Out There: a novel (6 page)

“Jefferson? Is there anything else?” She seemed to be turning a tad impatient, but, as he’d felt so often in war, Jefferson believed it was his job in this moment to share the beauty of what he was experiencing. This mission trumped any minor annoyance. She’d realize in time that the delay had been worthwhile.

“Yes. Actually there is something else,” he said. “I want you to know who it is I’m going to talk to about all this.”

“Oh, okay. Who is it? Someone I know? Someone I’ve heard of?”

“That depends,” he said. “Have you heard of Gabriel García Márquez?”

“The writer?”

He just raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“Is he even alive?”

“Of course he’s alive. The guy’s immortal.”

“Ha. Very funny. But what do you mean? Do you know him—I mean, personally? Is he like your great-grandfather or something?”

Jefferson felt the woman was finally loosening up a little, so he laughed at this last question, obviously her attempt at a joke. “Very funny. My great-grandfather! You think I’d’ve signed up for the US Army if my great-grandfather was Gabriel García Márquez? Now
that’s
funny!”

He thought then about the story he’d told himself, the story about how GGM had held him as a baby, had brought him birthday presents. He’d daydreamed until it ceased to be fun or even uplifting, and instead began to strike him as a loss. The idea of birthdays made him think of his mom, and the fact that he really had never known her, because one hazy memory of sharing a Welch’s soda together did not constitute a relationship. And then there was the fact that he’d never known his father, or either of his grandfathers.

Looking at the blurry outline of his navy sneakers on the floor below him, he did his little wake-up exercise, asking himself,
Where am I? Where am I?
Dr. Wesleyan was smiling patiently, he could see now, and speaking in a soft voice. “Jefferson? Are you okay? Jefferson? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you, Dr. Wesleyan. I can hear you just fine.”

“Listen, why don’t you come back next week, Jefferson, okay? I need to get on with my next appointment, but I think this is all very important, and I really hope to see you then. Okay? We can talk about Gabriel García Márquez. You can bring in a favorite book or something. Okay?”

There was that word again.
Okay? Okay? Okay?
It seemed to be the only thing people could say to him since he’d returned. But what was that the doctor had said about bringing in a favorite book? Now that was a good idea. Genius. Only why wait an entire week—especially since Jefferson knew as well as anyone that he had no intention of taking the train down here again next week—when he could show the doctor right here and now?

He’d begun fiddling the novel loose from its place under his shirt and inside the Ace bandage when the doctor clutched her heart. “Oh my god! What are you doing? Please, Jefferson! Oh my god!” She held her arms out stiffly toward him as she slowly backed away. “Please, Jefferson. Please don’t! Oh my god, please!”

The book popped out of the bandage and flew from Jefferson’s grip, landing with a
thwump!
on the floor between them.

“Oh my god, what are you doing?” the doctor yelled. “What’s that book?”

“
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, the masterpiece of Gabriel García Márquez. I carry it with me. It saved my life.”

“You need to leave,” said the doctor.

“But I want to share just one quote with you.”

The doctor had lost any sense of humor she might have ever had. Eyes bugged out, she stepped back from the book on the floor.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Wesleyan. Just one—a short one. I’m not crazy. You’ll see,” Jefferson said, waving his hand apologetically. He was sorry he’d scared her—that hadn’t been his intent—but he was sure that if he could only paraphrase the right line, she would feel much better, and the awkwardness would pass.

The doctor clutched her chest with one hand, breathing hard and heavy as she stared at his knees. “You just about made me have a heart attack. I have other patients. Now!” She pointed to the door.

Seeing that he was out of time, Jefferson stooped to grab the book up off the floor and backed away from the young doctor, who had now moved nearer to him and was standing in a power pose, arms wrapped tight around chest. There seemed to be nothing to lose, so he proceeded to recite the line he had decided in the previous several moments would be the best one in the circumstances, a continuation of his answer to several of Dr. Wesleyan’s earlier questions. He recited, half speaking, half singing, in the rhythm he often used, his eyes closed and his gut full, his breath searching for a listener in all the noise. He hoped Dr. Wesleyan was listening.

You ask where I have been and I answer: Out there.

His belly was empty from bellowing out the truth of those words. He refilled his gut and went at it again.

You ask where I have been and I answer: Out there.

In the third breath he saw through the slits in his eyes that the doctor was on her phone, her face that of a crazed feline. Nonetheless he shared the line one more time.

You ask where I have been and I answer: Out there. Out there.

Jefferson continued chanting even as a security officer ushered him roughly by his elbow back down the long blue hall and out through the waiting room, still full of young men who looked like they might have been his brother. By the time he was dumped outside in front of Building 1, the flags fluttering high in the May air above, he could claim the satisfaction of sharing the last word with the famous writer.

That
afternoon Jefferson took the pup and a crowbar out to the back corner of the yard, where his mom’s old camper van had sat since 1986, and pried open the passenger-side door. The steel creaked as he’d expected, but there were no rats or snakes. Anything that had spoiled had long since turned to dust, so he climbed inside and took a look around, wondering in part why his curiosity had never taken him this far before. From this vantage the back of the house looked almost foreign, the tan stucco mottled with the sinking sunlight, the half-dead elm off to the left. God, did it need to be pruned. He made a plan to get his old clippers out the next day and clean up the tree and all the other neglected shrubs in the yard. It was one of the things Jefferson seemed to be alone in caring about—the errant twigs and branches sprouting helter-skelter off the main trunks of trees and bushes. Didn’t anyone else in the family see the mess that was going on in the yard? He tried to envision a covered deck off the back of the house—a redwood-stained deck with pots of petunias, Esco’s favorite—and how happy that would make her.

He pulled the door closed behind him and crawled into the back. It was quiet and warm, and he felt he might bring out a pillow and blanket, a flashlight, and stay out here all night. How had this not occurred to him before, this ultimate hideout? And though it felt mildly juvenile to be hanging out in his backyard—he’d always wished his family had been into camping out in the woods, but they hadn’t—it also felt undeniably pleasant.

He was in the midst of calculating the dimensions of the deck he might build for his grandmother, how much lumber it might take, and how he might muster up the money, when he saw movement from inside the house and knew she must be home from the store. He’d go inside and tell her. She wouldn’t believe it. The van was intact, and he was going to sleep out there, plus he had a great idea for a deck off the back.

Jefferson jumped from the van, opened up the driver’s side as well as the sliding door for a little ventilation, and dashed into the house. He could not wait to tell her that he’d found a cost-free solution to his need for a little privacy. It was hard to believe he’d never thought of the van as a refuge before. Here it had been, right here, all that time.

“Hey, Esco!” Jefferson shouted, but she must have gone to the bathroom, because there was no reply. There was no time to waste, so Jefferson pulled down two blankets from the high shelf in the hall closet. He was looking for a flashlight in the kitchen when she found him.

“I didn’t realize you were home. How was the meeting? How was the doctor?” Her eyes were so hopeful.

Oh, that, he told her. It was okay.

And then he asked her where he could find a flashlight. The morning’s meeting with Dr. Wesleyan seemed to have happened in another lifetime. The train ride home alone had taken almost three hours, counting the bus ride and the waiting and the walk back to the neighborhood. Though he felt that in some ways it had gone well, he also knew he would not be returning to her office, and he was not sure which part of the story to share with Esco. She’d become a worrier, and this fact made him uncomfortable and generally complicated their conversations.

“The office walls were blue,” he said finally.

“Yeah?”

“Yep, sort of an ocean blue. Dark, but calming.”

“So that’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

Knowing that food would be a good distraction, he began opening cabinets and feigning hunger. Esco hovered a few feet away, pretending to sort mail.

It was impossible to find anything in his grandmother’s cabinets. She had a horrible sense of order, and so, as Jefferson thought back to the meeting with the doctor in Albuquerque, he began taking all the spices and cans of food out of the pantry and sorting them into groups on the counter. If someone had asked him, he would have said there were no better words in the entire novel for him to share with the young doctor than the ones he’d chosen.
Out there.
He chuckled to himself, thinking what perfect words, what a gift that he had been able to recall them just before he’d had to leave the office, and he felt himself swell with pride. It was a good example of everyone doing his or her part to make the world a better place. Him, Jefferson Long Soldier, reciting the perfect words to her, Dr. Wesleyan, the words she needed to hear if she was going to put herself out there like that, trying to help ex-soldiers, trying to get in their heads and reshuffle their bad stuff. There had also been a few looks of interest among the veterans in the waiting room as he had continued chanting while being escorted from the office.

He hummed the words again now as he spooned peanut butter onto a rice cake.

You ask where I have been and I answer: Out there. Out there.

Jefferson felt confident that at least one of those guys in the waiting room had benefited from his recitations. He told himself, just as he’d told himself every day in the war zone, that if he’d reached one person, that was enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Esco moved closer to Jefferson, trying to remind him that she was there, she was standing right next to him. Where had his mind traveled now? What was all this garbled humming? And what did he plan to do with that pile of blankets on the couch?

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I was gonna make dinner in a little bit, but I could start now.” She gave a heavy sigh as she surveyed the contents of her cabinets, strewn across the counter, and clucked her tongue. She didn’t really mind, though; it wasn’t the first time Jefferson had organized her cabinets. In fact, it was one of the things she’d missed when he was at war. She would not have chosen this moment for it, but then again, at least he was home and alive. Let him do it. Busy his brain and his hands with something a little more useful than finger-crocheting and chanting.

Ah, he was a little heavy now, but the skin-and-bones would be back soon enough. That was his nature. She’d probably never stop worrying that Jefferson was undernourished, even now when he was eight pounds pudgy and eating peanut butter. As a baby he’d been underweight and prone to ear infections, and then too, she would always be the grandmother, trying to make amends. Feeding Jefferson had been the best way she knew to try to make things seem okay for him.

He was smiling at her, that goofy smile that was new since he’d returned, almost like he’d had a stroke and was visiting a distant galaxy, and now he smacked another bite of the peanut butter rice cake and told her he could wait for dinner. He just wanted a snack.

“Okay, sweetie. Okay.” She took the sponge from the sink and began to wipe down the countertop where the rice cake had crumbled.

Jefferson hoped Esco wasn’t upset. Her short round frame bent down and away from him as she wiped the crumbs off the counter, and now she seemed intent on silence. He didn’t feel as if he’d been withholding important information, though. She was probably just fine. Grandmother rarely got upset, and when she did, it usually had something to do with the bread order for the store or a dog pooping in her yard, practical things like that. She wasn’t the fragile kind of woman who cried or got her feelings hurt. She’d had too much in her life go haywire to afford to cry every time some little thing upset her—or, for that matter, to get in a bad mood. Moodiness and anger were for rich people, Jefferson had always thought.

“I love you, Esco,” he said, just after she brushed against his arm with the sponge. “So glad to be home, you know?”

She paused in her cleaning and took a breath as she looked at him. And then it was as if a meteor had hit the earth somewhere far away and shaken Santa Fe in the process. She lunged against his chest, burying her face in his T-shirt and letting out a long string of wails that to him sounded both nocturnal and oceanic. He held on to her head, breathing into her hair and telling her it was okay, it was okay, everything was going to be okay now. When she had sobbed several long minutes without cease, she began to speak into his chest, as if she could only get out the words she needed to say if she did not look at him straight on, a barrage of thoughts and emotions that went on and on,
Oh my grandson, oh my god, you are home you are home, you really did make it home alive, oh my god, oh my god, oh my beloved, my child, my sweet one, you are alive, oh I love you so much, so much you will never know, never know, never know, you are here, here you are, your sweet skin, oh my god, your sweet skin, your sweet hands, oh your eyes, oh your tiny little fingers, when you were a baby, oh my god, I was so worried, I was so worried, I thought you wouldn’t survive and I did my best, oh my god, my sweet baby, I did my best.