Wide Blue Yonder

by Jean Thompson

  Rosa saw him and shrieked and said, “Dios Mío,” and something that clearly meant who in the world is that? “Bandido,” said Josie. Rosa was staring at the gun in her hand. “Oh, it’s his, I took it from him. And what’s this?” A bullhorn? Had Rosa been deputized?

  Rosa took a cautious step into the living room and spoke to the gunman. He answered in Spanish. Then Rosa again. Then him. A regular conversation. Josie tried to follow the back and forth of it. Rosa, stern and skeptical. The gunman, sullen and injured-sounding. Harvey touched Josie’s arm.

  “Does she know him?”

  “No, they just speak the same language.”

  “He should go away so we can eat breakfast.”

  The Spanish conversation stopped. The gunman addressed them. “The señora says you can untie me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I promise her I don make no trouble.”

  “She doesn’t know you like we do.”

  “It’s so I can get myself cleaned up.”

  “Now that I might believe,” said Josie. Rosa was already flicking bread crumbs from the couch, gathering ceramic fragments of coffee mug, and making indignant noises. Josie felt a little bad about the uses to which they’d put her good skillet. “Did you tell her about breaking in here and carrying on and shooting things?”

  “I tell her the truth, I’m a poor lost man, I don remember nothing. Hey, my nose still itches.”

  “Tough.”

  “All the bad stuff happen to me, it’s on account of this ghost. A ghost was after me. The señora says it goes away now.”

  Unsure what to make of this interesting information, Josie asked what kind of ghost, who was it, but he just muttered into his beard and complained about his nose again.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Josie got a Kleenex from the bathroom and, with shuddering care, applied it to his nose. It was harder to touch him now that he was acting more like a human being. His eyes fixed on hers, furious and humiliated. “There, how’s that?”

  “Turn me loose, you’re not doin it right.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” She gave up on him, took another peek out front. There was a TV news truck there. Unbelievable. They were actually hoping somebody would get shot.

  Harvey and Rosa were fooling around in the corner. Harvey kept trying to walk his fingers up Rosa’s neck and she kept slapping his hands and scolding him in between giggles. Josie couldn’t believe them. Was she the only one who cared that they were under seige here?

  “You guys, we seriously need to decide what to do. Harvey!” She had to tug at his elbow. “You know what those men were here for? You know what this is all about? They want to cart you off to some crazy farm, because you won’t have this simple, dumb operation so you won’t go blind. Blind, do you get it?” She waved a hand in front of his face. If she started crying one more time, she was going to lose her last ounce of self-respect. She never should have let things get this messed up. She’d tried to help and only made everything worse. She never should have come here in the first place, why stop there, she could unfurl her life like a roll of carpet, follow every bad decision back to the one before it. Never should have picked a giant fight with her mother, never should have fallen so willfully in love, never should have thought she was anything special, looked down on anyone, mouthed off, made snotty judgments, hurt people. She should just take a step outside, salute, and shoot herself in the head. Send the news crew home happy.

  Rosa was speaking in her soothing voice. She wished she was Rosa. Rosa always knew the right thing to do. If something was dirty, you cleaned it. That simple. Cleanliness next to godliness. Maybe she could follow Rosa around, scrub floor tiles on her knees with a toothbrush, ruin her hands with bleach. Atone for her sins. She was losing it. Brain cells starting to strobe and wink out.

  “She says, tell him she’ll marry him.”

  It was the gunman. He’d managed to wriggle himself around until he was sitting upright. “That’s what she said. Don look at me.”

  “Marry Harvey? She said she’d marry Harvey?”

  “She says, tell him if he gets his new eyes, she’ll marry him. That supposed to make sense?”

  Josie leaned against a wall. “Oh wow.” Rosa was watching her with her bright, birdlike gaze. “What’s ‘married’ in Spanish? Quick!”

  “Casado. What is this, the damn Love Boat?”

  “Rosa, you mean it? Casado?” Was she serious? Good Lord. Harvey married.

  Rosa put her hand over her heart and delivered another earnest speech. The gunman said, “They should do it. They both a couple of old crumbly types.”

  “Shut up and tell me what she said.”

  “Says the two of them will be happy because it is fate they come together, and a lot more flaming crap.”

  Josie tried to think it through. Could people like Harvey get married? Was it legal? She didn’t know anybody else like Harvey who was, but then, she didn’t know anybody else like Harvey. He was canting his head from side to side as the others spoke, as if trying to make hearing do the work of seeing. Getting married was one thing. The operation was another.

  “Harvey, Rosa says she’ll marry you if you have your operation. You want to get married?”

  “I do! Yup.”

  “Married. You know what that is?”

  “Herecomesthebride.”

  “That’s right. And it’s a serious, serious …” Josie decided to leave a legal explanation of marriage to somebody else. “I’m talking about your eye operation. I want to make sure you understand. You’ll have to go see a doctor, you have to go to the hospital and get shots and do whatever the doctor tells you. You’ll have to be very brave.”

  “Braver than Frank?”

  “Yes, Harvey. If you do this, you will be braver than anyone I know.” She held her breath as the idea of bravery took hold, rooted itself, then spread across his face.

  “And you’ll have to take better care of yourself. You’ll have to let Rosa and me and Mom and everybody else help you. Can you do that? Can you go out and promise everybody you’ll do it? Can you start being brave right now?”

  “Ain’t scaredy.”

  “That’s great, now you have to go out and tell them that. Is that why you brought this, Rosa? You are too much! Uh, congratulations, you guys.” Harvey turned his head this way and that, his smeared eyes blinking, smiling his watery smile. “Here, you push this button and you talk through it. Can you hold it like this? Just go outside and tell them everybody’s OK in here, and you’ll get your eyes fixed.”

  Josie prodded him toward the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. “Show time.”

  Harvey lagged behind in the hallway. The bullhorn dangled at the end of his arm. “No, hold it up to your mouth, see? Tell them what I said.”

  “Ain’t scaredy.”

  “Sure, you can say that too, just hurry up.”

  She watched him take one step, then two. After being shut up for so long in the stale house, the slice of fresh air made Josie’s lungs expand. The crowd noise rose and fell in a wave. And then, as if his was the only face worth seeing in any crowd, she saw Mitch. Oh goddamn him. Could he see her? Her skin burned. Her heart clamored. She hated that someone could do this to her. She didn’t want to be in love anymore. She wanted to pick it off like a scab. Harvey raised the bullhorn to his mouth.

  “DADDY HAD HIS PECKER OUT!”

  In the brief, silent space of her echoing disbelief, Josie thought, I’m glad Rosa can’t understand this.

  “NOBODY BETTER HOLLER AT ME ANYMORE!”

  “Sss, Harvey!”

  “I GOT MY OWN HURRICANE!”

  “Give me that thing.” Josie dragged him back by his shirttail and seized the bullhorn. Then she was out on the front porch, trying to focus on the mass of shape and motion before her. It was like one of those pictures made up of a million colored dots that if you looked at it one way, it was just a blur, but if you shifted your eyes, you saw the picture. So it was that one m
oment Josie saw nothing but confusion, then the next she was able to pick out Mitch, his expression one of stony dread, her mother looking like she was the one who’d spent a week wandering the Utah desert, her father scowling into his tie. And if she tried, she knew she could see all of them, every human face, just as clearly. She raised the bullhorn to her mouth.

  “EXCUSE ME.”

  The amplified force of her voice made her rise up on her toes. It was an electric wind, carrying her along.

  “MY UNCLE’S NOT REAL USED TO TALKING TO A LOT OF PEOPLE, SO I WANTED TO EXPLAIN …”

  The TV cameraman edged closer. Every face in that sea of faces, listening and waiting. Her head seemed to expand and drift away like a balloon, and there was a moment of slippery panic before she grabbed it and hauled it back and took courage from the new, electric power of her voice.

  “THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WHO HAVE BETRAYED HIM! HIM AND ME BOTH! THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE! SNEAKING AROUND DOING SNEAKY, DISHONEST THINGS! WELL, THEY SHOULD BE ASHAMED!”

  So there. Her mother was crying. That just wasn’t fair. Your mother crying was a secret weapon, it naturally made you feel like a lowlife. Mitch was trying to look like she didn’t mean him. She wanted him to feel scummy, and then she wanted to learn not to love him, and in spite of all that she still wanted to fasten herself to every inch of him. Her father was talking to the police, who were beginning to mill around and size her up. Josie didn’t like the way they were putting their heads together, so she hurried on.

  “HE SAYS HE’S GOING TO COME OUT NOW, AND HE’S GOING TO HAVE HIS EYE OPERATION, BUT YOU HAVE TO PROMISE NOT TO TAKE HIM AWAY SOMEPLACE HE DOESN’T WANT TO GO. MOM?”

  Her mother was crossing the street and Josie came down from the porch and met her halfway. Her mother hugged the stuffing out of her and called her Baby and her father was there too, slapping them on the back like they were in some football huddle. Josie kept saying she was fine, really. “I have to tell you about Harvey, it’s the most amazing thing. Tell the stupid police to back off.” Harvey and Rosa were peeking out the front door. “See, everybody’s fine.”

  Her father said, “What’s she doing in there anyway, windows?” “No, Dad, she’s like his girlfriend. They’re gonna get married and he can keep living here. We got it all worked out.”

  “Married? What kind of stunt is this?”

  “Frank, I’m going to have you arrested for public idiocy. You just let me talk to Harvey. Sweetheart, I’m sorry, you believe me, don’t you?”

  Her mom was blubbering. Well, Josie was blubbering too and of course she said she was sorry, you had to say that, and sort out all the hard part later. She hated that everyone was watching them. And where was Mitch?

  He was gone. No, going. She left her mother in mid-blubber and chased after him down the sidewalk. Her last official reckless act. She didn’t care if he got fired or she got sent to the home for depraved girls. She wasn’t going to let him just leave. “Mitch!”

  He stopped and turned halfway. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but you have to.”

  He was trying to give her his cop face. The impassive one he used on criminal types. She said, “Boy, it kills you to have to admit you know me, doesn’t it?”

  The cop face wasn’t holding up real well. “That’s not true. I just figured you were still mad.”

  At least they weren’t on TV at the moment. The news people were back at Harvey’s, pointing microphones at the police lieutenant. Josie said, “Right. Like you’re so happy to see me.” She didn’t want to keep sounding all sarcastic and mean, it was only part of what she felt, but she didn’t know how to start over some other way.

  “I am, I’m happy you’re all right.”

  “Yeah.” Josie shrugged. She felt self-conscious and grubby. “Still have all my fingers and toes.”

  “I really was worried about you.”

  “You didn’t have to be.” She wasn’t going to let him say anything right for a while.

  “I didn’t know where you were, nobody did.”

  He was wearing a blue shirt with a frayed collar. She loved thinking about how many times that shirt must have been on him. Why did she always go barmy over his clothes, she was such a basket case. She couldn’t look at him and not fall back into all that crazy wanting. But she was tired of it as well. “I wasn’t at the police prom, that’s for sure.”

  “Look, I made the date before I even met you, and you couldn’t have gone anyway, and I figured it would only upset you more if you knew about it.”

  Josie didn’t even bother with that one. Just stood there and let the bullshit rain down. She could admit to herself now that he’d always been a little dense.

  “It was a date, that’s all. A dumb date.”

  “And what am I, your dumb … Oh shit.” She’d forgotten all about the psycho. “Never mind that now, you gotta come with me.”

  She turned and fled back to the house, dragging Mitch along, dodging the enterprising TV crew now headed in her direction. Her mother and father and Harvey and Rosa were in the front yard with a bunch of grumpy-looking cops. Josie galloped past them, tore up the front steps, and whacked the screen door open.

  “What’s the big deal?” Mitch bumped up behind her as she skidded to a stop in the hallway. The extension cord and bathrobe belt were tangled on the floor. No psycho.

  There wasn’t any point in looking for him but she did anyway. In the bathtub she found his nasty clothes, a great wad of oily, burnt-brown hair, and a wet towel smeared with grime. It was as if he had slipped down the drain and left nothing but dirt behind. She wondered if Rosa had turned him loose or if he’d managed that on his own. She guessed it didn’t matter. He was gone, good riddance, one more thing she never wanted to think about again.

  “Never mind,” Josie said, backing out of the bathroom before Mitch could see. “I thought I forgot something”

  “Where’s the gun, I should get that secured.”

  It was gone, of course. “Oh, there wasn’t any, I just made that up so they wouldn’t snatch Harvey.” Which was sort of true. Besides being the easiest answer.

  Now he was the one passing out the dirty looks. “You brought the department out for no reason?”

  “I didn’t bring anyone,” Josie reminded him.

  “You provided false information.”

  “Oh, come on, Mitch. You’re mad because I caught you doing something sneaky, and now you want to work it around so everything’s my fault.”

  “I still don’t think you should have said that about the gun.”

  Josie sighed. Her parents were going to come in any second and one or both of them was likely to get arrested. “Let’s just call it a draw.” Foolishly, she stuck her hand out.

  Mitch stared down at it. Josie said, “I think things are getting awfully complicated.”

  “Well …”

  “No hard feelings.”

  “Of course not.” He seemed glad to be agreeing about something.

  “And I’d use the backdoor if I were you.”

  They shook hands. Mitch said maybe they could talk sometime. Josie said, “Sure.” He didn’t get it. After he’d left, she squared her shoulders and took stock. She still had all her fingers and toes. She would go back to being her parents daughter. She would cry some more and mope around and call herself an idiot and other names. She could see it all coming. It went along with her messed-up heart, and the carelessness she kept confusing with love, and life going on, in spite of everything, in its good old ornery way.

  Lonesome Road

  Rolando Gottschalk, heir to all the Americas, was seated in the last row of an eastbound Greyhound, traveling light. The window of the bus produced a landscape of gray highway and long stretches of useless green punctuated by cows. He breathed in exhaust and other mechanical perfumes. He was scared to drive anymore. He would stay on the bus until his money ran out, and then he would walk, and maybe by the end he’d be crawling. He tried to pay attention to the road signs s
o as not to lose himself again. The signs said SPEED LIMIT, YIELD, CAUTION. The towns were Decatur, Paris, Terre Haute, Indianapolis, Richmond, Dayton, names that were only collections of streets and crosshatched wires and storefronts. Whenever the bus stopped he got out and shuffled around the terminals, with their sad restrooms and vending machines dispensing puddles of coffee into styrofoam cups. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. In one of these places he stuffed a paper bag containing the gun into the mouth of an anonymous trash can.

  His new hair prickled. It made his head feel too small, lost in the oversize shirt collar that kept sliding over his shoulders. All the clothes were too big, especially the shoes. He had to creep around real slow so they wouldn’t fall off. He felt like a cat or a dog that had been shaved down to its skin and didn’t recognize itself anymore.

  When he tried to think about all the places in between Los Angeles and this bus, it was like taking too big a step in those loose shoes. He lost his balance and had to stop right where he was. There was probably some very good reason he couldn’t remember clearly. That meant the next face he saw on the street might have a score to settle, know him better than he did himself, know what he deserved and why. He fell asleep in his seat and his head rolled like the bus’s wheels. Awake or asleep, dread followed him.

  Dreaming his muddy dreams, he woke up with a shout in his throat, unsure of whether it had come all the way into his mouth. He must have made some kind of noise, because a voice from the next seat said, “You all right, son?”

  It was solid dark inside and out except for the safety light on the bus’s floor and the occasional car passing, dragging its own darkness behind it. The voice was a woman’s voice and Rolando could see the shape of her but not her face. He thought the voice had color in it, although he couldn’t say for sure. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “You was wrestling the devil. What it looked like.”

  “Huh.” He swallowed the shout down and forced a laugh. “The devil, sure.”

  “All souls in trouble be wrestling him. Our Lord Baby Jesus will help you if you call on him.”