Uncle Kevin was impressed with the back yard. “Now I won’t have to mow it for another six months,” he said. I didn’t find that funny, so I crammed some more fries in my mouth instead. “All you have to do is finish up the murder strip.” I knew that he meant that last bit between the trees.
“So did you meet Kirandra?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, quickly following up with, “You were right. She is different.”
If he could hear my mixed emotions, he didn’t say anything. I asked him, “Have you heard of a guy called John Cutler?”
He wadded up a hamburger wrapper and threw it in the wastebasket. “Let’s see. There’s a Cutler — not sure if he’s John or not — but he lives on the edge of town. People say he makes moonshine. Probably not him.” I rolled my eyes.
“Then there’s a John Cutler who lives up on 23rd street. He has a son named John too. John junior.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling embarrased for the guy, but also thinking I could kid him about it.
He nodded and then asked if I was going to eat the last hamburger.
* * *
Another day, another bowl of cereal for breakfast, and another item on the list. At least this one would be easy. The front yard looked as though Uncle Kevin mowed it at least a few times a month.
While I was putting the milk back, I noticed a note on the fridge. “I’ll show you the shop this afternoon — K.” I’d never seen where he worked, so I thought it at least would be something different. I’d have to bring my camera along.
I got the front yard done in no time and was looking around for a snack when the phone rang. It had been a few days, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was my folks. It was.
“Hi, this is the Blythe’s residence. Chris speaking.”
“Chris?” asked my mom.
“Yeah. Hi mom.”
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air like someone had just been stabbed. She spoke first.
“So how is it up there? Is Kevin keeping you busy?” She seemed slightly nervous.
I wanted to say so many different things, but somehow I couldn’t make my mouth say them. “It’s fine. He has a list and stuff, so I’m working on that.”
She laughed.
“He’s such a penny-pincher. Are you eating alright?”
It was my turn to laugh. “It’s bachelor food, but it’s not bad.”
She sighed. “I’ll need to talk to him about that. I can’t control how he eats, but he does have guests.” It would be interesting to see how that conversation turned out. Maybe we’d pick up fried chicken and get watermelon from a roadside stand.
“Anyhow, I just wanted to call and see how you were doing.”
“Things are fine. How are things down there?” I asked.
“Better.”
“Good.”
“But not because you’re not here,” she added. “I guess sometimes you can lose sight of something when it’s in front of you all the time.”
Dad and I didn’t talk much, so most of what I heard was from my mom. I didn’t mind, but this was one of those times when I’d like to know what my dad was thinking.
“I know what you mean,” I said, though I didn’t exactly. I had given up on “happily ever after” at my sixth birthday party. That’s when I knew that getting married — and girls — didn’t lead to a bed of roses. Still some part of me thought that it should be easier than they had it.
“Well I’m glad you’re alright. I’ll call back later tonight and talk to Kevin for a little bit. Let him know, ok?”
“Ok, mom, I will.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” And then she was gone. I hung up the phone and stood in front of the door for a few moments, the screen door the only barrier between me and the outside world. Here I was, half a world away, talking to my parents as though I were a cousin or someone far removed from their life, all general concepts or wrapping dangerous ones in bubble-wrap. I felt insulated, numb, like the whole conversation had never happened except for one tiny spot of warmth: she had said things were better.
* * * * *
It was around three that Uncle Kevin pulled up in the driveway. I had been looking around the house and taking pictures from weird angles, just to see what would come out. He drove a ruby pickup truck with the extended cab, still new and sparkly, though mud was starting to climb higher and higher from the wheelwells. “Chris! Chris, c’mon.”
I joined him in the truck and in fifteen minutes, we were at the main gas plant. It was a complex up a dirt road a little ways outside of town, on a small hill and surrounded by trees. A low white building with three white pickup trucks soon came into view, while various other cars sat in the lot. Beyond the building was a fenced-in one-room station with various signs hanging on the fence.
The white building was the hub of the Tarrant Oil and Gas Company, the official name of what Uncle Kevin referred to as “TOGAC”. Computers monitored the inflow of gas from the fenced-in station (the gateway), and at various points around town. You could control the pressure in the lines from this computer, or from three others around the station. The big office of course, belonged to my uncle, and there he kept track of new construction, plans for pipelines, employee pay, and all sorts of other business stuff. It didn’t look too different from his house, with the stacks of paper everywhere and a cordless phone peeking up from beneath it all. “So how does this all work?” I asked him.
“Well, I handle the high-level stuff,” he said. “City council meetings, construction, hiring, firing. Janice is our operator.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the office nearby. “If someone has a gas leak or a problem with their line, they call us and we’ll send someone out to take care of it. So the guys are either out on call or reading meters to see how many cf the unit is using. The gateway, that station up the hill, is where all of our gas comes in from. There we add the odor to the gas and bring it down to a pressure that our lines can handle. There’s also storage tanks on the other side of town that we can store excess gas or pull from in case we need more, and then there’s the shared line with Cranston.” He rolled his eyes.
“Shared line? How does that work?” I asked, expecting a sarcastic rejoinder. He didn’t let me down.
“Here’s how it works: Cranston gets all the gas and freaks out when we ask for some. There’s not much sharing going on.”
Just then, there was a knock on his office door. A guy with an upside-down U moustache and a frustrated expression on his face barged in. “We got a problem, boss.”
Uncle Kevin looked up at him. “Can’t it wait, Steve?”
Steve shook his head. “Sorry, man. Brian left because he was hurling chunks, so he didn’t get around to the meters on the east side. Jonas is off, and no-one else can swing it.”
“Great.” Uncle Kevin looked like someone had just stolen his wallet.
“I just stopped in to pick up some tools. Customer over at four-one-five is complaining again. I think there’s a kink in his pipe, so I’m checking that out.”
“Ok, thanks. I’ll take Brian’s route.”
Steve touched the brim of his cap with two fingers and left. Uncle Kevin looked at me. “Are you up for a ride-along?”
“Sure, why not?”
We hopped back in his pickup and proceeded to read the meters on the east side of Tarrant. The route covered an area from the lake almost to his house. I snapped lots of pictures, some of meters, but mostly of houses, that afternoon. As the day wound up, we swung by Kiranda’s house. As usual, Uncle Kevin went to the front door and announced himself. I felt a little nervous going to the front door, but I knew I would have felt dumb sitting in the pickup.
Close up, the house looked even more interesting than it had last night. Its front porch had four pillars that reached the second floor, and each pillar was different: one mermaid, one Roman soldier, one priest, and one snake. The latticework beneath the porch curved as it wove around itself, looking like waves if you looked at it too long. The house was painted in a light yellowish brown that looked like natural wood. Two antique lamps as tall as the door stood on either side, along with the usual swinging bench at one end.
My uncle knocked quick three times on the door and when it swung open, launched into his standard greeting, “Hi, I’m with TOGAC, the Tarrant — ” but what he saw stopped him in his tracks. Kiranda stood there with bright pink bubble gum wound through her hair. She looked from Uncle Kevin to me and said, “Erm. Oh.” She shut the door and came back with a huge cowboy hat on. As if nothing had happened, she continued, “You’re here to read the meter, right?”
Uncle Kevin nodded. “It won’t take us long. We’ll be by the side of the house.” He turned and went down the steps. I didn’t expect to see her like this, so I had to say something. I looked at her cock-eyed and smiled. “I think you need cowboy boots for the hat.”
“It’s all Shy’s fault,” she said. “She’s mad that I cracked the top ten on Rad Racer Four.”
“Really? Why?”
“Oh, it’s HER game,” Kiranda sniffed. “She had the top ten spots, and then I took one.”
“Sounds like she’s super-competative, unless there’s more to it.”
Kiranda sighed and grinned. “I did write my name in as ‘Shy is Super Short’.'”
“Oh. That’d do it,” I said, smiling back. I was surprised that she competed with her sister like that. It didn’t fit my first impression of her at all.
“I’ll get my revenge, though,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Just then a short blonde girl whose head barely reached Kiranda’s arms stole into the doorway and pulled the hat from her head. “He, he, he,” she said, talking a hundred miles an hour in a high-pitched voice, “I colored her hair with bubble gum! He, he, he.”
Kiranda looked down sideways and grimaced. “And this is my sister, Shira.”
“Am not!” She looked over at me and crossed her arms. “I’m Shy, and I’m not related to that one.” She stood on her toes and flounced her hands in Kiranda’s direction as if she were royalty, and her older sister, a mere peasant. “I’m posh!”
Kiranda sighed. “Britcoms,” she explained.
“So who are you?” asked Shy, stealing forward and eyeing me like a pirate. “How come I’ve never seen you before?”
“I’m Chris,” I said. “Kevin is my older cousin and I’m up here for the summer. You’ve never seen me before because I’ve never been here before.”
Shy thought about that for a second and decided that it made sense. Kiranda stole the hat back and Shy stuck out her tongue at her.
“Kira’s already got a boyfriend, you know.”
Kiranda rolled her eyes. “I do NOT.”
“Yuh huh. Yes you do. John Cutler–”
Kiranda put her hand over Shy’s mouth. That didn’t slow her little sister down, who kept talking, rapid-fire, although the only sounds that came out now were mumbles.
“Shira, Shh!” Shy stopped talking for a second and looked up at her sister. Her cheeks red in embarassment, she leaned forward and bit one of Kiranda’s fingers.
“Ow!” Kiranda whipped around with her other hand, aiming for Shy’s cheek, but her sister had escaped into the house. She turned around to give chase and collided with her mom.
“Kira, what are you doing with your father’s hat? And why are you hanging out in the –” Then she saw me. She blinked and then quickly introduced herself. I hadn’t forgotten my manners, and so I replied in kind.
She was tall and seemed kind, but beyond her brown eyes, I could sense steel. I could picture her taking a baseball bat to a thief, if not a shotgun. It wasn’t long before she excused herself and told Kiranda to not dilly-dally because Uncle Thomas would be there for dinner.
So Cutler wasn’t her boyfriend after all. I smiled to myself and half-heartedly tried to fight down the glow I felt inside. I tacked to a safer topic before my mouth decided to operate without my brain. “Wow. How big is your family?”
“I guess we’re bigger than most,” she replied. “but Uncle Thomas doesn’t live here; he just stops in sometimes during a buying trip.”
“So he does a lot of shopping?” Feeling brave with what I had just discovered, I tried to be humorous.
“No,” she said quietly. “He buys antiques. He’s been all over the world.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
Uncle Kevin lumbered back up the porch steps. “Alright, we’re done with the meter. Looks like a normal month,” he told Kiranda. “We’ll be back next time.” He looked at me and said, “You can hang out here if you’d like. I’ve got a few more houses left to go.”
I was about to reply when Kirandra’s mom called from inside, “Kira! Do you want to help in the kitchen?” I smiled helplessly; she shouted back, “Not now, mom. I’m busy!” Her mom replied, “We’re having Italian and you can work on your baking.” Kirandra’s face fell and the words teasing her about cooking dried in my throat.
“Sounds like you’ve got to get ready for supper and all that,” I offered.
“Yeah,” she said. Then her eyes lit up and it looked like she was going to say something, but her mom called again, “Kira” in one of those long, drawn-out calls that you knew meant “get here right away.”
“I’ve got to go,” she said, and even though she was wearing jeans, for some reason, she curtsied before shutting the door. I looked from the door back to Uncle Kevin. “Weird,” he said. I nodded, almost adding, “but in a good way.”
* * * * *
This evening it was subs from “Bradley’s Big Subs” and then a movie came on that I hadn’t seen. Uncle Kevin had already seen it, so he was messing with paperwork when there was a knock at the door. I leaned sideways in the chair and caught a glimpse of Steve, but this time out of work clothes. He wore a black AC/DC t-shirt, and I could tell by his grimace and the way he shut the door harder than necessary that something was up.
What I heard I wished that I hadn’t. Things so far had been peaceful and though I had to work pretty hard, I was enjoying the feeling of being far away from trouble and stress. In a few moments, I was introduced to all of Steve’s problems.
Steve groused about four-one-five. It turned out that there was a problem with the pipe. He thought it was one of those pinhole punctures that would be a real pain to find and required him to dig up lots of ground to find the exact location. Then he launched into problems at work; apparently Brian was a slacker and he probably wasn’t sick at all. Steve had seen him pulling into the grocery store. Uncle Kevin listened patiently and fiddled with the paperwork. When I got up to get something to drink, he looked at me with an expression that made me think he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. I tried to lighten the mood by talking about what happened at Kirandra’s house. Big mistake.
“Well it could be worse,” I offered. “You could have gum in your hair.”
Uncle Kevin laughed. He turned to Steve and gave him the back story.
Steve said, “Humph,” dismissively. “Their uncle burned me on a few acres, and I’ve never trusted him — or them — since. They all put on airs. Just because they’ve been around the world doesn’t make them freakin’ royalty.”
“I didn’t think –” I began, but Uncle Kevin interrupted me. “Hey Chris, isn’t that movie back on?”
I glanced at the TV. “Yeah, it is,” I said, a bit angrier than I meant it. Why was I so defensive? I didn’t even know the guy. Maybe he had ripped off Steve. I said nothing else and went back to the other room and turned up the TV.
A while later, Steve left and Uncle Kevin came back in. He looked over at me and said, “Hey, just a word to the wise: you can’t win any arguments with Steve.”
“Why not?”
“Because when he’s like this, the whole world is out to get him. Nothing is his fault.”
“So why do you…”
“Keep him around? Because he does a really good job.” Uncle Kevin sat down in the chair opposite mine. “But he has a need to vent from time to time and he knows that I’ll listen.”
I’d never thought of him as a counselor, even though I realized that he’d always been patient.
“It’s about as close to marriage as I want to get,” he said with a smile.
“So what happened with the land?” I asked.
“That’s an interesting story,” Uncle Kevin began, glancing at the action on TV. “There was a dispute over whether a strip of land was in Henry county or the city of Tarrant. Henry won and as a result, the land was available for development. Thomas and Steve decided to purchase seven acres, I think it was, of it. I remember Steve wanted to build a new house. Thomas had designs for a school of some sort. Something small and artsy.”
“How did they even know each other? They seem pretty different,” I said.
“They met at the meetings where the borders were resolved. They were on the same side of the dispute and felt that they had enough in common based on that, I suppose. Though, I’ve only heard Steve’s side of it,” he offered, almost as an afterthought.
“Anyways, they had the money ready and there were some forms to be filled out. The land was in high demand and they had to pay a retainer fee to start the whole buying process. I don’t know the amount, but it wasn’t pocket change. Thomas left under mysterious circumstances and wasn’t available to sign off. They both lost their money and didn’t get the land. Steve has been angry about it ever since.”
“I guess we shouldn’t tell him Thomas is in town, right?”
Uncle Kevin winked at me. “Right.”
Though as I dozed off to the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder what mysterious circumstances prevented Thomas from returning, and what his life was really like. The last thing I remembered of that day was the sound of the telephone ringing.
