Free A Moveable Famine by John Skoyles Page B

to forget everything, to repeat yourself fruitlessly in the face of beauty. And now that beauty was nudging me as we walked out of a lecture hall.
    Ridge had told me that Kim had recently won a hundred dollars at The Dugout’s Amateur Striptease Night.
    “Congratulations on the prize,” I said.
    “I knew I’d win if I just flashed my beaver at the jukebox a few times,” she said.
    “Want to get a beer?”
    Two weeks later, we decided to move in together, and interviewed for an apartment over a garage owned by an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Yoder. Pretending we were married, we sat in their living room with Mr. Yoder in his honest overalls, and Mrs. Yoder, who sewed a quilt draped across her lap. As I looked at Kim, wearing her shortest skirt yet, I felt less married by the minute. After half an hour of conversation, homemade donuts and buttermilk, they let us have the apartment. Mrs. Yoder said a lot of students had been interested, but she preferred a man and wife.
    Mr. Yoder handed me the keys and said, “We’ve been married fifty years. I still remember the day. It was raining. They say that when it rains on your wedding day, you’ll have good luck. And we had good luck.” He paused for a moment and added, “And we had bad luck too.”
    Kim and I were happy in our little place. Our desks in front of a picture window overlooked the gravel driveway. Because I kept a photo of Neruda’s studio on the Pacific taped to the wall, Ridge started calling me, “the poor man’s Neruda,” and confirmed the wisdom of my move with Kim. “You got the best deal in town,” he said, letting me know he had gone out with her too. To pay the higher rent and the upkeep of Kim’s aged car, I took a job as lunchtime supervisor at Iowa City High School, patrolling the halls with the retired county sheriff who wore a greasy double-breasted blue raincoat. We pushed our way through the crowd, stopping kids from hurling clots of wet toilet paper or aiming jelly donuts at each other. I cornered a boy who rode a unicycle down the main hall, but he simply spun around me and zipped to the other end, as I plodded behind him amid laughter. Lacking all authority, I realized it was probably best I was not given charge of a freshman class.
    At the end of the two-hour shift, I retrieved my jacket from the faculty room, spending a few minutes with the sheriff who was always there first, sweating heavily into his wilted coat. He said he couldn’t work weekends anymore and I took his place as fire marshal, standing at the rear exit of the auditorium and watching Our Town and The Music Man. I was glad for the ten dollars a night because Kim had been fired from several jobs. At the Lark Supper Club, she clanged a tray of corn chowder into the temple of Mr. Lark himself as he leaned back in his chair. She worked as a nurse’s aide at the university hospital, but one night at dinner she told me she had forgotten to remove a rectal thermometer from a toddler.
    McPeak brought Stavrula to The Deadwood for her birthday, joining Ridge and me in a booth. After a pitcher of beer, he took out a small wooden crate, and from a bed of straw, lifted a lifelike yellow canary. He placed it on the table, touching its breast so the head bobbed as it trilled sweet notes that soared and dipped. We marveled at this strange mechanical creation. Stavrula kissed him and kissed him. McPeak pressed it again and we listened again to its beautiful tune.
    “It’s an American Singer. The shape, the feathers, it’s exact in every way,” he said. “An artist in Moline does one a month.”
    Loudmouth Trotta left his barstool and seemed captivated by the bird, the first time he showed any quality besides scorn and vulgarity. “That’s a great song,” he said.
    “I’m calling it Maria, after Maria Callas,” Stavrula said.
    “Only the males sing,” I said. “You need a male name.”
    “Oh, come on,” Ridge said. “It’s not real. What’s the