by Logan Jorgenson
A light fog covered the prairie, not so dense as to blot out the new-risen sun but thick enough to hide the farmhouse from Laura Beth’s view. She stood at the ready, broomstick in hand, as her father pulled on a rope that lifted the rear gate. The line of heifers ran forward. As soon as the first heifer passed, she stuck her broomstick between an opening in the wooden fence, barring the narrow chute that ran alongside the barn. The second cow ran into the broomstick, but she held it firm.
The first heifer charged forward, looking for freedom, only to collide with the two front panels. The headgate snapped shut, trapping it. Her father let go of the rope, and the rear gate closed. She removed the broomstick and watched the cow in the headgate strain and pull against the metal panels. Then her father pulled on a lever that compressed the side panels, preventing the heifer from struggling.
Her father glanced her way. “You doing okay?” He ran a gloved hand over the cow’s hindquarters, picking out chunks of dried manure. “Hungry?”
“I’m fine.”
“Not too much longer. Then breakfast.”
“I know.”
He picked up the branding iron: a Double H. She remembered the first time they branded cattle, back before the divorce, before her brother, Haakon, died. She was six and was outside because it was something to do. Haakon, who was a year younger, asked why they needed to brand the cows. Their father explained that it was a way to tell whose cows were whose if they ever got out. The Fredricksons had a Lazy F, the Johnsons had a Circle J, and their family had a Double H.
“Why a Double H?” Laura Beth had asked.
“It’s from your great-great-grandfather. Haakon Hattlestead. His initials.”
“That’s my name!” her brother shouted.
Their father kneeled, smiled. “He’s who you were named after.”
Now, the memory made Laura Beth’s skin itch, just like every time she thought of her little brother. She felt heavy, like something pulled at her arms and legs, her stomach. She slipped a hand into her pocket to feel the razor blade, just to remind herself it was there. The metal was cool and sharp; it pricked her finger. She told herself that she carried it around so her father wouldn’t find it in her room, but that was a weak excuse because he hadn’t stepped foot past her door in years. When he came to talk to her about college, even though she already told him she wasn’t going, he hovered just outside the frame. The real reason was that she wanted it close in case she was seized by the sudden need for release. It didn’t take much. A little heat. A little pain. Then she always felt better. The scar winced underneath her sleeve, the skin a little tighter than it should have been.
The heifer cried and squirmed, dropping to its knees, as her father pressed the branding iron against its side. Smoke rolled off its body.
It drifted toward Laura Beth. The smell was sharp, acrid, and filled her nose. Her stomach flipped, threatening to throw up bile. She leaned against the broomstick for support and closed her eyes. The cattle in the chute mooed.
“Laura?”
She opened her eyes at her father’s voice. The branding iron sat on the ground. On the heifer’s hindquarters, the brand was bright and pink and highlighted by burnt, black fur.
“You can head inside if you want.” He faced her. He was scrawny with a graying beard. “I know you don’t like this.”
“You need the help.”
“I could manage.” He ran his hand over the fresh brand.
Laura Beth didn’t respond. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
Her father must have spotted some imperfection because he picked up the branding iron again. He was about to reapply it when he looked down the chute. Two heifers stood in the line. He gestured to the end, where it disappeared around the end of the barn. “Why don’t you go see what Chet’s up to? There should be five more after those yet.”
“All right.” She leaned her broomstick against the fence and walked away. Behind her, the cow shrieked.
The pen on the other side of the barn was small. At the far end was a tall wooden windbreak, and a line of feed bunks ran along the adjacent edge. Nearer the barn, the fence narrowed at a steady angle, like a funnel, where the cows were herded toward the chute. That used to be her brother’s job. It was tough. The cattle shied away from the pained moos of the heifers that were being branded. You needed to be quick and bold to jump in front of an animal more than ten times your size. That was why Chet was here.
He stood at the far end of the pen. Four heifers milled about near the feed bunks. The last one, the smallest, stood against the windbreak, eyeing Chet. He took a quick step toward the little cow, and it tried to run around him. He swung his own broomstick and struck it across the nose, a quick rap. The heifer jumped back against the wood. Chet laughed.
“What’re you doing?” Laura Beth marched up behind Chet.
He turned to her. “Just having a little fun.” He was tall and smiled. “This one’s so little I bet she’ll split in two when the bull mounts her.”
She grimaced. He was their neighbor and the same age as Laura Beth. They had grown up around each other, as tended to happen when he was the only other kid in a five-mile radius, but she didn’t like him. When they were twelve, he shot her with his BB gun on ‘accident’ after they got in a fight. She knew it was purposeful; she saw the ire in his eyes before he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger. Whatever they had fought over was long forgotten, but that look was burned into her mind.
She also knew that his father forced him to come over and help. This wasn’t the first time he showed up to ‘lend a hand’ over the past ten months. The fact that he was here only because his father pitied them made him even worse.
“You want a turn, LB?” he asked.
“No!”
The heifer tried to use this opportunity to escape, but Chet turned and smacked its forehead. It backed up, and he advanced, striking again.
“You’re missing out.”
Laura Beth stepped forward and grabbed at his broomstick. “Leave her alone.”
“What’s the harm?”
The cow ran past them and circled the pen before joining the other heifers. It stared at them.
“Just get back to work.”
“Is that all you came over here for?” He smirked and stepped in close. “Or was something else on your mind?”
There was that look, a look that meant he thought he was entitled to something, and woe be to anyone or anything that stood in his way.
“Get back to work or go home. I don’t care.” She turned and walked back toward the barn. Her skin itched even more, an itch only her blade could scratch.
* * *
The fog dissipated by midmorning, leaving behind a gray-blue sky. Kat arrived around eleven and came straight upstairs. They laid on Laura Beth’s bed.
“Chet’s such an ass,” Kat said when Laura Beth told her about branding cattle that morning. “You should’ve called me. I would’ve come help.”
“You have no idea what to do.”
“I’m better than Chet, aren’t I?”
“That’s not even a question.”
Kat kissed Laura Beth. She didn’t resist but was quick to pull away. For a moment, they laid there, face to face, silent as Kat’s hand walked its way down Laura Beth’s back. They had been dating for almost three years, but they had been friends long before that, ever since Kat’s family moved to Crosby when she was eight. Maybe it was inevitable, Laura Beth thought, that they would end up dating, after all, there weren’t many choices in small town North Dakota. That was why she needed to break up with Kat. Or it was at least part of the reason.
“Is your dad home?”
“He’s outside.”
“Maybe we could…” Kat’s hand found Laura Beth’s jeans and worked around to the front, fumbling with the button.
Laura Beth pushed her hand away. “Not now.”
“I’m sorry.” Kat sat up and leaned against the wall.
“I’m just not in the mood.”
Kat nodded, but something told Laura Beth she wasn’t convinced. Perhaps she thought Laura Beth was ashamed still. When they first started going out, Laura Beth waited to tell her father. When she did tell him, encouraged by Kat, he seemed to take it well, putting on a smile. But her father couldn’t hide the brief moment of unfamiliarity from his face. That was when he stopped coming into her room.
Their relationship was still a secret from everyone but their parents. Kat said this was okay, but Laura Beth couldn’t help but feel that it was a failing, just another way she was holding Kat back. She rested her head on Kat’s lap.
“It’s been a while is all,” Kat said.
“Sorry.”
“That’s all I’m saying.”
“I know.”
Kat ran her hand through Laura Beth’s hair. “Eleven months.”
“Ten and a half.”
“You need to stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”
Laura Beth drew a sharp breath and rolled to look out the window. The yard was dusty; the bins stood off in the distance. She knew where this was going: they had the same conversation with varying degrees of differences too many times to count over the past months. Usually, it started with Laura Beth expressing some sort of guilt for her brother’s death, saying she should have been more careful. Kat asserted that she wasn’t at fault, that Haakon shouldn’t have been up on the bin to begin with. She was right. That didn’t stop Laura Beth from hating her for it. She was also right when she said it was an accident, yet even in an accident, someone was in the wrong.
She couldn’t understand, Laura Beth decided. She had three brothers, a sister, and married parents. They were the perfect family with a perfect house. It was always full; there was always something happening: her mother exercising on the Wii Fit each morning at six, or her brothers running roughshod through the backyard with their pellet guns, or her father giving private piano lessons to the few kids whose parents forced them to learn the instrument. She didn’t wake up in the middle of the night to her father crying two rooms away; didn’t expect her brother to barge into her room, excited about the latest poem he had written, only to be greeted with silence; didn’t look out her window every morning and see the place where he died, the second bin from the end.
Kat traced the shape of Laura Beth’s ear. “Maybe you just need to let go?”
“What?” Laura Beth tensed.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Kat pulled her fingers away.
“What did you mean then?” Laura Beth sat up and looked at her girlfriend. “What is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to just forget my brother?” She stood. “Is that what you want me to do?”
“Can you sit down?” Kat ran her hand over the bedspread. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
Laura Beth walked over to her dresser. Above it, a collage of pictures was pinned to the light blue wall. Her brother’s face was there, smiling. He was two inches taller than her, but they always looked more similar than different, the same dusty hair, green eyes, and narrow nose. But his acne was less pronounced. Most of the pictures included Kat, and Laura Beth didn’t know if they belonged there, not anymore, not beside her brother. She itched.
It must have been itchy, she thought, drowning in durum. The grain dust, the heat of the bin, the humidity. Her brother must have itched. She resisted the urge to take the razor blade from her pocket.
“I care about you, you know.” Kat stood and approached Laura Beth. “I really do.”
It was a phrase Kat repeated a lot over the past months, too often for it to carry any meaning. A month after the accident, Kat suggested she see a therapist.
“I’ve done all the research, and there’s a good one in Minot,” Kat had said. “I’ve already given your dad all the info.”
Kat pressed, saying it was bad to keep her feelings inside. Laura Beth considered it, but she knew that they couldn’t spare the time to drive to and from Minot, four hours round trip, every week. Not when harvest was on the horizon. She said as much to her father when he brought it up. That was that.
Now, Kat rested a soft hand on Laura Beth’s shoulder. “And I worry about you sometimes.”
Laura Beth nodded in acknowledgement.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” The itch ate away at Laura Beth’s skin, and the razor blade called. She wanted to answer.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
“I said, ‘I’m fine.’”
Kat took Laura Beth’s hand and squeezed it once, twice. “I can tell you’re lying. I know you.”
I think we should breakup. Five words. That was all. They should have been easy, but Laura Beth couldn’t bring herself to say them, couldn’t bring herself to say anything.
“Look at me.”
Laura Beth looked, and Kat kissed her. This time, she didn’t pull away.
“Can you forgive me?” Kat asked, voice heavy.
“Yeah.” Laura Beth pressed her forehead against Kat’s.
“We should do something.”
“Like what?”
“There’s that party tonight.”
“I don’t know.” It was the yearly graduation party, not school-sanctioned, but still a tradition among seniors.
“It might be fun.”
“Everyone’s just going to be drinking and throwing shit into the bonfire.”
“Please?” Kat swayed from side to side and tried to pull Laura Beth with her, like they were dancing. “I want as much time with you as I can get. And it’ll be good for you to get out. Relax some.”
Laura Beth itched. “Okay.” She needed to get out of this conversation, out of this room. She pulled herself away from Kat. “I’ve got to use the bathroom.” Before her girlfriend could protest, she slipped into the hall.
The moment the bathroom door was closed, she pulled the razor blade from her pocket. It was discolored along the edge and reflected the bare incandescent bulbs. The first time she used it, it scared her. The dull metallic color, the coolness of the blade. She had held it against her skin for a whole half hour before making careful incisions, relieving the itch. Now, she rolled up her sleeve and rolled out the toilet paper, wadding it so she was ready to sop the blood, prevent any from staining the white tile floor. After a slow breath, she made the shallow cuts: three vertical and one horizontal.
* * *
To the west, the sky was still bright and yellow, ever fading, changing to orange and red and purple. Laura Beth sat on a blanket, watching the bonfire flames as they leapt and danced from one log to the next. The fire lay in a gravel pit out in one of old Ezekiel Erikson’s fields because he didn’t care what all these kids did as long as no one died on his land. There were about thirty students, a sizeable portion of the thirty-six graduating seniors at Divide County High School. Laura Beth could name every one of them, not that she cared to. All but a few were farm kids.
“Sorry that took so long.” Kat sat down beside Laura Beth and handed her a plastic cup filled with beer. “Chet was hogging the tap.”
“Of course he was.” Laura Beth looked over at the keg, which sat about fifty yards away, near the line of parked trucks. Chet and two of his friends stood there. He stared at her.
“He asked if you wanted to see the ceiling of his truck.”
“Ugh.”
That was the type of party this was. Everyone knew it. Couples sat on their own blankets, making out, staring up at the emerging stars, or going for another beer. Even most of the singles had paired off by this point. Carl and Lisa, who Laura Beth had never seen together, laid prone on the next blanket over, he above her, lips locked, her shirt open down the front, bra exposed, his hand down her pants. Soon, they would go to the bed of his truck or to the tall grass at the edge of the field, wherever afforded them the little privacy they needed.
“I told him to go jump in the bonfire and spare us any future stupidity.” Kat took a drink. “I bet he’s still sour about that.”
Laura Beth couldn’t help but laugh. She looked over at Kat. Her girlfriend only ever wore one earring: a dreamcatcher and lone feather dangling from a hook. Kat said it was good luck. Laura Beth found it odd but never said anything. Now, she studied Kat’s face, her delicate ear, the messy braid that hung behind it, her blue eyes, and her dark complexion, softened by the orange glow of the bonfire. We should probably breakup. Laura Beth played the words in her mind, measuring them, their weight, their heft. She cared about Kat, she realized, which was only going to make this all the more difficult.
“I’m going to miss you,” Kat said.
“You don’t leave for another few months.” Laura Beth took a sip of her beer and spit it right back into the cup. “This tastes like piss.”
“They didn’t have anything cold.” Kat put her hand on Laura Beth’s knee.
Laura Beth set the beer aside and gazed into the fire. A log shifted, falling, and sent sparks drifting up into the air. They joined the stars for a moment, before winking out of existence.
“I’ve got camp,” Kat said, picking up their conversation. “And I’m going to see my grandparents next month, remember? I’ll only be back for a week before move-in.”
“There’ll be breaks. And summers.”
“I don’t know. This place is a shithole.”
Laura Beth’s breath hitched. Now was her opportunity. We should breakup. It would be easy. Long distance was the perfect excuse; six hours would be too much to handle.
Lisa giggled. Laura Beth looked over at the couple. Lisa’s bra was unhooked now, hanging loose, and Carl kissed her neck. She pushed him away, glanced at Laura Beth, and whispered in his ear. Then they stood and walked toward the edge of the field.
“You should be coming to college.” Kat took a drink.
“I can’t.”
“You need to get out of this place. It’s not good for you to stay here. You need to get away from it all.”
Laura Beth didn’t say anything. She kicked over her beer cup and watched the liquid run through the loose topsoil. It reflected the light of the fire.
“L?”
“We need to breakup.” The words hung there, quiet. For a moment, Laura Beth wasn’t sure if she said them or just imagined it.
“I…” Kat started. Her mouth hung loose; a look Laura Beth interpreted as confusion. “I… I…”
“It’s not—” Before Laura Beth could finish, Kat stood and ran toward the vehicles.
Laura Beth followed. The heat of the fire evaporated as she approached the trucks. The landscape grew darker; long shadows, cast by the fire, spread outward. Her own joined the others.
“Wait,” she called once they were among the pickups. She hoped they were out of earshot of the bonfire, hoped no couples were hiding in the pickup beds.
Kat stopped beside a red truck. Her car was two vehicles down.
Laura Beth stood six feet from her ex-girlfriend. “It’s not you.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Can we just talk?” This was not how Laura Beth imagined it going. She didn’t really plan this far ahead, but a remote corner of her mind thought she would lay out her reasons, all of them, and that Kat would be forced to accept them.
“That’s all you have to say about this? About us? Three years and that’s the first thing you say?” Kat’s breaths were ragged. “I love you. Don’t you love me?”
Laura Beth shook her head.
Kat stared at her, eyes dark in the shadows. “Wow!” She turned and walked toward her car.
“You’re my ride.”
“Go to hell!”
Laura Beth took two steps forward when someone stepped out from behind the nearest pickup. She froze.
Their face was cast in silhouette, and they held a cigarette between their fingers. “Well. How about that?”
The voice was Chet’s. Laura Beth’s vision acclimated to his features: his crooked nose, big ears, and drooping chin. He brought the cigarette to his lips and smiled as he took a long draw. He turned his head to exhale.
“Lezzy Beth,” he said. “Lost your little friend?”
“Get out of my way.” She tried to sidestep him, but he moved to block her path.
“What’s the problem?” He stepped closer. “Don’t you need a ride?”
She took two steps back, recognizing his look. He grabbed her wrist.
“Maybe I could straighten you out. Show you—”
Laura Beth kicked him in the shin.
He swore and dropped his cigarette. It fell to the dirt, burned with renewed vigor for a moment, and then suffocated. “Bitch!”
“Next time, I’ll aim higher.”
He made a gesture that she couldn’t see in the dark. She stepped around him, glancing over her shoulder every other step. He didn’t follow, but that didn’t matter. Kat’s taillights bounced across the field. When they reached the township road, they turned and sped west. Soon, the car was gone, lost to the night.
Laura Beth didn’t know what to do. She looked up. The sky was black now; no moon shone. The stars seemed bright, but she couldn’t make out any constellations. Quiet laughter drifted over the fire. Somewhere, someone moaned. The highest flames peeked through the windows of the trucks, orange and yellow. Laura Beth shivered. She wondered what it would feel like, the flame against her skin. Would it be anything like the blade? Like the branding iron? She thought of the cows from that morning, their shrieks, the burning of their hides. Did the branding iron cleanse them? Was the pain enough to make them forget? Forget all the pain that came before?
She didn’t know. She felt dirty, sweaty despite the cool night air. For a moment, she considered calling her father for a ride, but she didn’t want to go home. So, she walked back to her blanket, the heat of the bonfire welcoming her, and sat. She watched the flames and fingered the razor blade. No one would see if she used it here. It was too dark; everyone was consumed by their desires. The itch grew with every passing moment, crawling outward from the base of her spine.
“Is it true, Laura Beth?” a voice asked.
It belonged to Lisa. Laura Beth looked over at her and Carl. They sat close to each other, sharing a cup of beer and a cigarette.
So, Chet had told everyone. Now the whole school would know. “Yeah.”
“You could’ve just asked us,” Carl said.
Laura Beth didn’t know how to respond. “For?”
“A ride.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Chet said you blew him off so he’d drive you home,” Lisa said.
In an instant, the heat of the fire surrendered to the cool of the night. Laura Beth felt numb. She scanned the field for Chet. He stood near the fire with his friends, drinking beer. Their laughter filled her ears. Chet looked at her and flashed a smile.
“What did you think we were talking about?” Lisa asked.
She left Lisa’s question hanging in the air, stood, and walked straight toward him. Her classmates watched, questioning eyes following in her wake. She ignored them.
“Come back for more?” Chet asked. “I didn’t—” His voice faltered, and his face lost all expression as he realized what was coming. For a brief moment, his face seemed suspended in the night air, big and white and stupid.
The razor blade cut through his cheek.
Laura Beth didn’t remember taking it from her pocket. It was just there, ready and willing. And it carried with it every ounce of her anger, her grief. It was harder than she thought, the razor met resistance in his cheekbone and his jaw. But his skin gave way, and she sliced him from ear to chin.
Several things happened at once. His friends pulled at her arms, tearing her sleeves. Something soaked her shirt; their beer, she realized. Chet swore and shouted, dropping his own beer, and tried to stop the blood that ran down his neck. The bonfire reflected in his eyes. And Laura Beth shouted back, “Pig! Liar!” because she couldn’t find any other words.
And now there were others. More hands grasped at her, she couldn’t see who they belonged to, and voices shouted, indistinct. Maybe they were trying to pull her away from his friends, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she was done, done with the pain, the pity, the guilt. It was all too much.
She stumbled, landing beside the fire. The flames reached out for her. They burned.
* * *
Her father picked her up from the hospital, after a deputy questioned her, after a nurse applied an ointment and a bandage to her burn. They didn’t drive home. Instead, her father pulled into the parking lot of a little diner on the outskirts of town. He parked, facing east.
The radio clock said it was a little before six A.M. That didn’t seem right to Laura Beth. She lost track of time through it all; there had been a clock in the hospital room, but when she tried to recall it, the hands blurred. The hospital seemed timeless, the whole night slipping away through those well-lit halls and bright, florescent rooms.
“I thought we could get breakfast when they open,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“It was a party.”
“You smell like beer. You’re all torn up. And you got burned.”
“I didn’t say it was a good party.”
For a long while, they didn’t speak. Outside, lights dotted the horizon. They were far apart, separate, each belonging to a different farmyard. The stars above seemed smaller than they had been earlier. They were being swallowed by the night, she thought.
Her father rolled down his window, letting in the brisk air. “What happened?”
“It was just a fight.” Her skin felt hot; the relief that the ointment provided had been brief. Now she could feel every inch of the burn, splayed across the back of her right shoulder and creeping up her neck. At the hospital, when she looked in the mirror, the skin was angry and red and swollen. “With a boy.”
“Did he…” Her father trailed off. “Did he do anything to you?”
“No.”
“Because—”
“I said, ‘no.’”
The clock ticked away, giving off the only light within the pickup. It was a grim green glow. That was how her brother would have described it.
“Where was Kathrine?”
“She left. We broke up.”
“You aren’t going to tell me anything more?”
Laura Beth didn’t speak. She reached into her pocket. The razor blade wasn’t there. She dropped it in the commotion. Not that she needed it anymore; the itch dried up as the flames burned her skin and hadn’t returned since.
“What about the scar?”
She looked down at her bare forearm. The Double H was there, just above the crook of her elbow, still raw and pink. The nurse had talked to her father about that, she knew, when they stepped out into the hall.
“When did that start?”
“Do you think he was scared? When he died?”
“We’re going to call that doctor in Minot tomorrow. That one that Kathrine found.”
“I think it would have been itchy. All that grain dust.”
“Don’t think about that.”
“But I don’t know if he would have been scared or not. I hope he wasn’t. I wish he wasn’t.”
“You need to stop.”
“Stop?” She felt a heat rising in her stomach, hotter than the bonfire. “What? Missing him?”
“Acting like the world’s stopped because of it.”
She didn’t speak.
“That doesn’t do anyone any good. Least of all your brother.” The sky lightened now, preparing for the sun. “I’m not trying to be tough. I just care too much to see you like this.”
“His birthday would’ve been next week.”
Her father was silent for a long moment. “I know.”
“How do I forget?”
“Forget?”
“So I can stop acting like the world’s stopped.”
“It’s not about forgetting. It’s about remembering.”
“It hurts too much to remember.”
“If I call that head doctor in Minot, will you go?” Her father reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I think it’ll help.”
The sun crested the horizon. “I suppose,” she said.
“Good.”
The sunrise was bright, yellows and oranges and pinks mixing and fighting against the dark sky. It was vibrant, warmer than the bonfire’s harsh light. The longer Laura Beth looked at it, the more she thought that maybe, just maybe, it was beautiful.
About the Author: Logan Jorgenson received his MFA in Fiction at the University of Kansas. Originally from Williston, North Dakota, he draws on his experiences growing up on a family farm for many of his stories. He currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and dog.