by Anne Degrace
Do something with your fucking useless life.
He should get some serious help.
Of course, I’m the one hitchhiking in circles.
What if he comes back? He’s not coming back. Is he? My knees are jelly; when I hold my hand out, it’s shaking. I don’t want to be on this road. There’s a path, heading off into the trees but still heading in the direction of the highway.
Do something with your fucking useless life.
I walk down the path for a while, not really caring where I’m going. It feels safer in the woods. It’s a while before things start to look familiar, which is no surprise the way the trails twist and turn through the forest around here, hikers, hunters, I don’t know. Ahead is the cabin where I smoked a joint with that cop. Man, I wouldn’t mind running into him now. Guys like Buddy shouldn’t be running around with loaded guns in their trucks. At least, I think it was loaded.
It probably wasn’t even loaded. Jesus.
Nobody’s been in the cabin since I was there, I can tell. By the front door, a roach ground into a rock. I can see the path heading off back behind the cabin. It’s the same path I took off down when the cop arrived, not that I got very far.
Another five minutes, and what do you know? A big rock, moss all over the top, squatting in the trees like a big old toad.
Windblown
Grey-eyed Athena sent them a favourable breeze,
a fresh west wind, singing over a wine-dark sea.
— Homer
The view, at sunset, is spectacular. Mountain ranges fade into the distance in subtle shades of green, blue, and purple. The sky shifts from rose to gold, blue to turquoise, and the clouds, lit from beneath, send fingers of light heavenwards. The air is fresh; there is the slightest wind, and it feels delicious on Jo’s skin. She waits for something inspirational, something poetic, to come to her.
She hears the snap of twigs that tells her someone is approaching. She turns her head, heart in her throat, waiting to see what might emerge from the trees. She is barely breathing, ready to spring and run if she needs to. In the reddish sunset glow it’s hard to make out anything at all in the shadows.
Pink walks quickly; the light is fading. Pretty soon, he won’t be able to see the path. If it’s a nice spot, as the girl at the co-op said, at the very least he’ll have a good, quiet place to bed down and sort out his thoughts. He still feels shaky, his knees not quite as they should be.
Follow the rules, Stan’s voice in his head. He remembers Nora’s voice, when, conspiratorially, they’d open the cookie tin before dinner. Rules are meant to be broken she’d tell him, winking, while breaking her own. It occurs to Pink now that even if he makes up his own rules, they’re still rules. Follow the wind; follow the rules. It amounts to the same thing. What happens is that the rules, whatever they are, keep changing.
When Pink was six—when Pink was Elvis—there was that first night at Stan and Nora’s. Big swaths of memories are missing, but that night, he remembers, he was bundled up in Stan’s plaid flannel pyjama top. It came to his ankles, and Nora, clucking, did up the very top button under the collar so it wouldn’t slide off his shoulders. “Poor dear,” she said. “Reminds me of Robby. Isn’t he a lot like Robby?” and Stan said: “Now, Nora…” It was years before Pink learned about the son his aunt and uncle had lost.
Lost: it’s such a strange way to put it. Like he was misplaced. As if he might turn up later. It was Kevin who told him, surprised Elvis didn’t know, that Stan and Nora’s only son had drowned. It was not clear who was supposed to be watching, who had turned away for just a moment, assuming the other had his eye on the little boy playing at the edge of the creek. Nora grieved; Stan, angry, blamed the circumstances, Nora, and himself.
Growing up, he’d hear people say: poor Elvis; you know he lost his parents. He can hardly remember them and yet, when he cast his mind back, he can feel a hand on his forehead—a fever, perhaps—that he’s sure wasn’t Nora’s. He can see the outline of a man chopping wood, rubber boots and canvas pants, white undershirt, the whack of axe on wood, and he knows this dim figure to be his father, the familiar limp as he moved from chopping block to woodpile.
Lost. Kevin lost his life in the war in Vietnam. Pink can imagine the sniper bullet as it hit his friend’s chest. If Buddy, instead of pointing the gun at him, had actually taken the shot… Pink can see himself, slow motion, falling against the tree, arching the way the cat’s body had arched as it fell against the side of the hole when Stan shot her. Would word get back to Stan and Nora? After all this time, the way he left, would they feel the loss?
What was he thinking, listening to that weird person at the co-op, and then heading off on this hike to some lookout, with bananas in his pack and not much else. But he’s here, now; nothing to lose. Ha! He is without money or identification, lost in his jacket in a Volkswagen van that could be anywhere. Couldn’t get across the border if he wanted to, now, and all at once this is important. Family. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose goes the soundtrack in his mind. He starts to whistle nervously against the growing dark.
Abruptly, the light changes. There’s a clearing up ahead; he can see the sun glowing red through the trees, knows it to be smoke in the air, a fire burning somewhere giving the setting sun its strange fiery glow. But it’s beautiful, too, and as he approaches he thinks about the two sides to everything.
There’s a person sitting on a rock at the edge of the lookout, the landscape dropping away beyond. In silhouette, he can’t identify age or gender, so he approaches cautiously, then, irrationally and as if he is approaching a wild animal, he reaches his hand over his shoulder and pulls the bananas from where they sit at the top of his pack, tucked into the strap.
Jo stands to meet the figure emerging from the trees. How stupid to have left herself with her back to a sheer drop. The figure—she can tell it’s a person—is holding something out in front. Oh, man. What is it? She thinks about the novels she’s read: her throat constricted; her heart pounded; she broke out into a sweat.
She is all of those.
The voice is timorous, not at all like a killer.
“Banana?”
It’s so ridiculous, she laughs.
They sit together on the rock, a safe foot or so between them. The flush she felt when she first saw him is back, but the morning feels like a long time ago. She looks at him, wondering how it came to be that they are both here, on this rock, watching this sunset, like some sort of B movie plotline.
“It’s quite a coincidence,” he says.
“Someone once told me there are no coincidences.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Weird stuff happens. Strange patterns emerge. They hear a voice in every wind, and snatch a fearful joy.”
Pink looks at Jo, who is gazing across the mountain ranges, watching the subtle shifts in shade and colour in the dying light. She turns when she feels his eyes on her. “It just came to me. From my English lit class, about a million years ago. Thomas Grey, 1700s.”
“Well, anyway,” offers Pink, after sitting with this for a moment. “Someone told me it was a nice view.”
“I thought you were going to tell me the wind blew you here.”
“Up until an hour ago, yeah, I guess that would have been my answer.”
“What happened?”
“Stuff. Just stuff.”
“Me, too,” says Jo.
They’re quiet for a bit. The evening star sharpens above the horizon. Pink decides not to talk about the guy in the pickup truck. After several minutes, he speaks.
“There are all these weird choices to make. It’s hard to know, sometimes, what the right ones are. Sometimes I feel like I’ve never made a concrete decision in my life. Unless you count the idea of hitchhiking with the wind.”
“Well, it was a choice, right?”
“…that brought me here. For some reason, I’d like to think.” He thinks for a while about the day: it’s
been a long one. Stefan and Thérèse, the flower lady, the guy he gave his shirt to, the girl at the co-op. Just stuff blowing around, or something else?
Jo looks at his profile against the darkening sky. His nose is crooked, his chin a little weak. He’s just a guy. This morning was a long time ago.
“The reason I left,” he’s saying now, “was this thing that happened. I’d done most of a year at college but I was flunking out. I was going to lose my deferment. I didn’t know they were going to pull out troops, it just seemed like Vietnam was going to go on forever. Some people I knew had left for Canada, and I was starting to hear stories about how easy it was to come up, you know, so many points at the border. There was even a manual about how to get in. I wouldn’t have a college degree, but I had my high school transcripts back at Stan and Nora’s, and a buddy who said he could get me a letter promising me a job at some bookstore in Vancouver. I’d gotten these letters from my friend Kevin, from Vietnam, lots of blacked-out stuff, but it was still there, in his words. The misery. No way I was going over.
“So I went back, took the bus from Seattle to Pullman, turned up at the house without letting them know I was coming. I came in, Nora and Stan sitting there at the table in the kitchen, and I just sat down like I hadn’t been away and told them what I wanted, and why. I don’t know, it didn’t even occur to me that they hadn’t risen to greet me; that Nora hadn’t done her usual fussing over me, Stan wasn’t there with his comments about the length of my hair.
“Turns out, my timing was, um, ironic. They had just heard from Kevin’s mother who had called, crying, to tell them about the telegram.
“Stan flew off the handle. I mean, he really flew off the handle.”
Pink remembers the scene with Kodak clarity: Stan, the colour rising upwards from his collar; Nora, hands flapping.
“You got the same candy-ass genes as your father. Know how he got out of the war? You know how?” Stan’s face about an inch from his. Hot breath on his face. “Shot himself in the foot. Told my sister when she met him it was a war wound, but I found out. Witnesses. Disgusting. Weren’t for him being married to my sister, would have blown the whistle, got that medal withdrawn.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pink started to say, meaning: it was a long time ago.
But: “You’re just like him. Good for nothing. Hopeless.”
Nora, crying, against the stove in the kitchen.
“When I think about Robby—”
From the direction of the stove, a wail. Anguish. Pink wants to look, but he can’t seem to take his eyes from Stan’s.
“Get out. You’re no child of mine.”
Now, sitting at the lookout with Jo, “How could he just cut me off like that?” he asks.
“What happened then? You just left?”
“Yeah. Just like that, walked right out. Thing is, I keep wondering if maybe he—if maybe he regretted it. He always had a temper. I mean, Stan could be really decent, I think he was a good father to me, but sometimes something came over him. I don’t know if this was one of those times, if maybe now he wishes he hadn’t said that, or if he really meant it. And then there’s Nora. When I walked out she came after me, grabbed me and turned me around and hugged me. She told me: ‘Thank God you didn’t go,’ but I was still so mad at Stan, you know? At what he said. Shocked, and confused, because I didn’t know that about my father. So I hugged her back, but then I turned and kept walking. I still had my pack on my shoulder. I hadn’t even set it down.”
They are quiet in shared regret; it’s palpable in the chilling air.
“I think about going back, you know? But it just seems too—risky, I guess. Emotionally, you know? And too much time has passed, now. What would I say?”
Jo doesn’t speak for a while. She’s thinking of her mother and father, the distance between them, and now, the distance between herself and them. It is almost dark, but Pink can see her profile limned with the last light.
“Where are you going now?” asks Jo, finally. She waits for the answer, watching the red fade from the sky. To the north, dry lightning, like distant warfare.
He looks at her, and she’s beautiful. It’s the only word in his head. He reaches over and touches her face with the tips of his fingers.
She jumps up. It’s nearly dark, now. Eamon. It was so stupid to come here by herself. What does she know about this person? She can’t see which way to run. “Fuck off,” she tells him. It’s all she can think of.
He’s on his feet, too. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Please.”
She doesn’t know what he means by please. Please what? She stands, panting. She won’t get very far in the dark. Pink has his hands in the air, like he’s under arrest.
“I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.”
Sorry, she thinks. There’s so much to be sorry for.
She sits a little ways away. She’s aware of stars coming out, more visible each second as the night turns indigo. Neither speaks. Nothing seems clear. For Pink’s part, he’s rehearsing in his head what to say, wishing he could undo that moment, wondering how to get past this one. Above them, the stars multiply.
“Are you cold?” he asks, finally. He has no idea how much time has passed.
Jo realizes she is shivering. On any June night in the mountains the temperature drops. She shakes her head, no. But in the end it’s the cold that drives them together, leaning now against the rock, the unzipped sleeping bag drawn around them. Their shoulders touch, but that’s all.
Pink extends his arm. “Satellite,” he says, and they watch the tiny point of light move through the stars. “Do you ever watch the meteor showers?”
“Meteor showers?”
“Shooting stars. We used to go out into the hayfields, my friend Kevin and I, and lie on our backs and watch them. The best time is about three in the morning. He was the dedicated one, always made sure he set his alarm, and then he’d come over and wake me up. That started when we were nine or ten. Later on, we’d just stay up drinking until then.” Pink laughs, then grows quiet. “He was killed in the last days of the war.”
“Sorry.”
“We should watch them together next time. Do you want to?” His voice in the dark has brightened. It reminds Jo of a little boy.
“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.” In this moment, it actually seems possible.
There are crickets in the tall grass. They’ve been singing their night songs for some time, but now Pink hears them as if for the first time. They are fervent and persistent. They know exactly what they are doing, just being crickets in the night. It seems simple, and perfect.
“I’m going to Vancouver tomorrow,” he says suddenly. He knows it’s true. “Come with me.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know. Get my bearings.”
The lightning is all around them, now, but there’s no accompanying thunder, just the flash, illuminating the trees, their faces, then gone. The wind has come up, blowing across the lookout, pushing leaves and grass about them in dark waves. The outline of the mountains is barely discernable against the black of the sky awash in stars. The storm has moved on. Jo can’t see Pink, but she moves a little closer. He feels the increased heat of her body and remains still, as if in the presence of a small, wild animal. Over the next few hours, in the safety of the darkness, they talk, their words weaving patterns in the night.
In the morning they are rolled up together in the sleeping bag, Pink’s face pressed into Jo’s hair, her chin nestled into his collarbone, the rib of his t-shirt making lines in her skin. His arm has encircled her waist in the night, a finger tucked in a belt loop; her hand rests on the side seam of his jeans. At some point in the night, both have kicked off their shoes. As they pack up, Pink, on a whim, leaves the last three bananas on the rock.
When they finally leave the lookout, the air is full of poplar seeds like tiny, perfect parachutes, and the sun is rising, illuminating the mountaintops.
5:45 a.m.
Sa
ndwiches to go
Archie’s in the La-Z-Boy, feet on the coffee table, snoring. The Fairlane is gone, the parking lot empty. Cass is curled on the couch, afghan tucked around her, oblivious to the morning sun streaming through the windows of the trailer. The air smells of stale smoke. Jo looks at Cass thoughtfully. A good person. Kindness. As she stands there, Cass opens one eye.
“Late night,” she says.
“Looks like it.”
“Wondered where you were. Thought maybe you’d taken off home.”
“Still here.”
“Maybe you should go home.” She coughs twice, opens the other eye, and then closes them both. “Tomorrow, I mean. Might need a little help opening up today. But then, might not even open.” Cass pulls the afghan over her head. “I’ll be in later,” she says, gravel voice muffled.
As Jo turns to leave, she hears Cass’s voice again from beneath the blankets, as if speaking from a place of half-sleep. “She had a birthmark. I’d forgotten about that.”
Jo remembers Cantha, when she asked to read Jo’s palm, carefully turning her hand over, then the soft exhale.
In the back room, Jo pushes her things into her pack. Sitting on the cot in the early morning quiet, she sees the photograph album lying on the rumpled blankets of the cot. Jo can imagine Cass and Cantha, two sisters, looking at the shared photographs that shaped their lives. She wonders about Cantha’s daughter: foster care, perhaps adoption. A family, maybe, who wanted this red-haired little girl more than anything, wanted her at least as much as Cass did. There is the unfolding of events, Jo thinks. And sometimes, there is reconciliation. She hopes that Cass and her sister found it. For the first time since she arrived at Cass’s, the tears come.
Pink will be here soon. She’d asked him for some time alone before meeting her at the diner. He sat on the rock at the lookout, back to the vista, and watched her cross the clearing and enter the woods. She knows because she turned twice to look back before the trees embraced her. She had been on the path less than five minutes when a sound made her start. A pheasant, beating its wings. The rush as, flushed from the bushes, it rose and flew, disappearing over the lip of the hillside where the forest dropped away.
