Charlie’s footsteps as he runs off.
And growling.
I pull back with my hands out, and I say, in the calmest voice possible, “It’s okay. It’s oka—” but the dog jumps at me anyway, simultaneously pulling me down and pushing me back.
I don’t expect to hear the next sound: me laughing. Even as the dog’s claws dig pale red trenches into my arm while I try to keep its head pushed back, even as it shoves me further back onto the lawn and starts shredding my pant leg, I can’t stop laughing.
Even as a faraway part of my brain registers that my best friend just made this happen.
The claw marks are starting to spill over, sending red teardrops down either side of my arm, and the dog has managed to pull my pants all the way off, whipping its head back and forth, when Charlie comes screaming back, yelling “We are the champions, motherfucker!” adding twenty extra syllables to “motherfucker” as he tackles the dog into a low hedge.
And I can’t hate him because I am invincible and my Superman shirt isn’t even torn. I can’t imagine any other way we’re supposed to be around each other.
An hour later we’re playing video games like nothing happened and he leans over and says, without context, “Plus, now we know dogs can’t hurt you either.”
THIRTY: HERE BE TIGERS
EVENTUALLY THE ROAD SPILLED us into Bannister and we headed for the first business that we saw: a Dairy Mart.
The Dairy Mart was every Dairy Mart in the world. It had a bright storefront and a big illuminated soft-serve cone on the roof that spun lazily clockwise and signs about liquor prices in the huge windows. On the door was a neon OPEN sign that lit up one letter at a time before flashing a few times and repeating the cycle.
This particular Dairy Mart was on top of a hill, higher than the rest of the city and everything else. When we got past the dumpsters and to the curb, we could see it all:
Miles of wet street and blinking traffic signals and apartment buildings with lights at different heights clicking on and off like the universe’s audio equalizer and a stream of headlights so thick and wavering that you couldn’t tell if you were looking at a dazzling literal river of light or a figurative bloodline of glowing plasma or just a stream of cars packed so completely with complex lives that, for just a second, they became one refulgent mass of temporary oneness.
When the cars drove past trees or turned away from us, little pockets of blackness would appear in the light like Morse code reminders: there’s darkness too. It’s never just light. There will be dark as well.
Along the street, storefronts were adorned with skeletons and witches; city flags with pictures of harvest gourds hung from streetlights, while snow-capped billboards advertised haunted hayrides.
“Do we need supplies?” Michael asked as we crossed the mostly empty parking lot. “Matty? Pregnancy supplies?”
“I would be a more believable pregnant person if I was eating a jar of pickles,” she said, nodding.
“Maybe. But these are hipsters we’re dealing with here,” Faisal said. “Half of them will think you’re quirky and ironic and the other half will legitimately, wholeheartedly hate you.”
“For eating pickles?” Michael asked.
“I mean, them hating someone eating pickles is probably just a symptom of a deeper sort of self-hatred, but yes, because of pickles. Not to mention drinking cheap beer while hugely pregnant.”
“My baby, my choice,” she said, the empty beer cans and candy wrappers rattling around in her womb. The door made a bing-bong noise when we stepped through and the girl behind the counter didn’t look up until she noticed Michael stop and flip through the magazines by the door. The tip of her nose was colored black and she had whiskers drawn on over orange circles on her cheeks. We dispersed into the store.
“They have a magazine called Weed and Butts,” Michael said, holding up the magazine for us to see. It was, in fact, a magazine called Weed and Butts.
The girl with the tiger makeup behind the counter gave him a look that said, “I’m sick of teenagers and you’re probably going to steal something and it’s been a long shift so I won’t have a problem running you down with my car if you try any shit.”
The first time I looked up from the racks and saw Tiger Woman behind the counter watching me in the convex, disk-shaped mirror, nothing was weird. The third time I looked up and made eye contact with her, I knew she was watching me and waiting for me to stuff something in my coat. The look was a distant relative of the look people give you when they think you’re a damned-to-hell arsonist.
Behind Tiger Woman, a small flat-screen TV was playing the news with the volume turned all the way down.
I looked up as Faisal leaned down and picked up a pecan pie—the sweaty, stale kind that comes in a box with a clear, flimsy plastic top. He shuffled the box around a couple of times, making the pie bounce around like a hockey puck, before holding it up and saying, “You guys ever look at a pecan pie and think it looks like some kind of horrible STD?”
Even though she was deliberately not looking at us, Tiger Woman made a disgusted face where she half-closed, half-fluttered her eyes and turned her chin toward her shoulder like she was fighting back hangover resurgence. Faisal noticed and did a small double take.
“Why are you trying to ruin pie?” Matty asked.
“No, I mean—I don’t mean it like that,” he said, pacifying the air around us by shaking the awful, now-I-can’t-not-see-STDs pie at us. “I mean, it looks like something you’d see in a medical file. Like a photo of someone who was in the Amazon and then got bit by some exotic insect and then the insect laid eggs in them.”
Michael peeled back the top of a little blue French-vanilla creamer and drank it before saying, “Or like gonorrhea. That’s what I imagine gonorrhea looks like.”
“Pecan pie is not gonorrhea!” Matty said, scolding both of them with her eyes. Tiger Woman, who assumed we were all stealing things, looked relieved. “It does kind of look like an impacted butthole though.”
Michael drank a green Irish-Cream creamer and high-fived Matty from two aisles away with a little nod and proud eye contact. She nodded back.
“Moses,” Faisal said. “Weigh in here. STD-riddled butthole?”
My first thought was, What would Charlie say? but I realized I didn’t need to know. Fuck what Charlie would say. “I’m on Team Butthole all the way.”
Fuck Tiger Lady’s suspicious looks.
Fuck the thin ice Test insisted I was choosing to tread on.
Charlie was stuck in my head and demanding I see him and our fire in everything I did, but I could live my own life too.
After a few minutes of poking around, we converged on the counter where the clerk had her painted face reburied in her phone like she’d never been watching us. I set the small bag of chips on the counter.
“Anything else?” she asked.
Taped to the front of the cash register, next to a sticker for a local DJ called DJ Apache Whirlwind, there was a piece of green paper with a drawing of an anthropomorphic cigarette saying, “You must have been born on or before today’s date…” followed by another piece of paper taped below it with what was supposed to have the current year. Instead of the year, though, the piece of paper had fallen and was hanging facedown.
“Nope. Just the chips. I think you need more tape,” I said, flipping up the felled piece of paper. I expected to see a date, but it was blank, and she gave me a tight-lipped smile that said, “Thanks, I definitely need your help with my job.”
And I noticed the TV. For one terrible second I saw Charlie’s and my courtroom with the looped footage of the burning building followed by the mourners mourning followed by them coming together as one solid community in WARMTH shirts. But then it was something else—footage from a new and different courtroom shit storm unfolding in someone else’s life.
I realized Tiger Woman had said something.
“Sorry, what?”
She breathed out through her nos
e. “For the chips. Ninety-nine cents.”
I handed her a five but kept looking at the piece of paper that insisted I had been born at some point between right now and any time in the past, and at the silent television behind her.
It’s a weird feeling, finding yourself missing the shittiest part of your life. Like some stupid part of you misses the incredible low because it was closer to the time before you did something irrevocable. The antithesis of pining for the glory days—pining for rock bottom.
Even if that pining is rooted in something toxic, like being addicted to your shitty old life.
As she gave me my change, my phone started going off in my pocket.
I managed to take my change and get my phone.
It was Lump.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to have your phone out,” I said as I answered. I caught Matty’s attention, mouthed “Lump,” then stepped outside.
“Hi, Moses!” she whispered as loudly as she apparently could.
“How’s it going? I thought you were staying with the nurse tonight.”
“Oh. No. I felt better and then I went back to the cabin.”
Through the door, I saw Matty hand Faisal the candy bar she wanted and a small wad of money before stepping outside with me. Her face was serious and nervous since Lump was in her cabin, but she knew that if something had gone horribly wrong, Lump would have gone for an adult, not called me.
“I know, I just wanted to call and see if you could help put up more flyers tonight.”
I had to admire the kid’s total disregard for camp policy.
I smiled what I hoped was a relief-inducing smile at Matty and said, “We can’t put more flyers up tonight, Lump. It was lights-out forever ago.”
The tension evaporated from Matty’s face and shoulders.
“I know. I was just wondering.” She was still whispering, but something sounded different. There was no enthusiasm, no adventure in her voice. It sounded different than a kid who had just been told that they could have those adventures in a few hours, when the sun was up.
“You okay?” I asked.
I didn’t want Matty worrying, but I had to ask. I saw the nervous creep back into her posture.
“Yeah,” she said, obviously lying.
“You know we can put them up in the morning, right? I didn’t mean to sound … you know.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s going on?”
She hesitated, just breathing for a moment. And when she breathed in through her nose, it was a thick sniffle. She swallowed before saying, “Can I talk to you?”
“Yeah, hey, of course you can talk to me.” I said it both for her and Matty as I leaned my back against the metal cage that had propane tanks for sale. I tried to tune out the world for just a minute. All I had to do was talk to this kid who needed a friend.
“Will you promise not to tell anyone?”
“Yeah, Lump, I promise.” I had an idea of what she was going to say, and it wasn’t about lost deer or mean little kids. It was about ghost hair.
Matty and I didn’t break eye contact while Lump started talking. She was reading my face.
“My dad is sick. And I’m scared about that.”
Even though I’d figured that she was going to say it, I still didn’t know how to respond. So I just tried. “Mesothelioma, yeah, you mentioned that.”
I saw Matty smile, just a little. Just enough to show that she was relieved that this sad, lonely kid wasn’t calling because she was in trouble, but because she just needed to talk to someone.
“Mom says not to worry because they’ve got good doctors.” She stopped abruptly. Like she didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
“It’s okay to be scared, Lump. Everybody gets scared.”
“That’s what Mom says.”
And I thought, Our moms would get along. Her voice was thick.
“I don’t know too much about your mom or dad, but I bet they’d be really proud of you for caring as much as you do about that deer. And as much as I know they don’t want you to worry, I bet they’d be proud of you for worrying about them.”
She didn’t say anything back but I could hear her crying.
“Let’s put more flyers up tomorrow, okay? I’ll tell you about how I get scared too,” I said, finally breaking eye contact with Matty.
“Okay. That’d be good.”
“Goodnight, Lump.”
And I hung up. I’d had enough beers to think I’d done everything right. I even did a brief scan of what was probably happening at camp: the kids were all asleep, a handful of the Buddies were still awake, their faces illuminated by their phones, and Test was being Test—probably diligently flossing and wearing his monogrammed camp pajama shorts.
Still, the sober part of my brain kept telling me that for a kid like her, this was a courtesy call; she was going to do what she was going to do, with or without me.
Before I could think about it any more, Michael and Faisal came through the musical door.
We left the fluorescent storefront for the yellow streetlights. As we worked our way down the hill into the town’s glowing streets, Matty reached over and squeezed my arm. Just once, and just enough to tell me that she thought I’d done something good.
THIRTY-ONE: THE ENTERTAINMENT
WE HEARD THE CROWD from a block away. The houses we passed were old and they were big and each one was unique from its neighbor. As we got closer, the streets, driveways, and gravel parking lots became more and more full of cars. They were mostly bangers and junkers—the kinds of cars that college kids buy so they don’t have to worry about backing into fire hydrants. Matty slowed down in front of a dirty beige pickup that had a jumbled mess of tools, coolers, and lawn bags sticking out of the back. A decal along the passenger door said “Home Grown Maintenance.”
“You okay?” Michael asked her. She was looking at the truck and suddenly she was hundreds of miles away.
“Huh?” she said, swallowing and snapping back to us in an instant.
He smiled. “Is the baby kicking?”
“Nope. Everything is okay,” she said. “Here.” She opened her belly with a ripping noise and held out beers for us. “Baby beers!”
“Oh, shit, that reminds me,” Faisal said. He patted around on his coat before reaching behind his back and pulling out an empty Diet Faygo Cream Soda bottle. “Here. It’s bad enough people are going to be smoking around your little bastard.”
She laughed; we cracked our beers and Matty dumped hers into the bottle.
“See, Moses,” Faisal said, “That’s the difference between a third-wheel friend and a load-bearing friend. Gotta pull your weight.”
We rounded the corner, right into the arms of a crowd of college kids mingling on the lawn, porch, and driveway of an old house. They were all laughing and talking and drinking out of plastic cups; it was a sea of flannel and Halloween costumes featuring brightly colored leggings and skinny jeans and facial hair and partially shaved heads.
The thing about small towns—like Guthrie, like Greenfield—is that everybody knows everybody’s story. I know that my mail carrier, Mira Evans, miscarried three times before having her first kid; I know that my seventh-grade math teacher buys weed from my seventh-grade bully.
But here, in the throng of college students, I was nobody.
I was baggageless. I wasn’t Moses Hill and I sure as hell wasn’t Charlie Baltimore’s cousin. It was one of the things I was feeling at camp too. Below the suspicion of new friends and authority figures in shorts, that strange weightlessness in the pit of my stomach was genuine anonymity. And it turned out that there was a whole world of it. It wasn’t just a matter of pretending to be someone else in the face of sad, brokenhearted adults in line at Chicago convenience stores.
We headed for the packed porch. When we hit the wall of college kids, Matty started rubbing her stomach with one hand and massaging the small of her back with the other, groaning just loud enough for people to hea
r.
The sea of flannel parted.
Matty led us up the stairs to the deepest reaches of the porch. When we got to the back, two guys sitting on the banister immediately got up and gestured toward the rail. The guy closest to us blew smoke out of the side of his lips and waved it frantically away.
“Shit. Sorry. Here, please,” he said. He was dressed like a panda. After craning around and assessing whether or not he could fit his panda-body anywhere, he moved to the other side of the porch next to a wizard with a staff made of beer cans and duct tape.
“We should have worn costumes, guys,” Matty said.
“You’re already in costume,” Michael said to her. “Or just flip that shit around your back and you can be a sexy hunchback.”
“Yeah, but real costumes. I don’t want to be a sexy hunchback.”
“Everything is sexy and dumb,” Faisal said. “Remember when everything wasn’t always sexy and dumb on Halloween? Which also, by the way, is going to be the name of my memoir: ‘Everything Is Sexy and Dumb: The Faisal Al-Aziz story.’”
A hipster in a winter hat and an ugly sweater whistled through his fingers before waving his arms. “All right! Guys! Next up, all the way from Milwaukee, we have The Entertainment. And just a reminder, if you’re here to see Meat Bath, they’re playing in the basement!”
The porch full of people erupted with applause before going silent in anticipation. I followed the rapt eyes of the quiet crowd and found that the band was indistinguishable from the rest of the people. The lead singer sat on the far end of the porch with his acoustic guitar; the woman to his right held a tambourine; the guy to his left cupped a harmonica to his lips. The lead in the middle looked back and forth between them, smiling and nodding, mouthing “One, two, three,” before strumming into the music. The girl shook her instrument every few seconds, rhythmic and melancholic, the notes twinkling out next to the bare chords of the lead. The crowd didn’t murmur.
I’d spent so long listening to classic rock with Charlie that I’d forgotten what it felt like to sway instead of thrash. The music on the porch didn’t need to be cranked up or accompanied by blistering guitar solos.
Unstoppable Moses Page 16
