Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

  With a borrowed record player and fifty LPs bought at an estate sale—a music teacher in the next town had died—their home was filled, for the next few years, with Jesus Christ Superstar (deemed too thought-provoking) and Anne of Green Gables (wonderful, foreign, unrelatable) and On the Town (perfect, as it described a healthier approach to the home life of enlisted men). They would listen to a new one every night, were required to examine every song, every word, for its appropriateness, its ability to cut through misery and uplift. Patterns emerged: Irving Berlin was fine, Stephen Sondheim too complex, morally problematic. West Side Story, including as it did gangs and knives, was out. My Fair Lady, being about nothing the veterans recognized as their lives, was in. Older musicals about presumably simpler times prevailed. Oklahoma! and Carousel and The King and I quickly made their way into rotation, while South Pacific was shelved; they wanted nothing about soldiers still fighting any foreign war. So many well-known shows were tabled in favor of less troubling but forgotten shows that now only Josie could recall. Jackie Gleason in Take Me Along—a vehicle for Gleason to be Gleason. Richard Derr and Shirl (Shirl!) Conway in Plain and Fancy, about New Yorkers in Amish country. Pippin was out, the words circled by her father, then crossed out: “And then the men go marching out into the fray/Conquering the enemy and carrying the day/Hark! The blood is pounding in our ears/Jubilations! We can hear a grateful nation’s cheers!” That wouldn’t work.

  The first musical Josie remembered well was Redhead, a show built around Gwen Verdon. The first seconds of the record were a revelation: everything was manic. The wall of delirious optimism appealed to her as a child, though her parents studied the words for controversy. They consulted her sometimes, danced with her occasionally—there was a time when their home had something in common with the bizarre happiness of dozens of people singing from a stage to darkened strangers who’d paid for joy and release. She remembered her mother, on her back with her legs in the air, doing some kind of yoga stretch, her father trying to put Josie on his shoulders to dance, finding the ceiling too low, her hitting her head, the two of them laughing, her mother admonishing, and the musical went on. Josie, in those years, pictured her parents’ lives at work as a similar sort of nonstop party, the soldiers dancing, too, with their simple and solvable problems—broken arms and legs, a few days in and then out again, her parents serving them jello and fluffing their pillows.

  “It smells,” Ana said from the back.

  Josie turned down the radio.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Paul agreed, something was off. Ana suggested skunk, but it was not skunk. It smelled like something in the engine, but then again it wasn’t the smell of oil or gears or gasoline.

  Josie opened the windows in the cab and Paul opened the kitchen windows. The smell dissipated but was still present.

  “I can really smell it here,” Paul said. Ana said her head hurt, then Paul had a headache, too.

  At a rest stop Josie pulled over and crawled back to the kitchenette. Now the smell was much stronger—it was a faintly industrial smell that spoke of great evil.

  “Get out,” she said.

  Ana thought this was funny, and pretended to be asleep, her head resting on the kitchenette table.

  “Now!” Josie yelled, and Paul unbuckled her and pushed her in front of him until the two of them were down the steps.

  “Get on the grass,” Josie said. Now she knew what it was. The gas was on. All four knobs had been turned full right. She had the momentary thought that she should jump out, that the whole vehicle might explode if she even touched the stove. But, inexplicably wanting to preserve the Chateau, their new home, she reached over, turned all four knobs hard left and then jumped down from the doorway, pushing Paul and Ana, who were standing on the grass, Paul behind Ana, hands on her shoulders, until they were all fifty yards away and panting. The Chateau stood still, unexploded.

  A car passed, heading toward the RV, and Josie ran to the parking lot, directing them to make a wide berth around the Chateau. “What is it?” the man asked. He was a grandfather with three kids in the backseat.

  “Gas was turned on. From the stove,” Josie said.

  “You should turn it off,” Grandpa said.

  “Thank you,” Josie said. “You’re very helpful.”

  He turned his station wagon around, and Josie crouched in front of Ana, who was holding her ThunderCats figure in front of her in self-defense. How had she grabbed that on her way out? She had found time to grab her ThunderCats figure while fleeing an imminent gas explosion. “Did you know you almost caused a very bad accident?” Josie asked her.

  Ana shook her head, her eyes wide but defiant.

  “She turned the gas on?” Paul asked Josie. He turned to Ana. “Did you turn all the knobs on the stove?”

  Ana looked at her knees.

  “Ana, that’s really bad,” he said. This was, Josie knew, the worst thing he’d ever said to her. Ana’s chin shook, and she began to cry, and Josie stood, satisfied. She wanted Ana to cry for once, to feel remorse for once. Ana’s nickname for most of last year was Sorry, given how often she had to say the word, but this had almost no effect on her tendency to put herself and her family in grave danger.

  This is a kind of life, Josie thought. She stood, looking around, noticing now that they had parked next to a beautiful round lake, the surface so clean and placid that the sky was reflected in it, in perfect symmetry. Looking at it, Josie felt a certain calm as she cycled through some questions and observations. She wondered how close to death they’d actually been. Could they have all died at midmorning, on a sunny Alaskan day? She wondered, with some seriousness, if Ana was an emissary from another realm, disguised as a child but tasked with the murder of Josie and Paul. She wondered how long they needed before the Chateau was clear of deadly fumes. She wondered what a life was—if this was a life. Was this a life? And she wondered about the gene she possessed, some strangling DNA thread that told her, daily, that she was not where she should be. In college she changed her major every semester—first psychology, then international studies, then art history, then political science, and all the while she was on campus she wanted to be away, away from the pedestrian workaday nonsense of most of her classes and the directionless pathos of most of her peers. She went to Panama, and felt briefly vital, but then tired of shitting in a hole and sleeping under a net, and wanted to be in London. In London she wanted to be in Oregon. In Oregon she wanted to be in Ohio, and in Ohio she was sure she needed to be here, in Alaska, and now, she wanted to be where? Where, for fuck’s sake? For starters, somewhere high above all this filth and calamity.

  “Mom, take my picture.” It was Ana. Her pants were around her ankles, her hands outstretched, as if ready to catch a falling man.

  Josie took her picture.

  —

  They made it to Homer. It was only one o’clock. Josie pulled into the Cliffside RV park and paid sixty-five dollars for the night, and then they headed out again, down the road, toward the spit. Or the Spit. It was where most of the action in Homer was, Sam had said, so Josie descended from the hills and down the two-lane road onto the narrow promontory jutting into Kachemak Bay. Sure, it was pretty, Josie thought, without being Seward. For Josie nothing had compared to Seward. Maybe the closeness of those mountains. The hard mirror of that bay. The icebergs like lost ships. Charlie.

  On the Spit’s main drag there were some old buildings that had real or former fishing operations in them, and there was a stretch of stores and restaurants, so, realizing they hadn’t eaten, Josie parked the Chateau next to another, far more luxurious recreational vehicle, knowing this would make its owners happy, to know they were better than her, than her children. Josie ducked under the sink, pulled a handful of twenties from the velvet bag, and they left.

  She took Paul and Ana by their hands and crossed traffic, heading for a pizza restaurant that looked, from the outside, as though it had been made from broken ships—the exterior was a
mess of bent walls and masts and crooked windows, everything blue-grey, like driftwood. The door was covered in stickers denying entry to those without shoes, with dogs, to unaccompanied children, to smokers and Republicans. Under that last admonition were the words “Just Kidding,” and under that, “Not Really.” Inside it was light-filled and warm and staffed exclusively by women. It seemed to be some kind of political pizza place, a pizza restaurant embodying its version of utopia. There was a giant stone oven in the middle of the first floor, and five or so young women buzzed about it, all in white aprons and blue shirts, all with short hair or ponytails. Josie ordered a pizza, afraid to look at the price, and the woman behind the counter, with a pixie cut and exhausted eyes, told her to sit upstairs anywhere.

  The second floor was bright, glassed in and overlooking the sound. The sun was so hot there that they all took off their jackets and long-sleeve shirts and were still warm in their short sleeves. Ana asked if she could have a knife and Josie said no. Paul tried to explain to his sister why knives were dangerous but Ana had already gone to the bathroom and in seconds there was the sound of something falling. She returned to the table, saying nothing.

  “Can you check the bathroom?” Josie asked Paul, and he leapt up, knowing he was on a mission that combined his dual loves: checking after his sister, and pointing out the wrongness of someone else’s behavior.

  He returned. “Looks pretty bad,” he said, and turned to Ana. Ana wasn’t listening; she had caught sight of a motorboat cutting across the bay.

  Josie stepped into the bathroom and found a towel rack on the ground, knowing Ana had made it this way, and knowing that only Ana could have separated the towel rack from the wall this quickly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of customers had no doubt used this bathroom and this rack without breaking it, but Ana had done so in less than ninety seconds.

  The political pizza place had had an intoxicating effect on her already, for Josie found herself not caring about the towel rack. In fact she was briefly stunned, undeniably impressed, that this girl had that acute a sense for the weakness of objects. That she could enter any room, any bathroom in Homer, and know the object most likely to be broken, and just how to go about it.

  She went down and told one of the women that one of her kids had broken the towel rack.

  “How’d he do it?” the woman said. A different woman—with feathered earrings—was pulling something from the oven.

  “It was my daughter,” Josie said, and now Josie knew she wouldn’t have to pay for the damage. Her leverage was invisible but real.

  “Just leave it up there,” the woman said. “We’ll get it.”

  Josie ordered a glass of chardonnay and two milks.

  Upstairs, it was two p.m. but felt like sunrise. The light on the water was tap-dancing wildly, trying too hard, really, and there was some boat out there they were watching—some great yacht with a thousand white sails. Josie finished her chardonnay and when one of the political pizza women, a third, with a sheep’s black curls all over her big head, brought the food up, a lumpy pizza served on what appeared to be a piece of bark, Josie ordered another glass.

  This was why people linger. Sometimes a place asks you to stay, to not rush anywhere, that it’s warm, and there’s the tap-dancing water, and the powder-blue sky, and they had the second floor to themselves. Josie felt that if anyone else came up there she would drive them away, she would throw a knife. This was now their home.

  Soon Ana was standing on the floor, using her chair as her table, eating her slice with her elbows on the seat. She was a disgusting shark-child but Josie loved her monumentally at that moment. Her never-questioning confidence in herself, in how her limbs should work, made clear she would always do things her way and never wonder if it was the right way—this meant she could be president and certainly would always be happy. She wiped her mouth on her arm like a feasting barbarian, and Josie smiled at her and winked. The sun swished around in the gold in her glass and it sang a song of tomorrow. Josie drank it down.

  The kids ate two slices each and Josie had two, and then wanted more wine. She asked the kids if they wanted anything. They didn’t, but she convinced them they wanted some of the cookies she saw in a jar on the counter downstairs. Then she convinced Paul it would be great fun if they wrote an order down on paper, and if he brought it down to the political pizza women. Josie didn’t want to see their eyes or puckered mouths when they heard her order a third chardonnay at three p.m. on a Monday. And besides, Paul was at a stage where he liked to be entrusted with making a phone call, with punching in ATM codes, with running into the 7-Eleven himself. He knew it would be a decade before Ana would be allowed to do this kind of thing. He knew he was responsible and he liked proving it.

  She wrote out the order: 1 milk, 2 cookies, 1 chardonnay, and the check, and Paul took it downstairs. He returned a few minutes later with another bark plate, all the items balanced on top. He was struggling a bit, and Josie thought, for a fleeting second, that she could get up and help him, but would he really want that? She stayed put.

  He made it to the table, and looked at her with a terror that seemed to question whether or not his parent really knew what she was doing. To put him at ease Josie smiled benevolently, like a grandma-saint. She wanted to toast him, and briefly raised her glass, but thought the better of it. “Look at the new ship,” she said, before turning toward the bay and realizing it was the same one she’d seen before.

  The chardonnay ennobled her, made her stupid. Her tongue grew and could no longer form words. She didn’t want her children hearing her slur in the afternoon so she said she was resting her eyes, to soak in the warmth of the sun, and she raised her face to the streaked glass ceiling. Josie saw Jeremy’s face, then her father’s, and heard her father, in his white nurse’s uniform, joking about sticking his head in the oven. Josie opened her eyes and saw Paul and Ana standing, his face near the back window, watching a pair of dogs humping in the dunes.

  After Carl she’d alternated between complete indifference to any carnal pursuits—she had no urges, no drive, made no plans, could muster nothing approaching an effort—and then, once every six weeks, there would be a calling within her, something like possession, and she would be in heat. She occasionally slept with Tyler, a high-school boyfriend. No, not a boyfriend. Someone she’d known glancingly in high school and with whom, through the miracle of internet nostalgia-sex, she had reunited. He’d written to her one day, attached a photo of her in her Halloween costume—she’d gone as Sally Bowles from Cabaret after her unsuccessful audition (I defy thy verdict, Ms. Finesta!). She recalled the feel of the tight satin on her legs in the cool night, the silver wig, and remembered her many admirers that evening and in the days after. A pair of satin tights, a black vest and the imaginations of hundreds of boys were alive for decades. So Tyler re-found some picture, called, said he was in town—passing through. Okay, fine. They ate pasta, drank numbing red wine and later, in his hotel, he did a fine job with his small cock until he became determined to stick his finger in her ass. He tried it once and Josie moved herself in a discouraging way. Five minutes later he tried again, and this time she gently pushed his hand away, assuming the matter settled. He tried once more, though, five minutes later, and this time she tried to make it funny, laughing a bit as she said, “Why are you so hellbent on sticking your finger in my ass?”—but despite her caution and obvious decorum he pulled away, pulled himself out of her, no great loss, and then—this part was delightful—he smelled his finger. Very slowly, very discreetly, as if he was just scratching his nose. He even looked away when he did it! Out the window! As if hoping he’d gotten at least a little bit of her feces on his forefinger before she’d thwarted him. That was why he’d been sticking his finger in there. To smell the finger afterward. He was memorable. And there was the other man, the one who died. The last man she’d slept with had died a few weeks later. How did she feel about this?

  Vincent. He had been a kind man. A kind man who had sa
id he would never leave her. For the children, he’d said, and she had appreciated this, his grave seriousness about not damaging her children in any way by entering and exiting their lives, for he knew about their father, Carl’s powers of invisibility. I won’t leave you, he said. I won’t do that to your kids, he said. Never mind that he barely knew them and they couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. It was too soon. She understood he meant well, but after two months of seeing each other, he had said that if they were ever to break up it would have to be her doing it. He could not abandon her. He would be in it for the long haul. She was flattered, maybe even impressed, but it was a bit constraining, no? She asked her friends: This was constraining, yes? To be told that this man would be attached to you, for the sake of the children he does not really know, for eternity.

  He had a habit of watching her as she watched movies. He caught her tearing up during an Iraq War soldier-widow movie and after that, every time there was an emotional scene of any kind on the screen before them, he turned to her. She could always sense in the dark his face angling toward her, to see if she was crying, or about to cry, or welling up. To what end? What internal score sheet was he keeping? He didn’t carry a handkerchief and never offered her a tissue. But he’d been indoctrinated. Stay with woman for sake of children. Watch woman and her displays of emotion.