In which case it was a bargain.
The smell of pizza filled the van.
On the inside of his forearm, Tim had written the address. Instead of “Hickory,” though, he’d just put “H.” All he’d have to do would be lick it a couple of times and it’d be gone.
Like 2243H meant anything anyway.
Then, I mean.
Now I drive past that house at least once a month.
We finally decided it should be Tim who went to the door. Because he already had a windbreaker on, like pizza guys maybe wore once upon a time. And because he had an assistant manager haircut. And because I said that I would do all the taping and sit on the guy in the back while we drove around.
How I was going to get the tape started with my gloved fingers, who knew?
How I was going to stop crying down my throat was just as much a mystery.
In the van, Tim walking up the curved sidewalk to the front door, I was making deals with anybody who would listen.
They weren’t listening, though.
Or, they didn’t hear that I was including Tim in the deals as well.
Or that I meant to, anyway.
As for the actual house we went to, it was 2234 Hickory, not 2243 like it should have been. Just a couple of numbers flipped. Tim would probably say that they were all the same house anyway, right? Up there on the hill? If he could still say.
As to what happened with whatever custody case we supposed to be helping with, I never knew, and don’t have any idea how to find out. But I do know that the name associated with the property records for 2243 Hickory wasn’t a lawyer like we thought, but a family court judge.
We were supposed to have grabbed his wife, his daughter, his beagle.
I’ve seen them through their front window on Thanksgiving eight times now.
They’re happy, happy enough, and I’m happy for them.
All this happiness.
When I finally made it back to Mark’s the week after, somebody else answered the door. He had all different furniture behind him, like the girl at the portrait studio had rolled down a different background.
What I did was nod, wave an apology, then spin on my heel—very cool, very criminal—walk away.
What I would be wearing when I did that was a suit, for Tim. Or, for his family, really, who had no idea I’d been there that night.
Anything I could have said to them, it wouldn’t have helped.
This is the part of the story where I tell about meeting Tim in the third grade, I know. And all our forts and adventures and girlfriends, and how we were family for each other when our families weren’t.
But that’s not part of this.
I owe him that much.
We should have cruised the bowling alley on the way up the hill that night, though. One last time. We should have coasted past the glass doors in slow-motion, our teeth set, our hands out the open window, palms to the outsides of the van doors as if holding them shut.
The girls we never married would still be talking about us. We’d be the standard they measure their husbands against now. The ones who got away.
But now I’m just not wanting to tell the rest.
It happens anyway, I guess.
Nicholas answers the door in his sock feet, and Tim holds the pizza up in perfect imitation of a thousand deliveries, says some made-up amount of dollars.
Then, when Nicholas leans over to see the pizza sign on the van, Tim does it, just as Mark played it out for us fifty times: spins the pizza into the house like a frisbee, so everybody’ll be looking at it, instead of him and who he’s dragging through the front door.
On top of the pizza, stuck there with a toothpick, is the envelope Mark said we had to leave.
Putting it inside the box was our idea.
It was licked shut, but we knew what it said: if you want whoever we’ve got back, then do this, that, or whatever.
As the pizza floated through the door, I saw me in the back of the van with Nicholas, playing games until midnight. Making friends. Tim driving and driving.
We were doing him a favor, really, Nicholas. Giving him a story for school.
But then the pizza hit, slid to its stop down the tiled hall of that house.
Mark was twelve miles away, maybe more.
I was only just then realizing that.
The way some things happen is like dominoes falling. Which I know I should be able to say something better, but that’s really all it was. Nothing fancy.
Domino one: the pizza lands.
Domino two: Nicholas, who’d turned to track the pizza, turns back to Tim, like to see if this is a joke, only stops with his head halfway around, like he’s seeing somebody else now.
Domino three: Tim leans forward, to hug Nicholas close to him, start running back to the van.
Domino four: what I used to think was the contoured leg of a kitchen table, but now know to be one of those fancy wooden pepper grinders (my wife brought one home from the crafts superstore; I threw up, left the room), it comes fast and level around the frame of the door, connects with Tim’s face, his head popping back from it.
Domino five, the last domino: Tim, maybe—hopefully—unconscious, being dragged into the house by Nicholas’s father, who looks long at the van before closing the door.
The reason I can tell myself that Tim was unconscious is the simple fact that Nicholas’s father didn’t come out for me too. Which is a question he would had to have asked, a question Tim wouldn’t have been able to lie about, even if he tried: whether he was alone.
So what I do now is convince myself he was knocked out. That he didn’t have to feel what happened to him over the next forty-five minutes, like Nicholas did. Or saw, anyway. Maybe was even forced to see.
In the newspapers, it was why Nicholas’s mom left Nicholas’s dad: because what he did to the drugged-up kid who broke into their home, he did while Nicholas watched, transfixed, his fingertips to the pear wallpaper so he wouldn’t fall down.
It involved a kitchen chair, some tape, a hammer. Pliers for the teeth, which he pushed into Tim’s earholes and nostrils and tear ducts, just making it up as he went.
How long I was in the truck was forty-eight minutes.
It’s better if Tim was knocked out the whole time.
What people say now—it’s still the worst thing to have ever happened—what they say now is that they understand Nicholas’s dad. That they would have done the same thing. That, once a person crosses the threshold into your house, where you family is, that he’s giving up every right to life he ever had.
This is what you do if you’re a traitor and in the same break room with people saying that: nod.
This is what you do if you hate yourself and can’t sleep and have your hands balled into fists under the sheets all night every night: agree with them for real. That, if anybody tries to come in your door one night, then all bets are off.
And then you’re a traitor.
Nevermind that, a few months before Nicholas’s harmless juvenile delinquency bloomed into a five-year stretch with no parole, you went to his apartment, to buy a bag. He was Mark all over, right down to how he narrowed his eyes as he pulled on his cigarette, right down to how he ducked his head into his shoulders like his neck was still remembering long hair. And you didn’t use anymore then, hadn’t since the night before your wedding, would even stop at the grocery store on the way home, to flush the bag over and over, until the assistant manager knocked on the door, asked if there was a problem.
Yes, there was.
It was a funny question, really.
The problem was that one time while your friend’s head was floating across a lawn, a machete glinting real casual in the doorway behind it, a thing happened that you didn’t understand for years: the life meant for Nicholas, you got. And he got yours.
That’s not the funny part, though.
The funny part, the reason the assistant manager finally has to get the police involved in removing you f
rom the bathroom, is that you can still smell the pizza from that night. And that sometimes, driving home to your family after a normal day, you think it was all worth it. That things happen for a reason.
It’s not the kind of thing Nicholas would understand, though.
Nevermind Tim.
About the Author
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of novels The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong (2000), All the Beautiful Sinners (2003), The Bird Is Gone: A Manifesto (2003), Demon Theory (2006), The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, and Ledfeather (both 2008). It Came from Del Rio, a bunnyhead zombie book set in South Texas, was published in October 2010. Two more novels, Flushboy and Not for Nothing are forthcoming. His numerous works of short fiction have appeared in many diverse publications. His first collection, Bleed into Me: A Book of Stories, was published in 2005. A second, The Ones That Got Away, will be published in late 2010. He was the recipient of Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction (2005) and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature: Fiction (2001). His day job is Professor of English, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Story Notes
I never watch the news on television. But one evening recently one of the local news shows came on while I was talking to my son. I started to turn it off. But the offspring, an education major, said, “Wait. Listen to this. I heard about it on the radio.” It was an all-too-true story of unthinkably cruel child abuse. We wondered what life would be like for the children who had been taken away from their monstrous parents. Would they overcome what they had been through? What would be the whole story ultimately be?
Stephen Graham Jones tells us a story we might hear or read of as “news.” But “the news” tells only a part of it. He tells us the whole story . . . and we are unlikely to ever forget it.
LENG
MARC LAIDLAW
Expeditionary Notes of the Second Mycological Survey
of the Leng Plateau Region
Aug. 3
No adventurer has ever followed lightly in the footsteps of a missing survey team, and today’s encounter in the Amari Café did little to relieve my anxiety. Having arrived in Thangyal in the midst of the Summer Grass Festival, which celebrates the harvest of Cordyceps sinensis, the prized caterpillar fungus, we first sought a reasonably hygienic hotel in which to stow our gear. Lodging accomplished, Phupten led me several blocks to the café—and what a walk it was! Sidewalks covered with cordyceps! Thousands of them laid out to dry on tarps and blankets, the withered little hyphae-riddled worms with their dark fungal stalks outthrust like black mono-antennae, capped with tiny spores (asci). Everywhere we stepped, an exotic specimen cried out for inspection. Never have I seen so many mushrooms in one place, let alone the rare cordyceps; never have I visited a culture where mushrooms were of such great ethnic and economic importance. It is no wonder the fungi are beloved and appreciated, and that the cheerful little urchins who incessantly spit in the street possess at their tongue-tips (along with sunflower hulls) the practical field lore of a trained mycologist; for these withered larvae and plump Tricholoma matsutake and aromatic Boletus edulis have brought revivifying amounts of income to the previously cash-starved locals. For myself, a mere mushroom enthusiast, it was an intoxicating stroll. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like for my predecessors, treading these same cracked sidewalks ten months ago.
Phupten assured me that every Westerner in Thangyal ends up in the cramped café presided over by the rosy-cheeked Mr. Zhang, and this was the main reason for our choice of eatery. Mr. Zhang, formerly of Lhasa, proved to be a thin, jolly restaurateur in a shabby suit jacket, his cuffs protected from sputtering grease by colorful sleeve protectors cut from what appeared to be the legs of a child’s pajamas. At first, while we poured ourselves tea and ate various yak-fraught Tibetan versions of American standards, all was pleasant enough. Mr. Zhang required only occasional interpretive assistance from Phupten, and my comment on his excellent command of English naturally led him to the subject of his previous tutors—namely, the eponymous heads of the Schurr-Perry expedition.
Here, at a moment that could have been interpreted as inauspicious by those inclined to read supernatural meaning into random events, the lights dimmed and the power went out completely—a common event in Thangyal, Phupten stressed, as if he thought me susceptible to influence by such auspices. Although the cafe darkened, Mr. Zhang’s chapped cheeks burned brighter, kindling my own excitement as he lit into a firsthand account of the last known days of Danielle Schurr and her husband, Heinrich Perry.
According to Mr. Zhang, Danielle and Heinrich spent several weeks in Thangyal last October-November, preparing to penetrate the Plateau of Leng [so-called, in fanciful old accounts, the “Forbidden Plateau” Journals of the Eldwythe Expedition (1903)] (which I mistakenly thought I had packed, damn it). Thangyal still has no airstrip of its own, and like me they had relied on Land Rover and local drivers to reach it. Upon arrival, they encountered great difficulty in arranging for guides and packhorses to carry their belongings beyond vehicular routes, and had been obliged to wait while all manner of supplies were shipped in and travel arrangements made. During this wait, Heinrich had schooled our host in English, while Danielle had broadened his American cuisine repertoire. (I have her to thank for the banana pancakes that warm me even now.)
The jovial restaurateur tried many times to talk them out of their foray—and not merely because of winter’s onset. Were there political considerations? I asked. For while the Chinese government has relaxed travel restrictions through some border zones of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, stringent regulations are still in effect for Westerners who wish to press into the interior. Many of these stipulations (as I know firsthand) exist mainly to divert tourist lucre into the prefecture’s treasury by way of costly travel permits. But in the case of Leng, there seem to be less obvious motives for the restrictions. Despite assurances that I would never repeat his words to any official, Mr. Zhang refused to elaborate on what sort of benefit the Chinese government derived from restricting access. Leng is hardly a mineral rich region; there has been little or no military development there, which indicates it is strategically useless; and recent human rights reports declare it devoid of prisons or other political installations. It remains an area almost completely bypassed by civilizing influences, an astonishing anachronism as China pushes development into every last quarter of Tibet. As a zone set apart from the usual depredations, such resource conservation seems distinctly odd; but perhaps they have other plans for its exploitation. Mr. Zhang’s warnings were sufficiently vague that I could easily picture my predecessors brushing them aside. Once he realized that it was my intent to follow them, he directed the same warnings at me. Any request for permission to enter the plateau region would be met with refusal, he said; thus confirming my decision to file no such requests, but depend on the remoteness of the region to lend me anonymity.
When he saw it was my fixed purpose to follow the Schurr-Perry trail, Mr. Zhang got up and shuffled back into the kitchen—now lit solely by a gas stovetop. He returned with a dog-eared ledger and said something in Tibetan which Phupten interpreted as, “Guestbook.”
Mr. Zhang opened the ledger, spread it flat on the checkered tablecloth, and guided us backward through the entries—past colorful doodles and excitable notes from the Amari’s many international diners—notes in English and German and French. Here were mountaineers bragging of climbs they had just made or climbs just ahead of them, penniless wanderers hoping someone might forward a few million yuan, laments of narrowly missed rendezvous.
Mr. Zhang stopped flipping pages and directed our attention to a ragged strip where one sheet had been ripped from the book.
“Here,” he said. “Heinrich and Danielle? They write thank you Mr. Zhang. They say, we go Leng. Bu Gompa. Anyone follow, they read this note, say wait for them in spring. But . . . no come back.”
I speak no Tibetan, but I recognized a few words I have heard many times
recently, albeit in different context. The locals are always making pilgrimages to their various gompas, by which they mean a temple or monastery. And bu I know from Yartse gunbu, the local name for the caterpillar fungus. Its precise meaning is “summer grass, winter worm,” which is a colorful (if backwards) way of describing the metamorphosis of the cordyceps-inoculated caterpillar, which overwinters as a worm, only to sprout a grasslike fungal stalk, the fruiting body or stroma, in early summer (once the fungus has entirely consumed it from within).
I clumsily translated the name as, “Temple of the Worm?”
Mr. Zhang said something urgently to Phupten, who listened, nodded, and turned to translate.
“Yes, monastery. Bu Gompa sits in the pass above Leng Plateau. Very old temple, from old religion, pre-Buddhist.”
“A Bon temple, you mean?”
“Not Bon-po. Very much older. Bu Gompa for all that time, gateway to Leng. Priests are now Buddhist, but they still guard plateau.”
Mr. Zhang was not done with his guest book. “This page, when my friends not return, two men come. Say they look for Heinrich and Danielle. Look for news of expedition.”
“This was when?”
“In . . . January? Before they supposed come back. No one worried yet. Tibetan men, say Heinrich friend, ask see guest book. I very busy, many people in restaurant. Think no problem, they look for friends. I go in kitchen, very busy. I come out, they gone. Oh well. Book still here. Later I see page gone!”
“The one Heinrich and Danielle wrote in, you mean? Saying where they were going?”
“Yes.”
“These men were Tibetan, you say?”
“Yes. I not see them in Thangyal before, but so many in town. Not only Yartse Festival. Many travelers. I worry they take page, get money from Heinrich and Danielle family.”
“Blackmail,” said Phupten.
I assured Mr. Zhang that we had heard of no such attempts. I explained that I had followed Heinrich and Danielle’s trail after reading a series of letters and articles published in the Journal of the Mycological Society in advance of their departure. But all of Mr. Zhang’s information was new to me; and that regarding the gompa was particularly interesting, as it suggested where I might next seek news of their whereabouts.
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