Journeyman Read online

—We fell out of love, Nolan. Shit, man.

  —We?

  —She. OK. She fell out of love with me and in love with our real-estate agent and his tanned, tattooed torso and his blinding veneer.

  —Veneer?

  —This thing they do to teeth nowdays. Makes them all shiny and white. Thirteen hundred bucks a tooth.

  —Why do you know that?

  —I live alone, Nolan. Late at night I sit before the Internet and ask it questions.

  Cosmo shrugs.

  —It’s a cultural fucking phenomenon, you ignoramus. You see it on TV people all the time. It’s especially obvious when you watch reality TV, just how unnatural the veneer looks.

  —I don’t watch much TV.

  —You should. It tells us who we are.

  —Maybe you.

  —Because you’re removed from all this? Above it all? I forget sometimes.

  —I’m sorry to hear Dawn left you, Cosmo. I am.

  —Guy sells me an overpriced house and then steals my wife. Awesome. If it happened to anyone else, I’d be laughing.

  —No, you wouldn’t.

  —Yes, I would. Sometimes I even say it aloud, like it belongs to someone else, and it does make me laugh.

  —Well.

  —Get this, she said they “formed an intense spiritual connection.” From where language like this even entered her vocabulary, I am at a complete loss.

  —People change.

  —And how. Last I heard, they moved to Costa Rica and she opened a yoga studio. Fake Teeth teaches surfing, now. The same woman used to hassle me about developing and maintaining a solid retirement plan.

  Nolan responds by nodding slightly and staring at the bar. Cosmo turns away from him and Nolan looks up at his brother’s profile in the bar lights, and the different colors of all the bottles lined up across from them, and he sees the lights and bottles mirrored in the lenses of Cosmo’s eyeglasses, the images wavering along the stems of the plastic frames.

  —You at all familiar with the philosophical notion of nihilism? Cosmo asks.

  —I might’ve encountered it under a different handle.

  —You see, Cosmo says as he raises one hand, palm up, like the scalepan of a balance. With the loss of meaning we create, he says, raising the other hand even with the first. Or we destroy.

  He drops both hands on the mess of papers on the bar, the tip of the red pencil aimed away from him, their father’s Zippo on its side.

  —I mean, I understand and accept that the world is not black and white. I understand that sincerity can be dangerous and that irony can be a tool of empire, that people who profess to be open-minded rarely are, and that if a monarch smashes flat on a windshield in Monterey, all of California south of the Transverse Range will break off into the Pacific Ocean. I will accept all that. But, superstitious hippies and willfully ignorant rednecks are fucking this country up, Nolan.

  —Chance—

  —And mark my words, brother, this red/blue shit doesn’t change, and pronto, you can bet your ass we’re headed for dark times. Dark times, indeed.

  Cosmo picks up the lighter and taps the bottom edge of it once, twice on the bar.

  —But not on my watch. No way.

  With his elbows rested on the bar, Cosmo lifts his beer to his mouth and shrugs.

  —I did, however, get a sweet bachelor pad out of the deal. Surrender your earthly possessions and whatnot.

  He drinks. Then:

  —As long as I can keep up with the mortgage.

  Nolan leans over the seat between them and places his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  —Let’s get you home, Chance.

  —Nolan, I may be drunk, but I will sock you in the mouth hard and repeatedly if you don’t stop calling me Chance. I go by Cosmo, partner, respect that.

  Over Cosmo’s shoulder, Nolan can see the bartender eyeing them suspiciously over the fold of his crossword, so Nolan leans back and nods at the man.

  —What’re you doing here, Nolan? Cosmo asks, his voice raised. What do you really, actually, literally want from me?

  —I’m here to ask you nicely to keep my name out of the paper.

  —Why?

  —Just how I am.

  —Mr Low Profile.

  —Something like that.

  Cosmo smiles and shakes his head.

  —Do you really think I’d do that to you? Like I don’t know my own brother?

  Nolan clenches his jaw and stares into the glass in front of him. Cosmo says:

  —Buy me a beer and let’s talk about something else already.

  —All right.

  —Dave, Cosmo calls out to the bartender.

  —What now?

  —Another round, por favor.

  —Here I am hoping you were going to settle up and leave.

  —No chance.

  Nolan awakes the next morning hung over and sprawled out on a love seat in Cosmo’s garage. His boots and hat are still on and the bath mat he used for a blanket smells of mildew and toothpaste. The hen-peck rhythm of animated typing punctuates the morning calm. When Nolan finally focuses his eyes, he sees that he is surrounded by a jumble of thrift-store house furniture and uneven stacks of plain cardboard moving boxes.

  Suddenly, he remembers the snub-nosed revolver, and he scrambles for the black plastic sack until he finds the fireproof box hidden among his soot-covered clothes. He sinks back in the love seat and tries to relax, but his head aches some and his throat is dry and his tongue swollen.

  Nolan just sits for a bit, idly working saliva from his cheeks while looking down at the calluses on his hands. He has no bank account and no home to speak of. He carelessly abandoned the potential for love with a good woman, and other than those tiny, hard lumps along the tops of his palms and the segments of his fingers, all that he has to show for thirteen years as a journeyman carpenter has been destroyed by fire. The money he will be compensated for the loss of his tools and his belongings, for his truck and the Airstream trailer, is going to be insufficient; it’s going to be insulting. Over the years he fashioned a philosophy from observation and experience and contemplation and lashed it to the fundamental notion that beginning and end are words as apt to explain the machinations of the world as are good and evil. Change is the only constant and the world is a perpetual state of flux. Plain-spoken words unravel truths the same as riddles, only different.

  But at times like this, ideas like these are awfully difficult to accept.

  Nolan stands and stashes the box containing the .38 and the cartridges beneath one of the love seat’s cushions. When he opens the door to the house, the sound of the typing becomes considerably louder. The bedroom door at the far end of the hallway is open, and Nolan can see clothes lying on the floor. The doors to the second and third bedrooms are closed, and from behind one of these comes the typing noise. Other than light sneaking around the curtain in Cosmo’s bedroom window, the hallway is dim. Nolan stands listening to the typing for a moment because there’s a persistence and eagerness to it that complements Cosmo’s verve. The sound is a signature of sorts.

  Nolan turns and walks the few steps to the living room. He finds the room empty except for a leather recliner and a large flat-screen television set placed directly on the faux-wood flooring. On the screen, the first-person view from inside the cockpit of a spaceship paused in the midst of an interstellar battle. Laser beams hatch the starry background. Music issues faintly from the television’s speakers, the few notes barely audible beneath the typing and caught in a loop that runs contrary to the excitement of the halted action. To the left of the recliner, an ashtray overflows with smoked joints.

  Nolan crosses the room to the kitchen, where the countertops are bare save for a stained coffee maker and a toaster noisy with crumbs. The only cabinet that isn’t empty is the one above the dishwasher; the door to the cabinet has been removed and the few plates and bowls that are in it are stacked awkwardly. The
rest of Cosmo’s dishes appear to be in the sink and each one resembles a painter’s palette: pasta sauce, microwaved burrito remnants, frozen pizza pocket innards, chicken fried rice. Nolan looks at the dishes in the sink and then back into the living room. The only chair in the house appears to be the recliner. Nolan shakes his head.

  After pouring himself a cup of lukewarm coffee, he stands for some time just looking out the sliding glass door at a small backyard, where a raised garden bed, overgrown with weeds and gone to seed, runs along the back fence. He remembers his mother mentioning that Dawn kept a garden. More than that, though, he remembers the desperate tone of his mother’s voice when she told Nolan before his brother’s wedding that she thought Dawn was good for Cosmo. Nolan remembers how desperate she was to believe the meaning behind her own words.

  When the typing stops, the office door creaks open and seconds later Cosmo walks into the kitchen wearing a threadbare robe and fuzzy slippers. Nolan keeps his eyes fixed on a shovel leaning against the fence, the handle splintering in the weather and sun. It’s irresponsible, treating tools that way, Dawn’s garden or not. Their father taught them better.

  —Morning, partner, Cosmo drawls, smelling of marijuana smoke. How’s the dome?

  —It’s been awhile since I closed a bar.

  —Yeah, well, we could’ve gone home early with those two transplant cougars if you hadn’t vomited in the hideous one’s clutch.

  —I never did that.

  —You certainly looked like you might.

  Cosmo pours the last of the coffee into a 32-oz convenience-store mug. Then he opens the freezer door and takes two frozen waffles from a torn cardboard box. The box is sticky with frozen orange juice concentrate that leaks from a container that was squashed by a liter of vodka.

  —Breakfast? Cosmo offers Nolan a frozen waffle, encrusted with ice.

  —You actually eat that crap?

  —Not when I can afford to be choosy, no.

  —It’s cheaper to make them from scratch.

  —Well, sweetheart, now that you’ve got all the time in the world on your hands, I’ll expect soft-boiled huevos in bed.

  Cosmo places the waffles in the toaster slots, depresses the lever, and leaves Nolan alone in the kitchen to listen to the toaster coils redden. His head is splitting now and his stomach is queasy and the coffee only seems to be making him feel worse. He places both hands on the kitchen counter, lowers his head, and closes his eyes. Soon, the toilet flushes on the other side of the wall and water runs through the copper pipes and Cosmo begins to sing in the shower. Nolan opens the refrigerator door in hopes of ice water but the light is blinding and the refrigerator is nearly empty. The only items are a torn cardboard twelve-pack of domestic light beer and a few condiments in glass jars and plastic squeeze bottles. An assortment of single-serving packets of parmesan cheese, chili-pepper flakes, soy sauce, and chili oil fill the butter tray.

  Nolan closes the door and leans against the refrigerator. There isn’t a decoration on it, not a photo or a coupon or even a magnet. Spider webs glom to a corner of the window above the sink, and dead flies lie on their backs in a bed of finger-smoothed caulk that runs the length of a paint-brushed windowsill. The entire house appears to have been packed up and stored in the boxes in the garage. Only what Cosmo has deemed the barest of necessities remain. Nolan tries to remember the last time, if ever, he was in a tract home that he didn’t help construct; in one that was actually lived in; in one that had already housed a marriage and a divorce.

  When Cosmo re-enters the kitchen, he is wearing the same shirt and tie and corduroys from the day before. The waffles have popped, and he tucks one into his shirt pocket and stuffs the other in his mouth. Under his arm he has a clutter of papers, his digital camera, and his notepad.

  —I’m going to head out to the campground later today, Nolan says. I want to be there when they haul my stuff off.

  —You want a ride out?

  —No, I figured I’d walk.

  —There’s a bike in the garage. You’re welcome to it.

  —I never took to motorcycles.

  —Yeah, it’s not that kind of bike.

  Stashed against a wall of the garage, behind some cardboard boxes full of empty picture frames and unlit candles and packaged linens, Nolan uncovers a woman’s ten-speed bicycle, shiny and pink. He inflates the tires, oils the chain, tightens the brakes, and checks the nuts at the front and back forks. After hiding the .38 at the bottom of a box labeled KITCH, Nolan puts on his hat, rolls back the garage door, and raises his hand against the glaring sun.

  The streets of Valley Oaks Estates are lined with mottled-bark sycamore, leafing out. Every fourth or fifth house has an identical floor plan, but painted a different color. Just by looking at the fronts of the tract houses, Nolan can tell that most of them are three bedrooms, two baths. They all have two-car garages facing the street and floor plans Nolan can rough frame in his sleep. Vehicles, aimed in different directions, dot the landscape and the drone of traffic from Highway 101, which runs north–south at the western edge of the once-rural farm town, is light enough to be almost unnoticeable. Cars are parked in the driveways or along the streets because so many of the garages are full of relatively inexpensive, plastic, imported stuff.

  —Stuffed with stuff, his father said once when Nolan asked why their family’s garage was so empty compared to others he’d seen in the tracts surrounding Sacramento. People like having stuff, his father said, having fun with the word.

  —Stuff, the child Nolan said.

  —Stuff.

  As Nolan reaches the intersection at the end of Cosmo’s long block, he notices a service banner hanging in the front window of a corner home. White field with red border. Two blue stars. One for each child. Flag his father’s mother never flew. Nolan leans into the turn and glides effortlessly through the four-way stop, hung over and stranded, reading himself into the story of the banner. These are the people you’ve been building for, he thinks, righting the bicycle. Evidence of the wars all around him; evidence of ignorance of them, as well.

  It’s a nice, safe place, Valley Oaks, and Nolan knows Cosmo and his ex-wife lived beyond their means to buy in.

  CONSERVE WATER, a sign reads at the center of a dead lawn, only the dandelion weeds green. He rides past yards recently mulched with stained wood chips and planted with drought-resistant shrubs, by rocks gardened by Occidentals. Only in their landscaping are the tract houses unique, but similar in that the majority of the plants are purely ornamental.

  —People expect the shelves to stay stocked, an old timer explained it to him once when he asked why tract developers never plant fruit trees. That, the man said, and it’s not cost effective.

  —Doesn’t seem very smart, Nolan responded.

  —Let’s see how you feel about that when you’re the one signing the checks.

  —Nah, that’s not for me.

  —Then keep your head down and hammer away, nobody.

  Nolan rides with the wind in his face and the fresh air alleviates his hangover some. He pedals to the edge of the subdivision, where a low hill overlooks the town of Burnridge, settled by easterners as a way station for travelers heading east to the Sierras or south to San Francisco from Oregon. A town of 8,000 nestled in the confluence of three of the world’s premier wine-grape growing valleys. Coastal Range hills of oak and fir, of second-growth redwood. Nolan stops there for a moment to gain his bearings.

  Across the street and down the hill lie the older parts of the town. The street before him is a marker in the geology of the place, a stratum of materials and designs. Behind him, to the north, is Valley Oaks, and to the south, over the simple rooflines of mostly postwar homes, stand the ornate flourishes of the heritage homes: the intricate roof-cuts of the Queen Annes and Victorians; original California bungalows and refurbished Italianate mansions, all at the outskirts of the plaza. Citrus and apple trees grow in the front yards there, persimmon and plum. So
me of the paint jobs have six or seven colors. Nolan can see copper gutters and steep slate roofs. One or two of the old houses are being restored, and the new wood shines under the sun.

  He pushes the bicycle forward and rides west and then north on Burnridge Avenue. He rides away from the plaza, away from the older, more affluent part of town. At the north end he pedals past an automotive dealership, a gas station and quick mart, a muffler shop, and a Chinese restaurant. He continues beyond the city limits to the countryside, where vineyards in every direction run up from the valley floor to the serrated ridges. Poppies and lupine and wild oats line the shoulders of the road. The stalks of the oats already showing blond at their bases. In the distance, Fumarole Peak stands alone above the foothills, its crown darkened by chaparral, by trees and shrubs that, when stressed for water, infuse the atmosphere around them with an inflammable essence.

  Nolan coasts down the mile-long straightaway. He’s not looking forward to seeing the convertible on the back of the Airstream like some piggybacking parasite, his truck torched. Just before the railroad crossing, before the road turns east toward the river through vineyard and pasture-land, a pot-holed gravel road leads up to the crown of a low knoll where a rundown two-story farmhouse, white with green trim, stands among a cluster of blue oaks. A Ram is parked in front of the neglected farmhouse, the only structure for miles around.

  Nolan slows to the side of the asphalt when he sees the truck and stops in the shade of several tall eucalyptus at the entrance to the gravel road. Cicada sound from the trees. Crickets in the frail grass. Sunlight sneaks through the oak canopy and glints off the Ram’s lumber rack. A crow alights on the power line that runs up to the farmhouse and caaws down at the journeyman.

  Nolan sits uncomfortably on the bicycle seat, just looking up at the work truck and at the old house. He has one boot on the gravel shoulder and the other on a bicycle pedal. The shadow of his hat and profile are cast out to the side of him and he looks up at the sun and then back down at his shadow.

  He’s been in situations like this before, but none as hapless. The towing crew won’t be at the campground for at least another hour. He has little money and no transportation. His prospects are slim. And there’s something about Cosmo he’s unsure of, something he feels he needs to stick around a short while to figure out. He exhales through his nostrils and then turns the bicycle onto the gravel road.