by Andrew Smith
I was thirteen years old the day I learned how to drive, but I was as tall as my father and could easily manage the controls on the vehicle. I did end up crashing the car twice, which made Robby and my father laugh very much. We had plenty of automobiles, so it didn’t matter that I’d crashed the car more than it may have mattered if we’d all had to walk back to our hole.
And it was nobody’s intent that I learn how to drive that day, either. My father and Robby didn’t even tell anyone that we were leaving; they’d hoped nobody would notice, which was not likely when the population in the hole suddenly declined by about forty percent. The original plan was to take me fishing through a hole in the ice at a place called Clear Lake.
It was all very confusing to me—fishing through a hole. I had never seen an actual fish in my life, much less a lake. To be truthful, I did not see a lake that day either, because Clear Lake, frozen over as it was, looked exactly like a barren, treeless field covered in white.
We left before sunrise. My father and Robby woke me up. I had been sleeping in the bed next to my father’s, which is where I usually slept, especially ever since Wendy made rules about segregating boys and girls—or, more accurately, the boy and the girl. They leaned over my bed, dressed in heavy clothing—jackets, overalls, long underwear, hats, gloves—which made me think they were coming to tell me good-bye before leaving on one of their runs where they’d scavenge supplies and other unnecessary things, like puzzles of visible men for me.
My father put his hand on the side of my face, which was damp from sleep sweat.
“Hey, Luck. Get up,” my father said.
I opened my eyes, and he said, “Let’s get you dressed. We boys are going on a secret mission.”
I thought about everything secret we could ever do. I thought about being on the Titanic, in the middle of an ocean. I thought about shouting and running, wild, as fast as we all could, without end, away from the hole.
All boys dream of going on secret missions with their fathers.
They dressed me in an outfit similar to theirs: thick wool socks and red, button-up long underwear that came inside a plastic bag, frozen in time from an Iowa crowded with humans, before the hole. I pulled on some stiff, dark-tan-colored overalls that said CARHARTT on them. Then I had gloves, a flannel shirt that I tucked down inside the bib on my overalls before hooking the suspender straps over my shoulders, a heavy jacket, and boots that laced up to my ankles and felt strangely weighted on my usually shoeless feet. But my favorite thing they gave me was the hat. There was a bill on the hat, and it was lined with soft yellow fur. It had flaps that could cover my ears and fasten together under my chin. And everything was older than me, but was also new, which was hard for me to imagine. All these clothes had never been worn by any other human being until I’d put them on down here inside our hole. It made me feel different and somehow disconnected from the hole.
In the hole, when I wore anything besides just underwear, it was the thin white-and-blue jumpsuits that said EDEN on them—the ones I hated, the same suits everyone else in the hole always wore. Putting on all those clothes Robby and my father brought for me made me feel free, despite their confining heaviness.
It’s hard to explain.
“You look like a real dynamo,” Robby told me after I finished dressing.
I didn’t know what he meant.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“A boy from Iowa,” my father explained.
“I’m a boy from under Iowa,” I said.
We stole out into the bitter-cold darkness of an Iowan winter’s morning.
When Robby turned our truck north onto Highway 65, the edge of the world to the east of us was just beginning to glow with pale light. My father and Robby smoked cigarettes and played music, which Robby sang along with. The morning was spectacular, wonderful, and magic, and I believed that if I had died at that moment, I would have been happier than I’d ever been in my life.
I understood—at least partially—why Robby and my father—the boys—always went away from us. It was so thrilling that I was afraid I couldn’t take it all in and keep it with me. If I had been Max Beckmann, I would have painted a big blue swirling image of the three of us crowded together in the front seat of a four-wheel-drive Ford truck going north on the ice-covered highway while frozen stars twinkled above like the ghosts of everyone who had ever been here before I was born.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever done since I was sixteen years old,” my father said.
He put his arm around me.
I sat in the middle, watching the miracle of the Ford’s headlamps skimming over the glaze on the roadway as we rushed forward.
Robby put his arm around me too. He said, “What do you think, Arek?”
I said, “I never want to go back.”
Robby squeezed me, and my father told me he loved me, then leaned over and kissed the side of my face. The truck slowed down, and drifted diagonally forward a few seconds before stopping in the middle of the highway. Then Robby opened his door and got out.
He dropped his cigarette in the road. “Come on, Arek. Let’s trade places. I want to show you how to drive. You need to be able to do it. Don’t be afraid. There’s no way on earth you could possibly be worse at it than your dad is.”
My heart raced. I forgot about everything that had ever happened in my entire life up to that moment. I forgot about the hole. I forgot about my mother’s sadness. I even forgot about Mel—how I used to take baths with her, and even sleep next to her, holding her close in the same bed when we were children. All there was now was this endless day just beginning, the road in front of us without end, being here with Robby and my father in the freezing dawn, dressed like a human being, and nearly—nearly—straddling time.
When Robby told me to press down on the long pedal beneath my right foot, the back end of the truck spun counterclockwise down the highway in front of us, which was now in back of us.
I pressed too hard, and our truck whirled around twice before ending up in the shallow ditch on the east side of the road.
Robby and Dad thought it was funny.
I was scared and embarrassed. Also, I crashed into a sign that looked like this:
It looked like that, except it was flattened down and pointing up at the sky, as opposed to down the highway behind us, which was how it was facing before I made the truck spin around.
“Maybe you should drive again, Robby,” I said.
“Don’t be silly!” Robby said.
“I am trying not to be silly, which is why I think I should stop driving now.”
“Just hang in there,” Robby told me.
But in twenty minutes, when I had to turn left near a place called Mason City, we crashed into another sign that said:
ENTERING POULTRY CONTROLLED AREA
The truck was a mess.
Part of the bumper hung down in front of the right wheel. It scraped the roadway and made a terrible racket. Also, the headlamp and one of the mirrors on the side of the passenger door were missing.
“Things like this are bound to happen when you put poultry in control,” my father said.
“Exactly,” Robby agreed. Then he exhaled an impressive cloud of cigarette smoke and said to me, “Drive on, Arek. We are almost there.”
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?
We made it to Clear Lake—alive—just after sunrise.
I watched as Robby, a cigarette dangling from his lips, cut a perfectly round hole in the white field we stood on using something that looked like a motorized wine opener for a giant. There was indeed a lake beneath our feet.
“What if the ice breaks?” I said.
“It won’t,” my dad answered.
I looked back at where I’d parked the broken-up truck, and then at my boots, worried about the integrity of the ground. “At least the Titanic had lifeboats.”
“Don’t worry so much,” my father said. “Fishing with your dad is a rite of boyhood.”
/> “Did you ever fish with your dad?”
My father didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. I saw his eyes turn to before eyes.
Robby dragged an ice chest out from the back of the truck and parked it beside the little hole in the frozen lake. He and my dad sat on the chest next to each other and instructed me on how to use the small pole and line. They told me I had to twitch the bait until I felt something tug at it. I made certain the ice hole was too small for me to fit through. I had no idea what might be down there, pulling on the opposite end of the line I held on to.
They lit a fire in a small steel tub, and my dad cooked us a breakfast of eggs and warmed biscuits he’d brought from our kitchen inside the hole.
It was a spectacular morning—so blue and bright that it hurt my eyes and the muscles in my cheeks. I was not used to such beauty. I wished I could paint like Max Beckmann. The day swelled inside my chest, the same way Amelie did.
“Why have you never taken me outside like this before?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “Your mother and grandmother would never stand for it.”
Robby nodded. “There will be hell to pay when we get home, Porcupine.”
Robby called my dad Porcupine. I didn’t know why, but I thought it was funny.
“What do you pay in hell?” I asked.
My dad said, “Missed opportunities for days like this, I guess.”
The line jerked. The tip of the pole stabbed downward. I screamed a little.
Something angry and alive was on the end of my line.
• • •
I caught a bucketful of yellow bass that day. It was an amazing thing.
They weren’t actually yellow, in my opinion—Dad explained that was just their name. They were in truth more of a dirty-brown color, like honey, and they had thin, black horizontal stripes running along their sides. And inside their mouths, behind the opening of their gills was the most brilliant color of red I’d ever seen. It’s hard to explain, but I also thought the fish had extremely disappointed expressions on their faces.
I couldn’t decide whether they were disappointed for spending their lives in a hole, or disappointed for having to leave it.
My father told me we were going to take the fish home, that we’d eat them for dinner that night, and maybe Mom and Wendy wouldn’t be so angry about how the three of us boys ran away from home for a day.
If bringing home a bucket of fish softened their anger at all, it would have been terrifying to see what things would have been like had we come home empty-handed.
Robby and Dad had brought a bottle of whiskey with us to Clear Lake. They both got extremely drunk while I stood over the little hole in the ice and caught fish. I thought it was funny. They wrestled in the snow and ice, laughing, pretending to fight, and each one alternately letting the other play as though he’d won. They kissed, too—not the kind of kiss like when Dad would put his lips to my forehead at night before bedtime and tell me he loved me and how I was the best thing that had ever happened to him; they kissed like people did in some of the movies we’d watch together in the theater in our hole. They kissed the way nobody else in the hole ever kissed—the way I wanted to kiss Mel, only I was too afraid to try, and too scared of Wendy, besides.
It wasn’t as though I’d never seen my two fathers kiss like that before. They were definitely not inhibited around me. My mother had asked me at times if I’d ever seen Dad and Robby kiss, or if they ever slept in the same bed together, and I’d always lie to her or change the subject, because it didn’t really matter, and it would only add to the complexity of her sadness. I told Dad about it. I told him I’d said, “I don’t know,” and my father said “I don’t know” is teenage-boy speak for “Leave me alone.” Still, it was something Dad and Robby never did around anyone else, and they knew I’d never say anything about it, anyway.
It didn’t matter.
In many ways, I was simultaneously happy about it and jealous, too.
“Hey!” I said. “I caught another fish! I thought we came on this secret mission so we could all fish together.”
Robby and my dad got up from the frozen lake surface. Robby brushed powdery ice crystals off Dad’s shoulders and back. Robby’s hat fell off. There were sparkling diamonds of snow in his hair. They laughed and wobbled a bit when they stood. I could see how happy they were, and I could almost feel the heat radiating from their red cheeks.
“Sorry, Lucky,” my dad said.
“It’s okay. I thought you guys forgot I was even here.”
They sat down on the ice chest and passed the whiskey bottle back and forth between them. Then they lit their inevitable cigarettes.
I put the fishing pole down and sat beside them in the snow, next to our little fire.
On that day, after thirteen years in the hole, I believed I had found something I’d never known was there. What I found, I think, was my father.
I would lose him again that night.
• • •
I drove the entire way back to our hole without crashing once.
I felt powerful and in charge. I’d never had any idea what being so far outside the hole could do for a thirteen-year-old boy.
Let me make a few things clear about that trip:
Robby and Dad sat beside me in the front seat, smoking cigarettes and passing the bottle of whiskey back and forth from time to time. Even though the trip back to the hole consisted of one right turn and one left turn, with a bunch of nothing but ruler-straight, ice-covered roadway in between, we would have definitely gotten lost if either of the boys had attempted to drive.
And when we were heading east on Highway 20, I nearly did crash the truck, because there was something massive and black standing in the middle of the road. Whatever it was had not been there when we had passed this way in the morning.
Dad and Robby didn’t notice anything until I stopped the truck about two hundred feet away from the thing.
I said, “Fish in a fuckbucket!”
That was the first time in my life I had ever seen one of the things—one of the monsters that had been responsible for our life in the hole—an Unstoppable Soldier. I had seen my father’s drawings, and he’d shown me photographs of insects called praying mantises, telling me, “Imagine this thing, towering over you, nine or ten feet tall.”
And he’d explained that in the summers, when it was warm, the things were usually green or the color of dry straw, but in winter the ones that survived—because they’d frequently die off in massive numbers—turned a dull, ashy black.
My dad took another drink, then puffed his cigarette and said, “Yep.”
Robby nodded. “Uh-huh.”
Then my dad said, “Pull up a little closer, son.”
And I had never said this to my father before, nor since, but I asked him this: “Dad, are you out of your fucking mind?”
I was shaking, about to vomit, and I needed to pee worse than I’d ever needed to pee in memory. I clenched my penis with my left hand to stop myself from urinating all over inside my new Iowa-boy outfit. Thirteen is too old to pee yourself in front of your dad.
My right hand was paralyzed, cemented to the steering wheel.
Robby casually reached into the backseat and grabbed one of the paintball rifles.
He said, “It’s okay, Arek. Just stay put.”
Staying put at that moment was the only thing I possibly could do.
The thing in the road saw us. It opened its spiked arms and raised them above its head, but I could see the thing was weighed down and sluggish from the cold. I had never seen anything so horrifying in my life.
Robby opened his door and got out of the truck.
And I thought, What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?
I wanted to turn the truck around and go as far and as fast as I could away from here.
Then my dad got out, without the other rifle. He was still smoking and holding on to the whiskey bottle. And then I actually did say, “
What the fuck are you doing?”
Robby walked forward. He sang, “Why don’t we duh-do it in the road . . .”
Dad followed him. “Let’s do this, Rob.”
They’d left their door open.
Robby had gotten about halfway between the truck and the giant salivating insect. My dad took a swig of whiskey. Robby kept singing, “No one will be watching us . . .”
I said, “Fuck you both!” and unfroze my right hand so I could reach across and slam shut the passenger door. Then I locked it. Then I thought, Why am I locking my dads out there with that fucking monster?
I was terrified, and very confused.
Pop!
Robby squeezed off just one shot, and that was it. Then my two fathers fell down in the road, laughing like lunatics and kicking their feet in the air.
And I left a substantial amount of vomit and piss in the middle of Iowa Highway 20 behind the rear gate of our battered Ford truck.
A Very Short Chapter About Fish and the Sea
This all will stand as a sort of explanation for why it was that my mother, Shannon Collins, rarely said anything to my father, and ultimately to me as well, after that day when I was thirteen years old and climbed down the ladder beneath the hatch, dressed like a before-the-hole Iowa boy, proudly carrying a bucket of dead fish.
I think Mom knew something about the desire we boys felt to run away from the hole.
It made me wonder sometimes about Louis—if he felt the urge as well. But he was always so unexcitedly content with everything about the hole, especially with his role as our little society’s chef; and he and Connie were so obviously in love with each other, even if I’d never seen them kiss the way I’d seen Robby and Dad do it.
And when Robby and Dad—my two fathers—followed me down into the hole and secured the hatch behind them, red faced, zigzagging all crooked legged, smiling, my mom silently stared at each of them for a long time, then said to my father, “Austin, are you and Robby drunk?”
