SEVENTEEN

Sometimes I forgot for a few heartbeats, and it was just another day, two lanes, the sky clear, all the way to the horizon.

We rolled north along the two-lane, a drift of sprinkler mist touching me through the open window. The almond orchards were irrigated by sprinklers on high poles, white plumes of water.

“Let me know if you want to stop,” Chief said.

Chief had a citizen’s band radio, a veteran Magnavox with two knobs missing. I never saw him use it, and he didn’t carry a phone. If I wanted to call the hospital, I would have to trek across a plain of petrified cow pies and knock on a door. “Doesn’t it get on your nerves when someone says how the Lord has blessed him?”

“He was just being friendly.” He looked over at me, a question in his eyes, the passing scenery reflected in his glasses.

“Thinking that God is wrapping up presents for you and you alone,” I heard myself saying. “A new house, a big new lime-green fiberglass hot tub, little skin cancers on your shoulders.”

“You’re just mad because he didn’t give you a tip,” said Chief. He worked the transmission out of fourth and into third, the gear box grumbling somewhere under our feet. Chief never complained, but I knew the old truck was a bitch.

As we slowed down something made me want to break Chief’s clipboard into tiny pieces. Maybe it was the bantering Chief kept up, able to pretend things were normal. I hated him for it, but at the same time I was grateful. I had written my GED essay about Chief, the person who had influenced my life. I should have written about my father.

Chief swung the truck up onto a rutted dirt road, fighting with the steering wheel. He let the truck lurch to a stop. For a moment I thought he was going to say, That’s enough out of you, Zachary, get out.

He turned off the engine, but even that was not a smooth operation. The key turned stiffly, and when the engine died the truck began to roll a little. Chief pulled on the parking brake and the truck steadied, stopping. The quiet was punctured by the sounds from under the hood, hot metal falling still, cooling. He climbed out of the truck, and I followed, up to a barbed-wire fence.

Silence. Hot wind. The crush crush crush of our footsteps.

“Can you believe having a head that small?” he was asking, his voice loud in all that quiet.

An ostrich peered at us from behind the fence. It had to turn its head sideways to observe us, like any bird, its head bare of feathers except for a few white hairlike filaments. Its ear was a fuzzy hole in its skull. Its feet were gray talons, huge, dinosaur prints in the dust.

“They buy these ostrich eggs for two thousand dollars each,” said Chief, holding out his hands to show the size and shape. “Keep hoping a demand for ostrich enchiladas will sweep the nation.”

Chief liked this, stories about people blowing their cash in a stupid investment. His father had been a pit boss in Vegas. Chief said most people were hopeless when it came to handling money, thinking they could beat the odds. But there was some kindness in his tone, too, as though people couldn’t help dreaming.

A woman stepped down back steps in the distance and made her way toward wash hanging on a line. The line itself was invisible, mirage rippling the air. She saw us and smiled, the whiteness of her teeth across the distance, friendly, someone we would never know.

“Maybe they like the birds,” I said. “As pets.”

“Would you?” But he wanted to agree with me. I could tell by the way he picked up a spine of weeds and held it out to the ostrich. Another bird marched from behind a shed, wending its way across the trampled earth.

As the second fowl cocked its small, dark eye, a dog scrambled from the back porch of the house. The woman called to it, but the dog ignored her, barreling across the drought-yellow lawn, swinging wide to avoid the angle of the barbed-wire fence, running hard down the road to stop right before us.

Half German shepherd and half haystack, he exposed his teeth at us and released a long, low growl. He gave us an especially ugly display, peeling back the skin of his snout, showing every single tooth.

The woman was calling, a name that sounded like Nero. I have a theory about dealing with angry dogs, and it includes speaking in a gentle voice and holding out a hand the dog can sniff. Nero stretched his neck toward my hand and barked, dog breath on my fingers. He was sour-smelling.

Each bark shook something in me, and as I began to back away Nero bristled, a ridge of hair up and down his spine. He crept after me, one step after another, an iron-edged growl backing me toward the center of the road.

Chief wore one of his merry little smiles. “Look here, Zero,” he said. He wrenched open the truck door, reached in across the seat and rummaged, bringing forth half a sandwich.

My essay had been about the time Chief broke up a fight between two massive Tongans on the loading dock, two cousins who had just been joking around and suddenly pushed with a little too much weight. Chief had insinuated himself between the two men with a laugh.

It was the laugh, the carefree manner, that had killed the fight. “If you’re going to show off your choke holds, make us buy tickets.” And the time he parked the truck in a driveway in San Leandro, and a furious man stormed down at us, holding up his pants with one fist, shouting that if we left our truck there he would have us arrested. Chief agreed that sloppy parking should be punished by the firing squad, and the man ended by leading us to a pony keg of beer and saying he could nuke another plate of nachos in the microwave.

And here was Chief, offering bug bread with grape jam seeping through, cottage cheese crumbling at the edges. The dog nosed the air. Chief put the half sandwich down beside an ant colony, cinnamon brown harvester ants, a hole with a halo of ant-processed earth.

I’m glad I’m not an animal. But for a moment Chief and I were silent, enjoying the dog’s pleasure. He lapped the bread, taking the sandwich apart, tossing it so he could wedge it into his jaws. He wolfed the last crust, eyeing us with little of his former aggressiveness, his tail beginning to jerk from side to side.

“Zero the Hero,” said Chief.