A Million Heavens

by John Brandon

  The wolf saw a window with no blinds toward the front of the house and he saw the form of the girl inside, the one who came and went. He stayed put and after a short time the wind died out altogether and the wolf heard the strumming. It was a guitar. It stopped and the wolf stood still until it started again. The music was coming from behind the window where the girl had been standing. The wolf heard the girl trying out her voice, reedy and full of an emotion the wolf couldn’t grasp. He crept out into the open and crossed over from the neighbor’s yard and put himself against the wall of the house with the chickens. There was never a way to tell, once music began, how long it would last. He was panting and his breath was out of rhythm with the song. The wolf got right under the window, pinned between the stucco and a line of tough shrubs, and he felt—now that he’d quit his rounds and quit his appetite and quit trying to figure out what power the human music held—now he felt this girl’s song pressing on him pleasantly from without and within. He didn’t have to discern anything. The song wasn’t chasing him or being chased. The song was doing a lap of its own natural rounds, a lap that somehow wouldn’t wind up in the same place it had started. The song had a good fate and maybe the wolf did too. He felt the angst that had been building in him begin to evaporate. There was peace in his soul and if he had a brain he didn’t hear it. The girl convinced her voice to rise with purpose and the strumming rose with it. The wolf felt quick and dumb. This music could have been anywhere and he could have been anywhere but they were both here. The song was going to end but that didn’t matter because whenever it ended would be too soon. If it ended in a human minute that would be too soon and if it ended when morning broke that would be too soon.

  DANNIE

  She was sitting out on her balcony again, her computer on her lap. She was supposed to be working but was just poking around on websites, doing what she was always doing, which was waiting for Arn to come home. He was late, which meant his boss, the owner of the sonic observatory, had taken him out for breakfast. His boss, as far as Dannie could tell, was very smart and lonely. Dannie herself, she had to admit, did not seem very smart these days, and the only time she wasn’t lonely was when Arn was around.

  Dannie was a researcher. She got paid by the hour to find things out. While Arn waited for monumental information that would never arrive, Dannie sought out scores of minutia. Mostly, these days, she used the Internet, but she also knew her way around a library, around a hall of records. This morning she was to begin compiling a list of honorary degree recipients. Some guy wanted to know how many honorary degrees had been awarded in each nation, which disciplines the degrees were awarded in, which individuals held the most.

  Dannie brought up a search engine but didn’t do more than that. She closed her eyes. The mood she was in felt like someone else’s mood, someone younger than Dannie. She felt a rogue craving for drugs. She hadn’t done drugs in years, since she and her ex-husband were dating, but this morning she had that itch. She had thought she’d outgrown drugs. Maybe it was the desert. The desert was the perfect locale. Maybe it was because she was trying to get pregnant and knew the fun of the young could soon be behind her. It was almost time for the end of Dannie’s cycle and she hadn’t felt a hint of a cramp. She didn’t feel irritable. Didn’t feel bloated. She was trying not to think about it, trying not to jinx anything or obsess over the calendar. She wasn’t late yet, after all. When she was late she’d go get a couple tests at a drug store in Albuquerque—until then, she wasn’t going to think about it.

  She began clicking around, marking websites. She only worked five hours a day, so she wouldn’t get carpel tunnel or burn her eyes out. When Dannie had originally discovered New Mexico, years ago, she’d been working for a movie house, scouting sites for a cowboy comedy. She’d spent three weeks up near Santa Fe, and she’d known she would return to the state, although she couldn’t have guessed the circumstances. Before the movie thing, Dannie had worked for PBS. Before that, she’d modeled for a home shopping company—coats mostly. For some reason, she looked nice in coats. She guessed it was the hue of her cheeks, which always looked like they’d been rouged by wind. Dannie was grateful for her skin. She’d always thought her skin made her look fertile. She’d never tested the notion until now.

  Dannie heard the scratch of Arn’s key and then heard him padding through the condo. He came out onto the balcony and plopped down in the other chair, a hand on his belly. His boss had stuffed him full of bacon. He flopped his arm out toward Dannie and she took his hand.

  “You ever have your cholesterol checked?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not big on doctors.”

  Dannie closed up her computer and set it under her chair. She looked at Arn’s hair, which was matted to his head. He often went days without showering, but he never smelled bad.

  “Which drugs have you tried?” Dannie asked him.

  He paused, then said, “Just pot.”

  “Really?”

  “What more should I have done?”

  “More than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Lots of reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, to lose track of time. To test yourself.”

  Arn scrunched his nose.

  “To be daring.”

  “Yeah, I’m not all that daring. I have been known to lose track of time.”

  Dannie squeezed his hand. His T-shirt was drawing up, revealing his little-kid belly.

  “Why the sudden interest?” he said. “Are you going to administer a random drug test?”

  Dannie raised herself up and climbed onto Arn’s chair. There was a pattern they’d fallen into. Dannie would corner Arn, would chase him down or trap him. She had on a puffy blouse that tied in the front, and she began undoing the straps.

  “Anything else you want to know?” Arn said.

  Dannie sat straight. “How many women have you slept with?”

  Arn made a face like he’d performed a magic trick. “You’re it,” he said.

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  “No joke.”

  “Sure, Arn.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t care that you’ve slept with other women. You don’t have to lie. I don’t like you because you’re supposed to be pristine or something.”

  “I’m just answering your question.”

  Dannie made a skeptical face, and Arn didn’t respond to it.

  “Now if you’re lying, I am going to be angry,” she told him.

  “What would I stand to gain from that lie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dannie. “Something.”

  Arn shrugged.

  “I’m not like you. Lying is a pet peeve of mine.”

  “Most people are that way.”

  “You’re telling me you were a virgin when we met?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “That’s your story? That’s your final answer? I took your virginity.”

  “Lock it in.”

  Dannie felt deceived. She felt like she’d won something she wasn’t sure she wanted. It was believable, she supposed. Arn wasn’t the type who would need to chase girls in order to prove something. He did have a certain unspoiled exuberance during the act. Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t. Dannie looked down at Arn. He was a prize the desert had awarded her and she was frightened of him. She was trying to get pregnant by this boy and maybe she already had, trying to turn him from a virgin to a father, and he didn’t know a thing about it. She did not feel upset about the thought of doing this and that was more proof she was falling for him. When she’d first gone off birth control she’d told herself if she got pregnant she’d move away and never tell Arn a thing about it, but now she was in deeper than he was. He wasn’t a novelty or a dupe.

  “What is it?” Arn said.

  Dannie shook her head. She reached out and stroked the lumped-up section of his hair as he gazed up toward her with his artless brown eyes.

  HISTORY OF A
RN II

  He bounced around during ninth grade, but before tenth he was placed with a couple way up north of Seattle, almost in Canada. They were strangely close, this couple, and didn’t talk much to Arn. The man worked at a candy factory and was always throwing tantrums and the wife was always soothing him, hugging him close and burying her face in his flannel shirt. The man had an exact schedule and when it was thrown off he fumed. If a show he was planning on watching got pushed back because the president was speaking, or if the mechanic didn’t have his car ready on time, he would stalk around in tight circles, tossing things against walls. The wife would spring into action. This was her talent, calming him. They had a younger son, too, and he was their own. They had a biological son who was like eight and then they’d gone and taken in a fifteen-year-old foster son too. Arn didn’t get it. He had no clue why they wanted him, but he didn’t mind living in their house. The days slipped by. The food was tasty and promptly served. The boy, the eight-year-old, was obsessed with baseball and kept to himself. He spent his time taking batting practice at the mini-golf complex down the road or sorting cards into sets in his room.

  School was a trial for Arn. He got sent outside most days by his typing teacher. She was a fat, red woman whom Arn kept tormenting long after she let up on him. He felt guilty about giving her a hard time because she was an easy target. She’d started it, always harassing him about hunting and pecking, but still, she was an easy target. It was like he was trying to teach her a lesson, to make an example of her, though he couldn’t have said whom the example was for.

  In eleventh grade, Arn got his pants pulled down in the lunch line by a big football player, a senior, causing the entire cafeteria to laugh. Arn went out to the parking lot and slashed the tires of the guy’s Mustang. He left a note under the windshield explaining to the football player that they were even now but if he chose to give Arn any more trouble, it would end in someone’s death. If the football player decided to trade harassments with Arn, Arn explained in the note, he would have to either kill Arn or be killed. If it’s worth all that, Arn wrote, go ahead and make the next move.

  Arn got a job at a car wash. It took about one week for the owner to realize Arn was a better worker than any of the other kids, and he was promoted to assistant manager, which meant he got an extra two bucks an hour and he was the one who pulled the cars around and drove them onto the tracks of the car wash. Arn hadn’t had his license very long, so driving a bunch of strange cars, even in second gear, was fun for him. His life wasn’t bad there for a while. He had a job that wasn’t drudgery and soon enough he would graduate and be free.

  At the house, the ongoing problem was that Arn’s foster father had not been sleeping. He’d been more on edge, and had instituted a bunch of new rules. He gave demonstrations of how to do things quietly, how to make a sandwich without jangling the silverware drawer, how to plug headphones into the television. He’d shown Arn and his real son how to turn a doorknob first and then gently pull the door closed, rather than forcing it shut so the knob had to click. The real son, nine or ten at this point, did not heed any of this. Since Arn had moved in, the boy had lost interest in baseball and had started reading a lot. He never had friends over, and took a lot of showers, sometimes three in a day. Arn reminded him over and over to be quiet, wanting to prevent conflict in the house, but conflict avoidance no longer seemed to be this boy’s program.

  One night Arn awoke to a scuffle, to his foster father’s grunts and his foster brother’s whimpering. Arn went into the dining room and the father had the son cornered, hemmed in by the china cabinet and the big wooden table, and was kicking him, just booting the shit out of him over and over. Arn froze, though not for long. The situation wasn’t complicated. A defenseless kid was getting beaten to a pulp. Arn brushed past his foster mother and into the boy’s room, where he got a good grip on an aluminum baseball bat. He returned to the dining room and set his feet and dinged his foster father in the back of the head. Arn didn’t swing his hardest, but hard enough. The man stood up straight a moment before slumping to his knees and then the rest of the way down. His son didn’t leave the corner. The kid stared at Arn like he thought Arn was coming after him next. The foster father moaned, rocking on the carpet. The mother stared, not at anyone, seeming for once to need comforting herself.

  Arn didn’t have a chance to take stock until he was on the train. There were probably a hundred reasons why it was hard to admit that he was on the run, but the most prominent was that it felt silly. It was silly to think of himself as some kind of fugitive, as wanted, as fleeing justice. It felt surreal, thinking that the cops had been called, a photo of Arn had been turned over, the whole incident in the living room had been recounted, that taxpayer money would be used to track Arn down. Probably all that was happening. Probably the foster mother and foster brother were making Arn out as a dangerous psychopath, pinning the kid’s bruises on Arn to spare the father. Probably an upper-level-type cop would be assigned Arn’s case, a cop who wore a suit and didn’t report to anyone, and if that cop found Arn he would be tried as an adult and would rot in jail. Assault with a deadly weapon. He was only a few short months from eighteen. The family would form a united front against him in court. Arn could see himself in a collared shirt that didn’t quite fit, standing before a judge, listening as he was made out to be jealous and angry and ungrateful and everything else foster kids were supposed to be, listening as his foster father was made out to be a saint. He’d have a big bandage on his head, the foster father, or maybe he’d talk with a slur. Arn wouldn’t bother telling his side. The judge wouldn’t even be disgusted with him; she’d feel pity.

  Arn was really on a train. He was really hightailing it out of town.

  Arn had his own little area on the train. He had his bag on the seat next to him and his feet up. He watched the river. It wasn’t a river anymore. It was a sound or a bay or something. A raffle was announced over the speakers. Whoever had the right number on their ticket would receive a free bowl of oatmeal, fancy oatmeal that came with raisins and brown sugar and cream. Arn pulled out his ticket and listened. He didn’t win. There were about nine people on the train, but someone else won the oatmeal. Arn found the restrooms then returned to his seat. He couldn’t decide if the train was covering ground or if it was piddling along. At some point, he was going to have to get off. He was going to have to choose a stop. He’d paid enough to get to Portland, Oregon, which would at least get him out of Washington. He was moving again, but this was different than foster moving. Arn was controlling this move. He didn’t have anyone to answer to. He had nothing but slack, enough to lasso the world or enough to hang himself.

  There was a girl at the other end of Arn’s car. He’d gotten a good look at her when he’d gone to the bathroom. All he could see now was her boot, sticking into the aisle. She had a music player and a cell phone and a book and magazines. She wore colorful tights. It heartened Arn to think that this girl did not know him at all. If they were to speak to each other the girl would form opinions about Arn, beliefs about who Arn was, and these beliefs would be wrong. Anyone who passed by Arn could think he was comfortable with his life. They could think he had a bright future, that he was already living his future.

  When Arn got to Portland he paid more money and stayed on the train. He didn’t feel up to dealing with a city. He stayed on, putting more miles between himself and his past, and finally got off at a town with one small college and one big bakery and stands everywhere that sold expensive coffee and expensive nuts and candles. There were a bunch of wine bars. There didn’t seem to be any heavy industry. There were limousine ads posted everywhere, for people who wanted to be driven around to vineyards.

  Arn checked himself into a hotel room with a little window. He put the TV on and locked the door and almost slept, thinking of that little shit purposely making noise in the middle of the night, thinking of the oatmeal he hadn’t won, thinking of that girl with the tights. She’d gotten off at Portland
, toting all her wired, clumsy possessions with her like medical equipment she needed to keep breathing. This town Arn was in was sunny and dry. A different part of the country.

  When he awoke it was past lunchtime. He walked down the street and ate a sandwich and then ate another one. He emptied his tray into the trash then pushed out into the sunshine and began asking around for work. He asked at a couple restaurants and had no luck, relieved, despite himself, at being turned down right away instead of having to fill out applications that would ask him for a bunch of information he didn’t want to give. He asked about winery work, knowing that migrants often did work like that and that migrants, like himself, weren’t able to fill out applications to anyone’s satisfaction. But it was the off-season. A time known as The Crush would come along in a few months, but there was nothing doing at the moment. There wasn’t a big supermarket in the town, a place Arn might collect carts or stock shelves.

  He left the main drag and walked up a hill, walking in order to avoid standing still, and found himself staring at what appeared to be a temp agency. It looked like a house, not a business. The sign was quaint. It said JOBS in large letters and down in the corner it said NEW GARDEN.

  From the moment he walked in the front door, he was treated strangely well. The other two guys in the waiting room had red eyes and runny noses, older guys, like forty, and they were being treated civilly, but Arn was being fawned over. There were three men working in the office. They fetched Arn water and tried to give him a bagel. They were waiting for someone, a woman named Amber. Amber would be Arn’s liaison. They gave Arn no papers to fill out. The office was full of flowers and bookshelves.