F*ckface Read online

  Fuckface turned his head toward Carter, but he kept looking at me. Then he said, real soft, “Check the walk-in fridges. I don’t want her smoking that contraption of hers in there.”

  I heard Carter say, “Yes, sir,” and I thought I heard the tapping of another pair of feet. Jamie must have been with him, wanting to talk to me.

  After they left, I whispered, “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.” I whispered it to Fuckface. And I sat there behind the cabinet for another half hour. He never said a word.

  * * *

  Eventually, Fuckface got up from his desk and grabbed his keys, took his wallet out of a drawer. Lunchtime. He gave me a quick glance while he straightened his shiny tie, and I watched him leave. After he was gone, I wriggled out from behind the cabinet and stood in his office working up the courage to go back to my register.

  The manager’s office was painted a sad hospital-green color. Paint chips and dirt smudges hid in all the corners. The whole place was filled with paper. It spilled everywhere. The desk had a dusty black computer on it, and it looked like Fuckface was working on about a million spreadsheets. I went around to his side of the desk and peeked. The spreadsheets were all kinds of money and product lists stacked haywire. On the monitor was a spreadsheet with all us checkers’ drawer totals. He had columns for all the employees. Next to the keyboard he had printed out a master list and a few spreadsheets from previous months, all labeled at the top. On the screen and the printouts, my name had a green bar going across my totals. I figured that meant I was doing all right, because some of the other girls had yellow bars or red lines. Jamie had her name grayed out.

  Underneath one spreadsheet pile was a magazine called The Advocate. I pushed some paper around to look at it. The cover had a picture of a skinny actor in a fancy suit. The actor had makeup on, and he was holding his collar in a real artistic way, fingers arced, long and delicate. Looking at that picture calmed me down somehow. I stared at that magazine until I heard Carter bark my name.

  “Pretty. What the…” He was standing in the door of Fuckface’s office. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before. Then he sighed a long breath. “Jamie quit.”

  I nodded and ran my fingers over the magazine. The cover felt so smooth, and I wondered where Fuckface had got it from. We didn’t sell magazines like that here. My eyes started to go fuzzy, and my face went hot.

  “Go on out back and take a break,” Carter muttered.

  I sniffed and nodded, and he left me alone.

  I went to the back door and opened it quiet. I eased outside and reached in my pocket for my vape. Before I headed to the picnic table, I looked to my left, prepared for the sight of rotting bear. I couldn’t help it; we had grown used to having it there with us. It was part of my routine now, and in a weird way, I wanted to see the bear this time.

  Fuckface was at the edge of the back lot standing over the carcass. His legs were parted, and he was holding a big, rusty shovel I’d never seen before. His jaw was clenched up tight, and even though I barely knew him, I could tell he was pissed. I didn’t move.

  On the ground next to the bear was a big blue tarp laid out flat. Using the shovel like a lever, Fuckface rolled the body onto the tarp a little bit at a time until it was just barely over the edge. Then he grabbed the tarp and pulled up slow with both hands. He rolled the bear in further to the middle, and its head turned over twice. It was just a big old cub, a yearling. It had probably wandered and got spooked, caught in traffic. I felt bad for its momma. Its tongue stuck out, dark brown and stiff, and its big, awkward feet were crumpled and broken like they’d been run over. One front paw was bent backward over itself.

  Fuckface folded the tarp over the body real careful until it looked like a big, sad burrito. He knelt down. He put his right hand on top of the blue lump with the bear inside, right on top of it, like a preacher would lay hands on a sinner. He thought about something for a long minute, but his lips didn’t move. I leaned against the back wall of the store and watched him.

  I’d never had occasion to notice before, but it turned out Fuckface had a lot of muscles. We don’t look at him much. After he took his hand off the tarp, he knelt down tighter and put his arms under the bundle he’d made and lifted that bear up like it was nothing. His silver pickup was right behind him with the gate down. That bear looked heavy—a hundred pounds easy. Fuckface’s muscles strained and bulged under his gray slacks as he lifted the bear. His arms and shoulders were huge, and it occurred to me maybe my manager got more done around the store than we gave him credit for. He was big enough, and he had all those spreadsheets. He didn’t have to hide.

  He turned and hauled the tarp into his truck in one clean motion. The bear made a hard thud when it landed. The truck bounced, and the thud echoed so sharp it felt like a punch to my chest. Fuckface sat on the edge of his truck bed for about two seconds, then he whacked his fingers against his leg and stood. He slammed the truck’s gate closed, then he turned and found the old shovel on the ground. He grabbed it in one hand, gripped it firm, walked to the edge of the back lot, and slung the shovel into the weeds.

  On the way back to his truck he caught me looking at him. Our eyes met, and Fuckface nodded at me, sharp and quick. He stood still for a second with his head down, and then he put his left hand out toward me. Not pointing exactly, and not waving. It was like he was signaling me, but I didn’t know what his hand was trying to say, so I stayed where I was until he lowered it back down again. Then he turned, climbed in his truck, and drove off.

  I stood there a long time wondering where Fuckface would dump that yearling. Maybe I should have offered to help him find somewhere peaceful to take it, but I couldn’t clear the distance. I couldn’t just get in somebody’s truck like that. Then I went to the empty picnic table with my vape. While I smoked, I hummed one of the Joan Armatrading songs Jamie had played me a few times—something about mining for gold in dim places.

  I sat out there behind Food Country for most of the afternoon, staring into the weeds behind the store, at the mountains beyond, trying to figure out a way to keep living here without going crazy. I puffed my vape and wondered about Fuckface a little, about his weird magazines and spreadsheets and management style, but mostly I just thought about how bad I wanted to sleep someplace quiet at night. The whole day went loose and cloudy after that.

  Later that night I lay in bed with my eyes squeezed closed, and I pictured Jamie wearing lots of bright rings and stones. Everything in my picture looked far from me, close to her. I didn’t know how to reach out and grab onto stuff the way Jamie did. Maybe if somebody could wrap me up in a big, blue tarp and take me into the forest someplace, that would fix things. Outside, the mountains hung low and mean in every direction. The walls of the trailer rattled in time with the neighbors’ music, and not a thing in the world held any light in the dark.

  BOOMER

  By the time May took the frog lamps, Larry was losing Hollow Rock. First she took the big stuff—loveseat, dining table, three bookshelves. When it was just state forest service guys like himself putting out small brush fires, before the election, before everything burned or surrendered, there had still been dishes in the cabinets.

  The first of October was warm. This time, when May said again marriage wasn’t worth it, they ought to just hang it up, instead of punching walls, Larry nodded.

  All right, May belle, he said. Then that’s what we’ll do.

  May didn’t understand. You want me to go?

  You’ve been trying to go a long time, Larry said.

  She blinked. What would I do?

  Whatever you want, Larry said. Don’t take care of me.

  May narrowed her eyes. What is wrong with you?

  A lot I reckon, Larry said.

  May repeated each question, rewording each time. Larry answered the same.

  The next morning he got called in to assist a team on the Qualla Boundary with a quick-spreading fire close to state lands. Some kids had left a cookout that caugh
t brush. Up north, twelve wildfires had already started. Larry scowled into his phone and watched amateur videos posted from Kentucky. He drove out into Cherokee tribal lands and spent two days stopping the cookout fire before it seeped into virgin forest. The Qualla crew was spooked.

  It better rain, they said.

  Larry and four Cherokee fighters gathered on the ridge above the campground. They assessed, checked for smoke. They looked down into the narrow valley where tourists teemed every autumn. Fudge shops, neon tomahawks. Summer had been a long drought, five states wide, and October was coming in clear and mild. It hadn’t rained for seven weeks, and none was forecast. The NOAA alerts out of Asheville kept using the word “unprecedented.”

  Leaf season’s no good without a little rain, they said. No color.

  One wiry ranger squatted in the leaves.

  We’re lucky we caught this when we did, he said. Whole place could go up.

  The Cherokee were well equipped—casino money and federal grants made it easy to get things under control there. The tribe’s firehouse had a pizza oven and Wi-Fi. Larry slept in his truck both nights, even though he didn’t have to. He dreamed about May. The news and firehouse chatter were all election talk, and he didn’t want to listen. Larry felt weighted down, as if somehow the news, the Qualla fire, his troubles with May had all been his fault. So he made some silence for himself. Inside the quiet of his truck he pondered everything May had grumbled, everything they’d agreed to.

  He wondered how it would feel to live alone, to lose out.

  When he got home from Qualla, ragged and sore and reeking of smoke, May wouldn’t let him in the house.

  You stink, she said. Stay out here and clean off.

  The rays of wrinkles around her eyes had deepened.

  You got somebody, she said. Who is she?

  She isn’t, he said. It’s just me. Nobody else.

  So you’re just going to live here by yourself? We’re both going to be alone?

  I thought you wanted to be alone, he said. I thought I was letting you go.

  May smirked.

  You never let me do anything, she said.

  Larry stood on the porch. His rucksack slumped against a post, and a tube of Bengay peeked out from his T-shirt pocket. He squatted, dug around in his rucksack, and pulled out three pairs of wet, filthy socks. He flung them over the white porch railing. They hung limp and gray like rotting game skins.

  I’m moving over to my sister’s, May told him through the screen door. I’m not staying in this old place. You can have it.

  Larry nodded. He looked across the yard, up the dirt road to the swell of mountain behind his land, and pulled the Bengay out of his pocket like he was cupping a moth. The trees twinkled amber, gold. He didn’t mention it wasn’t her house to give. He was a Helm County native. His grandfather built this place, and Larry had whitewashed its sides and cut the grass since he was nine. May’s name wasn’t on the deed.

  I’ll get a job, May said.

  Larry shook a crust of mud off his left boot and told her that was good.

  I wouldn’t be doing it for you, May said.

  She crossed her arms and stared at him as he screwed open the tube and put the cap on the railing. Her body was elfin, her jaw a triangle. She tilted her head sideways until her chin pointed toward Larry’s socks. As she cocked her head, a shiny blue glass earring appeared from behind her hair. She didn’t ask about the fire.

  May stood between the screen door and the oak front door, head to the side, blue glass catching light, and watched him work salve into his arms. The television bickered in the living room—one of the news channels. Her body blocked some of the arguments roiling out of the speakers, but the voices still carried and rattled Larry’s teeth.

  He’s gonna win, May said, closing her eyes. That pig. Listen to him.

  Larry told her to turn it off.

  May flitted into the house and slammed the front door. He pulled a towel off the plastic laundry rack at the edge of the porch. He wiped his face, sank into a deck chair, and let his arms hang limp. The Bengay’s mentholated tang seeped into his muscles while he stared at the woodpile under the carport.

  A flick of russet darted across the top of the woodpile and wiggled between two hunks of pine. Larry leaned forward. A few seconds later the red flicker appeared again. Boomer squirrel. He was little and twitchy, all red fur, with short tufts sprouting from each ear. Larry liked red squirrels. They weren’t fat or mean like grays. Boomers had spirit, and he could swear they winked at you sometimes.

  The boomer flashed around some more, then darted up the hickory near the mailbox. He was making ready for winter, stashing most of his nuts and treats in the woodpile. Larry muttered to the squirrel as it scurried. It should have been hiding its food elsewhere; the woodpile was a bad spot, a temporary structure. Soon the boomer would lose his stores to Larry’s woodstove.

  Better to bury in the ground, little buddy, he said. Better to keep up in the trees.

  He stayed on the porch and watched afternoon light glow through the hickory trees while May thundered inside the house. The television stayed on, pundits on low boil. He checked his phone for updates, texted colleagues. He’d have to go back out soon; smoke reports were coming faster, and yellow bubbles of text popped brightly on his screen. Tellico. Ferebee. High spots, far from each other. National forest, too. Nantahala was smoldering.

  May burst out of the front door holding a purple end table. She’d painted it in a crafting class at the Folk Center a couple years back.

  I’m taking this, she said.

  She stomped down the porch steps, turned back.

  I’ll need furniture, she said. You’ve never given me a thing.

  He eased himself up to a stand. He was six four, built thick and gingery, and he had just gone forty last spring. May crunched her sandaled feet across the gravel drive and popped the trunk on her hatchback. Larry kneaded the back of his neck, went inside, and slept in a dark coma for seventeen hours.

  * * *

  A few days later, all of Helm County was put under a Severe Threat. Larry wanted to file a report to Raleigh about Qualla. Nobody was paying attention to the campfire bans; nobody was talking about Kentucky. The state office needed to get their act together; a new parks secretary might be appointed in January, depending on how the votes shook out, so bureaucrats were hibernating under their log books until then.

  Ten thousand acres in Georgia had already burned. Twenty thousand in Virginia. The problem was getting worse, spreading, closing in on Helm County, on the whole state, from north and south.

  Hollow Rock, ten miles from his house, backed up onto fifteen square miles of usually damp, lush state forest. That whole expanse was a husk. Hollow Rock was more corkscrew than mountain—a massive, undulating mound of earth that separated the tourist hamlet of Chimney Gap from the state lands encircling Helm County. If any fire leaked out of Hollow into the state forest, or vice versa, it would do so in a mean spiral. Every ridge would burn, and so would the town. Everybody Larry knew would lose their home.

  Locals were calling 911 to report smoke here and there, tiny blazes or yard burns that town firefighters dutifully quashed. The forest floor rustled itself in even the weakest breeze. Fluffed-up leaves, all papery and loose, waited to catch light. Larry thought it was as if the whole of the world was asking to be fuel. The air snapped with brittle coolness and smelled of rust.

  We need to dig some lines, Larry’s guys said. Need to get those helicopters in from Tennessee.

  Some of his state forest service team were close to retirement, others still green and young. Larry fell about in the middle, in terms of experience.

  They’re federal, the longtimers said. They got the resources. Those choppers need to be here. We’re worse off than anybody.

  Larry nodded, even though he believed everywhere from West Virginia to Georgia was the worst off any place could possibly be.

  The team muttered to each other, counted out loc
ations and shifts with their thick fingers.

  Preventive measures, they said. While we still can.

  * * *

  By mid-October, he had forgotten what day it was. He forgot about Qualla and Raleigh. He stayed in Helm County, kept an eye on Hollow Rock. His team set prescribed burns. They pulled back tons of underbrush, cleared out the carpet of leaf litter and ripe tinder from miles of home ground. Masks covered their faces, so they spent entire days, in woods they had hunted since childhood, nodding and signaling to each other like pitchers and catchers.

  Sparks multiplied. Larry worked. Above Highway 9 a few miles from his house, he helped cut dozer lines in the dusty earth to stop the front marching down from the north. He corralled volunteers, surveyed, soaked the ground. In between prevention efforts, state park dispatch, tower lookouts, 911, and his own instinct took him to fires all over the county. Some were weeks-old lightning strikes that waited, burning slow, gaining power on the still-damp ridgetops. Elsewhere a devil set them. After Christmas they would arrest some whack job arsonist who set at least twenty fires on purpose, but nobody knew that yet. Most of the problem was stray cigarette butts or people burning yard waste without a permit, without sense. It wasn’t something local folks had ever worried about before. They were used to morning dews and soaking rains and black, moist loam.

  Blazes foomed up like signals from the peaks, and the sky for fifty miles in any direction was a low tarp of ash. Volunteers streamed in, and October tumbled quietly out of control. The governor released the National Guard. FEMA set up evacuation stations up and down the Blue Ridge. A bunch of fighters from out west trucked themselves to Hollow Rock. They were returning a kindness from two years ago, when southern firefighters had helped save half of Oregon.

  None of this made the news.

  When he could get away, Larry would drive home, shower, eat, crash. In his sleep he heard the thrum of helicopters making retardant drops.