Are you happy here, he asked. I know I practice tough love but—
He didn’t finish. He let the idea hang there as if I was supposed to pick it up, offer my forgiveness. I said nothing. Or maybe I had it all wrong and his dead wife was in his head, talking to him, and he stopped mid-thought to listen. In pictures she was a plain but pretty woman. Like the least-attractive cheerleader. Death seemed so permanent and embarrassing and I decided then and there I never wanted to die. My heart would stop someday and my physical body would expire but I believed somehow my dreaming could go on. There was not much more I needed than two wild friends like Miles and Molly. They didn’t erase my despair, but they made it tolerable.
I like it here, I said to Frank. Don’t worry.
He looked at me. In his eyes I could see how much he loved his wife. He was overflowing with it.
She used to adopt the neighborhood strays, he said. Dogs and cats and birds. Our house was always full of animals.
He began to cry again.
I’m going down to the basement, he said. You take care of yourself.
I put out my cigarette in the sink. I didn’t have the strength to hate him.
Good night, I said.
Princess and I made out for a while to feel better about things. I recited aloud the empty prayers of my youth. The legions mounted their horses, their flags tight in the wind. The darkness and the gamble. The first bullet skimmed my ear and killed a drummer boy. The second bullet came straight for my heart.
* * *
—
A FEW WEEKS passed and each day was an exact copy of the previous one. The sunsets were dark pink and baby blue. Me and Molly went to Charlie’s house every day after school where Miles would be up on the roof ruminating. It was during those weeks that I fell in love with the world again. Miles preached a wild indifference to life that raised my spirits. Molly smelled of honeysuckles fresh off the vine. Throughout these days I noticed a new light in the world. There was so much I did not yet know about the way time could rob you. How it was full of mendacity. Molly told me she’d begun to steal small things as a hedge against the malaise. Insignificant things. Cigarette lighters and packs of gum. But soon began to steal more personal items from random houses. Lockets, journals, wedding pictures. The most irreplaceable things.
At night I read my books. The tribes were mysterious and wild to the missionaries who first visited them. The missionaries wanted to save the natives using Jesus and good manners. If the natives resisted it was a gory mess. In the end, everyone always murdered each other. I came to believe that all peoples everywhere organized themselves around a cycle of misery and lessons unlearned. I tried to sleep. It was hard to rest on a bed after knowing the rhythm of the train for so long. I loved seeing the stars so pure and clear on a midnight run. No electric light anywhere. You felt how tiny you were in the cosmos, how fragile and rare.
When I was out west I’d lived my life taking one step and then another. Finding a warm meal and a place to lay my head was a perfect day. I saw friends waste away from treatable diseases. I saw policemen bash a kid’s brains out for pissing on a tree or jumping a turnstile. I saw a grown man so gone on drugs he begged for his mother as he jumped in front of a speeding locomotive.
It was clear Jesus was useless in the face of actual life. I prayed instead for the dumb luck to survive whatever random tragedy was thrown my way. I wanted those weeks with Miles and Molly to last forever. I wanted to live with them on a farm with a million animals and a river and a wide-open sky. They were the first true friends in my life.
Smoke from a leaf fire climbed behind the trailer and the sun filled the trees with yellow light. A hammock swayed empty in the last of the day. Miles was rambling and Molly was arranging her stolen treasures in the grass.
I only steal things that are meaningless or priceless, she said. Nothing in between.
Miles smiled down on us from the roof.
We lust after the things that destroy us, he said. And pay someone else for the privilege to die.
What the hell does that mean, I asked.
I don’t know, he said. But it sounds right.
When Charlie came home from work he would make us black bean burritos or stir-fry or burgers on the grill. I’d bring a plate up to Miles and visit with him awhile. Drink coffee. Have a smoke. A game of chess maybe. From up there we’d watch the last of the light die into the trees and could hear the old highway like the ocean waves. Then I would climb down and Molly would drive me home.
On the last day of this phase Miles’ father materialized in the driveway unannounced. A deputy was with him. The blue lights from his car spun against the dark trees.
Is that Miles’ dad, I asked Molly.
He’s not my dad, she said. I know that.
Mr. Armstrong was a soft man in a dark suit. He wore tiny gold-framed glasses and a pencil mustache. His hair was slicked back to hide his baldness.
This has gone on long enough, he yelled up to Miles.
I’ve made my decision, Miles said.
Charlie came outside.
What’s going on here, he asked.
Search this man’s house, Mr. Armstrong said. I know he’s hiding something.
You ain’t doing shit without a warrant, Charlie said.
He’s right, sir, the deputy said to Mr. Armstrong.
This man has kidnapped my son and brainwashed him, Mr. Armstrong said.
Miles is eighteen now, Charlie said. He can do what he wants.
He’s right on that one too, the deputy said.
Then the deputy turned to me.
How old are you, he asked. What’s your name?
He’s a foster, Mr. Armstrong said. Frank Mulberry looks after him for a check from the state. And that’s the Arab teacher’s girl. Captain Everhart’s daughter. Both underage.
Very well, the deputy said. Y’all need to clear out.
Mr. Armstrong looked at Molly.
Your father would be ashamed, he said. Hanging around with these subversives.
With all due respect, Molly said. Go fuck yourself.
That’s enough, the deputy said.
He turned to Charlie.
Get these underage kids home, he said.
Charlie nodded.
Alright, the deputy said. That’s about all I can do this evening.
Mr. Armstrong gave us a long look.
This is far from over, he said.
That night we drank one last beer before we went home and no one said anything as the moon passed over us with its lazy eye. A new phase was coming, and the old one was gone. When you’re young, things feel as though they will never change and when they do it feels like the world has ended and is being reborn.
The stars were splendid, mystery abounded. A low electric humming radiated from the city. Forever was hunched in half shadow, half light. His eye patch made him seem wise, but he wasn’t. I held a hot knife between my teeth and rubbed fresh blood on my cheeks. Zorn’s guards killed the deer and Princess cleaned it.
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY me and Molly went to the trailer early and Miles was up on the roof like always, carrying on. The light from the autumn sun was making him radiate. Molly held my hand as we listened to him rant about the epidemic of loneliness that no one was talking about.
Everyone’s displaced from the world, he said. The waters of despair are rising and no one seems to care as long as they stay dry.
We were together, the three of us, in a place of understanding and contemplation. I wanted to take those days and bottle them. I remember the smell of wood smoke from a neighbor’s chimney and the last of the blue ghost fireflies streaking across the twilight and big gorgeous storms coming out of nowhere. But mostly I remember sitting with Molly as we listened to Miles. It still had the mood of the old times but I could feel things were already changing. Charlie came home around noon distraught.
They fired me, he said. Twenty years I cleaned their toilets.
I thought this might happen, Miles said.
He got down off the roof and walked away into the long shadows at the end of the driveway. He walked with the same pace he used when he quit the team. Slow and determined. His hands behind his back, head bent forward in thought.
Are you going home, Molly yelled but he didn’t answer.
Why does he do this, I asked.
At this point, Charlie said. God knows and God cares.
Molly hugged him.
I’m sorry you got fired, she said. Those bastards never deserved you.
We waited for a while to see if Miles would come back but he didn’t so we went inside. Charlie was in a bad place. The years he gave and the way they fired him had seemed to lessen his spirit, belittle him. He got a drink of water and sat on the couch and put a cigarette in his mouth but his hand was too shaky to light it. Looking at him, watching him, I figured out what we were. All of us wanted to be useful somehow. There was something missing in us and we didn’t match up with the rest of the world.
What am I supposed to do now, Charlie asked.
You could get the band back together, I said.
They’re all dead now except for me, he said.
Charlie knocked over his water and Molly cleaned it up and got him another one.
Do you want a pill, she asked. I stole some from my mom.
What kind of pills, Charlie asked.
Painkillers, Molly said.
She passed them around like a priest with the wafers at communion. They were round white things, tiny pillows.
Should we snort them, I asked.
We crushed them up on the coffee table and separated them into long thin lines. Charlie went first. We each took a line until all three pills were gone. The table looked like Frank’s tiny town covered in snow. Soon the heat began to run wild in my blood and the ground disappeared under my feet and all worry vanished. I didn’t think about Miles’ epidemic of loneliness or about ancient tribes from my books or the woman in the car when I was twelve or Molly’s love or leaving town or anything else. Everything was gone, no thought came or went, and I was swimming in a delightful warmth. Charlie put on Indian music. The three of us fell into a languid and gorgeous darkness that reached everywhere around us. I was able, finally, to feel nothing and live in that nothing. We had hot-wired bliss. Hacked joy. Found a shortcut to God. I nodded off and when I woke it was already night outside. Molly and Charlie were snorting more. I took another line and we went outside to look at the stars.
I wish I’d learned how to find the Big Dipper, Charlie said. There’s so much I never learned.
It’s right there, I said.
See, Charlie said. I could never do that.
Out of the shadows we could see a figure at the edge of the yard. The cicadas sounded like tiny electric motors in the trees. The moon was a thumbnail above the Big Dipper. I couldn’t see the stranger’s face until they entered the porch light. It was Miles. He was walking at the same pace he’d used that morning, determined and true. Almost as if he’d been walking the whole day long. He was holding a black shopping bag and gave it to Charlie.
My father got you fired, Miles said. So I sold my car.
Charlie looked in the bag. It was thousands of dollars.
I know this won’t make up for it, Miles said. But I wanted to do it anyway.
Before Charlie could say anything Miles was climbing back up on the roof. His cooler of beer and his French cigarettes were still up there and he began his rituals again. Charlie turned the music up and we partied a little longer. Later Molly drove me home and we took the long way.
How does this end, she asked. He can’t do this forever.
What about us, I said. What are we doing?
Molly didn’t say anything, she just shrugged. I thought maybe she wanted to preserve the mystery. Love was a dirty word to me before I met Molly. The families I lived with growing up were often too wounded themselves to love anyone else. I saw love used like a weapon. My only notion of the word was a false promise people made to each other to get what they wanted. The love they showed in movies, the puppy love of Hollywood, was bullshit to sell you popcorn. A wild honest love like ours was the most dangerous thing on earth. Molly made my heart sink to my toes. It was the same feeling I got when I crossed over a high bridge on an all-night train. I could see straight down into the dark canyons below and my stomach would be in knots and my palms sweaty and my head full of fever. When I looked into Molly’s eyes it was like jumping into that void headfirst. There was nothing better than knowing she existed, that she lived in my same time and space.
You ever think about running away together, I asked her.
Every day, she said.
The enemy marshaled their forces and rode toward the river. Princess sighted Zorn in her riflescope. We were pinned down waiting for them to burn up their ammo. I didn’t have much by way of fire. Doom was near and I was content.
* * *
—
IN THOSE DAYS most of my time was spent at Charlie’s trailer. Each night I would sneak out when Frank fell asleep, walk to Charlie’s, party all night, and be back before dawn. We snorted painkillers off the yearbook, shot bottle rockets off the roof, and longed for a giant storm to wash us away. But throughout those low and languid days I never once skipped Mrs. Everhart’s class. I’d sit in the back of the room with a hat pulled low over my face and listen to her talk about transcendentalism or colonialism or antidisestablishmentarianism. She used such fine big words and spoke English in a faint British accent. Her eyes were light brown, almost yellow, the color of honeycomb. She told us that early cultures around the world had similar rituals for marriages and burying the dead, even though they’d never interacted. She said we had archetypes inside of us and that proved we were all the same creatures suffering through love and death. There was pure golden hope in her lessons but no one listened. Least of all Molly. She avoided taking her mother’s classes or talking to Mrs. Everhart about school. Molly told me she’d always been her father’s girl and could care less about her mother’s lectures on big ideas. The anger between kids and their birth parents was always beyond my comprehension. Molly was embarrassed of Mrs. Everhart for the exact things I thought made her extraordinary.
Some days I would walk out to the tracks alone on my way to Charlie’s and watch the trains come in from Salisbury bound for God knows where. The pulsing sound of the engines was the rhythm of my heart. I longed to be in constant motion curving around hollowed-out sections of earth. The looming majesty of our rotting world around every bend. I knew there was something I was born to do but I didn’t know what it was yet. The days got colder and when the sky turned wild and ominous it brought me back to that day with Bird on the icy hill. That day was an open sore inside me that festered and grew. Even through the good days at Charlie’s trailer I could never fully reach the heights of joy I knew existed. There would always be that gnawing guilt, eating me from the inside out. The painkillers helped when despair was savage. It crawled up my spine through the back of my head and lived inside my thoughts. But all I had to do was snort a few lines and the golden warmth would rush in again and wrap me up.
I’d only felt that way once before in my life. After I lived with the photographer and her lover in the stunt pilot’s house, I squatted in an abandoned country house a few miles away. The photographer told me about it. A dream home built by an architect for his depressive wife, who’d killed herself the year before, leaving the place vacant and cursed. One night I woke up there to a huge bull staring at me through a window. I walked outside not believing what I was seeing. I walked up to the huge beast and he moved his head to look at me. It was only then I realized the power of the animal and the danger I was in. As I started to move back slowly toward the front door the massive bull stood up, this time angry. I was frozen there looking into his eyes, trying not to move. It felt like hours but finally I saw blue lights coming down the road and heard a great stampede. It was
a police car following a herd of cattle. He drove into the yard with the sirens blasting. There was blood all over his hood. The bull scattered into the road and joined the march of other bulls like Pamplona. The policeman backed out and drove after them into the night and I was left there breathless and confused and completely alive.
Light moved big across the sand like a storm. The sun was a disco ball in the sky. I took out my spyglass to see what I could see. There was a cavalryman ordering a flanking maneuver. Sabers shined in the sun. Men in yellow tunics crossed the river. Forever stretched his legs. Princess stroked her hair. I adjusted my hat in a mirror tied with twine around an old birch tree. It was a beautiful day to die.
* * *
—
SOON IT WAS too cold for Miles to stay on the roof so he made the couch his home. We watched grainy footage of Charlie’s old band as we snorted Mrs. Everhart’s pills that Molly had stolen. Charlie talked about his glory days while we watched his tapes. He was always telling us to be quiet, this was the best part. Or else he’d turn it up to some ungodly volume and dance. You could tell he thought those were his best years, his salad days. He wanted to show off to Miles most of all. People were like that around him. They wanted Miles to acknowledge them. It wasn’t just football. He was like a movie star without a movie. A hero without a war. Sometimes I used to wonder if it ate him up inside to be adored like that, knowing it couldn’t last forever. Maybe that was why he went up to the roof, to get away from people’s needs. But I never asked him about stuff like that. Instead of talking, we did more of everything. More pills. More cigarettes. More drinks. More was the only thing going on those days. Less wouldn’t do. We spiraled out and came back singing. On and on. One long, wild slide.
My father won’t stop, Miles said. I should join the army.
What if there’s another way, I said. I know of an abandoned house in Tennessee.
Empire of Light Page 4
