This is the Part Where You Laugh (9 page)

I go down to the park and run a free-throw drill. Two full-court sprints dribbling the basketball, then two free throws. 50 sets is a game. 100 free throws total. It takes more than half an hour and I'm sweating hard.

The park's drinking fountain is on the wall of the bathroom building, and on the other side of the bathrooms, there's Natalie. She's set up orange cones in the grass, and she's dribbling a soccer ball right and left through the set, turning, dribbling back, and cracking shots off the wall of the bathrooms. I watch her hammer one shot and go retrieve the ball, dribble to the top of the cones, and turn to do it over again. She's wearing a bright orange sports bra and soccer shorts. She looks super strong. Tan and scary pretty.

She stops when she sees me.

I say, “What's up?”

“Hey.” She rolls the ball back onto the top of her foot and stalls it there, flips it to the other foot and stalls it on top of that foot too. Then she juggles it a few times, back and forth, before stomping it to the grass.

I look at that thick brace on her right knee. “What did you do to that knee?”

“Tore the ACL last year.”

“Oh, man. How?”

She rolls her ball up and juggles it a few more times. “At practice.”

“Practice? Not even a game?”

“Nope.”

I shake my head. “That's rough.”

She shrugs. Stalls the ball on top of her foot again, lets it roll slowly off the front of her foot, and settles it underneath the toe of her cleat.

I say, “You're going to play for Taft, then?”

“I hope so. If my knee's healed up,” she says. “It's been 10 months, but it's not that strong yet. We'll see.”

While I talk to her, I spread my fingers and try to palm my basketball. But it keeps slipping. I spin it and try again.

Natalie says, “So how often do you practice basketball?”

“Pretty much every day.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I'm a point guard, so I have to.”

“You're pretty good,” she says. “I watched you sprint and shoot some of those free throws. You made almost every one.”

“I missed seven.”

“Right,” she says. “Never mind. That's total crap. You better keep practicing.”

I smile.

“Speaking of,” Natalie says, “want a challenge?”

“What's that?”

“I'm just asking. Want a challenge or not?” She smiles, has a look on her face like she might've slipped something into my food.

“I don't trust you, but okay.”

“Don't trust me?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine. You're scared? We won't do the challenge, then.” She puts her hands on her hips.

“No,” I say. “Let's do it. I like challenges.”

“Okay,” Natalie says. “Here's how it'll be. We do four exercises, one right after the other, no resting. And it's a competition between you and me. Last one still exercising wins the comp. First person to stop loses. Got it?”

“All right. What are the four exercises?”

“Push-ups, then pull-ups on that bar”—she points to the playground bar a few feet away—“then squats to 90 degrees, then a plank on your forearms. Got it?”

“Got it.” I smile. I'm feeling confident. Anything with push-ups and pull-ups is an automatic win for me. I've been doing them all spring and summer. I can do a lot of both, and there's no way Natalie can come anywhere close to beating me on those. The other two exercises I don't do too often, but how hard can they be?

We walk over to the edge of the playground. Natalie says, “Push-ups, then jog to the pull-ups, then jog back and go right into squats, right?”

“Right.”

“No rest. You ready?”

“Ready.”

“Then go.”

We both drop down and start pumping out push-ups. We're on the same rhythm at first, but on number 13, Natalie slows down. She does maybe 10 more, but a lot slower on those last few, and I keep cranking, feeling good. By the time I'm in the mid-30s, she's finished and I see her jog over to the pull-up bar and start doing pull-ups. I keep doing push-ups, pass 40, pass 50, then start slowing down. I go hard, do as many as I can, the last few really slow, and get to 63 before my shoulders give out.

When I stand up to jog over to the pull-up bar, Natalie's already back from her set of pull-ups. She's behind me in the grass, doing standing squats, dropping to 90 degrees and back up. I go over to the pull-up bar and do 17 pull-ups, which isn't my record but is still pretty good for me for a single set.

When I jog back to start my squats, Natalie's still doing hers. Her face is a little sweaty, but she's smiling and still doing squats at a good pace. If I had to guess where she was numbers-wise at that point, I'd say well over 100.

She and I do squats next to each other. I pass 100 and she passes 200. I pass 150 and she passes 250. She starts to slow down then. The muscles in my quads and butt are hurting bad, but I can't show her that they are because she's still going on squats. I try to squat to the same depth, but I'm starting to fall apart. Finally, Natalie drops down onto the grass, props herself up on her forearms, and goes into a plank position. I do a few more squats, just out of pride, then drop down next to her.

I don't do well. I start shaking right away. My stomach starts to sag, and Natalie says, “Straight. Bring that up.”

I straighten my body for maybe 10 seconds, but then it starts to sag again.

Natalie says, “Get that shit up or it doesn't count.”

I straighten one more time, but I have to will myself straight, and when I look at Natalie she's still in a perfect plank position and I have no hope of winning. I fight as long as I can, but my body breaks down and I slowly sag to the grass.

I lie there panting, then say, “You win. Good game.”

Natalie smiles, rolls over onto her back, and lies there breathing. “Good game.”

I stay down a long time, lie there, watching Natalie. I watch her abs rise and fall, watch the lines of her ribs, then her chest expanding and dropping.

I say, “You knew you were going to win, didn't you?”

She's looking at the sky. “I always win.”

“But what if I won?”

“You didn't.” She smiles. “But small consolation: you made it further than any other guy I've competed against. I've always done so many squats that the guy has to start his plank first. And by the time I drop down, he's already defeated. But you're competitive. I like that.”

“So did I worry you, then?”

Natalie shakes her head. “Oh, hell no. I knew you'd suck at planks.”

“What?”

Natalie smiles again. “You were horrible at planking, super weak, and I knew you would be because all guys are.” She pops up to her feet, walks over and grabs her cones and soccer ball. “I'll see you around,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I'll see you around.”

Grandma and Grandpa are gone when I get back from the basketball court. I wish there was a basketball game on TV, but even the NBA finals are over. I'm stiff from the workout competition with Natalie, and I can tell that tomorrow I'll be sore.

I make a three-inch-thick sandwich with turkey and salami slices, cheese, and lettuce, and I mix a big cup of cold Tang. Then I go down to my tent and get the latest book Creature left for me,
Drown,
and I bring it back up to the house and sit on the couch in the living room, reading and eating. The first story is nothing like anything I've read before. The books that Grandma always gives me are slow at the beginning, and almost all of them are set in Europe, in Russia or France or England, a long time ago. But this book is on the island of the Dominican Republic and it starts right off with violence and cussing and a little bit of sex stuff. The older brother's always getting into trouble, always trying to do things he shouldn't, and the little brother's always following along. I like the book a lot, and I sit on the couch and read the next two stories. I'm still reading when my grandma and grandpa get home.

I hear them in the driveway, and Grandpa yells, “Hey, Travis? Are you home?”

I open the front door. Go out on the porch.

Grandpa's trying to get Grandma out of the car, and he's struggling to lift her. I jump down the steps. “I've got this, Grandpa. I've got her.”

“She's a mess,” he says.

And she is. She has a big smear of vomit down the front of her shirt, chunks of pink in her lap. “Oh, Grandma, I'm sorry.”

She says, “No, sweetie, I'm sorry. I smell terrible.” Her voice sounds like she swallowed a few pieces of sandpaper.

I say, “I don't care about that.” I get my hands underneath her armpits and pull her out of the car and to her feet. Then I slide one arm behind her back and one arm underneath her knees. “Let me lift you.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” She doesn't weigh much anymore, maybe 105 pounds, 110 at the most, and it's not hard to carry her up the stairs and into the house. I take her to the bathroom and set her down on the toilet. “Here, put your hand on the counter. Hold on.”

Grandpa's behind me. “Thank you, Travis. I can take it from here. I'll get her into the shower.”

“Okay.”

Grandma says, “This looks bad, but I had fun today.”

“That's good, Grandma.”

“I really did,” she says. “We had so much fun today.”

Out in the kitchen, I take off my shirt and put it in the sink. Soak it in warm water and dish soap. Then I take a rag and wipe my chest and shoulder where a little bit of vomit soaked through my shirt. I smell there and wipe again.

I used to clean my mom up like this, but she didn't ever say thank you. Usually she was asleep, her vomit down the front of her. I'd come in from playing basketball or just shooting alone on the back court, and she'd be asleep against the wall, the room smelling terrible.

I'd feel my head filling with blood and then my head would be tight, too tight like that blood was trying to push out from behind my eyes, and I'd have to lean against the wall for a second so I wouldn't pass out, but then I'd stand back up and I'd get her clothes off and fight her weight as I worked her into the tub. Then I'd run the water and fill the bath, wake her over and over as the water rose. I'd say, “Mom, you've got to wake up and clean yourself off. You have to.” I'd put a washcloth in her hand. But she wouldn't wake up, and I'd stop the water before it was too high, then I'd sit in there, in the bathroom with her, and wait for her to open her eyes.

Sometimes I wouldn't eat dinner afterward because I wasn't hungry anymore. My hands would feel sort of numb and I'd lie on the bed and open and close my fingers, and hope for that feeling to go away.

I search again in the morning. I have my backpack filled with cookies, the money jar, cold pizza wrapped in foil, dinner rolls, an old Gatorade bottle filled with ice cubes and mixed Tang. I bike down to the DeFazio Bridge, Alton Baker Park, check the Mill Race, the spillway bridge, the picnic area. Find two people sleeping in the middle of the island, both of them men in their 20s, one without a shirt on, a rash covering his back, yellow pus in the cracks.

I hike the river paths on the north bank, the fish camps, the sloughs. Trash heaps. Find a young woman passed out like she'd been hit in the head with a rock and fell that way. But she is breathing, and her right hand still holds an HRD vodka bottle, a few ounces in the bottom like water.

An old man at the west end of the trails is reading a mystery novel with a blue cover. I nod to him and he nods back.

I keep looking. Where the cottonwoods lean over the river, a middle-aged man smokes a cigarette and stares at the water. He's wearing a wool shirt and a down coat as if it's 20 degrees out, not 85. The July sunlight beats on his army-green jacket and he sits and soaks it up.

I say, “How's it going?” but he doesn't nod or say anything back to me.

I keep walking. Cut through on the trails east, up past the mini-boulders. There's a group of men and women with pit bulls at the picnic shelters, under the tin roof, two of the dogs growling at each other, one lunging, then the other lunging back, nearly meeting at the ends of their ties, a foot from each other, off the ground on their hind legs, snarling and thrashing and choking themselves against their collars.

I go back to the river trails, work east past the boat ramp toward the Autzen Footbridge. I look in the hollows, in the berry overgrowths, in places where she might be sleeping, check under a particleboard lean-to and a tarp shelter. But there's no one under either of those, and I don't find her, don't see her dirty hair and green eyes, don't see the lines across her forehead or her high cheekbones that are always so pink they look like the first layer of skin has been taken off with sandpaper.

I sit down and stare at the water. Feel hopeless. It's easy for me not to think about the homeless camps when I'm on the surface streets in this city, when I'm biking on the sidewalk or riding in someone's car through traffic. But down along the river, on the mud paths, at the tents or shelters, or under the bridge, I can't ignore how these people are living, how she's living right now, how the elements are always on her, how it's too hot or too cold, or the rain's soaking through everything, or the sun's cracking it open. And on days like this I can't even find her, and I worry where she could be because there are worse places than these homeless camps. There are the condemned houses out in West Eugene, the motels near Highway 99, rooms with a dozen people passed out, some on top of others, the floor littered with needles, broken bottles in the bathroom. And I can't save her from that. I can't even find her.

Biking home, I stop at a traffic light, put my foot down next to a woman at the corner of the 76 gas station. Her cardboard sign reads:

GOD GIVES FOOD AND SHELTER

I give her all the food in my backpack.