A Complicated Kindness (12 page)

sixteen

T
his evening I tried to explain to Travis how it was that he found me lying on the shoulder of Highway 23. It’s my chain, I said. It’s faulty. It happened to me frequently. One second you’re flying down the highway to America, the next you’ve got your Wrangler flare pant leg caught in the chain and you’re down, stuck pinned to the road staring up at the clouds and picking gravel out of your skin, waiting for someone to come along and rescue you.

Usually it was a farmer passing by. He’d get my pant leg out of the chain and throw my bike in the back and give me a ride to the border. Once I got to shift gears for a carny named Snake. Now! he’d say. It was fun. He made me wear one of his hats with the carnival logo on it so if someone saw me riding with him they’d think I was a co-worker and not report him. He told me he was on antibiotics because he’d gotten the clap from the cotton-candy girl. He told me that a kid like me could make twenty-five cents per rat at any fairgrounds if I knew how to swing a bat. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He told me he could not afford one more felony. I said man, tell me about it, although I was only ten and had never heard the word
felony
before. It sounded like a pretty girl’s name to me.

Travis put my bike into his dad’s truck and asked me why I didn’t tuck my pant leg into my sock. Somebody might see me, I said. I’d rather fall.

I made Travis promise me that he would never become the type of person who tucked his pant leg into his sock while riding a bike and he said I was superficial but he knew what I meant. He said he’d take off his pants and ride around in his underwear first.

Where would you put your pants, I asked. You’re not gonna have a carrier!

What’s wrong with a carrier, he asked and I said no, no carriers. Carriers are for little kids.

Well, then he said he’d get a clip for his pant leg and I said no, no clips, and he said my bike etiquette was extreme. I felt like an idiot for feeling good about knowing how to look on a bike. I had to get my driver’s licence soon.

He asked me if I felt weird lying beside the road under my bike. Now that you mention it, I said. He drove us to a field and we smoked a joint and climbed into the back of the truck where we could stretch out and stare at the sky. Just another hard surface to lie on while contemplating infinity.

Let’s talk more about bikes, I said. We talked about when we were kids and dressed up our bikes for the July 1 parade, which included a contest.

You don’t want to win though, I said. He agreed. (In this town, if you win something you’re dead.) Hey, we actually agreed on one thing, I said.

He asked me if I was warm.

Yes and no, I said. And I’m not on the Pill yet, I told him, which he said was cool but when would I be. Maybe two weeks, I said.

Should we take off our clothes anyway, he asked. I guess we could, I said. We lay in the open box of the truck like two
dying fish on the bottom of a small boat. He told me I was cute in the moonlight. I wished he’d said beautiful.
Cute
made me feel like a garden gnome.

He said we should go to Europe together and I could learn how to bake bread and he’d sell his writing and we’d have this little place up hundreds of stairs in a building in Paris with a courtyard and we’d ride bikes everywhere and play in fountains and make love continuously. I said: I do ride my bike everywhere. No, he said, but in Paris, with a big carrier that could hold baguettes and wine and fresh flowers. I said: Baguettes? Then why would I have to learn how to bake bread? And hey, I said, what did I just say about carriers?

Nomi, it’s romantic, he said.

Well, but how would we get to Paris? I asked.

We’d save money from our jobs, he said.

What jobs? I asked.

Nomi, you have…

No, too many variables, I said. What’s that bright light headed straight for us? I asked. It could have been a seeder. It was some kind of giant farming implement bearing rapidly down upon us like the Apocalypse.

What the fuck is that, asked Travis.

It’s like we’re in
Jaws,
I said. He told me to roll myself up in the shag carpet in the back and then he jumped out and ran around to the cab and started it and took off. The field was really bumpy and I felt my bike fall on top of me again, although this time I was rolled up in a carpet so it didn’t hurt as much.

He drove to The Golden Comb’s trailer out on Kokomo Road and parked behind the purple gas tank and that’s where I emerged from the carpet like a cute but not beautiful butterfly and put my clothes back on. I had orange wormy pieces of rug in my hair. He pulled them out one by one. He was so gentle and sweet and he sang an Eric Clapton song in this weirdly
satirical operatic voice but underneath he seemed to mean it so I put my hands on his waist and up under his shirt and we waltzed around, badly, and then we fell.

We sat in the grass and sang stupid nursery songs that had perverted hand movements. We tried to whistle “Crying” by Roy Orbison straight through without laughing. We loved Roy Orbison. Let’s name our baby Roy Orbison, said Travis.

Do we have a baby? I asked.

We will someday, he said.

Hmmm, Roy Orbison, I said. What if it’s a girl?

Nova, he said.

Nova? That’s a car.

No, it’s a star, he told me.

I don’t want to have kids named Nova and Roy Orbison, I told him. I liked the name Miep. Miep was the woman who had saved the letters of Anne Frank and had also done kind and dangerously heroic things for her. A real star.

Anyway, said Travis. We did this thing where I lie on my back in the grass and he stands at my feet really rigidly with his arms straight out like he’s on a cross and then he falls forward and I scream quietly and he puts his hands down at the last second, mere inches away from crushing my body. After that we just sat around sniffing purple gas for a while, lighting matches and flicking them off into the dark, and I asked him if he wanted to go halfers with me on
Wish You Were Here.
He said what if we break up which made me kind of sulk a bit and made him act tough like he’d have four thousand girlfriends in his life and I stopped talking except to answer his questions.

I hated the way I always wrecked beautiful moments. We saw The Golden Comb open his trailer door and spit and then slam the door shut again. Spitting is how people in this town both mourn and celebrate. It’s the standard response to
everything that occurs. The screen on the door was covered with moths. Travis and I stared at it longingly. Do you have any money, he asked me. I didn’t.

What about the carpet, I asked. We could trade it for dope and tell your dad it fell out the back of the truck somewhere and we hadn’t noticed and that when we retraced our route we couldn’t find it.

Travis told me that when I was dying to get high was when I was the most together and brilliant.

Well, I said, it’s the dying part that makes me feel alive.

I asked him if we were waiting for something and then he got up and hauled the rolled-up carpet out of the back of the truck and we each took an end and walked over to The Comb’s trailer and banged on the door.

Oh my God, said Travis, they’re listening to Yes.

The Comb opened the door and looked at us. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and he looked pissed off. No, he said, I don’t want an orange carpet, but thanks anyway. He was just about to slam the door but Travis put his foot in the way, movie-style, and said it was a shag carpet with triple-thick inlay. The Comb came outside and rolled the carpet out in the dirt and lay down on it for a minute. We stood there staring down at him. He ran his fingers through the shag.

Well? I asked. Yes or no?

He got up and told Travis to roll it back up and bring it into the house. I stayed outside and leaned against the ripply aluminum outside of his trailer and said thanks, man, you’re a lifesaver. The Comb smiled and put his hand on my arm and then leaned over and kissed me on my fuckin’ lips and said he’d seen me getting dressed by the purple gas tank.

Hmm, bionic eyes, I said. I shrugged. He tried to kiss me again and I asked him if we were doing the thing or not and he said I didn’t really have much of a choice, did I, referring to the
fact that there was nowhere else that we could go, and I said no, not much of one, but that Travis would be out very soon and shit, we had given him a carpet, so…then Eldon yelled something from inside about not being able to find the scales and The Comb said he’d be right there and Travis came back out and The Comb went in and I lit up a smoke and tried to act intensely nonchalant while we waited for The Comb to come back out again.

I hate that motherfucker, Travis whispered.

What does that have to do with anything, though, I asked him. On the way home Travis told me that when he was a boy he’d asked his mom whom she loved more, God or Dad. God or Dad! he said. God or Dad! She wouldn’t answer, just hummed. Then she finally said God already! and Travis was weirded out by that but he’d said: Thaaaat’s right. For some reason I laughed hysterically while he was telling me about it and afterwards I felt like an idiot.

We drove past my high school and the junior high and the track and the Sunset Diner and the cemetery and past a few houses and up onto my driveway which made a nice cracking sound that bothered Travis because he thought his tires were being punctured.

I was relieved to see my dad not sitting in his yellow lawn chair. We sat in the truck for a while listening to an American radio station.

Music really is the glue of our relationship, isn’t it? I said. Travis said yeah, shhhh, I’m listening to this song.

I mean really, I said. It’s brought us together, right? Yeah, it has, said Travis. He turned up the radio a bit.

Music’s probably altered our DNA so you and I are like twins now. You know? I said. I
know,
said Travis. We’ll feel the same thing at the same time even if we are miles apart, I said.

Can you be quiet for a minute, please? said Travis.

I shut up after that, thinking about the words
salve
and
salvation.
I got out of the truck without kissing Travis and said ciao for the first and last time in my life.

That night it rained softly. I could hear it through my screen. And then I felt it on my face, and it was warm, but it wasn’t rain.

In the morning I watched dust enter my room through a crack in my blind. No, I heard my sister saying, that dust has always been there. It’s the sunlight that illuminates it. I checked myself for bite marks. I wondered what it meant to bite yourself in your sleep. Would I soon begin to tear out clumps of hair? Would I be able to kill myself eventually without realizing it?

My dad and I used to dust with Lemon Pledge but when it ran out we stopped, although we talked about it a couple of times. Some pledge, my dad had said and I gave him credit for being funny intentionally.

Ray had already left for school. He had put his coffee cup on the counter, on top of the plate he’d used for his toast. I put them into the dishwasher and then I looked into the fridge to see if there was anything to make for supper. There was a knock on the door and I went over and opened it and the neighbour girl was standing there wearing her bathing suit and rubber boots.

Hello, I said, I have to go to school.

Can you play charades with me? she asked.

I said no, I didn’t have time, but she looked so sad and forlorn and kept saying please over and over so I said fine, quickly. I stepped outside and sat on the front step and she sat down in the grass.

Start, I said, hurry up. I’ll guess.

She didn’t move.

Are you doing it? I asked. She nodded.

Are you a…weird little kid? She shook her head.

Hmmmm, I said. Hang on. I went into the house and got my smokes and sat back down on the step and lit one up and said are you a rock? She shook her head. She was just sitting there in a vaguely square shape. God, I said. I blew smoke rings at her. Can’t you do some kind of action? She shook her head and started to giggle. Are you a book? I asked. She shook her head again. A fridge? She shook her head. Okay, forget it, I don’t know and I have to go to school now, I said. I threw my butt into the grass and went into the house and slammed the door.

Three seconds later she knocked again and I opened it and she told me she had been a Shreddie. Okay, I said, I’ll pour some milk over you and eat you, and she screamed and ran away. I thought probably I would not be a very good mother to Roy Orbison and Nova.

On the way to school I stopped to watch a group of twelve-or thirteen-year-old boys throw rocks into a new abattoir being built next to the junior high school on the other side of the highway. There was a twenty-foot wall of concrete cinder blocks around it and every day it got higher and higher, but the men were working from the inside so you couldn’t actually see them. I heard a loud clank like a rock had hit somebody’s hard hat and then an angry scream and five seconds later a bunch of the workers came flying out of an opening in the side and were throwing rocks back at us. Most of the kids had taken off but one of them got hit in the back and fell shrieking to the ground.

I went over to him and put my hand on his back and asked him if he was okay but he didn’t say anything because he was gasping for air.

Three or four of the construction workers came running up to us and they pulled him into a sitting position and said
c’mon buddy, breathe. There were many occasions in this town where people encouraged others to breathe, it seemed. C’mon, c’mon, said one guy with no shirt. He was moving his hands around the boy’s chest, trying to get the air circulating inside him. There we go, he said. There we go.

The boy began to cough and cry. I picked his ball cap off the ground and put it on his head.

Do you know this guy, asked the construction worker. I shrugged. I know of him, I said. We all knew of each other.

I’ll take him to school, I said.

Hey kid, said the man, see what happens when you throw rocks? The kid nodded. Gonna do it again? asked the man. The kid nodded.