This is the Part Where You Laugh (16 page)

I think about my mother, my mother who sleeps somewhere along the river in a tarp camp, braved against wet, my mother who rolls herself in a blanket, tucks her hair into her sweatshirt collar and slides the hood on, folds the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her balled-up fists to keep out the cold.

Sometimes I get mad or jealous when I think about other people's parents, but mostly I get confused. Why are some people the way they are, while other people are like my mom? It's easy to say it's the drugs, but what was before that? Maybe we need to ask more questions.

I lean forward, post my good arm on the couch's armrest, and push myself to a standing position. The pills cut the pain but not the stiffness, and I walk like an old man to the kitchen. I make sandwiches, double the meat, and cut thick slices of cheese. Add lettuce and tomato, mustard, but no mayonnaise. She hates mayonnaise.

I wrap the two sandwiches in wax paper and slide them into a brown lunch sack. Then I put some Doritos in a Ziploc, and throw in an apple. I open the refrigerator and look around, but the only thing I see to drink is one of my Gatorades. So I grab that. Pick up a backpack from the floor in my room. Put my jar of cash in the bottom, everything else on top. Zip it closed. It doesn't weigh much, but still I slide it onto my back so slow. Loosen the straps until the bag's not touching the long bruise on my back, but dangling from my shoulders and hitting my butt instead.

I step back to the coffee table and take one more Percocet out of the bottle. Swallow it dry and look for my Tang glass. But it's empty.

I go outside, grab my bike, and get on. Sitting there hurts, even without anything touching my back. I wince a little as I start to pedal, but the stabbing pains in my ribs are muted by the pills. The pain is there but far away, like it's happening to someone else, and I pedal slowly through the park toward the entrance.

The bike ride is three miles to 1st Street, near Washington, near the courts, and I struggle the whole way. The third pill kicks in and makes me feel like everything around me is covered in tinfoil, bright shiny in the sunlight, but my back and ribs are too tight. Pulses of tightness radiate up into my neck. My left shoulder is sore and stiff as I keep it extended to grip my handlebars.

I get off my bike at the bridge and lock it. Walk under the shadows. Start looking for her. On the pylon wall there are blue letters that say
BOB MARLEY 420
. A mural of his face above them, a blunt hanging from his lips. Around the back of that wall, someone wrote
PHILOSPOHY IS LOW-HANGING FRUIT
,
and another person drew a line through the word “fruit” and wrote
TESTACLES
in its place.

I walk the ivy paths, check the overgrowth near the Maple Garden. Look across to Delta. There are three homeless men there, drinking Steel Reserve in 24-ounce cans, all of them at least 10 years older than my mom. I don't find anyone else in that area, so I look along the construction site, where the skate park is being built, always out of funding. On the underside of the ramp, I find a young couple, a boy and a girl close to my age, both of them with split hands, yellow cracks oozing at the ends of their fingernails.

The girl's drooling.

The boy says, “Got a smoke, bro?”

I shake my head.

“Money?”

I shake my head again.

I try both bathroom doors near the second bridge pylon, but they're locked. The graffiti on the door reads
YOUR MOTHER SUCKS IT AND SWALLOWS
. An orange spray-painted dinosaur is stenciled above the door handle. Below that a blue penis going into two slits that I'm guessing are supposed to be a vagina. Black trees and red paint underneath that reads
MURDER ROBOTS KILL.

I check along the fences and blackberries that run the railroad tracks through the center of the park. There's a woman about my mom's age, but she has thick dark hair that's dreadlocked down to her waist and she's reading Proverbs from the Bible out loud.

I say, “Do you know a woman who goes by Sally down here?”

“No,” she says, “but I know a few women. Is she your age?”

“Older,” I say. “Twice as old. I'm trying to find her.”

“Don't know, but the Lord will provide.” The woman taps the Bible with her finger. Flips the pages back to an earlier chapter. “The 23rd, you know it? ‘The Lord is my shepherd'?”

“I think I've heard that.”

“My name's Medusa,” the woman says. “Medusa reading a Bible, huh?” She laughs like a lit cigarette. Coughs with her tongue out. Takes a deep breath. “So if it says here that the Lord will provide?”

I reach into my bag and pull out one of the sandwiches. “Do you need some food?”

Medusa smiles, two front teeth missing. “Are you the Lord, then?” She laughs again.

I hold out the sandwich and she takes it. Then I keep walking.

Check the benches along the west side, up to the courts. There's no one playing in the middle of the day, and I look at the double rims and the graffiti against the girders. There's a painting of a knife slicing open a face, the eyeball popping out. Underneath, it says
THE EUG—187.

The bridge traffic above me is constant, the
clunk, clunk
of the cars and trucks, and I look around again, but I don't bother calling her name because she'd never hear me anyway. I walk west through the Whitaker neighborhood for a couple of blocks, check alleys and along fences where the hedges are thick, but I don't find anyone other than an old man sleeping faceup in the middle of an alley, his arms outstretched to each side, his hands open like he's nailed in that position.

I walk back to the bridge. At my bike, I open the Gatorade and drink half of it. Unwrap the other sandwich and eat it, lean against the wall, and finish the rest of the food. A homeless man walks by me as I eat and says to me, “Keep your head up, brother. I've been there too.”

Then I get back on my bike and ride home.

Before I head down to my tent, I walk over to Mr. Tyler's house and take a piss. Since I'm too sore to run away, I don't go up on his porch. Instead, I hide in the shadow between his car and the side of his house, whip it out, and piss all over the hood of his Buick. With the pills making me drift a little, I rock back and forth and feel the piss surging, watch it splash over the shiny silver, smell the urine and metal as my piss runs off the hood and leaks through the seam, down into the engine compartment. I smile to myself as I finish, standing there staring at the car's hood. Then I zip up and walk back to my tent.

In the middle of the night, I wake up to a noise. I don't know what it is, just that the noise wakes me. Something's there. I sit up quickly and a shock of pain jolts through my rib cage. I groan, suck in a breath, pant, and try to relax my back and ribs while looking out into the dark. I get onto my knees and lean on my good arm. Feel like someone is trying to take apart my rib cage.

Something hisses.

I look but can't see anything. It hisses again, not far away. It's so dark that I don't know exactly where it is even though I can hear it. I get low and look for its outline. Then I see it. More than four feet long, the caiman looks like it's grown, and it's just outside my left-side tent door, only a few feet away.

I want to zip my tent door closed, but I don't want to startle the caiman. I look around for a stick, but there's nothing between me and the small crocodile. I have a knife somewhere in my things at the other end of the tent, and I think about that knife but I don't move to get it.

I stay still. Wait.

The caiman stays still too. He closes his mouth and opens it again. I scooch down a little toward my pile of stuff, closer to my knife, and the caiman waddles forward and hisses again. I stop moving then. He's only two or three feet from me, right outside my tent, close enough that he could step inside. He stays there, mouth open.

I have no idea what to do. I stare at the outline of that open mouth, a mouth half as long as the body behind it. The caiman's not the biggest animal I've ever seen, but it's crazy-looking. It could take my hand off, or my whole arm if it got ahold of me and thrashed a little.

I notice something hard under my right hand, glance down, and see it's Grandma's copy of
Crime and Punishment.
It's a hardback, has some weight to it. I slide my fingers underneath the book, raise it slowly, so slowly, until it's next to my head.

The caiman waits there, not hissing, just there, mouth open, at the edge of my tent door. I count in my head—
one, two, three
—then I swing. Hard. Bring the book down on the caiman's nose, at the end of its top jaw, and the caiman's mouth closes. It backs up a little. I throw the book at it, but I miss. I scurry back, crawl inside and fumble for the zipper, zip the door closed, then turn around and zip the other door closed as well. The caiman is scrabbling around out there, hissing and thumping its tail, and I feel around for my headlamp until I find it by my pillow.

Then I notice the pain in my ribs again, and realize that I'm wheezing and wincing from a feeling like box cutters separating cartilage in my back, like three or four people are back there cutting me open at the same time. I try to move into a more comfortable position. Get back on my knees, then lean forward. Rest on my hands. My head is low, next to the tent's air vent. I look out, try to see the caiman, but can't. I shine the light through, and then I see it. The caiman's only five feet away, on the grass, the hardback book in its mouth. It's attacking
Crime and Punishment
, and the book is hanging lopsided from its jaws while it turns in a circle. The caiman releases it, then snatches it up again, ripping off the front cover. It's grunting as it takes the book apart. Then it thrashes its tail and waddles a few steps, dropping off the bank, down onto the gravel by the lake, and I can't see it anymore.

I take two Vicodin pills and lie down on my side. Listen for the caiman, but he's gone.

In the morning, I'm sore and stiff, and I groan as I sit up. My ribs feel worse than ever. I peek through the open two inches of door on my left side. Turn around and look out the right-side door, opening it a crack, making sure the caiman isn't waiting for me.

After I piss into the lake, I look around for the book. Or what's left of it. The first third is just a wad of papers that I find in the blackberries. I pick them up, most of them single sheets, all of them torn in half. Then I look around and find the rest of the book up the shore 30 or so feet, lying next to a small rock. The back cover is still connected to the second half of the book, but it has gouges at an angle from the caiman's teeth. It looks like it's been chewed on and dragged around by a big dog.

I take what's left of the book up to the house. It's still early and my grandparents aren't awake yet. I put the remains of the book in a plastic grocery bag and set it next to the phone. Then I write a note:

Grandma, the book you loaned me is in this bag. Sorry that it looks like this. But I thought that if anyone would think it's funny, that CRIME AND PUNISHMENT looks like this, it's you.

Travis

I take two more Vicodin and walk to Natalie's. Knock on her front door.

She opens it and smiles. Takes my hand and walks me upstairs to her room. She's wearing a loose white shirt with the collar cut out, the open collar slid all the way to the edges of her tan shoulders. I can see both turquoise bra straps as I follow her up the stairs.

Her room is white. Bright white paint. A brass bed painted white. White bedspread. Four white pillows. Her white pine bookshelf is lined with an even row of hardbacks. No room in my grandparents' house looks anything like this. There are no clothes on the floor. No plates or wrappers. No crumpled newspapers. No magazines.

On a table on the far side of her bed is an aquarium with water in the bottom. Lily pads on the surface of the water. A flower and two vines. A frog at the waterline on the side of a hanging platform.

“My mom's gone.” Natalie kisses me. “Are you hurting?”

“Not too bad.”

“Are you on painkillers?”

“I just took some not too long ago.”

She peels off my shirt. “Lie on my bed. Facedown. Let me see your back.”

I lie on the white bedspread. It's thick and soft. Natalie sits next to me, runs her fingertips along the bruising on my back. “It still looks pretty bad.”

“I need it to heal quick.”

She walks around the bottom of the bed and comes to the opposite side. Lies down facing me. She runs her fingers along my arm. Says, “I think it can take a long time to heal ribs.”

I prop myself up on my good elbow. Wince a little.

She says, “I'm sorry you're hurt.”

“It's okay.”

She kisses me. We're kissing, and our bodies are next to each other. We kiss and I run my hand up her shirt, feel her abs, run my fingers over her skin and muscles. Then I slide my hand up, onto her bra. She presses into me, and I slide up on top of her. I run the tips of my fingers underneath the lace of her bra, against the soft skin. We're kissing and my fingers are against her bare breast. She's shifting against me and I'm breathing hard, she's breathing hard, and she feels so good underneath me, her legs spread, and everywhere our skin touches it's like I've added nerve endings.

She shifts once more, breathes into my mouth, and I'm heavy on top of her, pressing, her underneath me. I kiss her neck and reach down to pull her shirt up over her head, but she drops her elbows, leans away, and breathes. Stops. Looks away.

I stop.

She pushes my shoulder and slides out from under me.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I just—”

“I know,” she says. “It's fine.”

“Wait.”

“Everything's fine.” She stands up. “Sorry. You should go.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.” She's looking at the wall, but the scar under her eye is twitching.

“I'm sorry I—”

“No, you're fine. It's fine. You should just go, though, okay?”

“Natalie, I'm—”

“Will you just fucking leave?”

I stand up. Hold my hands above my head like she's got a gun pointed at me. “So I guess I'll just go then?”

“Thank you,” she says, and walks out of her room. I follow her. She leads me back down the stairs to the front door.

At the bottom of the stairs, I say, “Want to talk later?”

“Sure. Or whatever. I don't know.” She opens the front door.

“Look. I'm—”

“Stop.” She puts her hand on my chest. “It's fine. Really. Don't worry about it.” I walk out the door and she shuts it behind me.