The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
Today is different. He approaches the driveway like he’s done ten hundred times before. But it’s different this time. The shoulder of The Chicory Blue is gone, but that’s to be expected. Only the fallen plant and next year’s thistle seed heads remain. “It’ll be a good crop next year,” but something like fear struck at him.
All ten of the hundreds of times he’d walked this walk, those flowers forever marked the boundary, the first sensation of it. Their morning bloom, only ever witnessed by the privileged few. Open for the morning — chicory shuts its flowers by afternoon, so the blue that lines the road at dawn is gone by the time most folks drive home, and half the holler’s never seen it bloom because they pass that stretch at the wrong hour. A roadside full of flowers that hide from anyone who keeps regular hours. The thing’s been beautiful on the same shoulder for a hundred years and only the early people and the insomniacs and the men coming off a hard night know it’s there. Beauty on a schedule nobody set, keeping its own counsel, closing its shop before the world wakes up enough to look.
He’s here on time, but the flowers are long ago gone along with the salve that they are to his self conscious. For all the years gone by, the countless fishing days up Trail Holler, those flowers had been a medicine of sorts. One last hit off the glass to power that final stretch. The stretch with the most contrast to the holler itself. The Wiggins stretch.
And he turned in to make the climb. He could feel her there in her windows, today was no different, behind all those window shades and shadows – watching him – judging him – and that old phrase, “You can’t just hope, you gotta hustle too.”
“Shows what she know. Ain’t no hustle like feed the need.”
Up in this holler, Cody’s not the fix-er-upper kid from down the way. Up here they can’t tell him what he is. He shows them that.
“Deddy ain’t no tracker. He know it’s me gets the buck ever’ year. He know it’s me catches most fish. He know I’m not my fault. I’m his.”
Up this holler, the place where that invisible seam forgets for him the indignities that judge him in one look and shape him in the completely separate consequence of it, the endless beat of being weighed and measured and found wanting. Just past the old Wiggins place, it washes out. But not before. It’s as if the family stand sentinel over the entrance. Each time he passes this point, every time, the relief is here. It’s like a waterfall to walk through, and it washes him of what’s left behind.
Even with the branches pruned back, even with the gravel road that now stretches into the tunnel of , nothing is watching him now. Not yet.
And not all of it’s gone either, the calculation, the conniving, the plotting and scheming, the whole rumbling freightline of grievance and the machination to balance the books.
“Up this holler she hide behind her shades, can’t git caught seeing me climb above her. She down there in her trailer – talk to me all them years like she make it, an’ I ain’t make it too if I don’t listen to her – and there she is, trailer juss like me.
And Deddy too. They all the same. Im’a show them.”
And the plan developed the way they always do when you’re climbing to the idea from the under side of the ladder.
“That old coot thinks he knows read the sign. He know read the weights, the pauses. He act like he can count the breaths a man took while the footprint landed. Think he get the deer feeds us a month. Think he get Sunchokes and the Walnuts and the Poke Salad. It’s me gets them ramps he like so much with the meat.
He think it’s him gets in them old buildings get the wire, strip the wire, sell the wire. It’s me keeps him up.
I git the scrap, and I git the walnuts out the holler too, and I get the ginseng. And that’s all me. Not him.
And he act like he can read sign. Im’a read that sign myself, get a truer read here near two month later than he ever got that next day mornin’ when he read it to me out the make pretend book of his mind.”
But not today he wouldn’t. Today he’d march up that hill, every step one step closer. One step closer to the next worst. One day closer to building out the job that will take away his only place to blow it all off. Today he’ll look back in his mind’s eye at the Chicory Blue and wonder if he’ll ever see it the same way again, like he did last summer before all this began. He’ll wonder, will he ever even see it the way he did just this morning with the flower long gone but the promise in the seed. All of this toil, all of this burden not enough of its own weight; but every step is one step closer to a new man’s work. And as Tanner’s truck came into view where old man Wiggins’ blackberry patch should be, so came the dread in full view.
“Is this the guy? Are you serious? This guy in his wife’s coat and… are those sneakers?” He turns to Cody, “Serious, bro. Is this a gag?” Then to Tanner, “This guy’s not two sleeps south of his last good hit.” To Cody, “Tell the truth, you got a chipped pipe in your pocket don’t you?”
Tanner cocks his head, “I told you he’s different.”
Michael’s grin cracked through, and he stuck out his hand, “Welcome aboard. Ya think you can stay out of jail long enough to get this place built?”
A nervous laugh, and he pondered, “I think so. How long’s it gonna take?”
“My way? That’s time. A lotta time.”
He clocked Michael’s Dansko shoes. “I got time.” Them ain’t slick bottom. I see ’em right there on his damn feet.
“Yeah, how much time was it?”
Them have print in ’em. I know’d Deddy was bullshittin’.
“Huh?”
“Nothin’ man, sometimes the jokes are just for me.”
“I see that.”
“What do you know how to do?”
“I know that 35p over there, and the skid.”
“Yeah, they look warm, don’t they? Outside’a sitting on your ass runnin’ your joystick, what you know how to do?”
“I worked for Ball Homes.”
“So you know how to change the question. How about shovel work? You run a shovel?”
“Ya.”
“Do you know what side of the hammer to hit your thumb with?”
“I got a few idears, ya.”
“Nice! Okay, so listen, Tanner, I got us lumber over the weekend, and I dragged a trailer up to the pond. Today we start building a run-in shed, get out of the cold and warm up. Take my card and you two run down to Tractor Supply. I brought up a truck full of tools, but I forgot the speed square. Get a speed square and a coat and boots for this guy. I can’t have him up here looking like that if the inspector rolls through.”
“You ain’t gotta do all that.”
“It’s the responsibility comes with being human, Cody. I can’t load up my best insults and shoot ’em out the car window at you if you’re freezing your ass off and I’m all warm and cozy.”
“How’d you know it’s my wife’s coat?”
“Buddy, the coat’s red, and you don’t look like no electrician.”