Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
26.2
Nancy Zafris
AdaAda, the weighmaster cashier, looks down at what she has. It’s Thanksgiving, time to take stock. She’s here at her vacation spot, bought and paid for, but what she sees of her life doesn’t amount to much in the way of right now. She’s got the new girl she’s friends with—that accounts for two weeks of her life—and she’s got her job at the Metal Shredders—that accounts for about twenty-five years. Right now that’s all she wrote. Earl’s dead. Never heard a word of sorry, deepest sympathy from a single one of them except Tony. Only man there with some breeding to him. It would take a welder to show a little class. Tony the welder tapped on her cashier window, had something to say, then sent a card stamped and addressed. The rest? Twenty-five years and nothing. They showed their colors.
“Pull!” she calls, and the new girl—a big one, sad-looking, their new night-watchman—she pulls the trap, finally getting her timing down. Such a horse of a girl, you gotta feel sorry for someone who looks like that. “You doing great, Sylvie,” Ada tells her, though truth be told it has taken the poor thing a long time just to figure out that Pull! means pull. But Ada compliments her anyway. She likes to make ‘em feel good. They feel better about themselves if you say something nice. Besides, if she wants to do any skeet shooting on a legal holiday, this girl’s all she’s got and she’s got to make the best of it—as usual.
This morning, as preparation for the Thanksgiving buffet—her old friend Morris will be there and eight or nine others –Ada gave the girl Sylvia a manicure and fixed up her eyes that weren’t half-bad, but wasn’t nothing she could do in the way of clothes to help her out. Not yet. Gotta take off some pounds. Sylvia pulled up her shirt and lifted up one of the rolls of lard and pulled off a bandage and showed the wound to Ada. She called it her holy mark. It was godawful ugly, weren’t no holy mark neither. It’s sad to think she’d be so proud of what was basically a lard on lard bedsore. The poor girl doesn’t get about three-quarters of what the world is dishing out, but she’s got a good heart and Ada likes a good heart to go with her own. There’s potential there; she might eventuate as a good friend. Sylvia seems eager to learn whatever Ada’s got to teach, which is a lot, but Ada can’t figure what use a girl like that would put it to.
“Pull,” Ada calls again. She swings smooth and the clay bird bursts at three o’clock and scatters into the lake. She’s got it going now.
No, not a word about Earl from those men in the scrap yard. Twenty-five years and all she’s earned is their silence. One of them gets killed, though, that’s all you hear. That crazy Worm, she had the jump on him since day one. She warned John Junior about him not one week after he showed up. She’d been observing him, and that squirmy fellow was up to something. “Now, Young John, I’m going to tell you something,” she’d said. Her words didn’t no more work than cold water. Did anyone really think a man named Worm was going to listen to orders? Was going to lubricate the gears the hard way, the right way, with the machinery turned off? She guesses the funeral answered that question.
Well, she didn’t like Worm and that was no secret but that don’t mean she wanted to get him up and killed. The poor boy’s arm got tore off while she was gone and nobody thought to call and tell her. She goes back to work and finds out Worm’s dead and she’s not surprised but she is plenty angry the time is past for her to pay her proper respects. His funeral come and gone. Meantime, nobody asks her, You finally found a decent spot for Earl? You finally scattered him? Why does she bother to take a trip if nobody was going to notice what for? Not even her boss asked her, not even after working for him for twenty-five years. There was about five years of her life when she used to lay in her bed nearly ashamed of the heat she was feeling for him. Couldn’t hardly sleep it was so bad. She was good-looking then and a lot younger and she had plenty of men after her, and for five years she wondered, why not him? She knew he was married but that could change. She had married ones after her, too. Through three marriages, maybe John Bonner was the one she really loved. Even though she has a mind to hate him now. Even though she’s thinking seriously about never going back to that place—that place named after him and his father and his son and whatever other boy baby comes down the pike. John Bonner & Son & Son & Son & Son Metal Shredders. Take it. You can have it.
“Pull!” She prefers the swing-through in the low-gun position. Earl tried to get her to change to the sustained lead, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. She’s got fair to good accuracy; it’s too late to try for top-notch. She doesn’t have it in her anymore due to the natural aging process; she doesn’t like it—the aging part and what it does to you—but she’s not ashamed of it. There’s things that happen and death is one of them, and when she buries someone, she won’t go back. Life moves on and so does she. Won’t go to the graveyard, won’t do that stuff. Earl’s going to have to make due on his own.
“All right now, Sylvie, do it like I told you.”
They’re standing by the edge of the lake. Up a ways from the shoreline is her and Earl’s summer cottage. It’s not much in the way of glamour. It’s got four closets but just one of them is for clothes. The other three closets are the bathroom, the living room, and the kitchen. None of the doors can make it all the way shut. Floor’s warped, roof’s in trouble. But they used to come here and ride on the pontoon and that was all right. It didn’t make it all the way to romantic, but it was all right. Earl liked it. It’s not the most special place on earth, she’ll be the first to admit that, it’s kind of a shrug shrug place in the way of beauty, but it’s good enough for Earl. It’s not like she’s going to take a trip to Paris so she can say she found some spot in France to throw his ashes on. What does that mean? That could mean a toilet in the French airport. An Ohio man-made lake is good enough for him, and for her, and for most Frenchmen when you come down to it.
Maybe Paris, Kentucky she’d think about going to, but not Paris, France. That’s nothing but snobbery to think you have to do something so off-kilter that it requires a passport. Earl wanted to go but he never made it, and it’s not her job to make up for what he missed out on. If he’d wanted to go so bad, he should have ate better and got the diabetes under control. But he didn’t, and that’s that. And who knows, it might be nothing over there.
This place is good enough.
She tucks in her gun. Moment of truth coming up. She’s got the 12-gauge out today. It’s heavier and her muscles aren’t as strong as they once were, but she’s needs to put the odds in her favor. The 12-gauge gives her 550 pieces of shot. That gives her 550 chances, that’s how she prefers to look at it. In other words, she’s got the advantage now. There’s no way she can miss.
You can’t miss, she tells herself. “Pull!” she calls out.
Her friend Morris over at Barrelstocks has done his job, and now she’s done hers. The clay bird he fixed up for her special bursts apart. Earl briefly appears as a firework and then his ashes shower into the lake.
“Good-bye, Earl,” she says. She pulls a handkerchief from her belt, wipes her eyes and blows her nose. Suddenly she’s feeling bad she didn’t take him, one way or another, alive or dead, to Paris, France
“He looks happy,” Sylvia says.
“You think so, honey? Well, let’s pack up and get to the restaurant.” Ada slaps her hands clean like this was no big deal, like she shoots husbands into the lake most any day of the week. She puts herself forward as a cool cucumber but her heart is shaking and now her hands join in. She withdraws to let Sylvia take care of the clean-up. That wouldn’t have been a miss she could forgive herself for. She’ll write Morris a thank-you letter. Looks like he’ll probably be husband number four.
The last of the ashes float down. Not the best lake around, there’s some lots better, but it’s good enough. It might dry up one day but she won’t be around to see it. And as far as that goes, when she does die she doesn’t care where anybody drops her bones. Life goes on. She won’t be looking back.
