The Flying Troutmans

eight

WE GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, ate some fruit from the cooler and loaded up the van. I stared at the pool of something that was seeping out from underneath it. Logan had started playing Frisbee with Thebes in the parking lot. He threw the Frisbee hard every time against the pavement so it would deflect and fly up straight into Thebes’s hands. Or face. She didn’t like it. She kept yelling, Throw it normally, throw it normally! I looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my finger in the mystery liquid and tasted it. I’d seen my father do this once or twice. Except I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be tasting or how to differentiate it from any other automotive flavour. I decided it was water and not oil. It was water from the air conditioner, probably. I thought hey, excellent, we’ll have to stop using the AC and open all the windows and the wind and the racket will drown out Thebes and muffle Logan’s music. I didn’t mind listening to Thebes’s chatter or Logan’s music most of the time, but I was trying to solve problems and formulate solutions in my mind and I needed to concentrate for a while. We were headed for Denver, and then we’d blast our way like amyl nitrate west through the Rocky Mountains.

I had this dream last night, said Logan. About a poet who finds out that his new book has no words, only thick blue ceramic-tile pages.

Was the poet Cherkis? I asked.

It wasn’t clear, he said.

Logan complained about the birds waking him up. He said it wasn’t even real singing, just crawk, crawk, crawk. I told him that male birds have to send warnings to other birds to stay off their turf and away from their mates, and Logan said he wasn’t interested in their mates, all he wanted was to sleep. He yawned and wiped away a tear.

And this is fucked up, he said, but I also dreamt that I’d had a baby.

So did I! I said. The other night.

Logan rubbed his face and moaned and stared out the window. He didn’t want to be having the same dreams and dark desires as his flabby-armed aunt.

How did you feel being pregnant? I asked him.

I don’t know, he said. Distorted and inhabited.

Oh, okay, so you do know, I said.

I’d prefer to be the father in that type of scenario, he said.

All it means, I think, I said, is that we’re expecting something.

Whatever, he said.

Min had told me a story about when Logan was a newborn baby. The guy in the apartment right next to hers, a Lithuanian philosophy professor, electrocuted himself in his bathtub and his body wasn’t found for days and on the day that they discovered it Min had come in from a walk with Logan and she had cried and cried, thinking of the poor guy next door, and also how it was a terrible thing to come home with a newborn baby to an old guy having killed himself right next door. This old guy’s mom had Alzheimer’s and lived just down the hall in a different apartment and when he was alive she’d go banging on Min’s door calling out for her son and thinking Min’s apartment was his and then he or Min would patiently take her back to her own apartment. Somebody came and moved her away shortly after her son killed himself, but for a while there she’d still come banging on Min’s door looking for him, calling out his name.

Soon after that there was a massive blizzard, the storm of the century they called it, when Cherkis was trapped in a restaurant and Min was alone with Logan and he was twelve days old and all the apartment windows were completely iced up so that it seemed like they were living inside a crystal, or a Christmas ornament, and there was nothing for Min to do but nurse Logan and hold him and take pictures of him and stare at him and listen to True Stories by the Talking Heads and teach herself how to juggle with the tiny Pampers diapers she’d roll up real tightly into balls after Logan had peed in them.

I thought about telling all that to Logan. Maybe Min already had. Or maybe you don’t want to hear that right after being born you came home to a dead guy next door. I didn’t know if that was the sort of thing Logan would think was mildly interesting, colourful, or just a really bad omen. Conversing with children is a fine art, I realized. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word. Or a gradual release of information like time-controlled vitamins. Either way, my own befuddled attempts were pathetic and I really wanted to have more than odd, cryptic conversations with Logan and Thebes.

My mother and I were at Min and Cherkis’s apartment before they brought Logan home from the hospital. Min and Cherkis were young, barely twenty years old, and their apartment was a mess. My mom made Swedish meatballs and washed all of their dishes and cleaned the bathroom. I set up the baby mobile above Logan’s crib and ran up and down four flights of stairs to do their laundry. When they got in, we all crowded around Logan and stared at him and whispered our compliments and beautiful wishes for their fantastic future together. Cherkis held Logan close to his chest — he’d taken his shirt off so Logan could feel his beating heart — and carried him from room to room telling Logan this is the living room, and this is the kitchen, and, buddy, this is the bedroom where you’ll sleep. He took down a photograph he’d taken of a bleeding, screaming punk band because he thought it would disturb Logan and mess up his chi.

We all had some champagne, except for Min, who didn’t want Logan getting drunk on her breast milk, and then Min and Cherkis lay down with Logan between them and my mom put out the incense they’d left burning in the living room and I bent over and kissed them all good night and then my mom came back into the bedroom and also kissed them all good night and then we left.

Did you know, said Thebes, that there’s a shrine in Tokyo, in this park, Yoyogi Park, where you can buy a charm against all evil. All evil!

No, I didn’t, I said.

And did you know that there’s this really tiny building somewhere in Colombia, or maybe Ecuador, that is the official world headquarters of the Department of Unanswered Letters. To work there it’s mandatory that you have a history of killer depression, but I don’t think—

Is that supposed to be a joke or what? said Logan.

Why, do you think depression is funny? said Thebes.

No, but I’m just saying…the way you delivered it sounded like a joke.

Depression’s not a joke, yo, said Thebes.

I know it’s not a joke, said Logan. I said the way you told that anecdote sounded like you were…like it was supposed to be a joke. Forget it.

Hey, said Thebes. How did you know that was air conditioner fluid?

I tasted it, I said.

Logan looked at me and frowned. That might have seemed like a really good idea at the time, he said, but maybe you should have taken a minute or even possibly two minutes to think about what you were doing.

I told you I wasn’t qualified to be talking about that stuff, I said. Logan smiled and it was like…I don’t know what it was like. A hurricane. Childbirth. Heroin. It rocked my world for a few seconds.

Hey, said Thebes, I read something about miners drinking their own urine in order to—

I read that too, said Logan.

Well, then, said Thebes, you know to mix it with tree bark, right? So the uric acid is killed? If you get stuck in an underground mine that’s what you have to do.

There aren’t any trees down there, genius, said Logan.

Well, Stephen Hawking, said Thebes, experienced miners bring their own bark just in case.

And then an animal jumped in front of our van and we hit its rear end and went skittering off the road, spun around and landed backwards in the ditch, but right side up.

What the fuck just happened? said Logan.

We hit a deer, said Thebes. I think it was a deer. Hattie, you killed it!

Are you serious? said Logan.

Oh my god, said Thebes. I can’t believe we hit a deer. Why didn’t you stop?

I didn’t see it at all, I said. It was just there.

Oh my god, said Thebes.

Holy fuck, said Logan.

Are you guys okay? I said.

They said yeah and then we got out of the van and wandered down the highway a ways to see if the deer was still alive but it was lying in the middle of the road and there was blood everywhere and it looked dead. Its eyes were open. I picked up a small stone from the shoulder and slid it gently across the pavement. It hit the deer but the deer didn’t blink or move. Thebes started to cry, she said she was now impeccably sad, and Logan put his arm around her shoulder.

We have to get him out of the middle of the road, I said.

Thebes said she couldn’t touch him. Why did he do that? she said. I mean, like, why?

They just do, I told her. They don’t get traffic.

Logan and I walked over to the deer and grabbed its hind legs and dragged it to the side of the road. Thebes didn’t want to leave the deer, but I told her I’d call someone from the next gas station, some wildlife officer, and they’d take the deer away. There was blood and clumps of fur on the front bumper of the van and a big dent. Logan tried to get the blood off by throwing water on it from the cooler but it didn’t really work, it just turned streaky. Then when I tried to start the van the ignition fell right out of the steering column and I had to use a screwdriver to get it going. Logan picked up the ignition for a closer look and I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.

Are you okay? I asked him.

Yeah, totally, he said. You?

Well, I’m a little freaked out, I said. We just hit a deer.

Thebes couldn’t stop crying.

Hey, T., said Logan, do you wanna play Hangman? You can start.

They played for a long time and Logan played by all of Thebes’s goofy rules and she finally stopped crying and cheered up and Logan climbed back over into the front seat.

Logan was writing or drawing something. Is that a sketchbook? I asked him.

No, he said. It was a black, hardcover notebook with blank, unlined pages. Some of the pages had sketches on them. It looks exactly like a sketchbook, I said.

Mmm, he said.

It is a sketchbook, said Thebes. He doesn’t want people to know about it though.

You mean like your song lyrics? I asked her.

Shut up! she said, and dropped back.

Logan read something out loud, something his art teacher had written about one of his sketches. Logan, she’d written, this is an assignment tailor-made for your particular strengths…weird but fascinating creatures/shapes…very dreamlike.

On the outside of his notebook he had a bunch of strange drawings and odd numbers. He read those to me too.

380 off the dribble

220 off the dribble

80 2 dribble

80 crossover

200 free throws

Ideal: 30 ft., 300 off the dribble, 500 3s, 150 mid-range

Ball handling

Weight, running, jumping

20 wind sprints over 90 minutes

BALL MOVEMENT

Take it to the cup

Fuck the People

Darkleaf

What was that last part? I asked him.

My music, he said.

They say we should wear goggles, said Thebes. The wind is that strong today. She was reading the newspaper. Then she was quiet for a minute. What do you guys think about setting yourself on fire as a means of protest? she asked. Quiet for another minute. We didn’t bother to answer.

Okay, Hattie, she said, you’re a Gemini and that’s an air sign, which means you live more in your head than in your heart and you should try to remember and understand that all of humanity is interconnected and you should also try to be at one with the world and know that if you hurt somebody you’re also hurting yourself.

Got it, I said, although I thought it would be easier to light myself on fire.

I pulled into a gas station and told the guy behind the counter that I’d hit a deer about ten miles back and it was lying dead on the side of the road and asked if he could call someone to have it taken away. He said yeah and asked me if there was any damage to the vehicle and I said yeah, but just a big dent, and the ignition fell out.

The ignition fell out? he said.

Yeah, but I can start it with a screwdriver, I said.

He said well, okay, fine, but if the impact had loosened up the ignition so it fell out then maybe other things would start falling off too, and I said, okay, thanks, we’ll watch out for them, and we left.

So, we’re in a boat, said Logan. This was a dream he had had a few nights ago. And, yeah, he said, we’re just in it floating around in the ocean, and then Grandpa comes up and he’s smiling, this big, huge smile, and, you know, we’re all hauling him into the boat and he says, Man, am I happy to see you guys! He had a moustache, said Logan.

No, he didn’t have a moustache, I said. Logan hadn’t ever actually seen his grandpa.

Well, in my dream he did, he said.

I wanted Logan to keep talking about his dreams and his sketchbook or anything else at all.

Read me this, I said. I handed him his CD case. I wanted to hear his voice so I could remember its exact tone and timbre when I was back in Paris hunting down my boyfriend. So I’d be able to hear Logan saying to me, Jesus, Hat, give it up, man, fuck. But then when he actually did talk it was a question that took me by surprise.

Hey, he said, were you around when Mom first went off the deep end?

No, I said.

No? he said. Well, where were you?

Well, I mean, yeah, I said. I mean, I guess so.

And? he said.

She’d gone out late one evening in February to have a nap under a tree in the field behind the giant Discount Everything store a few blocks from our house. It was so cold our pipes froze that night. It was my job to thaw them out. I had to wrap them up in blankets and then sit on the floor using a hair dryer to blow hot air on them. A barrel fuse blew that night too, and I had to rummage around in the dark with a flashlight.

I remember peering over the fuse box saying, stove, fridge, dryer, stove, fridge, dryer, over and over, trying to figure it out. It was a record cold night, minus fifty-something with a deadly wind chill. Our house was shaking, none of our doors would close, and empty pizza boxes were flying past our windows. It was the kind of night where if you froze to death they’d have had to set up a tent around your body with giant industrial heaters in it, just to be able to peel you off the ground. Even the cool kids were walking backwards down the street to keep the wind from killing them. It was snowing horizontally and the streets all over the city were buckling and collapsing and swallowing up traffic.

It’s so beautiful, Min said when they found her under that tree. She said she’d seen an airplane explode in the air and crash. The cops said later that she’d almost frozen to death but not quite. She’d been out there for two and a half hours. One of them said she was shaking hands with God.

So she had to go to the hospital for a few weeks.

When she came home she thought her fingers would have to be cut off and then her hands and then even her arms, right above the elbow. She said she wouldn’t even be able to wipe her own ass. Nothing we could say would convince her that she was fine, that nothing would be amputated, and then one day she started doing it herself, cutting deep rivets into her wrists, getting it over with, and she had to go back to the hospital for quite a long time.

When she got home, our mother slept with her at night, in Min’s bed, and sometimes I’d curl up at their feet or on the floor in front of her door so she wouldn’t run away. When she was well enough to leave the house I’d follow her. She’d walk for miles sometimes, never stopping at a friend’s place or a store or a park or anything at all, just walking, quickly, and staring at her feet or off into the middle distance. One evening I had convinced her not to go for a walk. I begged her to stay at home and play gin rummy with me and she agreed to, and she made us milk-shakes and popcorn and she told me that she had known that I’d been following her and that she wasn’t angry about it but that I didn’t have to do it any more.

Are you afraid I’ll do something stupid? she asked me, and I said yeah, I was, and she promised me she wouldn’t, although she really couldn’t understand why I would care, and I told her because I loved her, and she smiled and shook her head like I was a complete fool.

Logan had carved Don’t take this the wrong way into the dashboard.

Don’t take what the wrong way? I asked him.

Just, you know what, he said. Try not to be so literal.

Thebes popped up from the back. Where’s North America again? she asked.

Oh my god, said Logan. He shrank into his hoodie.