by John Brandon
Shelby noticed all the twitchy muscles in her father’s calves and biceps. He looked like he’d gone ten rounds, puffy under the eyes, spaced-out.
“What is this we’re listening to?” Shelby asked.
Shelby’s father set down his tongs. “Lady that works in the mosquito lab gave it to me. She got the songs off the computer.”
The song that was playing was a garage-load of groggy guitars, the lyrics unintelligible but clearly longing.
“I never wanted you to be an only child,” Shelby’s father declared.
Shelby said, “I’m not an only child.”
“Only children are deprived.” Shelby’s father turned a knob on the grill, tapping it with his thumb. “All the only children I ever knew had something wrong with them.”
“Everyone ends up with something wrong with them.”
“I never see my sister, but we were always fond. My sister is the type of person people are jealous of.”
“I’m contacting her for my Iceland presentation,” Shelby said. She’d found a reason to get in touch with her aunt, an excuse, and now she felt embarrassed for needing an excuse, a ruse, a school project. It didn’t make sense to Shelby that she was still afraid of things, that anything could make her nervous. Fear was an emotion that did not add up. It was her aunt, after all. She would be glad Shelby was old enough now that the two of them could get to know each other.
Shelby’s father plopped the kabobs onto a platter. He went in and got beers, handed one to Shelby. She took a swig and the flavor was bracing. The beer didn’t smell good, but it tasted like something that could cleanse you. It was the time before night, when the air was perfectly still and didn’t want to be breathed.
Another song began. White rappers. They emphasized the last word of each line, the word that rhymed. Car horns and whistles were mixed into the music.
“Did they just call the devil a trick bitch?” Shelby asked.
Shelby’s father shrugged.
It was Christian music. Shelby hit the stop button and her father didn’t protest. The woman in the mosquito lab had outsmarted them. She’d smuggled her beliefs into their home—contraband. She thought she knew what Shelby and her father needed. This house was a place people snuck things out of and into. They snuck little sisters out and snuck music in. Maybe Shelby needed a big, obvious enemy. A specific enemy that could never be defeated.
Shelby watched her father slide a hunk of beef off his skewer and cut it into pieces with his fork. She had more of her beer.
“Are we going to move again?” she asked.
“Do you think we should?”
“I just want to know.”
“Where would we go?”
Shelby had no idea. She didn’t think it mattered. It wouldn’t matter where they were going, only where they were leaving.
“I don’t think I have the energy for it,” Shelby’s father said. “Selling the house, finding a new job, packing up.” Shelby’s father pushed his plate aside and brought his beer in front of him. “We’re buddies,” he said. “Anything we do, we’ll discuss it.”
Shelby pressed her bare feet into the wood of the porch. She didn’t know if she wanted to be buddies with her dad. She knew she wanted him to shave his beard. She could never tell what he was really thinking, because half of his face was hidden. She wondered if her father would ever go on a date, go on vacation. There were a lot of things besides moving that he didn’t seem capable of.
“I almost left your mom,” he said. “And you.”
He set his beer bottle down, farther away than he’d pushed his plate. Shelby had seen the words issue forth from his beard, but she couldn’t immediately grasp them.
“I wasn’t in love with her,” he said.
Shelby sat very still. She kept her eyeballs still, her organs.
“I didn’t want to give up the fighting life,” her father said. “She didn’t cost me a great career or anything. I wasn’t that good. But the life.”
“So I was an accident?” said Shelby.
“No, you weren’t an accident. We talked about getting married and when your mother got pregnant we were happy. A couple months later, before the wedding—” Shelby’s father reached over and grabbed his beer and finished it. Shelby touched hers; it was warm. The things her father was saying were whipping past her.
“The night before the wedding, I started driving south. I had a bunch of clothes packed and I remember I packed a spatula. I didn’t know where I was headed. I drove half the night and then turned around and drove back. I never forgot the exit, either. This many years later, when you and me and your sister passed it in the car on the way down here. I remembered that exit where I turned back.”
Shelby wasn’t angry. If this was being a buddy, she didn’t like it, but she wasn’t angry.
“I’m glad you did,” she told her father. “I’m glad you came back.”
“You’re glad?” Shelby’s dad chuckled. “I thought I was doing that because I was a decent man, like I was making a sacrifice, doing the right thing. I was real impressed with myself. I saved my life, coming back. I saved my own life. For whatever it’s worth.”
Shelby passed her beer to her father. He wouldn’t mind that it was warm.
“It’s worth something to me,” she said.
Toby accompanied Shelby to the public library. He knew she had something he needed, something that would fortify him, but he didn’t know if it was something she could offer or that he could accept. He didn’t know how to mine another person for something good. To Toby, Shelby was the opposite of the bunker; she was a bright kind of worry. In the bunker, Toby had to rely on his evil to lead him, but with Shelby he had to rely on his everyday self. When he thought about her, he felt he could toughen up and go about his normal business and keep his bunker business out of the rest of his life.
The library was open till nine on Wednesdays and Shelby wanted to e-mail her Aunt Dale. It was not fully night. The woods felt cramped. Shelby walked beside Toby, loosely grasping his elbow.
“My dad used to be an optimist.” Shelby halted. “And I used to be a realist.”
They’d reached a fork in the trail. Toby nodded to the left. Shelby was sweating, her skin lustrous.
“I guess I’m a pessimist now,” she said. “My dad says he hates pessimists.”
“You can call yourself whatever you want,” Toby said. “The same things are going to happen to you.”
“The bad things, anyway.”
“Especially the bad things.”
“What happened to your mom?” Shelby asked.
Toby felt how soft the sand was under each of his steps. In this part of the woods, it was like beach sand. He didn’t look at Shelby.
“You were young when she died, right?”
“I didn’t know her and neither did my uncle.”
“Why not?”
“I was too little. We lived far away from here.”
“Where?”
“Another part of the state.”
Shelby was still holding Toby’s elbow. “Is your uncle your dad’s brother?” she asked.
“I don’t talk about this stuff,” Toby said. “It really doesn’t matter whose brother anybody is.”
“Well, what did she look like, your mother?”
“I don’t have any pictures of her. I think she had long hair.”
“Can’t you see her in your mind?”
“What does it matter what she looked like?”
“I think it matters,” Shelby said.
“I don’t think it matters at all,” Toby said, sharply. He guided his elbow out of Shelby’s grip.
She got the hint. She didn’t ask any more questions. The trail hardened and then, near a buzzing power substation, turned to a gravel road. The library came into view, its parking lot swarming with old people and high school kids who couldn’t yet drive.
Inside, an elderly gang barked questions about their tax forms. The librarian held a tolerant look
on her face and repeated the statement, “I am not an accountant.” Shelby waded toward the computer lab and Toby went to the periodicals. He perused the wall of magazine covers and chose something about animal psychology. He found a cushy chair. He was still upset over Shelby grilling him about his family. Next thing, she’d want to come over for dinner or something. Toby’s family was his own business. He rubbed his eyes. The front of the magazine he’d chosen featured a shark relaxing on a dock, a radio nearby, a bottle held in its fin. Toby opened to the table of contents and couldn’t make sense of it; it was just a bunch of words. There were so many magazines, and none of them were meant for Toby. He didn’t belong where he was. He didn’t belong in the library, or in Citrus County. He didn’t belong in this padded, institutional chair. It wasn’t right that he was a human being on planet Earth. A mistake had been made.
Toby felt a tap on his shoulder and started. Shelby was done already.
“That was quick,” Toby said.
“E-mail. That’s kind of the point.”
Shelby pulled Toby out of the chair and they filed through the old folks and made their way past a faction of listless skateboarders. They took the frontage road instead of the woods.
“I have to tell you something,” Toby said. “You can’t ever come to where I live. My uncle can’t handle visitors. It could be bad.”
“Is he crazy?” Shelby asked.
“Certain things set him off. New people are a bad idea.”
“You know where I live and I don’t know where you live. Seems like that gives you an advantage.”
“Believe me, my uncle isn’t an advantage.”
“Does he have a job?”
“He works alone.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Mostly to himself,” said Toby. “I can’t have anyone know he’s not well. They might lock him up or ship me off somewhere.”
Toby did not deny that Uncle Neal was crazy. But Shelby’s aunt sounded crazy. Her dad was crazy, now. Coach Scolle was an asshole. Mr. Hibma was a weirdo. In the northern part of the county there were churches full of Pentecostals who handled snakes.
Toby and Shelby headed down the frontage road, mincing their steps for potholes. Meaty insects hovered. Toby and Shelby walked past the back of a restaurant, where a bunch of smoking waitresses with big purses smiled at them. They strolled beyond the Goodwill and into the parking lot of a strip mall. Every store was closed but one, a flag shop. A bell dinged as they entered. A thin man wearing high-tops and a bandana came out from the back and said he was doing inventory.
“Please don’t steal anything,” he said. “You look like good youngsters, so I won’t check to make sure you have money.” He sighed theatrically and returned to the back room.
“I bet that works,” Toby said. “Begging every single customer not to steal.”
“Could backfire,” Shelby said. “Could put the idea in someone’s head.”
“You going to take something?”
“Not today. I have money.”
Toby had noticed that Shelby was never without a small amount of cash. She was a prepared chick. She had everything she needed, which wasn’t much, parceled throughout the pockets of her shorts. Toby watched her. The flag shop was lit with weak lamps and a large fan was set up in the corner which managed to ripple the merchandise and dance wisps of Shelby’s hair around. She bit her bottom lip as she browsed, working her way through the flags of many nations, through twenty variations of the Confederate flag. Universities. Mottoes. Cartoon characters.
“Found one,” she called to the guy in back. She yanked it off the rack, unfurled it on a counter near the register, and stood aside. It was brown and white, about 6' by 4'. In the center, toward the bottom, was an official-looking seal, and in each corner was the print of a palm and fingers. The greater part of the flag was occupied by regal letters which spelled out LICENSED HANDJOB ACCEPTANCE STATION. This made Toby nervous. He wondered what the clerk would think.
“You look flustered,” Shelby said. “Before I knew you, I never took you for such a flustered dude.”
“Before I knew you, I wasn’t,” said Toby.
“I’ll touch your penis in a couple weeks, okay?”
Toby didn’t force a laugh or pretend he hadn’t heard Shelby. He stood there.
The guy in the bandana emerged, a tape gun in one hand.
“What happened?” he asked.
Shelby paused. “I zeroed in on the goods I wish to purchase is what happened.”
The guy edged closer. When he saw that Shelby had a flag on the counter and cash in her hand, he relaxed his grip on the tape gun and stood up straight.
“Wow,” he said. “You two aren’t nomadic vandals. You’re a nice young couple.”
Shelby took Toby’s hand. The clerk proceeded to ring up the flag without seeming to notice what it said. He folded the flag into a snug triangle and wrapped it in paper like a deli sandwich.
“Shipment next week,” he said. “You should stop back by.”
“Count on it,” Shelby told him.
“More humorous sexual stuff.”
Shelby handed over the money and told the clerk to keep the change. She forced the packaged flag into one of her pockets.
“Please be safe,” the clerk said. “You two are the best youngsters I’ve ever had in here.”
Toby moved toward the door, not sure if he was pulling Shelby or she was pulling him. As they passed back into the night, the bell on the door dinged. They regained the frontage road, a stretch that had no light at all. The stars were out. They weren’t twinkling.
“Where you going to fly that?” Toby asked.
“I’m going to nail it to the front doors of Central Citrus Baptist.”
“What for?”
“It’s a musical issue,” Shelby said. “Some offensive music was snuck into my house.”
“Offensive?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
Shelby was getting ahead of Toby and he sped up.
“You could just keep the flag. We could get it out sometimes and look at it.”
Shelby stopped. It was too dark to know what was on her face.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “I’m embroiled in a contest of pranks that has gone on for thousands of years, between people long before me, and if there’s a God then he’s been watching the whole thing and laughing. Someone stole my sister. That was a hell of a prank, don’t you think? A lot bigger than hanging a flag.”
“I see,” Toby said. He didn’t. He didn’t see what the church and its music had to do with Kaley. He almost wished he could tell Shelby where her sister was, so she knew who was worth being afraid of, so she wouldn’t waste her energy on a false enemy. The only thing to be scared of in this county was Toby, and he wasn’t going to hurt Shelby anymore. He hoped he never hurt anyone anymore.
Toby started the two of them walking again. “A hammer and nails will be too noisy,” he told Shelby. “If you’re going to do this, you need a staple gun.”
The classroom kept dimming then flooding with light as masses of clouds passed in front of the sun. Mr. Hibma pointed at a kiss-ass and ordered her to close the blinds. It was the last day of the foreign nations presentations. Mr. Hibma asked for a volunteer and here came Toby, a box of visual aids in his arms. Toby’s eyes were puffy, pinkened. He competently pushed his way through a bunch of obscure facts. He played a South African pop song. He gave everyone a serving of some canned root in a sugary sauce.
Next Shelby got up. No props. Iceland: puffins, aurora borealis, the Sugarcubes, Irish monks. Shelby had an aunt there. She ran a website, which Shelby promised she had not looked at in researching her presentation, a website called whatwouldtheythink, on which the aunt reviewed things. This aunt, Aunt Dale, had been with the same man since Shelby had been alive, but refused to marry him. Shelby’s aunt didn’t care for the United States. She refused to put ads on her website, and was compensated instead by the government of Iceland.
“Hold up,” Mr. Hibma said. He knew Shelby’s aunt’s website. He went on it from time to time and read reviews of performance artists. He hated performance artists.
“So you had that Stubblefield lady as one aunt,” Mr. Hibma said. “The lady in Tennessee, in the barn. And then you have expatriate Aunt Dale as another aunt.”
“Right, but Janet Stubblefield wasn’t my real aunt.”
“And both of them are nuts in a pleasing way.”
Shelby looked skeptical.
“Oh, Aunt Dale’s nuts,” said Mr. Hibma. “She’s dedicated her life to conjecturing what impression Martians might have of Earthly customs.”
“Abnormal,” Shelby conceded.
“Do you know how many people are abnormal in a way that pleases me?”
“In the world?”
“Let’s estimate.”
“Four hundred?”
This seemed a perfect guess. “And you have two of them for aunts.”
Mr. Hibma wondered if Aunt Dale had ever visited Citrus County. The area seemed ripe for whatwouldtheythink. It was unimpressive in a noteworthy way. Mr. Hibma could see Aunt Dale at the Best Western lounge, chatting with the mermaids. He saw Aunt Dale down at Hudson Beach—a scatter of damp dirt and a burger bar with Calypso music. Mr. Hibma saw himself serving Aunt Dale dinner in his villa. “The drywall is all original,” he would tell her. He would serve calzones, baked by the Long Islanders down the street.
Mr. Hibma dismissed the class, allowing each kid to grab a poster on the way out, something they now did out of obligation. He’d broken into a long patch of straight-to-video action movies—beefy, confused-looking men and women with shiny cleavage.
When the last kid was gone, Mr. Hibma shut the door. He stared at a Bosch print. Grotesque birds. Women with bonnets. Demons hiding in big eggs—or were they being born? Bosch had captured the horror so deftly that it seemed to echo. Mr. Hibma felt he might find himself in the painting, walking around lost with chalk in his pockets.
He was very jealous of Aunt Dale. He was meant to do few things, and what Aunt Dale did, criticize, was one of them. She’d made better decisions than Mr. Hibma and had ended up in a better life. That’s what Mr. Hibma should’ve done with his inheritance: started whatwouldtheythink. He never should’ve ended up throwing a dart. He should’ve chosen his life.
