This is the Part Where You Laugh (15 page)

I'm reading an old issue of
ESPN The Magazine
when Creature comes to my tent. He says, “I'm sorry you're hurt.”

I put the magazine down. “It's fine.” I try to stretch my back a little but it's too stiff. “If I could only play basketball…”

“I know.”

Creature has a backpack on. I point at it. “What's with the pack?”

“I decided to camp with you.” He drops his pack to the ground.

“Yeah?”

“My first camping ever.”

He pulls a Coleman flannel bag out of his pack, unrolls it, then reaches back in the pack for a mini
Star Wars
pillow. It's one of the old ones with Darth Vader on it. A red lightsaber. Blue background.

“Was that your mom's pillow when she was little?”

“She loves Darth Vader, baby. Any black man.” Creature winks at me. “And this pillow just proves I'm a camping pro.”

I scoot my bag over and try to organize my things. Make a stack of magazines and books, put my headlamp on top. Shove T-shirts to the corner. Keep both tent doors open, east and west, so the tent will air out and we won't feel like we're sleeping in the same bed. I say, “Here. Lay your stuff on this side. The breeze'll come through.”

Creature puts his bag down, his
Star Wars
pillow at the head. Gets his water bottle out of his pack and sets that next to his pillow. Then he pulls out a flashlight and turns it on. It's not quite dark yet, but he shines it in all the shadowed spaces in the tent. “Does anything ever crawl into your sleeping bag out here? Snakes or spiders or anything like that?”

“No.”

“You sure?” he says. “I mean, I've seen some huge bull snakes out here by the lake. Five feet long.”

“Yeah, but they don't come in the tent.”

“Okay.”

Creature keeps shining the flashlight. Spotlights a tiny spider down by our feet. “Can we kill that thing?”

“The spider that's smaller than a baby mosquito?”

“First,” Creature says, “baby mosquitoes bite the shit out of you. Second, spiders are spiders. They're all evil and sketchy.”

“Okay.” I grab the spider and throw it out of the tent.

“What the fuck was that?” Creature puts his fist to his mouth. “You just threw it out right next to our heads. You know that thing's just gonna crawl directly back in, right?”

“No it won't.”

“Yes it will.” Creature shines his flashlight on the long grass next to the tent, searching for the spider.

I say, “You want to hear a messed-up story?”

Creature does another sweep with his flashlight. Rechecks the corners of the tent. “No,” he says, “I don't want to hear a messed-up story.”

“It's good, though.”

“Good enough to scare the crap out of me for the rest of the night?”

“Maybe.”

“That's what I thought. And here's what'll happen. You'll tell your little story. Then, in a while, you'll be sleeping like a baby and I'll be wide awake staring into the darkness, waiting for something to crawl onto my face and bite me in the eyeball.”

“Man, Creat, you sure are fun to camp with.”

Creature rolls up onto his elbow and takes a drink of water. “Okay, fine. Tell me your stupid story.”

“Okay,” I say. “So you know how I did that wilderness experience for teens out of juvie?”

“Right. And that's why you like to camp so much now.”

“Exactly. So, one day, they showed us how to build primitive shelters and had us each make our own shelter and sleep in it for a night. No sleeping bag or anything, just survival-style, right?”

Creature shakes his head. “I can tell this is gonna be a bad story. I don't like it already.”

“It's fine, man. Just listen. Anyway, I built a good shelter. Spent all afternoon and evening making the structure and filling it with insulating grasses. And I felt pretty sure I was going to be warm enough.”

“But you weren't, right?”

“No, that wasn't the problem. I crawled in there just before dark, got all of the grass around me, made a pillow out of the grass for my head. It was comfortable enough and I fell asleep. But in the middle of the night, it rained.”

“How much? Did you get soaked?”

“No, I didn't. That wasn't the problem either. It rained a fair amount, but the counselors had taught me how to make a good shelter, and the rain slid off the outer layers of ponderosa bark to the side, and it was fine.”

“You know what?” Creature says. “I'm good. You don't have to tell the rest of this story. You were warm enough. You didn't get wet. Great story. THE END.” He turns his flashlight on once again and checks the seams of the tent above him.

I say, “I guess the rain filled all of the holes in the ground. There wasn't any water that came in the shelter or anything like that, or at least barely any water, but the rain went in all of the holes in the ground all around. Filled those holes. And the desert toads came up. They were calling to each other, croaking wild and crazy, and I could hear them as soon as it stopped raining.”

“Frogs? Okay. Frogs are fine. I thought this was a horror story, but frogs? I can handle frogs.” Creature clicks his flashlight off and lies back on his pillow. Sighs.

“But other things got flooded out of their holes too.”

“Oh no, no, no, no. Fuck that. What other things?” Creature turns his flashlight back on. “No, man, no. I don't want to hear this story anymore. I told you that already. And that's final. Good story. Great story. And it's the end now.”

I say, “Other things got washed out, but I didn't see them right away. I was listening to the toads croak, and I started to fall back asleep. Then I felt something crawling on me inside the shelter.”

“No! What the…?” Creature sits up. “Fuck this! Stop talking.”

“I had a light in my survival kit—the counselors made us carry our kits everywhere—but my kit was outside the shelter, and I didn't want to have to wriggle out of all of the insulation to grab it. So I tried to ignore whatever it was and let it crawl on past. But soon enough something was crawling in my hair too.”

“Seriously, T. What the hell, man?”

“So I had to get out and find my headlamp. I shook those two crawling things off, pushed all of the grass aside, and wriggled out of my shelter. There wasn't much of a moon, and I couldn't see until I got my light on. But when I did, oh my gosh…” I stop talking. Shake my head.

“What? What was it? No, don't tell me,” Creature says. “It's cool. Don't tell me. I'm good.” Creature holds his flashlight against his teeth. “No, wait, tell me. I have to know.”

“Big red spiders.”

“Oh no, no, no.” Creature taps his flashlight against his forehead. “No, you're making this up. Tell me you're making this up.”

“Big red spiders by the thousands.”

“Wait. Why? Why would there be thousands of spiders anywhere?”

“They were all crawling in the same direction, and my shelter was in their path, so a lot of them were trying to climb over it. I shined my light around and I couldn't believe it. Even if I wanted to squish them, to kill them all, I couldn't. It would've been impossible. I would've been crushing spiders for hours.” I start to laugh.

“What the…?”

“There were too many.”

Creature says, “I'm done with this story.”

“And I just stood and watched them. It was sort of cool in a crazy way.”

“No, man. No.” Creature shines his flashlight directly in my eyes. I block the light with my hands, laughing hard now. He says, “That's not cool. There's nothing cool about that. Cool is meeting a girl who plays point guard. Cool is reading a book you can't put down. Cool is dunking for the first time. It sure as hell isn't thousands of spiders crawling on you when you sleep.”

“No, but it was cool in a weird sort of way. They were all going the same direction. I asked the counselors about it, and they said that those big red spiders were just common ground spiders in central Oregon, that when it rains enough, they all get flooded out of their holes. So they come up and move. All together. They pick one direction to go to safety, and everyone goes that way. One counselor called it ‘a migration.' ”

Creatures shivers. “I'm not into that. I'm not into that at all.”

I say, “I didn't like them crawling on me. And I waited until they were all gone before I got back in my shelter.”

“What?” Creature sits all the way up. “You did what? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I had to sleep, man.”

“No, you did not have to sleep. You could've kept your flashlight ready. You could've kept watch all night. Or you could've gone back to the cabin.”

“But I didn't want to chicken out.”

“Just tell me this: Who would've judged you? No one. When you see thousands of big red spiders, you bail. That's it.” Creature's sitting on his butt, his arms wrapped around his knees. “Now I'm not going to sleep for a week. That was a messed-up story. Thanks a lot.”

“Those kinds of spiders don't even live here.”

“But there are other kinds. Are there any poisonous spiders that live here?”

“I don't know.”

“T, you have to tell me, baby. I can't go to sleep if you don't tell me.”

“I really don't know. Probably not.” But there are poisonous spiders here, and I do know. I know of at least three kinds of poisonous spiders that live in western Oregon, but I don't say that.

“Are you sure, baby?”

“Yep. We're good. I've slept more than 50 nights straight out here. Trust me. We're good.”

Creature breathes and looks around. “Maybe we should close the tent doors.”

“Okay.”

We zip them closed. Then the tent feels small, a little small for both of us lying in there.

Creature checks the tent one final time and turns his flashlight off. “I'm trusting you, all right?”

“Good. Now let's go to sleep.”

Creature lies back and I close my eyes.

A little while later, after I've fallen asleep and gone through part of a dream, Creature nudges me. “Wake up, T.” He's propped up on his elbow.

“What is it?” In my dream I was playing basketball against a team of blue herons, hundreds of them, a few dozen guarding me, others flying in front of the hoop. I couldn't get a shot off.

“After your scary-ass spider story,” Creature says, “you're not sleeping if I'm not sleeping.”

“What?” I'm still thinking about all of those blue herons.

“Because,” he says, “you're the one who told that horrible story about spiders.”

I'm lying on the west side of the tent, fully awake now, watching the sky. Creature's by the east door, a light wind coming through the mesh. I say, “I had a counselor at that camp that was obsessed with the stars. Always trying to teach me the constellations.”

“Yeah, you've told me about that. But where'd you live before that? With your mom.”

“The motels mostly. West Eugene in the weekly places.”

“Oh, I know some of those. We lived in a few the year before we came to this trailer park.”

I say, “Is that when your mom got disability?”

“Right.” Creature lies back down and folds his hands behind his head. “For the mental stuff. But it was good news since we got enough money each month to leave the motels. They were shit.”

“Yeah,” I say, “dirty and old. Cops always there.”

“And the manager of one of them was racist too,” Creature says. “I heard him call my mom a ‘nigger lover.' Heard him say, ‘Look what you did to your kid, mixing him up like that.' ”

“Yeah, fuck that.”

Creature laughs. “It's like the Deep South out there on the west end of town.”

“That's sorta true.”

I unzip the tent partway to lean my head out and look up at the sky. The stars multiply above me and the light of the Milky Way begins to glow. “Milky Way,” I say, and Creature leans out on his side.

I say, “How's your book coming, Creat?”

“Good. I have a new entry. Want to hear it?”

“You've got it with you?”

“Yeah.” Creature turns on his flashlight and sits up. Reaches into his backpack and pulls out two folded pages. Lies back again. Adjusts his head on his Darth Vader pillow and clears his throat.

Natalia Pavlovna Paley, you will be my first blond princess—dyed blond, but I won't tell people. I won't tell them about your Hungarian blood either. I'll let you be the American that you always wanted to be, as all women in New York are American, born or immigrated.

Many historians see you as the most beautiful Russian princess, a fashion girl, a model, but I won't reduce you to your looks. I won't talk about your catlike eyes, your
Mona Lisa
smile, the way you lean forward and put your face in your hands. I'll barely notice your long, thin body and the perfect swell of your breasts. When you are with me, I'll trail my fingers between your legs without noticing your thighs. I'll wait for you to dab perfume on the insides of your ankles and wrists, then smell your limbs with my eyes closed.

You were married to Lucien Lelong, the fashion magnate, a man who had no interest in women, and you tell me that he did not touch you. A “white marriage,” they call it. He touched only men. He was interested only in what men could offer, but not you.

You come to my room in the motel at night. I am asleep on the bunk above the water heaters in the boiler closet. It is more than 80 degrees in that room, and I sleep naked. You have a key and you slip in without waking me. I do not know that you are there until I hear the sound of your jeweled dress hitting the floor, followed by the softer sound of your slip falling away, the layers of your clothing slipping, and then the quiet nothing of your nakedness in the dark room, in the space next to my bunk.

I am awake and I wait with my eyes open. When you come to me, I will look. I will see the outlines of your shoulders, the outline of your hips. The only light in the room is the switchboard's red light marking you ready. You stand next to me, my eyes open, and you tremble, goose bumps on your skin, and you say, “I have never felt the weight of him.”

My weight waits.

You swim into my bunk with me, our bodies sinking the springs, the thin mattress sagging to a U, both of us in the low curve together, and we have to fight the blanket that's caught between us like the differences of our lives.

You say again, “I never felt the weight of him,” and I don't tell you that I've read of your affairs with Serge Lifar and Jean Cocteau, two men who are also only interested in men. Was it an affair, then? I want to ask you about that, about what brings you to men who do not want you. I want to ask you, Why? Or, Why now with me?

I know that there is nothing real in your stories, and that what is real is now, no words, no stories, but this bunk above the water heaters, the sweat of us in the heat, the warm damp, the tangle of our bodies.