His Illegal Self

45

Dial drove back up Bog Onion, stalling twice. Obviously, the boy thought, she never drove to Montana with anyone. She never had a gun, a wound, a son. Weren’t you cold last night? she called to him.

I’m cool, he said, and listened as she tried to make a joke of cool and cold. He did not laugh.

From the plateau they traveled through the pine forest and he did not tell them that he had been inside that old lady’s house in the middle of the night. That house. Right there. Dial was peering at him in the rearview mirror but the boy held his secret hard against him. In the pitch dark he had crept in the back door. He could, therefore he did. He expected to get nice and warm but once inside he was so creeped out he could not even move his toe. He stood in the blue-black shiny kitchen and listened to the old lady snoring. Was that what he came for? If so it was a big mistake, for when she stopped, he thought she had died. He knew that feeling from Kenoza Lake, waiting for the breath to start. Let her not die now. He often thought what would he do with Grandma when he found her dead. He was frightened of it, how she would look. The old Australian lady coughed. He imagined her big eyes staring and all her gray hair spread out around her pillow. She moved something, perhaps a tumbler. He grabbed the avocado from the countertop thinking it was something else. There was no time for blankets. He got ahold of the rug on the kitchen floor and rushed out the back. A chair fell. The rug got caught. The door slammed. The yard lights turned on and he almost left the rug behind. Finally he dragged it into the woods like the body of a stinky bear. Then he was inside the belly of the night staring out its burning throat. He was doggo. No one could see or hear him. Soon enough a car arrived. It had no flashing light but a loud radio. He retreated from the flashlight stabbing at the pines. Maybe they would hit him like the priests hit Trevor, with a cane or strap. He dragged the heavy rug down into the dark and out of the pines and into the bush and when he was sick of falling over and cutting his head and arms he rolled himself up in the rug and finally he slept.

The carpet smelled of rancid fat. He should have gotten arrested, but he did not want to go to jail for stealing money.

He made green vomit.

When there was enough light to see, he rolled up the rug and stuffed it in the drainpipe beneath Bog Onion. His stomach tasted of lead sinker, and he knew he had to put the money back for now. The avocado would not be eaten. He returned the money to the blue bag and crawled under the burned-out Volkswagen and stayed there, mostly sleeping. He woke when he heard the Peugeot coming down the hill.

He was captured, but no one knew what he had done. Trevor took the front seat without asking and the boy lay along the length of the broken backseat with his nose pressed against the hot leather and the car shook above the corrugations of the long straight road to town. They turned back on the hairpin toward the valley and, for a moment, the sun flowed across his legs and neck. The snaking braking road soon blocked the light and he breathed the cracked Peugeot leather which had once been a creature with babies of its own. He was pitched and rolled, until they skidded down the steep road onto the splashing ford where he had, only a day ago, seen a blue-and-orange kingfisher swoop like an angel across his path.

Now the Australian trees closed over him like monkey fingers and the light turned green and the road was smooth and sandy so the tires swooshed. Not even God could see him here, curled up like a lost caterpillar, filled with green stuff to be squashed.

There was a bang against the roof. A second one against the window.

Shit, said Dial.

As the car skidded he stung with fright and he itched as if his skin was pierced by prickly seeds with feather tails. The windows were filled with bodies, crushed velvet, beards and bosoms.

She had made the neighbors hate Americans. Now they were all pushing in around the Peugeot. As he sat up he could see there were maybe ten cars, twenty, some VWs with paintings on them, other junky old station wagons and behind them was the buckled so-called hall and on its platform there were mumbos sitting.

Closer there were slitty-mouthed hippies holding skinned and bleeding lengths of tree. They swarmed the car like bees, erupting like bull ants from a nest. In the Bible they would have stoned him. He thrust his hand into his pocket and folded up the hundred-dollar bill.

Rebecca dragged Dial from the car.

When his own door opened he scampered to the other side where the starving-chested woman pulled him out and before he could say anything she crushed his face against her smelly ribs.

He saw Trevor talking to a man with a pole. There was so much noise and rush and all the kids-some he had seen once, some he hadn’t-were grabbing at him with their warty hippie hands. A snotty little pudding-headed girl was Velcroed to his leg. She could not be bucked away.

He looked for Dial but Rebecca had her arms around Dial’s neck and Trevor was walking away into the lantana and the boy was being taken away by the kid named Rufus and the kid named Sam. They had made a stretcher-a brown coat with two poles-and Rufus and Sam said, Get on it.

Why?

Come on, Che, they said.

He thought, You don’t know my name.

Che, Che, get on.

They were bigger but he could have fought them. His stomach was filled with old balloon air as he was lifted off the giddy bilious earth and four kids took the shafts including the pudding-headed girl who was maybe four years old and they ran lopsided and stumbled along the road. As they swung into the bush the boy saw Trevor, just ahead. His shoulders were sort of round. He was by himself, beginning his lonely climb up to his fort.

The hippie kids dropped him and he hurt his arm and he burped and vomited inside his mouth.

What would you like first? Bath or eat?

He sat on the coat on the ground. He spat. He rubbed at his arm and they all argued with one another and then they were suddenly off again, directly through the slapping stinging bush.

Hey, hey, Che, Che.

Rufus was fourteen maybe. Keep your head down, Che, he said.

They jolted him along too fast and when they dropped him a third time they told the pudding-headed girl she should let go and then Rufus took the front and everything was steadier and the Puddinghead tried to hold his hand while she ran alongside. Soon she ran into a tree and began to cry and then he was put on the ground a fourth time and Rufus asked him would he mind walking. Not one bit.

Rufus had long bright red hair. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and the kid named Sam dragged the stretcher through the tangling scrub and the pudding-headed girl took the boy’s hand and that is how they all arrived at a clearing in which stood a long low hut made from logs and tin and sheets of glass on which was printed TELECOM, over and over.

Inside he found a gloomy kind of candle factory with long narrow benches all around the walls and it was on one of these they sat him and cleared away some candles to make space for a glass of milk.

The Puddinghead asked if he liked it. She had snot on her upper lip but her face was round and pretty and her hair was almost white. In a shaft of sunlight he could see soft down on her brown scratched arms.

It’s good, thank you, he said. In fact it tasted hairy.

Say something else, she said.

OK.

Something American.

George Washington, he said. He was pretty sure he would have to vomit.

It’s from a goat, said the boy named Sam. That’s why you don’t like it.

What?

The milk. I don’t like it either. This Sam had a thin face and beaky nose like a bush animal, a possum, with big dark eyes and very crooked teeth.

Tastes of bum, he said. His voice was all tight and curled up like wood shavings. It came out of his nose and mouth all at once.

Say something else, demanded Sam. His way of speaking made everything into a puzzle you had to peel and flatten out. Say something else American, he demanded.

Can I have a glass of water?

They had been pressed tight around him and now they all sprang away. The Puddinghead came back with water.

I’m Sara.

He nodded, suddenly very pleased.

The boys brought bread and butter and a bowl of honey. Rufus cut a slice of bread with a knife maybe two feet long.

The boy asked, Is that a dagger?

It’s a machete.

Yes, but is it a dagger?

No one knew what he meant. Rufus silently cut a thick slice of bread and covered it with butter and honey.

The boy was not exactly happy, but much better than he had been in a while.

We thought you was dead, mate, said Sam. We reckoned you was a goner.

The boy did not understand.

Rufus asked, Did you sleep in the bush?

Yes.

Was it scary?

No, said the boy. I’m used to it.

You must be tough, said Rufus at last.

The boy said, My dad is pretty tough.

Then he asked for another slice of bread and honey and as he ate it he began to look around, trying to locate where he was and what he really felt. He was eating great bread and thick honey but he was thinking about Trevor, his snotty nose, his rounded shoulders, his heavy trudging walk as he set off up his road alone.