Chapter Twenty Two
Dad seemed a lot more intent on pushing a purpose to the front of his stories after a few beers the following night, on Independence Day. His renderings were not as crisp, the humor was less self-effacing and more self-loathing, and any laughter he induced was nervous. He and I sat with a few other fathers in folding chairs manning the grill in front of our house, lined up as though we were watching a youth soccer game or a concert in the park. Each father had packs of firecrackers that they would unwrap and fidget with, untwisting the wicks from the jumbled helix in the center as they talked and drank and stoked the briquettes. One dad had a lighter and would occasionally light a firecracker he had unraveled and toss it under someone’s chair, who would of course kick up his feet and cuss while everyone else howled. The latest victim would then join in the laughter, too, because he had no choice. But like the summer itself, the gag dragged on too long until finally the dad next to mine threatened to break an empty beer bottle across the forehead of the firecracker-thrower if he did it one more time.
Dad tried to break the tension, but his attempt only added to it.
“When does changing the knob on a bedroom door, or inflating a bicycle tire, stop being this amazing thing only your Dad can do, and start becoming the kind of thing any schlub with the right tool can do?” he posited woozily.
If only the other dads could have seen him the night before, at the top of his game.
“Fourth grade?” one of them arbitrarily chose a number.
“Longer ago than I can remember,” said another.
“Let’s ask someone who’s young enough to remember,” said Dad, looking over at me.
The sequel to last night’s blockbuster conversation was falling terribly short of the original.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I hedged.
“Man, if you can’t remember at your age, it must’ve happened about, what, age three?” said the dad who had threatened the firecracker-thrower.
“Maybe it never did,” my Dad said, still looking my way.
“You still think he’s Superman?” firecracker dad asked me with a chuckle.
“I’m saying maybe he never thought of me like that,” Dad said, only now taking his eyes off me and staring out into the street.
“Feel free to talk about me like I’m not here,” I offered as lightly as I could.
“It’s just habit,” said one of the dads, I don’t know whom, as I tried too hard to join in the uncomfortable laughter that tried too hard to convince Dad that the dig was worth laughing over.
“Don’t sweat it, man,” the firecracker-thrower said, switching over to words in appealing to Dad, who continued to stare out at the street. “We’ve all been guilty of it this summer.”
“This year,” added another.
“The past two years,” came another voice. I wasn’t seeing anyone at that point. I looked at the ground while trying to gauge the state of my Dad out the corner of my eye.
“There must have been a time,” Dad said, turning to face me again. “You were in awe of me once, right?”
I returned his look.
He continued. “Not anymore, obviously. But you’ll grant me that. There was a time.”
“Of course there was,” I told him.
“I guess I’m the one who should be able to remember,” he said.
“It’s not like you can read minds,” I suggested.
“Actually it’s pretty easy to read a kid’s mind,” he said. “Especially your own kid. But you need to pay attention.”
The other fathers started to announce that the grill seemed ready and checked to see who needed another beer. I glanced over at Dad, who had taken to gazing at the street again.
“You need to pay attention,” he repeated.
He was saying it to himself, as our sitting companions had by then vacated their chairs and amped up their search for something to do besides contemplate.
But I heard him, and I wondered if that was deliberate, that he was seeking a compliment from me, an ostensibly unsolicited compliment, rather than a direct response to anything he had said.
The best I could imagine saying was something like “don’t worry about it we all screw up sometimes life goes on,” but kept it to myself since I assumed that wasn’t what he had in mind. We were the only two still sitting in the lineup, though, and I got a little panicky over the silence, feeling more obligated to fill it with each passing second.
Dad didn’t seem to mind the lull, but he was the one who broke it.
“Thank you,” he said.
I was relieved. And confused. “For what?”
“For turning out okay.”
“Oh. Sure. No problem.”
Just as I began to wonder why Dad used the word ‘okay’, I jumped in my chair as Miggy clamped his hands on my shoulders from behind.
“Dude,” I swung my arm around and he avoided my backhand. “Why didn’t you go through the front gate?”
“Not used to it,” he said. “I didn’t even think of it until I landed in your yard. I was afraid for a second that I tweaked my ankle jumping off your fence and then finally remembered, ‘Oh yeah, Nick gave me the gate code.’”
Dad had not flinched while Miggy had startled me, but the references to fences and gates had him looking our way.
“You remember my friend Miggy.”
Miggy came around and shook his hand.
“Of course,” Dad said loudly, overcompensating for his beer buzz. “Happy Fourth.”
“Happy Fourth of July to you, too, sir.”
“You gonna help us blow up some stuff tonight?” Dad groaned as he rose from his chair and unraveled his limbs.
“Sounds fun,” Miggy played along.
“We’re all about fun here,” Dad inserted at the end of his next grunt. “All about fun.”
He looked over at us and grinned, fully recovered from his bout with the folding chair and standing comfortably upright. “I’d better see if your mother needs help. God bless America,” he nodded as he started inside, his ability to walk steadily not having caught up with his ability to stand.
Once he was through the back door of the garage and in the kitchen, Miggy looked over at me.
“Have you asked them about high school yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“Is your Mom as wobbly as your Dad?”
“Probably pretty close. She’s got a bottle of wine going while she’s making the side dishes.”
“Then you should ask them tonight.”
“They’re hammered every night. Well, almost.”
“But it’s a holiday, and I’m here. They’ll feel generous and feel pressure at the same time. Come on,” he gestured into the garage. “Let’s do it now.”
“What? No.”
“Before you think about it too much.”
He had me there.
“Fine,” I grudgingly agreed.
“Woo hoo!” Miggy gave me an exaggerated cheer and overly hysterical grin as he held up his hand for a high five. I brushed past him and mumbled that he was a wanker, which cracked him up as he followed me inside.
Dad was sitting on the counter in the corner where the cupboards met, drinking his latest beer, while Mom was pretending she hadn’t just been situated between his legs making out with him and that the pot of beans on the stove really did need to be checked.
I explained our plan to them as Miggy hovered in my blind spot. I knew he was looking at them with a pleasant determination since they were having trouble keeping eye contact with him, doing so only on occasion and focusing primarily on me.
“Well,” Dad started, then looked at Mom to make sure he hadn’t blocked her from initiating the response. She didn’t appear to know what to think, so he proceeded.
“It’s not exactly Harvard Prep.”
“Nobody is saying it is,” I reminded him.
Mom jumped in. “I think your Dad’s point is that it seems like a lot of work just to go to a public hi
gh school, and no offense, not a very good one, I hear.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“It’s what you make of it,” Miggy backed me up. “My sister is going to be a senior, and she and her friends take advantage of it and do some really cool things, form clubs and stuff, and they’re feeling real good about their college applications.”
“And if you do make the effort,” I joined in the defense, “it looks great to be from a poor area and show that you’re determined to get out. Colleges and businesses, they love that stuff.”
“Makes them feel good about themselves,” Miggy added.
Mom and Dad looked at each other in a manner that suggested we had pleasantly surprised them, if not convinced them.
“What about us?” Mom said. “We’d miss you.”
“We’ve already lost a lot of time with you over the past couple years,” Dad said.
Now they had caught me by surprise. I figured they would question the logistics of it, but not from an emotional standpoint.
“What’s the main job of a parent?” Miggy cut in before I could come up with anything.
Far from being taken aback by Miggy’s forthrightness, they seemed impressed, which I imagined could only help our case. They carefully considered his question, and I waited on their reply with keen interest.
“To love their kids,” Mom went the standard route.
“But why? What is that supposed to help the kids accomplish?” Miggy pressed.
“To be happy,” Dad said.
I silently started to root for one of them to say something interesting.
“What does that mean?” Miggy asked him. “What makes a person happy?”
“Love,” Mom maintained.
“Besides that,” I snapped, then backed off when I heard myself. “When a person feels love then it’s easier for them to do things that make them happy. What are those things?”
“Sounds like a math problem,” Dad grumbled.
We were losing them.
“A job,” Mom caught on, “a partner, hobbies, pastimes.”
“Things they need to find on their own,” Miggy kept the pursuit on track.
We all glanced at one another at various times over the next several seconds. I felt like we had won it with that final surge, but was looking for validation.
Dad slid off the counter and drew everyone’s attention.
“Since we seem to have the self-reliance part down,” he said, “let me ask about the love.”
I hesitated. “What about it?”
“Well…” Dad also hesitated in his reply. “Do you feel it?”
He said it as something of a joke, but was clearly a bit nervous once it started to hang there.
“Yes,” I assured him. Then I looked at Mom. “Yes.”
“Then say it,” Dad said, wandering playfully toward me, in full joke mode now. “Say ‘I love you’, dammit.”
“I love you,” I smiled, staving off his jabs to my midsection with my forearms. “Was I supposed to say ‘dammit’ too?”
“You’d better visit us,” he poked some more; I felt like I was about five years old again.
“Okay,” I giggled.
“Every weekend,” he kept it up.
“Okay.”
“And write us every night.”
“I will.”
“Letters,” he said. “No texting. If you’re going to boarding school, we’re doing things the old-fashioned way.”
I was just laughing now, enjoying the feeling of freedom and security.
“Your mother will be devastated if she doesn’t find a letter in the mailbox every day.”
“Absolutely devastated,” Mom echoed him.
Dad stopped prodding me and clutched me in a hug. He exhaled deeply into my shoulder and down my back. I could feel him relax. I could tell he was relieved.
He told me to go hug Mom as though he was a coach who was sending me from the bench into the game. After doing what I was told, we separated and I thanked them both. Neither responded verbally; they just performed variations on a shrug and smiled.
“Do you think they’ll remember the deal by tomorrow?” I muttered to Miggy as we made our way through the garage.
“They’re not that drunk,” he said.
“You were brilliant in there,” I told him. “If I’m ever in trouble, I want you as my lawyer, even if you’re not a lawyer.”
We reached the front yard and Miggy stopped us. “Dude...” he held my gaze for a few moments. “We’re in!”
We embraced and smacked each other on the back repeatedly while we did so.
“I feel like I got into Stanford or something,” I said as we switched to locking our hands in an arm-wrestling shake.
“That’s the next stop,” Miggy beamed.
“Man, I can’t settle down,” I said as we unhitched our hands and I bounced around.
“Should we sneak a beer or something?” Miggy chuckled.
“Nah, I tried that once. Didn’t work out too well.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Without me?”
“Sorry.”
“When?”
I paused and pondered whether I wanted to reveal the true circumstances of my beer night. But after what we had just accomplished, I decided that I owed him all the honesty I could manage. So I told him about getting together with Shay.
“And it made you want to drink?”
I suggested we snag a couple of the empty folding chairs. We positioned them out of range of the grilling station and I told him, without getting too graphic, about the fits and starts that Shay and I went through on the night we tried to force passion, and how difficult it is to tell who is more frustrated when devotion runs only one way: the unconvinced or the unpersuasive.
“I thought when guys shared stories of hooking up with girls, it was supposed to be fun,” Miggy speculated.
“Well it was originally a story about why I got drunk for the first time,” I reminded him.
“True,” he said, and I noticed he was being a bit fidgety.
“I’m sorry if it bothered you that much,” I said. “I don’t want you to be all down on love or anything.”
“No,” he relaxed a bit and smiled. “It’s not that. You’re just being so honest, and I’m thinking maybe I owe you a little something too.”
“Oh yeah?” I was intrigued.
Miggy thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he decided.
He positioned himself in the chair as though some sort of natural disaster might occur once his secret was revealed.
“I’ve seen Lana Torres naked,” he said. “Many times. Many times more than Blaine, apparently.”
“What?” I lurched forward. “How?”
“Through her window.”
I lurched backward. A few more repetitions of my lurching and people would think I was having a seizure. I looked up at the orange and purple streaks left in the sky by the disappearing sun. All those hours, all those nights peeking through windows, all those scraped forearms and bruised shins, and all I got was an unflinching exposure of the present and a harrowing peek into the future. Miggy meanwhile had glimpsed timelessness.
I started to laugh.
And when Miggy asked me why, I told him about my own adventures in voyeurism.
Unlike my heaving back and forth, his reaction involved rapt stillness; he held every word with disbelief and delight. What unified our responses and our confessions was the tremendous sense of relief. We had both assumed that our exploits would be discovered rather than offered, and of course regarded as deviant. Instead they were shared, and as we moved past the initial exhilaration of unburdening ourselves, our actions started to seem natural, like admitting to masturbating.
“We should conduct a joint operation,” Miggy suggested. “Celebrate the Fourth and our future takeover of the high school by doing some reality checking together. That’s what you call it, right? ‘Reality checking’?”
“Everybody’s going to be outside tonight,” I reminded him. “Unless you wait till, like, two in the morning.”
“Maybe not,” he said mischievously.
“Oh?”
“I saw Dulce using the tunnel earlier,” he announced.
“Does she fit in the tunnel?”
“That’s cold.”
“I’m serious.”
“Apparently she does.”
“Damn, those people are horny.”
“Let’s get ‘em.”
“Why would you want to see that?”
“Not to spy. To scare them.”
The prospect had me halfheartedly stifling a laugh.
“We’d have to find them first,” I threw out an excuse just as feebly.
“That’s part of the fun,” he argued. “And we’re good at it.”
“Well, good at sneaking around. I don’t know about finding anything.”
“Speak for yourself. I found what I was looking for.”
“But you know where Lana lives.”
“Shut up and let’s do this.”
And off we went.
We started with the North house. I warned him about the possibility of raccoons before we crawled through the battered screen. Upon landing we heard no signs of life, and upon skulking through the house and pausing breathlessly beside every doorway before ducking our head in, confirmed that it was empty.
We tried Shay’s old house. The sleeping bag and candle weren’t even there, much less Chris and Dulce.
We then cased the house with the yard into which Dulce had tumbled and dodged bullets, but found it locked and lacking any soft spots. As we let ourselves out of the side gate, I surmised that if this house was available they would have used it by now, since they were already using the yard for access. The connection between yard and house seemed to inspire us at the same time.
“You don’t suppose…” Miggy said.
We headed over to Blaine’s old house and ducked around the back when it seemed no one up the street at the barbeque was looking our way. Most were eating or drinking while the others were starting to line up a fireworks display in the middle of the pavement and tossing around firecrackers as something of a warm-up act, so it was easy to be inconspicuous.
The yard was drying out and stripped of its statues. The grass was not as tall as the longer-abandoned properties but starting to become shaggy. The entrance to the tunnel was no longer upholstered by our makeshift birdbath. Only the piece of drywall remained, with some frayed holes left over from where the decoy had been attached.
“They took the birdbath?” Miggy noted.
“If they sold it online I think we deserve a cut,” I said.
We turned to survey the house and saw a faint light flickering in Kelsey’s old room.
“Naturally,” I chuckled, thinking of the glimpse of heaven I used to imagine that window held.
Miggy backhanded me in the shoulder and put a finger to his lips.
I nodded and we walked over to check for openings, starting with the sliding door. It slid.
“I can’t believe it,” I whispered. “This house is Soren’s pet. He must have left it open by accident.”
We sidled through the opening we had already created, not wanting to crack it any further and risk any more noise. We adhered to our vow of silence as we made our way through the living room and entry hall. The emptiness created louder echoes we were careful to avoid. The stairs were especially tricky, as every step seemed ready to whimper. We decided to take each step together, figuring the possibility of a louder creak was preferable to a double dose of a softer one. Plus the sound of firecrackers outside provided some cover.
When we reached the top of the stairs and felt we could relax a little, we started to hear the noises. Our looks of recognition were accompanied by gentle moans, grunts, and deep panting. Miggy mouthed a disgusted-looking “Oh my God” at me, but of course we forged quietly on. We got down on all fours just before reaching the opened doorway with the single candle’s worth of light shining through it, as the heated noises maintained a steady pitch. We sat down next to each other and leaned back against the wall beside the frame, continuing to exchange expressions of horror which doubled as efforts to stifle our laughter.
Then we heard Dulce stop moaning and speak through her heavy breathing.
“I love you, baby. I love you so much.”
And our expressions paused.
“I love you too, Dulce,” Chris responded just as breathlessly.
Miggy and I stopped looking at one another. Dulce and Chris kept proclaiming their love, sounding as though they were having a contest to see who could be more intense and heartfelt in offering themselves up to the other.
When we finally exchanged looks again, I could tell Miggy was feeling the same way I was: like a total creep. I suggested with a head tilt that we should leave and he agreed.
I led the way down the stairs, and around the midsection of the flight, Miggy leaned forward and murmured, “Did you ever think you’d see the day when you’d be jealous of Chris or Dulce?”
I leaned back to respond and lost my footing, so instead of the witty riposte I had intended, I yelped briefly and overcorrected in regaining my balance, slamming my hand onto the bannister and causing it to vibrate like a tuning fork.
We tore down the rest of the stairway, and as we sprinted across the ground floor we started to laugh.
“You couldn’t wait till we were outside to ask me that?” I managed to say through my laughter-in-motion.
“You couldn’t talk and walk at the same time?” he gasped back.
He beat me to the sliding door and threw it open as wide as he could, but its track was heavy with grit and left little room to pass. We barged through the modest space together and landed in a pileup outside the door. He emerged first and opened up a slight lead once more as we headed for the hole in the ground.
I heard some firecrackers pop and felt a sting in my back. Within a few steps my whole body cramped up and I collapsed to the ground. There was just enough light left to see Miggy submerge into the earth and pull the cover behind him, oblivious to whatever just happened and imagining with glee that I would be hounded by Dulce, with Chris looking on as a very satisfied witness.
But it was becoming clear to me that things were heading in a far worse direction. I could not catch my breath. I reached back to feel what had stung me and my fingertips dipped into a slick of blood.
I stared at my hand and remembered every other time in my life I had seen my own blood on my fingers, from the fresh piece of printer paper that slid through the tip of my pinky in the first grade when I had no idea paper could do such a thing, to the blood test when I was jabbed by a needle held in the beautiful slender hands of the young woman who worked in the lab.
I heard Soren’s voice. I heard him announcing the date and time and address. I tilted my head back and saw him upside down from my vantage point, broadcasting these items into his camera phone as he ran toward me. And after more of my life sped past me, after I recalled bursts of other moments when I had been running, had been laughing, had struggled to catch my breath, had watched friends leave me, I realized what Soren had done.
He reached me and hovered over me and only then realized how wrong he was. I could tell it was more than just the mistaken identity that had not gone according to script; one of those non-fatal shots he had bragged about was now killing me. He was so shocked that it took him a while to remember to stop recording.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, and a surge of images in which I saw so many other people say the same thing splashed over me. It reminded me of the notion that everything and everyone is connected; but looking up at Soren, I hoped this wasn’t true. I found myself unconcerned with whether there was a heaven, but wishing very hard for a hell that would serve as his destination when he found himself in my situation someday: staring life in the eye while saying good-bye to it. And as my separatio
n drew near, I decided it would be best not to leave soaked in bitter thoughts, and turned my attention away from him.
I rolled my head in the opposite direction and saw Miggy peering out from under the piece of drywall, eyes wide open, his tears catching the glow of the fading sun. I used my eyes to implore him to stay put, and as he lowered himself quietly back down, I smiled at him as best I could.
I didn’t know what was to come, but what had come before was rendered in stunning sharpness. I looked at the dying grass and noticed every spore on the tips that were trying to blossom now that they weren’t being cut down; they bowed in the breeze and gestured towards a birch tree that had tripled in size since I first entered this yard, its branches now filled with thousands of little leaves whose wiggling in the wind made them look like schools of tiny green fish circling the white trunk. Each leaf seemed to look back at me, life on earth returning my gaze, as my breathing became my countdown. I searched the grass and the leaves for patterns, for purpose, but instead of finding an answer, ended up asking the same question over and over again: “Where does it all go?”
I caught sight of some smoke rising in the distance from the factory whose product remained a mystery, the smoke floating higher into the sky until it disappeared. I may have felt a train thunder past, heard the blaring of its horn, but wasn’t sure anymore what was happening and what was recollection, what were dreams, and if my life had even occurred. I hoped that if it had been real and there was some other place expecting me, that I could grow a little taller there, and leave something behind other than sadness over a short obituary.
Epilogue
Soren’s panicked mug was replaced by the faces of all the people I loved, of Mom and Dad and Miggy and Lourdes, and I felt myself being lifted into the air, floating over the valley and into a bright light and a warm feeling of being saved. I awoke to find my enemy had been vanquished, and that I would be waited on constantly, my every need attended to while I indulged my interests in books and film. I seemed to have made the great discovery that no living human can claim to have found.
But I couldn’t return to the wild side of me I had found on The Ranch; I couldn’t run, run as fast as I could, run away from someone about to tag me, move my legs into an even faster gear and feel my knees pump higher as my feet barely touch the ground and carry my body away from the outstretched hand behind me and toward the open spaces ahead. I couldn’t ride my bike so hard as to wonder if I would be able to control it if I had to turn or brake even slightly. I couldn’t throw myself into the bushes, or slide headfirst along the grass or better yet, through the mud after a heavy rain. I couldn’t run.
I couldn’t do these things because it wasn’t actually heaven, or any name given to an afterlife.
Miggy collected his bearings and proceeded through the other end of the tunnel and ran for help. The hospital sent a helicopter as my loved ones waited with me. Soren’s wife used her nursing connections to arrange for full-time help that was paid for by a gun rights lobby that wanted to prove they weren’t all like Soren. They even paid for my education as well, so great was their determination and deep were their pockets. I suspect that had I not survived, their money would have gone to Soren’s defense team and I would have been posthumously vilified and held responsible for my own death during the course of his trial, but nonetheless I’m grateful. I’ve been left with few illusions about anything.
Even the thrill of watching Soren get divorced and sentenced was tempered. And not because I’m paralyzed. No. Like everything important, it’s invisible; it’s because no matter how many hang gliders I’m strapped to by well-intentioned people or surfboards I’m spread on as they guide me over some two-foot waves at low tide or inspiring interviews I dutifully provide or dates I go on that inevitably include a moment in which I am told how courageous I am, nothing is as liberating as when we owned what our parents only thought they owned, and nothing so lucid near death as my sense that paradise has nothing to do with lying around unchallenged.
But the call of the conventional is strong; it cradles, pampers, and obscures any glimpse of something different. So I allow everything to blend into an amorphous feeling of pleasantness; the promise of Rancho Hacienda at last fulfilled only after we left, and the valley slowly starts to reclaim the land that once had no price.
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About The Author:
Sean Boling lives in Paso Robles, California with his wife and two children. He teaches English at Cuesta College.
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