Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel (36 page)

I awoke on Sunday morning to the sound of Lee’s screaming, the sun just then rising in the east. I went to his bedroom, where he laid in his bed, feverish, the sheets soaked with perspiration, the room feeling terribly hot and stuffy. I looked out his bedroom window and watched a crow glide over the pasture, then land on an old fencepost where the barbed wire had been bundled into a tight crown of rusty thorns. In the sky, a cloud the shape of an angel blowing a trumpet. And at the very rear edge of the pasture: a coyote, trotting along the tree line, sniffing the spring air. Lee raked at his legs, scratching. I opened the window.

“We’re taking this thing out ourselves,” he said to me, his voice cracked and raw.

“Yeah?”

“Get some water boiling.”

“All right.”

Feet on the floorboards, one hand on the bed, Lee sat up, itching the half-scabbed wound until it oozed fresh blood.

“You need a hand?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Just get some water boiling. We’ll make some breakfast. And then get this thing outta my damn leg. We’re going to play us some Operation, old buddy. You and me.”

If only out of curiosity, I followed as he hobbled into the bathroom. I certainly didn’t want him to pass out, crack his head open against the porcelain. Standing in the spray of the shower, he lathered the hair of his chest and then his head, his armpits, drank the spray of the showerhead, lifted his feet to wash them with his hands. Finally, he attended to his wound, carefully scrubbing and washing it before taking a razor and shaving the entire area clean. He shook the razor at intervals, knocking off used cream and removing the long brown hairs with his fingernails. The first razor dulled quickly and he retrieved another from the medicine cabinet without ever noticing me. He also hurriedly tamped two more pills from the orange Vicodin bottle. He opened his mouth wide to the shower spray and swallowed.

“Goddamn,”
he swore, spitting shower water.
“Goddamn.”

When he was finished shaving, he collected the shorn hair in a ball and tossed it into the toilet. It looked like a wet little bird’s nest. He began to towel off, and that is when I crept downstairs, put on some water to boil, started cooking breakfast.

“What’s there to eat?” he asked, limping into the kitchen, pulling on a shirt. “I’m famished.”

“I’m making us eggs, a package of bacon, some toast, and some sausages. Coffee’s on. Orange juice on the counter,” I said, shaking my head. Lee poured a cup of coffee, blew into it, muttered something, peered out the window. I stood at the stove, scrambling the eggs and flipping the sizzling strips of bacon.

“Buying that mill might’ve been a bad idea,” he said. “You think?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lee. You seem full of good ideas lately.”

“Maybe I should just move out to Los Angeles, sit by a fuckin’ pool all day, visit the Playboy mansion.”

“You could use some sun. Or maybe, I don’t know, just a little more
well-distributed
sun.” The sleeves of his T-shirt were just short enough to display an inch of very white flesh before the sleeve of tanned and tattooed arm.

Lee nodded his head, then shuffled over to the basement door and hopped lightly down the stairs. I could hear him down there, rattling coffee cans full of old nails or screws, glass jars full of tools, and a few minutes later, he pulled himself up the stairs, returned to the kitchen, and threw a pair of pliers into the pot of water. He looked out the kitchen window again, to the creek below where once we had sat and talked, back when everything was normal and copacetic. Then he looked over at me, to the stove, where the water was beginning to show tiny bubbles at the bottom of the pot. The bacon was growing black and smoking. The eggs were beyond ruination. We stared at each other, neither of us certain about how to proceed.

*   *   *

I stood outside the old schoolhouse waiting for him, the pliers hot in my hands, the sun still rising. I hoped that Beth had already begun to milk our herd, or called the neighbors for help. I couldn’t remember the last time I had missed a morning milking, though I suspected it was our weekend in New York City for Lee’s wedding.

He was still inside, readying himself; he had already swallowed two more Vicodin and several shots of whiskey. I could see him, through the window, pacing, and suddenly I thought of one of the formative stories of my youth—a story involving a nearby farmer who had lost both arms to a hungry combine. The man, a friend of my father’s, had calmly walked the distance back to his home, climbed into the bathtub, and then dialed nine-eleven using a pencil that he’d clamped down on with his teeth. He sat in cold water until the paramedics finally found him, shivering, bleeding profusely, but alive. He spat the pencil out and hissed to the paramedics, “I left them out by the tractor.”
His arms,
he meant. Later, they were reattached and he resumed farming. My father used to like telling that story, saying every time in summary, “That about pretty much nails it, don’t you think?”

*   *   *

Lee finally came out of the schoolhouse in just his white boxers, a dowel that normally held paper towels in his right hand, a scary sort of determination powering him awkwardly forward. He got down on the ground, motioned for me to come brace him down with my knee. And then he clenched his eyes shut, motioned at the pliers in my hand, bit down on the dowel, and I did like he wanted.

And now he was beneath me, fighting me: rolling on the ground in his newly dusty underwear, teeth clamped down on that dowel, his legs painted in blood. And me: my knee pinning him to the dirt and gravel and blowaway grass, those needle-nose pliers half-buried in the gore of his leg and somewhere deep down inside all that tissue: the fragment of bullet fired almost a day prior. Dirt caked to our sweaty bodies, blood on our hands, tears in our wild, sad eyes, our hearts still raw—but
maybe
then mending.…

How we startled grasshoppers, butterflies, bees … rolling through patches of nettles and the small thorns of raspberry bushes. And through the dowel and its coming splinters, through the smithereen shrapnel of our undone lives, through bared teeth, through the waves of infinite pain and past the medication of whiskey and Vicodin—

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry, man! I’m so goddamn sorry!”

And me: through gritted teeth, my muscles an unbound circuitry of red-blue wires, my eyes two searchers, my body nearly trembling apart, like delivering a calf, but worse, so much worse, and me saying—

“Hold still, buddy. Just hold still. I feel something in there. Hold on now.”

The mouser-tomcats on Lee’s wraparound porch stared, the black eyes of sneaking raccoons, a terrified skunk scampering away from it all.… And in the blue-blue early afternoon American sky, unsuspecting airplanes flying over us, leaving behind their white contrails and the planes’ passengers flipping through glossy magazines or thumbing expensive telephones as the flight attendants pushed beverage carts up aisles in the skies and a single turkey vulture wheeling high overhead, inspecting the carnage.

“Hold on, buddy, okay? Hold on. Take a deep breath for me, now. Hold on.…”

*   *   *

Long after Ronny’s departure south to Chicago, long after the mill was sold to Lee, who rejuvenated the building and turned it into an unlikely music venue and recording studio, long after Kip and Felicia bought a brownstone in Lincoln Park and a five-hundred-dollar stroller for their new baby girl—on any given night down at the VFW, folks were still laughing about that new space on the bar where the giant jar of pickled eggs once sat, and sometimes, on hot summer nights, I would tell the story of my famous friend Leland Sutton, passed out on the edge of his own pasture, a pair of pliers bristling straight out of his leg. And people would buy me beers, and ask me to recite the same unlikely details: my friend’s sallow face mumbling dumb nothings, the jog back into the kitchen for ice water in the coffee pot, splashing him back awake, coaching him, saying, “All right, goddamn it! You want to do this thing then let’s do it—let’s do it together! I love you, all right? But this is going to hurt like a fuckin’ bitch.” And what the old farmers and seed salesmen and implement dealers and teachers and real-estate brokers and tourists all laugh at, wonder at, was us: two grown men, friends, covered in gore, saying things like, “I love you, buddy,” or “Breathe deeply, buddy.”

*   *   *

And now: a new jar behind the bar there, just a little Mason jar this time, suitable for chutney or jam or a few dozen string beans, mostly holding just air, except for one thing, heavy and loud at the bottom: Lee’s bullet, pickled in nothing, and shot from the pistol of a stranger passing through town.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my teachers: St. James Alan McPherson, Sam Chang, Dean Bakopoulos, Ethan Canin, James Galvin, Rebecca Walkowitz, Rob Nixon, David Dowling, Bridget Draxler, Bill Cronin, Joel Raney, Mary Mickel, Steve Umnus, Fred Poss, and Doug Smith. To the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where this novel began. For the helping hands: Connie Brothers, Deb West, Jan Lacina Zenisk, Nicole Neymeyer, Ben Percy, Marysa LaRowe, Mathew Rothschild, Jen Woods, DeWitt Henry, Rick Bass,
Ploughshares,
Narrative Magazine,
The Kenyon Review Online,
Th
e
Lumberyard
.

For much guidance, patience, and tenacity: my agent, Rob McQuilkin, who worked with me for months to smooth this rough-hewn thing into something more than I ever thought it could be. I’m a fortunate man to have such a talented advocate and thoughtful consigliore. For spotting me: Christina Shideler.

To my editor, Katie Gilligan, who fought for this book and galvanized an army behind it: I am forever grateful.

For my friends: Josh and Charmaine Swan, Nik Novak, Nicholas Gulig, Mike and Hilary Walters, Sara and Chris Meeks, Chuck and Shannon Stewart, Sheridan and Betsy Johnson, Virginia Evangelist, Tony and Kate Trapp, Tim and Gail Kohl, Tara Mathison, Tracy Hruska, Doug Milek, Mark Horton, Jeff Moore. For my Iowa People, who braved blizzards: my main man Marcus Burke and the camaraderie and smoke of his Starlight, my
very civilized
shooting partner Scott Smith, Kannan Mahadevan, Christina Kaminski, Chanda Grubbs, Adam Soto, Jessica Dwelle, Amy Parker, Lori Baker Martin, Ted Kehoe, Don Waters, Henry Finch, my office mate Stephanie Goehring. To Star Liquor: for keeping me afloat. To Erin Celello, Aaron Olver, Carrie Kilman, Chris Bittler, (and Marysa LaRowe, again): thanks for early encouragement. To Round River Conservation Studies, for changing my life and opening my eyes.

To my father, Raymond F. Butler, Jr., who handed me a typewriter one Christmas and said,
I believe in you
. To my brother, Alex, and to his wife, Cynthia, the biggest hearts in the world. To my mom, who holds the weight of the world on her shoulders and never shrugs or asks for help. I love you so much. To Jim and Lynn Gullicksrud—the best in-laws a guy could ask for. To Reidar—my sometimes roommate and always brother-in-law. To my relatives, I love you: all the Butlers, the Langs, the Gullicksruds, the Heitmans, the Gumzses, the Petersons, the Wigmores, the Ferrises. To my grandparents—all of you, for what you’ve done. To Eleanore Butler—I miss you very much.

To the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. To the city of Madison, Wisconsin, and East Mifflin Street in particular.

But most importantly, to Regina.

And to Henry and Nora, forever.

Praise for Nickolas Butler

“In this deeply felt debut, Nickolas Butler paints a place and its people with such love that you’ll find yourself falling for them, too. This is a novel about home, and home is how the book feels. With all the pull and power of the word, it brings us face-to-face with the most important things: how hard it is to love well, to stay loyal, to act right, to know what that means. It is Butler’s great achievement that this utterly American story—one that sings of the country without sentimentality or cynicism, but with the sweet sound of true sight—helps make it all a little more clear.”

—J
OSH
W
EIL
,
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF
T
HE
N
EW
V
ALLEY
AND
T
HE
G
REAT
G
LASS
S
EA

“
Shotgun Lovesongs
is an unswervingly bighearted and compelling novel about an indie rocker made good and his best friends back home in Wisconsin, all of them navigating their way through different iterations of the American Dream, trying to make authentic lives and find meaningful love. Nickolas Butler conducts a soaring, meditative chorus of voices in his first novel. And it’s absolutely beautiful.”

—D
EAN
B
AKOPOULOS, AUTHOR OF THE
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
N
OTABLE
B
OOK
P
LEASE
D
ON’T
C
OME
B
ACK
FROM THE
M
OON
AND
M
Y
A
MERICAN
U
NHAPPINESS

“Listen to Nickolas Butler and his
Shotgun Lovesongs,
listen to the unforgettable characters and their chorus of voices—as they sing about longing, about betrayal, about friendship and marriage, about the green explosion of summer and the white music of winter, about the gravity of home—and you will be moved to laughter and tears, plugged in to a melody that brilliantly shares the story of all our lives.”

—B
ENJAMIN
P
ERCY
, P
USHCART
P
RIZE–WINNING AUTHOR OF
R
ED
M
OON
AND
T
HE
W
ILDING