THE WHEELS bounced at the dirt road leading up to the white house. His father parked, the two of them walked in the grass lot, and Terry lagged at his back. Hardwick employees and their family members nicked footlines in the grass, gathered on the big front lawn, scattered paper napkins and chicken bones, voices gone loud at the trees. His father drew up with the others. The air was bright, and warm. They all wore identical orange sweatshirts made for the day, fifty-eight years since dirt broke, at their chests a black outline of the plant, as seen from the highway, a block with a smokestack, and after a while he went and stood near him. Benjamin Webber’s knee popped loud like broken wood when he shifted weight. In Korea he tore some part of it, a ligament, a tendon, while carrying a flamethrower strapped to his back. The doctors sutured it ramshackle. Terry kept at two boys sitting a few feet apart in the grass, their brown hair cut to bowl lines. The elder went to the ground and picked with two hands, stuck his fingers down hard and broke grass. He raised up, moved a clod around in his hands, threw it against the other one’s head, and the dirt busted, dry cloud bloomed at his face.
Going on an hour Terry stood beside him cross armed. Benjamin Webber breathed hard through his nose. His shoulders were wide and bowed. Still he was thick in the arms, and his hands were beat rough. The hair grew wiry and unkempt at the base of his neck, dark, mostly, but taken some by gray and white. Some of them talked to one another, but none came where they stood. Terry told him he was ready to go. His father shook his head.
Come on, man.
His father turned his face down some and shook it again slow.
Just sit down or something, he said. Be quiet a little while, dammit.
I’ll walk then.
Fuck you will.
Watch, then.
His father turned, looked at him square and serious.
Be fucking quiet, he said. You hear me?
I don’t hear you.
He put a finger hard on Terry’s chest.
You can’t talk at me like that, he said. You can’t.
I still don’t hear you.
He got up close to Terry’s face, squeezed one of his arms hard and put a finger to his chest again and shook him at the same time.
Listen, goddammit, he said.
He held Terry at the bicep and turned a few times at the others standing near and watching. Terry felt something lost in his grip, punched his chest with a closed fist, hard as he knew.
Let fucking go, he said.
For a moment his father was shaken, and then he backed him against a tree a few feet behind, put his forearm at Terry’s collarbone. He pushed him against the trunk and raised him on his toes, breathed hard, eyes set. Terry turned to one side.
Just stop, his father said.
He panted.
Just stop.
He held Terry there another moment, and then his breath slowed, and his face dropped. He let him down. Some of the ones nearby kept watching. Terry swatted at them.
Yeah, yeah, he said.
He pinched his eyes and dropped his brow and put his chest out, walked stilted from all of them. He balled the orange sweatshirt he carried tightly, and threw it down a few feet ahead. He met the bundle and kicked. It caught on his toe and stuck, rose in the arc of his foot and then dropped, all the force gone at nothing, like trying to kick a birthday He gathered it up and threw it down again, jumped on top, stomping.
He walked the edge of the place and found a graveyard through a stand of tall pine, headstones worn and broken, knee high granite. He crouched and lit a joint. The grave at his right was shaped a crib, plain baby face carved at the head. Grass filled the crib below the face. He put a hand against it flat, let it stay until the joint smoldered. He put his shoulders back against the stone, lit a cigarette, listened to the far muffled voices and shook his head at them through the trees. He dropped his eyes, circled thumbs at his temples. Seated he turned back at the crib, made scuffed dates at the head; four days, late October.
That night he slept walked, and woke chewing, taste of old ice at his tongue, refrigerator light bulb yellow on his bare feet and the wood floor. He gripped a frozen drumstick on the muscle at the fat end, ankle bone between his front teeth like a pacifier, a teething ring. He undid his fingers and turned the chicken leg the other way around and looked at it, held it up to the light come through the door, sweating in his tight grip. The skin was dimpled, colored white yellow. He had not meant to chew it, hadn’t meant anything other than sleep. He did not understand what his body had set out to do without him knowing. He looked some more at the drumstick, and then he dropped it quickly to the floor, bone thud like a fallen paperweight.