Wide Blue Yonder (29 page)

But
because
he needed a car most of all, one appeared, sidling and idling up to the stoplight. A hot-looking ride, red and low-slung
and sparkly. The driver, a kid, leaning his arm out the open window, radio playing some loud crud with the bass turned all the way up. Oh yes.

Strolling alongside the open window, like he wanted to ask for a light or directions. The kid either not noticing him or not paying attention, not until he was right on top of him. When he stooped and poked his head into the window—“Hey, man”—the kid looked up at him with his face a perfect blank. The next instant the gun was under his chin and the door was yanked open.

“Out of the damn car.”

The kid still looked like he didn’t get it. The cruddy music was so loud, he probably hadn’t even heard him, hadn’t yet figured out that there was something going on besides the noise in his ears, that he was about to lose his pretty car, not until his ass was kicked out on the street. Eat cement, white boy! But he fumbled around trying to get the car in gear and then the radio turned out not to be a radio but a CD player, which was excellent but how did you turn it off? Then the music became sirens and the rearview mirror filled up with cop lights, ah shit.

Except now the kid on the sidewalk was yelling Don’t shoot!, his hands paddling in the air, because here was a laugh, a cop jumping out of his squad and reaching for his gun but distracted by the kid, hesitating for an instant so that it was possible to step out and aim his own gun, all the while the little asswipe on the ground crying like a girl. The gun popped and did something to the cop’s hand, like it exploded from the inside out. Blood sprayed from it and the cop was rolling on the ground but still trying to get his unhurt hand on his holstered gun and then instead of putting the car in drive and getting away clean, he hit reverse. Smashed into the squad car and maybe the cop and the kid too, he couldn’t tell because of the music noise, BOOM BOOM BOOM, finally getting the whore ass gear into drive
and hauling out of there. BANGBOOM. The cop might have been firing, or else it was just the bass on the speakers that kept up its noise for blocks and blocks until he finally figured out how to shut it off.

Not wanting to slow down, he got on some freeway and kept going. It was a hell of a car, truly, the best he’d had so far, but there was no time to appreciate that now because everything had happened so fast and was still happening. He kept finding himself on bridges. He was either crossing three or four different rivers or the same one many times. The tires hummed on the steel plating, the sky above was crosshatched by girders, the river below surprising him with its bigness, its toy boats kicking up foam, its distant misty green-brown curves, what a ride he was having! A song came into his head,
Across the wi-ide Missouri
, was that where he was? He didn’t know the rest of it, so he sang it over and over again,
Across the wi-ide, across the wi-ide
, and then he forgot that too.

He was a little sorry when the rivers went away but he had a pleased sense of really covering ground now. Seeing things he had not been able to imagine, he was cooking, he was damn near
flying
, and for everything his useless brain forgot there was a new thing to take its place. All day he drove in directions he did not think anyone would look for him, and when he reached the Mississippi it was night and the water was dark, lit by beautiful red and green and white lights. He was
Porque
, he was
Because
, his own reason for doing what he did. And so he passed on into Illinois, looking for the next place he had never been before.

A
rlene never got past Tropical Storm. Bert was a hurricane. He made landfall along the south Texas coast and pooped out. Cindy stayed out in the Atlantic, past Bermuda. None of them anything to write home about. But low-pressure masses kept firing themselves from the Cape Verde Islands, from the coast of Africa, like baseballs. An ocean full of storms. Dennis was lumbering toward Florida. Emily was a whirling blob somewhere east of the Windward Islands. Floyd was stacked up behind them, a giant saucer of wind and rain. Floyd was the one everyone at the Weather was keeping an eye on, the one getting all the attention. If there was going to be a Harvey, it would simply have to wait its turn.

Local Forecast had a lot to keep track of. Winds coiling up and then unraveling, all the watches and warnings, storm surges, rainfall totals, evacuations. Most nights he sat up late, waiting for updates. It took a lot of concentration to keep it all straight in his head. Especially since now there was this girl sleeping on the couch. He had to scootch around her just so he could see.

He woke her up when Dennis’s winds jumped to seventy-five miles per hour, official hurricane strength. All the lights were off except the television, and the weather was turned down low so as not to disturb her. She had her face buried in the cushion and her hair was every which way. Local Forecast coughed experimentally. She didn’t move. Then he fiddled with the television volume. It got away from him and went loud, right in the middle of a Slim-Fast commercial.

She rolled over with a fuzzy look on her face. “Wha?”

“Dennis is a hurricane now.”

“Dennis who?”

“He’s a hurricane.”

“God,” said the girl. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. On the television a lady was dancing around in front of a mirror, happy about losing a hundred pounds. “There’s a hurricane here?”

“Nananana. In the ocean.”

“Well that’s exciting. That’s a news flash.” She rolled off the couch and went into the bathroom and Local Forecast tried not to listen to her in there. The toilet flushed and she came back out. “God, Harvey. It’s two in the morning. Oh, well. It’s not like I have to get up for anything.”

She sat down on the couch and wrapped the blanket around her knees. “So Harvey, look, if my mom calls, you haven’t seen me. It’s sort of a game I’m playing with her. Like hide-and-seek.”

“Hidenseek.”

“Or anybody else. Even the police. Especially the police. I just need to hang out here a little while longer, okay?”

They were showing the ocean from yesterday. It had a bumpy, bulging look to it. He’d never been to the ocean. It wasn’t fair. Somebody should have taken him. Then when it was on the television, he could point to it and say: You see that there? That’s an ocean, don’t let anybody tell you different.

Then maybe they wouldn’t make fun of him. He wasn’t dumb, he could tell when they pitched their voices up a notch, pretending they liked him more than they did. A stupid game he played along with because that’s what people expected. (Hidenseek?) Sometimes he wanted to tell them: Listen, I know what you’re doing. I’m not some born-yesterday kid. But they talked so fast, by the time he got it worked out what he was going to say, they’d
either gone away or they were pestering him about something different that needed different words.

Nobody made fun of hurricane experts. You could go on television. The thought grabbed him by the top of the head and spun him around. He just had to figure out how it was done, where you had to stand so you ended up on the screen. He figured they had people who were in charge of those things. So how expert was expert? Did you have to take a test?

“Uncle Harvey?”

She yawned it out, Har-vee. The Weather’s blue screen was quiet, giving temperatures. “Why don’t you want to get your eyes fixed?”

He shook his head and kept shaking it. The girl reached up and held his chin to make him stop. “Really. Why not?”

“Scairt.”

“What are you scared of? People get it done all the time. It turns out fine. They just take off the cataract part. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t even think they knock you out anymore. It’s lasers or something.”

Local Forecast put his hand in front of his face and wiggled his fingers. His eyes were fine.

“You could seriously go blind if you don’t get it done. You understand?”

Oh doctor doctor. No thanks no doctor.

“They’re plotting something. My mom and dad. I think they want to have you declared crazy.”

Because everything had to stay the same. Always the Weather, the Forecast, and him here to watch it. Or else it was The End. Sky falling down nobody everybody alive and dead.

The girl said, “All right. I’m going back to sleep. But I’m worried about you. You could end up in some boot camp too. Crazy boot camp. I wouldn’t put it past my mom.”

The girl wrapped herself up in the blankets but kept talking.
“So don’t tell her anything if she comes around. Zero. I don’t trust her. We’ll both just have to lay low.”

She had pretty hair. It was all goldy. He touched the ends of it, just a fingertip touch. One of her bare feet stuck out of the blankets. Even her feet were pretty. The toenails were shiny red. Fat Cat, who was inclined to jealousy, jumped into his lap just then, which was lucky because he was getting a little you-know down there.

“I don’t suppose … I asked my mom once why you went into the hospital and she didn’t know. So is it anything you can talk about?”

“Hospital schmospital.”

“Yeah. I guess not.”

There was a floating space in his head right there. Like a cloud you couldn’t see past. It made him feel stupid not to remember things. Cloudy clouds. He lived with Mamma and Daddy before the hospital. Frank had up and got married. It was after the war. He had the taxi job. He didn’t remember remembering that. It was like he’d that minute pulled it right out of the cloud. He wanted to tell the girl but she was asleep again.

After the war it was boom times. America, which was the country, flexed its muscles. Everybody had new jobs and cars and houses. Frank had a job in a bank, selling money. He wore a tie to work. America had showed its enemies what was what. Of course, there were still communists on the loose. Communists were the Red Menace. Daddy said they were Godless. Communists were sneaky. They could be anybody.

Maybe they had sent him to the hospital for being a communist. The idea that he had been something dangerous excited him. Maybe they had sent all the communists to hospitals, cured them somehow. You sure didn’t hear a lot about them anymore.

Frank said the next war would be with the communists. They were practicing with bombs. Airplanes would drop them. When
he drove the taxi, he watched out for airplanes. You wouldn’t want a bomb landing on you. All this was before the Weather, so there wasn’t any good way to warn people.

Nononono, he was getting confused. The Weather wasn’t for bombs anyway. What they had were sirens, just like for storms. When he thought about sirens he got all shivery. Did they have sirens in the hospital? Or bombs?

He knew there was something important here, but he was too tired to keep squeezing his head. He went to sleep and when he woke up there was a new problem because it was Rosa day and Rosa was knocking on the front door. And here was the girl, still asleep on the couch.

Oh boy. Rosa was going to be so mad. She hated a mess. Local Forecast ran back and forth between the couch and the front door. Get up, get up, he fretted. The girl just waved him away. She still had the blankets over her head. Rosa kept knocking. He didn’t want her to leave. Rosa!

He peered through the glass at the top of the door. Rosa saw him and wagged her finger. It was a rainy day and she had a big umbrella with pictures of fish on it. The fish were blowing bubbles. Rosa was mad because she was out in the rain. Local Forecast opened the door and tried to hide behind it.

Rosa set her umbrella to drip on the mat. Her feet in their little sneakers went swipe swipe swipe. Then stopped. He couldn’t bear to watch.

Sound of blankets thrashing around. The girl said, “Oh, hello. Are you a friend of Harvey’s? I’m Josie.”

Rosa didn’t answer. It was even harder to understand the things she didn’t say than the things she did. Local Forecast sneaked a peek. Rosa had her arms tucked up. She looked the way she did when she saw a mess. The girl said, “Oh, I get it. Spanish, huh? I’m taking French. Sorry.”

Rosa swept past her and into the kitchen. There was the sound
of her shoving dishes in and out of the sink. The girl sat up. “Jeez. Is it always so busy around here?”

On Rosa days, she made him breakfast. So Local Forecast felt better when he smelled coffee. He ran outside and looked in through the backdoor to make sure. The kitchen table had two places set instead of his just one. Two mugs, two glasses, two plates on dinky embroidered cloths. He had new plates now. Rosa had brought them from home. They had gold edges. Rosa saw him hanging around the door and crooked her finger, so he had to shuffle inside, dripping rain and embarrassed at himself.

The girl came in with her hair in a towel from the shower. She smelled like steam and soap. “Wow, corn muffins.” She sat down and loaded up a plate and poured coffee. “So is she, what, your girlfriend?”

Local Forecast cleared his throat. Rosa was making a racket with the breakfast things. She wouldn’t look at him. But he knew she was listening. He felt the kitchen light shining right down on top of his head, filling him with giddy heat. “Yes,” he said.