by Dan Chaon
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “I don’t think it matters really. I think I’ll always be lonely.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
And Jonah raised his eyes—a grim, bleary, furious glance that took Troy aback. “It’s just something our mom used to tell me,” he said, sharply, and then he let out a weird laugh. “You don’t understand about her, you know.”
“What?” Troy said.
“Oh, never mind,” Jonah said. “People seem to think it’s all either nature or nurture or some combination, but you know what? I think it’s even worse than that. It’s all . . . random. It’s all chaos and luck and whether you’re, like—” he cleared his throat. “Whether you’re, like . . . stupid and cowlike, like you, or else you have some inkling of how deluded it all is.”
Troy stared at him. Cowlike. “Don’t be an asshole,” he said. “You think I’ve had it so great? Well, I haven’t, believe me.”
But Jonah only bared his teeth. “You don’t know,” Jonah said, and his hand slurred in the air. “You don’t have. Any. Fucking. Idea. You . . . You’re just the baby in the basket. She always, our mother always used to say, that’s my baby—and when I was little I always thought it was you, but it wasn’t. It was just. Various babies. You were, like, I don’t know, all happy somewhere else. I just wanted to change places with you, that’s what I really wanted, if you want to know the truth. Because if I had your life . . . If I had your life, I wouldn’t have fucked it up as bad as you did. I would have done better, you know? You had such a good chance and you just trashed it! I just wanted you . . . to be happy. That’s all.”
——
What do you say to that? Troy had wondered. If there was an understudy waiting in the wings to relive your life for you, could you doubt that they would improve on your performance? He kept his hands folded as Jonah took another drink of Jim Beam, as he drew a hiccupped breath.
“Listen,” Troy said, softly. He couldn’t help but feel sorry, he couldn’t help but feel that Jonah was right. He had made a mess of his life. “Jonah, look, I . . .”
But Jonah’s face remained in his hands. Was he crying? He shuddered when Troy touched his back, and stared up at Troy with wide eyes.
“I can’t believe how bad I screwed this up,” Jonah said, and his face twisted as if Troy had trapped him, as if Troy had finally, after hours of interrogation, broken his spirit. “You know, right?” Jonah whispered. “You figured it out, right? I never had a wife that died. I was never in a car accident. Our mom never got married to anybody. I’m not that person . . . I’m not anything.”
——
It wasn’t a shock, really. Everything he knew about Jonah seemed to settle and solidify. Of course he didn’t have a wife, Troy thought. Of course he didn’t have the kind of normal childhood he’d invented. He could sense the weeks that they’d spent together tighten and grow heavy in his mind. Of course he’d been lying the whole time, and there wasn’t even any reason for it. Just fear, Troy thought, and, what, probably shame of his real life. He couldn’t summon much outrage at the revelation. All he felt was a kind of dull, exhausted pity.
It was about four in the morning, and Jonah stumbled out the back door, tottered over the wet, muddy lawn. He grasped the tire swing and bent over, expelling a long, wet stream of vomit. His legs wavered for a moment, and then he sat down in a pile of melting snow.
“Jonah,” Troy said. He stood there in the doorway, not sure how far the limits of his parole extended. Five yards, ten yards outside the house. He waded into the yard, trailing the electronic signals that his anklet might be emanating. He put his arms around Jonah, dispassionately, lifting him up. “Don’t,” Jonah whispered. “You win. Leave me alone.” But Troy continued to pull his body across the yard, into the house: You win, you win, Jonah kept saying, even as his body grew slack.
——
Now, picturing this again, he could feel their lives locking into place, his and Jonah’s.
“You guys,” he said to the two policemen, “I think . . .”
But then he was silent. He could see the flashing lights of the ambulance parked in front of Judy’s house as they turned onto Foxglove Road. Paramedics were running across the lawn, pushing a stretcher, and he could tell, even from a distance, that it was Judy.
“Oh Jesus, Jonah, don’t do this,” he whispered, but all he heard was Jonah murmuring.
You win.
You win.
33
June 5, 1997
A little bit after midnight, Loomis seems at last to be sound asleep. Jonah loosens his arms from around the child and slowly lowers him into the sleeping bag, letting his hand brush slowly across the soft cheek as Loomis makes a small, staccato whimper. “Shh,” Jonah says. “Shhhhh,” he whispers, as if he’s letting the air out of himself.
He waits a while, until he is certain that Loomis is asleep, and then he steps outside of the tent to look at the fire. It hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped, and he still feels a little shaky, a little unnerved by how upset Loomis had become. He’d seemed to be taking it well at first, with the wood gathering and fire building, but then, as it grew later, Loomis had withdrawn more and more, and when Jonah had suggested that it was time for bed, his lip had quivered.
“I don’t think I want to stay here,” Loomis had said. “I’m not feeling very comfortable.”
“Well,” Jonah said, “we have to stay here at least for tonight. We’re camping. I thought you said you’d like to sleep in a tent.”
“I changed my mind,” Loomis said, and Jonah’s heart had quickened.
“You just have to try it out,” he said.
“For how long?”
“Just a little while,” Jonah said. “It’s a vacation. Your grandma hasn’t been feeling well lately, and so she asked me just to take you for a few days.”
“I didn’t even know that she knew you,” Loomis said, frowning. “You said that I shouldn’t tell her I was talking to you.”
Jonah tried to smile. “I think you’re a little confused,” he said. “I mean, you know the situation with your dad, right?”
“My dad?”
“He got into trouble,” Jonah breathed. “The truth is, Loomis, he and your grandma haven’t been getting along very well, so I didn’t want you to talk about me because I thought she would get mad about it. But the situation has changed. She needed someone to look after you, so I stepped in. At her request.”
“Why can’t I stay with my dad?”
Jonah sat there for a moment, nonplussed. “Loomis,” he’d said at last, “he’s still . . . having some problems. I don’t want to worry you or anything, but your dad can’t take care of you right now. He’s in jail. That’s why I’m here.”
They looked at each other. At first it seemed okay—it was just a single tear, spilling over the edge of his eye, and Loomis wiped it away quickly. “I think I’m scared,” Loomis said. And then, without warning, he began to weep.
——
Thinking of those sobs, Jonah still feels a little light-headed. He can’t help but recall the sound of his mother’s crying, the way his heart would tighten as he stood outside her door, his cheek pressed against the wall. It made you feel helpless.
He knows that he’ll have to start making some big decisions soon, and he tosses a pinch of dirt into the fire, watching it spark.
They are surely looking for him by now. More than twelve hours have passed since he and Loomis drove past the St. Bonaventure city limits, and no doubt the police have been called. He guesses that probably everyone is very stirred up, though that wasn’t his intention. He wonders if it is possible that he could even be arrested, even if he explained the circumstances, even though Loomis is his nephew by blood and they were just going on an outing. He imagines himself back in St. Bonaventure, in a courtroom, the judge ordering him to wear the same kind of monitor that Troy wears. Forced to sit in that old trailer, which would perhaps be a kind of justice.
/> He could still call Troy, he thinks. The fire is dying out, and he pokes at it with a stick, stirring the embers. There had been a pay phone near the entrance of the park, and he could walk down there, while Loomis was sleeping. He feels in his pocket: five quarters, three dimes, a few pennies. Maybe. He turns the end of his stick on the coals until the tip of it is orange. He looks at his watch, squinting, holding it close to his face. It’s almost twelve-thirty.
Would Troy be in bed when the phone rang? He tries to project himself into that moment, to picture Troy rolling over to pick up the receiver—not fully asleep, surely, not with Loomis missing and all the worries that would be crawling like ants inside his head.
“Hello?” he would say, abruptly—Troy would no doubt be expecting bad news, and Jonah would have to pause.
“Troy,” he would say at last. “It’s Jonah.”
Or maybe he would say, simply, “It’s me.”
——
He gets up and wanders toward the stake near their campsite, shuffling the road gravel beneath his feet.
“Troy,” he thinks, hesitantly. “Hey, sorry to call so late. I figured you might be worried, so I just wanted to let you know that Loomis and I decided to go on a little trip together. I know I should have called sooner, but I didn’t realize . . .”
No, no, he thinks. Start over.
“Troy, we need to talk,” he says firmly. “I have Loomis here with me, and we’ve been talking some stuff over. He doesn’t want to live with his grandma anymore, that’s the thing. He wants to live with you and me. So we came up with this plan, you see . . .”
No, he thinks. Not right.
“Troy,” he says, in a low voice, very calm and serious. “I’m just calling to let you know that Loomis is with me.” And then he’ll just have to cut Troy off, whatever he says. “Don’t get upset. Just hear me out, okay? I need to know what you want me to do, because I think there are a lot of options that we might want to consider. But I really think . . .”
He takes a few steps down the gravel road, walking quickly into the darkness, aware of a hollow, fluttery feeling in his chest and legs. He looks over his shoulder at the hunched shadow of the tent where Loomis is sleeping, and then back toward the trail that leads to the pay phone. It’s about half a mile, he guesses.
“I think I can help you,” he says. “I know that you lost custody of Loomis, but if you just listen to me, if we just work together, we can all start over. I know it sounds crazy. I know that things haven’t gone so well between us, and I know that I’ve lied to you in the past, but I swear to you that you can trust me. Just listen, okay?
“We’ll let some time pass,” he murmurs, in his mind. “Let’s say about a month, or even two. Maybe they’ll think your ex-wife took him. And then, when you’re off your parole, we’ll set up a meeting place. I think it should be in Mexico. Maybe near the beach, it’ll be nice. I know you think you can’t start over, but you can. We can both find some kind of job down there—I mean, there are bars and restaurants all over the world, and we’re good at what we do. So we can just settle there for a while. You and Loomis and me. I know that it might sound outrageous, but maybe that’s what you need. Maybe you just need to make a break. We can all start over, and there might be some snags at first but I think it will turn out okay.”
He stands there in the middle of the road, two or three campsites down from his own, and there is only starlight, the galaxies hovering over him. Crickets. Cicadas. “It’s better than just sitting there, and letting yourself get bulldozed over,” he says. “You’ve gotten yourself into a situation now where you have to do something radical. It’s like you’re on a road, and you need to just pull over and . . . abandon the car. You just start walking away from the roads. Does that make sense?”
——
He waits for a moment, and finally, Troy sighs.
“How can I trust you, Jonah?” Troy murmurs at last. “Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie. You lie when the truth would be easier.”
And Jonah is silent for a while. No, no, he thinks. He listens to the steady churr of insects from the surrounding dark, to the even, rhythmic grinding of pebbles beneath the soles of his shoes. Over his shoulder, the fading campfire is barely visible in the distance.
“I realize,” he says. “I’ve made some mistakes.”
Then he starts over.
“Troy,” he says. “It’s me,” he says, and Troy takes in a harsh breath through his teeth.
You scarfaced son-of-a-bitch, I’m going to kill you. The police are already looking for you and when they find you I hope they beat the holy shit out of you. You’re going to go to prison for a long time.
“Troy,” he says. “Listen, I knew you’d be angry but . . .”
Mexico? Troy says. What is this, some kind of cheesy movie? Do you think you can just stroll across the border with a child you’ve kidnapped? And then what? Once you’re in a new country you just call “olly-olly-oxen-free” and you’re not a Class-A felon anymore? Do you think it’s some sort of game to live the rest of your life as a fugitive?
“Well,” Jonah says. He looks around. The boughs of trees hang over him, observing, and a night creature—a frog or something—makes a deep, glottal, percussive sound.
And what is Loomis supposed to do when he grows up? What kind of life is he getting out of this plan of yours?
Jonah hesitates. Start over, he thinks again, but his mind gropes and finds nothing. What is he going to say? There is a long, unraveling space that he tumbles into.
——
He had imagined that the cluster of buildings with the pay phone was about a half mile away, but it seems as if he’s been walking for a very long time. He holds his wristwatch up to his face, trying to make out the shapes of the hands on the numbers. He thinks of the flashlight, back in the tent next to Loomis, and wishes he’d brought it. It’s very dark, and the moon doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the sky.
Would the police really be looking for him specifically?
It sends a shiver through him, because he can imagine Troy’s voice, he can imagine the policeman writing quickly with one of those short, eraserless pencils. “He’s got a long, prominent scar along the left side of his face, from his eye, right across his cheek, all the way down to his throat. He’s sort of a dirty blond, not quite six feet tall. Believe me, people will remember him if they see him.”
He puts his hand to his chest, and he can feel his body vibrating as if there is a small motor inside him. What if he called Troy and the phone lines were bugged? What if Troy said, “Oh, yes, I think that’s a good idea, I think we should meet,” and all the while a policeman was standing there with a small machine hooked to Troy’s phone, tracing the call? This is far-fetched, he tries to tell himself. Why would the police think Jonah had taken Loomis? Why would Troy, for that matter? They hadn’t talked in months, and as far as Troy knew, Jonah was still in New Orleans, or someplace even farther.
But alone in the middle of the gravel road in the dark, he can’t be certain of anything. Ahead, there is no sign of the buildings where he had seen the pay phone. Behind him, the campsite where Loomis is sleeping is no longer visible either. He scans the trees along the edge of the road, and can make out the glimmer of someone’s campfire. The beam of a flashlight rattles against the treetops in the distance, then goes out. He can make out the sound of low voices from the shadows, someone still awake and talking, but he’s not sure where they are.
Maybe he shouldn’t call Troy, he thinks. Not tonight, at least. Maybe it should just be him and Loomis for a little while. A few days, a few weeks. He turns and begins walking back the way he came.
——
The campfire is almost completely out by the time he gets back. Only a few embers are pulsing out orange light through a crust of black ash, and he looks for his stick to stir them again. He doesn’t know where he put it, and he feels a little sick as he casts around for it. It’s as if his brain is actually moving aroun
d inside his skull as he tries to trace through the maze that he’s somehow created for himself. He imagines sitting in a cafe in some Mexican village, drinking lemonade with Loomis, looking up as Troy comes through the doorway, his face solemn but respectful as he nods at Jonah, as Loomis leaps out of his seat. He imagines a nighttime roadblock, the cars ahead of him slowing, the cops running the beam of their flashlight along the body of his car, over his face, and he tries to twist the steering wheel, to accelerate. He imagines pulling up outside of Troy’s house near dawn, opening the car door to let Loomis out.
Something rattles just beyond the edge of the campfire pit, and his thoughts stop. He can see the silhouette of a small child standing in the darkness.
“Loomis?” he whispers, but this child is shorter than Loomis. A toddler, he thinks, before he sees the yellow of its eyes.
A raccoon. It gazes at him as it stands there on its hind legs, its hands tucked close to its chest, and then it makes a slow, uncertain nod, bobbing its chin at him. Behind it, another one is backing tail-first out of the paper grocery bag where he and Loomis had left the remains of their supper—paper plates, half-eaten hot dogs, crumpled bag of chips. There are some other ones out there, too—four or five, he guesses. He can see their eyes.
“Shoo,” he says hoarsely, but instead of approaching them, instead of waving his hands or stomping, he takes a step backward. That numb feeling, that stuff he doesn’t think of, a mouth closing over his face. “Shh,” he says.
None of them run away, though the one that backed out of the grocery bag stands up on its hind legs as well, holding the empty plastic wrapper that the hot dogs came in, nodding.
He puts his hand against the side of the tent, groping for the entryway. He thinks to retrieve the flashlight that he’d left there next to the sleeping bag that Loomis was curled into. He’ll shine the beam of the flashlight on them, directly at them. That will chase them off, he thinks.
The opening of the tent is unzipped, and he crouches down with his eyes still on the raccoons, backing his way in. It’s almost completely dark inside the little bubble of tent, and he runs his fingers along the edge of Loomis’s sleeping bag, feeling for the flashlight, but it isn’t there. Damn, he whispers, tracing his hands clumsily along the slick nylon floor of the tent, blind in the darkness. He doesn’t want to wake Loomis up, and he takes extra care not to brush or bump against the child.
