Page 27

Pbr on the Porch

Colt

‘ D on’t take her too seriously.’

Mr Velasco’s reassurance comes with a cold bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, straight out of someone’s truck cooler. He nods, extending it my way. ‘Here. We really appreciate you helping us today.’

‘I don’t know that your daughter does.’

He lets out a laugh, probably the first someone’s laughed in this space in hours. The sun is starting to dip below the horizon, and we watch the teams clearing out for the day from up on the porch – one of the only parts of the house left intact. ‘She does. In her strange, Mayday way.’

‘Can I …’ I accept the beer, popping the cap in thought before I finish my sentence. ‘Would you guys like to stay at ours tonight? It can be the night; it can be however long you’d like. I just … I think …’

A weight seems to lift from Mr Velasco’s shoulders. He smiles, and it’s both grateful and melancholy. ‘We’d like that. Can’t thank you enough.’

‘You don’t have to. We can head over soon.’

He gives me one last firm pat on the back, and jogs down the driveway, hopping over rubble on his way out, talking to the contractors. I sip at my beer for a minute. May definitely doesn’t appreciate me. And it’s not like anything she said was wrong. She had the right to say every word of it.

As if she knows I’m entertaining thoughts about her, a creak of the planks of wood behind me and a clink of a beer bottle signal her arrival. ‘Probably an EF3,’ she says, referencing the Enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale that only two kinds of people would casually drop: Meteorology majors and Tornado Alley-ans.

Her voice is rough, but it’s softened from earlier. ‘Almost decimated a town, but there’s still worse storms out there. Isn’t that sick?’

‘Sick’s a kind word for it.’ I turn to meet her quickly reddening, puffy eyes. This is the circle of life in Oklahoma, and seeing it this plainly, it’s obvious May’d resent me for leaving. For leaving everyone behind and saving my own skin from this. Like I said, she’s entitled to every word she said earlier. I can’t be anyone’s saviour when I wasn’t around for the past five years. It’s obvious she’d hate me because her junior year, the season it all went sour …

‘Last year, it cleared Pontiac. Just about fifteen minutes from here. My uncle and aunt’s … I’d be shocked if you saw the news from up in New England.’ Her tone is one of bitterness, each word a sting, but she sits down beside me anyway, nursing her Pbr with two hands. ‘My dad’s youngest brother and his wife.’

‘Did they …’

‘Saying they’re fine now is probably an overstatement, Colt.’ She purses her lips, blinking back semblances of emotion. ‘Sure, they survived it. But all their stuff, their cattle, their equipment, gone. The way back from something like that …’ Hunched over, perched on the porch, all the fire in May’s eyes has fizzled out, replaced by a sense of helplessness. ‘My aunt cried for days because the storm took her old 4-H steer’s heifer. And maybe people say that crying over things like that is dumb because at least you’re alive. But when you lose everything you own? The kind of scared you feel? That’s like nothing else. It shook our family to the roots. Then we thought we were next. I couldn’t play right. My head was somewhere else. I mean, who gives a shit about lacrosse when your house could get ripped out of the ground tonight? Tomorrow?’

She slides her beer to one side, the glass scraping the uneven wood planks. ‘They called the first storm “The Widowmaker”. Like every tornado name in public media: shitty, crass and insensitive. And accurate. Clocked the highest death toll of any twister in the state in the past ten years. Auntie’s farm was fifteen minutes away from us, Colt, fifteen . And the fuckers didn’t stop. They kept coming, county after county after county. News said it was an epidemic.’

‘You could’ve told me,’ I start to say, but I decide to swallow my words. She doesn’t need me to try and be some sort of caretaker right now. She just needs me to be .

‘Personally,’ I say instead, ‘I wouldn’t have given a shit about lacrosse, either.’

‘You’re not all terrible when you sit and listen.’

‘I guess I do that, sometimes,’ I joke lightly. ‘I’m sure I’m not that mean.’

That gets a quiet chuckle out of May. ‘You didn’t talk to me for five years. You’re pretty mean.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I set my beer down beside me so I can look her in the eye – really look at her. Past the stunning face I fell so hard for back in high school, and into the brilliant mind that can come up with plays on a dime, but is also so burdened, all the time, with everything that whirls about in her life – a mental cyclone. ‘For trying to be something I’m not.’

She shakes her head. ‘ I’m sorry, Colt. I took my anger out on you. It’s just … to be hit by a storm twice in two years, it’s a lot. You know? We have seasons where this stuff comes and hits us over and over, but you get desensitized. Not having a minute to think in between the storms is different from getting a year to get your shit right, and then …’

‘That’s fair.’ I raise an eyebrow. ‘But you’re allowed to be angry at me. I hope you know that. You’re right. It’s not okay, the way I was trying to be something I’m not.’

‘I’m not totally right, thought.’ May waves a hand out towards the crates of stuff we pulled out of the rubble, crates that now sit on a flatbed attached to the back of my truck. ‘You don’t have to say anything for us to know who you are. And you’re not pretending to be anyone you aren’t. You’re Oklahoman. Maybe New England turned you into a terrible person, but you’re still Oklahoman.’ A smile sneaks out from the gloom that had settled over her face throughout the day. ‘The Colt I remember, at least.’

The Colt you remember is the Colt you made me . A better man.

My cheeks are warm, either from the alcohol starting to fill my body, or from the compliment, but I get the feeling it’s the latter considering I’ve only had a few sips.

‘So.’ I clear my throat awkwardly. ‘On the topic of the Colt you remember. This whole shitshow’s gonna get into people’s heads. They’re going to expect us to get even closer. The crowds are going to keep growing. People love an underdog.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’ May wiggles in her seat on the porch like a fifth-grader forced to sit through a PG kiss at the end of a coming-of-age movie. ‘Where’s this going?’

‘Well. It’s going … maybe this is a good point for me to ask, you know, for the sake of being a better fake boyfriend or whatever, why …’ The words tumble out of my mouth, completely out of my control. ‘Why did you hate me so much for leaving Prosperity?’

This is the question that’s been on my mind since the day she shot me that death glare in the stands when I walked in on practice. Now, though, the question is, will I get an answer?

‘Right now, you’re here. You saw what just happened to everything within twenty damn miles. This ranch, this place; it’s been in the family for generations. It’s all my bisa , my great-grandma, had when she came here. She built that barn with her two hands and a couple of stable boys. It’s where she got married. Had my ’buelo – grandpa. Then he got married here, Mumma and Papa got married here. I’ve spent my whole damn life here.

‘And even then, shit’s always been ebbing and flowing. Gotta pay the ranch hands. Never know what a given month of pay cheques will look like. And this weather … it can take away everything you’ve ever known in seconds. If I’m not here … who’ll be?’ With a shake of her head, she takes a sip of her beer. ‘We don’t get lucky here, Colt. We have to suck it up and dig our boots into the dirt. You … you left, and you don’t have to do that any more. I get it. You have a good thing in New Haven. But I gotta provide before I think about up and leaving.’

I wait for more, but that’s that. It sounded like there was a thought there – envy, maybe? – but it ends before it’s fully formed, and she moves on to the next. ‘There’s also the slightly important fact that friends don’t leave one another, turn their back, go radio silent, and then suddenly show up again with a sorry and a smile.’ She shrugs, the liquid in her bottle sloshing, and my stomach churns as it sinks into my shoes. Looks like I definitely just got an answer.

‘I …’ I wince. No easy way to sugar-coat this. ‘I really left you high and dry in the middle of Tornado Alley, didn’t I?’

May snorts, and then laughs, for real, out loud this time. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she covers her mouth. ‘Okay, Wizard of Oz .’

It’s kind of funny, and maybe I’d laugh in another situation, but my eyes are wide as I take in the aftermath I left behind. For years, I played on this tension between us, and instead of doing something, I dropped a couple excuses and took the first flight out. And maybe it would’ve made it different if I hadn’t done the next part, but I didn’t look back. Not once. Because I knew I’d screwed it up.

She picks up on my realization right away, the laughter subsiding slowly. She drums her fingers on her beer bottle, and after a long beat, she says, ‘I heard everything you said that night in Albuquerque.’

Wait. Albuquerque? When she was asleep?

Evidently, not asleep.

‘Oh. Oh. ’ I scratch the back of my neck. Fuck. That wasn’t my brightest moment. My chest tightens with anticipation. I wait expectantly for something to come next, but May pushes herself to her feet with a yawn and a big gulp of her beer. ‘Probably a good time for us to start heading back. Thanks, by the way. For having us over.’

‘Yeah – um, it’s no problem at all.’ I blink a couple times. It’s not easy to recover from the fact that we had just, almost, had a pretty deep emotional discussion. We had just, almost, touched on the topic I’d been waiting to touch on since I left Prosperity, and then, with a flip of the switch, we’re back on neutral ground. I’m jealous of May’s emotional regulation, honestly.

With one more glance back at the rubble surrounding the bones of the Velasco ranch home, I stand up and, half-empty bottle in hand, head after May.