This is Just Exactly Like You (6 page)

“Thanks,” Jack says.

“No problem,” Randy says.

“How’s Ernesto?” Jack asks. “Is he OK?”

“Cut his arm some,” says Butner. “Cherry came out and patched him up.” Cherry works behind the counter at the Shell most days. “He went over real slow. And I had him strapped in there pretty good. I made sure. He couldn’t have done any real damage.”

“Other than crashing the skid,” Jack says.

“Yeah,” says Butner. “But we’ll have it back up in a second.” Randy drops his cigarette on the ground, grinds it out with his toe, then lights another one. He’s got what looks like a tattoo of a litter of kittens on his arm. Butner says, “Once we’ve got it all rigged up, Randy’ll just back up real slow until the thing sits up on its own. Shouldn’t be much.”

Ernesto finishes with the chain, comes over to stand with them. “I’m sorry about all of this, Jack,” he says. With his accent, it comes out
Chack
. Sometimes Jack wishes he had an accent, too.

“It’s Butner’s fault for putting you in there,” Jack says. “How’s your arm?”

Ernesto holds it out, some gauze and tape wrapped around it, a little blood seeping through in a couple of places. “It’s fine,” he says. “It really is.”

“You don’t need to get it looked at?”

“I think that would probably be a little much.”

From the line, someone honks a few times, and Butner waves at whoever it is. He always seems to know. He points at the overturned skid loader, holds up his hand.
Five minutes.
The guy honks again, two little taps.
OK.
Butner turns to Jack. “We should probably go on and do this,” he says. “You OK with that?”

“I guess so,” says Jack.

“Well, let’s try this thing,” he says, and then they’re all moving, Ernesto toward the office and Butner toward the chains and Randy up into his pickup, gunning the motor. Butner checks everything, gives him the thumbs-up. Jack backs up a few steps and the kid’s already going, easing the truck back, foot by foot, until he gets some tension in the chains. This is the kind of thing Hen would want to see up close, Jack’s pretty sure. He should bring him over here. “Hang on,” he says, and Butner holds his arm up in the air. Randy stops, holds where he is, waiting. Jack goes to get Hen.

“Good idea,” Butner yells to him.

“What?”

“Good idea,” Butner says, coming toward the dump truck.

Jack has no idea what he means. “Hendrick?”

“No, man, drive the truck over here. We’ll tie off to it on the other end. Keep the skid from flipping over the other way.”

“Oh,” says Jack. “Good.”

“Yeah. That’ll work, I think.” Butner sticks his hand in through the window to Hendrick, palm out, wanting a high five. “How’s the brains behind the operation?” he asks him. Hen doesn’t move. “No?” Still nothing. Butner rubs him on the head. “That’s OK,” he says.

“Hello,” Hendrick says.

“Hello,” Butner says.

“Hello and welcome to another edition of
This Week in Baseball
,” Hendrick says.

“Awesome,” says Butner. Then, to Jack, he says, “Come on, man, let’s get this show on the road. You got customers waiting.”

Jack drives the dump truck over near where the skid’s lying on the ground, puts it in gear and shuts it off. Butner ties one more length of chain from the skid to the dump truck, pulls on it to make sure it’s right, gives his sign, and Jack’s only barely able to get Hen out of the cab before Randy starts back again. He hangs onto Hendrick, and the skid drags along on its side a little bit before the chains start to pull it up, but pretty quickly it’s leaning up into the air, and Butner’s right next to it, checking everything, giving more hand signals, telling Randy to
stop, stop
or
try a little more
. The kid gasses the truck back in little leaps. Finally Butner tells him
go, go
, and the Nissan jerks back and the loader lifts up off the ground the rest of the way all at once, rocks upright, holds at the top of its arc for a second or two, and then starts heading over the other way. Hendrick reaches out into the air like he might be able to catch it. The chain running to the dump truck does it fine, though, like Butner said it would, goes taut as a wire, and then it snaps the bumper right off the front of the truck, a huge shearing bang. But it does stop the skid. It stays up on its wheels. The kid shuts off the Nissan, and the crowd over by the office claps. Hendrick covers his ears, squirms free of Jack, marches in place.

“Well, fuck me twice,” says Butner, looking at the bumper. “Tied the chain wrong. I did worry about that.”

“You did?” Jack asks.

“Yeah. I let it pop too hard. Should have stopped it right at the top. I thought we’d be OK.” He nudges the bent chrome bumper with his toe. “Shit.”

“Why didn’t you say something? What else broke? Do you think anything else broke?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Butner says, squatting down to inspect the damage. He sticks his head in underneath. “Minor. Cosmetic. This thing’s straight as an arrow otherwise. I’ll fix it this afternoon.” He picks up the bumper, sets it on the hood of the truck. “At least we’re back up and running.”

“I guess so,” says Jack. He’s not so sure.

“Seriously,” Butner says. “Good as new. This afternoon.” He points at something under one of the headlights. “Just need to weld a couple new bolts on there.” Randy gets down out of his pickup and Butner tries to give him some money, peeling tens off a reel of cash he pulls out of his pocket, but the kid shakes his head, laughs, starts unhooking the chains. Butner shrugs, gets in the dump truck, backs it out of the way. He tries the loader next, which, amazingly, cranks right up, and he drives that over to the side of the lot. A woman in a huge red duelie starts toward the pine bark, but Butner waves her off, holding up both hands.
Wait
, he mouths at her. He pulls a book of matches out of his pocket, gives Jack a quick grin to let him know what’s coming. Jack wraps his arms around Hen again, pulls him back. Butner strikes the match, tosses it into the puddle of fuel from the loader, and there’s fire five feet tall. Jack can feel the air being sucked into it. Hen shrinks into him, away from the heat. They watch it flame out, smolder a little. Some of the spilled mulch is on fire. This all just dangerous as hell. If Beth had been here to see this, she’d have beaten him to death with the broken bumper. Hen’s talking into Jack’s arm, saying,
It’s gonna be a scorcher, folks.
He’s saying,
Your local forecast is next. Weather on the ones.
Butner starts waving to the woman in the red truck now, saying
come on, come on, come on,
and while she backs up against the mulch pile, he gets the loader going again, sending the bucket deep into the bark, coming back out with a full load, turning, tumbling it into the truck bed. It’s choreography. It’s air traffic control. It’s everything all at once.

Jack walks Hendrick over to the office and gets him set up—they’ve got a couch in there, a little mini-fridge, a radio Hen likes to play with. Ernesto’s ringing people up. Fifteen dollars. Fifty. Thirty-two. “Thank you so much,” he’s saying. “Please come and see us again tomorrow.” Hen watches him key in the prices, enthralled. He loves the register. Jack stands in the doorway, just out of the sun. Randy drives away, taps the horn on his way out. The lot smells like fire, like cedar, like fuel. Jack thinks about Canavan up in some tree, about Beth over there rinsing out her cereal bowl, her coffee mug. He wonders whether they’re taking showers together or one at a time. Out on the lot, Butner’s gotten hold of a guy in white slacks, is showing him the three kinds of compost they have. Jack turns to make sure Hen’s still watching Ernesto run the register, tries to clear his head, heads out onto the yard to help whoever’s next.

They go like hell all day. They’re selling everything on the lot. After her class, Beth takes Hen to lunch, drops him back off again.
Where’d you eat?
Jack asks her.

We just went to Mike’s,
she says
. We had sandwiches. He had most of a PB&J. He’ll need something later.

How was it?
Jack asks Hen.

Right now,
Hendrick says,
a forty-year-old nonsmoker qualifies for a $500,000 life insurance policy from Colonial Penn for just $19 a month.

The TV was on,
Beth says. She frowns, looks around the lot, watches Butner toss bales of pine straw into a truck.
I guess I better get back,
she says.
Be careful, OK?

We always are
, Jack says, and she drives away before either of them can say anything that matters. Midafternoon, a landscaper who comes in two or three times a month to do business specifically with Ernesto buys every rose they’ve got, twenty-two plants. Four hundred dollars right there. A couple buys a boulder that’s been out front for a year and a half. Somebody even buys the lighthouse he and Butner had a bet about. Five feet tall, wooden, black and white barber pole stripes, electric lights inside. Meant to go in your front yard. Jack doesn’t know why. An old German guy from McLeansville showed up one day asking them if they’d buy it for $75. Jack said no, but told him if he left it on the lot he’d try to get $100 for it. Like a consignment. He felt bad for him. Butner laughed and laughed.
A hundred dollars
, he said, over and over.
A hundred goddamn dollars. That motherfucker will be sitting right there when you die.
And it was a young guy, standing in front of it toward the end of the day, frowning, looking a little desperate:
Well,
he said,
I guess this is what she was talking about
, and bought it. A hundred, cash. Butner stood in the shed and stared. Ernesto hit the cash register bell several times after the guy was off the lot and down the highway, the lighthouse sticking out the back of his trunk like the head of some dead animal.

Hendrick’s been happy all afternoon, easy, even, spending his time running between the rows of plants and shrubs, arms outstretched like a plane.
He doesn’t look sick at all
, Ernesto said. Hen rode with Ernesto on a couple of late-day deliveries. Jack stood on the lot, watched the truck pull out onto 70, Ernesto’s left arm hanging out the driver’s side, Hen’s arm poking out the other window, tiny, pale. Then they’d come back, Ernesto grinning away and Hendrick serious, concentrating on riding, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

Six o’clock. Jack flips the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. Hen gets up immediately from the sofa and flips it back, then takes it down and starts playing with the WILL BE BACK AT clock arms on the CLOSED side, spinning them around and around. Butner drives both loaders to the back of the yard, parks them up against the mulch piles, walks over to the Shell station. Jack gets a cottage cheese from the fridge for Hendrick, locks the shed, and he takes Hen, his catalog and the OPEN CLOSED sign in hand, back to the greenhouse. They keep a few lawn chairs back there. Jack’s got nowhere to be, feels like sitting a while. Hen eats his cottage cheese in a hurry, carries the container and the plastic spoon over to a trash can, carefully drops everything in. When Butner comes back, he’s got a six-pack with him. He tosses a beer to Jack and another to Ernesto, who’s coiling up the hose against the side of the greenhouse. Ernesto pitches his back. “I can’t,” he says. “I need to go home.”

“You sure?”

“I am,” he says. He turns to Jack. “Nine o’clock tomorrow?”

“Good enough,” Jack says.

“I’m sorry about the loader. It won’t happen again.”

“
No problemo
,” Jack says, careful not to use any accent. Ernesto thinks the way he massacres Spanish is hilarious. He walks away, smiling, calling them
gringos
.

“Same to you, Paco,” Butner calls, and from his car, a little silver Toyota, Ernesto flicks them both off, then waves, the bandage on his arm a white flag.

“Don’t let him drive the skid any more,” Jack says to Butner, once he’s gone.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, something happens, nobody would ever insure us again.” Butner nods. Jack knows he’s not telling him anything he doesn’t know. “At least get him out here some Sunday and teach him not to turn it around with the bucket up,” he says. “Do that, and I’ll add him to the insurance.”

“OK,” says Butner. “Will do.”

A helicopter flies over, low, headed in the direction of the interstate. “Big day,” Jack says, once it passes and it’s quiet again. “We lit the lot on fire.”

“Only for a second,” Butner says. “And anyway, we had to clean it up somehow.” He scratches his arm. “I’m not gonna kill us, boss man,” he says. “Or anybody else. Don’t worry.”

“Fair enough,” says Jack. “I’ll try not to.”

They sit and drink and slow their clocks back down and the beer tastes good, cheap and cold. Jack works on enjoying himself, on relaxing. It feels like forever ago that he was in Canavan’s driveway. Like it might not have happened, even. Like he might just wake up out of this and find Beth at home, complaining about the kitchen wall. Hendrick’s doing something with the black plastic pots Jack’s been saving to start a few seeds and saplings in. He’s got them lined up in a long half-circle, keeps going back to adjust the middle ones. It’s a calendar, maybe, or a way to make contact with aliens. “I was surprised the loader still ran,” Jack says. “Once we got it back up, I mean.”