Kate Folk<\/p>\n
It\u2019s July, and we\u2019re in a small town in Kentucky, shooting the independent cowboy\/zombie film that my boyfriend, Jeff, is funding. Though he\u2019s paying for the whole production, Jeff is content to erect tripods and make beer runs for the crew. The movie is called \u201cBlood and Dirt,\u201d and the script is awful: too ridiculous to be scary, too violent to be funny. Jeff says it\u2019ll come together in post-production.<\/p>\n
Because he made a fortune off a protein powder he invented in college, Jeff now gets to pursue his dream of being an artist. All he ever wanted was to be a \u201ccreative type,\u201d as he calls it, and laments that he\u2019s more of a \u201cscience guy.\u201d He says this almost every day in some context. \u201cI like it, but I\u2019m more of a science guy,\u201d he said yesterday when asked his opinion of a painting hanging in a coffee shop.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been here a week. At night we camp on a dirt field with the rest of the crew. Even at midnight, the temperature stays above ninety. Our bodies are sickening orbs of heat. We don\u2019t touch inside the tent — a cramped, slippery thing, filled with tiny ants.<\/p>\n
The adjacent park is occupied by a Civil War reenactment group. They wear real wool uniforms, suffering for verisimilitude. We suspect that they\u2019re practicing for an upcoming event, since reenacting a single battle can\u2019t take this long. When we ask them questions, they spout platitudes about God and country.<\/p>\n
Last night we ate at Pizza Hut, all twenty of us. Only three people had cash so we split the bill on sixteen cards. We stayed in the parking lot for two hours smoking cigarettes and joints and drinking beer from the gas station. One by one, townspeople came out of their houses and stared.<\/p>\n
Jeff feels self-conscious if I\u2019m around while they\u2019re filming, so I\u2019m alone again today. The temperature hits 100 by eleven a.m. I wander down Main Street. A wave of nausea and I just make it to the diner bathroom before vomiting a gruel of Krispy Kreme and weak coffee. I\u2019m either pregnant or sick from organisms lurking beneath the sneeze guard at the Pizza Hut buffet.<\/p>\n
On my way out, an old man corners me behind a wood partition. His eyes are cloudy, like egg whites that have just started to cook. He breathes on me; his breath smells like apples softening in the sun.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour people pissed on my lawn,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
I edge past him. I feel his runny eyes on me clear to the door.<\/p>\n
Even the sparrows move in slow motion, their Chiclet hearts taxed by heat. I follow a trail of popcorn to the town square. Rusty water spasms from the fountain. I sit on a tree stump and am immediately approached by a small woman. She\u2019s skinny, with bulbous joints, dull red hair and a jaw like a desiccated chicken wing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re all a bunch of grade-A assholes,\u201d she says. \u201cSkipping out on your tab like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tell her I don\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about. I walk to the drug store where the crew buys energy bars and Gatorade and condoms. They say the local girls are almost too willing; no fun in it.<\/p>\n
I linger in the air conditioning and buy a pregnancy test. The girl ringing me up looks at the name on my debit card. Then she looks at me. She chews her gum slowly. She blows a bubble that deflates suddenly, as if pricked. I have to reach over and pry my card from her hand.<\/p>\n
I decide to go to the library. I move as fast as I can without running. The back of my flip flop is stepped on. The shoe comes off and I have to stop and retrieve it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been stalked by a family. A middle-aged man. A plump woman with skin like yogurt with chunks of fruit in it. A teenage girl, blonde with a wide forehead, her eyes red from crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour friend had his way with my girl,\u201d the man says. \u201cShe\u2019s only seventeen.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrug. \u201cIt\u2019s none of my business,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you give him this?\u201d the girl says. She hands me an envelope. \u201cSteve\u201d is written across the front in girly, looping script.<\/p>\n
Steve is a pudgy guy who wears stained t-shirts and scratches his ass on tree trunks. I laugh. \u201cSteve?\u201d I say. \u201cReally?\u201d The girl blushes and runs away.<\/p>\n
Around six we spread a tarp over the hot dirt and eat KFC. Jeff shows me stills from the day\u2019s shoot on his iPhone. The blood looks fake — too red, too thick, like the tomato paste my mom used to slather on meatloaf. \u201cLooks good,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
I tell Jeff about the townspeople, how I don\u2019t feel safe alone in the town all day. He laughs and says I can\u2019t let these backwater hicks intimidate me. I sip gravy from a Styrofoam cup like it\u2019s strong tea.<\/p>\n
I sneak out once Jeff\u2019s asleep and go to the park bathroom to pee on the pregnancy test stick. A dash blurs into being; food-borne organisms after all. I vomit once for good measure, then stand on the concrete bib at the bathroom entrance, looking at the dark, uniform humps of soldiers\u2019 tents, like sleeping elephants waiting trustfully for dawn.<\/p>\n
The crew leaves early the next morning. I stay in the tent. The sun rises and I start to broil. I watch the tiny ants move in diagonals over the nylon membrane.<\/p>\n
Pop, pop, go the guns of the fake Confederacy.<\/p>\n
I step out of the tent, locate my plastic bag of toiletries, and set off for my morning bathroom visit. I ignore the townspeople who have encircled me. When I move, they follow, whining and clutching at the edges of my clothes.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll follow me into the bathroom, but they do. I go into a stall. They sit on the floor, light cigarettes and talk about kids, work, the weather. They could stay there all day. I unbolt the stall door and try to run past but they grab me and pin me to the wall. I start screaming. They touch my face, my hair, stick their fingers in my pockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeave the lady alone,\u201d a voice booms. I feel wool scratch my cheek as his arm coils around my shoulders.<\/p>\n
General Lee takes me to his tent. It\u2019s spacious, the middle held up by poles. There\u2019s a sleeping pallet, a table, a sepia-toned map. He lets me lie on his pallet. He lights his pipe.<\/p>\n
I ask where he\u2019s from.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great state of Virginia,\u201d Lee says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long have you been doing the reenactment thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re asking how long this terrible war has lasted — why, it\u2019s seemed lifetimes already.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m scared to go out there,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself,\u201d Lee says. \u201cYou can stay here the rest of the day if you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hands me a Bible, then sits at his desk and writes letters for several hours.<\/p>\n
At four, Jeff texts me. \u201cI can\u2019t thank you enough,\u201d I tell Lee.<\/p>\n
Lee stands and bows. \u201cI tremble for my country when I hear of confidence expressed in me,\u201d he says. \u201cI know too well my weakness, that our only hope is in God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, whatever,\u201d I say. \u201cThanks again.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t tell Jeff about General Lee. They\u2019re doing the sluicing scene tomorrow, so everyone\u2019s excited.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod, it\u2019s so great to be around these creative types,\u201d Jeff says. \u201cI finally feel like I\u2019m really living, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
The men are burning through the town\u2019s teenage girl population. The two women on the crew are having affairs with local married men. Angry citizens ring the dirt field the next morning. They hiss and spit at us as we break their ranks.<\/p>\n
\u201cFucking rednecks,\u201d Jeff says, and spits back.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t bother going into town. I walk straight to General Lee\u2019s tent.<\/p>\n
His beard is real. I pull it gently, and he laughs.<\/p>\n
His trousers are tricky to undo. No zippers, and the buttons are tight. We do it missionary, silent and with most of our clothes on.<\/p>\n
After, I ask if he\u2019s married.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
I stay in the tent while General Lee goes to make a speech to his troops. The gun noises are so familiar, I don\u2019t notice when the real gun goes off. But then, sirens. I walk with the soldiers toward the field.<\/p>\n
The sheriff has a man handcuffed face-down on the ground. Jeff stands twenty feet away. His mouth hangs open as he stares at the bloodstained dirt. Real blood, so dark it\u2019s almost black. It must be hitting him now, how fake the movie blood looks.<\/p>\n
General Lee stands next to me. \u201cWhat a cruel thing war is, to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The reenactment packs up and leaves the next morning. The park is littered with pipe filters and spent packets of jock itch powder.<\/p>\n
Steve\u2019s left lung was punctured, but he\u2019ll live. Filming lasts another two days. Now Jeff brings me along on the shoots. I sit in the dirt under a makeshift cardboard awning and imagine that I\u2019m pregnant. Jeff will raise General Lee\u2019s son as his own. He will never know. I will never trawl Civil War reenactment groups on Facebook, only to discover that my son\u2019s father manages a Budget Rent a Car and listens to Creed.<\/p>\n
Jeff hands me a twenty and tells me to buy a 30 pack of Miller High Life at the gas station half a mile down the highway. I nod and start walking, because life is a series of small battles, only some of which are worth fighting.<\/p>\n
KATE FOLK<\/strong> is from Iowa and now lives in San Francisco where she works as an English teacher. Her fiction has been published in PANK<\/em>, Necessary Fiction<\/em>, Neon<\/em>, and Bartleby Snopes<\/em>, among other journals. She enjoys the company of cats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kate Folk It\u2019s July, and we\u2019re in a small town in Kentucky, shooting the independent cowboy\/zombie film that my boyfriend, Jeff, is funding. Though he\u2019s paying for the whole production, Jeff is content to erect tripods and make beer runs … Continue reading