Clare

SO WE WENT for that ride. We rode through the long evening light on that Friday when Ray lost his job. He had his binoculars, the ones he used to scan the horizon for the tall arms of cranes and the frames of steel girders when he went out looking for construction sites he’d read about in his union bulletin. The tilled fields flashed by, flat and brown, stretching back to woodlots. The corn was nearly knee-high, and the bean plants were getting a hold and growing up from the clay dirt. Orange tiger lilies swayed in the fence rows. Quail gave their cheery, two-note call: bob-white. The air smelled sweet from clover hay, cut in the pastures and curing in windrows. We met a car now and then, but for the most part we didn’t see anyone, maybe a farmer climbing off his tractor in his barn lot or a woman scattering feed to her guinea hens. They gave us a wave, and we waved back, and I liked the way that made me feel, like we were regular folks on this summer evening when we didn’t know how anything would work out for us. We were just driving.

We drove out Route 59, all the way to Georgetown, and crossed the White River. We turned onto a gravel road to a place called Honeywell, a heap of run-down houses, bird dogs and beagle hounds staked and chained in scrabbly yards, rows of mailboxes nailed to posts along the road, a lot of them with their lids hanging open.

He wanted to take a look, Ray said.

“For what?” I asked him.

“That power plant, the one they’re building outside Brick Chapel.”

He drove to where the houses stopped and the road dipped into the woods. After a while, he pulled the truck over to the side and got out. He stepped up on the running board. I opened the door out into the tall turkey foot grass and did the same, standing on the running board, so I could get a level look at him on the other side of the cab. He had his elbows resting there, his binoculars up to his eyes. Woods spread out to the east, trees rising up, a mess of green.

“Ray, you can’t see anything from here.”

All I could see were glimpses of old shale roads winding back through the trees. The light was fading, dusk coming on.

“Do you know what that foreman said to me?” Ray was still looking through his binoculars, and his voice was low. I knew that he was embarrassed to tell me what he was about to say. I thought then that he’d come out here, to this Honeywell—this place of lost chances, this place of people hardly getting by—to tell me a shameful thing, to speak words he could only stand to hear in the deep woods when dusk was falling. When the only people who might bear witness were folks who knew what it was to be down on their luck, to have people treat you like dirt. “He said I was a no-account man. I tried to tell him he was wrong. Dead wrong. It was just the sun, I told him. That’s when he said it: ‘Asswipe, you’re done. And if you keep giving me guff, I’ll run this trowel right though your guts. Now get out of here. Go on. You ain’t nothing but your daddy’s wet dream.’ That’s what he said. Like I was nothing.”

Something was moving in the grass. I looked down into the turkey foot, and there was a quail. Why it didn’t lift up, I don’t know.

“There’s mean people,” I said. “It’s no secret.”

“No call for it,” said Ray. He lowered the binoculars and banged his fist down onto the cab. With a flurry of its wings, the quail rose from the grass and flew off into the woods. That pop of wings—it’s a sound I can’t hear today without a chill passing over me. “It’s no way to talk to a man,” Ray said. “Mean makes mean, and who’s to blame?”

On the way back home, we came up behind a pickup truck loaded down with hay bales. The bumper barely cleared the ground. The truck was taking it slow, and Ray, even though we were starting down a hill, pulled out to pass. Just then, a set of headlights crested the hill in front of us, dipped down, and sped our way.

I pushed my hand against the dashboard.

“Relax,” Ray said. “We’ve got time.”

The headlights were so close they lit up the inside of our cab. It was one of those souped-up cars with racing stripes down the hood and the back end jacked up. We were so close, I could see the boy inside. He had his T-shirt sleeves rolled up. His girl, a blondie with long, straight hair, was sitting up close to him. She had her hands over her eyes.

Ray jerked the steering wheel and whipped the truck back into the right lane as the car went speeding past, its horn blaring and then dying away.

“I guess they’ll have something to talk about, won’t they?” Ray said. “Tough guy and his queenie.” He stepped on the gas, threw his right arm across the seat, and pulled me to him. “Hon,” he said, “I bet they’ll see me in their dreams.”