Burning (14 page)

Thursday morning, James left early to go up the street to say goodbye to his pal Shane. He and his family were on their way to Northern California, where some friends of theirs lived. It was as good a place as any to go, considering that neither of his parents had found work yet.

Every day that passed meant more cars pulling out of town for the last time. Everywhere I looked was another overloaded pickup truck, another closed-up house, another goodbye.

I felt bad about the way my talk with James had gone the night before. It seemed like nothing I’d said had come out right. I wanted to be a good brother to James. I’d lain awake for a long time, just listening to him breathing. If I was really honest with myself, a big chunk of what bothered me about James had nothing to do with
James
at all. It had to do with me.

It occurred to me that maybe I owed James an apology. For the things I’d said the night before, sure, but maybe for some other things, too. Things I
hadn’t
said but should have.
When I went into the kitchen Mom was just sitting at the empty table, staring out the front window. She had a cup in her hand; it was empty.

“Hey, Mom.” I tried my best to sound cheerful.

It took her a minute before she looked over at me. When she did, she kind of blinked her eyes as if she was bringing herself back from someplace far away. She smiled at me, but her whole face looked distracted.

“Good morning, Ben.”

I sat down next to her. When I did, she leaned across and kissed my forehead.

“You want me to get you some more coffee, Mom?”

She looked into her cup. “Look at that. It’s empty.” But she didn’t answer my question.

She was starting to worry me a little, actually. She wasn’t usually like this—sitting, for one thing. Unless she was working on a project, Mom was nearly always on her feet. “What’s up, Mom?”

“Your father’s out in the garage, screwing around with that old dirt bike again.”

I laughed. Dad had been struggling to get that piece of shit running for the past three years, off and on. Mostly off—whole months would go by without him so much as looking at it. “It’s too bad we couldn’t have just thrown it onto the fire last night along with the fort. One less thing to pack.”

Mom shook her head. “Your father seems determined to see that thing running before we move. I don’t understand why. But he’s been at it since five, and about half an hour
ago I actually heard the engine for a couple of minutes before it cut out.”

“No shit!”

“Why don’t you take your dad a cup of coffee, give him a hand.”

I shrugged. “Sure. Where are the cups?”

Mom looked around at the piles of half-packed boxes. Then she held out her cup to me. “Here,” she said. “Take mine.”

Pops was working at his bench, putting the pieces of the carburetor back together. The rest of the dirt bike looked pretty good. All the pieces, which for the last three years had been taken apart and reassembled about a dozen times, seemed to be in the right places. It was a junky old bike; the red leather seat was torn and layers of decals and touch-up paint made it look like a mechanical version of Frankenstein’s monster.

Over the last few years Pops had either replaced or repaired pretty much all the major systems and most of the minor ones—the engine, the transmission, the exhaust manifold, the brakes, the clutch, the gas tank, the suspension. Even though he’d gotten the bike for free from one of his buddies down at the mine, I’d guess he’d put close to a thousand dollars into it, along with dozens of hours of his time.

Part of the problem was that Pops knew next to nothing about motorcycles. When he’d gotten the bike I think his plan had been to give it to me when it was all fixed up, and
I’d been pretty excited about that three years ago, when I was fifteen.

Fast-forward to now, though, and I kind of hated the bike. It’d sat out there taunting me, always seemingly close to running but never complete. I’d given up on it ever working about nine months ago, when we’d gotten the news that the mine was closing and all of Pops’s extra energy had started going into looking for a new job. He hadn’t really touched the bike since.

I suppose I could have tried to work on the bike myself, but between school and running there never seemed to be time.

Now that it was too late to do me any good, Pops looked to be on the brink of getting the damned thing working at last.

“Hey, Ben, give me a hand with this.”

I put his coffee on the workbench and watched as he replaced a couple of rubber gaskets, and then I helped him lift the carburetor back into place on the bike.

He moved with a lot more assurance now when he worked on the bike than he used to; all those hours had finally amounted to some degree of confidence. He reconnected the fuel line to the carb. “I had it running pretty good earlier,” he said, “but the engine was bogging when I cracked the throttle, so I figured I’d just give the carburetor a cleaning, for good measure. It should be good to go.”

He wiped his hands on a red rag he had tucked into his back pocket. “Wanna take it for a spin?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Four days before we left town, a
hundred hours before I was going to get on a bus and leave the goddamn
state
, and the bike was finally finished.

Pops gave me one of his sideways grins and I could tell he knew what I was thinking. “Better late than never, right?”

I switched into jeans and laced up my shoes, then pulled on the dusty helmet I’d been waiting three years to wear.

While I was inside changing, Pops had rolled the dirt bike out of the garage to the driveway. He flicked the bike’s starter switch to RUN and flipped the fuel switch to ON. Then he gestured to the bike. “It’s all yours, Ben.”

I’d had some fun riding dirt bikes off and on over the years, mainly when we would visit Mom’s brother’s family out by Tahoe. They had a couple of acres and a bike I could tool around on, so I knew how to ride.

I straddled the bike and turned the choke on. Then I found the kick-start peg with my right foot, pushing it down as hard as I could.

It took a few tries, but finally the engine roared to life. It was loud, but it sounded smooth and strong. I looked up at Pops and we grinned at each other like a couple of idiots.

“Be careful,” he called after me as I pulled the bike into the street.

I rode around town for a few minutes, cruising up and down the streets I’d run so many times over the years. The bike seemed pretty stable; not perfect, the tread on the tires was kind of worn and they slipped to the side a little when I took corners, but considering that Pops had been the one putting it together, I was pretty impressed. I toyed with the idea of suggesting that he look for a job helping out at a bike
shop when they got to Reno. But realistically, there were probably a hundred younger guys hungry for work who knew more about bikes lined up for any job that might open up. What were my dad’s chances of finding a job anywhere?

I reached the end of town, where First Street widened into 447. Probably Pops wouldn’t like the idea of me taking it out onto the highway, and it wasn’t street legal, so if I got pulled over by a cop I’d be looking at a pretty hefty ticket. But the idea of seeing if I could get it up over fifty was a pretty strong draw—I’d always loved speed—so instead of turning down Freesia I pulled in the clutch lever and rolled the throttle forward, using the tip of my left shoe to lift the shift lever into third gear. Releasing the clutch, I rolled the throttle back to give the engine more gas.

The bike responded, surging forward strongly. Inside the helmet I grinned ear to ear. I leaned forward, closer to the handlebar.

I hadn’t really thought about which way I was heading on the highway. Well, shit, maybe that isn’t entirely true—I knew where the road headed.

And I felt nervous—not because of the speed of the bike, but because what if the whole thing wasn’t there anymore? What if all of it—the encampment, the tent, Lala herself—really had been some kind of complicated and beautiful mirage?

And then there it was—shabbier-looking than I remembered it, just up the road. Of course it had been real. I knew that. But I felt myself relaxing as the tent grew larger the closer I got. She was still there.

I could see why her family had chosen this place to camp. It wasn’t too far from the entrance to Burning Man, but it was far enough out of Gypsum that no one would bother them. And there was a nice flat pull-out where they’d parked the motor home, so they hadn’t had to drive it far off the asphalt. The tent was a little farther away, off to the side and on the dirt.

The sign was there, too, the plywood A-frame that read
FORTUNE-TELLING
on each side. I downshifted, pulling my bike to the side of the road, rolling to a stop, and cutting the engine.

It took a minute for the engine’s roar to fade away after I’d turned it off. After being surrounded by the bike’s noise and vibration, the desert’s stillness seemed even quieter than usual. The sky was this intense blue, and the air was crackling dry and so hot. I felt rivulets of sweat going down my back under my T.

The entrance to the tent parted and Lala ducked her head out. She was wearing a skirt like the one from the other day, but this one was red. Her dark hair was pulled back today and lay across her shoulder, across her breast, and down her side. As she emerged from the tent she tossed it behind her.

“Here for a reading?” she called, a polite smile on her lips. She didn’t come too close, staying back about a dozen steps.

“Hey,” I said, and realized I was still wearing my helmet. I flicked open the chin strap and pulled it off, pushing my sweaty hair back from my forehead. “Lala,” I said. “Hi.”

The smile she was wearing stiffened as she seemed to realize
who I was—that guy who’d asked her out. I felt like an idiot.

But I was already here, so I shoved my heel down on the kickstand to balance the bike and swung off it, putting my helmet on the bike’s torn red seat.

“Ben Stanley,” she said.

She remembered my name. Why did that make me so ridiculously happy?

“Yeah,” I said. “How are you doing?”

With relief, I watched as her expression shifted to an authentic smile. “How do you think I am doing? It is miserably hot and I am in the middle of the desert. I suffer like a dog.”

But she didn’t look like a dog; she looked great, like a cool drink that I was so thirsty for. I took a step forward. “It’s good to see you again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why
are
you here, Ben Stanley? Did you forget something when you were here last?”

For a second I toyed with the idea of saying, “Yeah … I forgot
this
 …,” and sweeping her into my arms for a big, dramatic kiss.

Instead I said, “Uh … not really … but I was hoping I could get you to reconsider my offer.”

This time it was Lala who stepped forward, just a little. She looked amused. “Your offer of a movie? Or a cup of coffee?”

“Of a date,” I said. “You don’t like movies, and you don’t drink coffee. I remember. But maybe dinner? I’ll bet you eat dinner.”

“I have been known to eat dinner,” she admitted. “But … still, I must decline. Though I thank you.”

The way she talked killed me. It was kind of formal, like she’d picked it up from an old book instead of from real conversation. Still, even though she was turning me down, I got the feeling she didn’t really want to. She looked, in those hard onyx eyes, like she wanted to say yes to me.

I’ve never been a real aggressive guy. I’ve always figured, if a chick isn’t into me, well, there are other girls. No reason to get all worked up. Some guys are really into the chase; they like girls who play hard to get, but when they finally catch them the thrill kind of wears off.

I guess I’ve always just been too busy for any of those games. And kind of shy, too, in a way. So I don’t know what came over me out there in the middle of the desert with Lala.

Maybe it was the heat.

But I couldn’t just quit and ride away. It seemed like too much to give up. So I tried again. “Don’t you feel it too, Lala?”

She tilted her head a little to the side. I would have paid a million bucks, if I’d had it, to know what she was thinking. To me, her face was a mystery—unreadable, beautiful, totally
other
.

“Ben,” she said, “I think it would be best if you did not visit me here again.”

It was a kick in the stomach. But she hadn’t said no—that she
didn’t
feel what I felt. So I hung on to that and
closed the distance between us, until my track shoes were up real close to her sandals.

I towered over her up close like that, and she seemed nervous, like she didn’t know whether to look up into my face or down at the ground. But she didn’t step back.

“You think it would be best if I didn’t visit you again,” I said. “But do you want me to leave?”

Now she looked up at me, those thick, dark lashes fanning up, revealing her bright dark eyes. “What one wants does not always matter.”

I could have stood there all day arguing just to draw out the pleasure of being so close to her. She smelled the way she had the other day—like citrus and cinnamon. I wondered if it was her hair or her skin that smelled so good, and I wanted to lower my face to her, to bury my nose in her hair and breathe her in, to run my face along her neck and smell there, too.

“What
you
want matters,” I said. “At least, it does to me.”

She seemed to consider this. At last she asked, “Why?”

I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

“It is because you find me beautiful and exotic,” she said. It didn’t sound like she was bragging; she didn’t even really seem happy about the idea that I thought she was pretty. She said it like she was disgusted.

But it wasn’t the whole truth. “Of course I think you’re pretty,” I said. “Who wouldn’t? But that’s not everything.” I struggled to put it in words, the draw she had on me. “It’s more than that. I want to know who you are. I want to hear
about you—you know, where you come from, what you like to do—stuff like that,” I finished lamely.