When Kato’s name is called, he launches into a tale of an old Roman couple who grew the biggest berry in the entire empire. Hoping for some kind of meaningful analogy, the crowd listens in pained silence as he tells of nobility coming from far and near to see this miraculous berry and of how finally the emperor himself gets word of its enormity and decides he wants it for himself. But the couple won’t give it up and no amount of negotiation will sway them. “Finally,” Kato says, just as André is about ready to cut him off and save his life, “these old folks hear a knock at the door an’ when the ol’ dude opens it, see he bein’ confronted by a whole squad full of Roman soldiers. But he an old fart and he let ’em in ’cause he think they just wanna see this big-ol’-ass berry. But then the head soldier put his hand on the old man’s shoulder and he say in his big official voice, ‘Uh-uh, old man, we come to seize your berry, not to praise it.’” Kato looks up at the audience with a big grin until one by one they get it and a rolling groan works its way clear through. When they’re finished, he smiles again and says, “But see, the point be, if I didn’t go to school here an’ work my butt off in English class, I wouldn’t even know that be a joke.”
André puts his hands on Kato’s shoulders and points him toward his seat, looking out at the audience. “I don’t want to be the one to tell him that’s not a joke. I’d appreciate it if each of you would mention it in the receiving line.”
Willie’s name is announced last and there’s a long round of applause as he approaches the podium; the audience knows him from the fire and he has special status. André describes him as “Comeback Cowboy of the Year,” presenting him with a tacky three-foot-high trophy with that inscription, composed mostly of plastic with a bareback bronc rider on top. Willie thinks that’s pretty funny. When the laughter dies, he takes a folded paper from the inside pocket of his rented tux and spreads it out in front of him. He’s thought long and hard about what he wants to say tonight, and he’s very nervous. He looks out into the audience; at Lacey, decked out in his dress whites, jewelry on every finger and a painted lady on his arm; at Lisa in her slinky two-tone blue dress that turns her smooth skin to polished mahogany; and Sammy beside her, his inch-long hair shooting out of his head like some kind of electric surprise; then over at André, who stands to the side watching, smiling, somehow knowing exactly how Willie feels.
Willie forces a lump back down his throat. “This school,” he says, “saved my life. I don’t mean it made me a better person, or picked me up when I was really down, or taught me the true meaning of anything. I mean it saved my life; because when I came here I was to the end of me. My family was wrecked and I thought I’d wrecked it, My brain didn’t work right and the physical skills I had always depended on were shot completely to Hell.” He looks out to Lacey. “My friend Mr. Casteel picked me up off the street and gave me a home; his home. I have to admit I haven’t always been the perfect roommate, and I would have to say our lifestyles are somewhat different, but old Lacey’s stuck with me, and in his way he’s a wise man, and I owe him a lot.”
Lacey looks around the crowd, smiling, a bit embarrassed.
Willie goes on. “Nobody here preached at me. Nobody told me everything would be okay, or that I should go back home to my parents and work things out when I knew the time for that wasn’t here yet. They let me figure it out for myself; demanded that I figure it out for myself; but they never deserted me. And now, I’m ready to go back home. I don’t know what will happen there; whether I can stay and make it or not, but at least I’m strong enough to give it a try.” He pauses, looking at his notes, then folds them, placing them in his pocket, and looks back out at the crowd, at Lacey.
“I know how lucky I am,” he says. “My parents were always there for me, but then the really hard times came and they couldn’t do it, and I chased my friends away and then there was nobody. And my parents are good people, really they are; so are my friends. So I really do know how lucky I am that when things were at their worst, out pops André, and Lisa, and this magic school.”
He sips water from the glass on the podium and clears his throat. “See, I’m not a tough guy; Lacey Casteel can tell you that. And I’m real aware that if most of you had known me back before, when I lived in Montana, you might very well have hated my guts. Because I had everything; and I had people there to protect me and make sure I didn’t lose it. And there are lots of people like that; people whose lives are protected from the day they’re born until the day they die. But no matter how wonderful those lives seem, if they’re not contested, never put up against the wall, then they exist inside very narrow walls, and because of that I believe they lose value, in the most basic sense of the word. I guess what I’m saying is that my life is more valuable because I got knocked out of my favored spot. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but I am and I know it’s true. I learned it from the people who picked me up here.”
Willie takes a deep breath and looks around; at Angel, who stares past him; at Hawk, who meets his stare and lets him in; at Lisa, who radiates her integrity right back at him. He looks at Lacey, who can’t hold his gaze, then back at Sammy, who just looks charged; gleeful and charged. “A few more minutes and I’ll get off it,” he says, dropping his gaze to the podium. “There’s a man in the audience tonight who comes from somewhere else. I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s a spaceship parked in the near vicinity waiting to beam him right up. When I first met him, I thought he was one of those Japanese guys who got lost on a Pacific island during World War II and nobody bothered to tell him when it was over.” Willie looks again at Sammy, who is grinning from ear to ear. “But then he talked to me, mostly without words, and I think he told me a whole lot of what I’m going to need to be an adult. He showed me how my mind and body are just different parts of the same thing and that there are no limits for either; that most of the really important answers are already inside me and I don’t have to go outside looking for them. He taught me how to go to my gut to survive.
“I asked him once what he believed in. He was up on the roof here at school, hanging down over the edge painting the underside of the rain gutters, and he stopped painting and looked at me and flipped paint on me and said he believes in lust and passion and good old common sense. And in staying alive.”
Willie shrugs. “I probably don’t even know what half of that means, but I sure like it and I’m going to find out.” He thanks everyone again for listening to him carry on, picks up his trophy by the comeback cowboy’s neck and walks back to his chair.
“I beat that guy one-on-one. Do or die. Make it, take it,” Telephone Man booms to nobody in particular.
Willie sits down; Hawk leans over and whispers, “Whooee, Chief be sayin’ some words up there. Don’ be givin’ you too much more play, you be runnin’ for some office.”
CHAPTER 21
Willie boards the Greyhound at 8:30 A.M., turns and waves once again to Lacey, decked out in his AC Transit uniform, looking for all the world like an honest man making an honest living. “This don’t work out,” Lacey says one more time, “you take that ticket Lacey give you an’ head right back down here.”
Willie smiles. “I will, Lacey, really I will. I know I have a home here.” He steps back off the bus for a moment and walks toward Lacey, who looks bewildered at his approach. “If it means anything,” Willie says, “you’re one and one now. You broke one and you fixed one.”
Lacey looks him in the eye and nods, leaving his thoughts where they are.
Willie slaps him on the shoulder and steps back onto the bus.
He could have flown. He has money of his own saved now, since Lacey started paying him for extra work and André did, too; and anyway, Lacey offered to buy the ticket. But Willie needs the cushion of space and time to ease him back to Coho. He wants to return through the same tunnel that brought him here, as if retracing his steps will help him find the clues to tell him how to be back. Willie knows he should have called; should call now, for that matter; but he just can??
?t imagine what he would say over the phone. He knows it isn’t right to show up without any warning, but he’s doing this the best way he can and it will just have to do.
He chooses a window seat behind the driver, stuffing his pack under the seat, having checked most of his luggage earlier at the desk. He hopes to sleep; he was up most of last night with the rest of his graduating class before finally collapsing for a few hours, possibly for the last time, on the makeshift bed in Lacey’s living room. But sleep never came; his mind racing randomly from the night at the fishing hole with Jenny to discovering her lie in the breezeway, to the Crazy Horse Electric game, to the night he crouched outside his parents’ bedroom only to discover what an immense burden he had become. He used every trick Sammy or Lisa ever taught him to quiet his mind, but it was off and running on its own and all he could do was go with it until finally it was time to get up and gather his things and ride to the bus terminal with Lacey.
Willie’s heart leaps as the big diesel engine cranks up; the driver moves among the passengers, leaving the engine running, checking tickets and rearranging some of the carry-on luggage. As the bus pulls out of the garage, Willie watches Lacey standing, arms folded, looking powerful and confident, without a trace of the horror in his life, and Willie marvels at the astonishing ability of human beings to go on. He waves; Lacey waves back and doesn’t move from his spot until the bus is out of sight.
Winding through the city streets toward the freeway, Willie notices how different they look to him now, in the light of day and a year and a half later, from how they looked that first night when they stole from him, through terror, what little dignity he had left. Perspectives.
The Greyhound rolls over the coastal hills out into the Central Valley, already intolerably hot in mid-June, and Willie drifts in and out of consciousness, the singing of the wheels finally allowing his mind to rest. In a daze, he watches the Sierra roll by, the bus stopping at every town of even the slightest consequence, gently bumping him awake, then easing him back to sleep. In the darkness he wakes to find they are in the high Nevada desert, headed north toward Oregon, then Idaho. Though the sign tells him not to talk to the “Operator,” the bus driver sees him awake in the mirror and strikes up a rambling conversation in which the most significant thing Willie learns is that the occasional bumping sound he hears is the result of legions of jackrabbits crossing the street without looking both ways. The driver calls this stretch between Winnemucca and the Oregon border “The Trail of Entrails.”
By morning Willie feels rested and almost impatient to be in Coho, though there are several hours of travel left. He’s ready to face what he left.
A little after four in the afternoon, Willie stands beside his luggage on the sidewalk outside Carson’s drugstore, looking up and down the main street of Coho. He saw Mr. Carson through the window when he got off the bus, but there was no glimmer of recognition on his face, so he didn’t go in. He looks up and down the street once more, then steps into the doorway. “Okay if I leave this stuff here for a little while?” he asks, pointing to his two suitcases.
Mr. Carson says, “Sure,” without even looking up and Willie slides them around the corner out of the way, hoisting his pack up over one shoulder as he begins the seven-block walk to his house. He passes lots of familiar faces on the way, but receives nothing more than a friendly smile. A block from his house he stops, gathering his courage, trying to visualize what his mother will do when she sees him standing there. He wonders again for a moment if the boy in the Portland terminal ever mailed the cards, but knows it doesn’t really matter. For a moment he considers walking back to the drugstore to call ahead, but takes a deep breath instead, centers himself and moves on. A half-block away, he sees a strange car parked in the driveway and he slows down to think, then walks onto the front lawn. He stops, staring at a two-foot hand-carved sign over the porch proclaiming his parents’ house to be THE MILLERS. He stands, staring, a vague, undefined fear carving deeper into the already empty pit of his stomach. He’s way off balance and for a moment can’t think what to do next. He could go to the door and ask, but somehow he can’t bear the thought of a stranger confirming any of his worst fears. Willie doesn’t know any Millers.
He turns slowly to walk back toward town, thinking his next move will come to him on the way, feeling somehow foolish, and wanting to get away; to not be seen in his old neighborhood looking bewildered.
Stepping into the phone booth outside the drugstore, he searches his pockets for a quarter; finds nothing. He curses to himself and walks into the store, placing a dollar on the counter for a pack of gum he doesn’t want. Mr. Carson looks right at him, seeing a stranger, hands him his change absently, telling him to have a good day. Willie says, “You, too,” and heads back out to the booth, where he flips through the R’s, looking for Johnny’s number.
“Hello?”
“Yes. Is Johnny Rivers there?”
“I don’t think so. Let me check.” Silence, then, “No, I don’t think so. I think he’s at work. Can I take a message?”
“No, that’s okay,” Willie says. “Could you tell me where he works?”
The other end is quiet for a second and Willie knows Johnny’s mom must think she recognizes the voice. “Down at Wilkie’s Conoco. Who is this?”
“It’s nobody. Thanks. I’ll try to catch him down there.”
“Wait…” But Willie hangs up.
Wilkie’s is just three blocks up Main Street from the drugstore and Willie sits on the curb beside the phone booth looking at the sign, absently fondling his cane, then pushes himself up, heading toward it. Time to blow his cover.
Willie stands in the doorway to the front office of Wilkie’s Conoco while Johnny counts out change for Mrs. O’Conners, and steps aside as she thanks him and moves past Willie toward her car.
“Johnny?”
Johnny looks up, stands staring, wiping his hands with his grease rag, his brain running through the fund of information telling him this can’t be Willie Weaver but it sure as hell is but it doesn’t look exactly like him but it does.
“Willie? Willie Goddam Weaver? Jesus, are you kidding me? Willie Weaver?”
Willie tosses Johnny the cane.
Johnny stares at the brass baseball in absolute disbelief, then back at Willie. He says, “Shit,” and looks again at the cane.
“How you doin’?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny says. “Jesus, where you been? I thought…”
“It’s a long story,” Willie says. “I’ll tell you later. Do you know what happened to my parents? I was over at the house and it’s sold.” He watches Johnny’s face fall momentarily as the bell signals a customer on the island.
“Lemme get this,” Johnny says. “I’ll be right back.” He trots out onto the island, watching Willie through the front window as he pumps ten gallons of regular into the tank of a brown ’76 Datsun, washes the windshield and collects the money.
“I probably know where your dad is,” Johnny says, pulling a bottle of pop from the machine outside the office. “Want one?”
Willie nods. “Sure. Orange.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Johnny says, handing him the pop, hesitating. “Your mom and dad sort of fell apart. I mean…”
“It’s okay, Johnny. Just go ahead and tell me. All the stuff that’s gone on in the last year and a half, I can take it. Just tell me. Where’s my mom and dad?”
“Well, your dad’s probably over at Dinghy’s.” Johnny grimaces, waits.
“Dinghy’s? What’s he doing at Dinghy’s?”
“He’s there a lot, Willie. Your dad’s been drunk a lot since you left. A lot of people are really worried about him. Nobody can do anything, though, ’cause he’s getting pretty mean.”
“My dad?”
Johnny just breathes deep and raises his eyebrows.
“What about Mom?”
Johnny takes another deep breath. “She got married.”
“She got marrie
d! My folks are split? They’re divorced?”
“Things have been bad, Willie. After you left, your folks started fighting really bad. Cops got called twice and your dad spent the night in jail. Pretty soon they were just split and your dad moved into the Ranch Motel and nobody saw your mom for a while. Then she started seeing this guy named Don Boudreaux—he owns a bunch of those condos over at Badger Lake—and pretty soon your house was up for sale and your mom was getting married. Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
Willie’s in shock. This is worse than his worst fear.
“Look at this,” Johnny says, pointing to the counter below the oil display. A half-gallon milk carton displays a likeness of Willie on the side, taken from his sophomore class picture. It says: MISSING. There is a description, with his age and location at the time of disappearance. Willie’s heart sinks. He knows the kid in the Portland bus terminal never mailed the postcards, and he wishes he had made some other effort to let someone know he had stayed alive. His need to stay hidden for the last year and a half suddenly seems selfish and stupid. “Look,” he says, “I’ll see you later. I’m going over to Dinghy’s and see if my dad’s there. You know where my mom lives?”
“They live in one of the condos over at Badger. I’ll drive you over there after work if you want. Listen, you can stay at our place. My mom and dad would love to have you.”
“Maybe,” Willie says. “I’ll see, okay? Thanks, Johnny, really.”
“Yeah. Hey, man, I’m really sorry…”
Willie nods and heads down the street toward Dinghy’s tavern.
The lights are low and Willie squints to adjust his eyes as he walks through the door. On the far side of the room a man and a woman shoot a game of eightball, and an old man rests his head on a table near the bar, seemingly passed out. Behind the bar a young guy Willie doesn’t recognize runs a wet rag over the bar top, absently lip-synching the Hank Williams Jr. tune playing low on the jukebox. He looks up as Willie enters. “Can I help you?”