This is the Part Where You Laugh (8 page)

In my tent, I can't stop thinking about Natalie, can't fall asleep. I keep thinking about how it would feel to kiss her, the smell of her hair when she leaned down next to me, her strong legs, those brightly colored bra straps, how she loves frogs and swims after them in the dark, how she reads alone at night on her dock, and the light of the lantern casting shadows across the angles of her body.

I imagine her in my small tent with me, how the tent would fill with the smell of her, her breath, her lips, her body on top of me, the good weight of her. Then I'd turn and roll on top, feel her underneath me.

I think about all of that, and pretty soon I'm wide, wide awake.

We slept in a Dumpster the first two times we got kicked out of motels, but that makes it sound a lot worse than it was. The Dumpster was mostly filled with cardboard, and the first time we slept in there, we slept between a new refrigerator box and a big brown box that said
FRAGILE
. Both smelled like paper.

We put our two suitcases in the Dumpster with us, our army blanket, and our sleeping bag. We swam down four layers in the cardboard before we laid out the blanket and pulled it flat, then settled in next to each other with the sleeping bag over the top of us.

I was fine until my mom said we had to shut the lid. I didn't want to do that.

She said, “You want someone to see us in here?”

“No.”

“Or to toss bottles in on top of us?”

“No,” I said. “We can shut it.”

So she shut the lid.

Then the Dumpster didn't smell as good. It still smelled like cardboard next to us, cardboard on both sides, but there were other smells that came through. Smells from the corners, smells from below us on the Dumpster's floor. And it didn't feel like there was quite enough air in there either. But we slept all night. We were fine.

We slept in the same Dumpster the next time, but it didn't smell as clean as before. When my mom closed the lid that second time, the bad smells were almost too much to fall asleep. But we were between layers of cardboard again, so I knew it could have been worse, and I finally did fall asleep. I had to pee in the middle of the night. I woke up having to go, and the dark of the Dumpster was too dark, and the smell of something near my head was overwhelming. I don't know what it was. But my mom was asleep, and I didn't wake her up. I kept counting to 100, waiting for morning, and at some point I fell back asleep with my hands between my legs, and I had a bad dream before I woke up and it was daylight. I'd peed my pants during the dream. I knew I was too old to do that, so I didn't tell my mom in the morning. I kept turning sideways so she wouldn't see the wet on the front of me, and I let it dry like that. Then it itched all day.

Walking down the street, we both smelled terrible. My mom said, “We can't do that again. Something's not right in that Dumpster.”

I nodded.

So after that, we slept down by the river anytime we got kicked out of a motel.

These I don't know well. But I worry about them because of what I've heard.

It rains 200 days a year in this valley. If you live outside, your feet will be wet. If you have bad shoes, your feet will be badly wet, always wet, soaked through and staying wet, never less than damp. Most of the fall, all of the winter, and most of the spring. Your socks will mildew, then mold, then rot. Your rotting socks against your skin will begin to rot your skin.

Your skin, once pink, is now white, thickened and spongy. I've been told that they call it “trench foot” because soldiers stood in water-flooded trenches for months during the wars. Trench foot is what the homeless have.

You need to change your socks. You need to air out your feet at least twice a day. You need to let your shoes dry, or find a second pair of shoes and trade off, back and forth.

But you don't have extra shoes. Extra shoes isn't what you're trying to score.

I can hear the screams from four houses away and since I'm the youngest resident on the loop, I get there first.

Maribel Calhoun is screaming, “Oh help me, God! Help me!”

I run around the side of her house and up her back stairs. When I jump onto her porch, I almost step on the caiman. It's right there on the porch, its head up. The caiman hisses as I plant my foot next to it and I jump, hurdle over a chair, and jump again. I slide behind the screen door. Pull that door back like a shield and stand behind it. “Oh my goodness….”

Mrs. Calhoun is right behind me, inside her house, the back door cracked open, and her nose sticking out. She's still saying, “Oh God, oh God…,” but she's also crying and gasping for air, staring at the caiman, and now that I'm safely behind the screen door, I stare too.

And what we see isn't pretty.

The caiman has a cat, or what's left of a cat. The body doesn't have a head anymore, and the right front leg is gone too. The caiman's halfway through its meal, and it's standing over its food, defending what it's caught.

“Ma'am,” I say, “is that your cat or someone else's?”

Mrs. Calhoun's crying too hard to answer me.

I say, “It's okay, ma'am. It's all right.” But it isn't exactly all right, at least not for the cat. Or for Mrs. Calhoun. There's a small crocodile on her back porch and a headless pet in front of us. I know it's wrong, but I have an urge to laugh. I bite my lip. Say, “Let's scare it off, okay?” I step out from behind the screen door and move forward. I yell, “Go on! Get!”

The caiman hisses. Opens its mouth. The bright peach of its gums is lined with an incredible set of teeth, top and bottom. The thing has grown in the last couple of weeks, and the mouth seems to have grown the most. I yell again, “Get out of here! Go!”

It still has its mouth open and it takes a couple of steps toward me, hisses again, and opens that mouth wider. I slide back behind the screen door. Look at Mrs. Calhoun, her nose and her glasses showing in the crack of the door. I say, “Well, that didn't work. Do you have a shovel or a rake or something?”

She keeps staring at the caiman. She isn't screaming anymore, she's just sort of whimpering and hyperventilating. She hasn't said a word to me yet, and she doesn't answer me now.

I say again, “Ma'am, do you have a shovel or a rake I can use?”

Just then, Bob Thomas, the neighbor from the other side, shows up. He's tucking in his shirt as he comes around the corner. When he sees the caiman there on the porch, he says, “Holy jiminy!” He sneaks in from the right side and slides in next to me behind the screen door.

I say, “It's impressive, huh?”

He says, “It's like a crocodile. Where the heck did that come from?”

“I have no idea,” I say. “Weird, huh?”

Mr. Thomas pulls a small black pistol out of his pocket.

“Whoa,” I say. “Are you gonna shoot it?”

He waves the gun back and forth in the air. “This isn't real. It's a starter's pistol. I'm a volunteer for the middle school track program. Better plug your ears, though.” He takes a step toward the caiman, which doesn't back up at all. Mr. Thomas says, “Hope this works.”

He shoots the gun and the caiman lurches like it's been shot with a real bullet and sidewinds off the porch and down the steps. It takes off across the grass, and Mr. Thomas and I get to the porch's railing just in time to see the caiman disappear into the undergrowth of the brambles near the water's edge.

“Holy smokes alive.” Mr. Thomas whistles. “That animal is something.”

We both stare at the blackberry bushes like that caiman might come back out, but it's gone. Mr. Thomas says, “We better help Maribel with her cat.”

I point at the torn-up carcass.

Mr. Thomas kneels down and examines the carnage. “Or what's left of her cat.”

“Right.”

I find a shovel in the shed, and Mr. Thomas goes over to his house to get bleach, paper towels, and a white plastic Walmart bag. He holds the bag open and I slide the shovel underneath the body of the cat, lift it, and drop it in the bag. Then I take the bag from him.

“That was sad,” Mr. Thomas says. “She really loved Mr. Fluffers.”

“Mr. Fluffers?”

“The cat,” he says.

“That was the cat's name?”

Mr. Thomas smiles. “Kind of a gruesome end for a cat named Mr. Fluffers, huh?”

I put my hand over my mouth and Mr. Thomas stifles a laugh too. We both hold our breath and look at our feet. Mr. Thomas puffs his cheeks out and swallows. He says, “Should we do something with that bag?”

“Probably.”

The neighbors are all showing up. There's about a dozen of them now in the side yard or on the bank by the lake. They've got flashlights and they're shining them into the undergrowth. I hear someone say, “I think I see its big, white eyes.”

Everyone huddles next to him.

“No,” someone says, “those aren't eyes. Look. Those are PVC caps.”

Another neighbor says, “I don't think any of us are safe anymore.”

Mr. Thomas flips on the porch light. “We better bury Mr. Fluffers. Maribel doesn't need to see that body again.”

One of the neighbors goes back to his house to get more shovels. Another neighbor says, “Maribel would like it if we were to bury it in that open space over there, and if she wants me to, I could make a little cross for it.”

Three of us dig a hole. The neighbors who aren't digging keep giving us directions on how to dig, tips on how to pry out rocks, suggestions for depth and width. I dig most of the grave, try to get it done quickly, and let them sort out the details while I finish. When the hole's about three feet deep, Mr. Thomas says, “That's probably good enough,” so I stop.

There are maybe 20 people in Mrs. Calhoun's house now, and they all come out for the burial. I put the Walmart bag in the bottom of the hole and Mrs. Calhoun sprinkles a little dirt on top of the plastic. Then I shovel in the rest of the dirt.

Mr. Thomas says a few words about cats in general, things like: “We know they love to eat mice,” and “I'm sure he played so much with yarn when he was a kitten.” Most of the women cry and the men look serious. Then I pat the dirt with the flat of the shovel to smooth it out.

One of the neighbor men says, “Mind if I pray over this?”

Mrs. Calhoun nods and the man prays for a long time, talking about souls and heaven and angels and demons and animals and purgatory and the coming of the new kingdom in Revelations. Then he says, “Amen,” and we all say, “Amen,” and that's the end of the service.

When I get home, I go straight back to my grandma's room. She's sleeping, as usual, so I start to close the door. But as I do, she opens her eyes and says, “Wait, sweetie.”

I say, “Oh, sorry to wake you, Grandma.”

“No, no, I was awake. I slept all day, so I'm fine. Come back in here and talk to me. Tell me what's new with you?”

“Well,” I say, “guess what happened at Mrs. Calhoun's tonight?” I sit down on the side of her bed.

She scooches herself up onto her pillows. “What happened?”

And this is what I've wanted, what I was hoping for. This is why I put the caimans in the lake in the first place. I wanted stories for Grandma, stories to tell her, stories to talk about.

I get in bed next to her and tell her all about the caiman and Mr. Fluffers, about scaring it off and digging a grave.

When I'm done, Grandma makes a clicking sound in her teeth. “Well, that is just plain wild. That is”—she shakes her head—“that is ridiculous.”

The next day, the killing of Mr. Fluffers is on the morning news. A news van is parked in front of Mrs. Calhoun's house when Creature and I dribble down the road toward Gilham Park. We stop and watch the station interview a few neighbors, who are happy to be on television.

It shouldn't be much of a story since the remains of the cat are already in the ground and the caiman's nowhere to be seen, but Mr. Gilligan tells the news crew that he “saw the monster,” and it looked to him “like a 10- or 12-foot alligator.”

“10 or 12 feet long.” The newsgirl repeats that in a serious tone.

“Yes,” Mr. Gilligan says. “Someone musta released it when it was little and it's been growing fat for years on the geese and bass and ducks and whatever else it can eat in this lake.”

The newsgirl nods like she's listening to a church sermon. “And what do you think will happen next, sir?”

Mr. Gilligan blinks a couple of times. “Well,” he says, “it'll probably be 15 to 20 feet long by summer's end, so it's only a matter of time before a person gets eaten.”

The newsgirl likes that quote a lot, and she shakes her head before turning to the camera and frowning. She pauses for effect, then says, “There's a monster in this lake, and we haven't heard the last of it yet. People may be next.”

After the cameras are turned off and we start dribbling down the road, Creature says, “Wait, why didn't you interview with that news lady? I thought you and Mr. Thomas were the only ones who were actually there on the porch with it and saw what it was.”

“Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to be on the news.”

“No 15 minutes of fame for you, baby?”

“No thanks,” I say.

“I guess last year you got your 15 minutes of glory, didn't you.”

“Of glory?” I say.

“Okay, 15 minutes of infamy. Sound good?”

The Animal Control vans are out at the lake when we come home from our workout. Creature and I stand and dribble and watch them. They search and talk to each other. Search some more.

I mow and weed out the borders of two east-side homes in the afternoon, and every once in a while I stop and look back across the lake at the Animal Control officers searching for the caiman on the trailer-park side.

It's Friday, so when I finish my yard work, I knock on the front doors of all my houses to collect my money for the week. Seven pay me in cash and two pay me with checks. Three people aren't home. At Natalie's house, I put on a clean T-shirt and smooth the wrinkles. But no one answers the door.

I bike back to my grandparents' house and stuff the bills in my jar, hide it again in the zip-up throw pillow at the bottom of the bed. I have hundreds of dollars in there from the last two summers, and the only time I spent anything was when I needed new basketball shoes last winter. Other than that, I've saved it all for my mom, in case I need to help her out someday. I daydream about that. Getting her an apartment. Getting her on food stamps. Maybe the Oregon Health Plan too. Or sometimes I picture myself just giving her the cash and telling her that it's all for her, that I earned it for her, that I want her to have it, that I want her to get her life together and live better. Sometimes I picture all of the men who treated her like garbage, and I want to hand her that fat jar of money and say, “It's gonna be okay, see? Look at all of this. You could just set yourself up with all this money. Get an apartment for a couple of months. Get a job and start over again.”

When I walk out to my tent, I look around. Everyone's out on their back porches tonight, and I can hear the neighbors next door to me on the other side, the Quincys, talking about the Animal Control officers. Both of the Quincys are half-deaf, so they yell everything. It isn't hard to hear an entire conversation when they talk to each other.

Mr. Quincy says, “Did you hear what that one officer said earlier?”

“No, I did not,” Mrs. Quincy says.

“Well, he said that a dog probably killed that cat last night.”

“A dog?”

“Yes, and he also said that the old people nearby were probably too senile to know what it was.”

“Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Quincy says. “Did the officer really say that?”

“Honest to goodness,” Mr. Quincy says. “I heard it myself from Mr. Anderson.”

I smile to myself, duck down, and crawl in my tent. Lie on my sleeping bag and think about how everyone's got a story now, something to talk about, something more than what they're going to eat, their aches and pains, and their medications.