His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  There’s another hut down there, she said. Do you want to check it ount?

  You said ount, he said.

  No I didn’t. She laughed but she hated people doing that to her, pointing out the moments when Boston surfaced. He had done this to her at Australian customs, the little WASP, announcing she was saying mayan instead of mine. Well, he would have more foreign stuff than that to deal with.

  This was going to be his home, not just the acres, or the two huts, but this small third hut down in the darkness of the rain forest, creepier than the others, with nothing in it but an empty pickle jar.

  Outside, on the stoop, someone had carved a face into a block of stone. It was not exactly sinister, but it suggested superstition, witchcraft and some very lonely lost life reduced to a hidden corner of the earth.

  What does conferring mean? The boy pushed the stone over so its face was hidden.

  He’s chickenshit.

  You should not use curse words, you know.

  He was hugely upset. She was hugely upset herself but she was the adult and could not show it.

  What’s the matter, baby?

  You shouldn’t curse.

  Shut up, she thought. She brought him out of the forest, emerging just below the deck of one big leaky shaky hut, beside a bush with shiny leaves and bright red berries which she said was coffee. She wasn’t even sure that this was true.

  Go on, she said, peel one. You’ll see.

  Inside the red skin was a white, moist seed, slippery and somehow wrong. The boy was peeling a second bean when she heard an engine and saw the dirty blue-oil smoke, then the car itself. When the motor was turned off it continued knocking and coughing. She was expecting Adam, not Trevor. Now both of them walked through the grass toward them, Trevor staring at the boy a little too intently for her taste.

  Hello boy, he said, shirtless, oily, hipless in the sun.

  Hello Trevor.

  She saw how the boy lifted his chin, allowing himself to be silently interrogated.

  She said, Fancy seeing you here.

  Trevor chewed his smile in the corner of his mouth. Well, someone has to change your money.

  Of course, she thought.

  The boy also understood. His howl came out of nowhere, like something teased and taunted in a cage. He charged at Trevor like a mad thing. He punched him in his hard hairless stomach and between the legs.

  Che! she screamed at him, but Trevor had lifted him up and away and he was still hitting and scratching in the air.

  When he was still, Trevor put him back on the ground and the boy looked hatefully at Dial, waiting for her to do something. When he understood she would do nothing, he slashed at the coffee bush and tore a handful of leaves and then he ran through the long dewy grass, leaping with fright at something on the way, continuing through the dense tangle of lantana which would doubtless rip his skin.

  I’m sorry, she said to Trevor, but she was frightened now, of everything she’d done. I better go and talk to him, she said.

  No, said Trevor, he’ll be fine. You have to talk to me.

  And she obeyed. She walked with them up the traitor’s path, thinking of the boy, knowing exactly where he was, what he felt, inside the empty shed with the pickle bottle, curled up on the filthy floor, growing cooler, slowly more ashamed.

  20

  Was she really going to buy these mad vines and raging wild lantana, palm trees, chaos, coffee. She might as well have bought an elephant-but you could not hide inside an elephant and you could certainly hide here. That was its single virtue, to place her up a dirt track at the asshole of the earth.

  The boy did not like it here, but he could not decide his fate. She was the adult. She followed the two men inside the hut, completely unclear about everything, whether she should buy or walk away, whether they were here to rob or help her. Surely she could defeat them if she had to-one man who could not see and a second man who could not read.

  She sat cross-legged in the hut and watched, through a lead-light window, a tiny yellow bird, hovering. It was exquisite, beyond use or understanding.

  Adam “located” the tea and “organized” the kettle and Trevor rubbed papaya salve onto the long thin cut that the boy’s toenail had made on his hairless barrel chest. He was a mole, vole, pit bull, otter, seal, just not her type, although he didn’t understand that yet. They all sat on the cushions and Adam poured the tea, smiling at some out-of-focus fact that was his alone to know. He was emaciated as an Indian ascetic, as unrelated to any life she knew as the yellow hummingbird outside the window.

  So! she said. Because she wished to appear definite.

  So? said Trevor. Was he mocking her?

  So, we’re here to talk business, I assume. She was a child playing with money, not her money, but thousands, almost countless.

  So, you want to live an Alternative Lifestyle, said Trevor.

  He was mocking her, but she was way tougher than he was. Another thing he did not understand.

  So, Dial, you know there are problems.

  She heard him say vere for there and pwblems for problems. She had a degree from Harvard. He couldn’t speak or spell. She raised an eyebrow.

  You pay Adam foreign money, what can he do with it?

  You quite like my foreign money. I see you everywhere these days.

  Trevor exhaled, as if offended. But of course he was a criminal, one of the shifty classes her younger brother found so admirable.

  All right, he said, now listen.

  I’m listening.

  No, you are being twitchy and sarcastic. You don’t know who I am. You think I am a creep. You don’t understand what I have given up to come here.

  What have you given up?

  There you go, he said, that’s what I mean. I was in the middle of building a new gate.

  Well she had been about to take a job at Vassar. A gate, she said. Mocking him.

  A stockade, said Adam, sucking up. A bloody stockade, Dial, he pleaded.

  There was some weird unworldly singsong in their voices, like elves, she thought.

  I had six strong men all lined up to work with me, said Trevor, and now they’ve gone away. Thank you, Trevor, he said. That was nice of you, Trevor.

  Meanwhile the disgusting little flies crawled across the surface of the table. She covered her skin with her dress and she could feel the weight of her remaining money-all there was now between her and Sing Sing. She could not ask him if he had already robbed her.

  He said, Do you know how much an American dollar is worth?

  He said “worf.”

  Australia has a dollar of its own, Dial. You’re in Australia now. An Australian dollar, he said, is worth more than an American dollar.

  Oh God, she thought. This is like the health food store. They hate us. We didn’t even know they fucking existed and they’ve been down here hating us. What did we ever do to them?

  I bet that just seems wrong to you, he said. You know every country has a telephone code. You know what America’s is?

  It was 1, of course. She got the point. She said, Why don’t we just cut to the chase. You’re saying I would have to pay Adam more than we agreed. Is that it?

  It’s number one, he said. God bless America.

  You’re jacking up the price.

  No.

  Just say it, man. Like to my fucking face.

  But Trevor wouldn’t fight. He produced a pouch of Drum tobacco and got busy with a cigarette. He looked hurt and offended and why wouldn’t he if he was what he said he was. But if he was cheating her he would act the same.

  I don’t understand you, babe. Why would you want to piss me off.

  He engaged her eyes directly. Way too invasive. She couldn’t hold them long.

  Who else is going to help you?

  She looked away, as if impatient, but really fearful of being wrong.

  Maybe you shouldn’t buy Adam’s place, he said. You don’t look like a farm girl to me.

  Well, it was not her
money. It was all she had.

  Just give me a figure, she said. Just do it.

  Six thousand Australian dollars is six thousand six hundred American dollars, Trevor said. He said “fowsand.”

  Ten percent of that is six hundred and sixty-six.

  And he continued but she could not hold the numbers still. She was a Harvard graduate but she could not even do the math. He meanwhile, the autodidact, was spinning numbers in the air.

  All right, she thought, I’m doing it.

  She pulled out the fuse wire and ripped off her hem. She counted out the money, showing the full length of her gorgeous leg and pushing out currency like cookie dough onto their filthy table.

  The boy was going to hate her-tough!

  Trevor grinned-the broken teeth, the injured ear.

  Excuse me, she said.

  She was a fool, a total fool. She felt the wet on her cheeks before she understood that she was crying. Trevor called after her, but she fled the hut, walking briskly. As soon as her feet were on the earth the tears arrived in floods. Then she ran, along the path up to the bananas and down the hill to the spring and from there to the rain forest where she ran to hide inside the shed.

  The boy was standing. Diane Arbus. Clenched jaw. Holding out his arm to show his insect bites. All across the floor were bits of paper, not a single one torn straight, some white, some folded over and over, and also little stones and seeds and a pack of playing cards that had gone missing from her bag.

  Mommy.

  The dark strength of the misunderstanding squeezed her gut. She felt his body hard against her, so familiar, so foreign. As she held him she looked down at his magpie nest. There was a picture of Dave Rubbo which brought her heart into her throat, and a torn pack of impatiens seeds which was somehow almost worse.

  We’ll get used to it, he said.

  You’re a brave boy, she said. He squatted over his stuff and gathered it together. He knocked over the jar. It rolled all the way across the floor and fell into the forest with a small fat thump.

  Floor’s not level, she said, her voice all thick with snot.

  Will I have my surprise? he asked.

  Surprise? She laughed, self-mocking, desperate.

  When we went to Philly, you know.

  What a shitty time you’ve had, poor baby.

  The boy clocked the ruined velvet hem tied around her waist.

  How can my dad ever find us now, he said.

  Suddenly, it was time for truth.

  Your dad doesn’t want to find us, baby. You know that. Once she had said the words they settled in her gut like a large gray river rock, little bugs crawling out beneath.

  No, he said, gathering himself into himself again. He wants us. He wants me. She could see the tendons in his neck, the tightness of his little jaw.

  You remember, baby. In Seattle.

  No, he cried.

  She thought, I cannot do this, not now. He’s too frail.

  Shush, she said.

  She had heard the cat, that’s all. It was a straw. She grasped at it.

  Shush. Listen.

  She got him to crawl, reluctantly, by her side until they were at the doorway like a pair of andirons waiting for a fire.

  21

  There was no kitty. The ground dropped away below them, and there, in the broken shadows amid the speckled light that gave the forest floor a spotted skin, was a fat, stumpy-tailed bird with emerald along its back, turquoise on the shoulders, a red rump, a lovely blue beneath its wings. All its sudden beauty made him sad. He wished that it was dead.

  Did I talk to my dad in Seattle, he asked.

  She shrugged, exhausted.

  I didn’t, he said. I never saw my dad. What do you mean that he won’t come here?

  Throughout all this, the bird was part of some dumb dream. It picked up a snail shell and hit it against a rock. For a moment a beam of sunlight got it. A minute later it was gone, swallowed by the wild lantana.

  Where was my dad?

  On the lawn, with the hose.

  That was my dad? No.

  As they came out of the rain forest, the boy did not know what he felt. He saw Adam arrive on foot. He was a loser. He had a wad of money, too bright to be worth anything.

  That was my dad? With the hose?

  The mother would not answer. He saw how she looked around the land as if she had just woken up. She rubbed her sweaty nose with the back of her hand, squinting up the hill behind the dark huts where the sun caught the wild trees. Smooth trunks burst out of the shadow, waxy white, at the same time shining green, and it was absolutely clear, even to a boy, that the mother could not take care of him. She had no idea of where she was or what she’d taken on.

  22

  His best memory of Seattle was an ice-cream sundae. They had just flown from Oakland. They had taken a taxi. They sat together at the counter and listened to the Jefferson Airplane, chocolate fudge pooling in ice cream.

  She said: Are you happy, babe?

  He did not understand he was going to be robbed of his father. So he was very happy. There were posters on the wall. He said, They’re really trippy.

  And she laughed, and laid her hand across his back.

  After the sundae, Dial was pretty much cleaned out. So they walked down the Ave to the unisex, hand in hand. She told the unisexer she was good for it. He said OK. That was Joel, a freak with no shirt and long curling black hair and a big Jewish nose.

  The mother told him how the boy must be fixed up.

  Oh man, he said, don’t make me do this, Dial. He had a whiny New York voice and the boy liked him without knowing why.

  I’m good for it, Dial said. She winked at the boy.

  The boy felt his hair lifted with the end of a comb and dropped back against his neck.

  Don’t make me cut this, babe.

  Don’t shit me, man. You know what’s going down. You know who this is?

  Hey, Che?

  Hi.

  You’ve got great hair, Che. It’s real pretty. You sure you want me to cut it off?

  The boy wanted it so much he could not speak.

  What do you think, man, the mother said.

  Joel wiped the boy’s face and sat him on a box.

  As the tickling clippers approached his ear, the boy waited with his eyes scrunched up.

  Yeah, right, said the barber. You don’t mind, kid? Times are tough for you.

  I’m OK, he said. He opened his eyes to see the mother walk out on the Ave and close the glass door behind her. He was excited by almost everything that had happened to him, the hotel, the airplane, the sundae, but particularly this high hard buzz against his neck. He was being liberated, as Cameron had said. They will break you out, man. Your life will start for real. Dial was so cool. Men turned their heads as they passed her. Now one walked backward smiling. Dial rolled a cigarette-long fingers, swift pink lick. By the time she had smoked it all his childhood was on the floor.

  The barber spun the chair and the boy saw he had become a redneck kid from Jeffersonville. He was a cicada underground.

  Dial came back to do inspection. She touched his cheek and winked at him. Give the man some color, she said.

  Oh, babe! He’s just a kid, Dial.

  Black.

  The barber raised an eyebrow and it seemed as if he would suggest a different shade, but a moment later he came back with some stuff mixed in a bowl.

  Organic, it ain’t.

  The boy felt the cold chemicals sucking on his scalp and he wasn’t scared about this or anything. This was his destiny as he had been told. He was on TV now. He was going to have to be with his dad, his mom, where he belonged. One of these days you’re going to rise up singing.

  While the dye took, he looked at a comic book, soft and furry pages, stroked by so many hands. In the Batcave Bruce Wayne showed all the different Batman costumes including a pure white costume to make him invisible in the snow. It was the first comic he had ever seen, a hard dark thrill that made his ey
es narrow. By the time he finished it he had become a completely new person, ink-black hair, two years older easy. The unisexer closed his shop and drove them to the underground which turned out to be a house whose porch had got filled with old carpet and boxes of books that had been rained on and melted like chocolate in the heat. This too excited him-the books-as if nothing that had mattered before would matter now. It was in a street of colored clapboard houses and kids playing stickball and greasers working on their cars.

  If his father was there he should have been told.

  He and Dial walked straight into an empty hallway where no one ever swept, and then passed into a large high room from which all of normal life had been removed. No one even smiled, not the fierce bearded men, not the women who had not washed enough. The boy had a good eye, an excellent eye, which had been proven at the Guggenheim. He had not been told anything but he guessed this was underground. He looked out for his handsome dad, their leader, staying close to Dial as she moved around the room, through the echoes, across the opinions, sharp like rocks and broken bricks. When anyone looked at him, he smiled, figuring his father would smile back at him if he was here. But no one smiled, which would be weird even on the main street of Jeffersonville, New York.

  The whole house was stressed and angry, with him, it seemed. They were stressed he was on TV. They were stressed Dial was on TV. They should not have come here because it was a secret place. They did not mince their words, as Grandma said. They spoke their minds.

  While he held Dial’s skirt balled up inside his fist, they began to beat on her. Dial was on an ego trip. Why was she telling jokes? Had the Vietnamese won? Had the pigs left the ghettos?

  This was the opposite of everything he had expected from Cameron. Behind a bad-smelling sofa he discovered a slippery bright green sleeping bag and into this he crawled, wedging himself as far under the sofa as he was able. He wished he could go to the bathroom. They beat on her and beat on her. She was a petit bourgeois adventurist. And she brings this fucking brat here, now. She just went and did it. She thinks the revolution is a part-time job.

  The boy needed a poop.

  What was Dial going to do with the kid now? Did she plan to give him to the pigs?