“Don’t you miss it down in Florida?” asked Kim, slapping at a bug on her leg.
Wendy hesitated. “In a way. But I’d rather be here now. It seems different here now. Houses I used to dislike seem charming. But that’s O.K. I’m the one that’s changed, not the houses.”
“My dream house is going to have one of those Florida rooms,” Kim said. “But I may never get out of a double-wide.”
She brushed a spiderweb from her arm. She had on blue shorts and a white blouse she had pulled over her swimsuit. The top of her suit was dark through the blouse. Wendy imagined having a sunburn—warm, like passion, against her clothes. Last night her skin had felt like that, with Bob’s hot body asleep next to her. For a dreamy moment now she thought about sex, looking forward to it again that night. She paused to pick up the gray dried center of one of last season’s pond lilies. It was shaped like a showerhead.
“In the fall there’s a blue zillion of those here,” said Kim. “But in a gift shop you’d pay two bucks for one.” She examined the ground. “Bob really likes you, Wendy,” she said suddenly.
“Do you think so?” Wendy dropped the dried lily. “I can’t tell how he really feels about me.”
“He’s hard to know, but if he decides to be your friend, then he’s your friend for life. That’s why his divorce was so hard on him. But she took him to the cleaners—she carried every stick of furniture with her to Minnesota.”
“He told me this morning he wants to learn to fly an airplane. Maybe he wants to fly to Minnesota.”
“I don’t know. He’s done a lot of neat stuff—challenge-type stuff. Did you know he used to work for a guy that called himself a swamp specialist? They’d put on waders and just march out into the swamp and collect snakes and weeds and things for the university.”
The fading light was eerie, and mosquitoes were materializing from the thick air. Wendy gazed out over the water—patched with debris and plants and dappled light. The place seemed inviting. She had a pleasant image in her mind of that swamp specialist—a man in love with the murky deeps, like Jacques Cousteau.
Bob was serious about learning to fly. He began taking lessons the following weekend and for the next several weeks buried himself in instruction manuals. Wendy came out to the lake each Saturday. She found it peculiar that a small event, at secondhand report, could spur an ambition like flying and that it could possibly make your life turn a corner. The desire to fly must come from a romantic temperament, she thought—a fundamental rebellion against gravity itself—but the ability to fly required a single-mindedness, and a calm, almost mundane focus. It was a contradiction explained only by arrogance, she decided. When she watched Bob aim his motorboat out of the shallows into the open water, she could easily imagine him flying. He was nervous when he wasn’t using his body, as if his mind had lost its anchor.
At the airport one Saturday afternoon, she watched the Cessna come in for the landing, wobbling and jerking. She could see Bob beside the instructor, and he seemed to be concentrating hard. The plane touched down, scooted along briefly, then lifted off again like a cat being chased up a tree.
When the plane landed again, he jumped out and rushed toward her. “Did you see us doing touch-and-go’s?” he cried, grabbing her by the shoulders.
“Yeah, like that plane I heard that time.”
“I’ll be ready to solo by the end of the summer!” he said. “Then I’ll fly you to the moon, or wherever you want to go.” He laughed as he shed his light jacket. “Paducah maybe?”
Wendy was drifting with the summer, suspended, but knowing that summers always end too soon, like delicious dreams. On a hot Saturday evening in August, Kim and Jerry came out again. Wendy had forgotten how shrill their voices were. She went into the kitchen from the patio to get a beer. Searching for something to pour it into, she found a slim, ridged glass she liked. She could see the others out on the patio, their loud laughter slapping the air. Jerry’s voice climbed above the rest—“He’ll go crying home to Mama if they repossess his car.” In the lowering light, the heat of Kim’s dark tan was deepening, flushing her face. Bob, grilling steaks, was clad only in a barbecue mitt and a narrow red swimsuit that fit like an Ace bandage. He shed the mitt and headed toward the reflective-glass doors like a bird captivated by the illusion of sky.
He came inside then and pulled a wad of loose paper napkins from a drawer. They had been crammed between some appliance manuals and what looked like paired socks. He said, “Jerry wants us all to go down to Mud Island next weekend. You want to go? It might be fun.”
“But Kim said she was going to St. Louis to see her mother.” Wendy turned away from Bob, not wanting to admit how the thought of a trip with Jerry and Kim gave her the heebie-jeebies, but she knew he caught her tone.
Bob’s hand on her shoulder twisted her around. “Do you want to go some other time? Just you and me?”
“If you really want me to.”
“I just now invited you, didn’t I?” Holding her arm against the refrigerator, he talked straight into her eyes. “If I ask you to go to Mud Island with me, I mean go to Mud Island with me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “I just feel out of place.”
“Do you think you’re too good for my friends?”
She looked away. “I just don’t think Jerry treats Kim with much respect,” she said, although that wasn’t all of it.
“There’s more history there than you see,” said Bob. “You just don’t know them.” He whipped the steak sauce from the counter, and she followed him out. He said, “Half the time I feel like I’m apologizing for the human race, and half the time I feel like there’s been some mistake—why wasn’t I born a catfish or a tree?” He laughed, but with little humor. “Nobody ever feels they belong, you know that?” He started spearing steaks. “And everybody has to feel they’re superior to somebody. It stinks.”
Jerry and Kim stopped talking, whatever they were saying. “What’s that all about?” they said to each other.
“Y’all get your butts in gear,” said Bob briskly. “Everybody grab a plate.”
It would be dark soon. The mosquitoes weren’t bad. Bob had lighted some buckets of citronella. A rock station was playing Pearl Jam, the music disappearing under the talk-show gab of a million crickets. Something shifted in the evening as the light dimmed, as if they all felt safer now with one another, their awkward judgments and hesitations erased as their faces grew indistinct. Although Wendy still smarted, she was enjoying the languorous evening, the slow buildup of desire. The heat felt subtropical. Occasionally something unidentifiable pattered down from the leaves on the redbud tree.
As they were finishing the meal, a pair of headlights approached. A truck door slammed and Bob crossed the yard to speak to the driver. Wendy heard murmurs and the rise and fall of urgent talk. The truck roared off, and Bob hurried back.
“A little girl’s lost,” he called. “We have to go look for her.”
Wendy grasped for details. Bob quickly explained that it was one of the Smith children who lived a few houses up the road. She had been playing in the backyard after supper. “Her mother thought the boy was watching her, and the boy thought his mother was watching her, so she slipped out of sight.”
“How long ago?” Jerry said.
“Not long. They reckon she wandered off in the woods. They didn’t hear any cars come up.”
The tone of the evening shifted again. Wendy ran to the bathroom and grabbed some Kleenex and mosquito repellent. Sorrow descended in her like water whirling down a drain. Bob emerged from the house in jeans, with a flashlight and a T-shirt he pulled on as he walked.
“This is the kind of thing that makes me never want to have a kid,” Kim said angrily. She snapped open a fresh can of beer.
“We’ll never find her in the dark,” Jerry said.
“Well, we have to try,” Bob said. “I know which one they’re talking about—Marlie. She’s a cute little girl. She’s about four.”
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On foot, they set out along the inlet. Kim and Jerry split off down the road that branched toward some houses and a small section of woods. Wendy and Bob headed toward the marina.
“Marlie!” Bob bellowed into the twilight.
They could see the wide-open point of land ahead, beyond the marina, with a few stark pine trees rimming the shore. A small road led up to some picnic tables. Bob was walking so fast Wendy had to take two steps for each one of his. They saw no sign of a child, no scrap of clothing or toy, no TV clichés. The point was deserted.
“This is impossible,” Bob said, kicking at a log.
“Listen.” Wendy cupped her ear. “No, it’s nothing.” She called out the child’s name.
They followed the road that joined the airstrip. They could see across the marsh to some lights on houseboats moored around the point.
“Man, what kids can do to you—it’s a crime!” Bob said. “This is the hatefulest thing.”
“Maybe Kim’s right,” said Wendy. “Perverts, guns, leukemia—think of the problems kids bring.”
“Ex-wives with a grudge. Add that to your list.”
“Someday you’ll tell me more about that,” she said, reaching her arm around his waist as they walked.
He slowed his pace and waited a minute to speak. “Todd, my boy, ran away once, and it scared us to death. I panicked and ran all over the neighborhood, and up the railroad track. Come to find out, he had wandered down to a neighbor’s. But they get out of your sight, and you’re just helpless.”
“You must feel that way now, since he’s literally out of your sight.”
“You know the last time I saw him? It’s been a year and a half.”
“That’s awful!”
“He was eight years old. He would be nearly ten now.”
“That’s what you say when they’re dead—he would be.”
“It’s like he’s dead in some way.”
“Why don’t you go see him?”
Bob didn’t answer right away. The night was quiet. The water lapping on the boats at the marina was still faintly audible. He said, “It wasn’t any big fight or anything. She just up and left.”
“You’ve got a right to see him.”
“I guess. I don’t know. It’s too humiliating. He won’t know me.”
Wendy shook herself loose from him and stopped. She said, “Look, I don’t know why you’re so passive about him—or about me. You’re totally unpassive in other things—your boat, fishing, flying. You’re a guy who does things. So why don’t you do something about this? Go with Kim and Jerry to Mud Island? What is the point? I want to go to Mud Island about like I want to go to Disney World.”
“Shhh. Don’t get onto me. I can’t help it. Here, don’t get upset, please.” He wound his arm around her shoulder again.
She would have cried, but she wasn’t sure how involved she was in this moment, whether the lost child had really penetrated her consciousness. The news was so sudden; it was like being catapulted out of bed by an earthquake.
“Let’s go back,” he said, with a sigh like a truck releasing its brake.
After they reached the house, they drove up to the Smith place to see what was going on, but there was no news. Wendy sat in the car while Bob got out and talked to a policeman and a neighbor. The policeman’s flashing lights made Wendy think of a carnival. When Bob returned to the car, he said, “Bill Kilmer’s bringing a searchlight and we’re going to get the boat out. He’s going to meet me at the house.”
Wendy stood on the patio. It was dark now, and the insects were singing loudly. Bob took a load of dishes inside, pushing the sliding door shut with his foot. She saw him raking scraps into the sack under the sink and rinsing off the plates. It dawned on her that of course you could see through reflective glass at night if the light was on. It seemed naïve of her to have wondered about that before—ages ago. When Bob came outside, he steered her by the shoulder until they were away from the lights. The moon was up. There was a glow where the moon was shining on a cloud bank, and high up some stars had popped out. Just above, among the highest trees, the bats were taking off.
“Look how they fly,” Bob said. “They don’t fly like birds, because they’re unstable. An airplane or a bird has stability. Birds soar and use their bodies to fly through the air, but bats, with that sonar they’ve got, are always jerking around, bouncing off walls of sound. Look how fast their wings flutter.”
“They’re jitterbugging,” said Wendy, tugging at his waist, pulling him into a slow, sensuous dance.
They both laughed quietly—something tentatively shared. As they danced, a faster song came on the radio and they adjusted to the quicker pace. Then Jerry and Kim appeared and joined in, babbling like strange animals. Now they were all jitterbugging like bats across the moon, as if that was all anybody could do under the circumstances.
Charger
As he drove to the shopping center, Charger rehearsed how he was going to persuade his girlfriend, Tiffany Marie Sanderson, to get him some of her aunt Paula’s Prozac. He just wanted to try it, to see if it was right for him. Tiffany hadn’t taken him seriously when he had mentioned it before. “Don’t you like to try new things?” he asked her. He would try anything, except unconventional food. But she seemed more interested in redecorating her room than in revamping her mind.
He cruised past the fast-food strip, veered into the left-turn lane, and stopped at the light. He stared at the red arrow like a cat waiting to pounce. He made the turn and scooted into a good spot in the shopping-center parking lot. At the drink machines in front of the home-fashions store where Tiffany worked after school, he reached into his work pants for a couple of quarters. He needed to wash himself out. He felt contaminated from the chemicals at work. He fed the quarters into a machine, randomly selecting the drink he would have chosen anyway—the Classic. He wondered if there was any freedom of choice about anything.
Tiffany wanted to get married in June, right after her graduation. He had not proposed, exactly, but the idea had grown. He was uneasy about it. His mother said he was too young to marry—nineteen, a baby. She pointed out that he could barely make his truck payments and said Tiffany would expect new furniture and a washer and dryer. And Charger knew that Tiffany’s fat-assed father disapproved of him. He said Charger was the type of person who would fall through the cracks when he found out he couldn’t rely on his goofy charm to keep him out of trouble. Tiffany’s father called it “riding on your face.” Charger was inclined to take that as a compliment. He believed you had to use your natural skills to straddle the cracks of life if you were going to get anywhere at all. Apparently he gave the impression that he wasn’t ready for anything—like a person half dressed who suddenly finds himself crossing the street. Yet he was not a fuck-up, he insisted to himself.
Tiffany appeared in front of the store, a bright smile spreading across her face. She wore tight little layers of slinky black. She had her hair wadded up high on her head like a squirrel’s nest, with spangles hanging all over it. She had on streaks of pink makeup and heavy black eyebrows applied like pressure-sensitive stickers. She was gorgeous.
“Hi, babe,” she said, squinching her lips in an air kiss.
“Hi, beautiful,” Charger said. “Want something to drink?” Then she raised her hand and he saw the bandage on her thumb. “Hey, what happened?” he asked, touching her hand.
“I mashed my thumb in the drill press in shop.”
“Holy shit! You drilled a hole in your thumb?”
“No. It’s just a bruise. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“How did it happen?” He held her hand, but she pulled it away from him.
“I was holding a piece of wood for Tammy Watkins? And we were yakking away, and I had my thumb in too far, and she brought the drill press right down on my thumb. But not the drill, just the press part.”
“I bet that hurt. Does it still hurt?”
“It’s O.K. I’m just lucky I didn’t lose my
dumb thumb.”
As they walked down the sidewalk, she repeated the details of her accident. He gulped some Coke. His stomach burned. He could hardly bear to listen as he imagined the drill press crunching her thumb. He whistled in that ridiculous way one does on learning something astounding. Then he whistled again, just to hear the sound. It blotted out the image of the drill going through her thumb.
“I might lose my thumbnail, but it’ll grow in again,” Tiffany said.
“I wish I could kiss it and make it all better,” he said. His throat ached, and he itched.
“No problem,” she said. “Didn’t you ever mash a finger with a hammer?”
“Yeah. One time when I was cracking hickory nuts.”
A young couple carrying a baby in a plastic cradle emerged from the pizza place. The woman was mumbling something about rights. The man said, “I don’t give a damn what you do. Go to Paducah for all I care.”
Charger guided Tiffany by the elbow through the traffic into the parking lot. She said, “I asked Aunt Paula about her pills, and she said I didn’t need one.” Tiffany swung her bandaged hand awkwardly in his direction, as if she were practicing a karate move. She laughed. “And I can’t open her pill bottle and sneak one out with this thing on my thumb.”
“It looks like a little Kotex,” he said.
She giggled. “Not exactly. How would you know?”
“Did you tell Paula the pill was for me?”
“No.” Her voice shifted into exasperation. “If you want one, go ask her yourself.”
“Man, I gotta get me one of those pills.” He struck a theatrical pose, flinging the back of his hand against his forehead. “I’m so depressed, I’m liable to just set down right here in the parking lot and melt into that spot of gop over there. I get depressed easy.” He snapped his fingers. “I go down just like that.”
Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail Page 17
