by Pete Hautman
“Thirsty?” I asked. We hadn’t had anything to drink for what seemed like hours.
“God, yes!”
I grabbed some waters from the fridge. We plopped down onto the sofa and guzzled them as if we’d been lost in the desert for days.
“Well,” I said, “that was fun.”
Gaia had sat down really close to me, so our shoulders were pressed together.
“I thought you were lost and I’d never see you again,” she said.
“Me too.”
“You were trying to find me.”
“I was scared something had happened to you.”
“Those fireworks went off, and I sort of freaked.”
“Me too.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off.”
“It’s okay.”
She said, “So your mom is gone till tomorrow?”
“Yeah, she’s at some yoga retreat, sweating.”
I could smell my own sweat, layered with hours of walking and fear. Gaia leaned her head on my shoulder.
“I bet I stink,” I said. I could smell her too. I liked it.
“You smell good.” She turned her head and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re bristly.”
“I shave,” I said. Okay, once every three or four days.
She drew back slightly and ran her fingers softly across my jaw. I could feel each whisker bend and spring back at her passing touch. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were moving, exploring my face, shifting rapidly. Her pupils were enormous.
She said, “Can we go to your room?”
“300 Pounds of Joy”
Howlin’ Wolf
3:12
I’m sitting on a bench across from the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. A man is pretending to paint “Tom Sawyer’s fence” while his wife takes pictures with her phone. I go back to studying my Great River Road map. I could cross the river here, which would get me out of Missouri and into Illinois. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. I don’t want to sleep in my car again, and I could really use a shower. Stay in Missouri or head for Illinois? Saint Louis is too far, and besides, big cities make me nervous. I’d like to find a little motel off the beaten path. Illinois or Missouri?
I’m pondering that when I’m startled by a sudden tremor. For a split second I think, Earthquake! Then I realize that an exceptionally large man has plonked down on the other end of the bench. He tugs a paisley kerchief from the breast pocket of his overalls and wipes his forehead.
“You know what this town needs?” he asks me.
A bulldozer, I think. But I don’t say that. I just shrug and go back to looking at my map.
“Golf carts,” the man says.
“Golf carts?” I say.
“Yeah. Like they have at Disney.”
“They have golf carts at Disney?” I say. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“For the physically challenged. The disabled. Ride around in comfort. That’s what they need here. Golf carts.”
“Are you disabled?” I ask.
He makes a poof sound with his lips and says, “Christ, look at me!”
He has a point. The guy can’t be more than forty years old, but his face is slick with perspiration, and I bet he’s four hundred pounds. I wonder how he ties his shoes. I look down. His shoes are slip-ons.
“I used to be a skinny kid just like you. Two-thirty when I graduated high school.”
“I only weigh one-thirty,” I tell him.
“Yeah, well, ain’t you something. You got a girlfriend?”
I don’t know why he would ask me that. I shake my head and go back to looking at the map. I can hear him breathing.
“So what do you think of this,” he says, gesturing. “Tom Sawyer’s fence. Quite the deal.”
“Tom Sawyer never existed,” I say.
The man gives me a long look and shakes his head.
“You got no romance in you, kid.”
“I have romance.”
“Whatever you say.” The man rocks back and throws his bulk forward to stand. He makes it to his feet. For a moment I think he is going to come crashing back down, possibly shattering the wooden bench, but he catches his balance. “Got to check out that fence,” he says, and lumbers off.
Tennis Balls
Garf gaped.
“You did it?” he said.
I instantly felt like a complete and total ass. But I’d had to tell somebody, and Garf was all I had.
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and we were in his backyard throwing tennis balls at a bucket. Neither of us played tennis, but Garf’s brother Jimmy had, when he was alive. Garf had found a whole laundry basket full of used tennis balls in his basement.
“Yeah, we did it,” I said. I threw a ball and missed. The bucket was all the way on the other side of the lawn against the fence. We’d thrown a dozen balls and hadn’t gotten one in yet.
Garf threw another ball. Missed.
“So you’re, like, not in the club anymore?”
“What club is that?”
“The virgin club!”
“Garf, goddammit!” I threw a ball, hard. It bounced off the rim of the bucket and went straight up over the fence.
“I’m just saying,” Garf said.
“You’re just an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, I know that. So . . . ?”
“So that’s all.” I wished I’d never said anything.
“Dude, I need details! This is the most momentous thing that’s ever happened in your entire life!”
“Momentous?” I thought about my dad dying.
“I remember my first time,” he said.
“You?” Nothing else he could have said would have surprised me more.
“Yeah, it was my cousin Kelsey. I mean, she’s my mom’s cousin’s daughter, so it’s not like she’s actually that close of a relative. She’s a couple years older than me.”
“How old were you?”
“It was last year, just after my brother died. Just the one time.” He shrugged. “It was her idea. I mean, she sort of seduced me, I guess. I think she felt sorry for me. Or something. So . . . where were you?”
“Forget I said anything,” I said.
• • •
We had been in my bedroom. Gaia had looked around, then started turning all my Darth Vader figures so they faced the wall. I’d just stood and watched, not sure what to do. When she’d turned the last Vader, she looked at me, very serious.
“Okay?” she said.
“What about Wonder Woman?”
“She can watch.”
A second later we were kissing, our tongues filling each other’s mouths, our breaths coming in gasps, our smell so strong and bestial I thought I would sink and drown in it and never come up again. There were no words. Clothes came off and my entire body melted.
There was no way I would—or could—tell any of that to Garf. It was mine. Mine and Gaia’s.
After, we lay on my bed, her leg crossed over mine, my arm under her head, heat rising off our sweaty, naked bodies. I turned my head and looked at her, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and wondered, How did I get here?
She was the first one to speak.
“Well,” she said.
“Well, what?”
She didn’t reply.
We lay there like that for an hour. I kept remembering every detail; I never wanted to forget. I was already thinking about the next time. Was she thinking the same thing? I hoped I’d done everything okay. I thought it was okay. Did she think so? I was just happy to be there with her, our skin touching, our breath filling the air.
I wanted to stay there with her forever. Or at least all night.
“My mom won’t be home until tomorrow,” I said.
“I have to get home.”
I looked at the clock. Nine thirty. It was still a little light out. I heard a distant boom.
“The fireworks are just starting,” I said.
“I told you what I think
about fireworks. Anyway, my dad will freak if I’m not home by ten.”
“Text him. Tell him you’re staying at Maeve’s.”
“My dad doesn’t text. He doesn’t even have a cell.”
I think that’s when I realized that I knew nothing about Gaia Nygren.
I knew she had a brother, of course—the overachieving Derek—although he was a year ahead of me and I didn’t really know him. I knew she lived in a white rambler on Ash Avenue. I knew she lived with her dad, who drove a Subaru and taught at the U, but I’d never met him and knew nothing about him. She never said anything about her mother. I had the feeling she wasn’t around anymore. I knew Gaia was a year younger than me; I knew her birthday was in October. I knew her phone number. I knew her body.
But I had no idea what her life was like when she wasn’t with me. She didn’t talk about it. I never asked. I was afraid to. I liked to think of her as unconnected, unburdened.
“I should go.” She sat up. She stood up. Watching her putting her clothes on was just as sexy as watching them come off.
“What does he teach? Your dad, I mean.”
“Art history.”
I waited for more, but it didn’t come.
“What about your mom?”
“They got divorced.”
“Oh.” I was embarrassed that I hadn’t known that.
“She lives in Santa Fe.”
“Sorry. Um . . . how come you live with your dad and not with her?”
“She left.”
“Oh. Why?”
“She said she had to find herself.” She snorted out a laugh. “She’s an artist. Whatever. It was a year ago.”
“That must have been hard. I mean, for you.”
“It’s not like she was this great mom.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“She said it was either us or her life. She was all about making choices. She chose to move to New Mexico and make her stupid paintings. She calls every now and then. She says I should come and visit, but I don’t want to.”
“You’re pretty mad at her?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m mad at my dad.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I guess he made a choice too.”
“I should go.”
I pulled on my jeans and grabbed a T-shirt. We went downstairs. There were things I felt I should be saying, but everything I thought of sounded lame: You are beautiful. That was fun. I love you.
I didn’t say anything. We went out to the garage and got in the Mustang, and I drove her home, trying to understand how we could have been so incredibly close a few minutes before, yet now I sensed a gulf between us. Had I done something? Said something? Was it because I hadn’t known that her mom was gone?
When we got to her house, I leaned over to kiss her, and she kissed me back, but it wasn’t the same.
“See you,” she said, and got out of the car.
“See you,” I said back.
So lame.
• • •
I could tell that Garf was disappointed because I wouldn’t talk about it, but he shrugged it off.
“Did you call her yet?” he asked. We had thrown all the tennis balls. They were scattered all over the yard.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re supposed to call the next morning.”
“I texted her.”
“Did she text back?”
I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked.
“Not yet.”
“Did you use a rubber?”
I gave him my How stupid do you think I am? look and said, “Duh.”
“Dream Lover”
Bobby Darin
2:32
An hour south of Hannibal, on the Illinois side of the river, I pull into a motel called Dreaming Pines. I see no pine trees, but it looks like the sort of place where they won’t care how old I am or whose credit card I’m using. The old guy at the desk is fixated on a baseball game playing on the lobby TV. He’s wearing a Saint Louis Cardinals cap.
“Who’s playing?” I ask to get his attention.
“Cards and Cubbies at Busch,” he says without looking at me.
“What’s ‘Busch’?” I ask.
Now he looks at me, as if he cannot believe I would ask such a question. “It’s the Cards’ stadium,” he says. “Home game.”
“Oh. Can I get a room?”
He sighs, stands, and pushes a form across the counter. “Name, license number, how many nights. Visa, Mastercard, or cash.” He goes back to watching the game. I fill in the blanks and take out my mom’s card. He runs it through his machine without looking at it and a few seconds later gives me a key.
“Checkout time’s eleven,” he says.
“Is there someplace to eat around here?” I ask.
He points at a vending machine at the side of the lobby. I examine the delicacies on offer. Candy and various greasy salty things. I pump money into the machine until I have a meal: Fritos, a granola bar, pretzels, and peanut M&M’s. I buy a Mountain Dew from a different machine outside.
Room number 112 is at the end. The carpet is worn, the fake-wood-paneled walls are scratched, the mattress is uneven, and it smells like some cheap cleaning product with a faint tang of body odor, but to me it looks like heaven. I throw myself onto the bed and stare up at the stained ceiling tiles. I am so tired; I can feel tiredness leaking out through my pores. I’ve only been gone for two days. It feels like forever. I think about turning on the TV. Cards versus Cubs? No, thank you. I think about calling my mom, just to tell her not to worry. There’s a phone on the bedside table. She’d take a collect call, probably, but no, I can’t hear her voice, whether it’s the angry voice, the whiny voice, or some other voice that makes me feel like a piece of crap.
I eat Fritos and M&M’s and think about going back out to the car and getting the map so I can see where the Great River Road will take me.
Instead I fall asleep.
Nailed
After I left Garf’s, I stopped at Walgreens. There were a lot of kinds of condoms. I’d heard of Trojans, so I bought a pack of those. When I got home, Mom’s car was in the driveway. She was in the kitchen cleaning up my breakfast mess.
“Hey,” I said.
She answered by putting my cereal bowl in the dishwasher and slamming the door shut.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was going to clean up.”
“Did you have a nice trip?” she asked, still not looking at me.
I said, “Trip?”
She turned, her back to the counter, her eyes drilling into me.
“Trip,” she said.
I tried to look innocent, but my thoughts were churning. I’m sure I looked guilty as hell.
“Do you know what Marnie Matthews said to me?” Mrs. Matthews was the busybody old lady who lived across the street from us.
“How would I know that?” I said. It was the wrong thing to say. Her face hardened.
“She said you drove off in your father’s car yesterday morning.”
“Oh.” I scrambled. “Yeah, I did. Just a quick trip around the neighborhood. It’s not good for it to just sit in the garage.”
“She said you were gone all day.”
I shrugged. Nailed. I waited for the next thing, and when it came, I wasn’t ready for it: she started crying.
“Mom . . .”
“Leave me alone!” She walked, stiff-legged, out of the kitchen. Seconds later I heard her bedroom door slam.
I felt bad. Guilty, ashamed, and foolish. That didn’t last long, though, because I started to get mad. The Mustang was my car. It was just sitting in the garage. And she’d left me here with no other transportation available. Was I supposed to sit around and watch TV the whole time she was de-stressing at yoga camp? Did she even ask me if it was okay if she went? And why was she crying? So selfish. It was all about her. Never mind what I needed. Never mind that I had a life of my own. I was almost seventeen, and she was sti
ll treating me like I was seven. . . .
. . . And then I felt guilty and ashamed all over again because her husband had died, and I thought how I would feel if Gaia died. . . .
. . . And then I got mad because Dad was my dad. She’d had him for twenty-five years, and for me it was only sixteen years and five months. She was an adult. She was supposed to be the grown-up, and now she was crying and hiding in her room. It wasn’t fair.
I could hear my dad saying that. It’s not fair. He had said it a lot, sometimes resignedly, shaking his head, sometimes in anger. What a crock! It wasn’t fair that he got blamed for the forklift accident. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t get paid more. It wasn’t fair that life sucks and then you die.
It wasn’t fair that he killed himself.
I needed Gaia. I checked my phone for the hundredth time. No text back. I called her number. Five rings, then her voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. All I wanted was to hear her voice.
• • •
I thought about taking the Mustang again since I was in trouble anyway, but Mom had blocked the garage door with her Toyota. I set out on foot. Gaia lived three miles away.
On the way there I kept checking my phone. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I thought of all the reasons why she maybe hadn’t called me back: lost phone, sleeping late, busy doing something else, mad at me, hates me. Why would she hate me? She always said I was too negative. But she was the one with the Life Sucks T-shirt and the sullen expression. And if she hated me, then why had we done what we did? How could she hate someone who wanted her so much? I hadn’t even showered that morning because I didn’t want to wash her off me.
I pulled out the neck of my tee and sniffed. Not bad, but they say you can’t smell your own stink.
“Frownland”
Captain Beefheart
1:42
Breakfast is Fritos, pretzels, and a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the motel lobby. I have showered and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a polo shirt that used to be my dad’s. The day is bright and pleasantly cool. I drive with the windows down, listening to a random mix from Dad’s iPod. The Rolling Stones, Courtney Love, Iggy Pop, Snoop Dogg. Dad had some seriously weird tastes. Roxy Music and Radiohead. James Taylor and Miley Cyrus. Hannah Montana? Weird.
