Munich Airport (21 page)

I get everything in a big bag and walk out. I don't immediately see a shoe store. The nausea and fatigue I've felt since leaving my father in the bathroom becomes a sudden and unbearable light-headedness. My legs become almost too heavy to move. I am numb. I find a chair—there is finally some emptiness in the airport. I sit down and put the bag between my legs and think that I must take my phone out to text Trish my whereabouts. But I cannot pick up my phone. The exhaustion is like nothing I've experienced. I have a moment of dream thought, a dream I'm conscious of having. My father and I are digging with shovels. The ground is frozen. Then I feel someone poking my shoulder and it's Trish. I open my eyes and realize my head is all the way back, without any support. I nearly give myself whiplash trying to lift my head. I sit up and cough. I try to speak but my throat is dry. Trish asks, anxiously, if we should go. I don't want to admit that I cannot move. I try to speak but I can't make any sense. I make the kind of noises one makes with a jaw full of novocaine. I shake my head. I clear my throat a few times and I can speak again. I say, Just give me one minute. She sits down beside me and I lean forward. I put my elbows on my knees and my eyes on the cups of my palms. Then I scratch my head for a while. I wiggle my toes and fingers.

I realize she has a large bag, even bigger than the bag I have. I say, Did you get my dad cowboy boots or something? She opens the bag and inside are three boxes. She says, I just didn't want to get him the wrong size. I didn't want to think of him walking across the airport in Atlanta with shoes that made his feet hurt. She opens one of the boxes. They are soft-leather penny loafers. My dad wears penny loafers, she says, he swears there is nothing more comfortable.

I look down into the bag and see two other boxes.

I got them in three sizes, she says.

That is pretty thoughtful of you, I say.

Let's go, she says.

I must have watched my father walk around a lot in penny loafers, sockless, watering the grass, gardening, waterproofing the deck, wandering through the maze of our house, washing the car, getting the paper or checking the mailbox, going to the grocery store, grilling steaks, standing on sidelines while I or Miriam played sports. I remember my father falling from a tree he was cutting. He'd been swarmed by bees. He screamed at us all to get inside and somehow picked himself up after the fall and ran around trying to wave the bees away from his face until he finally jumped the fence into the backyard and dove into the pool. I remember my mother swimming in the pool, drinking iced tea, or, if her friends were over, drinking gin and tonics, and either my father was there or he was absent—but the memory is curiously not of my mother but of where my father might have stood or not stood. One day, when a lot of friends were over, my mother broke her leg while running around the pool. The bone came clear out of her skin. My father was in California, so the neighbors gathered around her and waited for the ambulance to come. When my mother came back from the hospital, she wore a cast from her toes to her hips, and a big gurney came with her, which was adjustable, so she could raise her legs or her back. She was in that gurney for a month, and in the cast for longer. My grandmother did all the cooking. Miriam and I did the housework. My grandmother, when she drove us around the quiet streets of our neighborhood, let Miriam and me stand on top of the car and pretend to be surfing. Once, Miriam fell and broke her arm. Our grandmother was terrified and thought she would end up in jail. She was also terrified of how my father would respond. He was in California and he wouldn't be home for weeks, so my mother decided not to tell him. We all decided, together, that my father would never forgive such recklessness. Even if my mother had tried to take the blame, as she first decided she would do, we all knew my father would know she was lying, and then he would not forgive her deceit. About six months later it came out—it was always going to, I guess—when my father was home for the summer, and he laughed and laughed at our decision to keep it from him—had he inspired such fear in all of us? And we all thought we had escaped retribution until, later, my father quietly took our grandmother away for a talk, and she was—though it sounds slightly overtheatrical to say it—never the same with us again. And I do, now, remember beating up some kids over Miriam. I was a big kid. Miriam was quiet. I remember once hearing that two boys had taken Miriam to the woods. I ran after them. I found them trying to lock her in a shed, or some kind of abandoned house, in the middle of the woods. The woods I speak of—dense pine forests near the Gulf—are dark and endless, they are useless for timber, they are overgrown, they are full of snakes, they are not places you go to for nature and reflection. Everywhere, slim pine trunks rise up to the high green needles that darken the sunlight. There is just enough room to walk between these trees, and at dusk, the shadows that move through them as you walk seem like bodies darting from tree trunk to tree trunk. The ground is nothing but fallen needles, reddened, dry on the top, wet and compacted down below. If you happen to come across a little trail, or a dirt track made of two parallel ruts—made by tires—it usually leads to a natural break in the woods, a pond—dried or not—a clearing, a creek bed, and so on, and generally you find a structure there, a shed or a house that nobody lives in. Miriam was nine or ten, I guess, when she was dragged out there by two boys. It was something that was happening in our town. Boys my age were taking girls Miriam's age out to these places and locking them in these sheds or threatening to lock them in. It was like a game. It's hard to believe, now, that anybody would do such a thing, even the redneck boys in our town. Some of the girls were lucky—they weren't locked inside. Others, like Miriam, weren't as lucky. But I think that maybe none of the girls was as scared as Miriam. I remember I found out about what was happening to Miriam from some girls who were laughing about it, and who claimed that they had been taken, it was okay. But Miriam wasn't like these people. So I ran into the woods. I knew the woods very well, and I knew where the boys would take her. I could hear her crying out from a long way off. I couldn't run fast because of the trees, I couldn't run in a straight line. I was also slowed by the ground, because it was, in places, so soft that my feet sank, and the needles were up to my knees. I finally got there. One boy ran off but I grabbed the other one. I let Miriam out. She couldn't breathe. I have still never seen, in my life, a face as terrified as her face. She thought she was covered in spiders, I never had the chance to check. She ran away. She didn't go straight home. She just walked the streets for hours—I had to get on my bike and go find her. I beat the kid up. I didn't want to hurt him so much that he'd go looking for revenge, come back and take that revenge out on Miriam. But I had to do something. I had to teach him a lesson. Now that I am here in this airport I think I probably should have killed him. What would have happened if I hadn't come? How long would they have kept her in there? Another minute? An hour? And what might they have done to her when they released her, when they—these two stupid, violent boys—realized they had the power to so thoroughly torment and dominate somebody? A few days after that, I went into the woods by myself, I walked the path those boys would have led Miriam. I went slowly. I looked up at the canopy above. I tried to think of everything as Miriam had thought of it—of how different the light in the treetops might have seemed to her, of how strange her own senses might have seemed to her—I tried to emulate her panic in my senses, to smell and hear nothing, to feel nothing, while all her energies were channeled into the strength to fight or escape, which was not enough strength. They had opened the door somehow and pushed her in, and when I arrived they were holding the door and laughing. That first boy saw me and ran. The second looked at me and his look said, Well, you found us, no harm done, though. So I gave him a bloody nose and I choked him and I kicked him in the head and ribs. When I went back, I saw that nobody had come to repair the lock on the door, so I opened it. I was sick with fear. I couldn't see much. There wasn't any furniture. There was some wood, a lot of cut logs. There weren't any windows. The shed was like every structure you find in places like that—a cheap wooden frame held together by screws, brackets, and sometimes nails, covered with hand-cut, possibly secondhand, siding. The air inside was hot and stale. I went in and turned around and looked out at what Miriam would have seen last, before the door closed, except for the faces of the two boys trying to close the door on her, their eyes and fingers. Then I closed the door on myself and stood in the darkness for as long as possible. I might have lasted thirty seconds or a minute, but I knew I could escape whenever I wanted, I simply had to push the door open. But when I did push, the bottom edge of the door of the shed got slightly stuck in the earth, just a little—but it was enough to fill my thoughts with dread—and instead of lifting the door to make it open easier, I lunged at the door, shoulder first, with all my might, and tumbled out into the woods again. I found two big spiders on me. One on my shirt and one on my jeans. I figured I was covered by hundreds, so I undressed, as fast as I could, throwing my clothes on the little dirt road that led from the shed back to whatever country road you came to a mile or so later and stomped on my clothes and whipped them in the air. I rubbed my head and danced on the little dirt road. Then I went home.

I say, I'll go back to my dad and give him the clothes. Would you mind getting him something to eat? Something light.

Trish agrees and we separate. When I get to the bathroom, I find a man—a janitor—talking aloud to nobody about the mess he's had to clean up. He's angry. Germans talk to themselves more than any other people I've ever observed. I think they must feel really helpless. I knock on my father's stall door and he lets me in. The janitor gives me a threatening look. I stare right at him and say, in English, I swear to God I will make you regret that threatening look. He defiantly sticks out his fat neck. I close the door and my father says, Who the hell is that man outside and what has he been talking about? He is sitting quietly on the commode, wrapped up in his shirt and sweater. Where's Trish? he asks. I say, Gone to get you something light to eat. Ah, he says. Can you feel your arms and legs now? I ask. I think so, he says. Can you get this stuff on or do you need my help? I ask. I'm sure I can do it myself, he says. But before I can walk out the stall door I see that he cannot even lift himself up, he cannot stand. We look at each other. I've got to make this flight, he says. You'll make it, I say. I kneel down and take the socks and boxers out of the bag. I put his socks on first. He can lift his feet, he can point them. They go halfway up his calves. Nice socks, he says, nice and thick. I've got the same ones, I say. Next are the boxers. I put his feet through them. I pull them up around his knees. Then I say, Grab hold of my neck, can you hold on? He puts his arms around my neck, clasps his hands together and says, I think so. One, two,
three
, I say. I lift, and his thighs and buttocks come off the commode, almost like adhesive tape, but his grasp holds, and I slip the boxers up to his waist. Next I put his T-shirt on. Then his shirt. Then his jeans. The jeans take a lot of effort. I have to get behind and under him to lift him. He has to steady himself by putting his hands on the walls, and I pull his jeans up. They are way too big around the waist. They fall right down. I take out the shoes Trish has bought. I open the stall door so I can kneel down. I say, Trish got three different sizes, hopefully one of them fits. He looks at me quizzically. Did she really? he asks. She really did, I say. He starts to cry a little bit. I put the first pair on and he seems to think they fit fine. Then I put the hooded sweatshirt on him. We walk out together. He puts one arm around me. I hold the hand of that arm, and I also hold the loose waist, so his jeans won't fall down.

Trish is waiting outside for us—she's got him a sandwich—and we all go together down the steps to the seats where we were before. The act of walking with me seems to give my father strength, or reminds his muscles how to work, and he makes the last few steps all on his own, though I have to pull his pants up. He sits. His arms move fine. He's steady once again.

I'm going to get you a belt, I say.

And then we better start moving to the gate, says Trish.

I look at the time to calculate how long we have been here—in this airport—already. My thoughts go back to the shuttle-bus driver, the man dreaming of his wife. I won't be long, I say, I'll be ten minutes, twenty at the most.

My father's father died in the Ardennes Offensive—the Battle of the Bulge—either in Malmedy or St. Vith, and after seeing Mainz and driving on into Belgium, he decided to visit both places. We had come down into the Ardennes from Koblenz, after a very late night. That morning we'd had a huge breakfast in our hotel. It was a continental breakfast, but we were the only two people in the restaurant, and the owner was sitting with us, talking about the history of Koblenz, so we ordered some sausages and bacon, some fried potatoes, and a lot of ketchup. And we needed some beer for the hangover. And the owner decided we all needed some schnapps. We asked for recommendations—points of interest in the area. He said there was nothing more interesting than Koblenz. It was a funny thing. All the people we met along the Rhine kept telling us that the only town worth visiting along the Rhine was their own. We asked, for instance, a guest-house owner in Kaub where we should go next, and he said, Kaub is the most interesting, most beautiful, and most historically rich place along the Upper Middle Rhine. The people we met and drank with had said the same thing in Walluf, in Eltville, in Kiedrich, in Bingen, in Sankt Goar. In actual fact, all these towns and villages were beautiful, and the Rhine was beautiful. We—or I—climbed the steps at Lorelei, and looked out across the famous bend in the river, and the dazzling blondness of the day, the mountainous green valley, the blue skies, and I saw the centuries turn back. I saw the migrating German tribes arriving from the Bavarian gap. Here was where they naturally landed, guided by the mountains and the northern borders of the Roman Empire. They simply had nowhere else to go. They would all gather and live here and overcrowd, here at the Rhine. The next day I could barely walk, because my calves were so sore. The steps took almost thirty minutes to climb. I had run for the first five minutes, and by the time I reached the top I was nearly crawling. I met my father at the Lorelei lookout café—he had driven up—for a glass of sparkling wine.