DECEMBER 2009

 ABOUT   ARCHIVES   AWARDS   LINKS   SUBMIT   HOME

Drifting in Rapid City, SD
By Matthew J. Goering, Oct 03, 2009

It was cold and dark out, and there was a deep cover of snow on everything, crusting over from the bitter wind blowing in off the hills. Sam sat in his car in the driveway, smoking a cigarette and running the heater on high, thinking about how to break the news to his wife. Tim, the manager at the restaurant, had just put out the next schedule and only given Sam eight shifts again. Not even full time. It was always like this during the winter months, Tim had told him. No tourists came through this time of year. No tourists meant no one in the hotel and with no one in the hotel, nobody at the restaurant. There was nothing he could do about it.

It was the third schedule in a row Sam had been shorted, and the bills were still due. Bills they couldn’t manage last month already.

When Sam finally wandered inside, he found his daughter on the floor by the coffee table, half a room away from her blanket and toys. Jennifer was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. When she saw him come in, she pointed over the counter into the living room.

“Grab the baby, would you?” she said to him. “Put her back on the blanket for me?”

Sam reached down and scooped her up into his arms. She looked at him and smiled, made a soft gurgling sound.

“How’d she get all the way over here?” he said.

Jennifer smiled at him, something she hadn’t done a lot of lately.

“She figured out how to roll all the way over today. Made it from her back to her stomach after lunch and she’s been off to the races ever since.”

Sam smiled at that and held Katie up over his head.

“Is that right?” he said to her. “You’re on the move now, are you?”

He bounced her up and down until she giggled, then tucked her down into the crook of his arm. He looked back at his wife.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“Nothing special,” she said. “The usual.” She leaned down and checked the oven, disappearing behind the counter.

“You’re home early again,” she said.

Sam nodded slowly, tickled at Katie when he answered.

“Slow day,” he said. “Tim sent a bunch of us home after the rush.”

“But you talked to him about your hours?”

Sam nodded and avoided her eyes. Jennifer waited for him to look at her, and when he didn’t she leaned down and pulled the casserole out of the oven.

“Did you get the new schedule yet?” she asked. “How about that?”

Sam looked down at his baby. She was watching her mother. Her legs kicked independent of each other, and without rhythm.

“Can we talk about this later?” he said.

Jennifer set the oven mitt on the counter.

“How many?” she said.

Sam didn’t answer right away, but Jennifer didn’t give. She tapped her nails on the counter, and waited.

“Eight,” Sam said.

Jennifer was quiet for a few seconds. She pushed a strand of shoulder dark hair out of her face.

“This is bullshit,” she said. She walked over to the fridge, opened it, but didn’t do or say anything more. She just stood there, staring into the soft light.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Sam said. He waited, but Jennifer didn’t say anything.

“What do you want me to do with the baby?” he asked. Jennifer just waved her hand in the air.

“I don’t care,” she said. To Sam she sounded far away. “Put her back on the blanket.”

He did what she asked, and disappeared back into the bathroom.


Sam stood under the hot water beating down from the old showerhead over the tub, running through present and past, unable to wash himself of them, or make sense of either. He and Jennifer had moved up to Rapid City the spring before, running from the same troubles down in New Mexico. They’d decided to wait it out down there originally, get back on their feet in Rio Negro and then move somewhere closer to friends and family. Then Jennifer had gotten pregnant and things seemed more urgent all of the sudden, like there wasn’t any time to waste on getting things straightened out. Their friend, Joe T, a crusty, hard drinking vet who fixed lawnmowers, tillers and chainsaws out of his garage (his lawn was littered with them—a constant point of contention with his neighbors), owned land up in South Dakota, in the Black Hills. He said it was a cheap place to live. A good place to get by. And if they didn’t end up striking gold, Joe T said, at least the Hills were easy on the eyes. They were looking for anywhere else to go for a fresh start. Joe T made it sound promising enough.

The restaurant Sam had been cooking at was going under, but he put in as many hours as he could get until the business folded, making enough to get them out of the red and pay for a U-Haul trailer. A week after his work ended they’d loaded up their belongings and moved their lives north to Rapid City.

Sam remembered their first month in Rapid. It was exciting. Hopeful. He’d landed the job at the hotel the second week and hit tourist season right off. He was getting as many hours as he wanted, and then some. He remembered sitting on the front steps with Jennifer in the dry summer heat, her swelling belly exposed to the sun. She put his hand on her, trying to get him to feel what she felt.

“There,” she said, looking at him, moving his hand down below her belly button. “Did you feel that one?”

He remembered how he couldn’t feel anything. Just her heart beating and the smooth tightness of the skin there. He acted like he was concentrating hard.

“Yes,” he said finally, and Jennifer smiled at him.

“It feels like gas,” she told him, “when it moves.”

“That’s strange,” he answered. She held his hand tight to her skin, leaned back and kissed him. He remembered feeling in that moment like everything was right, like the world had finally turned in their favor.

Then the Black Hills winter hit early for them. They were used to New Mexico, where even in the mountains, in Rio Negro, the cold didn’t hang around long. But in South Dakota the weather turned at the end of September and never looked back. The tourists quit coming after Labor Day, and Tim laid off most of the staff as business dwindled. He kept Sam on, because Sam worked tirelessly and knew how to run a kitchen. But the extra hours weren’t there anymore, and before long even the normal hours were fleeting. The checks got smaller and the bills rose with the cold. They talked about Jen getting a job on the side, something part time, but they were on Medicaid because he didn’t have insurance at the restaurant, and any extra income would have bumped them over the threshold. They couldn’t afford the baby on their own, so they were forced to make due. The life that was supposed to be, that felt so sure during the summer, began falling away one little piece at a time.

Sam stood in the shower until hot water ran out, and then he ran the water a bit longer, feeling the shock of the cold bring him back to the present. He hadn’t wanted to be a father yet. He was just getting used to being a husband. He felt like things were slipping away, just out of reach. And he wondered why he couldn’t ever seem to get a hold on them, and why everything always had to be so hard.


Sam left the shower feeling cleansed of work. Free of the stink that comes from working a kitchen. He walked into the back room, threw his clothes into the washer, then joined Jennifer in the kitchen. She had Katie sitting in the bouncy chair on the table and was spooning rice cereal into her mouth from a small plastic bowl.

“How’s she doing with the food?” he asked, sitting down across from them. Jennifer looked up, then back at Katie.

“She’s doing okay,” she said. “She ate some at lunch today, but she’s been spitting it out all afternoon.”

Sam nodded. Jennifer put the bowl and the spoon down.

“Sam, we’ve got to talk about things,” she said.

Sam rubbed his eyes, ran his palm along the sharp stubble on his cheek.

“What’s there to talk about?” he said.

Jennifer looked at him a long time, but didn’t say anything.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“The credit card maxed out again today,” she said.

“The Visa?”

“Both of them now.”

Sam looked at the wood grain on the tabletop.

“I thought we were paying those down,” he said.

Jennifer stared at him.

“With what?” she said. “Your last checks barely covered rent and heat. There isn’t anything left over. Jesus, Sam. We still have to eat.”

Sam played with his wedding ring, spun it on his finger, then looked around the kitchen before meeting her eyes again.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. He listened to his voice raise and made an effort to check it. “I don’t make the schedules. I don’t send me home early.”

“We can’t make it this way Sam,” she said. There was an edge in how she said it that hurt him, and he couldn’t decide whether she meant it to.

Sam returned to his ring, like he was prone to do. He took it off, rolled it in his palm a few times, slipped it back on his finger. He’d been looking for other work for near two months already, but there wasn't any to be had, and the only offers he’d got were a step down from the hotel. He was tired of being offered minimum wage, or being told he wasn’t qualified, or being turned away because nobody was hiring. He hated the whole process so much that his stomach hurt him when he went to the interviews, and he’d often stand on the sidewalk in front of businesses, staring at the stale, decayed buildings that made up most of Rapid, debating whether to go in at all. He’d skipped the last two, one for a job at a telemarketing company and another as a convenience store clerk, instead driving slowly around town, smoking cigarettes and watching people going about their days—buying enough time until he could go back home and convince Jennifer things hadn’t panned out again. But that only made things worse. He’d never hidden anything from her and the secrets of not going ate at him. On nights he lied to her he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep.

They were already on food stamps, WIC for Jennifer and the baby. He tapped his fingers on the table. He knew what was coming.

“Sam, let me call my parents,” Jennifer said.

Still looking down, Sam shook his head.

“You know how I feel about that.”

“Just enough to get us even,” she said. “Enough to pay off the cards, the bills. That’s it. We just need some breathing room. A chance at a new start.”

“A new start’s how we got into this mess,” Sam said. “I don’t like borrowing money. From anybody. We’ll figure something out.”

Jennifer laughed at him, but it was mean this time. Katie shook a rattle in her chair and Sam looked out the window.

“Did you not hear me before?” she said. “There’s nothing else to figure out. We can’t make it anymore like this. I can’t keep living this way, Sam. I won’t keep living this way.”

She looked at Katie.

“Not with the baby,” she said.

Sam was quiet for a long time, working through what she’d just said.

“I don’t want them knowing how bad things are,” he said finally.

Jennifer looked at him funny, like she didn’t understand.

“What do you mean?”

“I just wish we weren’t so bad off. You two shouldn’t have to go through this.”

“Jesus, Sam,” she said to him. “We don’t have to. That’s the entire point. We can be done with it by bedtime.”

“There’s got to be something else we can do,” he said. Jennifer shook her head. She looked certain of things.

“We don’t have anywhere left to turn,” she said.

They were both quiet for a long time. Jennifer sat watching Sam, waiting. He felt her eyes on him, but wouldn’t meet them.

“I won’t say that it’s okay,” he said finally, “if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

Jennifer’s tone got hard. She wiped cereal off the baby’s face.

“I’m calling them,” she said.

“I can’t stop you,” he said.

Jennifer threw her dishrag onto the table. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she said. But Sam didn’t argue the point. Instead he got up from the table, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and walked back through the kitchen and into the front room without saying anything more.

Sam watched the television when she dialed the phone in the kitchen. He didn’t want to listen, but couldn’t help himself. She was telling them about things and it sounded worse somehow all rolled up into one instead of spread out over months a single disappointment at a time. She started to cry during the telling. Then he heard her defending him to her parents, making excuses and telling them that it wasn’t his fault, that he was trying as hard as he could, and that she was too. It made him sick. He grabbed his cigarettes off the coffee table and walked outside into the cold, slamming the door behind him. He stood on the front steps and grew angry with it all. He wanted to hit something, anything, but there was nothing around. Only the wind and the drifting snow blowing across the porch, and the silhouettes of the Black Hills looming dark on the horizon over the houses to the west. He settled on one of the balusters, chipped and rotting, and kicked it hard enough so that it splintered in the middle and hung bent, but not broken, beneath the railing. Then he shivered and smoked and drank at his beer, and hunched his shoulders against the South Dakota cold.


After another cigarette Sam heard the baby crying and went back into the house. Jennifer was crouched on the floor in the living room, finishing putting away Katie’s toys. When she heard him come in she scooped Katie up into her arms. She wiped tears away from her eyes.

“The check’s on its way,” she said. Jennifer looked into his eyes when she said it, holding his gaze until he looked away. The words hit him square and made him feel hollow inside. He started to say something back, but whatever it was caught in his throat and couldn’t find its way out. She waited another moment for him to say it, to say anything, until she saw he had given up.

“We’re going to bed,” she told him, and she left.

Sam went and grabbed another beer from the fridge. He sat and watched TV, an old Spaghetti Western that he picked up with the rabbit ears. The color was grainy and off, and the movie was full of silence and the sound of wind and horses hooves. He couldn’t stop thinking about how everything was turning out. About how he couldn’t do right for his family, and how he couldn’t do right for himself anymore. After a while he went outside to smoke another cigarette and by the time he came back in he decided he needed to talk about things. He opened the door to the bedroom, slowly, so he wouldn’t wake the baby, and whispered Jennifer’s name into the darkness. There was no answer. He hovered for a minute, then entered and sat in the worn rocker in the corner where they rocked Katie to sleep, and where Jennifer breastfed the baby at night.

From the chair he watched them in the dull glow of the nightlight. He could see their shapes under the covers, how Katie had burrowed deep in against Jennifer’s chest, nestled snug into her armpit, and he saw how beautiful they were. He wanted to reach out to them, to touch them, but he was afraid to. Everything he touched started a slow decay, and they looked so fragile in their sleep, like if he brushed against them they’d turn to dust under the covers. So he stayed sitting in the chair instead, slowly rocking into the night, wanting to go to them, but thinking to himself that things fall apart fast enough as it is.