for some time with a friend, and maybe he could do that again only without the trade. The season – the part of it that mattered to the people in the fields – would be over in a few days, everyone talking about it, a general buzz just like the bees, and when that was done there wasn’t anything keeping him at the sinks if he gave a couple weeks’ notice. Less than that if he didn’t want to be polite; there’d been a couple of times when he just hadn’t shown up at all, more than ready to move on.
He smiled as he reached for another bright nectarine. There’d been that one time unloading trucks, and another where he’d had enough of the monkey suit and said good-night at the end of a shift and left his mop in the closet, plus that busboy thing. Plus the dorm.
He scowled, tried to get his mind back to work. There wasn’t enough time for nostalgia when there were so many trees that needed attention, plus loading the trucks up, and it was a Saturday so there’d be the dinner rush crowd. The part of him that’d reminded him about the dorm corrected it to Shabbos, and he growled and tried to think of something else entirely. That movie theater in town, and that drive-in he’d passed coming in – he could work with that. He hadn’t been to the movies in a long time, and he had enough that he could afford a show or two before heading off somewhere else again. And even if he didn’t make it to them this year they’d be here when he got back.
It didn’t feel odd to him to think about it that way, and he kept on thinking about that all through the day and into the night, at the sinks next to Vernita, who kept on about her new cat, and then through the shower and while he lay back just like last night, staring up at the fan and its flickering shadows. Of course he’d be coming back. He had a commitment to his friend. Not just for dinner again next week after the whole harvest was over.
He knew he wouldn’t come back right here or try to see if his last place would be open the next time Alpert needed hands for his orchards. There were other good places to look next year. He smiled at the silly idea of asking Alpert if he could stay with him, of course he’d say yes, of course everyone would get the wrong ideas about them living together for the wrong reasons. Dan raised a hand, traced the line of the fans with a finger around and round, then rolled over and pushed his head into the pillow, trying not to think about where he’d end up sleeping.
The next night he skipped dinner to make it to the liquor store before it closed, and drank out of a cheap plastic tumbler in what he guessed was supposed to be the living room. It was a tiny place, the sort of place for someone like him who didn’t plan on really living in it. He snorted at the bad joke and poured another drink; he didn’t remember why thinking a cup would be a good idea.
If he stayed somewhere more than a few months he could get real glasses, more than two plates and one bowl, better than fifth-hand furniture and a chair by a window and who knew, maybe he could hang something on a wall and leave his packs in a closet. He could shed the old habits he’d worked so hard to make like winter fur, stop worrying about milk cartons and police broadcasts and telephone pole flyers and everything else. It’d been thirteen years. He could stop. He could stop any time he wanted to.
-
It felt different this time. He’d gotten a bus to take him away and started walking as soon as he got off, just like he’d done last year, using the stars to make sure he knew where he was going and sleeping during the day, like he’d always done even if switching over was harder this time. But there was always something behind him now. Not literally, not the way he’d used to use it, but – it was literal if he faced the right direction, because if he turned around and started walking he’d end up back where he started. He’d always been able to do that for home, and now he could do it for Alpert’s orchards too.
He knew he was spending time without any return on it now, just waiting. He’d never really waited before, and he didn’t really know if he liked it. Time moved the same it always did, moons rising and falling and growing fat and shrinking away while he waited for something he knew would be coming. That part was different too, something coming. Dan didn’t know if he should go early or not, cut off the time and go ahead, or if he ought to keep on waiting for spring to come and for everything to be ready for him.
Somehow from seeing an advertisement in a window he ended up raking leaves in a graveyard with three weeks’ good pay in his pocket and the promise of more if he stayed on through winter. It was going to be a cold one – the regular groundskeeper liked to keep the radio playing in the little kitchen in the funeral home, and from how much it’d been raining the weathermen predicted at least two inches of snow over the weekend. Dan almost laughed his coffee out his nose.
“Whoa, whoa,” George passed him a napkin once Dan stopped coughing. “Easy there. Wouldn’t mind telling me what’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Dan wiped his nose off, took the offered glass of water and had a sip. “It’s not that funny.”
“Someone’s gonna need to mop that up.”
Dan looked down at the cup and sighed before getting up to get a towel. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Just that, where I grew up, two inches was what you’d get on a Tuesday.”
“Just because we don’t get it much doesn’t mean we don’t know what snow is.”
“I just think they’re making a big deal of it.”
“Two inches is a lot when you don’t get much at all.” George poured himself the last of the pot and tipped some half-and-half in while Dan kept wiping. “And it still gets cold.”
“Yeah, I know, and yeah, six inches for last year.” He gulped down the last of his coffee, put the rag and cup in the sink. “Two inches a weekend is still something back East, but – maybe if it stuck around, but it’ll be gone by Tuesday.” He looked over at George, who nodded and shrugged after a moment of consideration.
“I can see how you think that,” George said as they made their way to the toolshed, pushed the door open with a deep grunt and pulled the chain to turn on the light.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “And I know ‘cause it doesn’t stick it’s a big deal since there’s never gonna be three feet of it in the front yard.” He made a show of smiling. “You get used to what you grow up with.” That got an honest laugh from George – just one, but a good one.
He kept thinking it over throughout the Protestant section, wondering about the conversation as he raked leaves off someone’s daughter. It didn’t make him angry that he didn’t fit in perfectly, but it was still a problem that other people needed to make a problem out of it. So what if he’d grown up with snow and didn’t eat pigs if he could help it, so what if he was just trying to make his way. Some things weren’t worth the energy but some things he couldn’t stop thinking about even if he knew that. He’d gotten used to what he’d grown up with in more ways than one.
Tonight was definitely a night for a decent bottle. He leaned against the rake and stared up at the late November clouds making their way across the sky. There’d been a couple of funerals last week, plus the local witches rented out in the gazebo on Halloween, and he’d wished he’d been able to hand out candy, but people didn’t go trick-or-treating in the sort of building he lived in now. He went back to his raking, smiling at the memory of his mother always checking her kids’ candy hauls, making sure everything that came into the house was safe. They’d lived inside an eruv and she checked anyway, and until he found out from other kids at school that their mothers didn’t do that he didn’t think it was weird. He wondered if the kids living in town had their mothers check, too, and if they did, why they did. There wasn’t anyone around here who cared about the lunar cycle the way his family did and how that messed with what they could eat, but there might be other good reasons.
Yeah, a good-sized bottle of something strong, and a chocolate bar.
True to the weathermen’s word, they got two inches by Sunday morning, and the morning was spent cleaning off the driveways and paths. George bundled up three layers thick and laughed when he saw Dan arrive in his regular work clothes without anything else.
“I suppose you’re warm enough in that?”
“No way,” Dan replied with his fake-answer smile, playing to George’s attitudes to Dan being from up North. It worked, leaving George shaking his head and trudging to get the dust-covered shovels. Dan never did it much, not if he could help it, but he didn’t think he could explain he wanted to really feel snow again.
It took a while for muscle memory to come back, but when it did, the work started to go faster and easier. The whole day would’ve been spent cleaning off the grounds back to front if the embalmer hadn’t shown up around ten with her two kids in tow. Dan was working on the footpath and looked up as she got them out of the car. “Hey there, Vanessa.”
“Oh, Dan! Look,” and that was a bad sign from her, no hello at all, “I don’t want to ask you if you’re busy, but –”
“Hey Danny!” Rico cried.
“Baby, please, hold a minute. Look, Dan, Harper Denmen came in yesterday and he’s downstairs for the viewing tomorrow, and I can’t do all the work he needs then, but Rafael’s got his ankle and his mother’s not –”
“It’s okay, Vanessa. I can get them.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she clasped her hands together and turned to her sons, “Rico, Gus, you’ll be okay with Dan for the afternoon, right?” The two boys shouted ‘yes’ from a nearby snowbank. She smiled big at Dan, who jerked his thumb towards the main grounds.
“Lemme tell George first. I’ll get them in a minute.”
Looking after the restorer’s kids for an afternoon when the rest of her family was busy wasn’t exactly in his job description, but George’s brief pep talk had plenty of wiggling room. Besides, it was a chance to play in the snow on billable hours, and he’d forgotten how soft it was when it was still new. Rico and Gus had been by their mom’s workplace a few times, never around the bodies, but enough to know Dan by now, and know him as the younger of the two groundskeepers and by that logic the one more fun to talk to. Dan grinned at them and showed them how to pack up snowballs and push little forts together and dig out mazes and racetracks for the little toy cars they had in their pockets. Later, sitting on a cleared-off bench with the sun still hiding behind thin gray clouds, Dan explained how much snow fell each winter where he’d grown up and the way he and his brothers had dug tunnels and built forts inside it, and how they’d rushed outside without stopping to put their shoes on when they saw the first snowfall of each year. He didn’t mention that he was the only one who didn’t run outside covered in fur, but made sure the rest of what he said was true.
They ended up eating lunch outside, only coming inside long enough for Dan to have a cup of coffee spiked with hot chocolate and Gus and Rico to have their hot chocolate straight-up. By the time Vanessa was done with Denman her sons were pretty well tired but more than ready for more snow, and both she and Dan laughed watching them roll around in it, failing at making snow angels and angry they didn’t come out like they did in TV and comics. Dan had to get down and show them how to do it right, and once they’d made a couple their mother put her foot down and they had to go home. It was only about two, so he ended pulling another few hours of the sort of work he was brought on to do – thankfully away from George, since he didn’t feel up to talking to him. Not right now.
It’d been nice to have the excuse to play in the snow. He knew he could go to that park near his place after work, or just stay on the grounds when his shift was over, but knew it wouldn’t be the same as really playing in it the way he’d done for the first time in years. Some things were better when they were with someone else. He paid for it that night, shivering in the shower as soon as he’d warmed up enough – he’d felt cold during the day but hadn’t realized he’d been that cold, too happy to feel snow in his hands again. That got him to laugh, flexing his fingers to get the pins-and-needles out of them, as he thought about how Jimmy and Reuben would only start to get comfortable down here in weather like this. Dan bunched his hands into fists and shook them out, trying to think where he could get a decent pair of gloves. Maybe just borrowing them from George for a few days would be enough. Even if it didn’t snow again it’d stay cold, and even if it wasn’t going to stay this cold he might as well keep his fingers safe. His mother always took special care in winter to make sure he stayed warm.
Winter always made him miss home the most, and it’d been nice to talk about it without having to check himself every third word that he didn’t let something secret slip out.
Still, word got out – the snow wasn’t even gone by the time Vanessa had talked to her sons and then to George, who waited for Dan to pour himself a cup of coffee to say, “You didn’t tell me you had brothers.”
To his credit, Dan didn’t snort anything out, just finished his sip. “Yeah, two.”
“Oldest? Stuck in the middle?”
He smiled without feeling it. “Runt of the litter,” and was a little disappointed that George hadn’t picked up on the hint. That was surprising; he always hated having to take twenty minutes to explain himself, but for some reason wished he had to do it now. Instead, they stayed quiet while the newsman went on about the herds of centaurs immigrating into the Ukraine peninsula from the Russian steppes and what that could mean for global agriculture.
Halfway through re-salting the driveway, he wondered if it was because explaining meant George would know, and no matter how he took the information then it wouldn’t be something he kept to himself anymore. Maybe. Sometimes he’d run through scenes and plans of what he’d say if someone asked, or if someone looked like they’d be able to handle it, ways to be cool about giving the information, but maybe there wasn’t a good way to do it. At least Alpert could pull down his pants or ask someone to use his first name. Dan didn’t have any shortcuts. Which was some of the problem with that, because if he was like the rest of his family he could demonstrate – but if he was like the rest of his family, he knew he wouldn’t be here in the first place, holding his hand up to his face, watching the sun finally peek out between the clouds.
Part three.
The last room he’d rented in the city, a dingy loud-at-all-hours place right above a bar, got snapped up by some struggling artist a few weeks ago, or so the owner said. It took a bit more searching through the papers and around the city but Dan found a tiny place a couple days later, a set of rooms two stories above a diner that needed another dishwasher for some of the hours he had free from the fields. It was a bit farther from where he wanted to be, but cost about the same, and he’d learned a long time ago how to get by with less: less food, less sleep, less everything.
He still celebrated the way he always did when he got a bit of space to himself, which was a bowl of chocolate ice cream at the nearest place selling it, that this time happened to be underneath his bedroom. This time, the ice cream was in a real ceramic bowl, with a real metal spoon – there’d been a couple of times both had been plastic, matching the feel of the tables and chairs. This place was a better sort of eatery, a few shades above a greasy spoon that knew what its customers wanted to eat and didn’t need to make a fuss serving it to them. He liked that about it, and when he told the server he smiled back and told him to wait one minute, and Dan gave him his special twinkle-in-the-eye grin when he got back with a tiny plastic cup of rainbow sprinkles. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothin’. Just enjoy ‘em.”
“I will.”
He’d had chocolate bars before – one of the first things he’d bought right out of the gate, right after he’d left – but there was something special about sitting down to ice cream, one of his favorite things already. It being chocolate made that much more special. There’d been just a few times he’d asked his parents about ordering it and they’d explained why it wasn’t for their family, and the idea of teenage rebellion through chocolate just hadn’t occurred to him since it wasn’t outright unclean the way oysters and cheeseburgers were. Mostly it was just another food his family didn’t eat. Not until he came along.
It took him three weeks of living away from home to get the courage to walk into a drugstore completely across town from campus and put down two bits for a cheap little bar that he gobbled down in an alleyway, and he brushed his teeth over and over when he got back to the dorm just in case Jim could smell it on his breath. It was the first thing he bought when he got across state lines, just because he could, and he still remembered the first time he had chocolate as ice cream, right after he’d come home for summer after freshman year and went to the annual carnival on his own, stood in line and waited for people traveling through town to serve him a scoop of the stuff.
The diner wasn’t as hot and humid as the fairgrounds were, and he was sitting down and not trying to hide from anyone, not more than he normally did. This was better stuff, too, not as grainy and probably made with real cream instead of some fake powders, and he didn’t need to lick off his fingers once he was done. But it took him back to straw under his feet and troupe of pixies dancing on stage and that same rich, full taste with every single bite. He ate it slow, to make it last, and scraped the bowl as clean as he could when he was done.
It was nearly eight weeks too late to be birthday ice cream, but it tasted great just the same, good enough that he smiled all the way up the stairs and through the shower, and kept licking over his teeth even after he brushed them, trying to catch the last traces of its taste.
He took Alpert up on his invitation to go out two weeks later, after plenty of snatched conversations, the same kind they’d used to first get to know each other last year. They ended up at a bar near downtown, somewhere much more expensive than most of the places he went when he wanted someone to serve him a drink – live music playing from a decent local band and a few couples out on the dance floor.
“I like to watch them dance,” Alpert explained when Dan asked him why he liked this place, with a still-around-the-eyes grin of his own. Dan could tell there was more to it than that, but understood enough not to press.
The bar’s snacks were better, too, and whether or not Alpert didn’t notice or mind Dan was eating most of the basket’s contents, he didn’t much care. “So really, where have you been?”
“Around? Out? Let’s go with ‘around.’”
“I’m serious here, I really did not think you were coming back.”
Dan took a long pull off his beer. “I didn’t know if you’d meant it. I mean,” he fumbled to make Alpert’s sour expression change back, “you have so many people coming through, they’re all working for you, you know every one of them, but I’ve worked for guys who’ve said they’d have work for me next year and I could tell they said it to everyone.”
“And you think I’m just like everyone else?”
“I think you do a decent impression.” That got his smile back, and a cheerful clink of bottle to glass before both got drained and slammed down onto the bar. There was another bottle, then another, and Dan had to politely refuse an invitation out onto the dance floor so he could get to bed at a decent hour, which made Alpert laugh and call for a final round and a taxi to send Dan back home.
He woke up feeling fine, almost tempted to come in late but decided against it – even if the boss was his friend that didn’t mean anything when it came to meeting the bottom line – and caught the bus that let him off a half-mile from the offices and walked the rest of the way, reminding himself the same way he did every morning to see if there was anyone living near him who’d be willing to give him a ride to work.
The offices weren’t as busy as they’d been for the past couple of weeks, and Dan was quickly sorted into his own tasks for the day, more work that machines could do but humans and animals could do with more care. He caught a glimpse of Alpert talking to someone, probably a dealer, and let the moment slide away as he got swept along between the trees out to the edge of the planted fields, where clearing the land was more of a priority than wondering who his boss and friend was chatting with, never mind that he’d somehow gotten to thinking of him as both of those things.
It turned out to be a woman selling beehives, not to rent them for a few weeks like Alpert had done before but install them permanently on the property. There was the possibility of Alpert expanding them to a side business next to the nectarines if the bees did well enough on their own. Permanent hives had been something Alpert had been looking at for a couple of years now but only just got the time, money and certification to pursue. When Dan next talked to Alpert, he was smiling about it, more than ready to start blabbing on about terms Dan knew he’d never hear outside of this sort of office, the kind that was out on the fields and right underneath a tiny apartment set-up that let the person living there rush out into the fields at a moment’s notice. Just in case an arm got caught in a motor, or an angry dog had run into the driveway, and watch while one of his itinerant workers manage to calm it down before he could run back inside and get his gun.
As ways to get to know his boss went, Dan had a hard time thinking of a more memorable one.
-
Getting into the routine was easy enough, always having a place to go and some sort of responsibility waiting for him when he had a moment – he could catch a few minutes to do nothing in the fields but never for long since there was always someone else around. The idea of quitting dishwashing occurred to him a couple of times but never seriously, and never stayed for long; it was close enough to where he lived that he could stagger upstairs, shower, and fall into bed a half-hour after his shift ended, and besides, the pay from that went to making sure he had a place to keep a bed for a while. Alpert paid better than some others he’d worked for, but he needed that money for winter. Or what passed for winter in the South. If it didn’t get cold enough to for real snow then some part of him knew it wasn’t real winter, just the fallow part of the year. And it was still a ways off, plenty of time to save up for it.
Still, it would’ve been nice to get some reading done. It’d been ages since he’d been able to pick up a book, and the time he got off from the sinks and orchard wasn’t enough, and just going to a movie wasn’t the same.
Laurence stood beside him at the dish sink and laughed deep as he rinsed out another link in the endless chain of coffee cups. “Who’s got time for books anymore?”
“Vernita’s working on the Rings trilogy.”
“Vernita’s part-time, but okay, one.”
“Marlon’s got that book group for skiffy stuff.”
“Marlon ain’t a dishwasher.”
“So then it’s just us that don’t have time.” He plunged his hands back into the suds. “Us lowly dishwashers.”
“Yeah,” Laurence smiled again, “I guess.”
At least it was easy to talk to everyone, in the kitchen and on the fields – he wasn’t the only one in either place working all the time, and he wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t be around a few months from now. Dishwashers came and went. Janitors filtered in and out. Waiters and waitresses were a constant flow. Some stayed, more than he’d thought at first, but enough that it didn’t faze anyone when he said he wouldn’t be here this time next year. Most of the people in the kitchen itself had been there for a long time, and had the burns and scars to prove it, marking their hands and arms in all sorts of constellations, weird star charts of tiny injuries and bragging rights about fishing stuff right out of the pan and grabbing something right off the fire and always slipping with the same knife in the same spot.
Dan remembered how his hands had blistered and bled and callused and cracked again over his first few weeks out working, not backbreaking work like digging a ditch, but rough work still for hands that hadn’t done more than rake leaves or shovel snow. He’d tried wrapping them in an old shirt and that’d helped a bit, biting off the callouses at first helped him feel better, breaking down and buying some lotion worked all right but not for long, and in the end he’d given up and learned to live with rough hands. It was just before Passover his second year out that he’d remembered and realized his grandfather, his dad’s dad, had hands like this. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten hugged by him or see his face but he could suddenly remember when he was five and moved up North, running his small hands over the rough patches and old, smoothed calluses from so many years of building houses, and even his paws were rough, the scars carrying over. He knew that even if his grandfather was alive he probably wouldn’t ever see him again, and if by some miracle that next year in Jerusalem they got to share the four cups together he’d be able to talk to him about his own hands and earning his life from them.
He’d read about earning his life through his hands in textbooks and old novels, and it wasn’t until he’d started doing it that he’d understood what they’d been talking about. Thinking back on them while walking back to the bus stop after another long shift made him consider how much they’d gotten right and wrong. He’d have to look some of them up when he got the time, but they seemed to be pretty much dead even.
Some days he wondered what his brothers were doing, if they’d gone off to med school and a juicy internship like they’d wanted, if they were earning their lives with soft hands, if they’d ever gone out West like they’d talked about as soon as they’d all gotten their drivers’ licenses and maybe settled down out there once they’d arrived, or if they were still on the East Coast somewhere to be close to Mom and Dad to help hold down the fort in case he came back. It’d been eleven years since he’d seen his family but he knew how his brothers would act. Even if he’d left them a note before he’d left, it wouldn’t do shit to keep them from doing that.
Well, maybe Reuben. But not Jimmy. Oh, hell, not Jimmy.
-
The bees did their job just fine and then some, buzzing around and ignoring the people testing the soil, checking the blossoms and bark for the flowers that’d just come in. The summer humidity was doing its job too, and some nights he’d spray himself with the faucet’s nozzle in between plates and bowls, which nearly always got a laugh from the person working next to him, maybe Laurence, maybe Nelson. He always shook the water from his hair – he needed a haircut something terrible by now – and made little growling noises for extra effect. It almost always got a laugh, sometimes a slap on the back, and maybe a cup of coffee gratis, which he’d always gulp down hot no matter what time of night it was. But he usually just bought one up at the counter if the bus was early and he had a few minutes.
“So how’s work out there?” Len – who still sometimes joked about the sprinkles – offered the pot; Dan pushed the mug over, letting him fill it back up. Bottomless was worth the extra fifty cents.
“Long.” He poured some cream in, let it mix, and sipped. “Picking’s coming up, and that’s always a lot of work, and Alpert’s got the buyers coming in to check the stuff out early.”
“He sells them to canneries, right?”
“Some, not a lot. He wants to sell them to supermarkets, you know, ride the organic produce wave, maybe make his own jam line if the bees work out.”
Len whistled. “There’s no way you could pay me to work next to bees.”
“Scaredy-cat.”
“For things that sting, damn straight.”
“Still not over those wasps?”
“Hornets, Dan, hornets. Oh,” the bell over the door jingled, more late-evening customers coming in, “Hold that thought, hey there, can I get you anything?”
“Just coffee.” The voice made Dan turn around on the stool. He sighed and immediately pulled his shoulders up and back, not in a mood for it but without a choice.
“Hey!” He grabbed his cup and went over to their table. “What’re you doing here?”
“You know them?” Len asked.
“We work together at Alpert’s. Mike and Eddie.”
“Pleased t’meet you.”
“You too,” Eddie nodded. Mike took the menus as Dan sat down and Len moved off.
“So what brings you here?”
Eddie shrugged. “Change of scenery. And you talk about this place sometimes, so we thought, why not give it a shot.”
“If you went out drinking, where’s everyone else?”
“Aw, we’re not drinking, we’re here to eat. Then we’re drinking. You wanna join in?” Dan jerked his thumb over towards the kitchens and Eddie nodded. “Ah, gotcha.”
They kept talking, not over much, and when Len came back he didn’t need to stand there long to get any attention.
“You do breakfast all day, right?” Mike asked.
“As advertised.”
“I’ll get the pancakes, some hash browns, and a glass of orange juice.”
“Ham-and-cheese omelet, coffee with two creams one sugar, and a side of toast. Dan, you want anything?”
“Oh, un, uh, sure.” He shook his head to clear it. “Wait, is this…”
“We gotcha,” Mike said.
“Oh,” Dan grinned. “The breakfast burrito, no bacon, side of hash, to go.”
“Coming right up.” He clicked his pen and headed off to the back.
“Man, I’ve never seen you eat bacon,” Mike chided.
Dan laughed, took another sip of now-cool coffee. “I’ve seen where pigs sleep, it’s where they shit. I’m not eatin’ something that lives in that.”
Eddie smiled. “If you had some you wouldn’t care.”
“So I won’t, then.”
“And if we gave you bacon without you knowing it and told you it was something else?”
“Then you’d be lying.” Both of them laughed at that. By the time the food came out, his shift was five minutes away, so he just had Len stash it in the fridge until he could have it for breakfast and said good-night to everyone before tying on his apron and getting back to the suds.
-
Last year Alpert had explained how harvesting was different from one farm to another depending on what it was. He’d described the huge orchards that sold to supermarkets around the country, the smaller ones that got by on tourists and local supermarkets, and as he’d ladled out another serving of dinner – “it’s the least I can do for you after what you did today, you’re not saying no” – in his tiny kitchen he’d talked about being careful about expansion and the cost of getting too big.
This year Dan knew what to expect, not just from harvesting fruit before, but from having harvested fruit in these orchards before. There were still a few littering the ground here and there, some ripe and some not, leftovers from the last round of harvesting. He kicked at one that the bees hadn’t gotten to, a rock-hard piece that’d fallen out of someone’s basket, and glanced over at the rising moon. Full and rising low on the horizon; he’d been restless this week and that was just one of the reasons why. Maybe he ought to take Alpert up on his invitation again; he was too busy these days to get drunk, something he’d almost always found the time to do when he’d had a place to get drunk in. At least tonight he could finally take him up on his offer for dinner at his place.
Thankfully, as he found out just after sitting down in the kitchen, Alpert kept a few beers in his fridge, one of which was uncapped and set down on the table with no questions asked. Alpert didn’t get one for himself, waiting to fill the teakettle and turn on the burner before sitting down across from Dan.
“So the bees are working out,” Dan said.
“Yeah, they’re, they’re doing their job.”
“You don’t need a license for them?”
“Not to keep them – if I want to sell the honey, yeah, the state government’s got its regulations.” He laughed. “Eight months ago I didn’t even know there was the word ‘apiculture.’ Isn’t that a great word?”
“A word just for beekeeping?” Alpert nodded, and Dan took another drink. “That’s a pretty good word. Maybe not as useful as ‘nimble,’ but if the situation calls for it, then I guess it’s just the right one.”
“Nimble?”
“Or ‘joyful,’ whatever. Something that comes up more often.”
“Point taken.” He got up just as the kettle went off, grabbed a mitt and poured himself a cup of something rich and spicy-smelling. “It’s one of those words you don’t know you need until you know it.”
“I’ve known a few words like that.”
Alpert smiled, sitting back down and wrapping his hands around the cup. “English always surprises me. It’s got so many ways to put words together, and it’s always so full of things, but it doesn’t always have the right words for, you know.” Dan nodded, giving Alpert the space to finish his thought. “People that aren’t typical people.”
“Most of English isn’t English. It steals from everything.”
“That is true.” Alpert took a sip. “Just, I know if other people knew the right words, even if they’re not English, things would be a lot easier.”
“Some things don’t translate one-for-one.” He took another long drink of the beer, almost finishing it.
“Yeah.” They drank in silence for a while, sipping quietly, before a timer dinged and shook them out of the trance. Alpert got the chicken out of the oven, turned off the rice cooker, and finished setting out the dinner he’d promised. They kept talking through it, about this and that and other things, but never getting back to that question of the words for being almost normal, not even during dessert and a couple of rounds of cards.
“No way, I’m not letting you catch the bus.” Alpert smiled, grabbed his keys, and gently prodded Dan down to his car.
“They’re still running,” Dan protested out of habit.
“This time of night you’ll be out there for at least a half-hour before one comes and I can get you home by then. Come on.” He held the door open for Dan, who stopped grumbling as soon as he got in. Four beers wasn’t a lot for him anymore, but getting into a moving vehicle right after the last drink of the night wasn’t something he did much, everything moving around so much more thanks to the alcohol. He was glad Alpert didn’t want to talk, happier to lean his head back and to the left, stare out the window and watch the stars turn into lampposts turn into streetlights turn into apartments, flowing into each other, cars next to them going their own places with their own people inside. But not almost-people inside. Not even almost-almost-people inside. He was drunk enough to know for sure.
“Night, Dan.”
Dan smiled. “Good night, Isabel.”
Alpert laughed. “Go get some sleep.”
“I hope to.” He closed the door and waited to see Alpert drive off before heading inside and upstairs, not bothering with a shower, stopping just long enough to strip everything off before getting into bed. He’d learned how to sleep with his shoes on a long time ago, but messing up sheets – even pre-stained eight-buck-sets from thrift stores – still bugged him. He knew Jim and Reuben always slept on top of the covers when they were on all fours. It was kind of like that.
He flipped over, staring at the ceiling fan making quiet circles, and thought about Alpert and the way he’d pulled his shirt up and pants down to show Dan his oophorectomy scars, not looking him in the eye but talking clearly, and Dan had recognized that tone of voice. Everyone in his family used it when they had to explain themselves all over again in words other people understood. He’d gotten his own speech memorized by the time he was eight and knew his parents’ explanation for him by heart too. Being a special person who couldn’t do what it was that made them special – English didn’t even have the right words for Isabel –
The next thing he knew it was morning and definitely time for breakfast with almost no time to eat. He skipped it to shower, waiting until lunch to stop his stomach’s grumbling. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember how to not eat for a few hours. Long days at the end of summer meant more work hours, and maybe he should’ve thought ahead and brought a change of clothes with him yesterday, but sleeping on Alpert’s couch felt like it’d be too much, at least while Alpert was still paying him. Dinner had been different, dinner had been a chance to lose a night’s pay at the sinks and trade that for some time with a friend, and maybe he could do that again only without the trade. The season – the part of it that mattered to the people in the fields – would be over in a few days, everyone talking about it, a general buzz just like the bees, and when that was done there wasn’t anything keeping him at the sinks if he gave a couple weeks’ notice. Less than that if he didn’t want to be polite; there’d been a couple of times when he just hadn’t shown up at all, more than ready to move on.
He smiled as he reached for another bright nectarine. There’d been that one time unloading trucks, and another where he’d had enough of the monkey suit and said good-night at the end of a shift and left his mop in the closet, plus that busboy thing. Plus the dorm.
He scowled, tried to get his mind back to work. There wasn’t enough time for nostalgia when there were so many trees that needed attention, plus loading the trucks up, and it was a Saturday so there’d be the dinner rush crowd. The part of him that’d reminded him about the dorm corrected it to Shabbos, and he growled and tried to think of something else entirely. That movie theater in town, and that drive-in he’d passed coming in – he could work with that. He hadn’t been to the movies in a long time, and he had enough that he could afford a show or two before heading off somewhere else again. And even if he didn’t make it to them this year they’d be here when he got back.
It didn’t feel odd to him to think about it that way, and he kept on thinking about that all through the day and into the night, at the sinks next to Vernita, who kept on about her new cat, and then through the shower and while he lay back just like last night, staring up at the fan and its flickering shadows. Of course he’d be coming back. He had a commitment to his friend. Not just for dinner again next week after the whole harvest was over.
He knew he wouldn’t come back right here or try to see if his last place would be open the next time Alpert needed hands for his orchards. There were other good places to look next year. He smiled at the silly idea of asking Alpert if he could stay with him, of course he’d say yes, of course everyone would get the wrong ideas about them living together for the wrong reasons. Dan raised a hand, traced the line of the fans with a finger around and round, then rolled over and pushed his head into the pillow, trying not to think about where he’d end up sleeping.
The next night he skipped dinner to make it to the liquor store before it closed, and drank out of a cheap plastic tumbler in what he guessed was supposed to be the living room. It was a tiny place, the sort of place for someone like him who didn’t plan on really living in it. He snorted at the bad joke and poured another drink; he didn’t remember why thinking a cup would be a good idea.
If he stayed somewhere more than a few months he could get real glasses, more than two plates and one bowl, better than fifth-hand furniture and a chair by a window and who knew, maybe he could hang something on a wall and leave his packs in a closet. He could shed the old habits he’d worked so hard to make like winter fur, stop worrying about milk cartons and police broadcasts and telephone pole flyers and everything else. It’d been thirteen years. He could stop. He could stop any time he wanted to.
-
It felt different this time. He’d gotten a bus to take him away and started walking as soon as he got off, just like he’d done last year, using the stars to make sure he knew where he was going and sleeping during the day, like he’d always done even if switching over was harder this time. But there was always something behind him now. Not literally, not the way he’d used to use it, but – it was literal if he faced the right direction, because if he turned around and started walking he’d end up back where he started. He’d always been able to do that for home, and now he could do it for Alpert’s orchards too.
He knew he was spending time without any return on it now, just waiting. He’d never really waited before, and he didn’t really know if he liked it. Time moved the same it always did, moons rising and falling and growing fat and shrinking away while he waited for something he knew would be coming. That part was different too, something coming. Dan didn’t know if he should go early or not, cut off the time and go ahead, or if he ought to keep on waiting for spring to come and for everything to be ready for him.
Somehow from seeing an advertisement in a window he ended up raking leaves in a graveyard with three weeks’ good pay in his pocket and the promise of more if he stayed on through winter. It was going to be a cold one – the regular groundskeeper liked to keep the radio playing in the little kitchen in the funeral home, and from how much it’d been raining the weathermen predicted at least two inches of snow over the weekend. Dan almost laughed his coffee out his nose.
“Whoa, whoa,” George passed him a napkin once Dan stopped coughing. “Easy there. Wouldn’t mind telling me what’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Dan wiped his nose off, took the offered glass of water and had a sip. “It’s not that funny.”
“Someone’s gonna need to mop that up.”
Dan looked down at the cup and sighed before getting up to get a towel. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Just that, where I grew up, two inches was what you’d get on a Tuesday.”
“Just because we don’t get it much doesn’t mean we don’t know what snow is.”
“I just think they’re making a big deal of it.”
“Two inches is a lot when you don’t get much at all.” George poured himself the last of the pot and tipped some half-and-half in while Dan kept wiping. “And it still gets cold.”
“Yeah, I know, and yeah, six inches for last year.” He gulped down the last of his coffee, put the rag and cup in the sink. “Two inches a weekend is still something back East, but – maybe if it stuck around, but it’ll be gone by Tuesday.” He looked over at George, who nodded and shrugged after a moment of consideration.
“I can see how you think that,” George said as they made their way to the toolshed, pushed the door open with a deep grunt and pulled the chain to turn on the light.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “And I know ‘cause it doesn’t stick it’s a big deal since there’s never gonna be three feet of it in the front yard.” He made a show of smiling. “You get used to what you grow up with.” That got an honest laugh from George – just one, but a good one.
He kept thinking it over throughout the Protestant section, wondering about the conversation as he raked leaves off someone’s daughter. It didn’t make him angry that he didn’t fit in perfectly, but it was still a problem that other people needed to make a problem out of it. So what if he’d grown up with snow and didn’t eat pigs if he could help it, so what if he was just trying to make his way. Some things weren’t worth the energy but some things he couldn’t stop thinking about even if he knew that. He’d gotten used to what he’d grown up with in more ways than one.
Tonight was definitely a night for a decent bottle. He leaned against the rake and stared up at the late November clouds making their way across the sky. There’d been a couple of funerals last week, plus the local witches rented out in the gazebo on Halloween, and he’d wished he’d been able to hand out candy, but people didn’t go trick-or-treating in the sort of building he lived in now. He went back to his raking, smiling at the memory of his mother always checking her kids’ candy hauls, making sure everything that came into the house was safe. They’d lived inside an eruv and she checked anyway, and until he found out from other kids at school that their mothers didn’t do that he didn’t think it was weird. He wondered if the kids living in town had their mothers check, too, and if they did, why they did. There wasn’t anyone around here who cared about the lunar cycle the way his family did and how that messed with what they could eat, but there might be other good reasons.
Yeah, a good-sized bottle of something strong, and a chocolate bar.
True to the weathermen’s word, they got two inches by Sunday morning, and the morning was spent cleaning off the driveways and paths. George bundled up three layers thick and laughed when he saw Dan arrive in his regular work clothes without anything else.
“I suppose you’re warm enough in that?”
“No way,” Dan replied with his fake-answer smile, playing to George’s attitudes to Dan being from up North. It worked, leaving George shaking his head and trudging to get the dust-covered shovels. Dan never did it much, not if he could help it, but he didn’t think he could explain he wanted to really feel snow again.
It took a while for muscle memory to come back, but when it did, the work started to go faster and easier. The whole day would’ve been spent cleaning off the grounds back to front if the embalmer hadn’t shown up around ten with her two kids in tow. Dan was working on the footpath and looked up as she got them out of the car. “Hey there, Vanessa.”
“Oh, Dan! Look,” and that was a bad sign from her, no hello at all, “I don’t want to ask you if you’re busy, but –”
“Hey Danny!” Rico cried.
“Baby, please, hold a minute. Look, Dan, Harper Denmen came in yesterday and he’s downstairs for the viewing tomorrow, and I can’t do all the work he needs then, but Rafael’s got his ankle and his mother’s not –”
“It’s okay, Vanessa. I can get them.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she clasped her hands together and turned to her sons, “Rico, Gus, you’ll be okay with Dan for the afternoon, right?” The two boys shouted ‘yes’ from a nearby snowbank. She smiled big at Dan, who jerked his thumb towards the main grounds.
“Lemme tell George first. I’ll get them in a minute.”
Looking after the restorer’s kids for an afternoon when the rest of her family was busy wasn’t exactly in his job description, but George’s brief pep talk had plenty of wiggling room. Besides, it was a chance to play in the snow on billable hours, and he’d forgotten how soft it was when it was still new. Rico and Gus had been by their mom’s workplace a few times, never around the bodies, but enough to know Dan by now, and know him as the younger of the two groundskeepers and by that logic the one more fun to talk to. Dan grinned at them and showed them how to pack up snowballs and push little forts together and dig out mazes and racetracks for the little toy cars they had in their pockets. Later, sitting on a cleared-off bench with the sun still hiding behind thin gray clouds, Dan explained how much snow fell each winter where he’d grown up and the way he and his brothers had dug tunnels and built forts inside it, and how they’d rushed outside without stopping to put their shoes on when they saw the first snowfall of each year. He didn’t mention that he was the only one who didn’t run outside covered in fur, but made sure the rest of what he said was true.
They ended up eating lunch outside, only coming inside long enough for Dan to have a cup of coffee spiked with hot chocolate and Gus and Rico to have their hot chocolate straight-up. By the time Vanessa was done with Denman her sons were pretty well tired but more than ready for more snow, and both she and Dan laughed watching them roll around in it, failing at making snow angels and angry they didn’t come out like they did in TV and comics. Dan had to get down and show them how to do it right, and once they’d made a couple their mother put her foot down and they had to go home. It was only about two, so he ended pulling another few hours of the sort of work he was brought on to do – thankfully away from George, since he didn’t feel up to talking to him. Not right now.
It’d been nice to have the excuse to play in the snow. He knew he could go to that park near his place after work, or just stay on the grounds when his shift was over, but knew it wouldn’t be the same as really playing in it the way he’d done for the first time in years. Some things were better when they were with someone else. He paid for it that night, shivering in the shower as soon as he’d warmed up enough – he’d felt cold during the day but hadn’t realized he’d been that cold, too happy to feel snow in his hands again. That got him to laugh, flexing his fingers to get the pins-and-needles out of them, as he thought about how Jimmy and Reuben would only start to get comfortable down here in weather like this. Dan bunched his hands into fists and shook them out, trying to think where he could get a decent pair of gloves. Maybe just borrowing them from George for a few days would be enough. Even if it didn’t snow again it’d stay cold, and even if it wasn’t going to stay this cold he might as well keep his fingers safe. His mother always took special care in winter to make sure he stayed warm.
Winter always made him miss home the most, and it’d been nice to talk about it without having to check himself every third word that he didn’t let something secret slip out.
Still, word got out – the snow wasn’t even gone by the time Vanessa had talked to her sons and then to George, who waited for Dan to pour himself a cup of coffee to say, “You didn’t tell me you had brothers.”
To his credit, Dan didn’t snort anything out, just finished his sip. “Yeah, two.”
“Oldest? Stuck in the middle?”
He smiled without feeling it. “Runt of the litter,” and was a little disappointed that George hadn’t picked up on the hint. That was surprising; he always hated having to take twenty minutes to explain himself, but for some reason wished he had to do it now. Instead, they stayed quiet while the newsman went on about the herds of centaurs immigrating into the Ukraine peninsula from the Russian steppes and what that could mean for global agriculture.
Halfway through re-salting the driveway, he wondered if it was because explaining meant George would know, and no matter how he took the information then it wouldn’t be something he kept to himself anymore. Maybe. Sometimes he’d run through scenes and plans of what he’d say if someone asked, or if someone looked like they’d be able to handle it, ways to be cool about giving the information, but maybe there wasn’t a good way to do it. At least Alpert could pull down his pants or ask someone to use his first name. Dan didn’t have any shortcuts. Which was some of the problem with that, because if he was like the rest of his family he could demonstrate – but if he was like the rest of his family, he knew he wouldn’t be here in the first place, holding his hand up to his face, watching the sun finally peek out between the clouds.
Part three.