by Andrew Smith
Max Beckmann liked fish.
I often get sad when I think of fish.
And when I look at the painting, it’s almost as though I can hear things—lonely music being played by a busker, sounds from the street below—even though I have never actually heard such things in my life. Or the women might be Beckmann’s Sirens, luring the mortals drifting in the city below their terrace toward the inevitable misfortune of the hole.
The painting conjures the smell of cigarettes.
I imagine my mother, Shannon, who spun the thread of me, is the woman in white. She occupies the entire right half of the painting, and we see her partially through the rippled glass of the open window. She holds a mirror in her right hand but is not looking into it. The mirror seems to be pointing toward the face of the woman in yellow, the rule maker, Wendy, the measurer of all things, who sits predictably at the apex of the painting, between Connie, who is wearing a green dress, and my mother, the one in white.
The maker of the rules, Wendy, the measurer of all things, dominates the painting. Of course she would. And she’s preoccupied with herself too, as she fluffs her hair while looking into the mirror held by my mother. She’s wearing an enormous lopsided hat covered with green and yellow feathers. But what is so disturbing about the image is that if you look closely, there is a second face behind Wendy, difficult to see at first, like the face most of us in the hole chose to ignore. The face is dark, frightening, and its teeth are sunk into Wendy’s left shoulder.
But her hat and hair are perfect.
• • •
“They wouldn’t wait out there,” Shannon said. “Nobody would do that.”
“We will keep looking every day until they do come back. It’s the least we can do,” Wendy said, issuing another rule, the tireless Siren of the hole.
“Actually, we could do less than that,” Connie pointed out, smiling.
And Wendy, already thinking about the loneliness of church and the next Christmas in the hole with half the population absent, looked directly at Shannon and said, “Don’t you even care that they’re gone? It’s your son. You have to know what they’re doing out there.” Although she asked the question to Shannon, it was clear she was talking to Connie, whose son was also gone.
“Are you talking about Arek and Mel, or Robby and Austin?” Connie asked.
“They’re all so useless. Goddamned boys,” Wendy said. “You’re lucky she had a daughter, Shann, otherwise Arek would probably have grown up exactly like his disgusting father. Anyway, you have to know what they’re doing out there—Austin and Arek.”
Shannon pondered the unknowable.
She said, “Do I have to know? Will it make anything different for you?”
As though the hole would digest them all if we resisted the call to return.
Connie could smell the bread Louis was baking, far off in the kitchen.
The Machine in the Forest
It was Mel’s sixteenth birthday.
After four weeks, the weather turned very warm. Trees exploded with leaves and color. And the only Unstoppable Soldiers we’d seen were dead, empty husks.
Something was wrong. Or maybe something had been wrong for the sixteen years Mel and I had spent in the hole.
Our journey had not become boring, nor was it reduced in any way to a chore. And every day, Mel and I pieced together a larger and larger universe that included such things as baseball stadiums, lightning, Kentucky Fried Chicken establishments, empty school buses, stop signs, hailstones, buildings so tall they were terrifying to look at, billboard advertisements for pregnancy counseling, and a giant water tower painted to look like a pumpkin with a face on it.
We constructed meaning from the data that was available to us, and we were comfortable in accepting our certain incompetence.
On a day when I was not sure about anything, I thought Mel and I may have been in southern Kentucky. It was late morning, and I’d pulled the van onto a gravel driveway that cut through thick dark woods past a sign that said:
SHAWNEE
NATIONAL FOREST
I said, “Why settle for a forest, when you can have a national forest?”
Mel sat beside me in the passenger seat. The map books lay beneath her feet, largely ignored on the floor. We’d given up using them days before, because so many of the roads we tried to take had become impassable. As a tool for determining our path, they were useless. The only good they served was in helping us determine where we were.
We had to turn around four times due to collapsed bridges.
So I drove in what I thought was a general direction that would take us closer to Nashville, always in the belief that my fathers were still out here, and they were waiting for me.
“What do you think a national forest was supposed to be?” Mel asked.
“Well, clearly, before the hole, national forests were places where all the trees formed separate nations and then went to war with one another, conducted elaborate espionage schemes, and conquered parts of the forest’s territory where maybe the water was better, or there were more abundant nutrients. Nations of trees invaded other nations of trees, enslaving them, murdering them, forcing them to adopt new languages, customs, and religions that required circumcision of all boys, because that’s what nations have always done. Now, after the hole, there’s no entertainment value in waging war of any kind, since there is not a large enough human audience left to enjoy the spectacle. This explains why this particular national forest appears to be so calm and tranquil,” I said.
All stories are true.
“In that case, we mustn’t do anything to let the trees know we’re watching them.”
I said, “Definitely. Nobody wants to be held accountable for the renaissance of global warfare.”
Mel agreed. “Definitely.”
“Let’s go see what’s out there.”
“Okay.”
The day was humid and still, and the air in the forest smelled alive, swirling with insects and birds, but not the kind that peck you to death. I carried the paintball gun and a small backpack that held the .45, a knife, and one of our flashlights. I was hoping to find a nice place with water, so I was only wearing boxer shorts and basketball shoes with no socks, and my number 42 rule-breaker tank top.
We learned that sleeveless T-shirts were called tank tops when we found a package of them that were made just for women in a demolished clothing store before we crossed the river into Illinois. In some ways the find was disappointing. The boys’ basketball team tank top I had taken for Mel had very large openings around the arms, so I could see the softness of her breasts when she wore it. The women’s tank tops didn’t do that.
I supposed the before-the-hole gender segregation in terms of clothing design may have served some practical functions, like the fly openings on boxer shorts, for example. And the women’s model tank tops looked good on Mel, besides. She also wore girls’ sneakers and shorts that were very tight on her, which made her look small and light, like she could float away from me if she only raised up her arms to the sky and willed it to happen.
At the end of the parking area was an arch-shaped tunnel that led us back a few hundred yards into the opening of the forest. As soon as we came out of the tunnel, both of us were struck by an overwhelming and silent awe of the scale and beauty of the place.
It was magnificent.
“Oh my gosh, Arek.”
“Yeah.”
For all the weeks we’d been driving around on paved roadways that passed through walls of wooded lands, this was the first time that Mel and I had actually ventured some distance out into the trees. I had no idea it would be like this.
At the back of the tunnel was a post that had a carved wooden sign with yellow arrows pointing to different trail openings with names of destinations and distances. We chose the arrow that promised a waterfall in 1.2 miles and started down the trail.
The path we took was overgrown with brush and young trees. In many places, Mel or I would
take turns bending back branches to open a doorway for whichever of us was in the back, leapfrogging like this until we got to more open ground. But the trail was easy to follow. We were up on a high bluff, walking along the edge of a stone cliff that dropped directly down to a line of trees and a shallow river that was the most welcoming shade of blue green.
“I want to put my feet in that water,” I said.
“So do I.”
I swallowed. I thought about being eleven years old again.
When the slope of the bluff we were following began to descend into the tree line, we heard a faint and constant rumble that almost sounded like an idling engine. We stopped and listened, without saying anything.
“Do you think there’s someone out there?” Mel asked.
Whirrrrr . . .
It was strange, but for the first time after traveling so far from the hole in search of someone—anyone—the thought of encountering other human beings was suddenly frightening.
I shook my head. I whispered, “I don’t know. If we keep quiet, we might be able to see them without being noticed.”
We crept farther down the slope.
Whirrrrr . . .
As we moved forward, the sound grew louder, until it became a near roar, some kind of massive machine that must have been as big as a mountain. The closer we got, the more the thing began to sound like an angry fire.
“Maybe we should turn around,” I said.
Mel grabbed my hand and tugged me onward. I would have gladly thrown myself into the flames for that confident touch of her hand. She said, “Let’s just see what it is.”
We rounded a bend in the trail, keeping close to the edge of the woods in order to remain hidden, and when we peeked out from the cover, we found the machine in the forest that had been making all that noise.
Here the river broadened out into a deep circular pool that butted up against the sheer face of a twenty-foot granite cliff. The rim of the cliff sloped down from both sides into a gentle dip, and over the edge spilled a frothy cascade of water.
I had seen waterfalls before, in paintings and photographs from before the hole, but being here in the presence of one so massive felt almost holy.
We could smell the droplets of water floating in the air, feel the marked rise in humidity as the path took us around the pool and closer to the base of the falls, and the sound became more and more intense, rising up in hypnotic vibrations through the soles of our feet.
“Add one waterfall to the universe,” I said.
“This is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen,” Mel said.
And I thought, One of the most perfect things.
In seconds I’d kicked off my shoes, dropped the rifle and backpack, and slipped out of my shirt. “I’m going in.”
“Be careful.”
The rocks at the edge of the pool were slippery and uneven. I stumbled and had to catch myself with my hands. The water was so cold it made my chest and belly tighten. But the bottom fell away quickly, and soon I was wading out to where the water was past my shoulders and up to my chin. It was incredible.
But I didn’t know how to swim.
There was never any reason or place for swimming in the hole, but I thought I could do it if I needed to. I was not afraid to try.
I looked back at Mel, who had her eyes fixed on me, waiting on the shore.
“You should come in, Mel. This is fantastic.”
“Okay. Just be careful.”
Mel slipped her feet out of her shoes and then tiptoed to the edge of the pool.
She said, “It’s freezing!”
“It’s really nice when you get in. Trust me.”
Mel crossed her arms at her waist and peeled her tank top up over her head. She tossed it back to where she’d left her shoes. I couldn’t believe I was watching Mel undress right there in the sunlight, at the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life. I felt nervous, like I should turn away from her or something, but I knew she would only tell me I was acting dumb and I needed to stop doing that. She stepped out of her shorts and stood, completely naked in front of me, at the water’s edge.
Amelie Sing Brees was perfect.
I felt as though I were painting an image in my mind—for the first time in my life—with Arek Andrzej Szczerba’s after-the-hole eyes, and I never wanted to look at things any other way. And I felt stupid and embarrassed for myself that I had some goddamned John Deere boxers with pictures of tractors on them, but I couldn’t strip out of them now and risk making this day into something forced and unnatural. So I just put up with the fact that of the two of us, Mel was braver and far less polluted by before-the-hole rules and hang-ups.
Why did I have to be like that?
Mel looked directly at me. I wanted to turn away but forced myself not to.
I wiped my hands across my face and said, “Come on. It’s really nice. You’ll see.”
Swimming and Not Drowning
We spent an hour playing in the pool beneath the falls.
And we managed, struggling and awkward, to swim out to where the water was too deep to feel the bottom, just so we could be right beneath the place where the cascading falls tumbled down over the edge of the granite cliff.
At one point Mel tried to steady herself by grabbing my shoulder but only managed to push my head below the surface, and then our legs tangled, and I ended up against her body, and her breasts met my chest. My hands traced down the curve of her spine and over her butt. It was all completely innocent and fun. I marveled at the fact that I was not thinking at all about having sex with Mel, and that I didn’t have an erection for maybe the first time in what seemed like a month. So I wondered if there maybe was something wrong with me, but I shrugged it off and allowed myself to simply be here in this moment, after the fucking hole, and share this simple experience that before-the-hole human beings had undoubtedly undervalued for century upon century; to just have fun with the person who was the closest, most dependable friend in my life.
We sat on the rocks and dried in the sun.
Mel put on my basketball tank top and wore it like a dress.
I said, “I’m hungry, but all I brought was a bottle of water.”
I opened the pack and drank, then handed the bottle to Mel.
“If I had brought a fishing pole, I would fish,” I said. “Do you know I know how to catch fish?”
Mel didn’t answer. She just looked at me and smiled.
I said, “And, you know what else? I didn’t forget. Happy birthday, Mel.”
“Is it my birthday? I hadn’t even been paying attention.”
I nodded. “I’ve been keeping track since the night I left. It is, in fact, your birthday.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Wait. I have something for you. For your birthday.” I reached down inside the pack. “You have to close your eyes and open your hand.”
“Can I guess?”
“Sure.”
“Is it a hot dog?”
“No.”
“A condom?”
“Shut up,” I said. “Here.”
And then I dropped the thing into Mel’s hand. It was a knotted bracelet, made from threads in two shades of blue with bands of charcoal gray between them. It was like what we were supposed to have given each other last Christmas, when all the gifts ended up being thrown into Wendy’s crematorium of happiness. I’d been working on the thing for nearly a week, quietly at night while Mel slept in her little bed.
Mel said, “Oh, Arek!”
And then she looked at me, and it was very confusing. Her eyes looked so sad and wet, and at the same time she seemed as though she’d been filled up with something lighter than air, like she was about to float away from me.
“How did you do this?” she said.
If keeping secrets in the hole was difficult, secrets in our van were impossible.
I shrugged. “Some nights I don’t sleep. Here. Let me tie it on. Robby said that’s how it’s supposed to work. The pers
on who gives it to you has to make the knot.”
Mel held out her wrist. My fingers shook when I touched her.
She said, “You’re shaking, Arek.”
“I know.”
I managed to get the thing tied properly, but it was no easy task.
Mel said, “It’s beautiful. I love it, and I’m never going to take it off. Thank you, Arek.”
“You’re welcome. And thank you for going swimming, and not drowning, with me. Happy birthday, Mel.”
Amelie held her hand up to my face so I could see the colors of the threads against her skin. Then she touched me just below my ear and said, “Can I kiss you?”
I inhaled.
“Yes.”
Then Amelie Sing Brees leaned her face close to me. She pulled me toward her with her palm open on my cheek, and then she kissed the opposite side of my face.
I nearly coughed. It was definitely not what I had expected her to do. I think the only person in the hole who up until this point in my life had never kissed me on the cheek was maybe Louis, but I could even be wrong about that.
Nobody remembers kisses on the cheek.
Maybe Mel sensed that too.
I hoped she did; I hoped it wasn’t what she had expected either—that maybe she just didn’t aim very well, like I did the first day my fathers took me out to drive a car. Crashing a car into a road sign is the same thing as being kissed on the cheek by someone you’re insanely in love with.
But when Mel pulled her face back, she paused there. Our noses were maybe a quarter inch apart. I could hear every single blood cell thrumming through the strained vessels in my neck.
And the waterfall went:
Whirrrrr . . .
Whirrrrr . . .
Whirrrrr . . .
Then Amelie Sing Brees pressed her lips into mine.
I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I was more than willing to die here and let this be my eternity and my final memory of the world after the hole. Mel put her hands behind my neck, and then softly and fumbling, our tongues met.
Add one real kiss between a boy and a girl to the universe.
It may have lasted five seconds; it may have only been half of one heartbeat.
