My father’s hands were coarse as sandpaper, strong as tree trunks. He’d take me hiking along the Timberline Trail, and in the firelight he’d share the history of our family, the history of the American West—swung axes and laid railroad tracks, woodsmoke and iron, strikes and picket lines. His hands were mill hands, blue-collar hands, like his father’s and his father’s before him. This, my father would say, showing me his weathered hands, this is what makes you a man.
I’m thinking about him as I drive to the corporate offices in Portland, park in an underground garage, and check in with lobby security. In a cluster of leather chairs near the floor-to-ceiling windows, I survey the glass and chrome, the suits and pantsuits, the perfect nails tapping Bluetooth headphones, the steam rising from the lobby’s espresso maker—everything and everyone, clean, spotless.
A young man, only a few years older than me, tells me to follow him. I step into a crowded elevator and, as we zoom skyward, notice that no one else is wearing sneakers. The internet said Portland business culture would be more relaxed; Mom said to dress up. She didn’t want me to spend another summer doing mill work.
We exit at the top floor and step into a corner office, where Dr. Maycombe is waiting. He received his law degree before taking over his dad’s company, Maycombe LLC. I didn’t know lawyers were technically doctors, and the internet said most lawyers don’t use “Dr.”—preferring “Mr.” or “Esq.”—but his email signature said “Dr.” so when I walk over to the man, the only person in the building wearing an informal flannel shirt, I greet him as Dr. Maycombe.
“Please,” he says, gesturing at a chair, “call me Ed.”
I sit. It’s summer, and the skies are clear enough to see Mount Hood in the distance, but I force myself to maintain eye contact with Ed, who says he’s happy to have me on the team this summer, that he wishes he’d majored in marketing, and that Portland State is a great institution, as if he didn’t have a Stanford diploma hanging on his wall.
“Anyway, Mark—can I call you Mark?”
He may.
“I figured, since the ink is still drying, and since we want to build trust with the mill workers and the union, there’s only one thing we can do. And, of course, I need your help.”
I nod as if I have a clue what he’s talking about.
“Next week’s barbeque celebrating the buy-out. The old management, and I don’t want to disparage the former owners, but they were fucking morons. Treated folks horribly. That’s off the record technically, but you can tell people I said that. In fact, please do.”
I nod.
“And we want everyone, and I mean everyone, to be there. The marketing team will be reaching out via emails and social media, but I have a list of people I want you to make house visits to.”
He hands me the list, and by the second name, I know exactly why I’ve been hired to do a summer internship here, why my name was plucked out of hundreds, why I was asked to drive down to Maycombe corporate headquarters on a Tuesday morning.
I feel Ed watching me as I skim the list. “Sure,” I say. “And afterward, I can, you know, do other stuff? Help with the next ad campaign?”
“Of course,” Ed says with a smile, “but let’s see how you do with this first, okay?”
I leave his office, grateful he didn’t mention my father.
For the rest of the week I ring apartment, townhome, nursing home, and halfway house doorbells, recruiting for the following weekend’s barbeque. Some of the mill workers are happy to see me; others have no clue who I am but remember my father. Everyone on the list, every single person, is disabled, or, as the internet says, is a person with a disability. Not that they’d identify as such. Gregory Fjeldseth says “me and my fucked knee.” Brenda Riley calls her three-fingered hand her “special clover.” Most are men. They wear or hover near mobility scooters, prosthetic limbs, and wheelchairs. After the third house visit, I master the art of not looking. Every person is on full or partial disability resulting from mill accidents, and as soon as I mention the ownership buyout and who I represent, their faces harden, like ice freezing over the town pond. When I tell Brenda, one of my mom’s old coworkers, she shakes her head, and for a moment, I think she’ll take back the chamomile tea she’s made me.
I tell them all not to worry. I tell them that Ed’s lump-sum buyout offers are just ideas. I tell them he’s happy to honor former disability settlements and talk to them—with lawyers present, if they’d prefer. I tell them I’ve even met Ed, a reliable, no-BS guy who, if you can believe this, said the former ownership group were evil morons. He’s got that right, hasn’t he? Anyway, Ed and his reps will be at the barbeque, so if you have any questions, he’d love to talk to you there. If you let me know, I can even arrange transport there, free of charge.
A lot of the script that Mary, the Maycombe marketing head, provided is embarrassing trash. I omit the parts about Maycombe being a family and how differently abled people are the real heroes.
In my report I write that of those visited, 34.3% didn’t answer after multiple attempts to contact, 23.6% declined to attend the barbeque, 27.3% said they might attend, 12.6% will attend, and 2.9% are N/A (died, moved to Florida). Mary asks why my percentages added up to 100.7%. I draft a four-paragraph explanation of my mistake, but Mom says to apologize and provide the correction, which I do.
There’s no place in the report to describe the wheeze of Earl Denny’s assisted breathing apparatus, the sound of Tim Lopez choking on his pills, the smell of Steve Flowers’s catheter. I finish the week with more empathy for the disabled. I finish the week with more empathy for people like myself: phone bankers, salesmen, Mormon missionaries. I finish the week ready to relax. I finish the week with a new voicemail from Ronnie Fritz: Holy fucking shit, Mark Junior, little Marky. Sorry I missed your call, man. Whatcha doing tomorrow?
Tomorrow is a Saturday, but in my cover letter for Maycombe I’d said I’m a hardworking overachiever, so even though Mom is using the car, I bike fourteen blocks to the trailer park and lock up on a streetlamp alongside an enormous F-150 Raptor souped up with customized XL shocks, struts, and tires. It’s not hard to see where Ronnie’s settlement went. I knock and survey the car again. Maybe he uses the nearby tree stump to help him up.
“Marky,” he roars in a deep voice, swinging the door open. “Come on in. How’s your mom?”
“Good, thanks. How about you?”
Ronnie says he’s sober, and I say that’s great. I don’t say fifth time’s the charm. Partially because that’s fucked up, partially because he canes across the living room pretty damn quick, despite his missing right foot. The walls are sparse, though a few unhung posters lean against the cheap paneling: WWE wrestlers, Donald Trump brandishing an AR-15, Bill Walton in a Trailblazers jersey, and a blonde Jesus. Furniture is scarce. Ronnie takes the tilted La-Z-Boy I’ve seen in some elderly homes this week—the kind that assists standing. I sit beside him in a sagging lawn chair, the carpet reaching my ass.
To say something I say, “Want me to help hang those posters?”
Right away, I can tell I’ve said the wrong thing. His eyes narrow, his hands choke his long beard. “You think I can’t do that shit, Marky?”
“No, I just—”
“You think I can’t hammer a fucking nail?” he smacks his hands together, the sound of a thunderclap. “You think I use my fucking feet to hold my hammer?”
“No, no I—”
He leans down to the lawn chair, and for a second I think he’s going to smack me, but he ruffles my hair as if I was five, his laugh like three notes of a tuba. “I’m just busting your balls. Christ, Marky, your sense of humor die along with your dad?”
I laugh because I’m relieved and because I now understand why Mom fucking hates Ronnie, why I haven’t seen him since my confirmation. “Good one.”
“I really should put those up, though, you’re right. I just can never decide where to put shit. It’s like, what if I make the wrong choice?”
In the resulting silence, I wonder if that fear of choice is him trying to talk about the accident that got him injured and Dad killed. Maybe he realizes it too, because he asks what’s up, why I called, if everything’s okay. I start to tell him about next weekend’s barbeque at the local high school’s football field, but he cuts me off to tell an old high school story, where my dad fought a visiting fan at that same field.
“Big ol’ fucker,” Ronnie says. “Should’ve been playing. Maybe he got cut for being too aggressive or some shit, or maybe he’d already graduated. Anyway, he says something about your mom. Hot tits, I think he said. Your mom, a classy lady, tells your dad to ignore it. He does. But then, just before halftime, the goliath reaches down and touches your mom’s hair. So what does your dad do?”
I pretend not to know. “What’d he do?”
“Your dad, your fucking dad, slides his wristwatch over his knuckles, like this, turns around, and coldcocks that sonofabitch, pow! A puff of red and the fucker is down on all fours screaming ‘My teeth! My fucking teeth!’”
He laughs his tuba laugh, and I join in. When Mom tells the story, she doesn’t include the wristwatch part.
“What happened after?” I ask. “Did the police come?”
“You think we stuck around to find out?” More tuba laughs. “It’s good to see you, Marky.”
I say likewise, and as I begin my spiel about the buyout, the settlement, and the barbeque, I see his smile fade.
“Wait,” he says, “what’s this? Are you here for the mill?”
“No, well, kind of.”
“They asked a sand grunt to visit me?”
“That was last summer.” I’d worked the swing shift at the mill, which turned lumber into paper and furniture. Every day, I taped my fingers before sanding endless cabinets on endless conveyer belts, smoothening and swirling grooves and grooves and grooves before they reached the flippers, the lacquer sprayers, and finally the kiln. I promised myself, and Mom, never again. “I applied for the internship and got it.”
Ronnie snorts. “They don’t give a shit about you. You’re just a name to them. Do you know how quickly they’ll replace you? How many people they’ll hire once they get everything they want out of you? Don’t you fucking get that?”
I wait for him to say just kidding. He doesn’t. “Damn,” I say, feeling bad I have to resort to this, “is it your time of the month?”
Ronnie laughs his laugh. “There he is! There he fucking is! That barbeque though, Jesus. Seriously, Marky—”
“It’s Mark.” I stand up. “And look, man. You don’t have to go. I’m just doing the courtesy of stopping by. Okay?” I pretend not to notice his face. “Have a good—”
“I know people like you and your mom think I’m faking it.”
My hand is on the doorknob. I could pretend not to have heard. Instead, I say, “Faking it?”
“The PTSD.”
“No one thinks that, Ronnie,” I say gently. And it’s true. Even when Mom picked me up that day in second grade, her eyes deep as the river, her hands tight on the wheel as we drove to the morgue to see what the beam had left of Dad, neither of us had blamed Ronnie. At least not out loud.
“I’m so sorry, Marky—Mark. I can’t. I can’t go to that fucking barbeque.”
Which is why a week later I’m thinking what the hell as Ronnie limps through the hot dog line to give me a wave and ask how it’s going, as if I hadn’t seen him cry into his shag carpet last Saturday. He lingers at my side, asking questions about the events and food, but I shake him off with a lie about needing to take photos for marketing. The photographer we booked is set up before a log cutout step and repeat, where families can stick their heads and pretend to be tree holes. Turnout is lower than expected, about three hundred—mill workers and their families—out of thousands, chatting through bites of food at the football field’s fifty-yard line. Maycombe leaned a little too hard into the tree theme: branches wreath the BBQ sign, wood bonfires sizzle the hot dogs and pulled pork, trunk slices clank off cornhole boards, and the caterers are dressed up as lumberjacks, or as they say, lumberjills, and while I don’t tell Mary this, I wonder if she confused them with an escort company because the food tastes mediocre and their necklines plunge low enough to make the wives who attended scowl. Perhaps this is why macho enthusiasm is high during the redwood relay, pinecone toss, and sapling throw. I join the mill workers, lumberjills, and Mary in applauding Ian Hafterson for his winning distance of thirteen feet, four inches. It’s the weekend, so the smokestacks by the river don’t plume, but the air, the field, and even the barbeque still smell of rotten eggs. Mom said I should look for Ed and chat with him to make a good impression, but he doesn’t seem to be here. When I ask Mary, she says he had an emergency meeting in San Francisco, but she’ll be sure to tell him that I said hi.
The rest of the summer internship is normal, which is to say boring. My resume collects phrases like “developed original marketing content like social media ads and videos which doubled engagement,” but the greatest lesson I learn is that performance matters far less than fetching Mary’s oat milk cappuccino and asking engaged questions about her Korean skincare routine. Wow, the serum has a higher percentage of niacinamide? That’ll definitely help even tone and pores, Mary. I’ll have to check out that brand myself, thanks. By mid-August, I’m finishing my last week at Maycombe, and tonight I’m shopping for used textbook rentals when there’s a knock on the door. It’s nine fifteen, too late for a delivery, so I peer into the peephole and see a dark silhouette against a bright light. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Ronnie, the fisheye lens warping his cane into a curve.
I open the door. “Hey, Ronnie.” Over his shoulder, I can see his truck parked in the middle of our lawn, the headlights blazing into the doorway like the sun. I place a hand over my eyes. “Um, you okay, man?”
“The little rat speaks English.”
“Rat?”
“It knows its name!”
I glance over my shoulder. Mom’s probably reading a book in bed, and I don’t want to worry her. “I’ll talk to you outside, okay?”
“I’m not allowed inside, am I? Is that it?”
“Well, not like this.” I brush past him, smelling the malt liquor wafting through his mustache like a fermented ghost.
“Like what? No cripples inside? You know I’m housebroken.”
“You’re wasted, man.”
“Only had a few.”
Even though he fucked up the lawn and insulted me, I almost want to put an arm around him. “Ronnie, is there someone I can call?”
He doesn’t answer, and I realize if he did, then he wouldn’t be here.
“Was it revenge?” he asks.
“Was what revenge?”
He shoves a torn envelope in my hands. Inside is a letter, addressed to him, and a few photos. I begin to read.
“You know,” he says, his voice cracking, “the union said I shouldn’t even talk to you. But I told them, little Marky wouldn’t do this, there was no way he’d stab me in the fucking back. And then I realized, all these years you wanted to get even. You still fucking hate me.”
I’m barely listening. I’m reading and rereading a letter from Maycombe LLC’s legal team, suggesting that Ronnie accept the lump-sum buyout offer. Especially since new evidence, an underlined phrase that appears twice, has come to light. New evidence that casts doubt on Ronnie’s initial and alleged disability claim (see attached photos).
The photos show Ronnie catching a pinecone, picking up a sapling, and running in a relay—the hand that holds his cane conveniently blocked by another runner.
“You set me up, didn’t you, you fucking rat,” Ronnie sobs.
“I, I didn’t know.”
“Did you take these photos? Or was one of your rat friends hiding in the bushes like a fucking pervert? And so what, I do one little race on my cane, you think I can stand and lift and work a twelve-hour shift? In the exact spot where their shortcuts led to me seeing the brains leak out of my best friend? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“You weren’t his best friend, Ronnie.” I don’t know why I say this, and soon as I do, I want to take it back—to make a time machine and watch Ronnie step back into his car and reverse down the road to his house, where he’d seal the envelope and wait for me to backpedal into his sad living room, where I could erase what I’d done, where I could tell him not to attend the barbeque.
“So it was for revenge.” He blows his nose on his shirt, the sound of a tuba in the rain.
“I didn’t know,” I say again.
“You should’ve.”
I don’t reply. And I think it’s because he’s right.
“That your mom?”
I turn around to see her at the window, one pajamaed arm holding open the curtain.
“Susan,” he shouts. “Susan!”
She slowly closes the curtain. I watch him watch the door. But I know she won’t come out. Ronnie tries to regulate his breathing, and I find myself staring at his tire tracks, at the grass blades crushed by rubber and its iron weight.
I say, “I’m going into the office tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do, okay? You’re right to be upset, Ronnie. This is fucked up.”
Ronnie doesn’t answer. He staggers to the driver side, opens the door, puts his good foot on the drop step, and plants his cane on the running board. But when he tries to climb in, the cane slips and he falls down onto the grass.
“Fuck,” he screams. Then: “Get your hands off me. Get your fucking rat paws off of me.”
I tell him I’ll call a taxi, call a friend, drive him home. After a few more attempts, he vaults himself into the truck, starts the engine with a roar, and careens onto the street, the truck shrinking as he flickers into and out of streetlamps, his taillights disappearing at last behind a magnolia.
The next morning, I drive to the Portland office on almost no sleep. The barista asks if everything’s okay, and I realize I haven’t asked her about her morning, our little routine. I say I’m just sad about leaving, about going back to school. In the elevator up, my dress shoes don’t stand out.
Ed’s assistant tells me he’s on a video call, but he can meet with me after he’s done. She looks at me like I’m a ticking bomb, and maybe I am. I consider bursting into the office and closing Ed’s laptop before I beat him to a pulp. Actually, I should hold the webcam so whoever he’s meeting with can see what a little bitch their boss is. Or maybe Ed is one of these CEOs I see on the internet, the ones who weren’t buff in high school so they spend the rest of their adult lives overcompensating with strength trainers and thirty-dollar protein shakes and Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes.
Ten minutes later, I can enter. Ed is standing behind his desk with his arms crossed, a tired look on his face, a tailored black suit jacket on his shoulders. Before I can speak, he says, “So you found out about the letters.”
I say, “Yeah,” and wish I could think of something else, something more devastating.
“It’s a little slimy, I know.”
“Slimy, yeah.”
“But they weren’t going to take the lump sum. Which isn’t even a bad offer. It’s just less than they’d like. During negotiations, the former company had the option to protect their old disability payouts when they sold us the mill. But they didn’t. You know why?”
He stares at me, meaning that wasn’t rhetorical.
Does he expect me to know? Should I know? I redden and shake my head.
“Because the sellers also knew the disabled had been awarded too much. It was a different time, then. And I know about your father, and I know there’s no price on a life. And this is why I get paid what I do, because no one wants to make these decisions. They’re difficult. Impossible even. But sometimes, business is just that. Business.” He removes his checkbook and begins to write. “Here,” he says, tearing the check and handing it to me. “This is your summer bonus. It’s well deserved.”
I stare down and see an amount I haven’t seen since my tuition charges.
“You’re a smart kid, Mark. You’re going to do the right thing, the smart thing, which is making a better life for you and your mom. Okay? I’m proud of you, Mark.”
If I were a better man, a real man, I’d rip the check, tell him to fuck off, report him to the government, and live in a log cabin I’d build with my own two hands.
I say, “Okay,” and pocket the check.
Before school starts, I decide to move to Portland. I can afford a small room with a shared bathroom. I walk to class. I eat lunch on campus twice a week. Sometimes people leave angry letters in Mom’s mailbox. She says Ronnie’s truck is gone, though she’s not sure if it’s been repossessed or if his license is suspended from another DUI. I make the Dean’s List. I work another summer at Maycombe. I graduate. I get my MBA from a better school. Ronnie dies. Then Mom. I marry a girl with a small trust fund and live in a house that’s our own.
When I hold our firstborn in my hands, when I hear her breathing, quiet as wind through pine needles, I wish I’d gone the same as my dad, dead and canonized, passing too young before anyone could hate me. We grow older and older, racking up sins like tree rings, waiting for God to chop us down.
Jordan St. Hill is a disabled writer living in Los Angeles. A Fulbright recipient and winner of the Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize, he is a PhD student at USC.