by Andrew Smith
It filled me with a kind of nervous dread, too, because Mel was destined to be so matter-of-fact, uninhibited, and unfazed by what we’d done, while here I was, a polluted after-the-hole teenage boy who was capable of feeling a dozen or more simultaneously contradicting emotions and impulses.
I didn’t have any idea where we were, and this was not only in reference to our van and geography.
Geographically speaking, the compass in the Mercedes’s dashboard said we were going south and east. I figured the next morning we’d eventually run into a town, or a marked highway of some kind, and then we’d be able to use the map books to get some idea of our location.
Emotionally, there were no compasses available whose needles didn’t spin wildly without ever settling on one definite point.
The sun was nearly down when, following a welcome sign and another one that said ENTER HERE, I parked the van at a place called Davy Crockett Campground. There were two other billboards that said RVS WELCOME and FISHING! BOATING! SWIMMING! HIKING!
So with all the fun and gracious hospitality promised by the signs, I figured this had to be a friendly and safe, monster- and snake-free place for us to spend the night.
And maybe tomorrow I could show Mel how to fish in nonfrozen waters, I thought.
I parked the van just as Mel came up to sit in the passenger seat. She was dressed in a set of thin plaid pajamas we’d taken from the boys who were supposed to have been surviving inside that very small hole in Rome.
I wanted to touch her so bad my hand shook.
She said, “Where are we?”
“Davy Crockett Campground, which sounds like a very fun place,” I answered.
Mel’s hair was wet. She’d taken a shower, which only served to remind me that the lower half of my body had been painted with bug guts.
I looked at her, consumed with wondering if we would ever kiss like that again. It made my throat knot up a little.
Mel said, “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
“You’re weird, Arek.”
“I know. And I need to take a shower too. I must smell like that awful . . . stuff.”
“Okay. I left pajamas on your bed for you. I’ll find us something to eat and a movie,” Mel said. “And leave your boxers on the floor back there so I can wash them.”
I felt my face getting hot.
Mel rolled her eyes and said, “Just go.”
Everything I had predicted was coming true. It made me very nervous.
• • •
I came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. It was night, and Mel had the small lights turned on above the little dining table. I’d forgotten to bring the pajamas Mel had left for me into the tiny bathroom and realized I was now in an inhibited, before-the-hole Iowa-boy predicament.
Mel was cooking something called macaroni and cheese from a dehydrated foods package. It smelled good. I was starving. The boxers I’d had on that day were gone, and I could hear the rumbling growl of our motorhome’s washer-dryer.
I pretended not to notice anything, but in my nervousness, absolutely everything around me—the sights, sounds, smells—assaulted every sense I had.
“Do you feel better?” Mel said.
“Um. Yeah.”
I tried to will myself to be the after-the-hole Arek who’d grown up with Mel, the one to whom nothing ever mattered.
This is me.
What if I’m wrong?
The pajamas Mel had left on my bed were made of soft T-shirt material. They had a green camouflage pattern on them. I thought it was funny, because what would you need to hide from when you’re in bed—and then I thought, maybe that’s a good idea after all.
I took a deep breath and dropped my towel. Shakily I pulled the bottoms up over my naked legs, trying desperately not to glance up and see if Mel had been watching me.
Of course she was watching me.
I swallowed the knot in my throat.
And Mel, without blinking, said, “Those look good on you.”
“How can you tell? I’m camouflaged. You’re not supposed to see me.”
“Believe me. I saw you, Arek.”
“Oh. Uh.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Well, it’s time to eat.”
“Good.”
“You’re being weird.”
“I know. Sorry.”
I picked up the towel at my feet and hung it in the bathroom, then sat down next to Mel at the little table where we shared dinner.
The Black Car with the Shiny Treasure Chest
Breakfast found a car the next morning in a small town called Hopeful.
“Ha-ha!” Breakfast laughed. “I was hopeful we’d find a car that worked! Do you get it, Olive? Hopeful? Hopeful and wild!”
Olive did not really get it, and the car was not really a car. What Breakfast had found was a hearse that had been parked behind a place called Shaun Hutchinson and Brothers Funeral Home. And although the wild boy knew what funerals were, he did not know why funerals had homes, or what the long black vehicle with the shiny treasure chest in the back had ever been used for.
“I’ll tell you what, though, girl—after what happened to me with that truck full of shit, I am never going to open that fancy box back there.”
That was probably one of the luckiest random decisions Breakfast ever made.
He said, “In fact, come on and help me, Olive, ’cause I plan on getting that big box the hell out of here before it pops open and turns out to be full of someone else’s shit, or hornets and snakes.”
Olive was afraid of snakes.
Breakfast wasn’t really afraid of anything, except surprises like trucks filled with shit, and he was determined not to be fooled again.
He left the hearse idling and opened the wide and tall back door.
Breakfast grabbed on to one of the silver handles on the big box and grunted. He had to brace his little feet on the car’s bumper and strain to get the thing to move. He farted and laughed.
Olive liked it when Breakfast farted.
Finally, the big long box nudged past the tailgate of the hearse.
“This fucker’s heavy,” Breakfast said. “And I honestly do not care if it’s filled to the brim with money, or even ham, but I am not going to open this motherfucker no matter what.”
Olive pulled on the other side of the coffin, and soon the heavy thing slid and tipped, crashing down onto the crumbling asphalt behind the funeral home.
Fortunately, it did not pop open.
“It sure is pretty in back of this car, with all them little fancy curtains and clean sheets and pillows. I bet this car was made for people who got tired when they drove places, so they could just lay down and rest themselves in this big back,” Breakfast said. “Looks like we not only got ourselves a car, Olive, but we got ourselves a place to sleep, too.”
Olive jumped up and down to show her approval.
Breakfast scratched his balls, sniffed his fingers, and said, “Come on, Olive. Let’s drive! Wild!”
As he spun the tires out on the surface of the funeral home’s back lot, Breakfast grinned and said, “Hoo-wee! Aren’t we the wildest, richest, luckiest two people in all creation?”
Olive clapped.
“Now all we need is to find a little river, and have plenty of luck and happiness inside our hearts, and we will get us some fish, or maybe crawdads, or maybe even a turtle so we can fix us some dinner.”
Olive bounced, and Breakfast picked his nose.
Although the hearse looked like it might have a siren and flashing lights, it did not. It did have music, though, but as far as Breakfast was concerned, the music it played sounded sad and likely to put him to sleep, so he turned it off.
Breakfast pulled gas from underground tanks at a service station outside Hopeful. They stored four large cans of it in the back of the hearse, which despite also carrying the wild boy’s sack of cash, rifle, and collection of tools, s
till provided plenty of room for Breakfast and Olive to stretch out and sleep if they wanted to.
They drove through the brilliant Tennessee morning, Breakfast scouting for some likely place to fish or hunt, his left foot propped up on the driver’s seat so his chin was practically resting atop the wild boy’s dirty, knobby knee.
“Me and Joe, we stayed in that smokehouse shed for a week or so, waiting for the storm to die off, just eating ham and pig meat. It wasn’t like we were in any hurry to get anywhere, ’cause we didn’t have nowhere to get to, anyhow. Ha! Wild! But eventually, all that meat got to poor Joe, who spent about a day and a half squatting and squirting shit in that field. Ha-ha! Poor fucker, out there in the rain, shitting all day long with a cherry cigar in his teeth. And when he got over it, and we finally decided it was time to go, I was considerably fatter, and Joe, who had nearly shit himself hollow, was gun-barrel skinny, like he always was.
“You know what I did? I took one of those hams with us. It was tied on a rope, and I just slung it over my shoulder when we headed out, and Joe told me to stay behind him, on account of he never wanted to look at a ham again for the rest of his life. Ha-ha! Wild!
“Well. Joe was like a father to me, I guess. He taught me all kinds of things, like reading and writing, what all plants we could eat, how to fish with my hands, and how to find stuff; and he told me lots about how things used to be when he was little like me, what he remembered, which wasn’t much, and what his own folks told him about what things was like before the damn bugs came. But he never showed me how to drive a car, because I was too little to do it, but I watched him enough to learn. That’s how you do it when you’re wild, girl—you learn by watching. Wild!
“I suppose we spent until the following spring, when it was starting to get warm, just going from place to place, trying to find people anywhere we could, hiding in big buildings, taking cars. It was Joe who taught me about taking money, too. We were the richest motherfuckers in the world, Joe used to say. But there wasn’t nobody anywhere—only those bugs, which we were always lucky enough or fast enough to get away from. They’re not very smart, besides, but you already know that, don’t you, Olive? Ha-ha!”
Olive bounced up and down.
She loved listening to Breakfast, and she loved their new big black car with the fancy bedroom in the back.
Breakfast slowed the hearse, straining to peer through an opening in the woods to the right of the roadway.
“Does that look like maybe a good spot to you, Olive?”
Olive clapped.
Breakfast nodded and scratched his balls. “Maybe.”
Breakfast backed the hearse up and turned onto what had at one time been a dirt road cutting through the woods.
“And that spring, when it was starting to get warm and the bugs were coming back, that was when me and Joe met up with Sergeant Stuart’s army, and they took us in at a place we called the farm.”
Breakfast parked the hearse beside a small waterfall in the cool shade of a dense Tennessee forest.
“Ain’t that pretty, girl? This looks like a wild spot! You know what we are, Olive? Ha-ha! I bet you do, girl! I bet you do!”
Breakfast slapped the steering wheel.
Olive bounced and bounced.
Breakfast and Olive were wild.
The African Queen
Mel said, “This dinner is great.”
I agreed. “Yes. This is probably the finest macaroni and cheese I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”
Mel laughed. Of course, neither one of us had ever eaten macaroni and cheese before that night.
Her eyes became shiny and wet when she laughed. I watched her, and when she saw me, she looked down at her plate.
I was so in love with her, I thought I was going to burst.
You are home to me.
I said, “Did you find a movie for us to watch?”
“I did. It looks exciting.”
“I’ll be honest, Mel.” And then I thought, No, I won’t actually be totally honest with you, because I’m afraid I might be wrong. But I said, “Everything I’ve chosen to watch has . . . Well, it’s scared the shit out of me.”
Mel laughed again. This time she laughed so hard she nearly spit out her food. And I was embarrassed because I’d admitted that I was frightened by goddamned Bigfoot and stupid blackbirds. But when she laughed . . . those eyes . . . And Mel put her hand on my shoulder, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and it felt beautiful.
She pulled her hand away and wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin.
Mel said, “Well, this one doesn’t look scary. It looks exciting. There’s a boat in it.”
I was worried the movie might be about the Titanic, and I’d be forced to watch that ship sinking, again and again, without end, just as I’d been watching it sink every day of my life in the hole.
“It’s called The African Queen,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound scary,” I said. “But, then again, you can never tell by the title, can you? What if The African Queen is an eighteen-foot-tall, ten-thousand-year-old beast with the face of a rattlesnake, and she bites your eyes and injects them with venom while you’re sleeping, and then when you wake up, for all the days throughout the rest of your life the world appears askew, claustrophobic, and horrifying, and it’s filled with monsters, like a Max Beckmann painting?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a love story, Arek. There is a man and a woman on the cover. And they have their arms around each other, and they look like they’re about to kiss.”
“Oh.”
She did it.
I knew she would.
Now Amelie Sing Brees, who I was so in love with it was driving me insane, was going to talk about kissing.
I knew she would.
Mel said, “Is something wrong?”
I cleared my throat. “Um. No.”
It was suddenly sweltering hot inside the van. I tried to will myself not to sweat or tremble in front of Mel, but will has little to do with these things when you’re sixteen years old and a boy, and you’re looking at someone like Mel, and you know she’s about to talk to you about how you kissed her on the mouth, how you tasted her tongue, just hours earlier.
“Then why don’t you say something about it?” Mel asked.
I played stupid, which was not a big stretch. “About what?”
Mel put the fork down and pivoted in her chair. Our knees touched.
She said, “About how I kissed you today.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah. That.”
Everything was hot and dizzy.
And Mel said, “I think it is so cute when you turn red, Arek.”
“Oh. Um. Thanks.”
I pretended to be fascinated by the color of my macaroni and cheese.
I said, “I thought it was good. I thought it was . . . Well, I liked it very much.”
“The macaroni and cheese?”
I decided that Amelie Sing Brees probably did tease me too much, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
I shook my head, felt the electricity between us, connecting and burning at our knees. It felt the same as when we used to be little, when we’d sit beside each other in the bath.
I cleared my throat. Shakily I said, “No. When you kissed me. It was good. I liked it. A lot.”
I swallowed.
For some reason I was thinking about what was going to happen next—how Mel and I might attempt to navigate through the next awkward how many minutes between here and The African Queen, and if that movie was going to scare the shit out of me, and where Mel would be, and where I would be when we watched it, and how I would have to try to be strong and not so much as glance over at Mel when whatever man and whatever woman broke down and finally kissed each other.
But Mel said, “Why haven’t you ever kissed me?”
I thought about possible answers for her.
I took a deep breath and decided on the truth.
This is how it would be.
> I said, “What if I’m the wrong person for you, Mel? We are not Adam and Eve. There are going to be other people out here. I know that. Maybe millions of them. Someone like you . . . Well, you shouldn’t just settle for me because there are no alternatives.”
Mel exhaled a little puff of wind that tickled my bare chest and wordlessly told me that what I’d said angered her a little.
She said, “If there were ten million people out there, and I got to pick the one who I wanted to kiss me, it would be you, Arek.”
“Really?”
I still hadn’t taken my eyes from the macaroni and cheese. And I decided the color of it was a color I had never seen before, not anywhere.
Mel said, “Really.”
Then I looked at her.
“Well, do you suppose we should kiss or something, then?”
Mel straightened her mouth. “You’re making me mad, Arek.”
“No. I mean . . . I want to kiss you so bad. It’s what I’ve wanted to do since we were maybe eleven years old, but I was too afraid of rules, and of Wendy, and of being wrong. But I want to.”
Then I put my hand on top of hers and said, “Can I kiss you, Mel?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t want to kiss her sitting down. I wanted to kiss her the right way.
I took her hand and pulled her away from the table.
“Here,” I said. “Stand up.”
We stood in the middle of the floor, at the foot of my bed with the television screen behind us.
Fuck watching a movie, I thought.
I put my hands behind Mel’s neck and moved closer to her. Before I kissed her, I pressed my body into hers, and Mel slid her arms around my back. We stayed there, frozen for a few seconds, eyes open, watching each other.
And then I leaned in and put my mouth on Mel’s, and I kissed her like I’d wanted to kiss her for as long as I could remember. Our tongues met and played. I combed my fingers through Mel’s beautiful black hair, and she moved her hands up and down my back, and around onto my chest and belly. Then she let her hand trail along my body downward, lower, and she began rubbing me softly through those thin pajama bottoms.
