The Physics of Imaginary Objects (Pitt Drue Heinz Lit Prize) Read Online Free Page B

chided him for the tense posture, talked about minutes he could shave off if he would relax his upper body. That was one of the highlights of these gatherings, race photo analysis. Along with talk of tapering strategies and shoe inserts and the best podiatrists in the area, the ones who would shoot you up with cortisone and not explicitly tell you to stay off your feet. Sometimes, when one of Ben's runs was over rough terrain, Jessamy brought her bike and she would buzz up to him out of the woods, spewing cedar chips and flecks of mud, snap her photos, and spin away. Ben thought of her as some kind of wood sprite in those moments, a distraction, a glimpse of color and a whir of wings. Jessamy was certainly sprite-like. Anyone would agree. Had there been a strong wind, the kite could have lifted her off of her feet. Ben thought of it, Jessamy, floating overhead, her blue sundress ballooning around her skinny legs, her sandals slipping off one by one to fall into the duck pond.
     
    Jessamy wanted children, and Ben didn't. He didn't like the way they drooled and clung and had to be carried everywhere. That morning, after he had woken up laughing, Ben had gone to his lab and euthanized forty-two rove beetles to send to a fifth-grade class in Florida. When he had put them all in the killing jar along with the tablespoon of nail polish remover, all forty-two opened their mandibles at him and waved their abdomens threateningly. This was the type of moment that made Ben love being an entomologist, even though his running buddies introduced him as “the bug man” and he knew they found his job somehow ridiculous. As a boy, Ben had been happiest when he was lying outside at night, the air buzzing and crawling around him, his hands wrapped around one of the glass mason jars his grandmother saved for him. Jessamy wanted a dog, and Ben didn't. He didn't like the way they drooled and shed and had to be taken outside to shit. Jessamy wanted a velour couch and an inflatable travel bed and the color green on the kitchen walls. Jessamy wanted a lot of things Ben didn't. That morning he had labeled the box going to Florida in his flowery script and written underneath rove beetle, Staphylinus olens , and under that, often called the Devil's Coach Horse. On impulse, he drew a picture of the beetle on the side of the box, meticulously inked and shadowed, the kind of illustration he normally was paid quite a bit of money to produce.
     
    Pale Johnnie had a nice spread. It was one of those farms that no longer functioned as such and instead was just a big, nostalgic playground for parents and children. The fields lay fallow and the barn housed a jumble of tricycles and beach floats, plastic balls and dolls, and hoops and teepees—everything inflatable. Pale Johnnie was going on about the trees in the field, how he had some agreement with the government not to let them grow and now the seedlings, too large to tug out, had to be poisoned, one by one, with some liquid so toxic that Pale Johnnie administered it with an eyedropper. A small, plastic hatchet was wedged into a stump by the barbeque grill; a decaying Day-Glo orange semiautomatic water gun lay near Ben's feet. He prodded at it with a toe, but it seemed rooted to the ground.
     
    If Jessamy flew away, Ben would be sad but also very happy, relieved even. Sometimes he imagined ways she might die on her way home from her job at the daycare center and reassured himself that every married person did this now and again. His favorite was collision with an oil tanker because the body would be incinerated, leaving fewer details for him to fuss with in the midst of his bereavement. If Jessamy flew away, Ben would eat all of the casseroles that were stacked in the freezer, and surely there would be a stream of additional casseroles brought by neighbor ladies.
     
    “Did you know you are harboring bald-faced hornets?” Ben called to Pale Johnnie, gesturing to the nest hanging from the barn