r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
winter 2008 fiction
NATHAN KEEPS TRACK by Robyn Parnell
winter 2008 fiction
NATHAN KEEPS TRACK by Robyn Parnell
The more Lou looked at it, the more evident it became. She saw the sum of it — house and yard,
sidewalk and gravel path, the length and breadth of the driveway — and felt the unmistakable ache of
conviction. The new garbage can, in all its mute, hunter green, man-made majesty, truly belonged
there: stationed (not abandoned) at the end of her and Nat's driveway.
The can was the up-to-the-minute model, composed of recycled poly-laminar-whatsit, or so Nat had
enthusiastically declared the day the County Disposal trucks cruised through the neighborhood,
collecting the outmoded, shiny-dented metallic cans and distributing their lusterless replacements.
Nat's initial interest in the new garbage can was sincere but fleeting, and faded within a fortnight.
Oregon-gray veil of a sky, Lou opened her front door and beheld an assortment of autumn flocked
Oregon-gray veil of a sky, Lou opened her front door and beheld an assortment of autumn flocked
around the can's base. Rusty orange and ginger-gold leaf stems clustered about the can's black
rubber wheels, and every daybreak revealed a fresh arrangement. The night breezes shifted the
pattern of foliage, like the sand dunes at the coast, Lou thought.
pattern of foliage, like the sand dunes at the coast, Lou thought.
The unforeseen, persistent charm of that particular sight, and the comfort Lou took in her amended
morning routine — arise, pee, put the teakettle on, check the garbage can — had trumped her memory
of the reasons why she'd refused to haul the can back into the garage on that first Monday in
October. It was of no matter, now. Every Sunday evening Lou moved the empty can to the side of the
house. She transferred the contents of her home's various wastebaskets into two twenty-gallon,
brown plastic leaf bags and schlepped the bags curbside. Every Monday morning, as soon as the
garbage and recycling trucks had come and gone, she'd roll the new garbage can back out to the end
of the driveway.
Lou continued with this practice despite receiving a terse missive from Metro Disposal and Recycling
Service. The letter, which she found peeking out from under the welcome mat on the front porch,
curtly instructed the residents of 228 NE Gracie Ct. to use the designated garbage container or incur a
dumping fine.
"Right!" Lou snorted, when Nat confronted her with the crumpled letter, which he'd discovered atop
the incoming mail stack on the entryway table. "It's been less than a month since they've been on the
new system, and now it's such a hardship for them to get out of the trucks? I smell a worker's comp
scam. Someone might throw his back out, pickin' up two or three plastic bags that weigh less than the
one metal can they used to lift? That's why the county gave everyone new garbage cans, Nat. It's so
the new trucks can lift 'em, not people. Everything's automated now."
Except for me. Nat stopped himself mid-grumble, silently conceding that he, too, had atypical conduct
to account for. Three weeks...it had all the markings of a major standoff. Only three weeks, and
already he'd forgotten why, on that particular evening, he had not brought the garbage can in. Nat
could not remember why he'd replied, "No, I don't think so," when Lou asked him to wheel the can
back to the garage. Her arched eyebrows silently demanded an addendum to his non-explanation,
and Nat had coolly complied.
"Not yet. Feel free to bring it in, if it troubles you."
"If it troubles me? If it troubles me." Lou repeated the statement several times, changing the
emphases. "If it troubles me; if it troubles me?" She became more...motivated, Nat thought, by the
latter versions.
"If it troubles me. Me. The garbage can comes in, 'cause of me. 'Cause of my great concern for
garbage can welfare?"
Nat tossed his jacket on the sofa. It had been a lingering, ample day. He'd no idea what Lou meant
and shrank from summoning the mental energy to consider her implications.
"If it doesn't concern me, it doesn't get done. That's it?"
"No, that's not it." Nat gingerly lowered himself to the sofa and summoned his it's simple, darling
voice. "Lou, if you want the can in, then bring it in."
"I am totally capable of bringin' the can in. And of fillin' it up and takin' it out. It's like loadin' and
runnin' and then unloadin' the dishwasher, and laundry, groceries and the and-and-and list. I am, it
seems, capable of doin' anything and everything. But I'm not goin' to do that. And do you know why?
'Cause it's not about capabilities, it's about justice. As in, will be just-it's one more thing that I do."
Nat leaned forward, resting his chin on his fists. Lou turned away from him and walked toward the
stairway. She absent-mindedly licked her left palm and rubbed it against the recurrent dermatitis on
the back of her right hand. That odd habit had become another just-one-more-thing-that-she-does,
Nat thought, ever since the day the County's Human Relations manager informed her that she needn't
do anything anymore.
District cutbacks; taxpayers demand more efficiency...and how did you vote on the most recent bond
issue?
He'd come home that night, the night Lou was laid off, to find her sitting in darkness at the table in the
breakfast nook. He'd switched on the overhead kitchen lights; Lou had a portable phone in one hand
and two buckets of piss and vinegar where her eyes used to be. Her free hand swooped over the
wastebasket by the table, her fingernails flicking at the junk mail and utility bills crumpled within.
"It's a record economy," she'd grinned up at him, "and I'm being recycled."
* * *
Nat drooped down the hall to the kitchen, motioning with his hand for Lou to accompany him. "I ran
into Jack Iboshi at the hardware store. He said he'd haul in the damn can for us, but as a friend and
neighbor he felt it incumbent upon himself to let us know that we are in violation of the CC&Rs."
"Incumbent?" Lou leaned against the refrigerator and smirked. "Is that right? Jack's re-runnin' for
something that I didn't even vote for the first time?"
"No, not quite," Nat softly chuckled. "The CC&Rs..."
"Huh?"
"Covenants, Codes and Restrictions. We signed them at the closing, remember? We initialed and
signed papers that stated we had read and agreed to adhere to the..."
"Never in all my life would I agree to adhere to anything." Lou shuddered. "You know how I feel about
bein' stuck. Besides, I can't remember half of what we signed that day. Do you? Musta been fifty
papers with the same information arranged different, over and over again. They coulda snuck
anything in there. For all I know I signed a form declarin' my mother-in-law to be the biggest bull dyke
in Multnomah County."
During the clumsy silence that followed her guffaws at her own joke, Lou wondered yet again why
people referred to her husband as 'Nat.' Indeed, she did remember the closing at the First National
Title Company. She remembered that her husband had signed the house papers, as he had signed
their marriage license, and checks and receipts and other Important Documents, with his full name:
Nathan Samuel Suerlin. It was a name that, to Lou, had always seemed more full than necessary.
She'd never known this alleged Nathan, but she'd loved, married and now puzzled over the Nat.
"Put a 'G' in front of it," she mumbled, "and it'd make some sense. Buzzin' round my head and..."
"What's that?" Nat asked.
"Nothin'. Never mind."
* * *
Nat ambled down the hall toward the front door. Peering through the entryway's stained glass
window, he could spot the garbage can by the curb; looking back down the hall, he could see Lou
sprawled on the sofa, pretending to read the newspaper. Nat wondered at what point exactly in their
eight-year marriage had Lou acquired the faux-countrified habit of dropping her g's? Maybe that was
what she was talking — not talkin' — about. Dropping her g's, stooping her shoulders, wearing those
vastly unbecoming, sloppy, floppy housedresses — it was as if, at age thirty-four, she had decided to
pull a reverse Garbo. Perhaps she found it glamorous, in a mutant kind of way, to affect the
comportment of a middle-aged bumpkin.
She can have all the midlife crises she wants; she can have them ahead of schedule, like the gifted child
she claims she was. My foot goes down if she starts drooling at trailer parks.
Nat ran his fingers around his jaw and looked out again at the can. Maybe Lou was right. The can
was starting to belong, which was more than he could say for himself. He'd noticed the stares, the
pointing, and the not-so-stifled snickers. The neighborhood dump. The Daystrom boys across the
street and their posse of sappy-brained, baggy-ass pants-wearing, white boy homeboy wannabes
practiced skateboard tricks at the end of the cul-de-sac, and made frequent pilgrimages to fast food
joints. The other morning as he was leaving for work he'd stopped the car at the end of the driveway
and peeked inside the garbage can. Nat had half-expected to find a tattooed gerbil with a nose ring
dumped inside the can, or at least a load of greasy taco wrappers or partially gnawed McLardo
burgers. But when he gingerly lifted the lid he saw that the can was completely empty, and almost
immaculately clean.
* * *
Nat shivered and pulled the covers up and around his shoulders. He raised his head, aiming his bleary
eyes in the direction of his nightstand. He could barely make out the laser-red LED of the alarm clock:
3:13 am. Nat rolled over; Lou was sitting up, straight as a silo, at the edge of the bed. She was
staring out the window, which she had opened. Nat heard the rustle of leaves drifting in the night's
timid breeze.
"I want a divorce," Lou whispered.
"No. No, you don't." Nat raised himself up on one elbow. "It'll be all right." He placed his hand on her
shoulder. "I'll bring the can in."
"Leave it." Lou placed her hand over Nat's. "Leave it, Nathan." She lightly caressed his hand with her
fingertips; the hair on his arms quivered, and he sat up and moved behind her.
"I don't want it in the garage, or near the house." She continued to gaze out the window. "I want it
where I can keep an eye on it. It's practically a full-time job, you know. Keeping track of things."
"Yes, I know."
Lou leaned back, resting her head against the slope between Nat's shoulder and collarbone. She
used to say that they fit together, she and Nat, like a creek in a hollow, whatever that meant. Nat
shuddered with memory, and circled his arms around her stomach.
"Besides, it's empty. Why does it matter if it just sits there?" She tapped her finger against his.
"We're only — or is it already? — thirty-four and thirty-seven. And we have this? Snotty recycling
services and CCRs."
Nat noticed something shimmering by the foot of Lou's nightstand. The front page of the business
section lay on the floor, the sallow white newsprint reflecting the moonlight. The lead article, an
interview with a local entrepreneur, had been highlighted with a fluorescent yellow marker. No good
reasons for not working. You'd have to be a blind fool not to be able to find a job in this market.
Nat picked up the newspaper and rolled it into a slender baton. There was the whiff of ice in the mid-
autumn air; he stumbled to the closet for coat and gloves.
Leaving the lights off, Nat felt his way down the stairs and out to the garage. He unrolled the
newspaper and started to place it in the appropriate recycling bin, then did an about-face and
unlocked the side door to the garage. He strode to the curb, raised the garbage can lid and deposited
the newspaper inside.
Nat strolled around the circle of his cul-de-sac, surveying each of the nine houses in turn. Mindful of
the home security system signs that sneered out at him from behind overgrown azalea bushes and
potted dune grass, he collected that which had been left out on front porches: a size 11 boys'
basketball sneaker; a wooden, craftsy, wreath-shaped plaque depicting two blue and white geese
honking "Welcome to our Home;" a plastic toy Phillips's head screwdriver; a well-weathered, canvas
fanny pack with a water bottle pouch; a yellow porcelain catfood dish.
Nat headed for home, his arms filled with the purloined treasure. He stood in his driveway and looked
up to the open bedroom window. Lou, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth, perched silent
and watchful on the inside edge of the windowsill.
Scanning the dark, cloudless heavens, Nat strained to make out the only constellation he could identify
on a regular basis, other than the Big and Little Dippers — which don't really count, he reminded
himself, as any fool can spot those.
Three in a row, the belt, the sword's sheath. There it is. Orion the Hunter, shining and watchful, for all
eternity. Nathan Samuel Suerlin dipped his head in respect and recognition.
Nat dumped his armful into the garbage can, topping off the load with piles of sodden maple leaves he
scooped up from around the can's base. He did not close the garbage can lid. And when Nat rang his
own doorbell, Lou answered.
"C'mon." Nat held out his hand. Lou was pajama-ed, coatless, and barefoot. She tip-toed arm-in-arm
with him down the front walkway to the sidewalk and beyond the garbage can, whose lid she slapped
shut in passing.
"Mmmm." Lou inhaled sharply, filling her nose and lungs with the early morning dampness. "It smells
good. Like dirt. Like rich soil after the first rain."
"Look." Nat ushered her into the street and spun her around in front of him. "Look up." He stood
behind her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, his chin pressing down on the back of her head.
"Have you ever seen it this clear? There's Orion, and the really bright star by the horizon might
actually be Venus. There's that small, W-shaped one, I can never remember its name. And the Big
Dipper..."
"Shhh." Lou reached up and rested her fingertips against his lips. "Any fool can spot that one."
sidewalk and gravel path, the length and breadth of the driveway — and felt the unmistakable ache of
conviction. The new garbage can, in all its mute, hunter green, man-made majesty, truly belonged
there: stationed (not abandoned) at the end of her and Nat's driveway.
The can was the up-to-the-minute model, composed of recycled poly-laminar-whatsit, or so Nat had
enthusiastically declared the day the County Disposal trucks cruised through the neighborhood,
collecting the outmoded, shiny-dented metallic cans and distributing their lusterless replacements.
Nat's initial interest in the new garbage can was sincere but fleeting, and faded within a fortnight.
Oregon-gray veil of a sky, Lou opened her front door and beheld an assortment of autumn flocked
Oregon-gray veil of a sky, Lou opened her front door and beheld an assortment of autumn flocked
around the can's base. Rusty orange and ginger-gold leaf stems clustered about the can's black
rubber wheels, and every daybreak revealed a fresh arrangement. The night breezes shifted the
pattern of foliage, like the sand dunes at the coast, Lou thought.
pattern of foliage, like the sand dunes at the coast, Lou thought.
The unforeseen, persistent charm of that particular sight, and the comfort Lou took in her amended
morning routine — arise, pee, put the teakettle on, check the garbage can — had trumped her memory
of the reasons why she'd refused to haul the can back into the garage on that first Monday in
October. It was of no matter, now. Every Sunday evening Lou moved the empty can to the side of the
house. She transferred the contents of her home's various wastebaskets into two twenty-gallon,
brown plastic leaf bags and schlepped the bags curbside. Every Monday morning, as soon as the
garbage and recycling trucks had come and gone, she'd roll the new garbage can back out to the end
of the driveway.
Lou continued with this practice despite receiving a terse missive from Metro Disposal and Recycling
Service. The letter, which she found peeking out from under the welcome mat on the front porch,
curtly instructed the residents of 228 NE Gracie Ct. to use the designated garbage container or incur a
dumping fine.
"Right!" Lou snorted, when Nat confronted her with the crumpled letter, which he'd discovered atop
the incoming mail stack on the entryway table. "It's been less than a month since they've been on the
new system, and now it's such a hardship for them to get out of the trucks? I smell a worker's comp
scam. Someone might throw his back out, pickin' up two or three plastic bags that weigh less than the
one metal can they used to lift? That's why the county gave everyone new garbage cans, Nat. It's so
the new trucks can lift 'em, not people. Everything's automated now."
Except for me. Nat stopped himself mid-grumble, silently conceding that he, too, had atypical conduct
to account for. Three weeks...it had all the markings of a major standoff. Only three weeks, and
already he'd forgotten why, on that particular evening, he had not brought the garbage can in. Nat
could not remember why he'd replied, "No, I don't think so," when Lou asked him to wheel the can
back to the garage. Her arched eyebrows silently demanded an addendum to his non-explanation,
and Nat had coolly complied.
"Not yet. Feel free to bring it in, if it troubles you."
"If it troubles me? If it troubles me." Lou repeated the statement several times, changing the
emphases. "If it troubles me; if it troubles me?" She became more...motivated, Nat thought, by the
latter versions.
"If it troubles me. Me. The garbage can comes in, 'cause of me. 'Cause of my great concern for
garbage can welfare?"
Nat tossed his jacket on the sofa. It had been a lingering, ample day. He'd no idea what Lou meant
and shrank from summoning the mental energy to consider her implications.
"If it doesn't concern me, it doesn't get done. That's it?"
"No, that's not it." Nat gingerly lowered himself to the sofa and summoned his it's simple, darling
voice. "Lou, if you want the can in, then bring it in."
"I am totally capable of bringin' the can in. And of fillin' it up and takin' it out. It's like loadin' and
runnin' and then unloadin' the dishwasher, and laundry, groceries and the and-and-and list. I am, it
seems, capable of doin' anything and everything. But I'm not goin' to do that. And do you know why?
'Cause it's not about capabilities, it's about justice. As in, will be just-it's one more thing that I do."
Nat leaned forward, resting his chin on his fists. Lou turned away from him and walked toward the
stairway. She absent-mindedly licked her left palm and rubbed it against the recurrent dermatitis on
the back of her right hand. That odd habit had become another just-one-more-thing-that-she-does,
Nat thought, ever since the day the County's Human Relations manager informed her that she needn't
do anything anymore.
District cutbacks; taxpayers demand more efficiency...and how did you vote on the most recent bond
issue?
He'd come home that night, the night Lou was laid off, to find her sitting in darkness at the table in the
breakfast nook. He'd switched on the overhead kitchen lights; Lou had a portable phone in one hand
and two buckets of piss and vinegar where her eyes used to be. Her free hand swooped over the
wastebasket by the table, her fingernails flicking at the junk mail and utility bills crumpled within.
"It's a record economy," she'd grinned up at him, "and I'm being recycled."
* * *
Nat drooped down the hall to the kitchen, motioning with his hand for Lou to accompany him. "I ran
into Jack Iboshi at the hardware store. He said he'd haul in the damn can for us, but as a friend and
neighbor he felt it incumbent upon himself to let us know that we are in violation of the CC&Rs."
"Incumbent?" Lou leaned against the refrigerator and smirked. "Is that right? Jack's re-runnin' for
something that I didn't even vote for the first time?"
"No, not quite," Nat softly chuckled. "The CC&Rs..."
"Huh?"
"Covenants, Codes and Restrictions. We signed them at the closing, remember? We initialed and
signed papers that stated we had read and agreed to adhere to the..."
"Never in all my life would I agree to adhere to anything." Lou shuddered. "You know how I feel about
bein' stuck. Besides, I can't remember half of what we signed that day. Do you? Musta been fifty
papers with the same information arranged different, over and over again. They coulda snuck
anything in there. For all I know I signed a form declarin' my mother-in-law to be the biggest bull dyke
in Multnomah County."
During the clumsy silence that followed her guffaws at her own joke, Lou wondered yet again why
people referred to her husband as 'Nat.' Indeed, she did remember the closing at the First National
Title Company. She remembered that her husband had signed the house papers, as he had signed
their marriage license, and checks and receipts and other Important Documents, with his full name:
Nathan Samuel Suerlin. It was a name that, to Lou, had always seemed more full than necessary.
She'd never known this alleged Nathan, but she'd loved, married and now puzzled over the Nat.
"Put a 'G' in front of it," she mumbled, "and it'd make some sense. Buzzin' round my head and..."
"What's that?" Nat asked.
"Nothin'. Never mind."
* * *
Nat ambled down the hall toward the front door. Peering through the entryway's stained glass
window, he could spot the garbage can by the curb; looking back down the hall, he could see Lou
sprawled on the sofa, pretending to read the newspaper. Nat wondered at what point exactly in their
eight-year marriage had Lou acquired the faux-countrified habit of dropping her g's? Maybe that was
what she was talking — not talkin' — about. Dropping her g's, stooping her shoulders, wearing those
vastly unbecoming, sloppy, floppy housedresses — it was as if, at age thirty-four, she had decided to
pull a reverse Garbo. Perhaps she found it glamorous, in a mutant kind of way, to affect the
comportment of a middle-aged bumpkin.
She can have all the midlife crises she wants; she can have them ahead of schedule, like the gifted child
she claims she was. My foot goes down if she starts drooling at trailer parks.
Nat ran his fingers around his jaw and looked out again at the can. Maybe Lou was right. The can
was starting to belong, which was more than he could say for himself. He'd noticed the stares, the
pointing, and the not-so-stifled snickers. The neighborhood dump. The Daystrom boys across the
street and their posse of sappy-brained, baggy-ass pants-wearing, white boy homeboy wannabes
practiced skateboard tricks at the end of the cul-de-sac, and made frequent pilgrimages to fast food
joints. The other morning as he was leaving for work he'd stopped the car at the end of the driveway
and peeked inside the garbage can. Nat had half-expected to find a tattooed gerbil with a nose ring
dumped inside the can, or at least a load of greasy taco wrappers or partially gnawed McLardo
burgers. But when he gingerly lifted the lid he saw that the can was completely empty, and almost
immaculately clean.
* * *
Nat shivered and pulled the covers up and around his shoulders. He raised his head, aiming his bleary
eyes in the direction of his nightstand. He could barely make out the laser-red LED of the alarm clock:
3:13 am. Nat rolled over; Lou was sitting up, straight as a silo, at the edge of the bed. She was
staring out the window, which she had opened. Nat heard the rustle of leaves drifting in the night's
timid breeze.
"I want a divorce," Lou whispered.
"No. No, you don't." Nat raised himself up on one elbow. "It'll be all right." He placed his hand on her
shoulder. "I'll bring the can in."
"Leave it." Lou placed her hand over Nat's. "Leave it, Nathan." She lightly caressed his hand with her
fingertips; the hair on his arms quivered, and he sat up and moved behind her.
"I don't want it in the garage, or near the house." She continued to gaze out the window. "I want it
where I can keep an eye on it. It's practically a full-time job, you know. Keeping track of things."
"Yes, I know."
Lou leaned back, resting her head against the slope between Nat's shoulder and collarbone. She
used to say that they fit together, she and Nat, like a creek in a hollow, whatever that meant. Nat
shuddered with memory, and circled his arms around her stomach.
"Besides, it's empty. Why does it matter if it just sits there?" She tapped her finger against his.
"We're only — or is it already? — thirty-four and thirty-seven. And we have this? Snotty recycling
services and CCRs."
Nat noticed something shimmering by the foot of Lou's nightstand. The front page of the business
section lay on the floor, the sallow white newsprint reflecting the moonlight. The lead article, an
interview with a local entrepreneur, had been highlighted with a fluorescent yellow marker. No good
reasons for not working. You'd have to be a blind fool not to be able to find a job in this market.
Nat picked up the newspaper and rolled it into a slender baton. There was the whiff of ice in the mid-
autumn air; he stumbled to the closet for coat and gloves.
Leaving the lights off, Nat felt his way down the stairs and out to the garage. He unrolled the
newspaper and started to place it in the appropriate recycling bin, then did an about-face and
unlocked the side door to the garage. He strode to the curb, raised the garbage can lid and deposited
the newspaper inside.
Nat strolled around the circle of his cul-de-sac, surveying each of the nine houses in turn. Mindful of
the home security system signs that sneered out at him from behind overgrown azalea bushes and
potted dune grass, he collected that which had been left out on front porches: a size 11 boys'
basketball sneaker; a wooden, craftsy, wreath-shaped plaque depicting two blue and white geese
honking "Welcome to our Home;" a plastic toy Phillips's head screwdriver; a well-weathered, canvas
fanny pack with a water bottle pouch; a yellow porcelain catfood dish.
Nat headed for home, his arms filled with the purloined treasure. He stood in his driveway and looked
up to the open bedroom window. Lou, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth, perched silent
and watchful on the inside edge of the windowsill.
Scanning the dark, cloudless heavens, Nat strained to make out the only constellation he could identify
on a regular basis, other than the Big and Little Dippers — which don't really count, he reminded
himself, as any fool can spot those.
Three in a row, the belt, the sword's sheath. There it is. Orion the Hunter, shining and watchful, for all
eternity. Nathan Samuel Suerlin dipped his head in respect and recognition.
Nat dumped his armful into the garbage can, topping off the load with piles of sodden maple leaves he
scooped up from around the can's base. He did not close the garbage can lid. And when Nat rang his
own doorbell, Lou answered.
"C'mon." Nat held out his hand. Lou was pajama-ed, coatless, and barefoot. She tip-toed arm-in-arm
with him down the front walkway to the sidewalk and beyond the garbage can, whose lid she slapped
shut in passing.
"Mmmm." Lou inhaled sharply, filling her nose and lungs with the early morning dampness. "It smells
good. Like dirt. Like rich soil after the first rain."
"Look." Nat ushered her into the street and spun her around in front of him. "Look up." He stood
behind her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, his chin pressing down on the back of her head.
"Have you ever seen it this clear? There's Orion, and the really bright star by the horizon might
actually be Venus. There's that small, W-shaped one, I can never remember its name. And the Big
Dipper..."
"Shhh." Lou reached up and rested her fingertips against his lips. "Any fool can spot that one."
inside by tamar factor