Four Cans of Beer

by E.B. Jansky

Eden Bridges lived in a shitty trailer with her shitty dad on land he rented from Mr. Irving. Surrounded on all sides by a carpet of soybeans, the trailer sat, all weathered siding and crumbling shingles.

            Not that my place was much better, to be honest. We were dairy farmers once, the smell of manure still draped over every inch of the property. It was as noticeable as the rusted tractor in the front yard that my grandpa had left back in the eighties and never moved. It was right next to the fossilized remains of the plow his grandpa had left, the rotten wood of the handles half-buried in the dark, moist earth. Carlyle and I used to sit on the seat of the tractor and pretend to be motorcyclists until it snapped clean off with me on it, with cuts that almost gave me gangrene. Pop kept saying he was going to get rid of the tractor and plow. He never got around to it.

            It was a hot summer afternoon when I ran away from the house, half stumbling down the hill and getting grass stains on my shorts in my hurry. I found Eden by the creek where her father’s rented land ended, on the big rock in the bend. I plopped down next to her.

            “Why were you crying?” Eden turned to look at me, hair wet from a dip in the water, clinging in ratty strands to her forehead.

            “I wasn’t crying,”  I might have been before this, but I wasn’t going to let her know that.

            “Liar,” she said, chewing on the end of her hair.

            “That’s nasty. Fish poop in that water.” She pushed me in.

            The creek was icy cold, low as it was from the summer heat. I gasped and screamed, then I pulled her in too.

            “So why were you crying, Naomi?” Eden asked, splashing me. She had barely reacted to her dip in the water, which was fairly typical – Eden Bridges never squealed or giggled like the other girls. It had been a fairly popular game last winter for the boys at school to try to get her to scream. Nothing they tried had succeeded, not even throwing manure, so it was concluded that she was probably some sort of robot, like Data in Star Trek.

            Despite this apparent apathy, Eden could always tell what emotion someone else was feeling, even adults. Not that it was hard to tell what I was thinking. My face was and has always been an open book.

            “Okay, so I talked back to my mom,” I admitted, getting out of the creek and wringing out my sodden sandals. “She smacked me. It hurt, all right?” I showed Eden my still reddened arm.

            “I see,” she said. “Are you okay now?”

            “Yeah. It wasn’t a big deal. I’m just tired of getting smacked. It’s not fair. I should be allowed to hit her back.”

            “You can’t hit adults,” was her quiet reply. Then, after a pause, “Can you help me?”

            “With what?” I asked, giving up on trying to dry my sandals and throwing them on the sandy bank.

            “My dad’s sick. He needs medicine.” Eden pulled on her own shoes, which she’d left in the grass before going near the water.

            “I got it.” Eden’s dad always called his beer “medicine,” and so did she, although everyone knew what it was. Mr. Bridges was the kind of guy who couldn’t function without drinking, to the point where he was hardly ever sober. If he was out of booze, there was no telling what would happen.

            “Why doesn’t he just go to the bar?” I asked.

            Eden shook her head. “He’s not well.”

            “So why don’t we buy some?”

            “No good,” she said. “Jeremy told me last time that I can’t buy booze without an iID.”

            “What kind of ID? A driver’s license?”

            Eden’s eye opened slightly wider, which meant she had an idea or was excited in some way. “Driver’s license. That’s it. If I have Dad’s license, then I can buy the beer.”

            “We should go before the store closes,” I said, but she was already heading up the hill.

            We cut through the woods and around the cornfields into the little valley where Eden’s trailer sat like a lizard sunning itself on the dried-out grass. I was about to follow her inside when she stopped me. This time, her eyes were narrowed slightly.

            “Don’t come in,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

            I was picking at the gray paint on the stoop when Eden came out, holding her dad’s wallet. I was always amazed at how easily she was able to take anything she wanted from her dad, and how little he would care. If he had booze, she could drink it, if she wanted to. If she wanted ice cream and he had the cash, Eden’s father wouldn’t have cared less. My parents, on the other hand, watched over me with what I perceived as complete and utter tyranny.

            “Let’s go,” Eden said, waving the wallet at me.

            I was holding my wet shoes as we walked down the road, trying to stay on the grass and off the gravel. I breathed a sigh of relief as we reached the black top, even though it was horribly hot on my bare feet.

            “I hate this place,” I said, kicking a rock and immediately regretting it as my toe smarted as much as my arm did. “I hate this shitty place.” I looked around on instinct to make sure no one had heard me say the bad word but still felt proud of it. I’d recently learned several curse words from Carlyle, who was too old to be smacked and thus talked back to Mom a lot more.

            “It sucks,” Eden agreed, as we passed another farm and climbed another hill. By now, we had reached the new neighborhood outside of the town proper, with its manicured lawns and identical driveways. The place was full of families with parents that went to work in the city, driving past my place in cars that had not yet been dented by the gravel roads.

            “Watch out,” Eden said quietly, as we spotted Kimberly Bauer coming up on her bike, all skinny sunburnt legs and wispy blond hair. She had new canvas shoes, I noticed, the white so clean it practically glowed.

“Hey, Naomi,” she called out, skidding to a stop. “And Eden,” she added, as an afterthought. “Why are you all wet?”

“Fell in the creek,” I said, cracking a smile at Eden, who raised her eyebrows to signal that she was amused.

“Really?” Kimberly asked. “Aren’t there snakes in there?”

“Yeah.” Eden spoke up laconically.

“We catch them,” I said. “Crawdads, too.” I grinned at Eden again.

“Oh,” Kimberly said, tapping the handlebar of her bike. “I was going to swim in Rachel’s pool. She invited me.” 

“She did?” I asked. “Didn’t she tell everyone you stole gum and pencil sharpeners from her? And write mean stuff about you in the bathroom?”

“She said sorry,” Kimberly said defensively. “Anyway, her pool is really nice. I’m going to wear my new swimsuit.”

“Have fun, I guess,” I said. For my part, I would rather have pulled my toenails out before I’d try to make friends with Rachel Butler, even if she did have a pool and name brand Converse. Kimberly had a lot more to hate about Rachel than I did, considering the drama the two had been having, but maybe the call of a pool and an air-conditioned house was too alluring to hold grudges.

Eden, of course, had the most reason to avoid Rachel. Last spring, she’d told Eden that she needed to find better dumpsters to get her clothes from. White trash, she’d said, knocking Eden’s milk from her tray with a splash that soaked her thin shirt in brown chocolate. Eden had stared at the floor, hair in her face. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the bathroom, tears pricking at my eyes. Eden never cried.

My sandals were mostly dry by this time, so I slipped them on before getting to the glass-ridden Badgermart parking lot.

One of the pumps was active when we arrived, the Methodist pastor filling up his car. We scooted past in case he recognized us and tried to ask if our parents had taken us to church lately.

Inside, Jeremy was behind the counter, reading the newspaper and drinking his afternoon coffee at the same time. We went to the separate room where they kept the liquor and grabbed at least four cans of beer, enough to calm Mr. Bridges down for him to feel better. The cans, chilled from the fridge, felt amazing in my hands, and I pressed one against my sweaty face.

Eden also grabbed some boxed macincheese to eat since, as she informed me seriously, “Dad’s too sick to make dinner,” which was code for he had forgotten to feed her.

“You could come eat at my place,” I said, feeling guilty that we were buying all this with her dad’s wallet.

“Are you kidding? You’re going to be in big trouble with your mom,” she said. “I’m not going to deal with that.”

“But if you’re there, maybe she’ll be nice,” I said. Mom was always so much kinder to my friends than to me. You could yell at your kids all day, but if company was there, it was like you were the world’s best family. I pressed against one of the cases of soda, feeling my heart speed up.

At the time, I was certain there was nothing more dire than being spanked. What was worse, Mom always pulled my pants down to hit my bare ass, which was humiliating on top of hurting even more.

“She can’t,” I said, clenching a fist. “I’m too big. No one my age gets spanked.”

“She just smacked your arm today,” Eden said coolly, investigating the candy and grabbing a bag of M&Ms.

“She says her mom used to hit her with a spoon,” I said. “What if she finally decides to try that out?”

“You’re tough,” Eden said. “Deal with it.”

If any of my other friends had told me that, I would have gotten angry for not commiserating, but Eden was in the trenches alongside me. The only time her father paid attention to her was to smack her around.

We’d reached the counter, alerting Jeremy to our presence. He raised his eyebrows at the beers.

“Is your dad outside, Naomi?” he asked. “Or yours, Eden?”

“I have his i.d.,” Eden said, passing him Mr. Bridges’ drivers license. “He told me to get some.”

Jeremy sighed, making his whiskers rustle like leaves on a hickory tree. He was about seventy-five at that time, with gray hair combed over his ever-growing bald spot. He’d spilled coffee on his shirt.

“Girls,” he said, “You need to be the person on the i.d. to buy these. It’s proof of age, all right? If you want to really fool me, pay someone off to make a fake one that says the two of you are twenty one. Until then, though, I’m afraid I can’t sell you any beer.”

“We’re not going to drink it,” I protested.

“I know that,” he said. “But rules are rules.”

“You let Steven have beer,” I said, staring at him in what I hoped was a clever gaze. “Carlyle told me. He said, ‘Steven’s grandpa lets him drink’ all the time to convince my Pop to let him have some.”

“Well, I’m not letting Steven buy it,” Jeremy said, heading my argument off. “Now, do you want to buy that candy, or – “

“I’ll tell the sheriff,” I said, leaning against the counter the way I’d seen someone on tv do when they were nailing a bad guy. “I’ll tell him you let Steven drink even though he’s sixteen. Unless,” I paused, toying with one of the beer cans, “You let us buy these.”

“Blackmail, huh?” Jeremy chuckled. “I’m sorry, but no deal. Sheriff Radley lets his kid drink, same as everyone else in this town. It’s the selling that matters, and my boss would have my hide he found out I sold booze to a couple of little girls. Now, you two buy the candy and stuff and have a nice day, all right?”

“Good try,” Eden said as we left Badgermart.

            “I thought it would work,” I sighed. It had been a rare opportunity to use my stock of dirt I had on nearly everyone I knew for negotiation purposes. Carlyle folded and got me a notebook immediately after I threatened to tell Mom he was watching porn at three a.m.

            “You can’t reason with adults,” Eden said. “Get dirt on Rachel Butler instead.”

            “I already do,” I said, perking up, eager to share the information in case Eden needed leverage. “She says she’s got boobs now but she doesn’t really. She stuffs. Also, she cheated on our last math test.”

            “You should tell Miss Martin.”

            “I’m not a tattletale. Although, I could be, if she tries any shit with you once school starts.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll hold it over her myself.”

            We lapsed into silence as we walked down the road, slowing down. I clenched my fists. I tried. I’d tried to make sure we got those beers.

            Eden stopped short as we reached the gravel road. “I don’t want to go home.”

            “Me neither.” While Eden didn’t show it, I knew she was terrified. I wished I could find really good blackmail material on her dad so I could force him to make her dinner that wasn’t macincheese or ramen, and to sing her bedtime songs and tuck her in at night. At least my mom, with all her faults, loved me enough to do those things.

            “What do we do?” I asked softly, as a truck drove past us.

            “Walk me home,” Eden said. “Please? We can tell him it was Jeremy’s fault.”

            “Good idea.” There was still the question of what would happen to me when I returned home for my spanking, but I was willing to overlook that in order to complete the mission the two of us had set out on. Eden had wanted help, and I would give it, no question.

            That was how we ended up, sans beer, on the worn stoop as the sun dipped towards the west. Eden took my hand and squeezed it, then opened the screen door.

            It was hot inside, as we took off our shoes on the rug.

            “Mr. Bridges?” I called, trying to sound upbeat and unbothered. “It’s Naomi.”

            “Eden with you?” the deep voice startled me as I realized I had missed the form of Mr. Bridges on the couch. He looked too skinny, the stubble on his face hiding his expression.

            “Right here,” Eden said.

            “You got my medicine?” he asked. She looked down.

            “They wouldn’t let us buy it,” I said hurriedly. “Not without being twenty-one. It was Mr. Jeremy’s fault, not hers.”

            “Is that so?” He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what I was doing in his house. “That’s a shame.” His hands were shaking, and I couldn’t help noticing how sunken and dead his eyes looked, as if he wasn’t really here.

            “I was actually wondering if she could stay over,” I said, realizing that might be the best idea. My mom wouldn’t be as hard on me if Eden was there, and Eden would be able to have a good night’s sleep.

            “Not tonight,” he said, and my hopes were dashed. I looked over at Eden, whose face had remained as stoic as ever. “Eden hasn’t done her chores yet. You understand.” He slowly rose from the couch, reminding me what a very tall man he really was. His hands were still trembling, and he swayed back and forth as if he was about to fall. I hurriedly backed away to the door.

            “Okay then,” I said, slipping my sandals back on. “See you later, Eden.”

            “Bye.”

            I started up the hill, the golden light of the late afternoon sun baking my back. I probably had a terrible sunburn.

            It had only been four cans of beer. Why couldn’t I have done something else? Maybe if I had better dirt on Jeremy, this wouldn’t have happened.

            I’d reached the top of the hill, home in sight, when I heard a scream. I’d never heard the sound before. No one I knew screamed in that way. That’s how I knew whose it was.

            “Eden,” I breathed, immediately turning and running back down the road, feeling every hard piece of gravel under my feet as I headed straight for the trailer.

            Eden burst out of the screen door, tears falling down her face, and nearly smacked heads with me as she wrapped her arms around my waist. “You’re here,” she murmured into my shirt.

            I was too shocked about Eden crying to reply.

            “Why the fuck are you still here?” Mr. Bridges stood in the doorway, and oh God, oh Jesus, he had a belt in his hand, the leather slick with his sweat, and he was sober, finally looking alive. Sunken eyes, bright and alert, zeroed in on something to focus his urges on. My mouth was dry, and I gaped at him, realizing all at once how small I was.

            Still, with some effort, I pushed Eden behind me. Maybe he’d be like my mom. He wouldn’t want to look bad to company, right?

            As if. I had a feeling Mr. Bridges didn’t care one bit. I clenched the hem of my shirt in my fist, stretching the fabric taut like a rubber band.

            He stopped at the foot of the steps, swaying uncertainly. It seemed like he wasn’t going to hit me. Maybe hurting me was too far, even for him.

            “Eden,” he rasped. “C’mere.” He held out his free hand and beckoned, as if calling a skittish dog. “We aren’t done talking.” Eden continued to cower behind me, hands gripping my arm. Her breathing was quick and sharp, sounding like the girl in a horror movie when the monster’s close.

            I stared up at the monster, my heart smacking against my ribcage. “I’ll tell my Pop,” I said, licking my dried lips, “That you were gonna hit me.”

            “I’m not hitting you,” he snapped, hands shaking.

            I could do this. It was just like nailing Carlyle for porn. “Well, if you try to hit Eden with that, I’ll get in your way. Every time.” Oh God, this would hurt way more than Mom’s hand. “So, it’ll be true.”

            “You little bitch,” he said hoarsely, the word new and raw in its badness. I saw myself through his eyes, a bitch of a girl stained red with sun, standing in front of a creature who was less to him than a dog herself. The setting sun was behind us. We were nothing but shadows and concepts.

            Mr. Bridges took a few steps forward, still trembling all over, then stopped, spitting into the grass. “I’m gonna get a drink,” he muttered, striding away and getting into his truck. It roared to life as he drove away, probably to the bar, maybe to get those four cans of beer from Badgermart himself.

The minute he was gone, the two of us sank to the ground, gasping. Eden wasn’t crying anymore, but I was, fat tears trickling down my face and wetting her shirt.

“Why did you come back?” she asked, once I’d stopped bawling and getting snot all over myself.

“I heard you scream,” I said. I pressed my forehead against her chest, soaked with tears and sweat.

“Let’s go,” she said, so we clasped hands and retreated through the cornfield, drowning in the fragrant green, breath hitching in our throats as we ran. We reached the creek as the sun finally set behind the trees, splashing into the water, dunking each other until our noses were clogged, our hair shiny and heavy, our clothes sodden. We huddled, shivering, in the bubbling water until the stars blinked out above us.

We could not stay out there forever. But we could wait until the dawn.

E.B. Jansky is a grad student at Minnesota State University Mankato. Her writing is inspired by the local stories of her home state of Wisconsin. She is currently working on historical research when not writing.