Yesterday at about 5 pm I submitted the manuscripts for NDQ 91.3/4. To celebrate that, I decided to post a story from NDQ 91.1/2.  

Here’s Michael Merlo’s atmospheric story of love and loss.

Rest Assured

Before Jean left for work in the morning, she said she wished things were different and that we’d talk about it when she got home. Then she put her coat hood up, opened the door and walked out into the cold. I looked through the window to see if she needed help with the car. She started it earlier and scraped it herself. Something I used to do when we started dating some years ago.

I’d been out of work and the layoffs at the newspaper led me to believe that after nearly a decade at small publications, there wasn’t much else I could do. She wanted me to apply for a city job, but I didn’t want to work with the people I wrote articles about. I looked online for gigs. There was an opening at the post office that paid more than my reporter’s salary. Maybe it would be nice to drive one of those little trucks in the summer and spend time outside on foot instead of being at a desk all day. I “romanticize,” she said, pick something you’d actually like.

The one thing I knew was that I didn’t want to work in newspapers anymore. It had been the only job I had since graduating college. I was at the point where I was just as boring as the news. Jean forbade me from talking about work three years ago. She said it was, “too depressing,” and that my mind had been stuck in the gutter by the 24-hour “liberal” news media. She used finger quotes. Sure, I said, I’m a victim of our era. We couldn’t really talk about it too much, because we were on different spectrums of the news. I wrote it and she spoke it.

Jean worked as a secretary for the city manager. That’s how we met. I called so much to get a quote that we became first name acquaintances and then friends and then I asked her out. When my editor found out about the conflict of interest, I was moved to the police beat. My editor said that it would be an easy transition. It was, but the difference was that it kept me up nights. The thoughts I had of people in jail or dead were followed by more thoughts and stories which I wrote and tried hard to ignore after. Although I hated to admit it, the crime beat didn’t fit me. Anyway, it was hard not to think about my work. And when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t help but pull myself out of this mental trap. The one thing I hated worse than reminiscing about secondhand work-related trauma was listening to someone in public relations talk about their “journalism days.” Whatever I do, that wouldn’t be me.

The bread in the fridge was molding so I ate salami and cheese for breakfast. Five beers and a half supermarket cake were left from the party over the weekend. I cracked one and sat on the couch while I ate. The dog walked over as I finished my last bite. He licked my fingers and I sat back and drank the beer. It was weird being out of a job. The curtains looked different. Not like I cared really, but also the paint and the wood floors were glowing. These mundane things I forgot about or never viewed charmed the hell out of me all of a sudden. The couch scratched a little more than I remembered and I saw myself looking haggard in the reflection of the TV.

I turned it on. The news came on so I turned it off. I always wanted to be a “novelist.” Jean knew that about me. She knew that I wanted to write more than just FOIA requests and 500 words about the county commissioners speaking words said to be written. Jean said that since I’d been out of work maybe I should try to sell some of that passion or what was left of it. I sat at the computer for a couple minutes avoiding pop-ups and anti-virus ads. I wrote one sentence—“There is this damned feeling about Texas,” a decent start to a western—then the dog started barking at a squirrel outside. I stood up and grabbed the leash. I put on some boots and a coat over my robe. I put the leash on Charlie, grabbed another beer and headed out the door. Outside, I could see my breath. I took out a cigar given to me at my “retirement.” I figured it would keep the fingers warm if it wasn’t a good smoke.

While I struggled to light the damn thing, my neighbor David was shoveling his drive. We were strictly neighbors or at least I thought of him that way. We invited him to barbecues and dinners every once in a while. Jean always liked him, but I thought he was maybe a little tight. Jean said that this response had a lot more to do with me than with him. I’m sure she was right in some way but why think about that.

“How you holding up, Virgil,” he said. He always asked how I was “holding up,” like something was wrong. It irritated the hell out of me. I told him I was holding up better than he was with all that shoveling. He laughed and asked me how Jean was. I said she was fine.

“Wanna come over tonight?” he asked me. “I’ve finished the bar in the garage and I’m having a few folks over to watch the game. Heat lamps and all.” I told him that I had plans but would think about it. He walked away in his blue Patagonia jacket. He had a Mercedes out front and had worked as an accountant for a firm in town. Something I knew nothing about and didn’t care too.

I walked the dog around the block and pulled back when Charlie saw another squirrel. We kept walking down the block to Canter Park and when we got there, I figured it was inappropriate to be holding a beer in a public park near a playground, even though no kids were present. I hid it under my sleeve and the cold of the air hurt my hands so I chugged it down and threw it in the trash.

I wiped the beer from my mouth, lifted the cigar for a puff with the leash hand and the dog bolted like he’d seen the love of his life or the biggest T-bone in the world down the road. I ran too. After him and after the damn squirrel.

God, I must have looked like an idiot. I chased him down the street, through an alley, into the woods. I could feel the flap of my robe lifting in the wind behind me like a cape. He was out of sight and I thought maybe he stopped. When I slowed down to see if he was digging a hole somewhere or taking a piss on a tree, he was gone.

I whistled and yelled for him between wheezing and coughing fits but there was nothing. I walked around for another hour and a half until I went back home to see if maybe the pup went back for chow. He wasn’t at the house and I called animal control to see if they’d picked him up. No sir, they said. We haven’t picked up any pooches today. Well, just call me back if you pick up a chocolate lab, I told them. He has a name tag and everything.

I sat on the front stoop for another 20 minutes and waited for the dog to come back. Nothing. I walked inside, opened the fridge and grabbed another beer. At this point, I couldn’t tell if the buzz was from the running in the cold or the beer, but both had been a factor and neither one was helping my case. I chugged the beer down while looking for photos of the dog in case I needed to post them. There was one with Jean at her college graduation with Charlie as a pup. She was smiling and the dog was in mid lick of her cheek. Then there was the one from a year ago. She was standing on a mountaintop, winded after a hike, the dog next to her in a golden hour. She was going to kill me.

I walked the usual trail again, down the road to the park and into the woods. He wasn’t there. I stood in the woods by myself for a while and sat on a log. I listened to the chickadees. They sounded out of place with the early spring winter conditions. They always made me nostalgic for warmth. The two-tone high-pitched whistle echoed across the trees and for a second made me forget the trouble.

If Jean got home and he wasn’t with me, what would I tell her? I walked back home. My head hurt. The buzz was gone and it was getting dark. The Sun was hidden behind the gray of the sky and I couldn’t tell what time it was.

I walked home and Dave was in his open garage. Men were laughing and drinking at the bar. Come on in, he yelled at me. I said sure, but that I needed to go inside first. He yelled something after that, but I didn’t hear it and kept walking so I didn’t have to ask.

I got home and Jean was sitting at the dinner table and the dog was underneath the table at her feet. How many times do I have to tell you that if you leave him home alone, you need to lock the door? she said. I apologized and walked over to kiss her. She moved her face away from mine.

She stood and paced. I really think we should figure out something different. I asked why. She said because her life was getting boring and calculated. She knew all the next steps and they didn’t feel right. This tore her apart, she said, because she didn’t love me, but also had forgotten what she wanted.

I sat down. She asked me if I wanted something to drink. I said no. She opened the fridge, cracked the last beer and sat at the table. I’m sorry, she said. This is just how I feel now and it’s not your fault or mine. It’s just the way it is. She petted the dog while talking to me. I looked down under the table and saw a dead squirrel near her foot. I didn’t tell her. When she went to the bathroom, I put my hand in a grocery bag, picked up the squirrel and headed outside, taking a few steps before tossing the carcass over the fence into David’s backyard.

I moved out a week later into a small one-bedroom apartment in Missoula for $650 a month. I spent the first few weeks looking for jobs online. Fantasizing about them all and applying to none. I tried smoking, but couldn’t quite commit. I struggled to write anything without thinking I would never publish. Those old “work-related” thoughts and anxieties came on more often and I checked in with my doctor who suggested yoga, running and antidepressants. I took the first two doses of pills, but quit and did the yoga and running. The buzzing in my brain became too loud, I told them, like little electrical sparks. They assured me it was normal.

I got a call from an old friend suggesting we go ice fishing together before everything melted. I had never gone so I said sure and he said I should pack a sandwich. Come up to my place tomorrow, he said. I’ve been living up near Seeley.

Nick also wasn’t working because he spent his summers fighting fire and therefore could collect unemployment in the offseason which was a common hush hush, he said.

I drove my Subaru there. It was a small house in the woods that he’d been renting as a short-term deal but that didn’t keep him from making the place his own. When I walked in, it was filthy in an organic sort of way. House plants were in every crevice and the smell of dried morel mushrooms and fermented apples stung the nostrils something wonderful.

He showed me the bathroom and the spot on the couch where I would be sleeping, a tour would have to be done on my own time. Nice place, I told him. Nick handed me a beer and then added more to the wood burning stove.

“I love this place,” he said, “Hopefully I can buy one of these for myself one day before the Californians snatch them all up,” he winked and then used his tongue to maneuver the tobacco in his lip. “It’s good to see you, man. I missed you. Sorry about your lady, but it’ll be good to have you around when it gets warmer. Get into some trouble,” he laughed and gently gut-punched me.

“Yeah, it’s good to see you too.”

We’d known each other since we both had long hair at the University of Montana. And it had almost been seven years since we were skateboarding down the walking trails with 40-ounce beers. In fact, we drank so much that we didn’t really get to know each other that first year. Things had changed, but also stayed the same with us.

“Oh, yeah. After our outing we’re having a little party here tonight. I forgot to tell you. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Good, good, good,” he said, taking a swig of a beer.

He drove us out to a small lake that was vacant. We pulled an orange plastic sled filled with gear to a far side on the lake, set up our chairs and drilled some holes. We baited our lines with nightcrawlers and let them sit. After a few hours of tiny perch destined to be tossed back and around 20 more holes in the ice, I suggested that we keep a few for a cioppino.

“Hell no,” he said. He took out a can of Copenhagen and stuck some between his lower lip.

“You look like a fish with that thing in your mouth.”

“Better to look like a fish than to feel like one,” he said.

After a few more perch small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, we decided to take off to the bar for lunch. Damn the sandwiches. It consisted of hamburgers, two bloody marys each and a few Bud Lights. Old timers were still smoking in there against the odds of a local health department and Nick knew the few women who were there and invited them to the get-together.

We stopped at the gas station on the way back to his place and picked up a few bottles of wine for appearances and two 30 racks of beer. I tried to pay for half but he insisted on me being an esteemed guest. Probably a good idea since I was out of work anyway.

He also picked up a block of cheddar and a box of Ritz crackers. Classy, I told him.

“You know me. Only the best.”

Around 20 people came to this party after the sun went down. Some of them hippies or hipsters from Missoula and some of them rednecks from anywhere else. A couple native kids showed up from his fire crew, but most of the night I chatted with Lindsey. She was from Great Falls and I thought she was sweet. She had curly brown hair and a smile that reminded me of Hollywood although I’d never been there.

She asked what I did.

I told her I worked in newspapers which was better than saying nothing and she said she never read the local one.

“Me neither,” I said.

She told me what it was like growing up in Great Falls. That while some of her friends ended up joining the army and others went to the university, she had gotten married to her high school sweetie and moved to Seeley. When I asked where he was, she pretended not to hear so I didn’t investigate further.

Our talk ventured from politics to municipalities and television. She wanted a house in the suburbs somewhere warm. And I told her that I had lived in Texas for a stint which she immediately said was not the type of warm she wanted.

 The party died down around 2 a.m., and Nick went to bed after a few shots of Lewis and Clark Gin. Most everyone left except for a couple kissing on the couch.

“I better walk home,” Lindsey said. I told her I’d give her a ride. She preferred to walk but asked me to join. It was cold and about a mile until we got to a small trailer in town. She opened the front gate to the property.

“Have a good night,” I said, keeping her marriage in mind. She said she would if I came in.

She opened the front door, put on some music and poured two glasses of Barefoot wine. It was warm and tasted like perfume. She danced along to some jazz playing from the university radio station and hung one arm around my neck.

“Your cheeks are getting red.”

“That’s from the drinking. I’m Italian or something.” I laughed. She didn’t, but kissed me.

“Well, what about that then.”

I kissed her back.

The door opened while we danced and my hair felt on fire from the gust of cold air entering.

“Hi honey,” she said.

“Hello,” I said waving to the shadow in the doorway.

He was bearded and looked drunk. He mumbled something I didn’t completely catch but knew it meant for me to leave. As I walked down the steps of the trailer, I felt a push from behind and fell face down into a snowbank.

When I turned around, he was there again and kicked me in the ribs before I got up and hit him once across the face. He swung back and landed across my nose. I swung again and missed.

 I remember waking from a dog licking my face maybe an hour or two later. I pushed the dog away.

The snow was falling down lightly and it was quiet outside. It seemed the whole world had been sleeping. It was a long walk. At least longer than it was before. I limped back to Nick’s with my knee feeling like hell. Blood was dried beneath my left nostril which is probably what the dog was licking.

I could see the porch light from the steep driveway and when I walked in, the couple was still on the couch under a blanket. One of them shushed me. I grabbed what I thought was the fullest open beer off the kitchen counter and headed back outside.

I opened the trunk of my Outback and spread out my sleeping bag and pillow. I got in, pulled the latch down and grabbed some handwarmers from my backpack. I chugged the beer. Put on any extra clothes. Some sweatpants and Jean’s Montana State sweatshirt. It was cold in the car, but the chemical pouches were warming slowly. As I drifted off, I thought about how Charlie used to sleep warmly between my legs and how it used to bug me, but that if tolerated long enough, any annoyance can end up comforting. Like the cold and the birds chirping and kissing chapped lips. Like TV commercials and dreams in the attic. Like canned chili and incense in every downtown Missoula business. Like being punched or slobbered by a mut. These things I tolerated until I didn’t, and now I missed them. They felt like home.

~

Michael Merlo is a writer in Montana. Born in Elgin, Illinois, he’s lived in Wyoming, California and Texas. He worked as a newspaper journalist in West Texas and Western Montana and currently works as a carpenter and bookseller in Missoula. 

91.1/2