The restroom doesn’t have a door; the entrance is just a U-turn around a concrete wall. The boy hates that kind; anyone could lean in and see him. He doesn’t like to be seen while he pees—he can’t pee, actually, when someone’s in a bathroom with him. This one has a urinal inside, and two stalls. The urinal is out of the question. The toilet in the stall nearest the urinal looks and smells like it’s been clogged for days; the one in the corner, next to the wall, seems all right. He walks in and latches the door behind him.
He’s halfway through peeing when he hears footsteps. Then someone clears his throat, outside the stall door. The boy reddens; he feels the heat in his face, even behind his sunburn. His pee stops.
He doesn’t want to go back out into the bathroom past whoever’s there, so he pulls his shorts down and sits on the toilet, prepared to wait it out.
The man outside the stall whistles for a bit. He walks back and forth, and the boy sees a scuffed pair of brown shoes, and white sockless ankles, one of them scabbed over.
Whew-eee, says the man outside. His voice is deep and graveled. That’s one shitty mess, ain’t it? Stinks to heaven.
The boy doesn’t say anything. He’s still blushing. Outside, beyond the stone wall, he can hear the traffic on the road, the wind in the trees that line the park.
I know you’re in there, says the man. It’s all right. You can answer me.
I’ll be done in a minute, the boy says, too loud. His voice cracks.
Yeah. That’s what I figure.
The boy looks at the door, terrified for a second that he forgot to latch it. But it’s latched. As he looks up from the latch he sees a sliver of the man’s face. An eye. The man’s looking through the crack in the door frame at him. The boy wants to moan; he bends over himself instead.
You going? the man asks. Or you just hiding?
My dad’s outside, the boy says. The lie comes out as a half whisper.
The man laughs. I watched you for a while, playing. I didn’t see your poppa.
He’s coming. Any minute.
How old are you? the man asks, but the boy doesn’t answer.
I guess about eight, the man says. Am I right?
The boy hears his feet shuffle, and then, suddenly, the man jerks on the door of the stall. It rattles against the latch; the stall walls shake. The man chuckles again.
I want to show you something, the man says. The boy, who’s been watching the shoes under the door, looks up and sees the man’s eye pressed close to the crack again. His eye is brown; the white looks yellow.
Look, the man says.
Lower down the crack, the boy sees a knife blade, poking into the stall. He blinks, wondering if he can really be seeing it. It looks like a kitchen steak knife, with a jagged bottom edge. The metal is dirty and stained. The man rattles it back and forth between the door and the frame, then pulls it out with a rasp.
You know what that is? the man asks.
The boy doesn’t answer. He wants to run, to try and sneak out, under the side of the stall. But first he has to pull up his shorts; it would take too much time. There’s a window over his head, in the stone wall, but it’s too small even for him, and the glass is behind chicken wire, and the man would just reach over the stall and get him, and could do it anyway, any time he wants—
That’s my dick, the man says. You want to see my knife?
The boy hears a zipper opening. He closes his eyes. His hands and feet are numb.
Look here, the man says. The boy glances up, without meaning to, for only a second. He can just see it, pressed against the crack, pink and brown.
Now you tell me, kiddo, the man says, which one you want me to put in you.
Go away, the boy whispers.
No. I want you to answer me. Tell me which one. You just say.
No.
The man rattles the door again, and then, as the boy watches, he kneels. Dirty fingers grip the underside of the door. The man’s bearded face bends low, into sight. He grunts, his mouth twisted. He smiles, showing brown teeth, lifts his head out of sight, then looks again, smiles again.
Peekaboo.
That’s when the boy hears his name called.
Here! he shrieks. I’m in here!
The man outside the door growls and jerks upright.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The man, somewhere outside, calls the boy’s name again.
Next time, you little piece of shit, says the man with the knife. The boy sees the scuffed shoes turning, hears rapid steps, hears the silence come back into the bathroom.
The boy quickly stands and pulls up his shorts. His hands and arms are trembling. He hears his name again, hears the man’s panting as he enters the restroom. The boy opens the door and flings himself out of the stall, and there’s a moment where the man’s back is turned, and the boy nearly screams; he thinks for a second it’s the man with the knife, waiting for him. But then he sees it isn’t; this man is his, and without thinking about it the boy throws his arms around him, and is sobbing, his face pressed into the man’s belly.
THE MAN PACKS their things quickly. He tells the boy to stay next to him. They don’t have much, between them; the man throws it all back into a duffel bag, and they walk out the side door to where the truck is parked. The boy has tried not to cry, but he can’t help it. Since the bathroom, whenever he’s tried to say anything, he’s snuffled in giant sobs, and the words don’t come.
Finally, by the truck, he stammers, Are we going to call the police?
The man doesn’t say anything. He shoves the duffel behind the seat of the pickup. When he’s done he lifts his head and glances around the parking lot.
Aren’t we? the boy says.
They’ll make us stay in town, the man says, and then looks at the boy. We need to get going.
Don’t you think they ought to catch him?
Yeah, the man says. Come on, get in.
But—
The man sighs and then puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders.
I don’t want you near him again. I don’t want to worry your mother. I know, I know. I know. He was a bad man. But your mother—
The man’s face looks strange now, an odd gray color.
Let’s not frighten her, okay? the man says.
The boy stares up at him.
You’d have to stay here, the man says. You’d have to testify, and pick him out of a lineup. Do you really want to have to do that?
The boy looks down at his hands. He sees a man out of the corner of his eye, and turns. It’s an older man, getting into a car, just a gray-haired old man, but he still feels his heart hammering.
Come on, the man says. Let’s get out of here. Okay?
Okay, says the boy. He gets in the truck. The man dips in his seat belt for him. The man smells sweaty, and he’s breathing hard. And, the boy realizes, so is he, until they’re on the road and the city and the motel and the park all fall away behind them.
III.
Long after dark, the man pulls into a truck stop, somewhere deep in Kansas. They’ve come most of the way now. Since he rescued the boy from the park toilet the two of them have driven nonstop, barely speaking. The boy hasn’t slept. He tries to read, but the man sees that he’s faking it; the boy looks bleary-eyed, nearly shell-shocked. He nods off every once in a while, but he always snaps back awake. Though he won’t say anything, the boy often looks around him, as though he sees, has thought to see, a threat nearby.
The foul-smelling vagrant in the bathroom. The man can still see him, pushing past him and running away, into the trees on the other side of the park. He smelled awful, like a dog that’s been living on garbage. The man can barely stand the thought of it. He still sees the boy’s tear-stained face, can still hear his hiccuping sobs. The man wishes he’d stopped the vagrant, leaped at him, wrestled him to the dirt, and choked him dead. The boy won’t say exactly what happened in there, but the man can guess well enough.
The truck stop is huge; at the center of it,
behind the pumps, there’s a diner and a gift shop—even a twenty-four-hour garage, with mechanics for the big trucks. It’s like a small city; it glitters in the dark and is crawling with people. The man parks at the edge of the lot, next to the road.
Are you hungry? he asks the boy.
The boy shakes his head.
Are you all right?
The boy nods, automatically.
I’d like to try and get some sleep, the man says. Will you be all right if I do?
I guess, the boy says.
The man locks the doors. He rolls up a shirt under his head and leans against his door. He feels the boy sitting, still, on the other side of the truck.
You miss your mother, don’t you?
Mm-hm.
The man can’t help it. You’ll see her soon, he says. He can’t tell the future, despite his plans for it. He wonders if he’s lied or told the truth.
The boy looks out the side window.
Is she really sick? the boy asks.
Yes, the man says.
You’re lying.
No, the man says tenderly.
The boy sniffles.
I just want to say, the man says and pauses, clearing his throat. He can’t bear it, if the boy cries. He could never bear that. He can barely stand to be in his own skin, knowing that something he’s done has made the boy cry. Knowing that this whole enterprise can only lead to the boy crying, the boy saddened, the boy less a boy than when this all began. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
I just mean. I know it’s been a while, but—
The man’s vision blurs with tears, surprising him.
But you’ve always been important to me.
The boy nods.
You have to believe me. I don’t want to hurt you. I love you.
The boy looks at his hands, curled on his bare thighs, lingers gripping thumbs to palms.
Will you come over here? the man asks softly.
He lifts his arm. The man can’t say how he knows the boy will come, but the boy does, sliding across the seat and under his arm. The boy puts his face against the man’s chest. The man lowers his face into the boy’s hair and smells it, smells his scalp, beautiful even through the smell of the boy’s sweat and fear, beautiful in the same way the boy’s face, even beneath its dirt and shine and sunburn, is beautiful and white and pure. He takes the boy’s slim, light hand.
The boy sleeps for a while, like that. The man stays awake longer, treasuring the closeness. The boy jerks awake, maybe a half hour later; when he sees where he is, he pulls quickly away and sits against the door, his face tight and offended.
Hey, the man says. The boy folds his arms against his chest and looks out the window.
It’s all right, the man says. You used to sleep against me like that, when you were young. Do you remember?
The boy shakes his head.
BUT HE DOES remember. He hadn’t, until the man said it. He remembers the man coming home at night, kissing the boy’s mother, sitting with them on the couch in front of the television. He remembers the three of them eating dinner, watching TV. He remembers sitting between his mother and the man. He hears the adults laughing. Remembers the weight of the man’s arm. Remembers being carried upstairs, his head bumping against the man’s chest.
The man squeezes him.
He remembers a kiss good night.
Always know I love you, the man says now. It sounds like he’s crying.
THEY EAT INSIDE the diner, very late. The boy orders pancakes, and the man sits and smokes and watches the boy eat The boy wishes he wouldn’t: he’d like to do something without the man staring. But he has, hasn’t he? He went to the park without being watched, and look what happened.
He shivers and feels his stomach try to force his dinner back up into his throat.
He’s tired. He wants to sleep, to sleep in a bed. In his own bed back home. He’d like to sleep now, or just eat his meal, but every once in a while he looks up and thinks he sees the man with the knife, across the diner in a booth or coming in the door. And then there’s the man sitting next to him, staring and staring. The man’s worried about him, the boy knows that, but he still doesn’t like it. So he tries to keep his eyes on his plate.
Across the diner another boy eats breakfast, too. A man’s with him, sleeping with his head on his curled arms. The other boy stares at him, and they watch each other until the man says, You’d better finish on up. We have to hit the road.
The boy across the diner drops his eyes, as though he saw something he didn’t like.
IN THE TRUCK the man kisses him. The boy is putting on his seat belt when the man leans over and kisses him on the cheek. He does it with a loud showy smacking of his lips; the sound is startling, popping through the fuzzy insides of the boy’s head.
The boy draws back from the kiss and looks up to see the man smiling at him, his face inches away, smelling of coffee and cigarettes and the gum he chews to cover up the smell. The boy leans away, but the man puts his heavy arm across his shoulders.
Well, he says. By noon I think we’ll be there.
The boy, despite himself, begins to cry. It just spills out. He hates himself for doing it, but he can’t help it, not anymore. He hates the sounds that squeak out of him, hates the way his nose runs into the hand he cups over his mouth.
Hey, the man says, rubbing his back. Hey, hey, hey.
The man leans forward and touches his forehead against the boy’s. His breath comes very quickly.
It’s okay. You’re with me. I’ll take care of it. Leave it to me, okay?
The boy can only keep crying, feeling his arms quiver. He’s never cried like this.
Hey hey hey.
Headlights wash over them, and the man pulls back, quickly, with an intake of breath. The boy squints against the light and curls up on his seat. The man starts the truck, begins to drive. The boy hopes for sleep, anything to end his tears; he curls into himself and tries to will himself away from it all, into the deepest blackness he can find.
IT’S MORNING, a little past dawn. The man drives; the boy is asleep. He watches the boy’s curled shape, warily. He squints at the new sunlight in the rearview mirror. Sometime just before sunrise they passed the Colorado state line.
After the sun rises fully the boy wakes up, yawning and tousled. For a moment he looks befuddled, unaware, but then his face sets itself; he remembers.
The man says, Guess what? We’re in Colorado.
The boy looks out the windows; the man keeps an eye on him, trying to judge the state of the poor kid’s mind.
I thought there were mountains, the boy says after a minute. This looks like Kansas.
This half does. Only the west side has mountains.
How far are we?
An hour or so.
The boy looks forward, out the window, craning his neck.
I used to play a game with my father when we came out here, the man says. We’d try to be the first one to spot Pikes Peak. You can see it from pretty far off.
The boy looks through the windshield with more intent.
Tell you what, the man says. See it before I do and I’ll get you an ice cream.
What if I don’t?
We’ll think of something, the man says, and laughs. He pokes the boy in the ribs.
The boy draws away, unsmiling, and then watches the distance.
You’d better keep an eye peeled, the man says. I’m pretty good at this.
The man turns on the radio and smiles to himself as they drive. Both of them look forward, to where the mountains will be; the truck buzzes, rattles, hums. It’s hard to see the actual shape of the horizon; the edge never quite comes into focus. A bump might be a mountain, or a cloud, or a bug on the windshield.
The boy is watching carefully, almost forgetting to blink. The man can’t help himself. He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of the boy’s neck. The boy glances over, then resumes his watch, tight-lipped, owlish behind his glasses.
It’s something, touching the boy. The man wants to weep that he can. It feels to him as if all his nerves are now concentrated in his palm. It’s . . . it’s as if the boy’s neck is rippling, like the road, jumping up, falling away, shocking the man’s hand—and through it, his whole body—with every movement.
Does the boy know what’s happening to them? All that could happen? The man doubts it. You have to be older, he thinks, even to guess. Or do you? Maybe before yesterday this was true for the boy, but today the poor little guy could be thinking anything.
Love and pity swell up in the man. My boy. He rubs his thumb carefully across the downy space between the boy’s jaw and throat, and the boy makes a movement, almost a shiver, or—what? The man can’t see; he doesn’t want to turn and stare.
He tightens his grip on the wheel, and concentrates instead on what he knows: The flat horizon stretched out ahead. The soft warmth of the boy’s neck. His hand resting on it. The way his fingers curl, to fit its shape.
Solos
I.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF MY HUSBAND’S FOURTH DAY of climbing, his base camp calls me via satellite phone. The news is not so good. After climbing straight through the night, Jozef is now two-thirds of the way up the west face of Shipton’s Peak. He has come farther on the face than anyone ever has. But now his radio is malfunctioning.
Jozef’s friend Hugo says to me, We were talking, and then it just cut off. He says, Of course we worried. But there were no avalanches on the face, and then we spotted him through the binoculars. When the sun set he flashed down with his headlamp that he was all right.
I tell myself, over and over, until my heart doesn’t pound so much: Jozef is still alive.
What now? I ask.
Hugo tells me Jozef’s options, and I write them down. I always answer these calls in my studio, away from Stane, our son, who is eight. This is a superstition of mine; in case the news is bad, I want to compose myself before I have to face our boy. And when Hugo and I hang up, I sit for a while, thinking of what I will say. Then I take the manila folder full of pictures and walk into the living room. Stane is sitting on the sofa with Jozef’s brother Karel, playing on Karel’s laptop computer. As soon as Stane sees me he wriggles out from under Karel’s arm.
We're in Trouble Page 5
