The Decoding of Lana Morris (23 page)

Chet says, “It’s not often you’re slammed and complimented in the same sentence.”

“No, I mean it,” Lana says. “It hit the spot.” It’s quiet for a few seconds. “I like it here.” She looks off. “What I realized a while ago is that from these bleachers, you can’t see a single man-made structure.”

Chet follows her gaze. “I guess you’re not counting the fences,” he says.

A green tractor that had disappeared from view now turns a corner and, running parallel to the fence line, heads their way.

“Okay, let’s get ready,” Chet says, and Lana says, “Get ready for what?”

Chet doesn’t answer. He just pulls two heavy cards out of his pack and hands one to Lana. They’re the kind of adjustable black-and-white scorecards Lana has seen in televised ice-skating and gymnastics events. You can flip the numbers to determine a score of one to ten, with added tenths.

“What am I doing with this?” she says.

“Scoring the guy on the tractor.”

“On the basis of what, exactly?”

“Style,”
he says. “Don’t you remember anything? This is the tractor-
styling
event. Look for attitude, grace, and whether or not he’s picking his nose.”

The drone of the tractor is louder now, and Lana watches it approach. It’s not one of the newer, closed-cab, air-conditioned tractors. The driver sits out in the elements, shaded only by a canvas umbrella. He is a stout, middle-aged man in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a cowboy hat, and dark glasses, which glint as he regards them in passing. Lana watches him another few seconds, then flips her cards to a 6.1. She holds hers up only when Chet does.

The man on the tractor stares solemnly at them. It’s clear he has no idea in the world what they’re doing.

“I think he’s disappointed in his score,” Chet says.

After he’s gone, she turns to see what Chet gave him.

A 3.4.

“I would’ve given him something in the twos,” Chet says, “except for the dark glasses. I liked those glasses.” He looks at Lana’s 6.1 score and says, “I should’ve known it. Next thing I know, you’ll be chanting U-S-A!”

He puts down his scorecard and pulls two Laffy Taffys out of his backpack. “Dessert?” he says.

The taffy is soft and yummy, and Lana’s whole body feels like a lazy day as she sits here in the shade listening to the cicadas and looking out at the buttes.

Chet, she realizes, has been staring at her, and he says, “It was nice of you to come.” He waits a second. “I’m kind of glad now that nobody else did.”

“How come you were hiding, then?”

He shrugs. “Embarrassed. I’m actually pretty embarrassable.”

“Not so much on your show, though.”

Chet considers it. “Yeah, well. That’s me being somebody else.”

A truck passes on the highway, then it’s quiet again. Lana says, “So what happened between you and K.C. and them?”

Chet’s answer is another question. “Have you ever heard of something called the Truth Room?”

Lana admits she never has. “Why?”

“I just wondered if it was something other people had heard of or whether it was just something my mother made up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, according to my mother, there is this room called the Truth Room and when you enter it, you have to tell the truth, and if you can’t, you shouldn’t go in. It was how she’d get me to tell her things. She would say in a really soft voice, ‘Do you want to go into the Truth Room?’ ”

Lana and Chet are both quiet for a few seconds. There is a whisking sound in the dry weeds. A field mouse, probably. Then Lana says, “Why do you bring it up?”

“Well, when you asked what you asked, if you had been my mother, you would’ve asked me if I wanted to go into the Truth Room.”

Lana thinks about it a few seconds. “Do you?”

“I might, if you’d go in, too.”

Lana thinks it over some more. “That seems like a pretty big
if
.”

Chet waits a second or two before saying, “So?”

“How do you get back out of the Truth Room?” Lana says.

Chet grins. “Simple. You just say, ‘I’m opening the door and leaving now.’ ”

Lana considers it. She stretches her Laffy Taffy until a piece breaks free. She puts it into her mouth and chews it until there’s nothing left. She swallows the sweet juice. She breathes freely in and breathes freely out. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay, what?” Chet says.

Lana grins. “The Truth Room,” she says. “I’m going in.”

T
o decide who goes first, Lana picks a number between one and ten and asks Chet to guess whether the number is odd or even. The number is four, and he guesses odd.

“How do you know I didn’t cheat you?” she says, and he says, “I just do.” Then he says, “That was your first question, by the way.”

“How many do I get?”

“Five,” he says, “and you just used your second. That leaves three.”

Lana stares out toward the buttes. She’s lost sight of the green tractor and can barely hear its dim drone. “Okay,” she says. “Three questions.”

Chet looks a little nervous.

“First question,” Lana says. “What happened between you and K.C. and Trina and them?”

Chet looks off. When he speaks, it’s in a monotone, a dull recitation of facts. “I told them I thought we should change our policy with you so we could talk to you and let you ride up front.”

Lana doesn’t know the protocol in the Truth Room. She wants to say, Wow, you did that?—but she thinks she’s
supposed to act more like a school psychiatrist and just listen in a neutral, almost zombie-like way, so she says what one school psychiatrist always used to say to her.

“And?”

A sour smile. “They thought about it for maybe two seconds and announced that they now had a policy with me. ‘What do you mean?’ I said, and Trina looked at K.C. and said, ‘Who’s he talking to? He doesn’t think we can talk to him, does he?’ ”

Lana says, “I think I’m just supposed to listen and not comment, but what you did was really nice, and …”

“You know what?” Chet says, looking now at Lana. “It was a relief, really. I didn’t miss them at all. I expected to, but I didn’t.” He’s clearly finished with the subject. “Okay, what’s question two?”

It takes Lana a second to remember. “Oh. What came for you from the Above Average Novelties Company of Chicago, Illinois?”

Chet doesn’t answer. A full minute passes and he still doesn’t answer.

“Hey,” Lana says, “are we in or out of the Truth Room?”

Chet expels a heavy breath. Then, “I thought it was something for me—these scorecards, actually—but it was something for my father.”

“And?”

“It was a new item for his collection.”

“Your dad has a collection?”

Chet nods, and Lana thinks of Mr. Pigeot and wonders what kind of things he might collect. “What are we talking here?” she says. “Indian artifacts? Frontier tools? Shot glasses with sports logos embossed on the side?”

Chet looks a little morose. “Ceramic vases with flowers on the side. Roseville, it’s called.”

A laugh bursts from Lana. “Why wouldn’t you want to tell me that your dad has a vase collection?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not
his
collection, really.”

This is too good. “They’re yours?”

Chet seems actually shocked. “God, no,” he says. “My dad gets them in case my mom comes back. She used to want nice things we couldn’t afford. She bought a Roseville vase once—she wanted to start a collection—but he made her take it back.”

“So she left him?”

“I guess it was other things, too. She didn’t like it here. I used to beg her to tell me what wish she left with William the Wish Reader, but she never would. But you know, the other day, when I got all the Dorito bags out of the well at Pioneer Park?—that wasn’t the first time I did that. When I was ten or so, I went back with a rake and pulled up the wishes that were down there. The only ones were hers and mine. Mine all said
Horse
, naturally.” He looks off. “Hers all said
Deliverance
.” He turns to Lana and makes an unhappy smile. “Her deliverance came in the form of a man from Ashland, Oregon, whose car broke down on Highway 20, so he had to wait in town almost a week to get it repaired. My mother met him when he’d gone to Pioneer Park and attracted a small group of onlookers while he practiced yoga on the grass. The others just gawked, but my mother asked him to teach her. That’s what we heard later, anyhow.”

The drone of the green tractor has grown slightly louder. In silhouette, it moves its slow course in the distance, east to west.

“Okay, time’s running out,” Chet says. “My turn.”

Lana had one more question, but she can’t remember what it is, so she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and says, “Fire away.”

“How do you feel about Whit Winters?”

Lana’s eyes blink open. “How come you’re asking that?”

Chet smiles. “You seem to have forgotten where you are.”

Lana remembers that she can open the imaginary door and leave the Truth Room anytime she wants, but it doesn’t seem right, not after Chet answered her questions. “Okay. At first I wanted him to adopt me and be my father. And then I wanted him to … divorce Veronica.” She looks off. “I know that’s wrong, but there’s something about the way he can make you feel and about the way he can make the Snicks feel. Like they’re the real thing, and the K.C.’s and Trinas are the mongos and ’tards.”

“Well, you can’t argue with that,” Chet says, but his tone is subdued.

“The problem is, I’m not sure who Whit is,” Lana says. “I thought I knew, but now I don’t.” There’s a lot more she could say, about how good and how bad Whit can be, how there seem really to be two Whits, the Outside Whit who everybody sees and the Inside Whit who only she sees, but Chet has fallen quiet and seems to have heard all he wants to hear on the subject, which makes Lana feel a little funny.

Lana says, “I remember my third question. Can I still ask it?”

Chet shrugs.

“What was the wish you wrote down and dropped in the well?”

At first Chet is merely looking at her, but then—Lana’s not sure when or how this change occurs—he seems to be looking into her. She feels a mix of fear and excitement. The drone of the green tractor is growing louder. Chet opens his mouth and says, “C-r-r-reak.”

“What was that?” Lana says.

“The sound of Chet stepping out of the Truth Room.”

“C’mon, Chesterfield,” Lana says in a pleading voice.

The tractor rises from the swale and heads their way.

Chet picks up his scorecard and hands Lana hers. “Ready, judges and judgettes?” he says.

As Lana looks off toward the approaching tractor, she can hardly believe her eyes. The stocky, middle-aged farmer has taken down the canvas umbrella so he can stand up on his tractor. He plants one foot on the tractor seat and the other on its steering wheel. When he gets fully in front of them, he takes off his cowboy hat and uses it to exaggeratedly fan himself, as if his act is so red-hot he has to cool himself off.

Lana laughs out loud, and so does Chet. Then they both put up scores of 10, and the farmer immediately sets his hat on his head, lowers himself back into his seat, and drives woodenly on.

“Okay,” Lana says. “That was the most unexpected thing I think I’ve ever seen, except maybe you kicking that guy’s butt the other day.” She grins at Chet. “I’m ready to sign on. What do I have to do to become an official Chetterista?”

“I don’t think you have to do anything,” Chet says. “You can just say you are one.”

Lana feels a strange mix of fear and excitement building within her. She wants to say something, something important, but she isn’t sure what, and then out of the blue she hears herself say, “I think I ought to have to kiss you once.”

He seems as surprised by her words as she is. “You don’t have to do that,” he says.

“I want to, though,” Lana says. She tries to make her grin frisky. “Where shall I kiss you?”

Chet’s whole face pinkens. “Wherever you want, I guess.”

“Well, close your eyes,” she says.

He does.

She considers his forehead, his nose, even his ears, but she chooses his lips and makes it a quick one, but not so quick she doesn’t notice how pleasantly soft are the lips of Chester Pigeot.

O
n the return trip to town, Chet rides the bike and Lana sits on the handlebars. She doesn’t like it, sitting up there with not much to hang on to and no good place for her feet, and at first she hates how completely out of control she feels, but Chet is a steady rider. He keeps an even pace and doesn’t wobble on the climbs or let the bike pick up too much speed on the downhills. Still, when finally they turn the corner and pull up in front of Snick House, Lana’s happy to jump off. She glances toward the house—everything seems normal, and there are no strange cars parked out front—then she turns to bid Chet good-bye.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“No, I mean it, Chesterfield. Thanks for everything. Especially for sticking up for me with K.C. and them.”

Chet seems slightly embarrassed. He shrugs and heads back for his place. Lana waits for Chet to disappear into his house, takes another quick glance behind her, then sets off on the bike.

She has one quick errand to run.

Just one.

S
nip snip snip
.

When Lana finds the gardener at Pioneer Park, he’s pruning a red-leafed hedge at one end of the cinder-block restrooms. He’s piled clippings onto a big square of burlap, his rake leans against the hedge, and his clippers go
snip snip snip
.

“Could I borrow your rake for a minute?” Lana says.

The man stops clipping and looks down from his stepladder. “What for?”

“I dropped something down that well over there and I want to get it back out.”

The man isn’t a white man, but Lana doesn’t know where he might’ve come from. To her, he looks kind of Chinese and kind of Mexican. He looks off toward the well, then back at Lana. “You want me to get it for you?”

“I can do it myself.”

The man nods. He’s thinking it over. “You’ll bring the rake back?”