Country Cedar

A black Chevy pulling into the narrow gravel driveway sets all the country cats to yowling. Stalking among the tall weeds, they feel milky headlights pass over their eyes and the nonsense patterns in their fur before sending up the nighttime call. As the engine cuts out, a cicada rich hush falls back over the yard, and the cats return to their violent preoccupations.


“This is the place?” asks Dale in the passenger seat.


“Yeah, this is it.” Jim grips the steering wheel, and shuffles his feet against the dead pedals of the car. He looks into spiny pinetree shadows surrounding them. “I haven’t been back here in ten years or so.”


The sand-splotched, dandelion infested grass patches bowing out from the house rustle with a passing breeze, and in the stillish wake, the trees seem to close in. Dale fumbles with his glasses case, and fitting the wire frames behind his ears, he sees a rusted-over dish washer gaping at them from beside the vine-ridden porch. Crackling with tension, he laughs. Jim sighs, and swings the creaking car door open. The mingling smells of wisteria and honeysuckle wash in over them.


Neither man says a word as their shoes crunch against the knee-high stalks leading up to the porch. Unseen, the cats skitter into hiding places, and watch with blown out pupils. Dale reaches over to hold Jim’s hand, but Jim brushes him away as they mount the cracking brick steps. Strangely, they both feel an urge to rap their knuckles against the crooked screen-door before Jim pulls at the handle, and takes the key that arrived two weeks ago out of his pocket. Fitting the brassy piece of metal into its lock, he remembers the long-expected note that arrived with it: “Dad’s dead, and I’m leaving after the funeral tomorrow. Would have called, but didn’t see as you’d want to come. Go get whatever you want. Love, Mom.”


“Go and fetch the sleeping bags out of the trunk, would you?” Jim looks at Dale with his hand still touching the key.


“But shouldn’t I –“


“Please.” Their eyes break with each other, and Jim pats Dale’s back as he walks away. His fingers trail down the starched, checkered shirt, and fall off just as they reach the hem. Waiting until he hears the driveway gravel grinding under Dale’s tight-laced tennis shoes, he finally turns the key, and walks into house.


Back at the car, Dale reaches in through the open driver’s window, and pops the trunk. He watches Jim disappear inside as he loops his hand under the rope binding their sleeping bags, and looks up as he brings the trunk’s lid back down. A bulbous moon stares down through a thin passing cloud, and far away from the city streetlights he’s always known, the multitude of stars astound him. The day’s heat radiates up onto him from the ground, and beyond his concern for Jim, Dale feels a flickering peace pass through the fibers of his back


Jim hears Dale’s quiet steps coming toward the porch, and shortly after, the whistling breath coming from his nose. He turns as the screen door bangs closed, and the two men stand regarding each other on the grayish living room carpet. Jim summons up a smirking, oblong smile.


“The power’s already been cut,” he says. “But there’s still some oil in these lamps. Got any matches?”


“Yeah, right here, Jimmy.” Dale hands over a flapping matchbook from the bar they like to frequent on weekends after payday.


“Thank god. I was afraid we’d have to go all the way back out to the car to light this.” Jim laughs as he produces a neatly rolled joint from his breast pocket.


Dale smiles, not bothering to mention that he doesn’t approve. He won’t do that here, not in this place. They push the wooden coffee table out of the room’s center, light the lamps on top of it, and spread out their sleeping bags on top of one another. Vaguely surprised at how little the house has changed, Jim takes two guest pillows out of the living room closet, and plops them onto the sleeping area before holding another match to the rolled paper’s puckered tip. Settling against the threadbare sofa, he and Dale pass the diminishing white cylinder back and forth between themselves. Dale coughs a lot at first, and soon leans his red-eyed, pleasantly bleary head against the couch cushion behind him. Jim dangles the half-finished joint from between his lips, and occasionally leans over to ash into a mug that still contains some brownish residue on the nearby coffee table.


“It wasn’t always so bad, you know” he says after what seems like a long time. “We’d get trips into town once in awhile to buy groceries, and every so often, he’d bring home a bunch of cedar to make junk out of. We’d sit out back drinking cheap beer, Jesus I couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, and whittling on that sweet smelling wood. He made all kinds of shit out of it: little elephants, rhinos, doorknobs, you name it. I mostly only ever made sharp little sticks, but one time I got a slingshot to come out that he said was pretty good. Thing’s still probably around here somewhere. We’ll look for it in the morning.”


“Thanks for bringing me out with you,” Dale says as he lolls his head against Jim’s shoulder.


“Shit, man. You didn’t think I’d come out here by myself did you? I still remember when he cracked my head against that table over there.”


Later, after doing the necessary things, the two men lay next to each other, touching their toes together underneath the sleeping bags. Jim runs his fingers through Dale’s hair, and holds his head close against the flesh under his boney clavicle. Whispering in the dark, they drift off to sleep beneath a carved wooden slingshot suspended above the front door.