Nebraska, or the Implications of a Gift of Duran Duran: Chapter 5

Nebraska, or the Implications of a Gift
of Duran Duran: Chapter 5
by Dileep Rao

That Sunday, Ajay sat eating dinner with his family, scooping rice into his mouth with his right hand, a book on Sandy Koufax in his left.

"Not at the table, Ajay."

He glared at his father and pitched the book end over end so that it would land on the couch. This, he knew, would further infuriate his father and it did so perfectly. Harish bit his lip, his usual demonstration of rage. His slight buck teeth gripped his dark brown lip. His mother turned to Harish. She opened her mouth, the defuser going to work.

At that moment, the doorbell rang. Harish looked at his wife as if this silencing of her placations was his minor triumph. He licked his hand.

"Coming."

He trumped off to the door, opened it and stood in the cracked doorway. There he exchanged words with another man, their voices deep and inaudible. Ajay looked at his mother, hoping to form an alliance against his father’s still hot and soon returning anger. She looked away, never one to be so easily drawn into an Archduke Ferdinand situation.

His father shut the door and returned. His face was changed. He dropped something on the dining room table and didn’t look up. He ate his yogurt mixed with rice. Ajay looked at the fifteen inch square he had dropped there, Rio staring back at him, his own handwritten note woefully still attached.

His father ate on, then stopped, tracing a line in the last bit of yogurt left on his plate.

"Did you give this to a girl?"

He asked the question as he asked all questions, like a band-aid that needed removal in one drastic pull. Ajay shrugged, the heat filling his head so fast he thought he might explode in flame. He reached for the record. His father snatched it away and dropped it in the garbage.

"Why do you cheapen yourself like that?"

Ajay shrugged, but it was already starting to melt through his eyelids. His soft palate ached as he held the last shred of his dignity in.

"May I be excused?", he warbled.

"No—" His father began to raise his voice when his mother slipped in.

"Yes."

He dashed from the table, grabbing his baseball cap and glove from their stand beside the stair. The storm door did its usual double slam as he evaporated into the evening. Harish stared at his wife, a mixture of betrayal and guilt crossing his face.

Harish then dropped his plate into the sink, went upstairs and used the bathroom. He went into his room, decided on a cool shower and took one. He read part of a Popular Mechanics then descended to deal with his wife. She sat in the kitchen holding the record.

"Okay, I’ll call him in and talk to him."

Harish went out the front door and went toward the single poplar. The night was silent, no sound of the ball and the tire. The front yard was empty. His anger began to expand, just trailing the nebula of his worry when the phone rang. Twice. His wife answered.

_________________

As Ajay pounced out the door, he had run only to escape the heat and anger that were swelling in the impotent manner in which they can only strike the young. He cut across the asphalt of Dewhurst Lane and, without thinking, entered the Ross farm, something he had only done twice before in his entire life.

The wheat was as high as his ribs, he raced through it, enduring its cuts against his arms and chin, an ice breaker in a tawny arctic. The evening was spread in purple against the horizon, an opiate, a bruise, the darkness of sleep. He pushed against the grain and suddenly fell forward near the farm itself, closer to its barns and giant silos.

He walked toward the silo and suddenly looked into his hands, finding the glove and ball there. He walked under a single light and found the silo door open. He walked in, like a thief in a storm.

Inside, he found the control room, a crude area with switches and dials, large red and green plunger buttons. He saw one of the buttons depressed in the ‘Up’ position and then wandered into the silo itself.

The grain was held up high in the elevator’s chamber. He stared up at the dark circle, hardly discernible from the inky darkness that coated everything inside here. He thought briefly of the dark record that now lay in the kitchen trash and how, at some proper height, it would match the size of the giant elevator in his eye line. He smiled.

He looked back across the space and saw the control room through the open door. The control switches were a hundred feet from there. Then, sealing some thought into his mind, he turned and threw the ball. It struck the button dead center. A brief horn sounded and the silo filled with six thousand pounds of wheat in two seconds.

Dileep can be reached at dileep@babblog.com.