by Andrew Smith
Following her, I slid my hands up inside her top, cupping her breasts, and around to the small of her back, lower, slipping my trembling fingers inside the loose waist of her pajamas to feel the smooth curve of her behind, never breaking our kiss.
Mel unbuttoned her shirt—one, two, then all the buttons. She slid the thing down her arms and let it fall to the floor.
I never knew it could feel like this, so perfect, so insanely electric.
You are home to me. I don’t care about houses.
And Mel pulled at the waistband of my pajamas, whispering, “Take these off.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
In a second, the universe added the most perfect moment of my life.
In a second, Mel and I were both naked, embracing, feeling each other everywhere as we stood, ready to fall, ready to fall, in the middle of the floor of our little lifeboat.
In another second, something began scratching outside.
In that second, something was violently trying to force open the side door.
Larger and larger grew the universe.
The Emperor of Bullshit
Then came the urgent banging on the door.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock!
Seven times. I don’t know why I counted them.
Mel gasped. “What—”
Knock knock knock knock knock!
Now five times.
“Hello! Is someone in there?”
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock!
“Hello! I can see your light! Is someone in there?”
There was a person.
I did not want it to be like this. I was not ready to encounter humanity. I selfishly wanted to keep our lifeboat adrift, shoreless, away from anyone else who might be struggling against the wild sea.
There was a person.
It was a man.
I whispered, “Oh my God, Mel!”
We scrambled to pull on our clothes. All I could hear was our urgent breathing, the rustling of our garments, the pounding of my heart. This was something I had never for a moment considered. Of all the possibilities—wolves, Bigfoot, birds—I did not imagine anyone else would ever come to us, assuming, instead, that we would be the discoverers.
“Hello!” The man’s voice sounded panicked, maybe angry.
I grabbed the .45 from our pack and put it into Mel’s hand, with my lips pressed into her ear, whispering, “You need to hide in the bathroom.”
“No.”
“Mel. Do it.”
I pushed her toward the bathroom and shut her inside, all the while the man in the dark persisted with knocking and calling. Then I picked up our .22 rifle and switched off the interior lights.
I said, “Who are you?”
And I thought, I am talking to somebody else.
Through the door came the man’s voice. “I mean you no harm. I’m a friend. Trust me, a friend. I’m a soldier. I represent the governmental authority of the United States of America.”
I thought he may as well be representing the Emperor of Bullshit, for all that mattered.
“What do you want from me?”
“I’m alone. I haven’t seen another human in two years. Please, just let me see you. Let me talk to you. If I could just see someone else, a human face—”
I didn’t know what to do, what I was expected to do. We had traveled all this distance and time, and now that I was faced with the prospect of confronting another real human being, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I said, “I have a rifle. Go away.”
“Please!”
I wished Mel would tell me what to do. I wished this soldier who represented the governmental authority of the United States of America and all the bullshit in the universe would go the hell away and leave us alone, leave us where we were.
The man repeated, “Please. I mean you no harm. Please.”
Beside the door was a switch that activated the outside floodlights on the van. I flipped it on. The lights made it like daytime all around our camp.
I said, “Move back ten feet, and I will open the door.”
“All right.”
“I have a rifle.”
“You said that.”
“Are you armed?”
The man didn’t answer.
He had to have a weapon. Nobody could survive out there alone for years—as he claimed—without some type of weapon. I waited. The silence of the next few seconds told me that whoever was out there was armed; he just didn’t know what to say. And now maybe my question had escalated this standoff into something I was not prepared to deal with.
I cupped my hand at the edge of the blinds on the window above Mel’s bed and peeked outside.
I saw him.
In the white-hot light cast out from the roofline on the van, he appeared, standing about ten feet away from my door. He was old, maybe nearly as old as Wendy, my grandmother, a soldier in her own right. The man was stocky and had a grizzly-white beard and gray hair that curled around his ears and over his collar. And he wore a cap and uniform—camouflage, like my pajamas, only monochromatic, dusty gray colors, and I thought, Camouflage clearly doesn’t work. The uniform was a type of jumpsuit—like what we used to be expected to always wear in the hole, but I rarely would—that came all the way up to the man’s neck. On one side of his chest there was a cloth strip that said U.S. ARMY, and on the other side, in the same black capital letters, STUART. The only real color on the dusty gray man came from the brilliant United States flags he wore on both of his upper arms. In the center of his chest was a little emblem that looked like this:
And both of his hands rested atop a rifle that was slung across his belly.
So I said, “I’m not going to open the door unless you put your rifle down. Put it over there, behind you, on the bank of the river.”
The man—Stuart—glanced behind him, then looked back at the van.
He said, “Fair enough.”
I watched as he went to the limit of the floodlights’ border and then took a few steps down the bank at the edge of the river in Davy Crockett Campground, which had already proven to be not nearly as fun as the entry signs had promised. Stuart unslung the gun and placed it down in the grass by the river; then, with his hands out, showing he wasn’t hiding anything, he carefully walked back into the light near the van.
I opened the door just enough so that Stuart could see the barrel of my rifle. Then I said, “I’m putting mine down too.”
I walked over and slid the .22 under the covers on my bed, then stood in the open doorway so we could both see each other. And we just stayed there like that, staring, Stuart with his hands out and me, bare chested in pajama bottoms, saying nothing, for at least a minute.
And I have to say it was an amazing thing to see somebody else who was not a painting or a photograph. The feeling must have been like what humans felt when landing on an island that nobody knew existed, or walking on the moon for the first time.
Finally, Stuart smiled at me and nodded. It was difficult to read, because I had only seen a few other people smile in my entire life.
He said, “Oh my God. I can’t believe I found you.”
“I wasn’t lost.”
“Can I come closer?”
“Okay.”
Carefully, deliberately, Stuart began to close the distance between us. He stopped about four feet away from the van’s doorway and then extended his hand. Although I had never really shaken anyone’s hand before—there was no need for it in the hole—I knew what the gesture was supposed to mean.
I took one step down onto the little metal rail beneath the threshold and put my hand in his.
It was the strangest and most frightening touch I’d ever experienced.
I said, “I’ve not even seen ten other people in my entire life.”
“I guess you were born lucky.”
“That’s what my dad calls me.”
“I�
�m Sergeant Stuart,” he said.
“I already saw your name.”
“You can read?”
I nodded.
He said, “What are you, thirteen? Fourteen?”
I let go of his hand. “Sixteen.”
“Shit. Sixteen years ago, that was when all the shit came down. You really are lucky. What’s your name?”
“Arek Szczerba,” I said.
“Well, then, Arek Szczerba, would it be okay if I came inside?”
I instinctively jerked my head around as though I needed to see what was behind me, if Mel was still hiding.
“I—uh—”
I was definitely not prepared for any kind of civility. Sergeant Stuart could clearly see his request had confused and frightened me. But was it possible to just be out here, adrift like we were, and then simply turn away from another human being?
“I’m not going to hurt you, Arek.”
A before-the-hole boy would know what to do, without being indecisive. Before-the-hole boys were probably given lessons in school about what rules applied when a soldier came to your home in the middle of the night and asked to be allowed inside.
A before-the-hole boy would likely have no problem watching a stranger drown.
My heart beat so hard, I felt like I was going to vomit all over Sergeant Stuart’s goddamned useless camouflage jumpsuit, and I was pretty sure he could see it.
Then he said, “It’s okay. I can see you’re scared. I’ll go away.”
“Uh—”
Sergeant Stuart gave me a kind of apologetic shrug and said, “You wouldn’t by any chance happen to have anything to eat, would you? I haven’t really had any food in a few days.”
I looked back again.
Was he lying? Do people tell lies to get what they want, to trick you?
“Oh. Uh. I could give you something to eat,” I said. “Wait here.”
And just as I backed my way through the door, Sergeant Stuart smiled broadly and said, “Thank you so much, boy!”
Then he put his boot up on the doorstep and, representing the emperor of bullshit, Sergeant Stuart let himself inside the van. He patted my naked chest and said, “Oh my God, thank you!”
Sergeant Stuart came in and shut the door behind him.
This was worse than the rattlesnake. Because now the snake had come in, presumably welcomed by its victim. I was so frightened I thought I would faint. I steadied myself by holding on to the chair I’d just been sitting in minutes before, thinking, Why the hell did I choose this place? Why the fuck did Sergeant Stuart have to be here at this moment, in this exact spot, when right now Mel and I should be—
Mel.
I swallowed, hard. “Mac. Macaroni and cheese,” I said.
I grabbed the pot from the stove and poured some of the indefinably colored stuff onto the plate I’d been eating from. There were two plates here, two forks, two napkins. Sergeant Stuart saw them. He looked from Mel’s plate to me without saying anything.
Damn our lack of rules. Wendy would have had us clear the table and wash the dishes before we would ever have been allowed to put our tongues in each other’s mouths and strip out of our clothing.
“Here.” I pushed the plate and my own dirty fork into Sergeant Stuart’s hands and then stupidly slid Mel’s plate into the little steel sink, which was just about as effective in making it go away as if I’d covered it with a goddamned camouflaged napkin.
Sergeant Stuart scooped a bite into his mouth. I don’t know why I instinctively found him repulsive, like he was violating me, bringing some kind of filth inside what was supposed to be my home with Mel.
Just us.
He chewed and nodded. “This is delicious.”
Then Sergeant Stuart’s eyes widened as he glanced around and took in the interior of our little hole.
“Man! This is a nice rig! Where’d you get it?”
“I—Iowa. I took it, when I left home.”
Sergeant Stuart clinked my fork into the plate. Then he scraped it. I heard the metal tines jangle against his teeth. All the sounds were so nauseating.
He said, “Can I sit down?”
I looked at the chair. I looked at Sergeant Stuart. Some of the macaroni and cheese was stuck in his beard. I never wanted to eat that shit again. I wanted to throw out that plate and fork, too.
He smelled awful.
I said, “Okay.”
So Sergeant Stuart sat down, and I sat on my bed with my hand resting on the butt of my rifle, hidden beneath the covers.
Scrape. Clink. Swallow. Grunt.
Stuart cleaned the plate and put it down on the table. He burped.
“That was so good. Thank you again, boy.”
He knows my name. Why does he have to call me boy?
“You’re welcome.”
Maybe he’ll leave now.
“You cook like that for yourself every day?”
“When I’m hungry.”
“You look like you could stand to eat more now and then, ha-ha!”
Ha-ha. Fuck you.
“Ha-ha,” I said.
Then Sergeant Stuart put his hands flat on his knees and leaned toward me. He pointed at Mel’s plate in the sink. “But there’s someone else here with you. Where’s the other guy you’re traveling with?”
I took a breath.
“Oh. Um.”
“Is it just another little boy? It is, isn’t it? You don’t need to be scared of me. The army could use boys like you. Survivors. Heck, you’re already half dressed for it, with your little camo jammies there, ha-ha!”
“I’m. Um. No, Sergeant Stuart. No.” I shook my head.
I wished he would leave.
“Where’s the other boy hiding? Is it your dad? No, a grown-up wouldn’t leave you to be in charge of dealing with visitors, with representatives of the governmental authority of the United States of America. It’s gotta be another little boy. I know these things. One time, I had this little guy in my unit who was completely wild, ran around naked constantly. Refused to wear clothes. For whatever reasons, the little boy was named Breakfast. Tough as nails. He would have been a good soldier. So, where’s your buddy at? You boys aren’t faggots, are you?”
I’d never heard the word before in my life. But I could tell by the tone of Sergeant Stuart’s voice that “faggots” were his enemies.
“No,” I said.
“Well, you don’t have to be afraid of me, unless maybe if you are faggots. Or fucking anarchists. Tell him to come out, so I can see him.”
“I—I don’t know what that is. Faggots,” I said.
“It’s boys who diddle with other boys. Haven’t you ever heard of faggots?” Sergeant Stuart asked.
“Not until just now.”
“Well, I’m not saying you’re a faggot, but call your little buddy out. Let’s have a look at him.”
I couldn’t expect Mel to stay in the bathroom forever. Maybe if she came out, and this stupid fucker saw the .45 in her hand, maybe we could get him out of our life and drive away, abandoning him to the elements. I fed him. I let him in. What else could he want from us?
“Mel!” I said.
Sergeant Stuart gave me an approving look. He said, “That’s a good boy. You’ll see. We’re going to be friends.”
“Mel?” I spoke to the closed bathroom door. “It’s okay, I guess. Come out and meet Sergeant Stuart, and show him how we are not faggots.”
Stuart grinned and nodded.
But Mel did not come out of the bathroom.
“Mel?”
I stood and went to the door, listening to see if Mel was on the other side. She had to have heard everything that was going on out here. She had to know what to do. After all, Mel was smarter and braver than I ever was.
Please come out and force this motherfucker out of our home, Mel.
When I opened the door, the bathroom was empty.
Mel was gone.
Part Three
After the Hole
Self-Por
trait with Shoreless Man
In 1915, before he could return to painting, Max Beckmann said this: Whatever would we poor humans do if we did not create some such idea as nation, love, art with which to cover the black hole a little from time to time? This boundless forsaken eternity.
Like Melville’s notion that truth in its highest form is only discernible in landlessness, Beckmann’s truth, his boundless eternity, his black hole, presents itself on canvas through the lens of his isolation and loneliness.
This was our life in the hole.
My father sought to construct truth with an assembly of artifacts stolen from the shoreless seas above us and cover our hole a little, from time to time, in trickery.
This is me.
If I could travel back in time and create self-portraits that attempt to strip away the artifice of model, as Beckmann did, mine would appear in two distinct categories: Arek Andrzej Szczerba in the Hole, and Arek Andrzej Szczerba After the Hole.
One of my in-the-hole self-portraits would have been Self-portrait with Shoreless Man.
“I can hear the voice of God,” Wendy said to me.
My father once told me that when he was alive, Johnny, who had been Wendy’s husband, could hear the voice of an actor named James Arness coming from the nonfunctioning old televisions in the hole, so I was not surprised that Wendy could hear God.
I wished I could hear someone who was not there; anyone would be fine.
It’s hard to imagine an entire world with only eight voices in it.
“What does he sound like?” I asked.
I was twelve years old. It was Sunday, and Wendy had ordered me out of bed so I could attend church with her. It wasn’t like there was an actual show—or whatever they did—going on; it was just Wendy and me, sitting on a cold oak pew and looking at a wood-paneled wall with an empty cross on it that looked like it was made of maple wood. The cross may have been considered Danish Contemporary, which is something I learned about in an art-and-architecture book from our library.
Wendy had fought with me that morning because I refused to put on clothes to come to church with her. My fathers, mother, nobody in the hole, would ever intervene whenever Wendy fought with someone, which was almost always me.
Around the age of twelve, and this may have been entirely in reaction to all the new rules and the forced segregation between the one boy and the solitary girl in the hole, I as much as possible resisted wearing the Eden Project jumpsuit that was the official uniform of the hole.
