Theo

by Ed Taylor

  Voices and music. Nothing changes. Nobody knows about Colin or the lady, or maybe they do. The show must go on, Adrian says, all the time. The show must go on baby, that’s all there is. There’s the show, and everything else is just waiting for the show.

  This is his show, Theo thinks, on his back, and he needs to get up and go.

  He crawls onto his hands and knees, and stands, and walks to the place where Paz is, and the other dogs, still there, but lifting heads a little, he can see. The assistant is there sitting with a bowl of water.

  Thanks, Theo says, for helping them.

  The lady’s a teenager, Theo thinks. He’ll be a teenager in three years. She looks up at him – she’s wearing a baseball hat and smiling, and an apron, and she has shorts on, and a watch – it’s six. She’s kind of pretty. He can’t help looking at where the apron swells.

  Hey – Leslie said to stay here with them until she could figure out what to do. She’s working right now, but was going to try to talk to your dad, about what to do with the. With the one who’s gone. The other ones are a little better I think. They’re drinking a lot more.

  Theo knelt to pet them, and their eyes followed him while he did. They seemed more tired now than anything else, the foam like toothpaste around their mouths now, dried. Theo wondered what they ate: search the house and protect them, look for bad stuff at dog level and put it away. Maybe tell grownups, make a rule. Some rules he could ask his dad about. Some rules.

  Tail, wag. A beat. On the ground. Thump thump thump. Then resting. Just like when they don’t want to go outside for a walk when it’s cold or snowy.

  Theo says, thanks. I’m going to bury her now.

  Where. She’s pushing hair out of her eyes, and Theo does too, reminded that his hair’s in the way.

  In the trees over there, I guess. I don’t know where my dad is.

  Theo didn’t want to do it alone, he didn’t know what should happen. He didn’t want to just dump her in a hole.

  Um. Can you carry the shovel for me.

  The lady looks around and back at the house, her face a little funny. She doesn’t want to. Please.

  Yeah, okay. But I have to get back to work.

  Okay. Okay, let’s go.

  The lady rises off her knees, then leans to brush them off – her brown knees. She’s tanned. Then Theo hands her the shovel, and he drops and scoots and reaches. He feels bad – he has to drag Paz, past the others, her stomach rubs against their noses and they just stare at him. Theo has her out in the sun now and squats to put arms under her – she’s limp. How long does it take to stiffen, he wonders. He wishes really hard that it doesn’t happen until he’s not touching her. She’s still warm. Some people are looking, but not the poison guy. He’s on his back staring straight up. Theo feels a rush of warmth. He walks fast toward the trees, the lady turning with him. Birds scream.

  Theo just walks, he’s not sure where, just in, where no one can see. He doesn’t want anyone to see her. She was shy. The lady’s not saying anything.

  The lady’s looking around. How about over there. She’s pointing.

  No, over there – Theo’s walking to the left and stopping under a spreading tree with a forked trunk, Theo’s tree, a twisted Y, a million years old, wrinkled and swirling. It looks like rock that flowed and froze, or like it’s raising arms. Here.

  The ground and trees are dappled with light and dark. ‘Dapple’ was a vocabulary word, when they studied elaboration in school. School. Theo sees desks and kids bent over paper, and playground sounds outside, the younger kids at recess earlier. The lady’s handing him the shovel: I need to be getting back, okay.

  Can you wait a minute. Please. Theo doesn’t want to do this alone.

  I’m sorry, but I have to get back to work. Sorry – she was a good dog, I bet.

  Yeah. Um, thanks.

  The lady waves her hand and walks away, fast. She’s wearing sneakers.

  Theo’s digging, the soil sandy, with brown mixed in the white. The hole keeps filling back up. He thinks if he does it really fast and gets her in it will work, so he shovels crazily, manically, which makes him laugh, but he feels funny laughing when she’s lying there. He digs on, flinging shovels of chocolate and sugar into the shade. Sound echoes out from the house, laughing. Theo wants them to be quiet.

  Theo’s arms turning limp with exertion. The sand creeps back into the hole, which isn’t a hole, more like a cone. He kneels and lays her in the hole, and has to fold her and her back legs rise above the ground. He shivers, pushing hard on her once and then he digs a couple of feet away and scoops sand over her. Grains not really covering her, just sliding off. He keeps at it, watching the dirt rise around her like water until it begins to lap at her sides and then slowly cover her more and more. Her eyes are half open. He leaves that for last.

  Theo stops to rest, breathing hard. The shovel’s tall, so he has to choke up on it, like in baseball the times he’s been able to play. He remembers hearing Adrian say to the bass player, man, you’re holding that thing like you’re choking a woman. Theo’s wearing gloves made of sand, his hands are sticky and the soil’s adhering, and to patches on his legs and stomach. She’s lying there. Her eyes.

  Keep shoveling – Theo’s mad to finish, just throws soil at the place until he can make himself look – she’s just an outline now, all of her covered, so he slows a little but keeps shoveling until there’s just a pile. Then he looks around, looking for limbs or rocks to put on top and hide her. He doesn’t know what might come looking but he doesn’t want her dug up. He wonders if the others found her, would they. What would keep them from it. Nothing. She’s just food now. What keeps people off each other. Sometimes nothing. People have canine teeth. Theo’s washed with sadness; he can feel it moving over and through him. He wants to get out.

  Theo lays gray driftwood on the pile, but there aren’t rocks here. There is, he sees, a small stack of bricks a little further in. They look old, he sees, taking one in each hand. Maybe from building the house, and they’ve sat since then. Or Colin decided to make something and then forgot. He lays the bricks on top, then piles on more, so she won’t float up. She’s asleep.

  No flowers around. He sits cross-legged beside her, not knowing what to do, and a song from school comes into his head. He sings, quietly, you are my sunshine. My only sunshine.

  When he’s finished, he gets up to find something to mark her. He combs through the trees, coming out at the dunes, finding nothing. Beer cans, and an old flip-flop. He’ll go back to the house and find something. Bring it later. Bring her some water. He weaves scuffing through the dry sand, squeaking, kicking clouds, kicking harder and harder, around the trees and down the path between the dunes toward the house, the heavy wood trestles of the walkway appearing like signs reminding him. This way to the world. Which world.

  Walking, Theo kicks at grass. Frieda and Adrian think they treat him like an adult, and he’s around adults all the time. Frieda and Adrian let him call them by their names and say when he goes to bed and what he eats and what he wears and where he sleeps and curse around him and talk about sex but that’s not treating him like an adult, that’s just doing what kids think being an adult is. He’s on the water, and it’s deep and black and he doesn’t know what’s in it, but things flash, he sees silver and eyes and swirls and there’s huge life down there but he’s floating over it – what else is there. When does he get to see it. Maybe he’s seeing now and doesn’t know it, because he’s a kid. Maybe all you ever see is just the flash.

  Theo moves over the lawn among people scattered further apart now, fewer outside, the late afternoon sun hotter, or maybe people have left. He hopes so. Theo’s thinking of what to put on Paz’s grave. Mingus and the Seal and Gina and some other adults have brought chairs into the gazebo, and coolers, and Theo’s sliding up the flaking wood steps: maybe he’ll ask here.

  Mingus looms in his costume, sweat pouring down around his helmet and wraparound shades.

  You know
, you can moan about how this’s ugly and you need that and you need to be someplace else with other people, but you know, it’s like every day I’m kicking down Avenue A and stepping over the dog shit and garbage and worn-out shit and glue sniffers and toothless fucking winos and crack whores and syringes and ugly this and that and I’m just, you have to find the magic, find the magic, it’s there, it’s everywhere, just find the magic, there’s something shiny, you just never know where it’s going to come from, that’s the magic. I mean there’s no escaping the yin and yang, like if you’re Elizabeth the Second and you never even touch the ground your life is so exalted and everything you touch is beautiful, you still have streaks in your silk knickers, you dig. And of course there’s the oldest story of all, the only one, man, decline and fall, attachment and loss, like every life is a little civilization that has some sun and then is overrun by the Visigoths, you know, sickness and old age and the old rags. Yeah, I’m high, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and the sooner we all just get over it – like, the most broke-ass sidewalks in Manhattan glitter in the sun, if you look close. Just look at the street and it sparkles, and the rainbows in the oil, man, it’s beautiful, even a slab of asphalt. It doesn’t get any more basic. That’s what I see. Just pay attention, just wake up and pay attention. The world is talking to you. And I am awake. Can I get another bump.

  Do you plan to shut up this year, one of the men said.

  Pearls before swine as usual.

  Above on the gazebo ceiling mildew spots on the white, constellations, black stars in a white sky. Backward. Even outside here like an inside, something backward. It’s not right.

  Theo stands and walks away, no one seeming to notice. He’ll look in the house for something, and he runs now, to the side of the house and peeks around the corner, then runs to the front door, open wide, and in, over the black and white tiles and the disarrayed collection of Colin’s toppled chess pieces. He looks, but nothing seems right for Paz, and he runs down the right hall, and there’s Billy the minder at a door.

  Is my dad in there.

  Yeah, but we have to leave him alone right now.

  I need to see him, Theo knocking and saying dad.

  Adrian from inside says, it’s okay, Billy.

  Theo and Adrian sit cross-legged facing each other, under a window. The late sun lights up the room, and Theo watches the dust, up and down. An acoustic guitar lies on the floor beside Adrian – Theo can’t tell them apart; his dad buys seats for them on planes. Once he and Adrian and some people flew on a small plane between two islands and Adrian kept his hand on the white guitar case the whole flight. Adrian leans against velvet cushions and a cloth beanbag chair the color of wine. A couple of tape players, too. It feels weird, then Theo realizes it’s because they’re alone.

  What happened to everyone.

  Yeah, that’s always the question, isn’t it. Adrian laughs, coughs.

  Why did you make Colin go to jail.

  Adrian breathes deeply, purses his mouth, grins with half his mouth. You know what I am aside from being your dad.

  Theo’s puzzled – is this like a riddle.

  Adrian half smiles again. I’m a person. I’m inordinately fond of myself, lazy, selfish, weak, arrogant – ask your mother, who could give you a list of things I’m not. And of course, she’s a person too, aside from being your mother. And I’m a coward. I make friends take falls for me.

  You mean Colin.

  Adrian nods, exhaling smoke.

  So when I was your age and I learned stuff I didn’t like about people I loved – your grandfather was a right bastard, I thought – I built my own perfect human, out of parts, an arm, a leg, left eye – I cut up pictures of people I liked and made one person out of them and taped it to the wall. It was ugly but it was paper so you couldn’t break it. Every now and then I’d stick somebody new in there, swap out somebody, so it was like it was alive in a way. Does that make any sense to you. Do you understand what I mean.

  I guess.

  Or, instead of building an idol, you could, you know, put up a mirror.

  So you can look at yourself.

  Well, like maybe you don’t need an idol. Maybe it’s just in the way. You know.

  I guess. Is this like church.

  Ha. No.

  Do you think there’s a god.

  Hmm. Me. I do.

  Adrian pointed with his big hand at Theo’s head, and at his own head. I think god’s in here. A little piece. And all the pieces together equal god.

  But that’s just us.

  Yep.

  Theo’s dad squints through the smoke, the handrolled cigarette wrinkled and bent, and wider at the burning end than the mouth end, then grins around the cigarette, at the corner of his mouth. We’ve all got a little of the fire in us, a little piece.

  Even bad people.

  You know, Adrian says, rubbing his nose, I’m not sure they’re bad as much as they’re just confused.

  Some people like doing bad things. They think that’s good.

  You know, mate, sometimes people can be damaged, or sick. They might have had bad things done to them that broke them. But humans are pretty amazing. Sometimes even the brokest toy can be fixed, even if it’s just for a little bit. But sometimes fixing makes it worse, because then they see what they’ve been before. Did she put on his knowledge with his power, before the indifferent beak could let her drop.

  What.

  Old poem I learned in school. About a lady and a swan. Adrian took a deep drag on the cigarette. I’m sorry, mate.

  For what.

  Pretty much everything. I’m trying. I want to be a good father to you.

  You are. The best.

  What else are you gonna say. You’re a peacemaker, that’s your nature, especially after growing up in so much war. Later you’ll go grumbling about what a full cockup your dad was, tell your wife about it.

  Adrian reaches for the guitar and slides it into his lap, the way he pulls Theo into it, or used to. Theo is too old for that now. Adrian looks at Theo and starts playing: Theo knew it was the blues.

  It’s okay, dad. I won’t say that.

  Adrian’s eyes are closed and Theo isn’t sure if he hears. The dust in the air is like snow.

  Adrian says, you know, there’s somebody you need to meet. You should have met her by now. It’s time for you to meet her, I think.

  Theo hears, and remembers Roger saying there’s news, then remembers a winter time with Colin and Gus and pushing through the first-floor snow, with flashlights, and the only world was what was in the flashlights. Nothing else, just black. Or was this a dream. Them walking, the snow whispering, dry as sand, Gus muttering something. Theo said, I wonder if there are people somewhere doing the same thing right now, or are we the only ones in the whole world doing this.

  Colin laughed: I hope we’re the only ones fighting Siberia inside their own house just to get to the icebox. There’s a bloody irony. But, you know, I take it this way. I think nobody’s alone. I mean, you have your family, but sometimes it’s like monsters, or jail, something you have to escape. But your tribe’s out there, maybe scattered all over fuckall – come on, language, Gus said – right, sorry, but they’re there and maybe they’re even looking for you and eventually you’re all together lying on the beach, grinning at each other, getting matching tans.

  Theo says, who is she.

  Adrian tilts his head back and shakes it. Her mother was mad at me. And she’s not anymore.

  Why was she mad.

  Christ, Theo. There’s a list. Just check stuff off and whatever it is, it’s there. Look, mate, I’ve never had a job except being in this band, and it’s the only thing I know how to do. I’m still learning about everything else. Maybe I’ll get it right eventually.

  When can I meet her.

  Soon.

  How soon.

  We’re figuring it out, okay. It has to be neutral territory. And the recording’s off here. The vibe’s not right, the house’s de
ad.

  So you’re leaving again.

  Not immediately, love.

  I want to go to a school. And I’m getting out of here.

  Out of here. This house.

  Yes.

  How do you plan on that.

  I don’t know yet.

  Making your break, eh. Okay. I hear you. I hear you.

  Theo thinks about what he can’t live without, and what he can let go, let sink into the dark underneath ocean, even if something has to drown, die. But that’s too hard, he doesn’t know how to think about it. What does he live with: he’s not sure. Maybe he doesn’t want to stop being a kid. Everything else is blank and big and. And.

  I need to find something for Paz’s grave.

  Theo waits, but Adrian says nothing. He’s staring at Theo, and just takes a deep breath from his cigarette, looking like he is deciding something. Ah. Let’s give her a good sendoff. Come on.

  You mean you want to see it.

  Yeah.

  Adrian stands straight up from his crossed-leg position, leaning on the guitar for an instant and shaking his head. Then he sinks again, to crouch between his spread legs, squatting.

  What are you doing.

  Getting my bearings. Alright, let’s go. We’ll bring an offering, a libation.

  Theo doesn’t know what that is: I don’t want any other people. Just you.

  Okay, that’s cool.

  Not even Billy.

  Got it.

  A libation’s like an offering, something to help the dead cross over.