The Flying Troutmans (6 page)

Yeah, said Thebes. At the last second some Kenyan shepherd yanked her out of the way.

Hmm, I said, she liked to travel around the world getting into trouble and being rescued. In that way she
was a little like Min. In that way she was a little like all of us. Once, I mentioned off-handedly to her that I was sometimes afraid of Min, that I wished I didn't have to share a room with her because I was tired of staying up late, night after night, waiting for Min to fall asleep first so I wouldn't have to worry about her stabbing me in my sleep. I'd kind of been kidding, but I'd wanted my mother to know that although I was young, and although I loved my sister, and although I
usually
trusted her, I didn't
always
trust her. My mother scooped me up in her arms and laughed and said I didn't have to worry, really, Min was only a danger, and a slight danger at that, to herself. I hadn't known exactly how that was supposed to be reassuring. I put bubble wrap on the floor around my bed, just in case, so I'd be able to hear it popping if she walked towards me late at night with a butcher knife in her hand. Nothing that crazy ever did happen.

 

We were zipping along the highway towards the U.S. border. Not a single cloud in the sky, just a jet stream that resembled arthritic vertebrae and a few bossy crows swooping around up high, plotting some sort of attack. We were quiet now, for about six seconds, staring out the windows of the van in three different directions.

Then Thebes said, Min told me a story about you.

Yeah? I said.

About you guys renting scooters in Corfu and riding on a road that circled and circled and rose and rose until you were finally at the highest peak of the island, said
Thebes. Nothing but blue sky, rock and sea. Kids threw pomegranates at you and old men laughed. On the way back down you took a turn too sharply and wiped out and scraped layers of skin off your legs.

We had such a hard time getting off that island, I said. Our parents had paid for that trip after one of Min's melt-downs. Logan was just a baby and Cherkis took care of him while we were gone. Cherkis brought us to the airport and waved to us from the observation deck with Logan all curled up against his chest in a Snugli.

Why? Weren't there boats? asked Thebes.

Well, yeah, I said, but the one we wanted to take left every morning at six and we could never get up on time. That went on for days.

Well, did you have an alarm clock, like a tiny travel one? she asked.

No, we didn't have anything at all, I said. We were counting on the sun.

That's flaky. What about a rooster? Did you have any roosters?

No. Just the sun. If we'd had a rooster, we'd have eaten it.

Well, why didn't you stay up all night? she asked.

We tried that, I said.

And?

And it didn't work either, I said. We couldn't stay up past three or four.

Why not?

I don't know. We were so baked from the sun and probably dehydrated and malnourished.

Oh, said Thebes.

Logan's chin clunked onto his chest and then snapped back up, then down again. He was out.

Hey, let's draw on him, said Thebes. She was waving around a Sharpie.

No, don't, I said.

I'll put
666
on his forehead.

No, don't, I said again.

But eventually you got off the island, she said.

Yeah, I said, so then finally, there was this guy, his name was Pantilas, I think, something like that, and he hated us, so he told us he'd make sure to get us to the boat on time.

Why did he hate you?

Because we were terrible olive pickers, I said. We tried to work for him.

Nothing you guys did worked out! she said.

 

I adjusted my rear-view mirror and considered my current plan. Min had told me that at one point Cherkis was the curator of an art gallery in the middle of a field somewhere outside Murdo, South Dakota. It was an old, abandoned farmhouse. Cherkis had crammed all his art onto the main floor and was living in the second storey and the attic. He had taken a lot of blurry photographs. Min had once told me that Cherkis's life's work had been, maybe still was, to create the perfect level of pixel breakdown without compromising the essence of the image. He didn't feel right about charging admission and hated
the idea of advertising, plus nobody really showed up anyway, where the hell is Murdo, let alone a field outside of it, let alone a dilapidated farmhouse/gallery, so eventually, actually really quickly, he went broke. But that's where we were going. Point A.

So, Murdo, eh? said Thebes.

Yeah, I said. He won't be there, but maybe there'll be someone who knows where he went.

He used to balance me on his face when I was a baby, and he tie-dyed all my onesies, said Thebes. Min told me.

Logan remembered smashing into a tree while trying to show off his flashing runners and Cherkis carrying him eight or nine blocks all the way to the hospital. They were both covered in Logan's blood. Cherkis held him down while the Emergency staff stitched up Logan's head, then he returned his kid intact to Min, and, with streaks of blood still on his face, left town in a silver rental car loaded with options.

 

five

I' D FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE BORDER.
Logan had dozed off again. I yanked on his hoodie and told him to wake up.

What the
F,
he said. Where are we?

Checkpoint Charlie, said Thebes. Act natural. We cruised past the wanky little “tuck stand,” as Logan called our Canada Customs building. Nobody was coming into
Canada, the guy inside the cracked booth looked like he was busy counting his ribs or something, and we pulled up to the shiny space-station Star Wars thing on the American side.

Don't say anything, Thebie, I mean it, I said to her.

Geez Louise! she said. Bust a cap in my—

Seriously, keep your mouth shut. Please? I'll give you a dollar.

I will too, said Logan.

Thebes dropped out of sight and hit the floor of the van.

No, no, I said, don't lie on the floor, Thebie, they'll think we're kidnapping you. She popped up again, sat there in this ridiculously erect position, and mimed zipping up her lips and throwing away the key.

Hello, I said to the guy. How are you?

He ignored the question and asked me where we were from, where we were headed (family reunion in Minneapolis) and how long we'd be gone (forty-eight hours). These your kids? he asked.

No, they're my niece and nephew. They wanted to ride with me, uh, but their parents are going too. Flying. I stuck my arms out and made a whooshing sound that I'll regret all my life.

Is that true? the guy asked Logan.

Yeah.

This your aunt? he asked Thebes.

Nothing.

Hey there, darlin', said the guy, this your aunt?

Nothing.

Logan turned around and looked at her. I stared straight ahead into the great nation of America, waiting for the onset of dogs and AK-47s.

She doesn't talk, said Logan. Like, she can't. She's profoundly retarded.

The guy looked at me. She don't talk? he said.

Right, I said. She makes sounds sometimes but it's impossible to know what she means. I felt Thebie's foot through the back of my seat, gradually exerting pressure.

Her folks should get her checked out, said the guy.

Oh, I know, they have, but—

It's your guys' health care, right? he said. Socialism is really nice in theory but not when you've got a retarded kid that needs treatment, right?

I smiled. Yeah, exactly, I said.

It's too bad, he said. He looked at Thebes, shook his head.

I know, I said. Logan cleared his throat and started tapping the dashboard with his foot.

All right, said the guy, well, y'all have a good reunion. It's real sweet you're taking her with you.

Hey, yeah, I said. Thanks. She likes to travel.

 

Thebes picked up a book and lay down in the back seat. What are you reading? I asked her.

Corporate Media: Threat to Democracy,
she said.

Thebes, man, said Logan, just say “this” and then hold up the book. God. Like you would actually say “Corporate Media: Threat to Democracy.”

Well, she said, I don't date a girl who wets her bed.

She doesn't wet her bed, said Logan.

She wears Batman bedsheets, said Thebes.

Logan turned up the volume on his Discman and then stuck his head out the window like one of those stop signs that pops out of the side of a school bus. Thebes said that if she was eighteen and old enough to drink she'd start a book club.

We drove straight south into the heartland. Billboards told us not to abort our fetuses or to let our sins get us down or to worry about our bad credit and criminal records. For instant cash all we had to do was call a certain number. Bingo. Logan pulled his head back into the van and took a knife from his pocket.

What the hell is that? I asked him. A shiv?

Don't say “shiv,” he said. He started to carve something into the dashboard.

Whoa, I said, stop that. He kept carving. Stop that! I said again.

What's he doing? asked Thebes. What's he doing? She was sucking on ice that she'd taken out of the cooler and water was dripping down her face and onto her terry cloth outfit. She took an ice cube out of her mouth and rubbed it on her forehead and then popped it back into her mouth. She was wearing a necklace with a huge, pear-sized plastic jewel dangling from it and a ring with an angel, arms outstretched.

Where'd you get that? I asked her.

Logan, she said. For Christmas.

My hands were shaking. We passed a lot of fields and
a few houses and a barn with giant words painted on the side. Bubba Where Are You, it said.

I miss Min, said Thebes. She leaned forward and put an arm around each of us.

I know, I said. I wanted to ask her why she regretted being born, if it was a knife-in-the-heart all-consuming regret or an intermittent, passing regret like a loose tooth you worry with your tongue every once in a while. I didn't know how to say the words. I didn't know how I'd answer her answer.

Why can't she be happy? asked Thebes.

She often is, I said. Life takes a long time.
What the hell does that mean, anyway?
Why would I say that to a kid who was already regretting being born?

Thebes sat back and tapped her Sharpie against her teeth. In the rear-view mirror I saw her squint against the setting sun like a desperado trying to get oriented.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
I was bracing myself for another question I wouldn't be able to answer. But she didn't ask it. Just kept knocking on her teeth with her marker and staring out at the darkening world. Logan had ignored my plea about not carving into the van and had written into the dash the words
Fear Yourself.

Okay, that's it, we're stopping somewhere to eat, I said. This is what parents do when they're stumped, I thought. They feed their children.

Like what, said Logan, are we gonna graze in a field? I don't see any restaurants.

Sandwiches in the cooler, I said. Ham and cheese. There's fruit.

Awesome, he said. Budget.

We're not gonna eat in restaurants the whole time, I said. I had a wad of cash in my backpack that I hoped would get us through. I pulled into a rest stop next to a shitting chihuahua and two old RVers reading a newspaper at a picnic table.

We got out and walked around awhile, stretching our bodies, enjoying less proximity to each other, and I smoked a cigarette behind the women's can until Thebes caught me and told me I was going to get AIDS. There was only one picnic table, so the three of us squeezed in next to the old couple and ate our sandwiches.

Where are you headed? the man asked.

Um, Murdo? I said.

Never heard of it, he said.

I told him I hadn't either until yesterday.

Honey, said the woman, ask your mom for a napkin. She was talking to Thebes, who had mayonnaise and mustard running down her face.

Logan ignored us all. He had his giant air traffic controller headphones on and his hoodie up and was staring intensely at the chihuahua like he was wondering what the most painful way of killing it might be.

Is that your natural colour of hair? the man asked Thebes.

Yo! Dude! It's purple! What do
you
think?

I gave her a nudge under the table and passed her a paper bag to wipe the stuff off her face. She put it over her head and drew a face on it, blind. Big cartoon eyes and a mouth where the nose should be. I told her to go get the
Frisbee, and without removing the bag she stumbled and weaved and crashed her way to the van. She finally took the bag off her head and she and I threw the Frisbee around for a while before Logan joined in. He tried to make each of his throws deflect off the van's windshield and then he decided that we should play Frisbee
through
the van, with both side doors open and Thebes sitting on the seat
in
the van. She was entirely down with that and Logan had a blast whipping the Frisbee inches from her face, until he accidentally hit her and her nose bled, she cried, he apologized, said she was stand-up for playing the game, apologized again, and again, she forgave him with a karate kick to the 'nads, which he handled with an off-hand grace, said he deserved it, the old people shook their heads like bobblehead dolls and we all hit the road once again.

 

We kept driving south down the I-29, past the tiny hamlets of Wahpeton and Harkinson and Sisseton. Thebes said we should drive in directions that spelled something, like a giant word carved by us into the American landscape.

What word did you want to spell? I asked her.

Min,
she said.

I traced the letters of my sister's name in my mind and realized there were no curves, so it might even have been possible to write her name in giant, hundred-mile-long letters if the roads had matched up with the lines, but they didn't. There were rivers and mountain ranges and deserts and gullies that separated
M-I-N
from posterity on the map.

By the time the sun had almost set, the kids had dozed off again. Thebes was curled up in a ball in the front now and Logan had stretched out in the back. I could hear the faint bass coming from his headphones and ice cubes sloshing around in the cooler. Giant, endless semis blasted past us and I waved to the drivers every time but they couldn't see me in the dark. I was looking for a cheap motel with a pool and free breakfast.

Thebes woke up and asked me what was going on. Help me find a motel, I said.

Will you give me a dollar?

Yeah.

What kind of motel?

Like in
Psycho
—have you seen it?

Yeah, she said.

Yeah? I said. Really? Aren't you kind of young?

Everybody knows
Psycho,
she said.

Yeah, but it's an old movie, I said.

Logan owns the original, said Thebes. She started doing the music from the shower scene. She told me that one time she'd pulled a Norman Bates on Min and it had gone badly. She was in the shower so I decided to attack her, she said. It wasn't a good idea. It was a bad choice, like they say in Guidance, she told me, which I never go to any more, by the way, since Mrs. Zefferelli told us that ultimately we're all alone in the world. Oh, said Thebes, going into one of her voices. Like, thanks, man! You're the Guidance teacher and you're basically, like, okay, kids, get lost, every man to himself, you're a rock, I'm an island, we're alone, we have no one, we die and then we rot. Scene.

What happened with the Norman Bates thing? I asked her.

Min screamed, she said. Okay, that worked. But then she stopped screaming and she sat down in the corner of the shower and started crying. I just stood there on the other side of the curtain and whispered that I was sorry and all that. I didn't know what to do. And then I decided to stick my hand around the curtain and try to hold Min's hand.

Did you find it? I asked.

Yeah, said Thebes, she took my hand and so we were just holding hands like that, with the curtain between us. And she was sitting down all naked and crying. My sleeve was getting soaked but I didn't mind.

That's nice, though, I said. I mean…holding her hand like that. Like walking in the rain.

And then I told her again that I was sorry for scaring her, said Thebes. I told her I was being Norman Bates, and she was all, like, she knew that, she just hadn't been expecting it, that's all.

Mmm, yeah, well…, I said.

And then, said Thebes, I realized my Norman Bates would never work if she expected to expect it every time. I mean the whole point—

Yeah, I said. Yeah.

Thebes spotted a motel, low-slung with lots of neon, a tiny outdoor pool and a basketball net. There was a permanent vacancy sign flickering on and off in the window next to the front desk and a sign that said No Repares Aloud in Lot. Logan shot hoops outside in the dark while Thebes and I checked in.

He's gonna have to stop that at eleven, said the woman behind the desk.

When we got to the room we stood next to the bed and stared at it. Thebes still had half-moons of dried blood around the edges of her nostrils from being hit in the face with the Frisbee. Do you ever wash? I asked her. Am I supposed to tell you to?

She decided that instead we'd all go swimming. She told me to go over to the window and look outside while she changed into her bathing suit.

There were two people sitting in a car in the parking lot, an older guy in a suit and a girl with a ponytail and an orange ball cap. The girl was giving the guy a hand job. Her arm was flying back and forth fast, like a school kid rubbing out mistakes with an eraser. It looked painful. The guy's eyes were squeezed shut.

Tada! said Thebes.

Hey, cute suit, I said. Let's go! I tried to hustle her away from the window.

You don't even have your bathing suit on, she said. I'll look away and you can change.

No, I don't feel like swimming, I said. I'll watch you, though. I could throw things into the water that you could dive for. Hey, I said, did you know that right after you were born Min and Cherkis put you in a little pool and you swam, naturally, like a champ.

Really? said Thebes. Were they trying to drown me?

No, I said, of course not, it was just something that they'd heard infants knew how to do.