After the Parade by Lori Ostlund Page B

truck,” his father liked to say, “or maybe it’s a truck that wants to be a car.” He had smirked as though they were talking about much more than automobiles.
    They got into the El Camino. “Ready?” said his uncle. He slapped Aaron’s leg as though they were pals, but the pain was sudden and sharp. Aaron nodded.
    Several minutes later, they exited the interstate and stopped at the top of the ramp to wait for the light to change. Aaron thought they were in Fargo, though the two towns were connected and he could rarely tell them apart. Just outside Aaron’s window was a man perched on a backpack, a sleeping bag and pan attached to it, a crutch across his lap. His uncle leaned over and locked Aaron’s door. “Homeless people like to sit here and wait for the light to turn,” he said. “Just when you’re rolling away, they reach in your window or yank open the door and grab something.”
    â€œWhat do they grab?” Aaron asked.
    â€œWhatever they can get their hands on—a purse or briefcase, even a sack of groceries.” Groceries, his uncle explained, were not as popular because the homeless people wanted money. “For their vices,” he added.
    Aaron knew what a vise was. There was one attached to his father’s worktable in the basement. When his father was away at work, Aaron used to go down and look at his tools, trying to make sense of them but really trying to make sense of his father, who was attracted to them. The vise had perplexed him. When he finally got up the courage to ask his father what it was for, his father said, “Here, I’ll show you,” and he took Aaron’s hand, held it in the air between the two sides of the vise, and began to turn the handle so that the sides moved toward each other, toward Aaron’s hand. Aaron felt an unpleasant pressure, whichcrossed over into pain. He tried to pull away but couldn’t. His father was watching him, waiting. Aaron whimpered, and his father loosened the vise. “Now you see how that works,” he had said.
    â€œThey use the money to buy vises?” Aaron asked. It made no sense to him.
    â€œThey’re addicted,” said his uncle. “Vices cost money, so they take what they can get and run down under the bridge over there.”
    Aaron looked out at the homeless man, who gazed steadily back at him as he brought his empty hand to his mouth, fingertips pressed together. “I don’t think he can run,” Aaron said. “He has a crutch.”
    â€œThe crutch?” his uncle snorted. “That’s a prop.”
    Aaron did not ask what a prop was. The light changed, and they drove in silence, finally pulling into the driveway of a white brick house, a house that looked like every other house around it. Aaron wondered whether he had driven by the house before, on family outings or trips to the dentist. His father had known everything about both towns. He took shortcuts and never got lost and told stories as he drove, like a tour guide pointing out important sites. “You see that house with the red roof?” he had said as they left town on the Englund family vacation. “I answered a call there a few weeks ago, a girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. Cute thing. A garter snake got inside the pipes and came up through the bathroom faucet. It was stuck halfway out of the tap, and the kid was afraid to call her parents because they told her never to call them at work unless it was an emergency. She told me she’d shut the door and tried to forget about the snake, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it wiggling around in there.”
    â€œWhat did you do, Jerry?” asked his mother.
    â€œI yanked it out and lopped off its head with my pocket knife.” His father laughed, perhaps recalling the weight of the dead snake in his hands.
    â€œI hope you didn’t just leave it there,” said his mother breathlessly.
    â€œOf