Guests

by Samuel S. Crawford

  Once we have everything that we need, Bane eases open the screen door, and then the front door. He does it quietly, carefully, but the screen door still squeaks, and the wooden door bangs shut. On the porch, I am torn between running and tip-toeing. “Walk quietly,” Bane whispers, “and don’t turn on your flashlight yet.” I nod even though I know Bane can’t see me.

  We keep walking on our tiptoes until all of the sudden, Bane begins to sprint. “Wait!” I yell, too loudly. I start running after him, but it’s still so dark. I trip over something, a rock, a tree root.

  Did you know that a tree root mirrors the shape and pattern of its branches?

  I hear footsteps, but they aren’t coming from Bane’s direction. Then there’s a cough and a beam of light. “Azalea,” Maisie says, her flashlight blinding me, “you’re bleeding.”

  Maisie is standing over me. She asks, “Where’s Bane?” She’s got her foot on my thigh, holding me down. I couldn’t move even if she’d let me.

  “Maisie,” I say, “you’ve got to let us go. We want to go home. We aren’t having fun.”

  Maisie scary-laughs, spit flying from her mouth. “I tried,” she says, “I tried to make everything fun, everything safe and perfect.”

  “You’re just a kid,” I say. “You can’t make everything perfect.”

  Maisie grabs the back of my shirt, pulling it, dragging me back towards the cabin. “Come on,” she says, “we have to go home.”

  “Our home is that way,” I say. I’m crying. I’m so afraid I can’t breathe. I can’t tell if I am afraid for me or Bane or Maisie. And then Bane is back, stomping towards us. Maisie shines her lights through the trees and I see Bane’s face: furious, red, sweating.

  “Enough!” he screams. He’s got the knife in his hand. Even though Bane has come back for me, I only feel more afraid. Bane keeps walking towards us, his knife held high, “Let go of her, Maisie.”

  “I can’t,” says Maisie, “I told Mom I would keep her safe.” Now Maisie’s hands are around my neck and she is dragging me. I can’t breathe. Everything is cold and dark. My pants snag on a rock, then rip. Bane screams again. Maisie finally lets go. I gulp for air. Bane pants. Maisie is quiet and then she’s falling backwards, stumbling, and Bane is saying, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Maisie hits the ground. I crawl towards her. Bane yells, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” as a dark stain spreads from the hilt of his knife, up towards Maisie’s heart, down towards her legs. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” cries Bane, falling to his knees next to me. Maisie is moving her lips but no words are coming out. A terrible pounding is in my ear.

  Maisie turns her head to look at Bane. She says, “Don’t swear,” in this terrible, quiet voice. “Say you won’t swear anymore.”

  And then Bane is crying too. “I won’t swear,” he says, “Maisie, I won’t swear anymore.”

  It takes Bane and me hours to carry Maisie’s body back to our cabin. I don’t remember her body being so small, she’s lighter than she should be.

  “Has she been eating?” Bane asks. “Did you ever see her eat the whole time she was here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  In the morning, Bane makes the beans and I make the coffee, then we read on the couch. Last night, Bane tucked Maisie’s body into her bed so that when I walk past her room, it is easy to pretend she is sleeping.

  “What are we going to tell people?” Bane asks, putting his book down. “What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “That she killed herself, I suppose. That she did this to herself and there was nothing you or I or anybody could do.”

  Next

  When Auntie invited Brook, Mom and me to go with her and Trent to Noah's Ark Water Park, Dad demanded to know why he wasn’t invited. Brook said, “It’s, like, a girl’s thing,” and Dad responded, “Trent’s not a girl.”

  So here we all are, Dad driving Trent, Auntie, Mom, Brook and me up the Interstate Five. It’s not even four a.m., so we’re one of the only cars on the road. I’m in the very back, sitting to the left of Trent. Brook is sitting on Trent’s other side, sleeping with her stupid mouth open.

  Auntie has to sit in the front with Dad ‘cause Mom is taking up all three middle seats with her stupid knee that she “strained” from “sleeping weird or maybe just by being old.” Even though Auntie is a nurse, I was the one who had to tell Mom that she had a “sprained knee,” not a “strained knee.

  About two hours into our drive, the sun comes up, and we are finally allowed to get out of the car to stretch our legs and/or pee at this gas station in the middle of Nowhere, California. Trent points at two flannel-wearing women smoking next to an RV. “Meth,” he says, nodding.

  I nod and say “meth,” in the same knowing tone. Then an actual tumbleweed tumbles across the asphalt, and I say, “We have got to get out of here.”

  While he gasses up the car, Dad explains what we missed in chapters one, two and three of Lonesome Dove. I half listen to Dad’s, “Augustus McCrae and Capt’n Call spend their time at Lonesome Dove ranch drinkin’ and talkin’ to pigs–” and half think about Leo Moretti who was supposed to be my lab-partner this week. Leo Moretti is the best looking eighth-grader at La Cumbre Middle School, and, thanks to this trip, when I graduate next month all I will have said to him is, “Does this course require a graphing calculator?”

  Dad talks and talks. I walk around and stretch. Then Auntie gets out of the car and says, “Psst. Come with me.” She and I walk a little behind the Food Mart and Auntie slips a cigarette into her mouth. “Don’t tell Dad,” she says, before lighting up. Then she winks at me, and says, “I’ve really missed you, kiddo. You’re getting too tall for your Auntie.” Before we walk back to the car, Auntie buys me a Three Musketeers, which normally I’d never be allowed to eat. She says that if I keep her secret, she’ll keep mine too. Even though Auntie and Mom are only six years apart, Auntie seems closer in age to me than Mom.

  When we get back to the car, Dad’s arms are crossed and he is stomping his foot. He says, “You know, it’s rude to walk away when someone is in the middle of explaining something to you!”

  So I ask, “Is Augustus McCrae the same guy who paid the whore five dollars for a conversation?”

  Mom says, “For the love of God, please don’t shout ‘paid the whore’ across this gas station!”

  But then Auntie shouts, “I think that was a different whore!” so Mom can’t be too mad at me.

  Just as dark-eyed-Jake Spoon arrives at Lonesome Dove, Auntie makes Dad turn the audio tape off. She says, “If we don’t stop for breakfast, we’ll die before we even make it to the park.” We’ve begun to climb the foothills of Mt. Shasta, and Dad says Noah Ark’s Water Park is only about an hour away, but then Brook wakes up from her pretend sleep and says, “Daddy, please! I’m seriously about to pee myself.” If there is one thing you should know about Brook, it’s that she is a huge suck-up. Her greatest talent in life is getting whatever she wants. My greatest talent is that I’m not afraid of anything. Not heights or mountain bikes or the first day of school or holding my breath under water. The order of who is the toughest goes Dad, then me and Auntie are probably tied, then it goes Trent, and way, way below Trent is Brook, then Mom. Mom used to be tough, but then she used up all her strength working at the Presidio.

  Dad agrees to stop at the Hi Lo Café in Weed, California. Before he’ll let us out of the car, he tells us that we have exactly one hour to eat/pee/stretch our legs, and if we aren’t in the car by nine a.m., he’ll leave us behind. Even though I am excited to ride Blue Typhoon and something called Mega Wedgie, the restaurant is so warm that I wouldn’t mind sitting here for an hour or two.

  On my side of the booth are Mom and Trent. On the other side of the table, Auntie is sitting between Brook and Dad. Brook is looking at the menu, all squinty-eyed, so I know she’s really thinking about what she wants to order, but then she blurts out, “Why’s it called Weed, Calif
ornia?” all fast like she’s been holding in her question since we got here.

  Trent says, “Probably because they grow a bunch of dank weed here!” Auntie and I laugh, but Mom says, “Trent, please!” Dad looks like he is about to explode, so Auntie puts her arm around him and Brook sings, “Fingers and toes!” to Dad, who shoots them both death looks. Auntie says that whenever we see Dad about to lose it, we should remind him to hold all his anger in his fingers and toes.

  Dad is supposed to be working on his temper. Just last week, Dad’s physician told him that if he didn’t become more Zen, he’d give himself a heart attack. After Dad saw Dr. Whitfield, his temper got about ten times worse.

  When the waitress comes, I order pancakes with strawberries and a large hot chocolate.

  Dad asks, “Hot chocolate? Are you trying to rot out your teeth?” but then Auntie orders hot chocolate too, so Dad doesn’t go on about it.

  When it is Brook’s turn, she only orders water. She says she is on a diet, all boastful and smug. Then she asks our waitress, “Why’s it called Hi-Lo Café?”

  This time, Dad has the answer. He says, “First you get high, then you feel low.” The waitress says, “Actually, we were renovated in–” but Dad waves his hand and says, “Please! We are trying to teach our daughters a lesson about drugs!” Then Dad points out the window and asks, “You see that big mountain?” We nod, and Dad says, “That’s Mount Shasta.” Everybody looks except for the waitress, Auntie and me. I see Auntie mouth “Sorry,” to the waitress. Then Auntie sees me and winks.

  Once the waitress is gone, Trent scoots out of the booth and says, “I’m going to walk around some.”

  Dad calls, “Be here when the food arrives! We won’t wait for you.”

  Before anybody can stop me, I say, “I’m going to look around too.” Then I crawl under the table. Auntie calls me silly.

  Dad asks, “Is she silly or just embarrassing us?”

  I find Trent poking around the gift shop. “Hi,” I say.

  Between Brook and me, I’m Trent’s favorite ‘cause I’m cool about video games and I fence. Trent says that one day he wants to fence too. We’re always on the same team when we play Monopoly. In order to be a good Monopoly partner, you have to keep track of, and organize the cash. Before every roll, you have to blow on the dice for good luck. If Trent lands on anything bad like income tax, or the enemies’ property, you have to say, “Shit! My juju cursed you!” and Trent will say, “That’s ok. Do better next time.” The one time Brook was Trent’s partner, they argued the whole time about which properties to buy, and whether or not to improve those properties. It’s good that I’m Trent’s favorite ‘cause everybody else in the family prefers Brook.

  Mom doesn’t play Monopoly with us. She is an old lady when it comes to games, climbing, traveling or trying new things. Dad says that when Mom was Auntie’s age, she was tough just like Auntie, but then grandpa died and Mom got worn down.

  ‘“What’s up,” says Trent.

  I say, “Our parents are killing me!”

  Trent shrugs, and holds up a little glass container that says Weed, California in this fancy green script. “Do you think this is gay as fuck?” he asks.

  “I don’t think that’s gay as fuck,” I say.

  Then we walk over to this little rack where there are some sweatshirts and a couple tank tops. Trent picks up a sweatshirt and asks the woman behind the counter, “Are these really only ten dollars?” She nods and Trent asks me, “What size are you?”

  Trent buys me a sweatshirt that says, I Love Weed, California. He even rips off the tag so that I can wear it out of the store. At the counter, the store attendant smiles and asks, “You two brother and sister?”

  “Cousins,” I say.

  “Oh,” she says, “you look a lot alike.” Then Trent puts his arm around my head and pulls my face towards his stomach. “Ugh!” I yell, but I don’t mind being this close to Trent. He smells like Apple Pie, or Thanksgiving. Then Trent buys Brook a hat and a leaf sticker so that she won’t be jealous. When we get back to our table the waitress has just served our breakfast.

  Before I can even sit, Dad asks, “What the fuck are you wearing?”

  Then Mom says, “Jeffrey!” which means she’s had it with Dad’s swearing.

  Dad gets all huffy and says, “Oh, excuse me!” in a very dramatic and exaggerated way, then he says, “Your daughter is wearing drug paraphernalia, and my saying fuck is the problem?”

  Mom doesn’t answer. She only drops her head into her hands and sighs. Auntie says, “It’s the name of the town,” which puts Dad over the top.

  “Oh great,” he says, “more females ganging up on me!” Then Dad turns to me and says, “Take off the sweatshirt. We’re returning it.”

  I look at Trent who has gone back to playing games on his phone. Then I say, “It’s not returnable.”

  Dad starts breathing hard and his face gets all blotchy so Brook says, “Dad!” in this sing- song voice.

  Dad says, “What!”

  Then Brook asks, “Are you holding your anger in your fingers and toes?” which sets Dad over the edge. He says, “I’ll be in the car!” then he storms out of the restaurant.

  On the last leg of the drive everybody is either too full or too angry to talk. I don’t look at Auntie in case she makes me laugh. From the way the vein in the back of Dad’s neck is bulging, I can tell he is about two seconds from turning the car around and driving us straight back home. He’s done worse.

  After a couple of silent minutes, Dad asks, “I’m assuming someone paid the bill?” Auntie says that she took care of it. Then Dad says, “You know, I was waiting out here for fifteen minutes.”

  We arrive at Noah's Ark Water Park a few minutes before ten. It’s all rainy and cold, and Dad asks Mom, “Did you check to see if the park was open?”

  Auntie says, “I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” then she jumps out of the car, and we kids follow her, while Mom and Dad park.

  It turns out Noah’s Ark is open, and at the front kiosk a pimply teen fastens a paper bracelet around my wrist. “Not too tight,” I say.

  Mom and Dad reappear just as the boy asks, “You wouldn’t want it to fall off, would you?” He licks his lips in a way that makes me feel like a balloon is squeezing its way up and out of my lungs. I think nobody noticed the boy, or my balloon, but then I catch Dad’s eye. He glares at me just like when that boys choir serenaded me at Mom’s stupid Presidio event. Then Trent says, “Move it,” and pushes me through the gate to where green, yellow and blue plastic slides shoot into the grey sky, some of them twisting and turning and others plunging directly into the ground.

  “Oh!” says Auntie, “Doesn’t this look fun!?” She puts her arm around me, and the balloon in my lungs deflates.

  Trent takes the lead. As we walk, he reads from the brochure, “So there’s Banshee Plunge, Capt'n Hook's River Adventure, Black Cobra, Blue Typhoon, Bonzai Pipelines, Mega Wedgie–”

  I want to go to Mega Wedgie right away, but Dad insists we follow the map, which means Black Cobra is first. Mom asks, “Don’t you guys want to walk around some?” and everybody says “NO!” including Auntie.

  Because of Mom’s stupid knee, we all have to move at a snail’s pace. As we walk, Dad points at this punk-looking couple and shouts, “What is the deal with all of these young people and their tattoos? Don’t they realize they look God-awful? Real terrible! I mean, come on!”

  Auntie turns to Mom and asks, “You ever get this guy to just relax?”

  Dad, Trent, Auntie, Brook and I all stand in line for Black Cobra while Mom sits in Glacier Italian Ice and watches our bags.

  Before we separate from Mom, I ask, “Aren’t you going to ride one with us?” and she says that she will, but first, she needs to check in with Ed at the Presidio. I roll my eyes. Then I say, “Come with us or not. I don’t care.” Mom looks hurt, like I just punched her in the heart.

  When we get t
o the front, Brook tells Trent that they are sitting together, and Auntie says she’ll sit next to me. Auntie and I have always gotten along real great. I know she’d never say, but out of Brook and me, I’m her favorite. Dad gets all huffy about sitting alone, so I pinkie- promise that I’ll sit with him on the next ride. Right before the ride starts, Auntie gives my shoulder a little squeeze, then a different pimply-teen lowers a metal bar over my torso. We start to move and the ride makes this real loud groaning sound. Behind me, I hear Dad say, “Well, that doesn’t sound good!”

  Auntie proves to be a great person to sit next to ‘cause she doesn’t take up too much room, and because every time the ride twists or dips she lets out this crazy little yelp. She holds my hand the whole time we’re plunging into dark tunnels or hanging upside down. She keeps holding my hand until we get to the end of the ride and the people who were sitting behind us ask if she needs help getting out of our little cart. When she refuses, a park employee comes over and asks, “Can you get your mom out? We got to move this thing along.”

  “She’s not my mom,” I say, but he’s already walked down a few cars in order to harass somebody else.

  Note

  Distributed with all rights and permissions required. All rights reserved.

  The End

  A story by Samuel S. Crawford.