asleep. He calls to him but he does not wake up. Goes into the kitchen, it is on fire. His father left a burner on. Lee stamps out the flames with the lid of a pan, and when his father wakes up hours later—having slept too late to hunt—he asks Lee why it smells like smoke, but Lee shrugs and never tells him how he saved both their lives.
He and his father are at Safeway a day or two later for more meat. Lee’s eye is dripping slime. His father has given him a straw to stick between his lips so he can breathe. People are staring. His father is red-faced, muttering to Lee that they all need to mind their own damned business.
—Poor little boy, a woman says.
His father smiles falsely and says, —He’s okay, just a little infection, it’ll clear itself right up.
—I don’t know, she says, —it looks horrible.
—Looks worse than it is. He ain’t in pain, and he can see out of it just fine. Still grinning he turns, the smile vanishing. Lee keeps lagging behind. —Come on, now, Lee, walk. You have to get the blood circulating otherwise your system won’t fight off the infection. Christ, you must think you’re the first buckaroo ever to get himself a little pinkeye. Come on, we’re successful homesteaders, let’s start acting like it. If this were the range, we’d have put you in the stockade for being so damned difficult. We’ll get some sunlight today when we’re working on the farm, that’ll help. Sunlight is the best disinfectant—ain’t you ever heard that before?
They go straight to the meats and fill the basket with beef. Every trip to Safeway is mechanized, because his father hates Safeway and believes maybe, if he is mechanized, Safeway will somehow know that he hates it. In and out in ten minutes flat is the goal. No cart—a hand basket provides greater maneuverability for darting around the old ladies standing about clogging the aisles, nothing to do with their lives, he says, but peruse a daggone grocery store, picking things up and putting them down and fussing and fretting over every trivial little thing and getting in men’s daggone way. — These people are cattle, they’re sheep. They’re sheeple, is what they are, he says. The word sticks in Lee’s brain and never leaves. His father carries the gun on his hip. The sheeple glance at it, give him space and respect, think he must be a police officer, which he likes. At the checkout he is sweating. He smiles through his sweat at the teenage cashier.
—Howdy, li’l darlin’, he says. He seems to forget Lee is there. —My you’re pretty. Though you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled a little bit.
She acts like she has not heard him. She is looking at Lee, his eye. —Whoa, she says, —what happened?
Before Lee can answer his father says, —Just a lil’ bug bite, darlin’. Comes with working the land like we do. It’ll clear right on up on its own. Pay it no mind. Now the polite thing to do when someone pays you a compliment like I just did is say thank you and smile.
She smiles halfheartedly, mutters thanks. His father wipes the sweat off his forehead with his hand, takes the bags, handing the one with only bread in it to Lee to carry. In the parking lot, crossing to their car, his father is saying, —Come on, Lee, we gotta get home, we gotta work, there’s a lot to be done yet today. He’s way ahead of Lee, who’s trying to go fast and keep up. A pickup truck backs out of a space as Lee is passing by. The driver pulls up hard but hits him, the high bumper striking the side of Lee’s head, on the side of his bad eye. Driver jumps out, a young man, high school.
—I’m so sorry!
His father comes hustling back for Lee, smiling, waving the young man off. —He’s fine.
Lee is on the ground, dizzy, face in the pavement. —He almost killed me, he says as he climbs to his feet.
—Hell he did.
—I’m so sorry, the driver says again.
—Nothing to worry about, Lee’s father says to him.
—I hit him, is he okay?
—You missed him, it’s fine.
—He didn’t miss me, Lee cries.
—He missed you. You fell, you tripped over your own feet. Anyway you should have been paying better attention to your surroundings. His father turns to the high school boy. —Does it all the time. He’s as reckless as hell and one day he’s going to get himself killed. I’ve been telling him but he ain’t listened. Maybe now he will.
Lee is staring at his hellish mangled reflection in the silver bumper of the truck, an inch from his head at eye level.
—Doesn’t he need a doctor for that eye? the young man says.
His father snorts. —No, he’s fine. All right, Lee. Apologize to the man.
—He doesn’t have to apologize to me, the driver insists.
—Don’t tell my son what to do, please. He nudges Lee. —Lee. Apologize.
—You don’t have to, the driver says.
—I’m sorry, Lee says.
The young man sighs and throws up his hands, then turns to get back into his truck, looks at Lee once more. —You didn’t have to do that, he says, and closes the door.
They walk off and get into his father’s truck. It is quiet. His father keeps looking at him. After a long time, his father says, in a voice that sounds different, even more like a cowboy than usual, —Hey pardner, did I ever tell you about the time your daddy got himself bit by a rattler out in Oklahoma? Hoooo, doggy! You think you’re bad, you should have seen your daddy. His foot was as big as your entire body, God’s honest truth. They gave your daddy last rites. The carpenter was fixing him up the coffin. They were out there diggin’ the grave. Know what your daddy did? I’ll be damned if he didn’t get himself up off that plank they had him on, limp over to where they were diggin’ the grave, grab him a shovel, and pitch in! Dug twice as much as any healthy man there too! Put them all to shame, your daddy did. Sweated that poison right out. That’s where you get your toughness, son. You’re a tough son of a bitch, Lee. Tougher than any boy I know. I was the same way at your age. That’s the kinda people we are. You’re just like me. I see a lot of myself in you. It’s eerie sometimes, I have to say. Downright eerie how much I see myself in you.
He pulls out, drives home, telling Lee all about it, forgetting again about Lee, who sits with his face pressed against the glass of the window as the box he is locked inside zooms past the sunshine world outside.
The fences are up, the barn is raised, the troughs are in—but the food is dying. The little hard potatoes still grow, but the tomatoes never appear on their vines and nothing ever comes up through the places in the dirt where things were supposed to come up. And some of the greens turn yellow then brown, became brittle and now tumble away in that foul wind. Lee watches his father squatting to examine the dead leaves and wilted buds, picking up the dirt in his hands and watching it run through his fingers. He squints up at the sky, the sun, as though appealing to the gods. —Must be dry this year, he says. Lee starts to ask what they will do but he cuts him off: —I don’t know. Dammit, I don’t know what we’ll do, stop asking me what we’ll do, you’re always asking questions, so many goddamn questions, go find something to do, go fix us some supper.
—We don’t have any meat.
—Well, mash up some potatoes or something then.
—We don’t have any potatoes, we don’t have anything.
—Well then, dammit, order us a pizza I guess then, I don’t know. He kicks the dirt and walks away and Lee goes inside to order a pizza. Then he calls his mother in New York, but a man who answers says she is not home and he doesn’t know where she is or when she will be back. The man says she will call him but she never does.
Lee likes to go inside the new barn, which is still empty, and climb around, hide out. He likes the fresh smell of the wood, the way the light of midday comes in through the little windows and seems to bake the wood, seasoning it with the dust motes moving down through the light beams.