Untouchable (26 page)

He finished the dog’s snout, the food dish that said
Steve Rogers
along its side. He stood back from the wall, looked at what he’d done, feeling pretty good about it, feeling pretty proud. He looked at the red-haired woman, her wings spread, her body stretching up toward the hole in the ceiling. He thought that maybe she’d be less lonely now, but he wondered if maybe she’d like some other company, if maybe she’d like to have somebody new in the house, somebody other than The Kid.

He hitched his backpack up across his shoulders, looked at the whole thing, the angel, his mural, and thought that maybe he’d like that, too. Maybe he’d like somebody else to see what he had made.

T
hey took the dog out to the backyard and filled a metal tub with water from the hose. The Kid brought out a bottle of shampoo from the bathroom. He was worried that it wouldn’t work because it was people shampoo, not dog shampoo, but Darby told him it would be fine. The dog wouldn’t know the difference.

Steve Rogers stood watching them from a far corner of the yard. Darby shut off the hose and squatted in the dirt.

“Steve. Come here, boy.”

The dog looked at him, looked at The Kid. Stayed put in the corner.

“Come here, boy. Come here, Steve.”

Darby stood, walked slowly toward the dog, talking softly, repeating the dog’s name. The hair along the dog’s spine rose as Darby approached. The dog bared a fang, issued a low growl.

Darby crouched again, pulled a biscuit out of his back pocket, broke it in half. The dog squinted at Darby’s hand, kept growling. Darby moved in closer, held out the biscuit. The dog stopped growling, sniffed the air.

“Come here, Steve. Come here, boy.”

The dog shuffled forward a step, sniffed, darted his head forward and back like he had on the porch, moving his snout closer to the biscuit with each move. He finally made a lunge, grabbing the biscuit with his front teeth, but Darby held on, the dog pulling for a second and then giving up, letting go, standing and squinting at Darby. Darby held out the biscuit again. The dog darted his nose, grabbed the biscuit, and this time Darby let the biscuit go. The dog stood crunching. Darby reached out, slowly, and put his hand on the back of the dog’s neck. Ran his hand along the dog’s back, flattening some of the standing hair. The dog crunched the biscuit, watching Darby’s free hand with one wary eye. Darby moved his hand up to the dog’s head, scratched behind a half-bitten ear. With his free hand he held out the other end of the biscuit. The dog took it, crunched some more. Darby placed his hand on the dog’s side, moving both hands along his ribs, his flanks, careful not to touch the sore spots. The dog finished the biscuit but stayed where he was, getting scratched.

“Kid,” Darby called back. “Come on over.”

He could hear The Kid’s slow approach, his sneakers shuffling in the dirt. The Kid stopped just behind Darby, clutching his notebook, watching the dog, watching Darby’s hands, scared.

“It’s okay, Kid. Give me one of your hands.”

The Kid shook his head.

“This is how he’ll know,” Darby said. “This is how he’ll know we’re his friends.”

The Kid took one hand off his notebook, held it out to Darby. Darby took a hand off the dog, took The Kid’s hand in his own, moved it gently toward the dog. The Kid’s hand was shaking, so Darby added The Kid’s name when he spoke to reassure the dog.

“It’s okay, Kid. It’s okay, Steve.”

Darby kept his other hand at the dog’s neck, ready to grab and pull if need be. The dog looked at The Kid, looked at The Kid’s hand inside of Darby’s. Moved his snout closer. The Kid’s hand shook even more.

“It’s okay, Kid. It’s okay, Steve.”

The dog’s nose was right at their fingers. Darby tightened his hand on the back of the dog’s neck, squeezing the scruff, just a little pressure, just enough so the dog would know. The dog’s cold nose touched Darby’s fingertips, touched The Kid’s.

“Go ahead and get that other biscuit out of my back pocket,” Darby said.

The Kid moved and the dog tried to lurch back, spooked, but Darby held his scruff, kept him in place. The Kid pulled the biscuit from the pocket of Darby’s jeans, broke it in half.

“Hold it out for him, Kid. Go slow.”

The Kid held the half biscuit in his palm, lowered his hand. Slowly, slowly, his hand shaking.

“It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay, Kid. Nice and easy.”

The dog sniffed, squinted up at The Kid. The Kid held his hand out further, toward Steve’s snout. Darby tightened his grip on the dog’s scruff. The dog did his nose-dart, sniffing at the biscuit, moving his head in and out. The Kid held his hand as steady as he could. The dog opened his mouth, waiting for Darby’s response at the back of his neck, then moved his head in, taking the biscuit in his teeth.

“Go ahead,” Darby said. “You can pet him now.”

The dog crunched the biscuit, watched The Kid’s hand move over the top of his head. Darby squeezed Steve’s scruff, the skin tight between his fingers. He talked low to the dog and The Kid. The Kid set his hand down on top of the dog’s head. Patted the dog’s head once, twice, then moved his hand over the dog’s ears, down to Darby’s hand at the back of the dog’s neck. Darby took The Kid’s hand, squeezed it over the dog’s scruff, moved his own hands away. The dog finished the biscuit, The Kid holding him by the scruff. Darby stood, knees popping, took a slow step back. The Kid put his free hand on the dog’s back, patted down the hair that was still standing on end.

They ordered pizza and sat in the pickup listening to the news. The day getting soft, the sky going pink. Steve Rogers lay on the front porch, droopy-eyed, drying in the evening air. Darby couldn’t stop thinking about the apartment in Chinatown. The unfinished room, the rabbit on the dresser. The speck, the fleck in his throat; he coughed to try to jar it loose, spat out the window onto the lawn.

The Kid was pulling the sleeve of his undershirt, asking him something in the notebook.

What was it like?

“What was what like?” Darby said.

The Kid turned a page, clicked on the dome light so it was easier for Darby to read.

Where you grew up.

Darby pushed back at the thought of the unfinished apartment. He focused on The Kid, on The Kid’s question.

“It was quiet,” Darby said. “That was the main thing. How quiet it was.”

How quiet was it?

Darby turned the radio down. “What do you hear?”

The Kid tilted his head toward the window, listened. Wrote slowly, as each thing came to him.

Fire sirens. Helicopter. Cars on Vermont.

“There was none of that,” Darby said. “There was still some noise. Cars that came through on the highway, big rigs, air conditioners in some of the trailers, generators humming. But not like this. And there was nothing at night. Everything was still. No noise except coyotes howling out in the dark, past where the last lights reached.”

What did that sound like?

“Sounded like coyotes howling.”

The Kid shook his head. He didn’t know that sound.

Darby took in a deep breath and let out a loud coyote howl, held it until his lungs had emptied. The sound trailed away out of the pickup, through the yard, up and over the house.

The Kid smiled.

“Sounded like that,” Darby said.

It was the stillness that he missed, that came back to him in dreams. The flat, deadened days, heavy with sun and heat, the air unmoving, Darby floating on his back, watching the tops of palm trees against the purple sky as he drifted slowly, one end of the pool to the other.

A retirement community was being built at the foot of the mountains, about a mile from the trailer park. A walled neighborhood of flamingo pink bungalows arranged around the curving greens of a private golf course. Construction would take most of the summer, trucks moving sand, moving earth, a large crew of white guys and Mexicans and a couple Cahuilla Indians building the bungalows, importing great loads of sod, palm trees, shrubs, rose bushes. Seeding grass, digging ponds, installing fountains, paving streets, laying the high cement perimeter wall, painting it all pink. Darby was fifteen years old and he and some friends biked down there almost every day after school, during school if they ditched, and asked for work, unloading trees from trucks or seeding the grass or hauling tools from one end of the site to the other. Chickenshit, buck-an-hour jobs, but some cash for beer or cigarettes, for a bag of weed or a packet of ephedrine tablets from the truck stop by the highway. It was like some kind of saccharine fever dream, the place taking shape around them, pastel stucco and sculpted hedges, grass so green it seemed fake. The workers rode golf carts around the thin, twisting streets, gunning the carts as fast as their electric engines would go, taking the corners on two wheels, tipping over more often than not, disgorging tools and sod and mulch across the rich new asphalt in a torrent of belly-laughs and curses, calling for Darby and his friends, whoever had shown up that day, because this was one of their jobs, cleaning up after the workers had flipped a cart.

As the months went on, fewer of Darby’s friends went with him to the site. They didn’t understand his fascination with the place. It was hot, repetitive work, no money, all to build houses where rich old people would come to die. But Darby was entranced by the place, by the process, the progression of its construction and the accumulating end result. The strangeness of what was being built. He went down to the site almost every day. The foreman grew to expect him, had a list of things for him to do when he arrived, chewed him out if he didn’t show.

At five o’clock they’d call it a day and sit out on the newly poured cement patio behind the first tee, or by one of the pools they’d filled prematurely, soaking their feet, drinking beers, passing bottles of tequila. When it got dark, someone would give him a ride home in the back of a pickup, drop him off at the entrance to the trailer park, muscles aching, woozy with booze and sun. He’d sit in the front room of the trailer and have a beer with Eustice and tell her all the things he’d learned at school that day. She’d listen and smile, Darby never quite sure if she believed his stories or just liked to hear him tell them.

There were days when it was too hot to work, and Darby would find the front gate locked, no sign of activity within. He’d climb the wall and walk the streets, the golf course, careful to stay off the seeded areas, giving the grass a chance to grow. He felt protective of the place. He’d helped build this, helped bring this remarkable thing to the desert. He relished those days alone, knowing it would all be over soon, that the crew would go on to the next job, leaving him behind, and the place would be filled by a colony of the aged, retirees and blue hairs, leather-skinned sunbathers by the pool, visiting grandchildren, the cautious carts of morning golfers, afternoon naps and cocktail hour, a massive Lincoln or Buick in every garage.

He would find a filled pool and strip down to his underpants, lie on his back and float. Watching the tops of palm trees moving against the purple sky, feeling the warmth of the water, his skin taking on sun. When his ears bobbed under there was a rushing sound, a seashell roar, and when they came back above there was nothing, just the silence of the desert. He’d float until the day faded, and then he’d gather his clothes and walk back along the coiled streets, evening coming slowly, the stillness around him becoming more complete.

In his bed in the back room of the trailer he slept soundly those nights, despite the heat, and on the rare occasion that he slept soundly now out in the pickup it was because he had dreams of that place, the last weeks before the colony arrived, the floating stillness, an entire day like a held breath.

He told The Kid all of this, minus the drinking and drugs. The Kid listened, looked out the windshield of the pickup at the dog dozing on the porch steps. Darby sat back in the seat, looked out at the house, the graying sky beyond. The night around them had paused, the silence had paused, so Darby kept talking.

One night toward the end of construction, after a couple of hours sitting and drinking at the first tee, some of the crew drove to a tattoo parlor in Palm Springs. Darby tagged along. He wanted to be part of this. A rite of manhood. Ink on your arm. He sat in the neon-lit shop, listening to the needle buzz, sketching an idea on the back of a hot rod magazine while the other guys got their tattoos. The artist was a Cahuilla with a Fu-Manchu mustache named Gil, and when it was finally Darby’s turn, he showed the sketch to Gil, to the other guys, who all thought it was some kind of headless snake. A long, elaborate curve that would start at the top of Darby’s right shoulder, twisting and turning in on itself, branching off into other curves that circled his bicep before meeting again down at his elbow. Darby let them believe it was a snake. He knew that the truth would bring a shower of ragging and name-calling. The curves were actually the streets that moved through the retirement community, the white stone paths that hugged the bungalows and the greens of the golf course. He had walked them countless times, was able to draw them accurately from memory. It was a map of what they had built, but he let them believe it was a snake. Darby pulled off his t-shirt and Gil swabbed his arm and got to work. He didn’t object when Gil added a snake’s head to the end of the curves where all the streets met, what would be the community’s front gate, didn’t object when Gil inked yellow eyes and a flicking tongue, an inscription below the open mouth:
Don’t Tread
. The map was the important thing, getting it down so he’d never forget what they’d built.

Within a week they were finished, the last bungalow up, the last fairway seeded. They took a final, celebratory drink at the eighteenth hole, packed the equipment and locked the gate behind them. The crew split and moved on to other jobs, some going back to Los Angeles, some going north or east where more golf courses were being conjured from the desert. Only Darby remained, back to school, back to his friends, who were all impressed with the badass snake twisting down his right arm. His skin was still tender and pink when he saw the first cars pull off the highway, air-conditioned Lincolns and Buicks, windows rolled up against the heat, the first gray settlers heading up toward the pink stucco walls.

He never went back. He was tempted, he thought about hopping the wall late some night, sneaking past the dozing security guards, stripping down and sliding into the cool water of one of the pools. But he resisted the urge. He knew it wouldn’t be the same, knew that the place no longer belonged to him. In another year, he would buy a battered GTO with the money he’d saved from the job, and six months later he would leave that place for good, leave school and Eustice and the trailer, heading west into the sprawling city.