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Metal Fatigue

Bill Kirby

    The street seemed especially long and steep to Adam as he walked slowly toward the old house. He achingly remembered that he had had this thought every trip up the hill for the past twelve years, too. Each weary step he took jarred his old knees with the dull pain of arthritis.
    How many times had he climbed this hill? Traversed every single inch of its surface? How many times had he complained to himself about the ache of a limb he no longer possessed? Too damn many. The landscape never changes for someone always relegated to walking. Adam could see the eaves of Ruthie’s house where they were beginning to peel, the wooden-framed screens at the windows starting to pucker up from age and countless coats of paint. Across the sun-soaked street sat the Turners’ house, squat and stoic like May Turner herself, imposing and withdrawn. Up near the stop sign at the top of the hill, where the intersection was, there the Augusta Women’s Clubhouse waited, usually in vain, for some chance to host an “important” organizational meeting, or to serve as field headquarters for some new and doomed plan of “improvement” for the little town. Most times it remained empty, like most things in Augusta. Adam knew every blade of grass, every wilting azalea between downtown and the house. He was surprised on setting out each time for town that he had not worn a groove in the pavement like an animal trail to water.
    Finally the old man reached the level plane of the front yard. He caught his breath under the oak that toed the sidewalk leading to the front porch, then crept up the front steps and into one of the ancient metallic chairs sitting sentry-like by the front door. It felt good to finally be at rest. His body continued to resonate, like that feeling that’s left in a body when a freight train passes over a trestle bridge, vibrating like a tuning fork. He willed his arms and legs to relax, to go gently with the natural rhythm of the metal chair. The chair always amazed him. The idea that the S of the metal would still have enough tension left within itself to enable a body to rock back and forth upon it, with no apparent effort, was beyond his reasoning. Adam could barely gather his sinews and synapses together tightly enough to propel himself the three blocks to Revette’s store, yet the old rusted chair was always here, waiting patiently to spring and rock back upon its haunches.
    Looking across the street at a diagonal, Adam could see little Tom McIlhenny stirring around his family’s carport. Adam knew the routine— half with dread, half with relish, he knew that eventually Tom would worm his way to the porch, and their ritual would be played out once again. Maybe this time Adam would give Tom benediction.
    Yes, he was right. Tom poked around and through the minutiae ringing the carport walls for a moment, cast a surreptitious peek over his shoulder at Adam on the porch, then nonchalantly mounted the bicycle he shared with his twin sister and pedaled carelessly up the hill. Tom scutted to a stop on the asphalt above the sidewalk leading to the porch, then launched himself down onto the sidewalk, across it, and finally bumped solidly into the bottom step of the porch. Adam hated the dull sound Tom’s tire always made when it slapped against the wood.
    “How are you today, Mr. Adam?”
    “All right, sonny boy, how about you?”Adam wondered if perhaps Tom was retarded.
    He certainly looked the part, what with his melon-sized head and his dull, scaly eyes. Hard to tell; his twin sister and his other siblings seemed normal enough. It would stand to reason that his twin sister would look retarded as well, if Tom were retarded. Hard to figure, though.
    “What are you doing riding a girl’s bike, sonny?”
    Tom flushed, his nine-year old face turning red immediately, mouth carving an inverted U that covered both sides of his chin. “I’ve told you a thousand times, Mr. Adam, it’s not really a girl’s bike. My folks bought the bike for me and Lucy, and girls always grow faster. Momma says that our next bike’ll be one of those with a bar ‘cross it.”
    “You mean a boy’s bike?”
    “Well, I’m riding this bike, and I’m a boy,” Tom stood defiantly in the center of the bike now, legs planted firmly to each side, his lips pooched out. Adam had thrown the bait, and as always, Tom rose greedily to it.
    “Well, if you say so, boy.”
    “I do.” Tom got quieter, smaller. He cast his eyes down for a moment, and Adam readied himself for the question he knew would come.
    “Mr. Adam,” Tom raised his eyes slightly, his idea of guile. “Did it hurt terribly when the train came? I mean, did you want to die?”
    “Boy it’s been so long ago I can’t remember.” A total lie. Adam could remember every nugget of railroad gravel, every grain of wood in each crosstie, the all-pervasive, stomach-wrenching smell of creosote. He could remember the phantom pains that lasted more years than then he had the leg.
    “Well, did it look horrible? I mean, when you knew it wasn’t still on you?” Tom was straining forward into the handlebars, caught up in visions of blood and gore.
    “It was clean gone, Tom, and somebody from the railroad came later on and wrapped it up in an old croaker sack. Didn’t nobody, not even my folks, know what was done with it after that.”
    “Gross.” Tom shivered with the thought of a bloody leg unaccounted for, and he involuntarily reached to his leg.
    “Does it feel funny, I mean, does it feel really weird to have a piece of a leg, Mr. Adam?
    You walk pretty good, I mean for your age and all.”
    Little asshole. Adam could enjoy this little tete-a-tete they regularly had only so much before he was ready to pinch Tom’s head off. The whole McIlhenny family was full of retards, and the vilest and foulest of the genetic juices pooled around Tom. “Do you want to see what’s left, sonny boy?”
    The boy’s eyes swelled until Adam thought the very borders of them would dissolve. Tom’s mouth slowly opened until it looked as if the jaw had become unhinged.
    “Well, boy, do you?”
    Adam was offering what Tom had secretly desired for years, ever since his older brother and sister had told him that Mr. Jessie had a wooden leg. He wanted to see it first, rub the fact in Lucy’s face, frighten her with the bizarreness of it. But now, well, push had come to shove, and he was hesitant.
    “You mean really see it?”
    “Boy, are you deaf and dumb? I asked you if you wanted to see the leg you been quizzing me about for forty forevers.”
    “Well, yessir, I. . .I. . .I would. Yeah.” He knew if he didn’t ride this to the end, he could never come to the porch again and question the old man.
    Adam thrust his leg out, heel down and toes up, the kind of stiff-legged motion a man makes when he’s about to struggle with getting a stubborn boot on. Tom stood galvanized, eyes drawing a bead on the sole of Adam’s shoe.
    “Does it hurt your toes when you take it off?”
    
    My God, Adam thought, the boy was retarded. “Sonny, the damn toes was connected to the leg that was thrown away.”
    Tom recoiled from the curse. He realized that he had wandered near some strange briar patch of Mr. Adam’s emotions that he had never walked near before, like that briar patch of Brer
    Rabbit’s his momma had read about to him and Lucy.
    “Right. Right.” Tom had leaned precariously over the thorns for too long not to jump down among them now. “What kind of wood is it, Mr. Adam?”
    “Wood? Wood??” Adam sneered. The shit people let their kids hear. “Boy, it ain’t wood.” He grabbed the cuff of his Ruf Stuf khakis and walked the pants leg slowly up to his knee. The prosthesis was all polymers and chrome, and through the cross braces Tom could see the white metallic bow of the chair.
    “Man.” Tom could think of nothing else to say; he just rolled around in the patch with a mouthful of briars.
    “Here, sonny boy, I’ll take it off and you can try it on.”
    It was more than he wanted, more than he had bargained for. Tom flung himself back over the patch’s edge, casting off tendrils and thorny grasps as he went.
    “I gotta go, Mr. Adam. See you later.” Tom jumped upon the bike, and began pedaling like mad, and soon he was two blocks down the street, bobbing at the handlebars like an old fire engine pump.
    Adam was laughing so hard he didn’t hear the front door open, nor hear the screen door being unlatched. He glanced to the side of the porch where it looked down into the flower bed, and beyond it, into the green of the lawn. Suspended over the grass, just above eye level, hung a bird, he couldn’t decide what kind. The bird’s wings were pressed to its body, and the creature swam easily through the summer thickness, much like those scuba divers Adam had seen on TV, their bodies nosing for the plane of the surface. The bird kicked upward, ever upward, until it came directly under a flying insect. The bird fluttered momentarily, squeezed the last bit of air between them, then engulfed the bug. The bird hung for a breath’s length, then dove hawklike into the shadows of a camellia bush.
    With a squeaking yawn, the screen door swung out a few inches, and Adam felt a sudden kinship with Mr. Bug.
    “Adam, you’re going to have Bob McIlhenny on your back if you don’t straighten up.”
    Surely, thought Adam, this was the voice Hansel heard that day in the oven.
    “Hell, I just gave the boy what he’s been asking for.”
    “We all got to be careful of what we ask for, don’t we, Pee Wee.”
    God, how he hated that name. His sisters had tagged him with that nickname as a child, and he had gotten more diminutive ever since.
    “What is it you want, Ruth?”
    The old woman looked at the man’s bony shoulder blades where they almost met in a V at the apex of his old polyester knit shirt, and she thought of the dying sparrow she had found sitting in the dirt of her garden once, its frame shaking and quivering, folded upon itself like an old Japanese fan. “I want you to get your stuff and get out of my house. I’m tired of your mess.”
    Adam straightened himself in the chair, swung his shoulders and eyes to the screen door over his left shoulder. He could just make out the woman’s silhouette through the heavy woven mesh, but he could see, rather feel, the arrogant hard jut of her lower lip.
    “Where would I go, Ruthie? Back to Colorado? Maybe to Nelda’s house?”
    “I don’t know, Adam, and I don’t really give a damn. You can’t go to Durango, you know that’s out. Didn’t the union tell you that you had worn that welcome out? You know Nelda’s won’t do. Sally told you that.”
    There was a pause, a quiet gathering of energy. “But whatever you do, you do it away from my house from now on.” The screen door snapped shut, and the heartbreaking sound of the latch flying home put a finality to everything.
    Adam twisted around in the chair, ready to recite his litany of reasons why he should be allowed to stay, but he was cut short by the slamming of the front door. He turned back to face the street, and for a while he watched the waves of heat course across the pavement, like little rivulets in a half-empty stream. The shade from the oak canopied unto the street, and the sunlight danced around its edge like angel fire. Adam thought about knocking on the door, try to get Ruth to talk to him, but he knew her moods, and he knew that knocking would not do, not at all. Best to leave it alone, try to play up to her in a day or two when the venom had dissipated. She was a wicked thing on a good day, but by God, when she was on a tear, well, it was best to just leave it alone.
    Adam looked at his watch, one of those cheap Cascio jobs they sell in every Pic-a-Pac in America. But it kept good time, and it did give the date. Looking at it closely, Adam saw that it was four o’clock. The date read: 18. He was mildly surprised by that; he had lost track of the time, thought it was still around the ninth. It wasn’t like him to lose track of the date; maybe the time, but the date, no.
    Perhaps it was time to walk down to Revette’s, Adam thought. Maybe old Bobby Ott was feeling expansive, feeling generous. It was always worth a try. You never know till you try; you won’t know the answer until you ask the question.
    Adam eased himself out of the metal chair much like the unfolding of one of those portable easels, joint by joint, length by length, until he was complete. Before starting down the steps of the porch he orientated his body to the task, shifting his weight first to his bad leg, then to his good, ultimately working his way down the steps, where he again readied his body, accentuating his gait to fit the roll of the street. He set out for Revette’s brimming with goodwill and high ambitions.
    “Goddamn,” Adam muttered to himself as he worked his way down the street, sweat soaking the belt line of his pants. “It gets hotter the older I get.” He couldn’t remember this much heat as a kid. He couldn’t remember the oppressiveness of it, the total control it exercised over every breath he took. Revette better be in a giving mood, he thought, or else he was suffering for nothing.
    Adam coursed his way down through the neighborhood. Not his neighborhood; he wouldn’t choose to live among these assholes. Perfect place for his sister Ruthie, though. They thought she was some sweet old lady, one of those women who have endured. Endured, my ass, he fumed. The bitch lived to torment him, to dog him with his faults and fears.
    He took a reckoning, as he passed through the Thames’s front yard, careful not to step in any of those awful piles Toby the dog left (certainly didn’t want to give Revette any reason to deny him, not after all of this walking!), and he figured, roughly, that Ruthie had thrown him out of her house at least four times a year; that meant forty-eight times since he had moved in with her. Endured, hell. He was the one who had endured.
    Soon he was at the Paces’ house, and the lay of the land was friendlier to his legs and lungs. He knew that it would only be a little more of the heat, and he would be in the cool of Revette’s store, an oasis of air conditioning and possibilities.
    A few more minutes, and he could see the corner of Revette’s. It was the typical small town convenience store, plastered to the gunwales with Marlboro Men and Joe Camels, those ubiquitous price signs, the Seven-Up posters. Inside it was crammed with everything from clothespins and motor oil to tequila and Tampax.
    Adam reached for the front door, maneuvering his weight where he could pull it open, when it abruptly sprang out, followed by the bilious body of Tammy Norris.
    “Why, Mr. Jessie, I didn’t see your poor little body through all these advertisements stuck to the door,” she whined through her nose. Adam envisioned Roy Rogers rearing up on Trigger. What a bitch.
    “No harm done, Tammy.” He bobbed back from the door, a small pleasure craft bouncing upon the wake of a great ocean-going vessel. “I was just going in to shoot the breeze with Bobby Ott.”
    “You’re not going to buy a train ticket, are you, Adam? Are you going traveling again?”
    She snickered and Adam could see the mounds of flesh between her arm and chest through the open yoke of her sun dress, a pale pink flesh that he imagined looked bad in any light. Why was it that the fattest, ugliest women always showed the most? Perhaps they had the least to lose.
    “You might think you’re funny, Tammy, but I bet if you could find that old man of yours, he’s probably riding that old ‘train,’ too.”
    “Robert Earl died working offshore, Jessie, and you and everybody in this town know it. He wouldn’t dream of doing the shit you do.” She pulled her packages of Doritos and Corn Buddies closer to her heaving bosom and stormed off. Adam pulled the door open and stepped into the tight confines of Revette’s.
    A thin, morose-looking man stood behind the counter in the far right-hand corner of the store, counting receipts and making entries in a red spiral notebook. Adam put a smile on his face, hitched himself up, then hopped Gabby Hayes-style toward the counter and the man.
    “Hey, sonny boy, what’s up?”
    Bobby Ott Revette looked up regretfully from his notebook, a look of annoyance blossoming in his face until he saw that it was Adam.
    “Mr. Adam Jessie,” he cooed. “Long time no see. What’s it been, three days, four days, possibly a whole week?” Adam could hear coils of laughter spring out from the direction of the doorway behind Bobby Ott.
    “Sonny Boy, I ain’t been in here since the seventh. That’s well over a week, maybe even a week and a half.” He stood perfectly still now, directly in front of the register that Bobby stood behind, much like Oliver in the gruel line.
    “Hell, Adam, been that long? Seems just like yesterday.” And he laughed from his toes, the guffaws rising up through his stomach, along his lungs, out of his mouth, finally crashing around Adam like waves on a beach. Adam shuttered.
    “Now, Sonny Boy, don’t treat an old man rough. I really ain’t been in here for over a week.” He looked at Bobby Ott imploringly. “I’m good for it, Bobby Ott. You know I am.”
    The smile dried up on the younger man’s face. He pulled himself up to his full height, then leaned menacingly over the counter, looming over the older man’s sparse frame. Adam shrank back. “I ain’t running the goddamn Salvation Army, old man, and you know that’s the truth. I’m tired of being your damn accountant!” Another peal of laughter filtered out from the back room, and Adam flushed.
    “Sonny boy, you know I’m good for it. You know I am.” He twisted the front of his shirt in both of his gnarled hands, pivoting a private ceremony of intent upon his good leg.
    “You want me to call Miss Ruth, ask her if she can spot you some money, old man?”
    Goddamn you, you asshole, Adam thought. “Lord, no, Bobby, don’t call her. She’s on a real tear today. She’s liable to come down here and whip both our asses.” Adam was sweating now, oblivious to the air conditioning.
    “We don’t want that, no sir. That woman is bad news when the mood strikes her.” Bobby Ott relaxed, and the smile returned to his face. “Well, old man, if I carry your ass today, it’s gonna cost you.”
    “I know, Bobby, and I ‘preciate it. I ‘preciate all you do for me, sonny boy.”
    “What you want, Adam, Old Granddad? Mad Dog 20/20? It’s your money.” He burst out laughing again, then said, “Well, actually it’s my money right now, but it’ll be your money on the thirtieth, right, old man?”
    “You’re right, sonny boy, and it’s a bargain at twice the price.” Both men laughed at this, and Bobby Ott turned to the rows of liquor behind the register. He reached for a bottle of Taaka vodka, but was stopped by the plaintive voice behind him.
    “Bobby Ott, how about a bottle of that Beefeater. I think I would like it better, don’t you think.”
    Bobby looked over his shoulder, a cloud gathering in his eyes. “Now, Mr. Jessie, you remember what happened the last time you and Mr. Beefeater shook hands. Your little train ride cost your nephew a nice pocket of change.”
    Adam gulped hard, then stuck his pigeon breast out. “I’m better with it now, Bobby. I really am. And I’ve had a rough day. I deserve a little something special.”
    Bobby Ott grunted, then pulled a fifth of Beefeater gin off the shelf, turned, put it on the counter, and reached under the counter for a bag. “This bottle’s twelve-fifty, Adam, so you’re gonna owe me another twenty-five. You’re up to one-oh-six, old man, so make this last. Gotta make it to the thirtieth when that old eagle flies.”
    “I ‘preciate it, Bobby. I ‘preciate all you do for me. If I could, I’d have the gubernment send my checks straight here.”
    “And I’d let you, old man. Save me the trouble of hunting you down. Here’s Mr. Beefeater. You want this ole conductor to punch your ticket for you? Ha!Ha!”
    “I ain’t gonna ride today, boy, really I ain’t.”
    Bobby Ott grinned as he walked around the open end of the counter to the back door of the store. “Sure thing there, Adam. I know you just gonna sit in the depot and watch the cars slide by. But by and by, you’ll get that hankering, and off you’ll go.” He popped the deadbolt on the steel door and held it open for Adam.
    “No, I ain’t riding today. Just sitting and enjoying the sun.” He drew the heavy bag to him and shuffled out the door into the patch of dirt and grass and trash behind the store.
    “All abooaarrddd!!!See ya, old man.” Bobby Ott Revette pulled the door shut with a thud. Adam stared at it for a moment, and then turned to the open-ended half of the refrigerator box pushed up against the back wall of the store. Its floor was covered with dirty newspapers; the walls smelled of sweat, urine, and desperation. Adam gingerly eased himself down unto the newspapers and settled against the back of the box. His legs splayed out in front of him, an indentation forming in his pants where his lower left leg used to be.
    Adam smiled to himself, drew a deep breath, and opened the bottle of Beefeater. As he sipped, he could see the twin strips of steel beyond the shade of his box, and he glanced at his watch. Four-fifty. He wondered if the six-fifteen freight to Laurel was on time.
    Adam lay there quietly drinking his gin, wondering if Ruthie really meant to throw him out this time. She never did; of course, it didn’t really matter. Her declaration of intent always had the desired effect. It always put him at the mercy of fear and the unknown. It seemed to him now, in what he hoped was the sunset of his life, that his whole existence since the accident had been one soaked to the bone with anxiety. When was he going to be fired for his drinking? How long until his landlord or landlady or sister or niece or whoever threw him out into the street? How long until someone told him he was useless?
    It was clear to him now, finally, that the loss of his leg was the only finite moment in his life. It had fruition, a natural chain of events that nothing since had. Train comes along, boys scamper out of the way, one boy falls, one leg taken. Simple and to the point. And what a point it had. PeeWee is in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. Zap. Cost: one leg, thank you, and come again. We are here to serve you. Nothing in Adam’s life after that moment had so much possibility, so much delivery on demand. A promise made true.
    Adam reflected upon all these things, as he was wont to do when the gin was on him, and he came to the same conclusion as always: there is no conclusion. Same old shit, day after day. Conclusions tended to leave things loped off, bloodied. Better to avoid conclusions. Even leaving wasn’t a conclusion. If you left, that meant that you were showing up somewhere else, and that wasn’t a conclusion, just another turn of the wheel, just another spoke on the same rim.
    Adam heard the sound of the six-fifteen down the track towards Brackman’s Economy Supply. They must be off-loading plywood, he thought. He glanced at his watch: six o’clock on the dot. As he did so, he noticed a different pattern of light upon his good pants leg, a dappled coolness where starched sunlight usually lay. He had not spent endless days in the box not to know every nuance of the scene. It puzzled him until he realized that something was casting dark upon his leg, and he turned to his left to the corner of the back wall of Revette’s.
    Adam was startled and surprised to see Tom McIlhenny and his sister Lucy standing there, like security at a demonstration, tight-lipped and noncommittal. Adam never had company back here, not even Bobby Ott, not even railroad security or the local police. It made him mad, aggravated him that these two kids had not only invaded his place, but hadn’t even signaled their arrival.
    “What you kids want?” Adam slurred. He struggled to sit upright, straightening his legs as best he could. Lucy’s eyes ran immediately to The Leg. Adam saw her look, and resented it like hell. “Well, what is it? I ain’t got all day. Can’t a man have a moment of peace?”
    “Mr. Adam, I’m sorry, but I just wanted to see you for a minute. Lucy don’t believe I saw your leg. She said I was a liar. Tell it ain’t so, Mr. Adam.”Lucy remained silent through the explanation, intent on watching every twitch and adjustment Adam made of his body.
    “Goddamn it, Boy, I ain’t part of a display case for Red Cross or Amtrak. You kids get the hell out of here.” Adam wrestled himself to a standing position, placing the bottle of gin carefully in the corner of the box as he did so. Tom and Lucy backed away from him, but otherwise stood their ground.
    “But Mr. Adam, she doesn’t believe us, I mean me; she thinks I’m lying.”
    Off in the near distance a loud horn could be heard, and the deep rumble of thousands of pounds of cold steel being put into motion could be felt. “You are lying, Boy, through your teeth.”
    Tom turned beseechingly to his sister, whose face now bore a mask of total disdain and superiority. She cocked her head at Tom and threw her hands to her hip. “I knew you were lying, Thomas William. You don’t know a thing about anything. You’re so stupid.” She turned on her heel and began to walk in the direction of the McIlhenny house, her path parallel to the railroad tracks.
    Her brother turned back to Adam, despair and anguish etched in his face. Adam screwed his nose up and glared at Tom. Over Adam’s shoulder Tom could just see the snout of the Burlington diesel poking around the far fence of Brackman’s, and a few seconds later all the engine rolled into view. A man with a weathered face hung out of the engineer’s window as if he were trying to determine how much of himself he could expose outside of the window without falling out.
    Adam stared at Tom for a while, then stared beyond him at the sullen, smug dipping of Lucy’s back as she strolled down the dirt path along the track. He heeled slowly back to look at the six-fifteen as it approached the back of Revette’s.
    The noise of the freight was not altogether unpleasant. It was much like the sound you might expect a passenger train to make while it warmed up at the depot, waiting patiently to whisk families off to far-away vacations or lovers to secret rendezvouses. Adam stood as straight as he could, then turned again, and yelled past Tom to Lucy’s back. “Hey, Girlie, hey, Lucy.” Lucy easily heard her name over the drone of the train, knew it was not Tom’s voice, stopped, and turned automatically. She looked back at Adam expectantly, waiting for an adult confirmation of Tom’s duplicity.
    “Hey, Girlie,” Adam yelled even higher, the liquor giving depth to his voice. “Tom says you want to see the leg. Then see the leg you will.” Adam reached down to pull his pants leg up, and had to struggle with fingers confused by gin. The six-fifteen slowly crept up the track, now just before Revette’s, now even with it, the engine passing, then one or two of the boxcars. Adam began to sweat, and as he continued to pull at the reluctant khakis, he began to trot stiff-legged beside the train. Tom stood transfixed, unable to move as Adam hopped by him. Ultimately, the digging motion of Adam’s jog helped the pants leg slide over the chrome braces and plastic joints. Lucy gaped at the sight of Adam coming towards her, his leg seemingly to disappear as he got closer. She screamed once, and bolted across the tracks in front of the train and into and down the street at the end of the vacant lot opposite Revette’s back door. The train honked belatedly at Lucy’s receding figure. In a second, all that remained of her was the echo of her hoarse shout, “Momma!”
    Adam pulled up, exhausted now. Tom quietly walked around the corner of Revette’s, his shoulders hunched, and headed toward the post office. Adam turned to watch the flats and refrigerator cars roll past him. His pants leg unfurled down his brace of its own accord. He could feel the bearings of the cars as they rotated upon their axles, an endless rumbling of metal upon metal, baggage and cargo buoyed by steel springs and ramrod supports. He looked at his watch and noticed with satisfaction that the six-fifteen was on schedule.

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