His mother calls from New York and she says she misses him and does he want to come see her, and he says yes and says when, and she says soon. She asks how he is and he says okay; she says she loves him and he says, —I love you too, and he says, —I miss you, and starts to cry, and she does too, and he begs her to come back but she says she cannot, and now she is crying harder, and she says but soon he will come see her in New York, soon he will.
His father digs in the ground and drags pieces of wood from his rusted pickup truck and saws them and hammers them and curses and spits brown juice from his lips and wipes his lips with the back of his hand and hammers more, curses more, Lee there with him in little Levi’s rolled up at the cuffs and a boy’s flannel shirt, with his own wood to saw, with his own dull children’s saw from his own children’s tool kit, toy gun stuffed down the side of the Levi’s to be like his father who carries the special gun in a holster on his hip as he works. They are building a garden. —So we can provide our own vegetables and things, his father says. There is a high mound of mulch packed in bags from the store in town. They are building fences for animals, little houses for them to live in. They are going to have pets: pigs, cows, chickens. —So we can provide our own meat.
Lee cries when he says that. His father says, —What the hell you crying about?
—I don’t want to kill them.
—Relax, we don’t even have them yet, we have to build their barn and fences first. Anyway, where do you think meat comes from? Meat is animals that someone has to kill, Lee. It’s nature. It’s life.
—Then I don’t like life.
—Life doesn’t care if you like it or not. Life is life. Anyway, it’s better we do it ourselves than some corporation doing it for us. You think the Founding Fathers went to Safeway? Hell no. They provided for themselves. They were men of the field and the plow. They were peaceful and happy. Much happier than people are now. They were happy because they were self-determining. Self-determination is the name of the game.
—What game?
—I don’t know what game, it’s a figure of speech, Lee. Though you could say it’s all one big goddamn game. A rigged one.
—Do you think children are in the new house?
—What new house?
—The one they’re building.
—Where are they building houses at?
—Down the mountain. I see it from my window. Lee has been watching for his mother from his bedroom window all summer, and there is a spot farther down the mountain where one by one the canopies of the trees went away and were replaced with the gray roof of a brand-new house, the first one to have ever been built anywhere near their mountain.
His father stops digging and looks at him like Lee has done something bad. —Shit, he finally says, shaking the sweat from his head like a wet dog and stomping the edge of his shovel into the earth with his steel-toed boot. —Didn’t know that land was for sale or I would’ve bought it just to keep anyone from building on it.
—Shit, Lee says.
—Watch your mouth. How close by is this house?
Lee shrugs. And then he says, —So do you?
—Do I what?
—Think there are children there?
—Well, yessir, I reckon children probably do live there. You’ll want to play with them sometime, I guess, huh? He says it with his face pained, like he’s getting a shot. Lee nods. —Okay, well, once we find out what kind of people they are and what they’re all about, maybe I’ll take you down there.
He keeps working, sweat steaming his glasses, which are secured to his face by a piece of thin rope he cut off the curtains inside and proudly rigged to go around the back of his head and tie to both ends of the glasses.
Lee asks him, —Where do you come from?
—Where do you think I come from?
—New York.
—Is that what she told you? No, New York is where I was born, but that’s not where I come from. Do you understand the difference? Just because you’re born somewhere doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean that’s who you are. You choose where you come from. No one else gets to decide that for you.
Lee stares at the wood he has sawed, the bright fresh teeth marks he has made in it, the thin curls of wood that have been shaved away and gather at the edge of the teeth marks. —Then where are you from?
His father dumps a shovelful of rocky dirt atop the mound he has made to the side of the garden site and wipes his face with the sleeve of his plaid shirt, drinks from one of the beers he has brought out in a blue plastic cooler. —The West. The frontier. That’s where I’m from. And that’s where I’ve been. And that’s where I am. And that’s where I’ll be. He shakes the empty can, drops it in the cooler, opens a fresh one before he has even finished swallowing. —You know what? We should build ourselves a little brewery up here too. Provide our own beer. George Washington used to do that, you know. All those guys did. He becomes excited, animated. He is almost yelling now. —Yessir, once we get all this up and running, we’ll have everything we’ll ever need, Lee. We’ll never leave. We’ll never have to!
His mother calls from New York and he is working on the farm and does not want to talk, but when she calls from New York he has to talk to her, so he goes inside and holds the phone up to his ear and listens to her talk and says yes when she asks if he is okay and if he misses her and if he loves her. She asks if he loves her even if she’s not an actress anymore, and he does not understand so he says yes, and she says, —Will you always love me no matter what? and he says yes and she says, —No matter what? and he says, —No matter what. And she says, —The attorneys have been talking and they say you can come visit me in New York any time, even next week, what do you think, do you want to come next week? And he says, —But I don’t want to, and she says, —You’ll love New York, I’ll take you to the Central Park Zoo and see the animals, and he says, —We’re building a farm, we’ll have our own animals. And when it is time to be done talking to her on the phone he can hear her start to cry as she hangs up.
They are working again on the farm and on the house for the animals. The mulch is laid, bright brown and sweet-smelling. A good deal of the fence is up, the barns are coming along. Lee says, —Can you take me to the new house now?
—Help me with this some.
—You promised.
—All right, don’t cry about it.
—You’ll take me?
—I can’t take you, son, I’m working. Violet will take you.
Lee goes inside, finds her standing at the window watching his father and shaking her head.
—Will you take me to the new house to see if any children live there?
—Of course, I’ll get the car keys.
—Can I go by myself?
—I don’t know, can you?
—May I go by myself?
—No, you absolutely may not. It’s too far.
—No, it ain’t, his father says from behind them. He has come inside to refill his cooler and he stands in the doorway. He is tanned and cheerful and sweating, beer can in one hand, the other in his back pocket, gun on his hip. —At least let the boy’s balls drop first before you go loppin’ ’em off, Violet.
—You said to me