This is the Part Where You Laugh

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This is the Part Where You Laugh Page 15

by Peter Brown Hoffmeister


  I say, “Do you know a woman who goes by Sally down here?”

  “No,” she says, “but I know a few women. Is she your age?”

  “Older,” I say. “Twice as old. I’m trying to find her.”

  “Don’t know, but the Lord will provide.” The woman taps the Bible with her finger. Flips the pages back to an earlier chapter. “The 23rd, you know it? ‘The Lord is my shepherd’?”

  “I think I’ve heard that.”

  “My name’s Medusa,” the woman says. “Medusa reading a Bible, huh?” She laughs like a lit cigarette. Coughs with her tongue out. Takes a deep breath. “So if it says here that the Lord will provide?”

  I reach into my bag and pull out one of the sandwiches. “Do you need some food?”

  Medusa smiles, two front teeth missing. “Are you the Lord, then?” She laughs again.

  I hold out the sandwich and she takes it. Then I keep walking.

  Check the benches along the west side, up to the courts. There’s no one playing in the middle of the day, and I look at the double rims and the graffiti against the girders. There’s a painting of a knife slicing open a face, the eyeball popping out. Underneath, it says THE EUG—187.

  The bridge traffic above me is constant, the clunk, clunk of the cars and trucks, and I look around again, but I don’t bother calling her name because she’d never hear me anyway. I walk west through the Whitaker neighborhood for a couple of blocks, check alleys and along fences where the hedges are thick, but I don’t find anyone other than an old man sleeping faceup in the middle of an alley, his arms outstretched to each side, his hands open like he’s nailed in that position.

  I walk back to the bridge. At my bike, I open the Gatorade and drink half of it. Unwrap the other sandwich and eat it, lean against the wall, and finish the rest of the food. A homeless man walks by me as I eat and says to me, “Keep your head up, brother. I’ve been there too.”

  Then I get back on my bike and ride home.

  Before I head down to my tent, I walk over to Mr. Tyler’s house and take a piss. Since I’m too sore to run away, I don’t go up on his porch. Instead, I hide in the shadow between his car and the side of his house, whip it out, and piss all over the hood of his Buick. With the pills making me drift a little, I rock back and forth and feel the piss surging, watch it splash over the shiny silver, smell the urine and metal as my piss runs off the hood and leaks through the seam, down into the engine compartment. I smile to myself as I finish, standing there staring at the car’s hood. Then I zip up and walk back to my tent.

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  In the middle of the night, I wake up to a noise. I don’t know what it is, just that the noise wakes me. Something’s there. I sit up quickly and a shock of pain jolts through my rib cage. I groan, suck in a breath, pant, and try to relax my back and ribs while looking out into the dark. I get onto my knees and lean on my good arm. Feel like someone is trying to take apart my rib cage.

  Something hisses.

  I look but can’t see anything. It hisses again, not far away. It’s so dark that I don’t know exactly where it is even though I can hear it. I get low and look for its outline. Then I see it. More than four feet long, the caiman looks like it’s grown, and it’s just outside my left-side tent door, only a few feet away.

  I want to zip my tent door closed, but I don’t want to startle the caiman. I look around for a stick, but there’s nothing between me and the small crocodile. I have a knife somewhere in my things at the other end of the tent, and I think about that knife but I don’t move to get it.

  I stay still. Wait.

  The caiman stays still too. He closes his mouth and opens it again. I scooch down a little toward my pile of stuff, closer to my knife, and the caiman waddles forward and hisses again. I stop moving then. He’s only two or three feet from me, right outside my tent, close enough that he could step inside. He stays there, mouth open.

  I have no idea what to do. I stare at the outline of that open mouth, a mouth half as long as the body behind it. The caiman’s not the biggest animal I’ve ever seen, but it’s crazy-looking. It could take my hand off, or my whole arm if it got ahold of me and thrashed a little.

  I notice something hard under my right hand, glance down, and see it’s Grandma’s copy of Crime and Punishment. It’s a hardback, has some weight to it. I slide my fingers underneath the book, raise it slowly, so slowly, until it’s next to my head.

  The caiman waits there, not hissing, just there, mouth open, at the edge of my tent door. I count in my head—one, two, three—then I swing. Hard. Bring the book down on the caiman’s nose, at the end of its top jaw, and the caiman’s mouth closes. It backs up a little. I throw the book at it, but I miss. I scurry back, crawl inside and fumble for the zipper, zip the door closed, then turn around and zip the other door closed as well. The caiman is scrabbling around out there, hissing and thumping its tail, and I feel around for my headlamp until I find it by my pillow.

  Then I notice the pain in my ribs again, and realize that I’m wheezing and wincing from a feeling like box cutters separating cartilage in my back, like three or four people are back there cutting me open at the same time. I try to move into a more comfortable position. Get back on my knees, then lean forward. Rest on my hands. My head is low, next to the tent’s air vent. I look out, try to see the caiman, but can’t. I shine the light through, and then I see it. The caiman’s only five feet away, on the grass, the hardback book in its mouth. It’s attacking Crime and Punishment, and the book is hanging lopsided from its jaws while it turns in a circle. The caiman releases it, then snatches it up again, ripping off the front cover. It’s grunting as it takes the book apart. Then it thrashes its tail and waddles a few steps, dropping off the bank, down onto the gravel by the lake, and I can’t see it anymore.

  I take two Vicodin pills and lie down on my side. Listen for the caiman, but he’s gone.

  —

  In the morning, I’m sore and stiff, and I groan as I sit up. My ribs feel worse than ever. I peek through the open two inches of door on my left side. Turn around and look out the right-side door, opening it a crack, making sure the caiman isn’t waiting for me.

  After I piss into the lake, I look around for the book. Or what’s left of it. The first third is just a wad of papers that I find in the blackberries. I pick them up, most of them single sheets, all of them torn in half. Then I look around and find the rest of the book up the shore 30 or so feet, lying next to a small rock. The back cover is still connected to the second half of the book, but it has gouges at an angle from the caiman’s teeth. It looks like it’s been chewed on and dragged around by a big dog.

  I take what’s left of the book up to the house. It’s still early and my grandparents aren’t awake yet. I put the remains of the book in a plastic grocery bag and set it next to the phone. Then I write a note:

  Grandma, the book you loaned me is in this bag. Sorry that it looks like this. But I thought that if anyone would think it’s funny, that CRIME AND PUNISHMENT looks like this, it’s you.

  Travis

  ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  I take two more Vicodin and walk to Natalie’s. Knock on her front door.

  She opens it and smiles. Takes my hand and walks me upstairs to her room. She’s wearing a loose white shirt with the collar cut out, the open collar slid all the way to the edges of her tan shoulders. I can see both turquoise bra straps as I follow her up the stairs.

  Her room is white. Bright white paint. A brass bed painted white. White bedspread. Four white pillows. Her white pine bookshelf is lined with an even row of hardbacks. No room in my grandparents’ house looks anything like this. There are no clothes on the floor. No plates or wrappers. No crumpled newspapers. No magazines.

  On a table on the far side of her bed is an aquarium with water in the bottom. Lily pads on the surface of the water. A flower and two vines. A frog at the waterline on the side of a hanging platform.

  “My mom’s gone.” Natalie ki
sses me. “Are you hurting?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Are you on painkillers?”

  “I just took some not too long ago.”

  She peels off my shirt. “Lie on my bed. Facedown. Let me see your back.”

  I lie on the white bedspread. It’s thick and soft. Natalie sits next to me, runs her fingertips along the bruising on my back. “It still looks pretty bad.”

  “I need it to heal quick.”

  She walks around the bottom of the bed and comes to the opposite side. Lies down facing me. She runs her fingers along my arm. Says, “I think it can take a long time to heal ribs.”

  I prop myself up on my good elbow. Wince a little.

  She says, “I’m sorry you’re hurt.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She kisses me. We’re kissing, and our bodies are next to each other. We kiss and I run my hand up her shirt, feel her abs, run my fingers over her skin and muscles. Then I slide my hand up, onto her bra. She presses into me, and I slide up on top of her. I run the tips of my fingers underneath the lace of her bra, against the soft skin. We’re kissing and my fingers are against her bare breast. She’s shifting against me and I’m breathing hard, she’s breathing hard, and she feels so good underneath me, her legs spread, and everywhere our skin touches it’s like I’ve added nerve endings.

  She shifts once more, breathes into my mouth, and I’m heavy on top of her, pressing, her underneath me. I kiss her neck and reach down to pull her shirt up over her head, but she drops her elbows, leans away, and breathes. Stops. Looks away.

  I stop.

  She pushes my shoulder and slides out from under me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just—”

  “I know,” she says. “It’s fine.”

  “Wait.”

  “Everything’s fine.” She stands up. “Sorry. You should go.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.” She’s looking at the wall, but the scar under her eye is twitching.

  “I’m sorry I—”

  “No, you’re fine. It’s fine. You should just go, though, okay?”

  “Natalie, I’m—”

  “Will you just fucking leave?”

  I stand up. Hold my hands above my head like she’s got a gun pointed at me. “So I guess I’ll just go then?”

  “Thank you,” she says, and walks out of her room. I follow her. She leads me back down the stairs to the front door.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I say, “Want to talk later?”

  “Sure. Or whatever. I don’t know.” She opens the front door.

  “Look. I’m—”

  “Stop.” She puts her hand on my chest. “It’s fine. Really. Don’t worry about it.” I walk out the door and she shuts it behind me.

  IN MY HEAD

  My walk back around the lake is like doing the difficult part of one of those 1,000-piece nature puzzles. The bottom part of the puzzle is fine, where the mountains and trees and rocks are, that’s easy enough to complete, but the whole sky is one color of blue, and all the pieces look the same at first. As I duck under a blackberry vine, I say to myself, What the hell just happened?

  The girl I dated last year was named Maggie. She was a freshman, nine months younger than me. But she seemed older. She was into all kinds of stuff and she made me nervous. She liked to steal her stepdad’s Marlboro Reds and smoke them in her room and say, “If he catches us smoking in here, he’ll kill us both.” He was a big, scary guy who’d played defensive line for the University of Oregon, and he never looked anyone in the eyes, and I wanted to say, “But I’m not the one who’s smoking, you know?”

  Maggie and I didn’t go out for very long, but we still went pretty far whenever we were making out. That would’ve been cool if she’d let me lock the bedroom door, but she never did, for whatever reason, and I’d sort of look over my shoulder the whole time we were in her room. I’d have her shirt off and she’d put my hand down her pants, and she’d be moaning and asking me to do things to her, and I’d be so nervous that someone was about to walk in that I couldn’t do anything at all. The room would be full of smoke from her stolen cigarettes, and I didn’t even want to take my shoes off in case I had to run.

  Maggie dumped me as soon as I got back from juvie. We’d only been going out for four weeks before that, but still, I was pissed. She said her stepdad saw the news coverage of the punch and told her that she couldn’t have me over to her house anymore. She was chewing bubblegum when she dumped me and she shrugged and said, “It’s not like we’re a good match anyway. You’re kind of a pussy, you know?” She blew a bubble and I wanted to grab that bubble and pull the gum out of her mouth.

  I watched her after that. I watched her at school, and I watched her flirt with guys. I watched her walk down the hall with her new boyfriend after they started dating. She saw me watching her one time when they were kissing against the lockers in the back hallway. She looked over his shoulder and saw me there, and I could tell that she liked me watching her, and she reached between his legs and looked right at me.

  So I tried not to watch her after that. But all spring long I thought about her, wondered what we’d be doing if we were still together. The weird thing was that I didn’t even like her that much, but still, I thought about her a lot. I don’t like to admit it, but a girl can get in my head like that.

  If I had to pick between Natalie and Maggie, though, I’d pick Natalie every time. Even though she practically shoved me out the door and slammed it in my face today, I’d still choose her. ’Cause it sort of makes sense. Maybe she doesn’t want to do too much when we make out. Maybe she gets nervous. Maybe she starts thinking too much. I do that sometimes, I think too much, so I understand. And anyway, there’s lots of reasons for a girl to act like Natalie did today, so I guess that’s all right. There’s a little bit of mystery in it, and mystery keeps things interesting.

  NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

  I go up to the house. Slide the back door open and enter right as Grandpa’s coming in the front door opposite of me. “Grandpa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where were you?”

  “Community meeting. Everyone in the neighborhood got together to discuss the lake monster.”

  “You still believe in that?”

  “Everyone does. The Bufords lost a cat this week. Shanahans think they might have lost their schnauzer, Billy. And Animal Control isn’t helping at all. Animal Control doesn’t think there’s a monster.”

  “Well,” I say, “it’s a pretty crazy story.”

  “Oh no,” he says, “there’s a monster, and that’s a fact. Some kind of crocodile monster. There’s been more than half a dozen sightings now.”

  I say, “I’m not so sure.”

  “But weren’t you there at Maribel Calhoun’s? Didn’t you see it?”

  “I saw something, but I’m not sure what it was.”

  “Well, we’re going to set up a lake guard. Take turns patrolling the bank. And we’ll see who’s right.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Do whatever you want.”

  “Oh we will,” he says. “And you might not want to sleep out there anymore.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say, and walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and grab the end of a block of cheese. Then I pull some Ritz crackers out of the cupboard. I keep my back to him since I’m smiling so big. I say, “Don’t worry about me.”

  SLIP PAST THE CHEESE GIRL

  I take two Vicodin and try to read. But I stare off after the pills kick in. It’s evening, cooler than most, when I step out of my tent, and I put a hoodie on. Zip it up.

  Then I walk out the lake loop to the entrance road. Walking feels better than biking since I don’t have to hunch over. I cross Green Acres, go up the dentist’s drive, through the hedge, and past Little Caesars. I walk around the corner to the Market of Choice.

  Up and down the aisles, I don’t know what I’m looking for. Then I see the chocolate display. All of the bars are the import
ed kind, from Europe, the Caribbean, or Africa. There’s a store worker at the cheese display next to me, but no one is posted at the chocolate.

  I pretend to read labels, but I’m really watching the cheese girl. She keeps talking to customers as they come by, offering different cheeses, always looking around. But when she finally turns her back to grab another box of toothpicks behind her, I slip a chocolate bar under my sweatshirt, take a few steps, then slide it into the front of my basketball shorts.

  CODEPENDENCE

  My ribs ache all the time. I swallow pills. Ice three times a day for two weeks. I lie on the couch or take a chair out onto the back grass and sit in the sun. I take naps. I try to do as little as possible and heal my ribs.

  I don’t hear from Natalie. I think about going over to her house so many times, but I don’t know what I would say.

  The only noise in the house is Grandpa’s snoring. He’s asleep in his chair in the study. The door to Grandma’s room is closed. I go into the kitchen, make a big glass of Tang, and drink it. Grandma’s Percocet pills are sitting out on the counter again. I open the bottle and take four pills. Put three in my pocket. Pop one in my mouth and swallow it dry. Then I go into the living room and turn on the computer. Watch Michael Jordan highlight videos on YouTube. Then Damian Lillard videos. Then Jason Kidd’s. Chris Paul’s. Steve Nash’s. Magic Johnson’s.

  Take another Percocet.

  I quit the Internet and turn the computer off. Hear Grandma coughing and I walk down the hall and into her room. She’s sitting upright, reading a book with a magnifying glass. Holding a handkerchief to her mouth with her other hand.

  “What are you reading, Grandma?”

  “Persuasion, sweetie. Jane Austen. It’s always been one of my favorites.”

  “You and Creature. I’ve never reread a book.”

 

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