Free Another Perfect Catastrophe by Brad Barkley Page A

took Sugar out to a work site for copper scraps, and one of the guys on the crew stole his friend’s bag of Cheetos, just goofing around, and nailed it to the top of a frame post. Then all afternoon we sat and watched these two crows swoop down and land, pluck a Cheeto from the bag, and fly off with it. One by one, until it was empty.”
    She smiles. “That’s pretty cool.”
    â€œThe point is, Cheetos and crows are just things. But you can love them for themselves. What’s wrong with just loving the thinginess of things? They don’t have to mean.”
    She leans down, kisses my upper lip. “Like those tractors on the golf course.”
    I nod. What I don’t say is that it was Sugar who first showed me the tractors, Sugar who made a dozen guys stop a day’s work and sit in the shade to watch crows. Sugar is all mystery, and there is, I think, no solving him.
    She ties her hair back. “Listen, pick me up at midnight, okay?”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd bring Sugar with you. We’ll go ride, just like old times. It’ll make us all feel better. We’ll see some thingy things.”
    â€œYou’re too young to have any old times,” I say. She gives me a look. “Okay, Sugar and me, things, midnight.”
the old times
    Before we leave that night, I find Sugar in the backyard, smoking cigarettes in the cold, hammering nails.
    â€œWhere’s the torch?” I ask him.
    â€œNot tonight. Other plans. A wedding present, actually.”
    He is pounding two-by-sixes together into a big square. He tacks angle irons into the corners.
    â€œWedding present for who?” I say.
    â€œFor you, Reed, who else?”
    â€œSo I’m getting married? This is news to me, buddy.”
    He motions me to help, and we place the square of boards on an even spot in the backyard. Sugar tosses a plastic tarp across it. “I have eyes and ears both, Reed. Don’t tell me you aren’t getting married. And you should, right?”
    â€œThat’s my understanding, though I may have missed something.” He hands me a staple gun and we walk around opposite sides of the wood frame, tacking the blue tarp to the boards. Above us the moon is thin and cold, the sky metal black. I feel sweat freeze in the hairs of my beard.
    â€œCome on with me,” I tell him. “Lyndsey wants to go for a ride. Like old times, she says.”
    He grins. “She isn’t old enough—”
    â€œI know, I told her that.”
    Ernest is watching us, his head lolling out of the doghouse Sugar made him from a yellow fertilizer barrel. Sugar finishes stapling and lays a bead of caulk over the staples.
    â€œIt’s a little nippy for caulking,” I tell him. He shrugs, says it will set eventually. He rubs his logging leg, which always bothers him more in the cold. We are quiet a minute.
    â€œYou ever think about it?” I glance down at his hand rubbing the knot on the side of his leg. “I mean, remember it?”
    He peels caulk off his fingers. “I got three roommates, Reed. You, Lyndsey, and that memory. Every morning I wake up, it’s there at the breakfast table eating Cap’n Crunch.”
    I nod, take a breath. “I didn’t do everything I could have then. You know? I didn’t…act.” We stand together, looking at the tarp-covered box in the middle of the yard.
    â€œWhat was there to do, a thing like that?” He shrugs. “A long time ago, Reed. I never held you to any blame. Things go the way they go.”
    The tarp ripples in a cold wind. Sugar picks up his welding helmet and puts it on, tips the mask up.
    â€œYou gonna tell me what this is?” I ask him. “Another Perfect Catastrophe?”
    He smiles. “For a wedding present? Not a chance.” While I am warming the Pinto, I see him with the garden hose pointed at this thing he has just built, as if he is washing off the plastic tarp, washing