The Burts

BURT

Burt’s girl called. Burt’s girl said her whole knife set was dull. Burt had been clipping his fingernails over the basement bath sink, taking a break from separating paper clips from rubber bands. When Burt’s girl called Burt was clipping a ring finger. A clip of keratin plinked off the mirror and dropped short of the sink. Ring, “Burt here” Burt here “My knives can’t cut worth shit, baby, can’t cut cucumber, tomatoes, any of it” shit baby any of it “Cucumber?” Cucumber? “For the salad, Burt” for cucumber salad Burt. “It’s that knife with the mahogany handle handle, that knife is dull, you’ve tried them all?” tried them all? Burt’s baritone all’s tickled the baby toes on his sweetiepie’s feet. “I love it when you say all Burt.” “This echo’s driving me crazy, baby, we both need to pipe down,” Burt said. “All but the bird’s beak,” she said, “but I ain’t peeling kiwi or popping jalapeño seeds, I want to cut cucumber, tomatoes, big things that aren’t that hard” aren’t that hard. Burt took the strawbroom propped in the corner of the bathroom and punched at the ceiling with its round woody end. Burt’s such a poker-joker. His lovergirl bull-eyed her dirty garden toes on the kitchen floor and stomped. She fixed the ballpoint pen holding up her weekend bun. Burt flipped his hand palm-side up and pressed on the counter, swiveling his forearm bones this way and that, underarm flashing like a trout in a cut of sun. He looked at his self in the mirror doing what he himself was doing, swiveling, talking. “Try the santoku in the washer, that’s a nice knife. Cucumber salad?” Burt heard the washer door draw open, plates adomino metal aclink. “Who said cucumber salad?” Water rushed through the basement pipes. Burt heard the unsealing smacking of the fridge door. A great green bell pepper fished out, fridge door whoosh. Spurt, spurt. Sweetcheeks cut off the pepper’s head, tugged out its core. Just so many creamy white seeds. Twirling his piggly-wiggly phone cord around a finger in the bathroom mirror, his sweetheart tuk tuk with the knife, Burt leaned in. Burt got up on himself, close. He cocked his head. He flared his nostrils. His eyeballs and eyelids calibrating to the upturned sockets.

BURT

The fence is shaky. You can shake the fence when a fence shouldn’t shake. It’s old. It’s wood. Untreated wood. Nails won’t hold. Wood is old. Nails are rust. Nails are nuts. Nails aren’t nails. Hammer this nail. Hammer that nail. Nail this nail to nail that nail out. A fence does little to keep one at bay, as you will learn someday on an abandoned lot throwing rocks. As opposed to, say, cautioning a passing pedestrian that he or she is out here, the thing could alert the world that something — anything — is in fact in there. For instance, if it is you who happen to pass by your own fence it should remind you that you are in there waiting to be had. Disturbing, that trespassing sign, the one where you’re looking down the barrel of a gun: BEWARE OF OWNER.

The term territory, I know, sounds so clinical, but property has taxes (and taxes suck), and the word land is, frankly, big — and bland.

Look: with a fence you get two sides. This, here, is the house’s back and, here, is the house’s front. Remember: your home deserves to look at the back of its head, too, when it gets a haircut. Here is where you have your garden (close the gate please), and here is where you knock on wood.

No. Hold the hammer like this. Then, strike the nail like this. One strike, two strikes, three. Then, inspect your striking. How flush is the nail’s head to the wood in question?

BURT

Smoochiecoo fell from the house. She had “to jet.” In the basement, Burt was gazing at the insides of an old TV controller, its rudimentary microchips. Burt heard the car click in gear. He was organizing his workbench, overturning coffee cans of nuts and screws, reviewing expiration dates on paints and glues. Burt got thirsty. He wanted water. He climbed his heart’s long stairs, which needs re-screwed. The basement railing is loose. A crow cawed. A distant kid went “Nonsense.”

Burt bopped shut the silverware drawer with his hip. He fluffed the pillows on the couch in the living room and picked a few chips of potpourri up off the rug and put them back in their tin. He got the mail and tucked it between the toaster oven and phone. He put the salt and pepper — away? — in the pantry. The middle hingepin of the pantry door has been gone since the beginning, the door cockeyed, the hingepin popped out, Burt’s at it again, standing in the kitchen staring at that hinge, getting right up on it, squinting at his handmade nail, Why it won’t hold? He spent a summer day in the basement, fumbling with a smallish slating nail (slate roofs are fireproof), filing it down, oiling it up, climbing, his hand shaky because he was hungry, sweaty because he was hot, his forehead flush to the wall, staring down the fish-eye size hole, sliding his handcrafted nail down and down, surprise, relief, pride, a perfect fit, and testing the new hingepin, the handcrafted hingepin, his handcrafted hingepin, by flapping the door, shutting the door, opening the door, evaluating the door’s seal and hinge threshold, sliding his cupped hand up and down the pantry door’s edge, not long, the length of his torso or so, shutting, opening, Skippy, Tapatío, shutting, opening, Prego, Twix, and then fetching steel wool and rubbing it up, his handcrafted hingepin, before his wife got home, Burt so pleased, rubbing up the top and bottom hinge, too, as they would match and gleam, gleam and good.