American rust by Philipp Meyer Page B

thinking he wasn't any better than what he came from.
    Dark days. Things had not been that bad for a long time now. The trailer had gone into foreclosure but gradually people started picketing the sheriff's sales, deer rifles in the trunks of their cars, and when one of the bankers had come down to insist the sheriff take action, they had turned his Cadillac over and burned it. To keep people from getting shot, the judge put a moratorium on the foreclosures. Eventually it had become the law. So they had managed to keep the trailer, living on what they could get from the food bank and the deer Virgil poached. That was why she couldn't stand the taste of venison. For two years it had been all they ate.
    Virgil had done two years of job training to learn robotics but that hadn't gone anywhere—those jobs had never materialized. Then he'd done the stint at the barge- making plant but that had closed as well— most ships and barges were now made in Korea, where the government owned all the industry.
    Keeping that trailer might have been a curse, she thought. At least we might have moved somewhere else and started over. But it was hard to make those calculations, figure out where to go. Men went to Houston, New Jersey, Virginia, lived six to a motel room and sent money back to their families, but plenty of them came back in the end. It was better to be poor and broke around your own people.
    A hundred fifty thousand unemployed men didn't leave room for the good life but neither she nor Virgil had relatives anyplace else. You needed money if you wanted to move; you had to move if you wanted money. The mill had stayed closed, and then it had stayed closed longer, and eventually most of it was demolished. She remembered when everyone came out to watch the two- hundred- foot- tall and almost brand- new blast furnaces called Dorothy Five and Six get toppled with dynamite charges. It was not long after that that terrorists blew up the World Trade Center. It wasn't logical, but the one reminded her of the other. There were certain places and certain people who mattered a lot more than others. Not a single dime was being spent to rebuild Buell.
    At the end of the dirt road she turned in next to their trailer. Virgil had promised he'd be home by two but it was nearly four. He was breaking his promises already. You knew this would happen, she thought. She called the women's shelter in Charleroi to tell them she wouldn't be coming in to volunteer the rest of the week, had a pang of sadness, it was her lifeline to the rest of the world, all sorts of people worked there, a teacher, a pair of lawyers from Pittsburgh, a financial adviser, all women, they would sit around listening to the public radio stations you couldn't get in Buell. That was what she planned to do, if she could ever afford to finish her degree—become a counselor.
    Why not, she thought. Even if it takes six or seven years, you could just start now. She went into the kitchen to prepare her heating pad, put the pad into the microwave oven and turned it on. While she waited, she took a pile of newspaper and started a fire in the woodstove, piled kindling on top and one thicker piece. The timer beeped and she went and got her towel from the microwave, scorching hot, she let it cool for half a minute and sat down on the couch and wrapped her hands. It burned at first but a few seconds later the relief came. She leaned her head back and focused on the feeling. It was almost like sex. She felt good all over. She felt herself get sleepy. She knew if she drifted off she would wake up with the towel cold and damp but it was worth it. She thought about Buddy Harris, a strange and guilty thought now that Virgil was back. The K-Y stayed under the bed with Bud, they'd been on and off for years, two different times she had nearly left Virgil for Bud Harris, but in the end she hadn't been able to do it, he was too awkward and quiet and she hadn't been able to imagine a life with him. She