Page 12 of Butter You Up
“What do you use for your carbon?”
I show him the coco fiber. “Do you compost on the farm?”
“Of course,” Alex says, turning the package over and reading the back. “But first, we have a digester in the back which vents off biogas, and then we turn the digested waste into compost.”
“What doyouuse for your carbon?” I can’t believe I’m having a conversation with my new boss about composting and poop.
“Mostly bedding, hay, or spoiled feed. In the summer, we can supplement with fresh corn stalks from local farms. We have a program for our neighbors who don’t treat their lawns to bring their raked leaves to us in the fall. If we have to supplement, we use biochar.”
“What’s a digester?” I ask, circling back.
Alex looks up at me. “I’ll show you next week, if you want.”
“Sure,” I say, hands on my hips. When Alex stands, I nudge the drawer closed with one foot and turn. “This is my office-slash-dining-room-slash-bedroom.” On each side of the van are two seats against the wall. The one on the right side has a pivoting table to turn it into my office. Past that, up against Vaniel’s back doors, is my bed. It’s really more like a daybed, a single (custom) mattress with walls enclosing three sides. “I have a board I can place here”—I indicate the space between the two seats—“and then a pillow and foam topper that I can spread out to make a bigger bed for two. But I rarely do that since it’s just me. And then I don’t have to worry about putting it away every time I want to sit down at my table.”
“An office? For work?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s mostly for when I video chat with my dad or with friends. Like, I have a book club that meets once a month, so I sit here to talk to them.”
Alex puts his large palm on the tabletop and bends down to look at the bottom side. He moves the table around experimentally. It’s a special table that can fold down but also can swing around three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. When Alex discovers this, he crouches to look at the mechanism.
I fold my arms on my chest and watch him, one corner of my mouth curled up in a smile. He’s curious, and I like that about him. During my time on the road, I’ve found that curious people are the most interesting.
When he finishes inspecting the table, he stands and puts a hand on my bed and presses, like he’s testing the mattress. I half expect him to lie down?—
“Oh my god,” I say, laughing at the image in my head.
“What?”
“Lie down.”
“What?”
“Lie down on the bed. I wanna see if you fit.”
Alex grumbles, but he obliges me anyway, and I think I catch the edges of a smile as he turns to put his head on my pillow. He lays down, tucking his feet flat on the mattress, knees pointed to the ceiling.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say you aren’t cut out for van life.”
“No shit,” he deadpans. He moves, but I put out a hand.
“Wait, wait. Let me take a picture, for Ethel.”
“Gran doesn’t want a picture of me in this bed.” His voice is slightly bitter, but he doesn’t move.
I have noticed the tension around the Bedd family. Alex doesn’t engage very much with Ethel, and before today I would have called Alex stiff, but he looks even more tightly wound and uncomfortable when talking to his brother.
I snap the picture and pocket my phone again. I’ll show it to Ethel in the morning.
“Who’s the man?” Alex asks, breaking me out of my thoughts about the Bedd family. He’s looking at the ceiling, where I have some photos taped up. Most of them are various places I’ve been; with my best friends from home canoeing Horseshoe Lake one summer, Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, Four Corners, Mystic Pizza, the furthest east I went, Kittery in Maine.
Alex is talking about the one picture I have with a man in it—my dad. The picture is old, taken a few years ago at a hockey rink where we watched a curling match together. It was before my dad’s last major PTSD episode, before we had to adjust his meds. He’s doing a lot better now, in some respects. I almost didn’t leave on this trip, but Dad kept pushing me to go. Back then, he was still doing stuff with the Wounded Warrior Project. Now, though, he hasn’t talked about it in a while, and I’m worried that he’s not getting out of the trailer much.
I don’t know how much of this is real or how much of it is in my head. I’m worried about my dad, but is it because I’m not there to take care of him?
Which is why I need to complete this trip. If I drive straight home from here, it’s about forty hours, but I won’t hit all the states, and I definitely won’t fulfill my dad’s checklist for each one—eat a meal, visit a tourist attraction, and use the restroom.
I counted Four Corners as a tourist attraction for both Colorado and Utah, ate a snack on both sides, and chugged enough water to make me have to pee—twice.
