“They’ll take us to jail. It’ll go down on our permanent records and we’ll never go to college. We’ll end up flipping burgers for the rest of our miserable, nonproductive lives.”
“I’m almost in,” Balder says. “There.” He looks great. Like a guru of the lawn. “Take the board, too.”
“That’s stealing,” Gonz argues.
“Who got you a Cadillac?”
“Give him the board,” I say.
Balder hops on it, bending his knees, fighting imaginary waves. “Wicked.”
“How did you get the idea to Star Fighter him?” Gonzo asks once we’re on the road and sharing a drive-thru meal together in the front seat. “What if he’d seen the movie?”
“It was a calculated risk,” Balder says. He’s camped out in the spacious back like the king he thinks he is.
“How did you even know about Star Fighter in the first place?” Gonzo asks.
“One of my kidnappers was a devotee of science fiction. He took me to those—what are they called? Fields of battle where people dress as Visigoths and androids and those marauding teddy bears who are strangely lethal?”
“Teddy Vamps,” Gonzo fills in. “Dude, you’ve been to all the cons! All right.”
“Indeed. I have been photographed with the one they worship as a god, Silas, son of Fenton,” he says, mentioning the name of the director revered by millions.
“Silas Fenton? You took a picture with Silas Fucking Fenton? Oh my God! Balder! You sly little kick-butt gnome. You are the man!”
Balder leans back against the seat, his arms behind his head. “Damn right.”
We drive on, the Caddy and its bull-horn hood ornament cutting a colorful figure through the slick sedans and dime-a-dozen SUVs. Some little kids press their noses to the windows of their child-locked doors, gaping at us. Gonzo opens a bag of chips and hands it to Balder, who takes a handful and forwards it to Gonzo.
“Dude, I can’t believe you whizzed on him.”
Balder wipes his hands on the Sammy Surfer bandana he’s now wearing around his neck. “He was very disrespectful. I have learned much in my current form. I have seen how those supposed to have no power can be disregarded quite easily. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I have no worth.”
Gonzo nods. “Say what-what.” He puts a stubby fist on the back of his seat rest.
“What-what,” Balder says. He reaches up and bumps fists with Gonzo, and they go back to eating their chips in satisfied silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Wherein We Make Up Bumper Stickers and I Introduce the Joys of the Great Tremolo
We drive for miles. The Caddy takes us past ordinary sights that seem amazing and new glimpsed from open car windows on an unexplored road. Out in the fields that run alongside the endless highway, prisoners in orange scrubs that read PASSAMONTE CORRECTIONAL UNIT pick up trash with long pointed sticks and drop it into the huge Santa sacks tied to their backs. Parker Day’s blindingly white teeth glare from a billboard for Rad Sport—OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE DEMANDS THE OPTIMUM SODA EXPERIENCE! Dogs stick their heads out to catch the breeze and we answer their howls with our own. An eighteen-wheeler rumbles by on the right, shaking the Caddy. UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS. FREEZING LIFE BEHIND GLASS. HOW’S MY DRIVING? CALL 1-800-555-1212. Above us, the clouds drift along in a blue, indifferent sea.
To pass the time, we make up bumper stickers and deliver them in movie trailer announcer voices.
“I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing.”
“My honors student sells drugs to your honors student.”
“I know you’re stalking me.”
“Please don’t tailgate: body in trunk.”
“Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity.”
When we get hungry, we eat at greasy-spoon diners, where Balder and I order things with names like “The Count of Monte Cristo Sandwich” (a fried egg in a ham-and-toast “mask”) and “Devil Dogs—hot dogs so good you’ll swear you’re sinning!” Gonzo always orders the grilled cheese. It’s the only thing he deems safe.
We drive through interstate rainstorms that last all of ten minutes, like the weather’s just in a bad mood. I like looking out through the metronome of the windshield wipers at the rain bouncing off the bull horns. When the storms pass behind us, the sun cuts through, and sometimes there’s a greasy smudge of a rainbow.
At the Georgia-Alabama border, we park the car on the shoulder and Gonzo and I stand with one foot on either side of the WELCOME TO GEORGIA sign, just so we can say we were in two places at the same time. Then we hold Balder between us so he can say he did it, too. I like the way Georgia looks, so different from Texas. All those tall pine trees and that rich, red dirt, like the ground bled and scabbed over, like it’s got a history you can read in the very clay.
We talk about stupid things, things that don’t matter, like why no one ever has to go to the bathroom in action movies or what you’d do if you found a suitcase full of money. Gonzo wants to start a dwarf detective series called “The Littlest PI” or “Dwarf of Destiny.” Balder argues that you can never know about destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part in your destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs? I tell them about my secret cartoon fantasy, the one where the coyote stops chasing the roadrunner, sells all his contraptions of death, buys a boat, and goes fishing instead.
What I don’t tell them is that every time I look up at those frequent billboards for personal injury lawyers or HAMBURGERS NEXT FIVE MILES, I see the Small World characters smiling and waving me on. Marionette Balinese girls dancing. A Mexican boy in sombrero playing the guitar. The alligator with the umbrella. The Inuit fishing boy with his plastic fish.
It’s tempting to say, “Hey, check it out—the animatronic Don Quixote on his wooden horse just winked at me.”
But then they might not let me drive.
A Copenhagen Interpretation song comes on. Balder sings along.
“I didn’t know you were a CI fan,” Gonzo says.
“A most harmonious band,” Balder says, air drumming. “They performed for my people at Breidablik.”
Gonzo and I exchange glances.
“It’s true!” Balder insists. “They fell from the sky with their odd instruments, and we feared that Ragnarok was upon us.”
“Ragnarok.” Gonzo makes a face. “Is that a musical festival?”
“The end of the world in Norse mythology,” I say, remembering my mom’s lessons. “The doom of the gods.”
“They spoke a strange tongue, but their song was a charm against ill. While they played, peace reigned. Enemies stood as friends. The giants lay down in contentment. Even the Valkyries refused to choose the dead. We feasted. And then, the clouds opened once more. They were gone, leaving behind only the northern lights.”
The sky’s filling up with dark clouds. Time for an afternoon downpour. Cars flip on their headlights, bracing for the coming rain. Our rigged boom box flickers into a staticky symphony of pops, crackles, and occasional burps of words. With the precision of a code breaker, I turn the knob, listening for the sonar of life in the distance, happy when we get a sudden blurp of sound; it makes me feel like I’m moving toward something, that it’s only a signal tower away and getting stronger.
“Could we please find something else? This is torture,” Balder pleads.
“How do you feel about the Great Tremolo?” I ask.
“Is it static?”
“No, it’s a CD,” I say, feeling around on the front seat for the disc I burned.
Balder yawns. “Wonderful.”
Gonzo does the honors, and soon, the car’s thumping to the head-banging pleasure of Portuguese love songs on ukulele and recorder.
“What is this shit?” Gonzo asks, a smile tugging at his lips.
“The Great Tremolo. The master of love in any language.”
The Great Tremolo starts to sing in his high, shaky falsetto and that’s it. Gonzo is officially gon
e. He’s crying he’s laughing so hard, which of course makes me laugh, too. The Great Tremolo goes for a high note and we nearly piss our pants. Balder has chosen to ignore our immaturity. He’s stretched across the backseat with his eyes closed, probably taking a little gnome snooze.
“Dude, where did you find this?” Gonzo chokes out.
I wipe away tears. “Wait—turn it up. This is his big ukulele solo!”
Gonzo slaps his leg, chortling. “He’s tearing that uke up! Go, badass girly-singing man!”
“I bet the women throw their underwear,” I crack.
“I want to throw my underwear! Pull over so I can take it off!”
A rumble of thunder rolls over us. The first big splats of rain hit the windshield, a heavy one, two-three. Four. The Great Tremolo sings out from the rigged boom box.
“Hey, Gonz, what’s he saying?” I ask, catching my breath.
Gonzo snorts in disgust. “I don’t know, man, it’s Portuguese. I’m Mex-i-can?” he says, drawing it out. “This may come as a shock to you, pendejo, but not all brown people are the same.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I still wish I knew what he was saying.” And for the first time, I really do.
“Eu considerei a sua cara e sabia a felicidade,” Balder murmurs from the backseat, his eyes still closed. “I looked upon your face and knew happiness.”
Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Of What Happens When We Take a Detour Through Hope (Georgia)
It’s a soaking rain, and I decide it’s better to pull off and wait it out rather than risk the Caddy’s mostly bald tires on the slick highway. A sign advertising a rest area blinks white and blue in the gloom. And just behind that is a little white sign that says HOPE, GEORGIA, TWO MILES. There’s a feather emblem next to it.
“Dude, why are we here?” Gonzo asks. “You know I was kidding about my underwear, right?”
“Just seems like a good place to wait out the rain,” I say. I’m not mentioning the feather. Maybe it’s the state mascot or something.
“Okay. I’m crashing. Wake me up if anything happens,” Gonzo says, joining Balder, who’s been snoring for the last half mile.
If I’m supposed to find something here, I can’t imagine what that could be. There’s not much to Hope. It’s a one-stoplight kind of town. They don’t even have a strip mall, which I think might actually be against the law. I drive slowly past an old clapboard Church of the Nazarene. A closed gas station with a tire yard next door. A couple of houses tucked away far off the road so all I can see of them is a snatch of white or a glimpse of brick. The road veers off to the left and becomes a narrow lane that runs past a dilapidated hardware store with a chipped sign: PARTS SOLD HERE—NEW, USED, NECESSARY. And that’s it. The street dead-ends at a guardrail and a wall of pine trees. There’s an old man sitting on the front porch of the hardware store, his hands on his knees. I pull over and ask him how to get back to the interstate.
“What yo’ lookin’ fo’ is just over yonder,” he answers, pointing a shaky hand straight ahead at the DEAD END sign.
“There’s no road there,” I say.
“You can leave yo’ car heah. Yo’ friends be safe. You go on yonder, now. Got things to see.”
“We really have to get back on the highway,” I say, wishing Gonzo’s door wasn’t unlocked. “Thanks again. Have a nice day.”
I step on the gas in reverse, and the Caddy shudders and dies.
The old man shuffles over and pops open the hood without even asking. “Go on, now. I’ll take a look at yo’ car.”
For a second, I wonder if I should leave my friends here with a stranger. But this guy is eighty if he’s a day. The worst he could do is take out his teeth and inspire us never to neglect our flossing.
I step over the aluminum guardrail and duck into the trees. The rain’s slowed to a blue-gray mist that sticks to my jacket. The ground’s soft with pine needles and the occasional crunch of a cone. The air smells like it’s just been born. Light bleeds through the spaces between the trees. At first, I think it’s the sun coming out, but it’s brighter, like someone just turned on the lights in a stadium. The water droplets on the trees; the brown carpet of pine needles under my feet; my jeans, shirt, and hands—everything glimmers in that strange white light, and then I see the small, worn path off to the right. I follow it through the maze of pines, the light getting stronger all the way, till I find the source of it—a ginormous ash tree, big as a house.
“Whoa,” I murmur. The tree takes up the whole clearing. A tangle of branches sticks out in every possible direction, and every one of those branches is alive with about a million different scraps of paper.
“Hola, cowboy.” Dulcie steps out from behind the tree. She glows like she’s a part of it. I’m so happy to see her that I have the urge to scoop her up into a big bear hug, but I don’t know if full-body contact with angels is cool or not, and it’s not one of those things I feel like testing.
“Hola back. Where’ve you been?” I say instead.
“Places. Hey, what do you think of this, huh?” She pats the tree’s milky-colored trunk.
I smirk. “It’s called a tree. We have lots of ’em.”
Dulcie arches an eyebrow, but that grin isn’t far behind, and God, what is it about girls in general and this one in particular that I would sit in a room all day coming up with jokes just for another one of those funky smiles? “I promise you, cowboy, you haven’t seen a tree like this one before. Take a closer look.”
I finger one of the scraps of paper on a low-lying branch. On closer inspection, I see it’s actually more like a leaf—like somebody stuck a note on the tree and it grew veins and bloomed there.
“Go on. Read it,” Dulcie says.
The paper is so yellowed with age that I’m afraid it’ll crumble in my hands. Even though I’m drenched, it’s somehow dry. The handwriting’s hard to make out.
“What does it say?” Dulcie asks.
“It says, I wish to marry Tobias Plummer.”
She nods. “Nice one. Read another.”
I bend another leaf toward me. This one is fresher, and the words seem as if they’ve been printed out on a computer. “I wish I could get a Game Guy for my birthday.”
“Huh,” Dulcie says. “Good luck with that, kid.” She plucks a paper leaf off.
“Should you be doing that?” I say, and just like that, it grows back.
One by one, I read them off:
I wish my daughter were cured of her sickness.
I wish I had a new job.
I wish the girl in fourth period at Bethel High School would notice me.
I wish I could feel the sun on my face. Nothing feels warm to me anymore.
I wish I knew what to wish for.
“What are these?” I ask, letting the branch snap back into place.
“Wishes. It’s a wishing tree.”
“A wishing tree,” I repeat.
“It grants wishes,” she says, like I should know this.
“So, what? People write out their hopes and dreams and place them on the tree and the tree says, ‘Poof! There you go. A big steaming plate of All Yours. Enjoy!’”
Dulcie wobbles her hand in an—ish motion. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Sort of.” Dulcie picks some pine needles out of her wings, which aren’t decorated with flying cows or painted to look like Holsteins today. They’re just normal. If wings can ever be considered normal. “I’m starving. You got any candy?”
I stick my hand in my pocket and come up with two Juicy Cute Bears stuck together like a candy sideshow act. “Just these guys.”
“Fork ’em over. Minus the pocket lint.”
I defuzz the bears, and Dulcie peels them apart, offers me one. When I decline, she pops the red one in her mouth and closes her eyes in a swoon. “God, I love sugar. Greatest invention ever.”
“Getting back to the tree. ‘Sort of’ s
ounds pretty random, if you ask me.”
“Well, you have to know what to wish for. Take this one.” She plucks a wish from high on a branch. “I wish I were famous. Okay, first question: Why does this person want to be famous? To be worshipped? Adored? To get noticed? To make gobs and gobs of money? You have to look inside the wish and find the heart. So maybe what this person really wants, the heart of it, is to find somebody who adores her. She goes out to wherever it is people go to become famous and just gets knocked down and out and around like a pin-ball flipper. And one day, as she’s walking on the beach totally bummed, this person comes along, and to him, she’s a rock star. He adores her, and with him, she feels adored, famous. In a roundabout way, she’s gotten what she really wanted. Wish granted.”
The rain dribbles down again, hitting the ground in a soothing patter.
“What kind of self-help-philosophy-lite bullshit is that?” I ask. “Somebody puts her wish up here expecting to have it come true and this … tree makes a completely arbitrary decision about what may or may not be the ‘heart’ of the wish? That’s retarded!”
Dulcie bites the head off the other Juicy Bear. “Your skepticism is duly noted.”
“How about this? How about if the Wishing Tree grants people their freaking wishes exactly as they requested?”
“Doesn’t work that way.” She picks some Juicy Bear out of her back teeth.
“Well, the way it works is stupid.”
Dulcie looks at me—I mean really looks at me. It’s like she’s seeing straight through to my cells. “No guts, no glory, cowboy,” she says quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Make a wish. See if it comes true.”
She comes nearer, and I can smell her along with the rain and the pine. She has a scent that’s familiar and comforting, like all the things you wish you could take with you on your travels to make you feel less alone. Dulcie tilts her face up to mine. Her eyes remind me of the ocean in winter—gray, stark, a calm surface hiding a serious undertow; something you only go into if you’re sure you can handle it, and if you can’t, well, too late now.