The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

The next day was more of the same.

The day after that was more of the same.

The day after the day after that was more of more of the same.

Peter quit meeting me in the night.

I answered Roger’s call—though I hung up before we spoke to each other.

what the men needed to know

There is no reason not to be honest.

Actions are only shameful when you keep them a secret.

Most likely no one will care if you tell anyone.

There is nothing to be embarrassed about.

There is no reason to be loyal to an employer—or leader.

Leaders demand loyalty to exploit the people beneath them.

Never trust anyone who demands loyalty from you.

Love is far more important than loyalty.

twenty-five

AS THE MEN set the foundation for the ninth shed…

as Peter fertilized his zucchini…

as Dyson swam laps in the pond…

I hammered a nail through a wall in the barn. I plugged a screwdriver into the hole and rotated the handle until the hole widened to the size of a dime. A scrunch of brown cloth fit in the crevice to prevent anyone from noticing.

Dyson kept a bottle of bourbon in the living room trunk. I needed three shots to work up the courage to spy on the lecture. At the clearing, my head hot with liquor, I expected to hear revelry spewing forth from the barn. Instead, there was silence. Rain pattered on the leaves, the roof of the barn, the sheds, wetting my hair and my arms. On the far side of the barn, the brown scrap of cloth I’d used to plug the hole lay in the grass. I pressed my eye to the hole.

IV.

reconciliation

THE BENCHES WERE arranged into a square stage at the center of the barn. Dyson, Peter, and Gerry stretched inside the square, hopping on their toes, jabbing as if preparing to box. “Fight Club on a farm,” I scoffed, and nearly slunk back to the cabin. The rain had intensified, though, into fat, slappy, flu-giving rain, and I pressed my body closer to the wall, reluctant to flee the dry strip of grass beneath the lip of the roof.

The three men inside the square made exaggerated circles with their mouths. They silently read what appeared to be scripts. Dyson clapped. The men on the surrounding benches straightened their backs. Dyson said, “Today, I will play the part of Randy. Gerry will play Randy’s wife, Susan. Peter will play Randy’s daughter, Bridgett. Other parts will be played by… your imagination.”

The men chuckled nervously.

Randy sat on a chair propped on top of the table.

“You ready, Randy?” asked Dyson.

Randy nodded.

“Showtime!” said Dyson.

Randy cleared his throat before speaking:

“For a long time,” he began, “people saw my life as a fairy tale. I grew up poor and unloved to a pair of alcoholics outside of Norman, Oklahoma. I was the younger of two, but my brother died at eleven. He swallowed something under the sink. Looking to get loaded, I think. There was nothing the doctors could do. I was eight, the lesser-liked child, dimly lit in the shadow of his potential—he was destined to be a major-league pitcher.

“My parents didn’t blame me for his death. They didn’t wish me dead instead. But they couldn’t pretend my brother wasn’t their favorite, and seeing me made them feel guilty, so we avoided each other however we could. I’d follow complicated routes through the house—slipping into bathrooms as they came down the hall, hiding in the pantry if they entered the kitchen—until I became more roommate than child, especially after turning fourteen, when I began paying rent for my room.”

Dyson performed what Randy described. He inhabited Randy with a level of attention he’d never shown in his movies. He wept over Randy’s dead brother, crept through imaginary hallways, mimed handing cash to enormous parents, giggled proudly when he received his high school diploma. The performance mesmerized me.

In his early twenties, a car accident had left Randy with a clawing pain in his neck and an OxyContin addiction. Five years revolving through rehab clinics, he finally kicked the habit after meeting the woman who would become his wife: Susan Cleary. Gerry stepped into the square and took Dyson’s hands. Susan was the humblest and most patient woman Randy’d ever met. She was the first person he’d ever loved without also fearing. He got clean for her, learned to cook for her, woke up early for her, enrolled in college for her, graduated for her. They moved to Lubbock to live near her family. “It was like being married to a TV show,” he said. Her family held weekly barbecues in the summer; sisters went shopping together; cousins called to gossip; aunts offered prayers during difficult times. Randy had never lived among people who loved unconditionally. He kept expecting her family to give him the boot (Dyson mimed getting kicked in the butt). They welcomed him deeper into their lives. He brewed beer with her cousins. Her brothers brought him on fishing excursions. His father-in-law told him he loved him. He and Susan decided to start their own family.

“Some people are meant to be happy,” he said. “Then there are people like me.”

Susan gave birth to Bridgett Elizabeth Dent. He lavished his daughter with gifts—clothes and dolls and candy and video games and stuffed animals and butterfly stickers—loved taking her places without telling their mother: to the park when she hadn’t finished her homework, for ice cream when she was grounded. More than anything else, though, Randy loved taking Bridgett to movies. One Friday a month, he’d pull her from school early to see a matinee in an empty theater on the outskirts of town. They’d gorge themselves on a bucket of butter-wet popcorn and a barrel of soda—Dr Pepper mixed with Sprite, her favorite—while trading contraband Peanut M&Ms and Sno-Caps and gummy worms they’d bought at a pharmacy. Most important: they never told Susan that they went. It