7.

The morning light presses hard into the dusted glass of the shop windows. By eight am the feed has been stocked, the tack polished, the till counted up and recorded. The co-op next door stinks of dog food. Twice a year there is the pungent waft. Roland has lost the smell of it in his nostrils by nine. He cleans the glass that Brooklyn insisted he place over the rotted gray wood of the counter. When she was a child she had run her hands along the edge of the counter, then cried out and sucked her finger with thick tears basting her cheeks. The splinter had been too deep for Roland’s father to pull out so he’d sent her home with a hard candy and promised to fix the countertop. Though his father never fixed it. It wasn’t until Brooklyn was pregnant with Andrew that the wood was covered, and even then it had been her doing.
The bing of the cowbell against the door precedes Earl, whose feet stomp heavily on the wood floor, a swallowed thud with each step. Earl puts three mousetraps and a bag of finishing nails on the counter. He leans in ready to tell a secret, one elbow pressed against the counter.
“So it smells like shit again. Sometimes I think if there weren’t that smell to this town you could close your eyes and forget where you were. This could be fuckin BC or something for all the trees. But then you got that smell catching on the breeze every spring and fall. Just in time to mix with the goddamned manure eh. Well I tell you, that doggy chow is some stink. How’s about you put that on my tab Roland? I forgot my cash at home. It’s the damn smell. It’s disorienting.” He grins.
Roland bags the items then holds them up. Earl leans in further, ignoring Roland’s offerings of the now free goods. “Did you hear about that girl going missing? Damn shame. Been two days now.” Roland places Earl’s bag back on the counter.
“Brooklyn mentioned it. She seems worried.” Roland feels like he shouldn’t have said the word “worried”, it begs explanation. “You gonna need any firewood? Stock up now for the winter hey? I could send Andrew over.”
Earl squints, slides his tongue to the corner of his mouth, bites on it. “Yeah. Okay, send him on over. I guess I’ll be needing some.” A slight pause, a slitting of the eyes and the wiry gray brows collapse. “The little woman doing okay. The surgery go well?”
“Yeah Earl. She’s doing just fine. I’ll send Andrew over later today. God knows he needs something to keep him busy.” Earl nods, takes his bag, and leaves, the door slamming too hard behind him, the bell slapping loudly against it. Roland feels the cool breeze enter the room and settle silently among the polished saddles and spilled seed.
The smell of the dog food comes in waves of recognition then detachment. At once he can feel the chunked liver, the pureed lamb, the gelatinous gravy fold over his tongue and then nothing, not a scent except those he knows well. He wonders if he’ll carry the smell on him when he sees Linda. Though he knows that he won’t see her soon enough to hold the smell. Wednesday is far enough away that the molecules of scent will dissolve in his sweat and in all the smells that he carries on his body, buried under flakes of skin and in thick patches of black and gray hair, How many shirt changes? How many showers until…
He remembers Brooklyn.
This happens often, the sudden memory of his current life. Current memory? He says it out loud to the grayed wood door with its silent cowbell. His eyebrows sit low under the weight of the conflicting words. But he can’t think of a better way to put it. He forgets his wife often. Not cruelly. Not with intention or resolve. In his mind he sits at the table with Andrew and Isabel. He can see them clearly, Andrew chewing and cutting at the same time, his eyes fixed on the edge of his plate, on the butter, on the napkin, on the knife and fork passing each other methodically like scissor blades through thick cloth. And Isabel babbling happily, pushing green beans, focused on no one and everyone, eating only the odd chunk of steak, she plays with everything. Roland can’t see Brooklyn but she must be there because he didn’t cut up Isabel’s meat and he only cooked half of dinner. Brooklyn is absent from this memory that is a string of memories. Sometimes she is present but only peripherally: a hand, a gesture, a glass placed on the table. Even when he tries to focus on her within an actual moment, to memorize her clothing, her expressions, he can only hold her briefly and then she flutters into all other clothes and all other expressions.
It is only when he’s off somewhere else in his mind, as he is now – in the long sequence of showers that will lead him to Linda – that he remembers Brooklyn. This time he sees her standing in the tub, shivering and calling him. Her voice is clear and low Roland, I need a towel, I’m freezing. Hurry. And then he is there, standing in their bathroom: chipped tiles, stained sink, and burnt-out bulbs. Brooklyn is shivering. He knows this because he sees it as clearly as the cowbell on the door in front of him. Roland takes in the slopes and creaks of his wife’s body, her shoulders slumped forward in an attempt to be warm, to protect her breasts from freezing and her stomach from trembling. Long streaks of water roll along her hips, legs, thighs, then pause to bloat, then roll again. It is in these moments of memory that Roland is sure he’s never forgotten Brooklyn; only that he’s been somewhere else for a while, his mind cloudy and locked on Linda, or not Linda, but on his body / her body. He’s been caught in the merging of Wednesday bodies and the time that swells and rolls and pauses in between their brief meetings.