Jerk, California

by Jonathan Friesen

  Okay, Keegan, create. I remember my random plot at the Archers’, regrip my brush, and make a streak of blue, then yellow. I go for another brush and, along with my grandma, double-fist color all over the canvas. Twitches from both of us send paint onto her floor, onto each other, and we laugh.

  “Splatter’s half the fun.” She steps back to admire her work. “You should have seen your dad.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  She looks at me. “What would you like to know?”

  “Anything,” I say. “I don’t think Old Bill let Mom talk about him, so I just have my stepdad’s version.”

  Grandma takes her finger and dips it into her black. She presses it hard onto her canvas. I stare at the spot.

  “He is one of the most hateful men on this earth. God might still love him, but whatever he said about James—”

  “I know it’s a bunch of lies.”

  “A bunch?” She makes another spot.“That man wouldn’t let me speak with you. Imagine a man not letting a grandma talk to her own grandson.”

  I made my own black dot. “Tell me about my dad’s Tourette’s.”

  “It was hard on him. Nobody knew what Tourette’s syndrome was back then. School was hard. Other kids were hard.” She drops her arms. “I was hard.”

  I glance at her and frown.

  “I didn’t want him to have the life I had. But the truth is we embarrassed each other. Too many mirrors showing the ugly parts. Does that make sense?”

  I nod.

  “He came back to visit. My son, your father, had grown into a wonderful man. But the whole thing stood like a wall between us.” She sits on her stool. “He blamed me, and I understand.” She whispers, “I’m the one to blame.”

  My heart thumps. I know what she means. I’m with my grandma, and if I wasn’t so covered with paint, I’d give her a hug.

  For the next hour she talks, and I make a mess. It’s wonderful. But then Francine quiets, and I slow my brush. She’s up to the part where I’m sick and I know what comes next.

  “They hit the pole. Your father hung on for a few more hours.”

  A black streak forms across my canvas.

  “He was getting medicine for me, right? That’s what the Fasts said.”

  She nodded. “They’d know, being there and all.” Francine places her paints in the easel tray, walks over to the glass, and stares. I join her, and she takes my arm.

  “I see him, you know,” I say. “I’ll close my eyes and there he is.” I let my eyelids close. Nothing. “He calls me or looks at me like he wants me to catch him even though I can’t. But I feel him. Like he’s close. Like he’s always right here.” I hold my free hand inches in front of my eyes. “Am I crazy?”

  Francine shakes her head and smiles.“Sounds like the Good Lord’s just letting you see what’s been true your whole life. He’s giving you a picture of yourself. Whose you really are.”

  I wait for the burning, the painful tingle that pricks my fingers whenever someone goes off on how kind God is. A minute later, I still wait.

  “But God’s never done anything for me. Why would He start now?”

  Francine squeezes my arm. “Were you always right about George?”

  “No.”

  “James?”

  I chuckle.

  “Me? Your mom?” She pauses. “Naomi?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Well, seeing as you’ve been such an accurate judge of character, would it be possible that perhaps you’ve been, as the kids around here say, messed up on God as well?”

  I breathe deep. “Possible.”

  “Well, now that you have just taken your first step on another lifetime search, I suppose you’d like what you certainly came out here for.”

  I frown. “I think I came out here for you.”

  “That’s very kind. But you have to be excited about your dad’s gift.”

  “My gift?”

  Her brown eyes twinkle. “Lydia must’ve mentioned it.”

  I keep staring at her. My dad never left me anything. Old Bill said so.

  “That George. That wonderful man.” She gazes out the window. “James built mills for a living—”

  “I know.”

  “He never built me one.” Grandma beams.“But he built one for you.”

  “He did?”

  Grandma laughs and hugs me and laughs some more.

  “That’s all he worked on the last few times he and George were here. He never felt right being away from you and Lydia for weeks on end, but James wanted to build it beautiful in the most beautiful place he could.” She waves her hand toward the ocean. “They’d come in after a day’s work. James would say, ‘Jack’s got to love it. It has to be here. It has to be perfect. It has to speak to him.’ You were a baby, but already he was so proud of you.”

  “He left me a windmill?”

  “He did.” She puts her arm around me and squeezes. “He planned on giving it to you after graduation, which, if I’m not mistaken, just happened.”

  “Don’t take this wrong.” I scratch my head. “It means a lot, him doing that for me. But if he wouldn’t have died, and Old Bill wouldn’t have been around, we’d have come out here often, right? I’d have seen it and, well, it doesn’t seem like a graduation kind of thing, you know?”

  She nods. “I told James that. I said, ‘ Why does an eighteen-year-old need a windmill?’ He smiled back and said,‘He won’t, but he’ll sure need what’s inside.’”

  “Where is it?” Fingers burn and my leg bounces.

  “Well, my dear, you probably ran right by it last night. I call it a sea mill.”

  I rip off my smock and dash out her door. I tear down the hill, reach sand, and stare down the coast.

  “Wow.”

  Nestled on jagged rock, it rises high out of the water. Don’t know how I missed it. I pad nearer until water soaks my ankles.

  High tide.

  The rocky finger on which it sits pokes up twenty yards out, and waves crash pretty strong. For a moment I think about waiting, but the thought sickens me and I throw off my shoes and slosh into the ocean.

  I never liked to swim. I don’t like it now, and I wade until water laps my chest.

  I’m only halfway there. A wave rolls over my mouth, and I sputter and lose balance. I replace my feet and feel sand. Then I don’t.

  I’m under, and moving. Don’t know if the current yanks me toward shore or away.

  The water around me lulls, and I kick and kick and pray I’m kicking toward the surface. I have no more air.

  My head pops up and my body sweeps toward a rock. I crash into it, feel it gouge my calf. But I hug it, and work my way around the slippery stone until I find a place to climb. I haul myself ten feet up to a flat place, and crumple onto my side. My leg oozes red, but I’m alive, caught by the only rock that could catch me. I look up. The windmill sets about five feet up on the next plateau. I look out toward the ocean and the waves that wanted to sweep me away.

  Thanks, Dad.

  I climb to the mill. It looks crazed—blades whip one way, stop, start again. I’ve never seen a mill like this. Anchored into solid rock, it doesn’t look like wood. I reach out and rub my hands over the surface. Rock. The same rock that it sits on.

  I bend over and look for bracing. There is none. No crack along the bottom either. Fifteen feet below me, a wave smacks the rock and showers me with spray.

  “This wasn’t built on rock. You carved this out of the rock. Man!”

  Wind whips off the ocean and nearly knocks me off the spire. I scoot around the mill, careful where I place my feet, hugging it all the way. A windmill hacked out of stone.

  Above me, blades whir and stop. They shouldn’t withstand wind and water and years, but they do.

  This is incredible—what in the world?

  A small door is chiseled into the side of the mill away from the wind. It’s also made of stone, but fits airtight into the rock around it. I trace my finger over th
e thin crack that outlines the vault and pick algae from the keyhole.

  I peek inside, jam in my pinky until the tip hits metal. “If I could only open you.”

  I squeeze my hand into my soggy pocket and pull out my keys. I try car keys and farmhouse keys and keys to every outbuilding on my property.

  “Too small.” Teeth chatter. “I don’t have anything bigger—wait!”

  I stuff the key ring back into my jeans. “Hold on, I got one more.” I dig out my wallet, and yank out Old Bill’s precious key number thirty.

  Blades give a furious whirl, but they aren’t important to me. Nothing matters but the door my dad hacked and the key in my pocket.

  Clouds cover the sun, and I shiver. Numb, pruned hands struggle to hold Old Bill’s key, the one with the etched letters. JK, my dad’s initials. JK, my initials.

  I double-fist it and jam it in. Inside, a spring gives, and the door pops open an inch.

  My heartbeat pounds in my eardrums. “Okay, Old Bill.” I stare at my dad’s initials poking out of the hole. “How did you end up with my dad’s key?”

  I reach for the door and pause. “You took it from Mom, didn’t you? My name wasn’t enough. You had to steal my gift, too.”

  I throw open the door. Eight slim boxes sealed in large plastic bags are stacked inside the opening. I reach for the first, and read the word scrawled on yellowed masking tape.

  Me

  I rifle through the titles.

  Ireland

  Lydia

  George

  What you need to know

  These crazy jerks

  I place the other boxes back into the mill and stare at the one in my hands. Crazy jerks. I open it. Tapes. A plastic tape holder with twelve cassette tapes.

  My heart thumps harder.

  I yank out boxes and lean against the mill. It would be safer to leave the tapes in their stone tomb, but I’m not letting go and clutch them tight.

  I watch the tide for hours. More beach becomes visible, and spray no longer crashes against the rock. I ease myself down. Another hour passes, and lifting boxes over my head, I slip into water that laps my chest.

  A friendly current carries me to shore, and I sputter onto the sand.

  I start toward Francine’s, pause, and turn. I look out over the ocean, like my dad had done. The rumbling of the waves sounds like Old Bill.

  All he left you was that disease. Stupid, no-good drunk of a dad—

  “Liar!”

  I scream at the water, and my scream sounds small. I try again.

  “Everything you ever said was a lie, start to finish!”

  I shout until I’m hoarse, until every ugly thing I’ve ever wanted to say to him has been carried away by the sea.

  I’m exhausted. But inside I’m light. Clutching Dad’s tapes, I haul up the hill, reach the top, and stop.

  Naomi sits on the front step.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I nod.

  “What’s all that?”

  “Dad stuff.”

  She stands and walks toward me. “I’ll help you carry it in.” She smiles and grabs half the boxes of tapes from me.

  “I like you,” I blurt.

  Naomi stops in her tracks. Her eyes widen.

  I straighten and meet her stare.

  She bites her lip then, lets out an exasperated sigh. “There you go again! I’ve been driving around for an hour rehearsing this, and you mess it all up.” Naomi smacks my jumpy shoulder and drops a box of tapes. I bend down and pick it up.

  “This isn’t easy, you know,” she continues. “It’s not the kind of thing I say, well, ever. And I needed to say it first. But now I can’t, and I’m stuck, and I wasted my time preparing a useless speech.”

  I nod slow. “Do you remember the last line of it?”

  I can tell she’s trying hard to stay frustrated, but she’s losing the battle, and her face softens.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”

  “Just the last line,” I say.

  She swallows hard, and for a minute we stand in silence.

  “Forget it.” I shift boxes to one arm, stroke her shoulder, and turn toward the front door. “Don’t say anything you don’t want—”

  “Get back here!” She grabs my free arm and drops more tapes. I pick up those too.

  “I hate this!” She stares into the sky, exhales hard, lowers her eyes, and locks her gaze on me. “If you knew how horrible it is to be separate from you, or what it’s like to see your face every time I shut my eyes. If you knew how I feel when I’m with you, maybe you’d get how hard this is for me! I mean, there’s no reason for me to come back here. None!” She pauses, whispers, “Except you.” Naomi blinks hard and her breathing slows. She stares at me. “That didn’t sound much like my last line.”

  I can’t hug her—we both hold boxes full of cassettes—but I can kiss her. Suddenly there are no tapes between us; they’re heaped on my feet. Naomi presses into me. Our lips touch, gentle as an evening’s wave, and a moment later I’m drowning in a feeling so wild and free I don’t ever want to breathe.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” says Francine, her head poking out the doorway. “But you two should get out of the rain.”

  It is raining. My brain thinks again, and I glance down. “My tapes!”

  We scoop them up and dash inside, as heavy rain starts to fall.

  I place my gift on the floor, grab Naomi’s hand, and whirl toward Grandma.

  “Do you have a tape player?”

  chapter forty-five

  THE THREE OF US TAKE OUR PLACES IN THE living room. Between us, on the coffee table, Grandma places a dusty tape player.

  “This is what was inside the mill?” Francine asks.

  “Inside,” I whisper, and rub my hands.

  Naomi draws her knees up to her face.“For how many years?”

  “Sixteen,” Francine says.

  I flip through the sets of tapes. “Guess it doesn’t matter what we hear first.” I reach for the set labeled ME, and pop out a tape. “What kind of music did he like?”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’ll hear music,” Grandma says.

  She squirms in her seat, and suddenly I feel anxious, too. A dad who wraps gifts in windmill wrapping paper is unpredictable.

  I place my finger on the play button. “Here we go.”

  Five seconds. Nothing. Ten. Nothing.

  “Oh, please,” Grandma says.

  Nothing? He gave me nothing?

  “Hi, Jack.” The voice on the tape speaks to me. Naomi leans forward, and Grandma places a trembling hand over her mouth.

  “It’s James,” she whispers.

  “Some things a man should say. Likely he’ll forget, or won’t have the chance. I want to be sure that doesn’t happen to me and you. I want you to know everything. Who you are. Where you come from. So I’m saying it aloud, in case you forget. Figure it’s my job to remind you.”

  My heart soars. I spend the next eight hours on the couch. My father’s words fill my head and wash away any doubt. The man was smart and funny. He was good and strong. He loved Mom and at the end of each tape I hear it from his own lips:

  “I love you, Jack.”

  It’s the middle of the night. The brightest night I can remember. Grandma’s asleep on the love seat. Naomi sits wide-awake and stares at the clock.

  “I love my present,” I say.

  “You’re lucky to have a dad like that,” Naomi says quietly.

  I nod and rise. “I am.” I walk over and plop down in front of Nae. “This didn’t go over well on the beach, but”—she hasn’t moved, and I breathe deep—“I need to go home. I’ve got to look Old Bill in the face, and it doesn’t matter what voice he uses on me. And if he calls me Sam, I’ll steal my real name right back.” I take her hand. It’s limp and doesn’t resist and tells me nothing.

  “I need to set it all straight. Tell Old Bill and Mom that I know the truth.”

  Naomi’s eyes stare vacant, a
s if what I said means nothing.

  “It scares me,” I say.“I’ve hidden from Bill my whole life, but you heard it. You heard my dad. I know it sounds dumb, but I want to make him proud. He believes in me and I can’t run anymore, at least not away.” I peek back at Grandma, “I finally caught my dad.” She stirs.

  “Dad ain’t out here anymore. He’s in here.” I thump my chest. “And I got a mom, and a farm, a business and the truth . . . every responsibility I have is back home.” I nod. “All but one.” I stroke Naomi’s cheek, and lay mine on her stomach. “I know you didn’t have to come back here to be with me, but you did and . . .” I whisper, “Come with me.”

  “Where else would she go?”

  I sit up quickly and glance over at Grandma. She removes her glasses and rubs the divots. “Is there something I’m missing?”

  I scoot back so I’m not between Grandma and Naomi, but both of them keep their eyes fixed on me.

  “Jack?” Grandma asks.

  “I’m pregnant.” Naomi’s voice is small, but it doesn’t waver. “That’s what you’re missing.”

  It’s quiet. Just Naomi and me, my grandma, and the secret. I lift my hand onto Naomi’s armrest, rest it palm up. It lies there, alone and funny-looking for the longest time. Finally, she lays her hand inside mine, and I squeeze.

  Grandma’s chin quivers, and she looks from Naomi to me. “Does Lydia know?”

  “Mom?” I ask. “Why would—oh, it’s, no—”

  “It’s not Jack’s,” Naomi says.“It’s not his fault.” She pulls free of me and buries her face in her hands.

  Grandma takes a breath, and I can’t tell if she’s relieved or not. She stands, walks to the table, and grabs a chair.

  “Fault.” She sets the chair down by Naomi and eases into it. “That’s a tough word to lug around.” Grandma sighs, leans back. “I should know.”

  Naomi peeks through a crack in her fingers.

  “I never knew the half of what I just heard on those tapes. James never shared it. I knew I hurt him—the disease, my disease, hurt him.” Grandma gives a weak smile. “All his agony came through me. It’s my fault,” she whispers.