Evidence of Things Not Seen (14 page)

Jake can’t help but laugh. “Wait. You guys don’t know how to jerk off?”

Everyone in the car but Alvin laughs. Jake sees his face flush red. “Fuck you. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking about, you know, how you do it with the watermelon.”

“Oh, you want my recipe for watermelon delight? That might cost you more than twenty bucks.”

“You’re fucking with me. You’ve never jerked off in watermelon or a peach or a potato.”

“A peach, yes. Once the pit is removed. Very satisfying. A potato, no, unless it is cooked, mashed, and cooled. Also quite delightful.” Jake is having too much fun to stop. He can see Nando in the back trying not to laugh. Unfortunately, Alvin is not laughing. Jake had heard stories about his old man’s temper. And his drinking. He backed off. “Seriously, Alvin, why do you need four watermelons?”

“We’re going down to the arroyo behind Nando’s house and use ’em for target practice.”

“Wouldn’t cans be cheaper?”

“Yeah, but they jump around too much. You’re always chasing ’em down. Watermelons are cool cuz you can start big and then keep shooting smaller and smaller pieces.”

“So start with one for five dollars. If you still want more at the end of the day, come back and I’ll sell you two for five.”

“Deal.” Alvin pops out of the Trans Am and walks around to the back of Jake’s pickup.

“Here. Let me get you one that might be a little green.” Jake digs out a melon from the front corner of the bed.

Alvin hands Jake five dollars and hefts the melon onto his shoulder. “Hey, man, can I ask you something?”

Jake nods.

“Are you going to college?”

“I haven’t decided. Why?”

“I’m gonna be a junior next year and that’s when they start talking to us about college. My old man says school’s a waste of time. But I’m not so sure. You know I built that car?”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, I rebuilt that kid Tommy’s bike.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that.” Jake is impressed.

“Yeah. So I’m wondering if I need to go to college. Or even finish high school. Like, what can I learn there if I already know how to make a living?” Alvin turns to walk back to his car. “But then, I was talking to that kid Tommy and he knew some really wild shit, so it made me think that, you know, maybe I should think about it. Like maybe I could be more than a car mechanic. I don’t know. It’s probably a stupid question. I thought since you graduated that maybe you might be able to tell me if it was worth it.”

Jake leans on the bed of the pickup. What should he tell Alvin? He doesn’t want to bullshit him but he also doesn’t have a very good answer. “Hey, man, I don’t know. I mean, I wish I could tell you that it all made perfect sense and that high school made a difference. But I can’t. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I think I’ll figure it out. Some days, it’s about getting up and doing the next thing, right?”

“Yeah, I guess I wish it was more certain.” Alvin opens the car door.

“Me too. But hey, there’s always watermelon delight.”

“Fuck, yeah. I’ll get back to you on that one.”

Alvin starts the Trans Am with an unnecessary roar. Jake doesn’t like those muscle cars but he’s impressed that Alvin built this one. He’d never said two words to this kid in high school. True, Alvin is two grades behind him, but still, who knew that he could build cars? Not only that, even with a pretty awesome skill, he feels the same purposelessness that Jake feels. Maybe it’s okay, not knowing what the next step is. Maybe it’s normal.

Jake watches the Trans Am pull away. Nando is looking at him. Jake sees him wave a little. Maybe he feels more comfortable acknowledging that he knows Jake. Or maybe Jake seems cooler after joking around with them about watermelons. He shakes his head. That kind of thinking drives Jake nuts. That was high school. He is done with overthinking shit like that. Maybe he’s overthinking his future. Maybe he should just make a choice and see what happens.

He walks over to the cab of the pickup. Just as he is about to sit down, he hears another car turn in. It’s a light green minivan. The driver, a woman, pulls in at the opposite end of the pull-out and hops out. Right behind her, a little boy scrambles out of the van. He looks to be June-Bug’s age, maybe five or six.

“I gotta go, Mom. Now.”

“Okay, honey, let’s go behind the bush.”

“I wanna go by myself.”

“Travis…”

“Mom…”

Jake points to a break in the cedars near the two logs that lay askew along the edge of the pull-out. “Private restroom right behind those cedars.”

Travis looks at Jake. “See, Mom?” He runs off.

The mother sighs.

Jake knows that exhale of breath from his own mother. “Don’t worry. There’s no cliff back there.”

She smiles at Jake. “What about poison ivy?”

“Not sure about that.”

The mother looks after her little boy. She takes one step and stops. “Oh well, if he gets it, he gets it.”

“He’ll never get it again.”

The mother laughs. “That’s for sure.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a wallet. “How much for a melon?”

“Five dollars.”

“Could you pick it out for me? I always seem to get them overripe or too green.”

“Sure. No problem.”

Jake slaps and thumps a few of the melons. He tends to pick the ones that have the most hollow thunk sound. Problem is they could be too green. He pulls one from the pile. “This one might be all right.”

“Great. Would you put it in the back of the van?” She turns to the bushes. “Travis, are you okay?”

“I’m peeing on ants, Mom. It’s so cool.”

Jake walks around to the back of the van and opens the door. Just as he sets the melon down, a head pops over the back seat. A girl.

Jake jumps a little. “Oh sorry, I didn’t know there was anyone else in here.”

The girl stares at him. Jake doesn’t think she is in high school yet. She looks a little too young, too pudgy, but she has eye makeup glopped on and is sporting a “Who do you think you are?” look on her face. Jake had barged into that expression dozens of times in high school. Girls have a unique way of sizing you up and dismissing you in a split second.

Instead of looking away like he did in high school, he braces the watermelon in the back of the van and looks at her. “Let me guess. You’re going into high school next year.”

She blushes. “How’d you know?”

“A talent.” Jake doesn’t say the talent comes from years of crushing on girls from afar, trying to find out everything about them so he could ask them out, only to be shot down because they weren’t interested in him. Maybe if he had walked up and asked them out right away, he would have had better success. Or it might not have hurt so much when they said no.

The girl hangs her head over the back of the seat watching him, kind of like a little kid would. Except she isn’t. Or she’s trying not to be.

“Did you go to Fred Johnson High? I mean, Fred High?”

“Just graduated.”

“Oh wow. Did you like it?”

Jake knows that his street cred had gone up by telling her he’d graduated. Maybe that’s why it seems like everyone, well, two people, are asking his advice today. Maybe he should try to tell her something important. Or wise. Something that might make high school easier. Or more fun.

“It was okay.” Jake rolls his eyes inwardly. Oh that’s brilliant. “I mean, there are good and bad days like any school.” Man, he is sounding stupider and stupider. He smiles a little at the girl. She doesn’t smile back. She looks like she is trying to figure out if he is cool or if he is a loser selling melons on the side of the road. He really wants to say something that will make high school better for her. “I mean, the worst part of high school is always trying to act way cooler or more together than you feel.” Jake slaps the melon. “Just be the melon if you’re the melon. Don’t try to be a peach or a tomato. If you’re a melon, be the best darn melon you can be. That’s this loser’s advice about high school.” He smiles at her. Her face is blank. Jake closes the back door of the van. Well, at the very least, she’ll always remember him when she’s eating a melon.

The mother is standing near the cedar break under a scrawny branch of a mesquite tree. The sunlight through the leaves speckles her arms. “Travis, honey. Are you about done?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I’m watching the ants swim in the river I made.”

“Travis, let’s go.”

Jake slides his pocketknife out, flips it open, and, cuts a big circular slice off the cut melon. “Hey, Travis, got a slice of melon for you.”

“Really?” Travis scurries through the cedars. “I love watermelon.”

Jake smiles. That kid makes him think of his little sisters. It’s so simple for them. They run around doing little-kid stuff. They think of something, they do it. They don’t question if they should or shouldn’t.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” The mother reaches into her purse. “Let me pay you.”

“I don’t charge for slices.” Jake breaks the slice in half and gives one piece to Travis. “Here you go.” Jake hands her the other slice. “I have to cut one open anyway.”

“That’s awfully nice of you. All right, Travis, let’s go. No seed spitting in the car.”

“Aww, Mom.”

“Especially not at your sister.”

“Aww, Mom.”

“Travis…”

“Okay…”

Jake watches the boy climb in the van and the mother shut the door behind him. He can remember being that small, with his feet sticking straight out from the seat, not touching the floor or the seat in front of him. He can remember not being able to see a darn thing. Not out the window in front or right next to him. He’d watch the sky go by. Sometimes he’d count telephone poles. But that game always made him fall asleep.

As the van turns around and accelerates out of the pull-out, Jake raises his hand to wave good-bye. When he realizes the mom isn’t looking at him and Travis can’t see out the window, Jake starts to put his arm down, feeling stupid. Except the girl
is
staring at him. The watermelon is in her hand. Jake waves and smiles. Maybe she’s thinking about being the melon.

Jake walks over to the truck and leans onto the hood under the shade. This next step isn’t such a big deal. It’s just a step. It gets so built up. Life after high school. College. Job. Career. Lasting relationship. Maybe that girl in the van is thinking the same thing about life after middle school, that high school is this really big deal. It’s not. It’s school. It’s hanging out. It’s finding your spot with people you like. It’s getting through awkward times.

Maybe Jake is the one who makes everything more momentous than it needs to be. Like the way he waited too long to ask Kimmie Jo to the prom. He kept second-guessing the way she looked at him. By the time he figured out she might want to go, he heard she was already going with some other kid in her class. It wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t have a crush on her. But she was cute. And talkative. Jake liked girls who could hold up their end of the conversation. But he blew it by hesitating. Like not going after Tommy right away.

Jake walks to the other side of the pull-out. What if he is still driving out here in fifty years with watermelons in the back of his truck? Jake imagines his waist thickened like his father’s. He can almost see his tan turning into those liver-colored splotches that stretch up and down his dad’s arms. He can feel his father’s hunched-over gait in his own muscles from years of walking in the fields, bending over, looking at the plants. Jesus, what a creepy picture. What if he never feels that little-kid excitement about wanting something ever again? What if he does and he blows it by hesitating?

At the opposite end of the pull-out is a decent-sized boulder, tucked under a mesquite tree. Jake sits down and looks at his truck. Everything is right in front of Jake but he can’t feel the want of going toward something. How do you get that feeling of wanting something? And going after it. Maybe if he goes to college, the want will happen.

“Shit.” His voice interrupts the silence of the pull-out. Jake wishes he could stop his stupid wonderings about his life. He closes his eyes and feels the burn of tears inside his eyelids. The sun is going to move across the sky like it always does. The next crop will grow, then the harvest, then the planting. Maybe it doesn’t matter if he never feels the want of going after something.

He watches the truck and the watermelons. In his mind’s eye, he can see himself sitting in the cab with his legs hooked over the door hinge. He can also see himself sitting on the rock watching his truck. In that one moment, he is both Jakes. One of them wanting to wait and see. The other wanting to go for it. He feels torn between the two.

Just then, a light blue pickup sails into the pull-out, not slowing for the ruts and bouncing right out of them. It skids to a stop next to Jake’s truck. It looks like a miniature version of the same truck. The two together make Jake think of that game in his sisters’
Highlights
magazine
,
the one where they circle the differences in two side-by-side pictures. Other than size, these two trucks look identical. Yep, even the taillights—red, white, red—are stacked up the same way.

The driver’s door opens and a girl steps out. Her hair is clipped up on top of her head and sunglasses shade her eyes. She is wearing a Fred High T-shirt, jean shorts, and boots.

Jake squints. He knows her. Genie McAllister. She graduated a year ahead of him. He remembered the one time he spoke to her. It was her senior year. She was walking down the hall. He was coming out of a classroom, late. He bashed into her and knocked all the books she was carrying onto the floor. He was so apologetic. He kept dropping everything he picked up. She smiled at him and said, “It’s all right.”

That was when Jake noticed her cowboy boots and the curve of her legs under her jeans. She was all curves. From the waves in her auburn hair to the sweater that hugged her waist. She was tall. They were standing eye to eye. He said “I’m sorry” one more time and she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay. Really. No harm, no foul.” Then she walked away.

Jake watched her walk down the hall. From that moment until she graduated, Jake kept track of Genie McAllister. He knew when she had a class on the science hallway. Or math. Or English. He knew which period lunch she had. He kept her in his peripheral vision. How had he never noticed her before? He knew the McAllister family. He knew they had a daughter named Genie. But it’s like he’d never seen her before.