And you get angry like this. You feel the whole sweltering earth humming shame beneath your
feet.
He had smashed the mirrors in his two-story farm house. Boarded the windows. Broken
the dishware. His wife had suffered a breakdown, and now his neighbors and the community as
a whole treated him as an outcast. He was living now in a low green tent in the shade of a
sycamore, next to the porch, struggling at night to keep the wind-blown canvas from caving.
McCole had once told him that a low green tent was a metaphor for a coffin, but when Forbes
heard this, he hit him with a clod of dirt.
The sunlight was so bright this September afternoon that he hadn’t seen from behind
the tall cottonwoods in the distance McCole, his wealthiest of neighbors, approaching.
Suddenly his massive face and body blotted out the sun. Forbes blinked up at him, feeling
naked in the surprising coolness of his shadow.
McCole pointed at him, scrutinizing him and his sunstraw eyes, and said in a pitying
tone, “Forbes. Those look like my suspenders. Are you wearing my old suspenders? The ones I
threw out last sum mer?”
“I was out of belts.” He rolled his tongue against his cheek, weak and breathless in the
sweltering heat. He was aware of how his own ribs bulged through his work shirt, splintering
out from his spine like crab legs. His faded shirt reeked, stinking underneath his oil-stained
shredded bib overalls, and his feet were so callous and tan that neighbors like McCole had a
hard time distinguishing them from the soil.
McCole snorted. “You can have ‘em.” He set a thermos at his hip. “I brought you some
ice w ater. You look like you need a tub of ice to cool you off. You look a little flushed.” He
squinted at Forbes’ house shimmering in the distance, the large blots of paint chipped away
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