Despite the twenty-degree weather, Darrell wanted to cook on the grill outside. He opened the top and squirted lighter fluid, threw in a match. The thing puffed up in flames. He put first one steak on, then another, then a smaller steak for Zelda, and shut the top of the grill and sat down on the picnic table next to me.
“Want a smoke?”
He pulled a pack of Pall Mall from his jacket pocket.
I said, “We’ve known each other now for, what, fifteen years?”
“Give or take.”
“And in all that time have you ever seen me smoke?”
“I keep offering, you keep declining. Figure one of these days you’ll take one just to shut me up.”
“If that’s all it took, I would have done that years ago.”
He chuckled as he lit his cigarette, blew a stream of smoke into the air.
I said, “Those things are going to kill you one of these days.”
“Old age is going to kill me. These—”
He held up the cigarette and squinted at it like it was an alien object.
“—these are helping accelerate the process.”
A silence fell between us then. Zelda lay on the patio floor beside us. The sky was gray and low and expansive. Occasional traffic could be heard out on the highway, as Darrell’s house sat right behind the General Store.
Darrell struggled to stand up, limped to the grill, and flipped the steaks. He lowered himself down beside me with a grunt.
“Gonna snow tonight.”
Sometimes it was difficult to know if Darrel liked reiterating himself or if he really didn’t remember recent conversations. It hadn’t always been that way, just something in the past couple years. More than once I’d thought about mentioning it to him, but I knew he would only wave it off, tell me to mind my own goddamn business.
“How many inches?”
“The weatherman is calling for a foot, but I’m thinking it’ll be less. Maybe … eight inches.”
If I were a betting man, I would have placed all my money on Darrell. For as long as I’d known him, he was never wrong about the weather. And it was not like he checked the forecast first; he only checked it after to confirm what he already knew. Felt it in his bones, was the way he put it to me once, and I didn’t doubt it. If Darrell said we were getting eight inches tonight, we were getting eight inches.
“On second thought, make that ten inches. And believe me—”
He threw a wink in my direction.
“—I know what ten inches looks like.”
We both laughed, hearty chuckles, because that was what old men like us did. But Darrell’s laughter didn’t sound good. It hadn’t for a while now. There was something deep inside that sounded congested.
“You should quit smoking.”
He took one last drag, smashed the butt out in the ashtray on the table.
“And you should mind your own goddamn business. You’re not my doctor.”
“No, of course I’m not your doctor. I’m your brother.”
He chuckled again.
“That’s right—my brother from another mother.”
I grinned.
“That’s what the kids say. Or at least that’s what you tell me the kids say.”
It was true. For years now Darrell had been making the joke, and I had been going along with it, because while we may not be actual brothers, we were very close friends. Probably the only friend either of us had.
Slowly, like paint drying, Darrell’s smile fell off his face. He stared off into the distance.
I said, “What’s wrong?”
He blinked, frowned at me.
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”
He got up again and flipped the steaks, lowered himself back down with a grunt. He was quiet for another several seconds, then let out a heavy sigh.
“Goddamned kids.”
“Don’t let them get to you.”
“When we were their ages, we were in the middle of Vietnam. Shooting at Charlie. Killing Charlie. Those sons of bitches wouldn’t know the first thing to do in a war.”
I didn’t say anything. When Darrell got like this, it was best to let him tire himself out.
“I heard what that little bastard said to you.”
He shook his head, his face twisted in disgust.
“Fucking asshole.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been called a nigger, and it probably won’t be the last.”
“I can’t even remember the last time someone called me a nigger. In fact, they didn’t even call me a nigger. They called me a half nigger, and I’m not sure if that was meant to be more insulting or less insulting.”
He shook his head again.
“I’ll tell you, nothing much has changed since we were kids. You’re up on the hill without a TV or radio, you don’t know how racist people have gotten. They said the Civil Rights Movement was going to end racism. Shit, it was just an intermission.”
Darrell fell silent for a moment, brooding.
“Every night I go to bed, I worry about Phil and Thomas. That I’ll wake up the next morning and find out one of my grandsons has been shot by a cop. Or that there was a shooting at their school. That shit happens all the time now. I know my son’s terrified about it too. He’s a good boy. I raised him right. I never knew my old man, so I always wanted to make sure I was a good father to my son, and because of it my son turned out okay. Not a complete fuck up like his old man.”
Darrell chuckled, but it was a hollow chuckle as he stared off into space. He was quiet for another moment before he spoke again.
“Two percent.”
“What’s two percent?”
“That’s how much the processing fee is for credit cards. At least the last time I checked, a couple years ago. Then there’s the setup fee, the monthly fee …”
He shook his head.
“If I wasn’t so goddamned cheap, maybe those punks wouldn’t have acted like they did. It’s all about the bottom line, isn’t it? So goddamned cheap of me.”
“Darrell, don’t.”
“Plus—and here’s where I’m going to sound really paranoid to you, I know—there’s the whole problem of the government knowing every single goddamned thing I do at my store. That’s why they put those credit card machines in stores in the first place, you know, so they can track everyone in the country. Know what you buy. Know where you shop. It’s Big Brother, and it’s just getting worse. Hell, some days I think you have it all figured out.”
“How so?”
“Living off the grid like you do. Up there in your Fortress of Solitude.”
He smiled when he said this, then started up another coughing fit. This one went on longer than usual, and when I placed a hand on his back, he waved me off.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just need another cigarette, is all.”
Back on his feet, he flipped the steaks but didn’t sit back down. He looked at me again.
“But I don’t think I could actually go through with it. Living all by myself. No TV, no radio, no electricity, no phone. You don’t even wear a goddamned watch. And sure, you got Zelda to keep you company—”
And here the dog’s ears perked up at the mention of her name.
“—but what else do you got? Nothing. What’s that saying, no man is an island? Not you, my friend. You are your own island. Your own goddamned continent. And sometimes it makes me so jealous it pisses me off.”
“Do you want to switch?”
He let loose another laugh.
“And have you run the store? No offense, but I think Zelda would be better suited. You’re too much of a nice guy, you’d give everything away.”
I wasn’t sure why he said this. The truth was Darrell didn’t know much about me. We were friends, yes, but that was about the extent of it. He knew I was from New York, but he didn’t know what line of work I had been in. When he asked once, I told him it was so boring it wasn’t even worth discussing. He hadn’t brought it up since. He knew about my family, my children, and he’d ask every once in a while how they were doing, but he knew I didn’t talk to them anymore, that I never saw them. It wasn’t like I ever left my Fortress of Solitude, as Darrell liked to call it, except for once a month when I traveled down to Harper for supplies, or to take a wounded animal to the veterinarian clinic in Durango.
“It’s not good being by yourself.”
The good humor was gone from Darrell’s voice. He stared into that distance again.
“And it’s not just the social aspect, either. That’s nice, of course, but I’m talking about … well, what happens when you die? Have you thought of that? Say something were to happen to you up there on the hill, you have a heart attack or slip and fall and break your neck, who would know? Certainly not your family. Not right away. And just how long should I wait until you don’t make your regular visits before I begin to worry? And then what about Zelda, for Christ’s sake? Would she even know the first thing to do if something were to happen to you?”
“Darrell.”
He blinked, frowned at me again.
“Hmm?”
“Why don’t you flip the steaks?”
He hobbled over to the grill, and as he did, I glanced down at Zelda. She was looking up at me. She had no idea what it was we were talking about, but I sensed worry in her eyes, maybe asking the same thing. What would happen to her if something were to happen to me? Or, on the flip side, what would happen to me if something were to happen to her? Besides Darrell, she was my only friend in the world, and the sad, hard truth was that some day she would die, just like Darrell would die, and it would just be me by myself. Living all alone on the hill. My Fortress of Solitude.
“I think these are almost ready.”
Darrell flipped the steaks one last time.
“Nice and juicy, just way you like it. Isn’t that right, Zelda?”
She barked, her tongue now lolling from the side of her mouth, her tail thumping the wooden planks of the patio.
Darrell grabbed the oversized plate from the table, forked the steaks on top, then turned around, holding the plate high above his head like a sacrifice.
“Let’s eat!”