His Illegal Self

8

A tree fell in Australia. The hippie car entered its crown, like a brick being forced into a shoe. Branches banged and broke beneath the tires and you could feel them spring up like busted bones or spikes and scrape beneath your bare feet on the floor.

Stop! the mother cried.

The boy grasped the front seat and peered over the driver’s rancid-butter shoulder. Leaves spun against the windshield like in a car wash, pouring rain. Then a jolt. He bit the seat and tasted blood. He saw a mighty branch, arched, white, bones showing through a skirt of leaves.

Flying buttress, said the Rabbitoh, the one with long black hair.

The mother was pressed against the boy, all tied up with worry. He could feel the heavy weight of the tree, pushing and groaning on the roof like a boat tied against a pier. The air was roaring, carrying inside its throat a clearer harder hammering. He wished they could go home.

Trevor lit a joint, and as its flame ran halfway up its length, the boy saw him twist in his seat and offer it to the mother but her arms uncoiled from around her chest and she struck at it. She shouldn’t have.

You’re getting high!

Sparks rushed from her hand which she whacked against the seat. A second later she took the boy’s hand and rubbed it as if he had gotten on fire as well. She should be careful.

Trevor quietly repaired his injured drugs. The boy could not tell if he was angry or not. He did not say a word but made a humming sound like Jed Schitcher who sold deer meat in the fall. Jed Schitcher’s name was on the packets in Grandma’s freezer but now the boy was thinking of Jed’s skinning knife, him breathing through his mouth, the steaming blue-white stomach never seen by eyes before.

I’ve got a kid here, the mother said.

Hello kid, said Trevor. You’re with feral hippies, Trevor said. How does that feel, kid? His voice went high as he held the smoke.

The boy did not like being teased.

A branch dropped on the roof and the mother sort of squeaked.

Number one rule, Trevor said, never pick up SMs.

The boy did not know what SM meant, only that it must be rude to his mother or himself.

You mean single mother, right? Dial asked.

Trevor picked his teeth.

Just take us to a shelter, OK?

This is a shelter, said Trevor. There isn’t a better shelter than this.

Please, the mother said. I know it is a drag for you. I’m sorry.

I think you should take us to the town, said the boy.

That made a great big hole of silence in the car. The boy waited with his heart banging in his ears. Then the engine started and Dial squeezed his hand real hard. The car scraped back out into the road. In a short time they got to the little township of Yandina where nothing lived but violent dark. Leaves and branches everywhere, the street looked skinned, rippling like melted tin.

No shelter here, babe, said Trevor.

But then they found a bright light burning.

There you are, said Trevor. Star of fucking Bethlehem.

The Rabbitoh poked the yellow headlights into the drive of the Yandina Caravan Park. You want to kill your kid, go right ahead.

We’re fine, the boy said. Thank you very much.

He felt the mother hesitating. Then he understood what she was seeing through the windshield-a grandma and grandpa with bare legs and black raincoats, poor people, mooring their shuddering trailer to the toilet block. The grandpa had varicose veins. He also had a long blue nylon rope-weightless, glistening, threading through the storm.

A sheet of yellow paper slapped the windshield and when it departed there appeared one more man-red face, one-hundred-ten-volt blue eyes, long white hair stretching up into the night.

The mother lowered her window and the storm rushed in like a tomcat, occupying the backseat and spraying the inside of the windshield.

Five dollars for the lot of youse, the man shouted. Room for all. I’ve got a nice clean Globe Trotter.

The boy began gathering the Uno cards but the mother dragged him out before he got done. Here, she told the man, here’s five.

Trevor and the Rabbitoh fled like cowards, suddenly reversing onto the highway, and the stinging gravel was cruel on his bare legs. The boy and his mother ran toward a trailer home shivering on its blocks.

Then the generator failed, so the boy would recall when he only lived inside the memory of a man.

Under hypnotism on East Seventy-sixth Street he would once more see the spooky-eyed proprietor lighting two propane lights which roared like jets at forty thousand feet. At that moment he was recognized, he was certain, and he stared straight back. Years later he understood-he had wanted to get caught. After the hypnosis he drank Armagnac in the Carlyle, flirting mildly with the waitress. You look familiar, she said.

In a minute the pair of them were up the ladder beneath the dented metal and the mother held him to her in the rocking bed.

It’s better here, Dial, he said. We’re doing fine.

I’m proud of you, she said. You spoke up for us.

His usual sleeping thoughts were of his mother coming to rescue him. Now he had her, he was safe and inside the heaving chest of storm; he went to sleep and when he was tipped out it was hours later and he was falling to the earth.