The Zymurgist
The water was hot, scalding his fingers. Francis let it fill the sink, submerged two cans of malt extract, and began sterilizing the equipment: glass carboy, tubing, thermometer, hydrometer, ferm entation lock. He rubbed each with sanitizing solution, then set it on the chipped Formica counter. His sleeves were shoved up past his elbows, exposing thick forearms that popped with tendons and muscle as he explored the surface of the items. Francis filled a stock pot with three gallons of water, balanced it on the stovetop, and turned the knob. Blue flame hissed from the burner. Drying his hands on a kitchen towel, he winced and massaged tightness out of his sternum.
Francis was pale, his face cracked with lines and marred with faded freckles. His unruly hair was the color of rust. A heavy brow line cast his eyes in shadow. He had stopped telling his age, that he was just 28. When they said, “oh,” he knew they meant, “what happened?”
A transistor radio on the windowsill cycled news, an announcer listing everything shut down by the nor’easter. “The wind chill is ten below zero. Between 12 to 14 inches of snow are expected by nightfall,” a man reported. “The governor has declared a state of emergency and banned all travel. KYWNews time: 9:22 a.m. Up next: a roadside blast rocks downtown Baghdad.” Francis switched off the radio. Because the restaurant manager had already phoned and left a message about closing, Francis knew he wouldn’t be working in their kitchen tonight.
Leaning forward for a better view, Francis wiped condensation from the window and looked down to the street. Snow spiraled from the gray sky and swept against the glass. Milling snow drifts covered the streets and lawns. Frost crusted lonely maples and oaks like Belgian lace.
His roommate, Amiko, had left for class an hour ago. A rectangular impression marked where her car had once been parked, the edges smoothed away by the storm. Francis turned and looked over his brewing equipment. She could have hit a snow bank or spun out. She could have lost the road as ice spider-webbed across her windshield, only seen the guardrail moments before impact. He grabbed his heavy coat and boots.
Just then he heard movement at the front door: the click of the deadbolt, followed by creaking hinges, then a slam. Francis walked to the living room and saw thrown keys bang against the coffee table then tumble to the floor.
Amiko shook dusty snow off her pants and whispered a sharp Japanese curse. “I should have listened to you,” she said. She sat on the sofa and pushed her black boots off with her toes. She sometimes paused before speaking, translating the words to English in her mind. “I ran out of gas two miles down the street,” she said, then looked at his coat and untied boots. “Were you leaving?”
Francis felt the cold that had rushed through the open door, the ghostly chill that raised goose bumps on his thighs. “No,” he said, draping his coat over the sofa. “Not anymore.”
“Ah,” Amiko said in a way that confirmed she knew he was about to search for her. She stretched her neck, rubbing it with her fingers. “The whole day is lost,” she said.
“Not quite.” Francis motioned for her to come to the kitchen. He nodded toward the stove.
“You are brewing beer again,” she said then groaned. “Totally lost,” she repeated and grinned.
He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah,” Francis said. “Again.”
Brewing had become a running joke between them. Every few weeks, Francis would be finishing a batch of ale when Amiko came home from class. Once she had held up his copy of The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing alongside her professor’s required reading. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” he said, reading the title aloud.
“What you read,” Amiko had said and held them as if they were on a scale. “What I read.” Then she laughed and dropped her text to the floor with a bang.
To Francis, Amiko was the perfect roommate—quiet and independent, with sarcasm that still surprised him. Pretty, too. She had moved into the apartment two years ago and now attended a nearby college. She planned to finish her bachelor’s degree in America then return to her small village in Japan. Apartments in this decaying steel town rented for four hundred dollars less per month than in the city, which is why she lived with him.
Over the years she put up a brave front, but he saw the frustration she had to deal with as the only Japanese woman in town. The old men, former steel mill workers, hated her. Adrunk had once shoved her down as he walked home from the American Legion Post. Standing over her, the man spat and growled, “Friggin’gook.”
Amiko walked to the kitchen window and looked up into the gray morning sky. “The sun seems about to rise,” she said. “I don’t think it will.”
He stood beside her to see what she saw. “No one is going to work today. Not you, not me,” he said.
Amiko shuffled toward her bedroom. She said: “I’m going to change my clothes."
He heard her stop near the hamper, probably to rescue her favorite tee shirt, one he remembered that read “Property of New York Yankees.” Francis, cold from the outside air, walked to his bedroom to get a sweater and noticed Amiko had left her room door slightly ajar. He stopped and considered the splinter of light across the floor, the soft noises within. Francis had never spied on her before. His breaths became ragged now, like a child playing hide-and-seek. He held air in his chest until his lungs ached and finally peeked through the narrow opening into her room. She was turned away and pulling her shirt overhead. The cotton slid down, stopping at her slender hips. He loved Amiko’s hair, which was thick and dark as shadow. She pulled it into a ponytail that fell in a black shimmer to the middle of her back.
They had never kissed, although one night it had almost happened. Amiko had come home crying, needing a friend to listen. While she talked, Francis heard his own isolation voiced. He had remained in the same town his whole life, but since high school he’d lived cloistered away. The town and he had become crumbling husks. He felt echoes of his solitude in Amiko. Then Francis and she had hugged, and when they let go his vision was filled with her face: her eyes like elm leaves, narrow and long. He felt her skin’s warmth. But then they both blinked, looked away.
Before he met Amiko, Francis had only trusted one other person: Jeff.
They were more than best friends. Francis was Jeff’s only friend. In high school, that was true for both of them. Their acquaintances came and went like fads. Nobody else knew Jeff like Francis did. Knew his secret.
Francis first saw Jeff in seventh grade gym class. Back then Francis was the rich kid with an overbite that everyone picked on. The one who had cow-licked hair, and who forgot sneakers and had to wear penny loafers to play basketball. The one with bruises on his neck like grape jelly. As a kid whose dad worked in the steel mill, Francis was curious about Jeff right off.
It wasn’t until months later, after they had been together every day, maybe down at the river shooting the breeze or smoking cigarettes in the woods, when Francis found out about Jeff’s father. He was a manager at the bank. Sometimes he came home spoiling for an argument. “The first time, he grabbed me by the collar and punched through the drywall next to my head. It scared the hell out of me,” Jeff said and flipped a spent Marlboro in the river. “I remember that the hole stayed there for a month — a warning. I was four.”
By his freshman year in high school Jeff had learned to hate his father, but refused to fear him. “My old man, he wants to get to me, make me twisted up, like him,” Jeff said. “No goddamn way.” He learned to go to bed without dinner, to be like stone when his father slapped his face, sending jolts of pain down his arms. Nobody outside of his father’s house could get to Jeff either. He became the kid who’d do anything on a dare. Throw rocks at a passing car. Steal cigars and condoms from the pharmacy. Burn the back of a girl’s hair at the theater.
Only one time did Francis glimpse that boy, the scared one Jeff had pushed down, locked away somewhere. A guy had dared Jeff to jump from the bridge into the river where people said there was collapsed railroad rigging. Francis, Jeff, and the guys all huddled together on the bridge. Francis looked down at the water’s surface, surging with spring thaw, and imagined twisted iron hidden beneath. “This is stupid,” Francis said. “Don’t.”
Just then Jeff dove headfirst over the guardrail. Still fully clothed, he disappeared into the water. His curly blonde hair pulled up wet ringlets when Jeff burst through the surface. They all pointed at one another, their hooting and laughing fueled by relief.
But the rush didn’t last. After the guys went off to score cigarettes, Jeff and Francis spent the next hour drying his wallet, pants, and button-down shirt on a rock. Jeff, his legs covered with yellowing bruises, shivered in his wet boxers. He rubbed at mud streaked on the clothes.
“Shit, Francis,” he whispered. “If these are ruined, I’m dead.”
In the kitchen, Francis moved the pot to the sink, opened the steaming cans, and poured in the malt. He was stirring the wort when Amiko, wearing that drooping Yankees tee shirt, sweatpants, and slippers, ducked in the fridge. She grabbed two of his homemade rye ales, popped the caps, and poured them into chilled mugs. He took one and nodded thanks.
“Class would be ending right now,” Amiko said and drank. Her shirt, which had once been her father’s, revealed the delicate line of her collarbone. “My mother disapproves that my father sent me to school in the United States. She once told me, ‘I have lost my daughter.’” Amiko pushed a stray hair from her forehead. “Can you imagine if I told her about the apartment? About you?” She tipped the mug, drinking longer this time, and set it down on the counter near a mortgage advertisement. “Huh.” She studied the envelope. “This looks just like a letter.”
He took the envelope, read the sender’s name again: Jeffrey Doyle. Jeff. Again he reminded himself that this was not the same Jeff. “I was just going to toss that away.” Francis dropped the ad in the recycling bin, where it sat on a pile of grocery store circulars. He turned and hefted the pot onto the burner and set the timer for an hour. Flame churned the wort, and froth rose inside the brew kettle. Sweet odor filled the kitchen. Francis glanced back to where he had left the letter.
“Are you OK?” Amiko asked.
The question surprised Francis. He wondered whether she could see his thoughts, how he’d felt a shot of happiness seeing that letter in the mail. Before he’d looked closer.
Francis dropped a steeping bag of cascade hops in the pot. “Yeah,” he finally said and leaned against the counter.
Rotating a ring on her finger, Amiko paused. Her eyes watched the ring, gold with a honey-colored opal, and she smiled. Then she held it out to him. “Fire Opal,” she explained.
He took her hand in his, lifting the stone to the soft kitchen light. Prismatic color — sparks of reds and greens — flashed from tiny fissures. “That’s beautiful,” he said, letting go. It was a word that he had not said in years, but now, with her, it felt right.
“Thank you,” she said and pulled her ponytail to one side and kneeled to pull a slipper back on. As she leaned, the neck of her shirt hung low, framing her exposed breasts. He glanced at her skin, her brown nipples. “How did you learn this?” she asked and looked at him. Francis wondered if Amiko noticed his gaze because she stood and tugged up on her collar.
“My best friend,” he said. “Jeff.” Sipping the beer, Francis tasted hop bitterness, felt the rough frost on the mug with his tongue. “I was underage when Jeff taught me to brew. We both were. His father had this expensive kit, never used it.”
Francis rubbed the pain in his chest again, the piercing tightness. “We were trouble,” he said.
He remembered the smell of sweat and beer and drying mud. The summer before his senior year in high school it was all you could smell when Francis, Jeff, and the guys drank at the rope swing outside of town. Pabst. Schlitz. Milwaukee’s Best. Francis and Jeff let everyone else have garbage beer while they sneaked bottles of their home brew from the bottom of the cooler.
It was the kind of August that browned lawns, withered everything except poison ivy. The night of the last party that summer, the guys sat around wearing only cut-off jeans. They leapt from the rope, belly-flopped in the water, splashed moonlight. A couple guys brought their girlfriends and disappeared into the woods to hook up.Jeff was drunk again, bitching to the guys about how his father wanted him to go to University of Penn. “He even wants me to pledge his old frat. You’re lucky,” he said, looking at Francis.
“Lucky? I’m going to be working with my dad. At the steel mill,” Francis said. “Shit. All I know is you better let me visit on weekends, frat boy.”
Jeff downed his beer and threw the empty bottle in the river.“Whatever, man,” he said, weaving to the cooler. Popping two bottles from their secret stash, he gulped them down between gassy belches then spit the last mouthful up in the air and let it land on his face.
“Dare me to swing to the other side of the river?” Jeff asked. He pitched the empty beers near Francis.
Everyone got quiet. At last one guy said, “I dare you.”
“Go ahead, Francis,” Jeff said.
“No.”
“Do it.”
“I’m not going to dare you.”
“That’s what I always thought,” Jeff muttered. “No balls.”
Francis felt a kind of rage that only someone you love can spark. “All right, I friggin’dare you,” he said. “Jump in the river. Smash up mailboxes. It’s not going to change what he does to you.”
“You son of a bitch,” Jeff said, flaring his nostrils. “You goddamn son of a bitch.” He scrambled up the small cliff to the swing, wrapped his hands around the rope, and pushed off the ground with his legs. He hung from the swing, arcing over the water and back over the guys. Jeff howled, deep from his chest, and kicked. He swung five times, each time higher, more out of control. Jeff screamed at the apex of the final swing and released the rope. His body vanished into shadow; his voice trailed away. Francis heard a sound like a boulder splashing in the river, saw rings of water catching slices of reflected moon.
Stillness. Then a shape drifted into the light. It was Jeff’s back. His bones pressed against skin in knobby ruts.
“Oh, god,” Francis said. He sprinted into the water, feet sinking in the mud as he pumped his legs hard toward Jeff. The guys behind him shouted and fell into chaos, but he couldn’t hear them. When he reached Jeff, Francis wrapped his arms around his friend and kicked back to shore, shoes lost. Everyone helped carry him to Francis’s dad’s truck. They laid him down in the back and looked around at one another. Francis climbed into the truck’s cab and drove the rusted Ford through empty streets toward the hospital.
Glancing through the back window, Francis couldn’t tell if Jeff was breathing. His chest appeared heavy, ribs jutting out over a hollow, pale stomach.
Francis cut through stop signs and red lights, fear and adrenaline sobering him.
“Jeff was wilder than me,” Francis said, pressing a bottle cap into his palm. “You know that big river in town? One night he tried to swing across.”
“That’s crazy,” Amiko said.
“He didn’t make it. Jeff hit rocks at the bottom of the river,” he said, looking down at the blood traced in ridges left by the cap. “He landed on his head.”
“Oh,” she said.
A grip tightened on his heart, and Francis wiped his eyes. “I dared him to do it.”
He jumped when he felt Amiko put her arms around him, felt her chest rising and falling with breath, her warmth molding against his body. He remembered her form as he had glimpsed it earlier. Francis looked down at her, the way her dark eyes watched him. She was different from anyone he had met since Jeff. Amiko seemed to understand what had not yet been spoken, to feel the same isolation he did. He wondered whether she was paying her own penance.
Then he kissed her, his mouth meeting hers. Amiko responded, her tongue sneaking between his lips. He closed his eyes. In the darkness he imagined his mouth full of sweet barley wine. They pressed together, and Francis felt his mind slow, his head heavy and drifting.
The dull light peeked through the window as they moved to the sofa and began to undress and explore one another. Amiko kissed him so deeply, Francis felt like he couldn’t breathe. As he moved with her, her lips brushed his neck. She whispered to him in Japanese, beautiful staccato words.
At the hospital, attendants carried Jeff inside, and a heavyset nurse directed Francis to an administration desk. He told them everything he knew about Jeff, even his home phone number, although Francis had never called the house. Barefoot, dripping mud and river water, he sat in the waiting room.
Any other time Francis would have gotten Jeff out of trouble. When Jeff had burned that girl’s hair at the movies, the theater manager called Francis’s dad. “Who was with you?” his dad had asked. “That spoiled brat again?”
Francis was grounded for a month for his silence.
When Jeff’s father stalked through the hospital’s sliding door with his wife in tow he headed straight to the main desk. The nurse spoke with him, motioning at Francis. As they looked over, Francis felt his face flush.
Jeff’s father did not speak; his wide jaw clenched. He went into the emergency room, and Jeff’s mother sat next to Francis. She wrapped her cardigan around herself. He followed her gaze to his feet, which flaked drying mud. “The doctors don’t know how serious his neck injury is, but they say Jeffrey is stable.” Her voice shook and she paused to gather herself. “They’re waiting for the swelling to go down.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’ve done enough. Leave.”
Francis hesitated.
“Go,” she whispered.
He couldn’t stop shivering in the truck on the way home. Angry, confused, his arm muscles jolted and twitched.
That night Francis dreamed Jeff was back at the river, falling upside down, just above the water, still feeling gravity’s force drawing him. He swam out to catch Jeff and protect him from the rocks. No matter what he did, his efforts always failed. He started and woke from the dream, his mattress damp with sweat.
The night after Jeff fell, Francis’s dad came home late from work. He had finished a double shift, trying to get even a little ahead of their bills. “Since your mom died,” his dad said, “things only seem to get worse.” The steel mill was in trouble: overtime began to dry up as consumer demand went overseas. Francis sat with him at the table, thinking about Jeff, feeling smothered by guilt, unable to speak. He reached across the table and cupped his dad’s weary hand.
Initially, because of the swelling, no one knew the extent of the damage to Jeff’s neck and spine, whether he was paralyzed. The guys from Jeff’s street called Francis an hour after Jeff moved his feet. Still, Jeff was not whole; he had suffered severe nerve damage.
When Francis heard Jeff was finally released from the hospital he tried to call. He held the phone without dialing, guilt catching in his throat. Francis sat frozen until a woman’s recorded voice said, “If you need help, hang up and dial your operator.”
Three weeks later Francis saw Jeff at the drug store downtown during a rainstorm, using a cane to limp down the street. Francis approached and tried to lead off with “I’m sorry,” but it just came out as “hi.”
Jeff stopped for a moment and they stood together in silence. “They say that I need a cane,” Jeff said. “I might always need it.” He looked older, weaker.
“I never meant for —” Francis started at the same time as Jeff began: “Why did you —”
They both stopped talking.
Francis cleared his throat and pushed his wet hair back. Rain dripped from their noses as they stood, the quiet looming. The air smelled of earthworms and cooling asphalt.
“My father put me in private school,” Jeff said, then he started to move past.
“I drove you to the hospital,” Francis managed to say. It sounded stupid, and he knew it. “I still blame myself.”
“Do you know what my father told me the night before I was released?” Jeff asked after a moment. “That if I ever talk to you again, he’d do worse than break my spine. He held his hunting knife to my throat.”
Francis put his hand on Jeff’s arm.
“I wished he’d have done it,” Jeff said and pulled away.
A year later, Francis’s dad was laid-off. The mill shut down completely six months after. Families with better prospects, like Jeff’s, moved away, their lives packed into overflowing vans. Yard sale signs hung from trees until the poster board rotted. Francis and his dad stayed behind as the town suffocated. They took whatever jobs they could: construction during warmer months, short order cook over the winter holidays. When his dad died of a heart attack four years later, Francis sold the house and moved to the apartment, staying in the only place he knew.
At the end of making love, she gripped his forearm; then Francis held Amiko, her light frame pressing him down, inhalations sharp. Then they watched snow layer the windowsill, the way it flew out of the distance, flecked the glass, and melted. “What happened to Jeff after the fall?” she asked. Francis began to tell her about the night at the hospital and what came after.
“Everything good fell apart,” he said. “The mill, the town, dad. Me.”
“When you brew you are remembering him,” Amiko said. “Jeff.”
With a finger, he traced her eyes and the smooth line of her jaw. They held each other until he heard a timer on the microwave sound, then he covered her with a blanket and pulled on boxers as he walked toward the kitchen. He heaved the pot off of the stove, and put it in the sink, which was filled with cold water and ice. The pot’ssides clunked in as the hot metal pulled away from the cold.
After twenty minutes, he poured the wort into the carboy and added two gallons of spring water. When the mixture reached 70 degrees, Francis pitched in yeast. Any hotter would kill it.
Returning to the sofa, Francis lay beside Amiko, who had fallen asleep. When she stirred, he wrapped his arms around her. He pulled the heavy blanket over them and pushed his nose into her hair, which smelled of lavender. As he drifted to sleep the yeast within the carboy began consuming sugary malt, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Pressure would build, force pushing against glass, before escaping through the tubing—it released like a sigh.