The Porcupine of Truth

by Bill Konigsberg

  “I missed you so much.”

  My jaw relaxes a bit, and I breathe into it. “I missed you too.”

  He opens his eyes and looks up at me. The look is still spacy and unfocused, and the thought comes to me that when he dies, this is the image I’ll have of him. And I don’t want it.

  “I’m glad we’re a family again, Dad,” he says.

  I close my eyes. “Me too,” I say.

  “Do I have long?” he asks. I open my eyes, and his unfocused glance seems to be searching for connection, and it’s like neither of us can find it.

  And his question. I don’t know what he means. Does he have long? With me holding him, or to live?

  “No,” I say, as kindly as I can.

  He doesn’t cry. He just breathes and coos like a content little baby. And then, after a few minutes of that, there is shaking, and he does cry some more.

  I pet his thinning brown hair gently. I don’t say anything, because I can’t. All I can do is breathe and breathe and breathe. This is all I’m capable of doing.

  WHEN I AM safely able to extricate myself from my father’s dream, I walk, numb, back down to the basement. Aisha is lightly snoring, but I figure if she can wake me at six thirty to clean, I can wake her up for this.

  I sit down on the edge of the air mattress and tap her shoulder gently. “My dad,” I say, when she finally leans up, resting on her elbows.

  “What about him?”

  “Crying. For his dad. To me.”

  I can’t say more, because if I do, I’m gonna cry, and I don’t cry, ever.

  “What?”

  I suck in as much air as I can, and I set my jaw tight, and I do my best to explain to her what just happened.

  “Man,” she says. “Heavy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So …”

  “So,” I say. “So we have to find him. We have to find my grandfather, I mean. Before my dad … you know. We need to get my grandfather back here for him.”

  “You think?” she asks.

  “I know,” I say, and maybe the way I sound so sure makes her sure too, because she nods in agreement. “We have to go to Thermopolis and talk to those people. See what they know.”

  She stretches her arms over her head. “Let’s do it. What’re you gonna tell your mom?”

  “I have no idea,” I say.

  I decide to take the journal, and Aisha says we have to take the Porcupine of Truth. We put these things on the ground next to the stairs. Neither of us can sleep much more, so we get up around five. I decide I’ll text my mom once we’re on the road, just in case she says no for once. Once we’re both showered, we creep upstairs so we can sneak out to the car without her or my dad seeing.

  We’re all set to go around five thirty, and just as I close the passenger-side car door, my mom comes out the back door in her peach robe and slippers, her face so tense I can see the creases from ten feet away in the side-view mirror. She looks nothing like the calm woman who came down to the basement in crisis mode last night.

  I get out of the car and salute her. Aisha gets out of the car too, and Mom waves to her tentatively.

  “What’s going on, Carson?” my mother says, her tone clipped, controlled.

  “Got stuff to do today,” I mumble.

  She tenses her jaw and takes a deep breath. Then she puts her hand on my shoulder, which is apparently the official mother greeting. “Seeing your dad like that must have been very difficult for you,” she says.

  At first I think she means my nighttime visit to his room, but then I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know anything about that. Pretty sure. “It was delightful,” I say.

  She lowers her chin to her chest and speaks to my kneecaps. “I’m hearing a great deal of anger at your father. I want you to know that I know it isn’t easy for you to be here. I appreciate you coming to Montana, and I know that there will be a great deal of growth for you if you continue to be the bigger man.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and my mother taps me on the shoulder twice like she’s my teacher and I just got a hundred on my sixth-grade geography test, like maybe I was the only one who knew where the fuck Botswana was. She goes back inside without asking, for instance, why we’re getting in the car at five thirty in the morning.

  I look at Aisha and hold up a finger, telling her to pay attention. I cross to the house and open the back door. “Hey, Mom,” I yell. “We’re gonna head out to Wyoming for the day. Okay?”

  A couple beats of silence, then she yells back, “Whatever you think, honey.”

  “I’ll just use the card for any expenses, ’kay?”

  Slight pause. Sigh audible from twenty feet away. “Sure, honey.”

  Aisha gives me a quizzical look as I walk back to the car, like, Really?

  I shrug. “Yep, that just happened,” I say.

  And with that, the journey to find my grandfather begins.

  THE PORCUPINE OF Truth perches precariously on the dashboard as Aisha pulls the Neon onto I-90 and starts us on our journey west and south from Billings.

  The Porcupine is our new, prickly mascot. When Aisha makes a sudden stop at a yellow light, the porcupine lurches forward into the windshield and then off the dash into my lap.

  “Ow,” I say, pushing her onto the floor. “Our God is a painful God.”

  I recline in the passenger seat. When I take my shoes off, kick up my legs, and place my bare feet against the windshield, Aisha swats me in the biceps and says, “You crazy?”

  I pull my feet away from the glass and see that I’ve left toe marks. I rub them and that just makes a smudge. She turns up Tegan and Sara, which is not what I would choose, but it’s not terrible. I find myself bouncing my head exaggeratedly to show her I approve, and then I stop because it’s like, Overcompensate much?

  Conversation is tougher this morning. Maybe it’s that we’re stuck in a car for three hours, and that’s different from being in the same house, because in a house, you can always get away. Also, I’m not in a real jokey mood, what with the whole My dad is dying and last night he thought I was his dad thing, not to mention the My grandfather is still alive thing. But joking is what I do. So as we careen through the outskirts of Billings, the billboards on either side screaming for our attention, I look out the window and riff on whatever I see.

  “Candy Town. The largest candy store in Montana. Do they get a medal for that?”

  “It’s a cool store,” she says, almost defensive.

  “I’m sure. Far be it for me to diss candy.” I keep scanning for more material. “Pelican Storage? Did someone really name their store Pelican Storage?”

  “Apparently,” Aisha says.

  “Is it for the storage of actual pelicans only? Or can you store other fowl there?”

  “You want me to stop and ask?”

  “I think they probably prefer only pelicans, but if someone has an osprey, or maybe a flamingo, even, they’re like, ‘Fine. So long as we don’t get to a point where we have fifty percent flamingos, we’re set. We don’t want to have to change our name.’ ”

  “Right,” Aisha says, monotone. “All the new signs.”

  I look over at her, grateful that she’s playing along. “What about the self-esteem of birds?” I say. “I worry about things like that. Like if you’re an osprey, you’re set. Everyone fawns all over you and you can hold your beak high. But if you’re a pigeon? Do you think pigeons have inferiority complexes?”

  “Probably they do,” she says.

  “Some of them walk around with their chests puffed out, but I think it’s a false pride.”

  We exit onto a rural highway, and now we are entirely alone on the road. There is nothing remotely like this on the east coast. Not that I’ve seen, anyway. It makes me feel important, like, instead of being one of a million people to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel one day, I’m the only one on a lonely stretch of highway. Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing in New York? The thought that I matter?

  Fifteen
miles past Bridger, the first town we pass through with an actual stoplight, I spot a yellow deer sign surrounded by flashing lights.

  “So that’s where flashing deer cross, I guess? Are they doe? A deer, a female deer? Do they flash for money?” I ask.

  Aisha is lost in another world, because she doesn’t answer. Tegan and Sara melts into jazz explodes into the hip-hop sass of Janelle Monae, and ours may be the only car in all of Wyoming at this very minute in which Janelle Monae is playing. We let “Q.U.E.E.N.” envelop Aisha’s Neon. How cool would it be to be able to rhyme like that? So flawless and smooth and quick. And then I think about how she gets to go into a studio, and she gets do-overs. The recording we hear is her final cut. Maybe in life, most of us feel inferior because we compare our dress rehearsals to Janelle Monae’s final performance. If I could just broadcast the Best of Carson Smith, and erase all the thoughts that go flat, all the jokes that don’t go anywhere, maybe I’d be amazing too.

  “So if you could create an app, any app, what would it be?” I ask.

  “Is this where we’ve gone now? What happened to prideful pigeons and flashing deer?”

  I laugh. “You gotta keep up,” I say. “My brain does this.”

  “I think there are medicines for that.”

  I look down at my fingernails. Is she trying to pick a fight? “If I had to create an app, it would be one where you give haircuts to feral cats, or maybe one where you chase witches around a plant nursery. If I had to create a reality TV show, it would be called America’s Next Top Podiatrist. Contestants would face increasingly bizarre and disgusting foot diseases.”

  Aisha sighs. “I would not watch that show.”

  “Aw, come on. Scabies of the foot? Pinky toe rot?”

  “Oh my God, Carson,” she says, raising her voice a bit. “Am I actually going to have to murder you in the first hour of our road trip?”

  “You want to kill me over pinky toe rot?” I ask, blowing air against the window and then wiping up the mist that forms.

  We drive on in silence, and I find several spots on the window to breathe against and then wipe up. When we are ten miles outside of Belfry, the sun comes up on the left, and the buttes begin to illuminate on the right.

  “Nice butte,” I say, and Aisha says nothing.

  “I like big buttes and I cannot lie,” I mock-rap.

  Aisha groans. “Everything is a joke with you.”

  “Whoa,” I say. “Where did that come from?”

  “I’m serious. Why can’t you just not make a joke once in a while? Silence. It’s golden.”

  “So silence is a color now? When did this happen?”

  “Just — shut up, Carson. Shut up.”

  I stare out the side window at the blur of pine trees. I imagine each of those tree branches slapping me in the nose, my stupid, annoying nose.

  “You just … Why can’t you talk about what’s up?” she asks. “With your dad, I mean. Like say something real for once, and not hide behind some stupid joke.”

  “So you’re a psychologist now?”

  “It doesn’t take a psychologist,” she says.

  I close my eyes. Am I this bad now? Am I being psychoanalyzed by homeless chicks? I feel like the anger could just bubble out of my mouth, like the acid could ooze out and smoke could billow from my ears and I wouldn’t be able to stop until there was nothing left inside me anymore.

  “Yeah, you’re nothing like that,” I say finally. My voice doesn’t really sound like mine. “It’s not like the first time I met you, you said the tiger was at the zoo because his father kicked him out for being gay. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure that one out either, looking back. Thank God you don’t use humor as a shield.”

  I hear her inhale. But she just keeps driving, and we say nothing.

  “So now you’re not talking to me? Great. Real mature,” I say.

  She turns up the rap song that’s playing. Then she turns it up louder, and the thumping bass starts to rattle my brain. It’s one thing to be angry, but giving me hearing loss seems a little aggressive.

  Aisha turns down the music when it starts to bug her too, I guess. She mutters, “Fuck. You know what the worst thing about car fights is?”

  When I don’t reply, she says, “You can’t leave.”

  I feel something that is way too big for a Dodge Neon boiling in my bloodstream. I don’t need this shit. I don’t need my fucking crazy family, and my mom and her psycho-fucking-babble and my lame-ass dad and his dying and my one friend of the moment and her bullshit.

  Maybe my dad had it right all along. A glass of whiskey. Beats people.

  The miles slip by, and my anger washes over me in waves. I play the conversation over and over in my mind, and I think of other things to say, meaner things, smarter things. Aisha slaps a button and the music goes from soft to off. I steal a quick glance at her face and her eyebrows are arched high in much the same way as when she’s excited. The only way I can tell she’s angry from her face is the tightness of her lips.

  Then something inside me shifts, and I remember that when she’s not being a total B-word, she’s my best friend. In under a week, Aisha has become the best friend I’ve ever had, and maybe I wouldn’t say that to her, because it’s undeniably pathetic, but it’s also true.

  So I take out my phone and text her.

  im sorry

  I put my phone away so she won’t see me holding it when hers buzzes. She gets the buzz, pulls her phone out of her pocket, and glances down to read it.

  She starts to text back.

  “Texting while driving?” I ask. “Really? Why don’t you just steer us directly into a tree?”

  She gives me an annoyed look, but then she does something that surprises me. She slows and pulls over to the side of the two-lane highway.

  I’m sorry too, she writes.

  i didn’t mean to bug you

  and i didn’t mean to piss u off

  I was being a bitch.

  no comment. me too. a male version of a bitch

  Bastard.

  hey watch the name-calling

  Let’s be nice to each other. I’m sorry. Upset about Kayla today.

  you’re too good for her

  I guess.

  do u think it says something bad about us

  that we are texting our apologies?

  It’s not a great sign.

  i kinda love u, u know

  I know. Love you too kinda.

  We hit the road again. We’re quiet, but at least the tension is gone.

  “You text in full sentences, and you use punctuation and capitalization,” I say.

  “Does it take that much longer to hit shift?”

  “I think I’ll start doing that,” I say. “I mean, with all the many friends I text.”

  That makes her laugh. That. Not all the awesome ideas I came up with earlier, but the sad fact that I haven’t had a textual transmission in a week except what she’s sent me. And she must know it, because we’re together all the time.

  And then I realize: Her too. I’ve never seen her text either. I laugh back.

  “We are quite the popular duo,” I say, and she shrugs.

  “Maybe not, but hey. Today I’m on a road trip with a friend. That’s better than I was doing a week ago.”

  I don’t want to admit it, but yeah. So am I. “Ditto,” I say.

  I CHEER AS we pass the WELCOME TO THERMOPOLIS billboard, which alerts us to the fact that the world’s largest mineral hot spring is here. There’s a picture of two kids on a waterslide, and it says SWIM, SOAK, SLIDE, STAY.

  We follow Google’s directions to a deserted, treeless dirt road, and for a moment I think we’re lost. But then we come across a rickety green-and-white wooden sign swaying in the wind: FOUR PEAKS MOBILE HOME PARK.

  Aisha and I look at each other. “Here goes nothing,” she says.

  I’ve never been to a mobile home park before. The homes are marked with numbers, and we keep our eyes peeled for t
he Leffs’ place.

  What we find is a small, narrow trailer with a covered parking spot out front, a dilapidated, olive-colored Chevy under it. In the front yard, a squat old man in work boots is standing over a foldout table, painting a piece of pottery.

  We stop the car but keep the engine running. The man looks up from his painting and gives a half wave, clearly trying to figure out if he knows us. Aisha cuts the engine, and we both get out of the Neon.

  “Hi,” I say, taking the lead.

  He nods. “Can I help you?”

  He’s old, chubby, and has a silver mustache, with round, rosy cheeks. He looks like what the captain of the football team at my school would look like if he were melted down for a bunch of decades and then artificially inflated with air.

  “Are you Thomas Leff?”

  “That’s what my driver’s license says.”

  “We’re sorry to bug you. I just have some questions about my grandfather. Apparently he stayed with you a million years ago. Russ Smith?”

  The man’s face animates for the first time, and he approaches us on stubby fire-hydrant legs. “Get outta town,” he says. “Russ Smith. You’re his grandson? You don’t say.”

  “That’s me. I’m Carson Smith. This is my friend Aisha Stinson. Do you know him?”

  “Knew him, yeah. How’s he doin’?”

  “Okay. Well, not okay. Actually, I don’t know. Do you have a few minutes to talk to us? We’re kind of trying to figure out what happened to him.”

  He slaps me on the shoulder. “Any family of Russ Smith is certainly welcome at our place. You up for some lunch?” He motions toward his trailer.

  This does not seem like a great idea to me, but Aisha starts to nod. I excuse us and pull her away for a moment.

  “Might as well. We’re here,” she says to me.

  “I’m from New York City,” I say. “I don’t generally go into strangers’ trailers for lunch. Everyone in New York is a potential serial killer. I’m pretty sure that’s true out here too. I mean, he seems harmless, but really?”

  She shrugs. “I’m not afraid of him. Seems like a nice old dude.”

  “That’s how they get you!” I’m not sure I even mean this, but now that I’ve started it, I feel the need to follow through. “Isn’t there some ‘Don’t go in the attic’ thing?”