The manatees have messed with his head. He said it was the manatees that messed him up. As a kid, he was terrified of swimming with the manatees.

“I would tell my parents I don’t want to go. I don’t want to swim with the manatees. They would force me into the water. They couldn’t figure that out. It made no sense for them. Everyone wants to swim with the manatees. But I was afraid of the manatees.”

Visitation with his kids is like swimming with manatees.

Since the DUI, it’s court-ordered that he can only see his kids under the supervision of his ex-wife. It’s court-ordered that she must be in the room with them. It’s like visiting the manatees. He hasn’t seen his kids in a long time due to that awkwardness.

He hands me a beer before we press play on his answering machine.

“I’m sorry Dad, we aren’t going to come,” the answering machine said. “We want to come. Mom won’t let us. I just want to say how much I appreciate what you do for us…”

Tom said it’s his oldest, his teen-age daughter on the answering machine.

This answering machine message is what it’s all about.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he tells me.

He must have played that message a million times for me.

“I know who I am now,” Tom said.

“Does that mean you’ve decided between Shelby and Peggy?”

Tom is caught in between two women who are vying for his affection.

“Help me decide. Who should I choose?” he said. “Why am I asking a kid for advice on my love life?”

“Pearls flow from my mouth,” I said.

I have been going to his trailer after work for months, since before he got laid off. It’s like visiting the landfill.

“This is what it’s like to shake hands with a president,” he demonstrates.

It’s like an amputation is what it feels like to me.

“That’s a Republican handshake. Reagan gave me such a strong handshake.”

Then he shakes my hand again.

“But Jimmy Carter pulled his hand away from me and put it in his pocket like a body that won’t be found until spring.”

The second handshake was quick and weak.

These presidents were both before my time. I’m twenty-five years old. Tom is fifty.

Tom had been laid off recently. He was the first to go. He wouldn’t shake the boss’s hand.

“You’re looking at this the wrong way. Don’t look at this as getting laid off. This is an opportunity. Take this time to be with the kids. Relax with the kids. Go on a vacation and send me some postcards.” That’s what the boss said to him.

Tom said he put his hand to his forehead and left it there when the boss said that. He could feel the world turning without him. There’s still life on earth.

Then the boss offered to shake Tom’s hand.

“He offered to shake my hand,” Tom tells me. “’Nothing personal,’” is what he told me. I told him I would rather cut my hand off than shake his hand.”

“Call Marvin,” the boss said. “Don’t forget to call Marvin.” Marvin was the automated unemployment system. You call Marvin and he tells you what to do next. He gives you instructions.

People don’t realize that Robert Frost is no timid poet. People underestimate his fierceness. He is a butcher’s poet.

It was just like that poem Out, Out about the boy who cuts himself on the saw.

It was a slow day at work. There was only about four hours of work. Everyone was telling me to slow down. If I didn’t slow down, they said, there would be more layoffs.

“How are we supposed to pay our bills?” someone said.

They hated me for going fast. My speed was heresy.

What do I care? I’m a maniac on the bandsaw. I was already making plans to go over to Tom’s after work.

Then I cut myself on the saw. I don’t even know how it happened. I shook hands with that saw.

It was like the blade wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Like the blade jumped out at me.

I don’t even look at my hand. I know it’s bad. I made a fist. I was afraid to open my fist. I wrapped my apron around it. It was a fist like you put inside a boxing glove.

The boss is one of those what’s-so-funny guys. Every time he walks in the room, he wants to know what’s so funny.

“What’s so funny?” he said.

The boss figures it out. He tells me to sit. The room is spinning around me. He looks into my hand, he investigates, and makes a grimace.

“You cut all four fingers,” he said.

I was so hot with fear, I felt my forehead glowing.

People think Robert Frost is a gentlemanly poet, two roads, mending fences, apple picking—that’s bull shit. Frost is a meatcutters poet—snarling saws.

On my way walking out of the plant, I saw that some seemed glad I cut myself. They’d never say that, but I saw their eyes. There’s a coalition of evil eyes that are glad at the sight of my blood. People get carried away at the sight of blood. They were rubbing their hands together like flies.

At the hospital, the nurse is giving me the best advice I’ve ever heard.

“You have to stop hurting yourself,” she said. “Are you going to take my advice this time, and stop hurting yourself?”

Then she starts hitting on me, asking if I’m available. She wants to know if I would like to go out sometime.

“Are you dating someone?” she said.

I could tell she was one of those who the minute a man stepped in the room with her she was interested in them.

“I’m not seeing anyone. I'm focused on raising my kids,” I said. “I don’t date as a rule.”

I don't usually mention that I have kids to anyone, but in this case, I can’t think of another way to get her to leave me alone.

Later when a second nurse comes in, she starts goading me into dating the first nurse.

I had to get firm with her.

Her forehead came down over her eyes and she changed subjects.

“I’m going to hell,” she said. An old lady told her she’s going to hell for what she did to her body, the piercings, and the tattoos. Why can’t she be the one who wants to go out with me? I’d say yes to her.

Tom had been laid off for three months at this point.

The trailer was unlocked when I arrived, so I helped myself to a beer. There were flies near the stove. My hand is wrapped in gauze like it's embalmed. I waved my hand at them. They probably thought a mummy was attacking.

Where is Tom? He’s nowhere to be seen. I waited close to two hours. I waited outside. I drank several beers.

He finally arrives in a cop car. When he got out of the cop car, he leaned way back like the inflatable tube man out front of the car wash. It’s like he had to fill himself with air to stand straight. I could tell his back was giving him problems.

Tom is looking at my hand, but he doesn’t want to see it. He shut his eyes the entire time while I explained.

Then he starts to tell me about Peggy.

“Something happened to Peggy,” he said.

“Where is Peggy?” I said.

He wouldn’t just tell me. He wouldn’t spoil it. He wants to tell it like it’s the war of the worlds.

They went out for breakfast, and she didn’t want to, but he made her drive home. They stopped and grabbed some political signs, and he got in the back seat. Then he had Peggy drive around. They picked up a hitchhiker and Tom acted like he was running for office and asked the guy if he wanted a sign for his yard.

“I don’t have a yard,” the guy said.

The guy figured out that Tom was no politician. He jumped out of the car at the next stop sign.

From there, they drove all the way down Heights-Ravenna Road, and even drove past Shelby’s house. Tom tried to get into her house (at this point he couldn’t remember Shelby’s name, so I had to tell him). He said she had some things that belonged to him. But he couldn’t get in, so they sat in the car outside her house and had a drink. On the way back Peggy just went off the road and into a tree.

“Why would she do that?” he said.

The police said she blacked out. The front of Tom’s car was gone. They had to take Peggy’ left leg off to get her out of the car.

“She lost a leg,” he said. He seemed cheerful about it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”

Tom has a pain in his chest from the seatbelt. He looked down at the cloud of flies over my work boots.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going to listen. I’m going to be a better listener.”

He opened the beer I had for him and went inside to his daughter’s message.

I stayed outside, but my eyes followed him inside.

I have a fatty liver, I reminded myself for no reason. I prayed like Augustine—make me sober, but not yet.

Tom is in listening mode now. He plays the message and listens as if he could understand everything that was happening to him, and as was always the case by the time the message ended, he knew who he was.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Someday you too will have kids who will inspire you like this.”

“I do have kids,” I said. I don’t know what made me decide to tell him that. I should have pretended I didn’t hear him like I usually did.

“What are you talking about,” he said. He came back outside.

And so, he finds out that I have kids. He is flummoxed.

“I can’t go to your church anymore,” he said. He put his full weight into those words, and they almost knocked me over. There is no actual church, of course. He is saying he can’t worship me anymore.

It’s not like I was hiding the fact I had kids. I just never talked about my kids. It’s easier.

He wanted to know how old my kids were, so I was trying to remember. We sat there trying to remember the ages of our children, and we couldn’t. I would never have told Tom about my kids if it hadn’t come up at the hospital first. The pump had been primed by that nurse.

“How could you never have mentioned your kids in six years of us working together?” he asked. “Why don’t you marry her?”

“I did,” I said. “We got divorced.”

The gleam of Bacchus left his eye.

“You’re following me. You’re riding my coattails,” he said. “But you’re half my age. You fucked up your whole life in half the time it took me.”

He put both his hands right over his liver.

“Hand me that fly swatter,” Tom said. He said it like it might solve his liver problems.

I hit my bandaged hand on the door handle reaching for that fly swatter. It started to throb right away.

I decided I was going to drive by my ex-wife’s house since it was nearby. I’ve done this before. What I do is I park a few houses down from her house, where I’m not likely to be seen. There’s a tree in the front yard partially blocking my view, but I can see most of the house.

I see that they’re getting a new roof. That is, the boyfriend my ex-wife and my kids live with, he must be getting a new roof. There’s a sign out front advertising a roofing company that he’s hired, and I can see the packages of shingles have been laid out on top of the roof, which means they’re not taking the old shingles off. They will probably put the shingles on first thing in the morning since it’s almost dusk.

The boyfriend is on the roof and he’s shouting down to a neighbor in conversation. I can just see his head and shoulders due to the tree. I can’t make out what they’re saying. They’re probably talking about me. That’s what this world has come to.

Getting a new roof is not something I know much about. I’ve never even stood on a roof. I still lived at home with my parents. I started thinking about the marriage, the kids, the divorce. We turned into evil animals when we got married. We used to go after each other like butchers. I’d never hit anyone before I married her.

I thought about divorcing my pregnant wife. I thought of this scene with our divorce lawyers, in an elevator in the county building—with my pregnant wife. All four of us were on the way to see the judge.

“You're so young, why not try to make this work?” her lawyer said.

My lawyer said the same thing as Noah’s lawyer before the flood.

“I want to make it work,” my pregnant wife said. “I don’t want a divorce. It’s him.”

She blamed it on me.

Then we gave each other—all four of us gave each other—that sad look that animals give each other after intercourse.

Everyone on this street is wheeling their garbage out. It must be garbage day tomorrow. Here come the garbage cans. I roll up the window due to the smell of garbage in the street. This street smells. This street smells like a dream deferred. Flies are buzzing over garbage cans. These are bottle flies, the ones with metallic green bodies.

An old lady approached my car and told me to move so she could put her garbage out.

“My garbage can needs to go where your car is,” she said.

I pulled up a few feet.

There is a fly in my car. I watch as one fly turns into two, then three. Just how did these flies get in my car with the windows rolled up? I started thinking about spontaneous generation, how they used to believe flies came from meat. Not just flies, but everything— this was an ancient belief. It had its own Latin motto. Then they disproved it. They thought they disproved it.

A new experiment was needed, with three bleeding meat cutters in three separate cars.

I tried everything to get these flies to cooperate, to leave me alone, but they were buzzing after my bandaged hand.

I watched the boyfriend coming down his driveway to put his garbage out. I watched the way he did it. He did it with measured steps. He was emotional. He wiped his eyes when he got to the curb like he was walking my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

I drove past the river flats and saw the most glorious thing I’ve seen in my life, hundreds of blue herons standing in the treetops—this is something I’ve never even known about. One of the birds took flight, its wings opened, and it took flight. The sight revives me. I wanted to stop somewhere, but I was on the highway. There’s no place to stop.

So. I worried about my hand like it was the most important thing in the world.

October 13, 2023

About the writer

Jason Escareno is a government worker living in the Seattle, Washington area with his wife and son. He keeps a collection of first edition novels beneath his bed just in case of an emergency.