by Dan Chaon
He thought of this feeling again as he looked over his possessions: his victims. He had considered trying to hold a garage sale, but on second thought there was more satisfaction in sentencing this segment of his life to death. In thinking that there were still things in his life that he would live to regret losing. He stood with his arms folded in the living room of his trailer, considering, and then he began to stuff all the little flotsam that he’d cherished into garbage bags and cardboard boxes, filling containers one by one and hauling them out to the communal Dumpster in the alleyway behind the trailer court.
It felt good. He broke the base of a lamp against the metal side of the Dumpster. He slit open a bag of flour and let the contents slide in a curl of fog over some discarded shoes. He wavered only a few times before he befouled his well-thumbed old college textbooks and beloved paperback novels with the poured-out contents of his refrigerator—a bottle of ketchup, jar of pickles, cottage cheese, spaghetti sauce. Good-bye books. Good-bye term papers that he’d written when he was taking college classes. Good-bye stupid, desperate, self-pitying journals and diaries he’d been keeping. And finally, after a slight hesitation, good-bye packet of information that connected him to Troy, the photocopies of the birth certificate and court records. He crumpled these papers up very deliberately, shoving them into a two-ply plastic garbage bag full of household cleaning products that he’d bought when he first moved in. An electricity crackled across his fingers. Good, he thought, dragging bag after bag into the daylight, down the dirt path, to the alleyway. Good riddance.
It was a Saturday morning, and after a while the neighborhood kid, Jinx, came out to sit on the hood of a car. Still dogless, Jinx slouched back on his elbows, watching his baby brother playing in the dirt with matchbox cars, and when Jonah went past a third time, he lifted his head.
“Hey, Jonah,” he said. “You throwing anything good away?” And Jonah smiled tightly.
“Not really,” Jonah said, but on his next trip to the Dumpster he presented Jinx with a fairly new boom box that he’d bought at Discount Mart. “I was just going to get rid of this,” he said. “Maybe you can find some use for it.”
“Nice,” Jinx said, mildly, and rubbed his hand over his incomplete mustache. “You moving out or something?”
“Something like that,” Jonah said. He felt a small twinge of guilt, once again, for the death of the boy’s dog. “I’m feeling the need to start my life over.”
“Oh,” Jinx said, “that’s cool,” and his grubby little brother gazed up at Jonah solemnly, crashing the fender of a matchbox car against Jonah’s shoe.
“Yeah,” Jonah said. He fingered the small framed photo in his pocket—the Polaroid snapshot of Troy and Loomis that Troy had given him. He’d thought about throwing this away, too, but now he thought he would keep it for just a while longer.
“Well,” Jonah said, and held out his hand. “I guess this is good-bye.”
Jinx smiled sleepily, regarding Jonah’s extended palm for a moment, then at last inserting his damp teenaged hand into it.
“Good luck,” Jinx said. “Have a nice life.”
——
For a while Jonah wound his way along the interstate, stopping from time to time to glance at a road atlas. It was strange, he thought, to find the place he once lived, the towns he’d passed through, represented only as dots along great rivering roads. The maps showed the world spread outward from St. Bonaventure—from North Platte, from Omaha, from Chicago, from every center—spiderwebs, veins, nets that cast themselves across the open prairie. He recalled that day in the fall when he’d first driven to St. Bonaventure, when he’d stupidly imagined that his life was some kind of film—the story begins, he’d thought then. Now he wasn’t sure what to think. The story never ends? The story is pointless?
Near the center of the state, he turned himself southward, past Red Cloud, where Willa Cather once lived, into a series of Kansas towns—Lebanon, Mankato, Belleville, Concordia—and into the larger world, which spread indeterminately outward. He could continue on this route, through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, all the way to Mexico City, or beyond, through Central and South America, to the tip of Antarctica. In between, there were many great cities, and millions of people, but that didn’t comfort him very much. It didn’t seem to matter really.
——
In Wichita he sat in a strip bar at the edge of the interstate, where a topless red-haired woman danced in high heels. He drank a gin and tonic, then rested in his car with his eyes closed. He traveled down I-35 through part of Oklahoma, stopping for gas in Broken Arrow. He ate a cheeseburger in Okmulgee. He crossed onto the Indian Nation Turnpike, on his way to Texarkana, before twining his way lengthwise across Louisiana to New Orleans, where he planned to live for a while.
But he hated it there. It was not the sort of place where you started over, he thought. On a block in the French Quarter, he watched a teenaged girl helping her friend throw up into a garbage can. A walking tour passed by, led by a man with a shock of black hair like a horse’s tail, and curling stiletto fingernails, at least three inches long. The man was wearing a cape and a top hat, with dark makeup around his eyes, and he looked at Jonah’s face suggestively as he passed, as if they were kin, as if Jonah was yet another curiosity he might point out to the docile people following behind him.
Jonah slept in his car that first week, trying to decide if he really wanted to rent a room. At night he sat with the map light on, reading the various brochures for attractions that were scattered across the city, listening to the radio and the street sounds. One night he woke up and a couple were having athletic sex while braced against his car. He sat there in the backseat, blinking, watching the man grin fiercely as he thrust himself against his partner, a woman bent double, with her face pressed against Jonah’s hood. Jonah wasn’t sure what to do. The man seemed to be looking directly at him, his gritted, gilt-edged teeth glinting under the streetlight, and Jonah didn’t move. Did the man see him? Jonah wondered. He felt for a moment as if he were disappearing, ceasing to exist, and in the morning, he wasn’t sure if it had really happened.
——
It reminded him a little of that March morning after his birthday, the stuff he’d been trying not to think about. He’d awakened on Troy’s couch, and at first he didn’t remember much of anything. Hungover. His head was too fuzzy, too painful, and when he tried to sit up he could feel his equilibrium swinging around him in a nauseated, wobbling circle. His shoes and socks were on the carpet, next to a plastic bucket that had been placed near his head. He sat up, rubbing his hands against his face, and it was then that a little flash of the night before came to him. He remembered the bottle of bourbon he’d purchased for his twenty-sixth birthday, and then showing up at Troy’s back door. They were sitting at the kitchen table, as usual, but he didn’t remember what exactly they’d said. All he knew was that he’d slipped up. Told more than he should. (I don’t have a wife. There wasn’t any car accident. He remembered that much for sure.) Called Troy names. (If I had your life, I wouldn’t have fucked it up as bad as you did. Had he said that?)
What had he done? There were large, unpleasantly blank chunks throbbing in his memory, but it didn’t matter what he’d actually said. It was clear to him even in his hungover state that the damage was irreversible. He picked up his shoes and socks and limped, barefoot, along the cold cement of Troy’s driveway to his car.
For the next few days he slept. He unplugged the phone, didn’t bother to go into work. He lay in the dim bedroom and tried to piece together the conversation they’d had. The alcohol had fragmented it into dozens upon dozens of tiny shards—some nearly clear, some blurry, some utterly dark. He could picture Troy’s face, grim, silent, listening. Ultimately, he had no idea what he’d told Troy—how much of the truth, how many new lies he might have layered on top. But he knew that he’d ruined things.
——
For a few weeks he tried to imagine himself into New Orleans, but it seemed le
ss and less probable—like a bad rerun of his first days in Chicago, without the eager, hopeful belief in the idea of becoming a different person. He didn’t know what to do with himself. From a phone booth on Bourbon Street he called Steve and Holiday’s number, and listened to Holiday’s voice on the answering machine before hanging up. He called Crystal about an hour later from the same phone booth, listening sadly to her surprised, stiffening voice.
“Oh! Jonah,” she said. “How nice of you to call!”
“I’m in New Orleans,” he said, and Crystal exclaimed as if impressed.
“That must be exciting!”
“Yes,” Jonah said. He could feel the people moving around him on the sidewalk as Crystal hesitated awkwardly. “How is everybody doing?” he said. “I’ve missed you guys.”
“That’s so sweet of you,” she said. And he wavered there in the brittle politeness of her silence.
I don’t have anywhere to go, he imagined himself saying. I want to go home but I don’t know where that is. He winced at how pathetic it sounded, how self-pitying. What could she possibly say to that? What could she do to help him?
“So,” he said at last. “How’s Troy doing? He must be just about done with parole by now.”
——
When he finally arrived in Little Bow, South Dakota, it was the middle of May. Over four years had passed since he was last in this, his hometown, but nothing much had changed. Main Street was still the same sad cluster of shops. The movie theater where he’d spent so much of his time was still there, and so was the high school, the football field, the clump of bushes beyond the chain-link fence where teenagers were still standing, furtively smoking cigarettes and joints.
A few miles outside of town, the little yellow house where he grew up was still there as well. He passed down the long gravel road where once the school bus would drop him off; here was the same metal mailbox with the red latch-flag that you could lift to tell the postman that outgoing mail was contained inside; here were the stubble field and prairie, here were the kitchen windows and the white door, the weeds beginning to grow in the flower beds on either side.
He sat there for a while, his car idling, and at last a woman came out of the house holding a baby against the crook of her hip. Another child, about three, a girl child in a purple smock, followed behind.
“Hello?” the woman said cautiously. She was a homely little woman, about Jonah’s age, with short brown hair and a pointed, witchy nose. “May I help you?” she said. Her voice was gentle and musical.
Jonah rolled down the window. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not here to bother you. I used to live here once.”
“Oh, really,” the woman said, pleasantly. She glanced in the backseat of Jonah’s car, where a stack of dirty clothes was covered by a blanket and pillow, and an old flashlight was wedged alongside a smattering of books and magazines. “Just passing through?” the woman said. She didn’t seem to notice—or at least, she didn’t respond to—the scars on Jonah’s face. “Do you want to look inside? It’s a little messy, but I’d be glad to show you.”
At the edge of his vision, Jonah could see Elizabeth loping along the side of the house, her paw lifted because of a thorn. He could see the clothesline where his mother hung the wash, draped with billowing blankets.
“I know what it’s like to want to come back to your old house,” the woman said kindly. “I think about doing that myself. I grew up in Boise, and I know someday I’m going to do the same thing you are. I’ll just park in the driveway and take a long look. I think that’s an important thing to do.”
“Yes,” Jonah said. The little girl looked at him from behind her mother—a thin, hollow-eyed child, her blond hair lifting in the constant wind, her brow furrowed.
“We love this house,” the woman said. “We’re so happy here.”
After a moment, Jonah returned her smile. “I’m glad,” he said.
——
Later that same day he found his grandfather’s headstone in the cemetery. There were some plastic flowers next to it, very old—the color in them had faded, and the plastic itself had become weathered and brittle. They were meant to resemble orchids, and he picked them up and put them under his arm. His grandmother’s grave was alongside: Lenore, who died in a car accident when his mother was a girl. There should have been a gravestone for his mother, as well, he supposed. But of course there wasn’t.
He’d been dreaming about her lately. He dreamed about her walking, the way she walked when she was taking Thorazine, the jerky, deliberate steps of someone who doubted the solidity of the ground in front of her. He could see her contracted eyes, the pupils about the size of the head of a pin. He remembered walking with her in the supermarket when he was a teenager, dreading the moment when she’d see an infant in a stroller and go into her routine, her old, bitter joke. Oh look, she’d say, there’s my baby! and he’d flinch as she tottered forward, her once beautiful hair now stiff and unruly, cut in a shag style, her mouth small and dry and trying to make an exaggerated smile for the infant. Jonah stood there stiffly as the woman pushing the stroller recoiled at their approach. There’s my baby! his mother crooned. There’s my baby! His mother was only thirty-five but looked much older. Her body was wiry, monkeylike, with ropy arms and stumbly, stick legs, wearing clothes from the children’s department at Sears, girly jeans and a pink T-shirt, and he sometimes thought that if he grabbed her wrist, her hand would come off and the thin fingers would curl and shrivel around his thumb.
He dreamed that she was leaning over him as he was sleeping, shining a flashlight into his eyes. He dreamed that she was singing to him, a song from one of her records, slow, terribly sad: I wish I had a river I could skate away on, she murmured, her alto voice throaty and thin in the darkness above his bed. The damp pads of her fingertips passed along his face, along the ridges of his scars, and when he groaned and tried to push her hands away, she winced, then smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be gone soon enough. Then I won’t bother you anymore.”
“Good,” he said, and when he tried to close his eyes again she bent down and kissed him firmly on the mouth.
“No one will ever love you again,” she said softly, as if to herself. “You know that, don’t you?”
And he squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his face to the pillow, just wanting to get back to sleep.
“Yes,” he said.
——
And he supposed that it was true. He drove around town one more time, past the old folks’ home where he’d once worked, past the Harmony Chicken Farm, where his mother had once spent her days, packing eggs, and in the late afternoon he even drove out onto the reservation. His grandmother’s sister, Leona, would be in her middle seventies, he guessed—if she was still alive—and after a few passes down the rutted dirt roads, a few angry dogs snapping and chasing at his tires as he rolled through their territory, he found at last the boxy, prefab house his grandfather had once taken him to, years before. The bare, grassless yard was scattered with toys—a purple bike, a basketball, a naked Barbie, some plastic building material—and when he knocked at the screen door a Lakota boy a few years younger than he came to the door. The boy was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and his hair was cut very short, as if he might have been in the marines.
“Can I help you?” the boy said.
Jonah cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Actually, I was looking for Leona Cook. I don’t know whether she still lives here.”
The boy was silent, his eyes passing over Jonah’s face and body with a heavy, neutral look of appraisal. Behind him, Jonah could see a boy and a girl, aged about six or seven, sitting on a couch, watching television. He could hear the bloinks and xylophones of cartoons.
“What do you want her for?” the boy said.
“Well,” Jonah said, “I guess she’s my great-aunt. Her sister, Lenore, was my grandmother, and I just thought . . . well, I just . . .”
“She’s not in v
ery good shape,” the boy said. “She had another stroke a few weeks ago.” He didn’t open the screen door.
“Are you her son?” Jonah said, and the boy blinked at him.
“Her grandson,” he said, his voice uninflected.
“Well,” Jonah said. “I guess that means I’m your cousin. Your . . . third cousin? Maybe. My name is Jonah.”
“Oh,” the boy said. He glanced down at Jonah’s palm, which was extended as if to shake hands, the scrim of the screen door still between them.
“You know,” the boy said. “It’s probably not a good time. She can’t really talk or nothing. She just sits there, you know? With her fingers moving? I don’t think it would be good for her to have a stranger in the house.” He peered uncertainly at Jonah, and of course he must have wondered about this pale blond guy with the scars on his face, claiming to be his cousin. Maybe, Jonah thought, Leona would confirm their relationship, but maybe she wouldn’t remember him at all. Maybe, he thought, there was no one left alive who really knew who he was.
At last, he traced over the route he took, years before, along the edges of South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa. Here was the old two-lane highway he’d traveled down once. He watched along the edges of the road the fence posts, the growing weeds, the barbed wire. He had to drive past, a few times, before he finally saw the place.
Miraculously, the urn was still there, upturned over a fence post, weathered and rusted, but still present. Four years had passed. Nothing remained of her body, of course.
