River Town Box Set Read online

  He picked up the phone again, and, believing he had a slim chance for success, he typed a text message to Brody:

  “Hey, are you at work yet this morning?”

  The response came quickly.

  “Unfortunately, yeah. I’m calling the plumber to fix the toilets in the restrooms. Lacey called me and got me out of bed. We’ve got a sewer gas problem or something. The store reeks. Good morning, Dak.”

  The words were followed by a green-faced emoji with its tongue sticking out. Dak wished he was there to help out or at least offer a hug. He thought about the next best thing.

  Twenty minutes later Dak pounded on the front door to Home Pro. The store wasn’t due to open for another half hour, but Lacey let him in. “Good morning, Mr. Preston. I’ll go get Mr. Sexton.”

  Dak balanced three large white boxes on one hand. He said, “Wait a second, Lacey. These are for you and everyone else.”

  She held out her hands. “Are they donuts?”

  “Donuts. Pastries. Yep, I heard you had a little problem this morning, so I thought this might put a smile on a few faces.”

  Lacey said, “That’s so sweet of you. I’ll take them back to the break room.”

  She pivoted on her heels and nearly collided with Brody. His hair was sweaty and slicked back on his head. He wore a shop apron that was smeared with dark streaks, and his hands were nearly black. Dak thought he still looked handsome.

  Brody sighed heavily. “She’s right. That’s really sweet, and it’s great to see you. Would you care to have company if we make it to lunchtime? After all of this uproar, I’m a little worried the whole store might fall down on our heads.”

  7

  Brody

  Brody was still growling by the time he greeted Dak at the front doors of Home Pro when he was ready to head out for lunch. It took almost two hours to locate a plumber who could stop by the store. They all claimed fully booked schedules and offered advice to plunge and flush. When a plumber finally arrived, he took one look at the floor drain in the employee restroom and said, “Pour a bucket of water down there. I’ll bet fifty bucks that solves your problem.”

  Less than a minute later, Seb followed the instructions, and the odors began dissipating. Brody grumbled, “Damn, we could have done this two and a half hours ago. We owe you fifty bucks for this?”

  The plumber cringed. “Unfortunately, you owe a little more than that. On the upside, you know what to do if this ever happens again.”

  Brody and Dak rode together in Dak’s truck to the Dairy Curl ice cream stand downtown. After they ordered hot dogs and fries for lunch, it was only a short one block walk to the downtown park on the edge of the Mississippi River. They found an empty picnic table and spread the food out using the paper hot dog wrappers for placemats.

  “Did I really forget ketchup?” asked Brody. “Damn, this just isn’t my day. Shoot me now and get it over with.”

  Dak grinned and pulled five ketchup packets out of his pocket. He said, “I’ve got you covered.”

  “You know I’m gonna miss you again,” said Brody. “I always do. A month is a long time.”

  Dak tore open a corner of a ketchup packet with his teeth and squeezed it to form a thin line along the length of his hot dog. He said, “Yeah, I miss you, too, but there’s something about the river. She’s almost like a person sometimes. She has her moods. There’s a sense of humor, and she gets angry, too. I have to go back. I would miss her horribly if I just stopped. It would be like a breakup, and I don’t need that on top of Lewis.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say you should stop working on the boat. I just wanted you to know I think about you. I sometimes worry, too.”

  “Well, let’s have our blow out Thursday night,” said Dak. “We’ll have a movie triple feature, pizza, beer, and I’ll crawl onto the deck of the tow Friday morning.”

  Brody sipped at his drink and asked, “When do you have to be there? How early?”

  “10:00 a.m., so I have time to sleep. I won’t drink enough for a hangover. You know me. I’ll just need sleep. Get me to bed by 2:00 a.m., and I’ll be fine.”

  Brody tried not to think too hard about Dak in bed. He was sure it was a pleasing sight, but it would be an almost irresistible temptation. He said, “That sounds great. We’ve both had a rough time lately. Let’s celebrate and toss the hard times behind. We’re due for some good stuff coming up.”

  Brody turned down Dak’s offer to help move the last of his belongings to his mom’s house. Most of his furniture was beat-up when he first moved in after buying it at a used furniture store. Five years later, some of it was barely holding together. He donated the few pieces in good condition, dresser, easy chair, and kitchen table, to a charity providing furniture for abused spouses starting over again. They came to pick it up for free.

  The rest he left out by the curb for garbage pickup. He took one stick of furniture with him to his mom’s house. It was a rustic ladder-backed wood chair that lived at his grandparents’ house when he was growing up. The woven seat was badly frayed, but Brody’s mom fashioned a cushion that tied to each of the legs so a sitter would have no worries of falling through.

  As he packed up the rest, a motley collection of clothing, kitchen spices, and DVDs, he came across a copy of the summer camp movie Meatballs. Brody knew that he had watched it at least fifteen times. It was a favorite of his ex-boyfriend Michael. They dated for eighteen months. The length of time together was a personal record.

  Michael was small-boned and short like the main character in the movie. Although he worked in an executive management position at the Tar-Mor factory halfway over to Zephyr, Michael still battled with feelings of inferiority. He told Brody painful stories of bullying while they downed nachos and beer watching Meatballs one more time.

  Brody remembered how much he looked forward to weekends with his boyfriend around. Michael lived in an elegant apartment downtown above the small menswear store that remained in business long after it turned a profit. The apartment was an open space with twelve-foot high ceilings and at least 1,500 square feet. Michael worked with a decorator friend from Minneapolis to turn it into a replication of a big city loft.

  Brody spent weekends with Michael in the loft pretending that the rest of Coldbrook Bend didn’t exist. Michael mail-ordered the best wine, and he put together luscious cheese plates with all of the ingredients shipped from New York City. In exchange, he was content to rest his head on Brody’s chest and snuggle up wrapped in Brody’s arms for hours on end.

  As he packed the last of his DVD collection into a cardboard box, Brody wondered whether he would ever have a relationship where he felt as content as he was with Michael. It all ended the day Michael phoned him with news of a transfer to Tar-Mor’s home base on the west coast.

  He asked Brody to join him and move to California, but Brody refused. He couldn’t consider moving so far away from his mom, and he was already eyeing the management position at Home Pro. Saying goodbye was painful, and he received one phone call and four text messages from Michael after he left. Brody severed their social media ties. He knew that it would be too painful to watch Michael develop a new life from a distance.

  Brody was happy to say goodbye to his apartment. His mom’s house contained twice as much space, a spare bedroom for guests, and it made him feel closer even in her absence.

  When he pushed the kitchen door open and dragged a suitcase stuffed as full as possible with the contents of his apartment closet over the threshold, Brody thought for a moment that he heard the voice of his mother from upstairs calling, “Brody, is that you?”

  He started to answer back and then held his tongue. She was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. At the funeral, he saw her body in the casket. It was open for the whole world to see. She didn’t look the same as in everyday life. Her expression was slightly off, and her hair was perfect. He never saw it that way when she was alive, but it was her. He bent down to kiss her cheek just minutes before the funeral began, and it was
cold. She was not coming back.

  Brody carried a small cardboard box of spices from his apartment to the pantry in the corner of his mom’s kitchen. It was a large kitchen like those found in old farmhouses. He imagined the house bustling with kids and extended family members while a stout, matronly woman prepared food for a dozen hungry mouths.

  Brody’s mom rarely cooked for more than two after his father left. She didn’t date for the last ten years of her life, and she rarely invited friends over. He didn’t worry about her. She seemed content with her life. She occasionally complained about the breakneck speed of technological development and how it was slowly destroying personal interaction with her library patrons. She was a librarian who enjoyed the company of books, and she loved the small town. The town loved her back and turned out in droves to say their final goodbyes.

  Brody laughed when he saw tiny tin cans of spices in the pantry that were so old they were rusting through. Mom never threw anything remotely useable away. Brody retrieved the garbage pail from the kitchen and began sweeping ancient spice containers off the shelf with his hand. He winced as he watched them collect in a small pile. Why does it feel like I’m throwing part of her away?

  He began breathing hard and had to set the pail down. Brody quickly unpacked his own cardboard box and placed the fresher, recently purchased spices in front of the remaining older cans. Leaning back against the wall, he waited until his heartbeat slowed again before returning to the truck for his box of DVDs.

  He considered filing them away on the bookcase in the living room with his mother’s collection of movies, but Brody decided it was too much to handle at the moment. He needed something to take his mind off recent events. The only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment was a walk down to the banks of the river.

  As he descended the side of the bluff on Sunrise Avenue, Brody remembered a particular picnic with his Grandma and Grandpa Miller when he was eight years old. He was visiting them for a week on his own. Leaving home solo and receiving full attention from both Grandma and Grandpa made him feel grown up. He got to eat hamburgers, hot dogs, and bologna sandwiches. He reveled in the trip to the cities to watch the Minnesota Twins play baseball. Despite all of the exciting activities, what Brody remembered most was a quiet picnic along the banks of the Mississippi.

  Grandpa brought along burgers and zucchini sliced lengthwise to grill. While he went to work putting together the meal, Grandma walked down to the river with Brody at her side. He skipped a few stones into the water, and then a barge appeared rounding Coldbrook Bend.

  Grandma said, “That barge will go all the way down to New Orleans. Do you know how far that is, Brody?”

  “It’s a long way. Have you ever been there?” He looked up at his Grandma. She was tall for a woman, just an inch short of six feet. She always claimed she had shrunk with age, but she still appeared powerful and almost larger than life to the young boy. Her formerly jet black hair was streaked with gray, and it was pulled back into a braid that ran halfway down her back.

  Grandma Miller shook her head. “Never been to New Orleans, and I don’t think I’ll ever go. It’s over one thousand miles. I find everything that I need closer to home. I’ll let the river make the trip for me.”

  Brody stared at the water and imagined climbing aboard a bus or a train and traveling all the way to New Orleans. All of the adults he knew talked about the Mississippi like it was a person, but Brody had a hard time thinking of it walking and talking. It was just water. It was like what spilled into a glass when he turned the faucet on. It was the same thing as what he used to rinse his mouth out when he brushed his teeth at night.

  Brody never understood why Grandma Miller was so adamant about not traveling to New Orleans. She went to New York with Grandpa Miller to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person. He finally understood when he was in high school, and Grandma Miller told him the full story of her father.

  Brody knew that his great-grandfather worked on the river, but he didn’t know that Great-Grandpa Miller perished in an explosion near Natchez, Mississippi. They never recovered his remains. Brody shivered when he thought of an explosion so powerful that you couldn’t find anything left from the people involved.

  “It was a boiler,” said Grandma. “He never made it to New Orleans on that trip, and neither will I.”

  8

  Dak

  Brody called them superstitions, but Dak had traditions he followed for the final day onshore before returning to the tow boat. For Dak, it was a way of keeping life orderly, and a corner of his mind worried that something tragic could happen if he deviated from the tried and true pattern of events. He was willing to concede a tiny bit of superstition.

  Dak woke early. He showered and dressed and drove down the streets of town while it was still dark out. He spotted a few hardy residents out walking their dogs in the dim pre-dawn light, but the roads and streets were mostly vacant. It was a peaceful and thoughtful time. Dak loved being out so early. He just hated getting out of bed.

  He pulled into a fast food drive-thru to order a cup of steaming coffee and a fried potato patty. Dak didn’t want anything else to eat, but he didn’t want the full cup of coffee on an empty stomach either. The young blonde woman at the window smiled broadly and said, “You’re our first customer of the day. It’s one minute after the hour, so you have perfect timing.”

  Dak leaned toward her as he offered a credit card for payment. “Does that mean you’re going to set off balloons and give me a lifetime of free breakfast sandwiches or something?”

  She laughed softly. “You’re funny, but hang on just a second.” She handed his card back with a receipt and then disappeared from the window. When she returned, she held out a small paper bag. “I stuck in a free baby cinnamon roll on the house. You made my manager laugh, and she doesn’t laugh very often at this hour. Thank you for starting our day off right.”

  The cinnamon roll was sweet and gooey, and it made the truck a little more difficult to drive while Dak sucked the icing from his fingers. The parking lot at the riverside park was empty when he arrived. He parked the truck in the center spot next to an aged picnic table. Hopping out of the truck, Dak took his coffee along as he walked down to the riverbank through grass still damp with dew.

  Dak continued his streak of perfect timing. Just as he reached the small boulders strewn along the bank, thin rays of peach and orange-colored light began showing themselves over the top of the bluff on the opposite side of the river. He was in time to see the sunrise. Seeing the sun chase the darkness away was an important part of Dak’s traditions.

  The dock where he would join the tow was ten miles downstream at Zephyr. Dak liked that his hometown riverfront remained relatively pristine and clean compared with the heavy machinery along a working freight dock. That didn’t mean it was always peaceful.

  Major floods were rarely a problem in most of Coldbrook Bend, but the old downtown section was in a floodplain. Everyone who lived near downtown for more than ten years had stories of removing river mud from their living rooms.

  Dak downed the last of his morning coffee and tossed the cup into a nearby trash can. As he stared out over the water, he remembered the day he decided to work on the river.

  He lost his job when the old hardware store downtown closed up shop. Dak got a job there his junior year in high school and worked for six years until it closed up shop. A steady leak of customers to Home Pro, the “everything store,” caused profits to dwindle and then disappear altogether. Mr. Bennett, the owner of the hardware store, apologized profusely to Dak and suggested that he take classes at the community college and look for a more lucrative line of work.

  Classrooms were never a happy place for Dak. Making it through high school was painful enough. He didn’t want to hear about going back for even more.

  Mr. Bennett turned off the lights while Dak waited on the loading dock at the back door shifting his weight from foot to foot. Greg, Mr. Bennett’s only ot
her full-time employee outside of Dak, waited with him. He spoke up and said “Hey, Dak, my cousin makes good money working the barges. You’re a strong guy. Maybe you should check that out. They have a dock office down in Zephyr.”

  Greg had little to lose from the impact of the store shutting down. He was married to the town dentist, and he had a two-year-old daughter. Greg complained at least once a week about not having enough time to spend with his little girl and his wife. The store closing was a blessing in disguise, and Greg fought to suppress his glee at having an excuse to stay home.

  Dak shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d thought of the barges before, but he also heard horror stories from guys he knew in high school. They talked about how a line could snap and throw a guy into freezing cold water in a split second. Occasional stories filtered back to town of men crushed by barges improperly rigged or who lost a limb while trying to make a repair. At the very least, it was a rough way to make a living.

  “I don’t know. I guess I could check it out. There’s no harm in that.” Dak sighed heavily when Mr. Bennett turned out the last light and joined them on the loading dock.

  The next morning, Dak drove down to Zephyr and wandered into the tiny office of Eagle Point Transportation. He was nervous, and he wasn’t sure what to ask. The woman behind the desk looked up, smiled warmly, and asked, “Are you looking for an application?”

  “I…I guess so,” mumbled Dak.

  She said, “That’s usually what someone’s looking for when he walks into this office. Most of the higher corporate decisions are made down in Dubuque, but we do hiring here.”