We're in Trouble Page 4

  In the parking lot, just outside the shop, two state police cars have pulled next to each other, facing opposite directions. The cops inside seem like mirror images of each other: young mustachioed men starting to thicken in the neck. Their haircuts are short, and they wear sunglasses. They’re laughing, and as the man passes by they reach out and slap palms between their windows. The man keeps his head down and goes to his pickup, parked at the edge of the lot, getting his key out and at the ready.

  The boy isn’t in the truck. The man can see this from several feet away, but keeps his pace steady—the kid might be asleep, that’s got to be it. But when he draws near the window he sees that the seat is empty. The boy’s door is unlocked.

  The man sets his purchases inside and, calmly, looks around the lot. He sees only parked cars, and people getting in and out of them. The policemen still laugh with each other in their cruisers. He circles the truck, looks into the bed. Nothing. The parking lot ends at a strip of grassy land which rises up to the edge of the interstate; there’s been a drought so far this summer, and the grass is gray-green, tinder dry, as far as the man can see. He takes a breath. Beyond the diner and the shop are long rows of self-storage sheds. Across the street there’s an ice-cream place. They all seem, at the moment, places a boy might want to go.

  He calls the boy’s name—not a shout, but loud enough for him to hear if he’s wandering nearby, down between the cars. There’s no answer.

  He walks two rows over and calls again, hearing nothing.

  The man locks the truck and walks slowly back to the convenience store. One of the cops glances up. The man gives him a thin law-abiding smile and pushes through the doors, into the air-conditioning.

  He looks in the adjoining diner and sees nothing. The college kids are still playing video games. He scans the rows of groceries. He walks into the men’s room and calls the boy’s name. So far he hasn’t panicked, but he starts to when he goes back into the shop. He swallows and asks the clerk if she’s seen a little boy come in. She says, Yeah, little blond guy? I gave him quarters.

  The man sees him this time. Behind the college kids. The boy is sitting in a race-car game, one of the machines with a closed cockpit and a steering wheel. The man stands next to the machine and watches the boy race to thumping drums and guitars. The kid swerves—his head and shoulders move—and his little video car hits a cow on the roadside, which explodes into chunks of red meat; the car keeps going, and the whole machine bucks and shudders.

  Watch out! the machine booms.

  You scared me, the man says softly, and the boy jumps.

  Just a second, the kid says.

  All right, finish your game, then we have to go.

  Yeah, the boy says, halfheartedly.

  The man and the boy walk back to the truck. The police look at them and the man smiles again, sheepishly. He tries not to glance back at them, but the boy does, giving them a good look at his face. He even waves.

  When they’re on the interstate, the man says, You can’t do that. I need to know where you are when you leave the truck. I told your mother I’d keep you out of trouble. Would you do that to her?

  I waved at you. I thought you saw.

  This is a lie, but the man ignores it. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezes until the kid’s looking up at him.

  The next time you do that, I’ll have to do something about it. Do you want me to have to do that? Punish you? We’re supposed to be having fun.

  The boy looks at him for a moment, then down at his hands.

  No.

  All right. The man glances into the rearview mirror. Well. I got you a dictionary and some games. They’re in the bag there.

  The boy doesn’t move for the bag, but the man expects this. The boy is an expert sulker.

  They’re quiet for a while, driving.

  I want to be a policeman, the boy says abruptly, looking out the window at the passing fields.

  TOWARD EVENING they cross a river. They’ve turned to the west now, driving into slanting, dazzling light that comes from just above the horizon and gives the man a headache. The man thought maybe he’d drive the night through, but wonders now if that was too ambitious a plan.

  He pulls the pickup into a fast-food place on the other side of the river, at the foot of the off-ramp. They order dinner inside. The man keeps watch outside the restroom door, waiting for the boy to finish his business. The restaurant has an outdoor play area, currently empty of children; he offers the boy a chance to stretch in it. The boy refuses. His face is slack and shiny.

  They eat in the truck. Through the windshield they can see the bridge they’ve just crossed, and the tops of cars and trucks passing over. The river beneath is brown and thick. Westbound windshields glint orange as the sun lowers. The man massages his temples.

  Can I call Mom? the boy asks.

  No, not tonight. She knows where we are.

  I want to talk to her.

  The boy’s voice is tight. The man looks up. He starts the truck, and says, Do you want anything else before we get moving?

  There’s a phone. Over by the door.

  There’s phones everywhere. Do you need to talk to her?

  The boy shrugs.

  Aren’t you having a good time? the man asks.

  It’s boring.

  Trips are like that sometimes. It’s more fun at night. The wind gets cool and better songs play on the radio. And before too long we’ll be in the mountains.

  I don’t want to go.

  Now, you told me it sounded fun. The man puts the truck in gear and begins to pull out of the parking space. The boy’s watching him. Maybe that’s it: he’s tired enough to stay on one topic. The man says, You want to put a tape in? You can pick.

  I don’t like any of that stuff you listen to.

  A radio station?

  She doesn’t know we’re doing this, does she?

  The boy’s still staring at him with his dull, sleepy eyes.

  The man says, carefully, watching the road, Well, I didn’t want to have to tell you this right away, but you won’t let me get away with it, will you? Keeping a secret?

  The man noses the truck onto the ramp and picks up speed.

  Well, the man says, Your mother’s . . . your mother’s been having some problems lately. You know she’s been tired, right? Not feeling so hot at night?

  The boy nods, and there’s something different in his eyes now.

  She’s going to the doctor. It’s not a big thing, but she’s been worried, and they’re going to keep her for a few nights, and even though it’s, you know, a little different for us, she wanted me to take you on a trip. You’ve been talking about the mountains, and so she wanted me to take you out there while she does the tests. She told me not to tell you for a while so you wouldn’t worry. She wants you to have a good time.

  I want to call her.

  Well, that’s the problem. She’s not home right now.

  The boy swallows.

  The . . . the hospital?

  The man nods.

  We could call her there, the boy says.

  The boy’s voice is shaking—but just a little bit; he’s hiding his worry. The man wants to hug him. He’s a brave kid; his mother never sees it. Just says how much of a handful he is, how much he fights her. But he’s a kid, and in trouble, and look at how he takes it. How he digs in. The man knows it’s no big thing to beat up, or be beaten up by, another kid on the playground. Or to trip over your own feet. The man knows that, for boys and adults both, it’s really about taking it, seeing the world as it reveals itself and then being able to stand up to it all. Some people can’t—the boy’s mother, for instance, always complaining. But, somehow, not the kid. The boy pushes his hair back away from his eyes, a false gesture; he’s acting. The man knows: the boy’s going to fight him, too, more and more before the trip is over.

  Today she needs to rest, the man says, quietly. Can I give you a message? What she told me to say?

&nb
sp; The boy nods and looks away from the man, out the windshield. They both watch the road as the man says the boy’s name, and then:

  Don’t worry, honey, she said. Be brave and we’ll talk soon. I want you to have a good time. I want you to be good. Try and relax and I’ll give you a call in Colorado. Just think of this as a vacation. I love you, honey, very much.

  The man looks sideways, a little, when he says the last part. The boy keeps his head turned toward his window. His cheek is red, colored by sunburn, sunset.

  You okay?

  Yeah.

  I can stop, if you want.

  No.

  LATER, AFTER MIDNIGHT, they’re parked at a rest stop. The man tries to doze, to get an hour or so in; he has a sweatshirt bundled behind his head. The boy napped for an hour on the road, and now he holds a flashlight over his lap.

  A waterfall, the boy says. Seven letters. Second one’s an A.

  The man thinks, groggily.

  Do you know it? he asks. Or are you just testing me?

  The boy grins at him. Oh, I know it. Do you?

  No. You should get some sleep.

  Nah. I’m all awake now.

  But the boy does, eventually, get sleepy; he turns the flashlight off half an hour later. He curls into himself against his door. After another minute he reaches under the seat, rustles around, and then spreads his jacket over his chest and arms.

  Cold? the man asks.

  Yeah.

  You can lean on me if you want.

  The boy hasn’t slept against him since he was a toddler. The man tries to keep his eyes half closed, play it cool—has he given it away? How much he wants the boy to say yes? But the boy just shakes his head.

  I’m fine like this.

  All right, the man says.

  Do you know it yet? the boy asks.

  Know what?

  Cascade, the boy says, almost cruelly. It’s cascade.

  II.

  The boy, curled on his side on the soft motel bed, watches through slit eyes as the man sleeps. The boy lies still for quite a while, listening to the air conditioner rattle, making sure of the depth of the man’s breathing. When he’s sure, the boy sits up on the bed, hoping it won’t squeak, though if it does he’ll just say he’s going to the bathroom. But the man keeps snoring. The man’s hair is wet; he’s sweating in his sleep; the air conditioner doesn’t work that well. Hot sunlight seeps in past the blinds.

  The man had told him they’d drive straight through, if they could, but at noon he said he was too tired, that they should get a room and try to sleep. But the boy slept already; he’s not tired now. His whole life he’s only managed to sleep in short spurts. At home his mother is used to him slipping into the living room at night to watch television. But the man made him turn the TV off before they went to bed.

  The boy puts his feet over the side of the bed, and then stands, shifting his weight over to the arm he has leaning on the bed table. The man asked the desk clerk for a wake-up call at five; it’s only two now. Three hours in here listening to snores will be forever.

  The boy sits on the floor and ties his shoes. Now, if he’s asked, he’ll say he wanted to go downstairs to the big lounge and watch TV. The man will tell him no, but it’s a nice story and won’t make him feel bad. The man has tried hard to keep the boy happy—the boy knows that, and even if this feels strange to him, even if sometimes he thinks the man is lying, he knows the man wants him not to be sad.

  When his shoes are tied the boy walks carefully to the door. The room’s carpeting is thick and muffles his sounds. The man has left a chair near the door, with his pants draped across it. The boy knows why. The man’s keys and change are in the pants; the man thinks that if the boy tries to leave the room he might make noise. Tricky. The boy scoots the chair back, inch by inch. The change jingles a bit, but not much, and the snores never stop.

  The door is the real trick. The boy tells himself to be patient, and, moving just a few inches at a time, he unhooks the door chain and turns the dead bolt as slowly and quietly as he can. He reads the instructions on the back of the door to distract himself, about where the motel guests are supposed to go if there’s a fire. There’s a diagram of the rooms; theirs is blacked in. The boy tries to imagine a fire, dying in a fire. When he was six his best friend up the street died in a fire. Someone set it, but they never caught whoever it was. His mother won’t tell him about it, even though he’s asked; he wants to explain to her that it’s worse not to know, even if she is trying to protect him from things she thinks he’s too young to understand. The boy dislikes her sometimes, when she gets like that. He’s deliberately burned his fingers twice on the burners of the stove, trying to imagine. He holds his breath sometimes, too, trying to figure out what it’s like to breathe smoke—but that’s harder; he gets too dizzy.

  His mother wouldn’t let him go to the funeral.

  The man, though, told him a little; he was around for a while then. The man has always tried to answer the boy’s questions, which is why, when he doesn’t answer now, the boy knows he’s lying.

  Either that, or his mother really is very sick; it’s not a lie; it’s worse than the boy supposes, than the man is telling. The boy can’t figure it out.

  He hears the door latch click, and then the door swings in toward him. He opens it just enough to slip out into the cool hallway, smelling of cleaner and the weird burned odor of vacuumed carpet. Outside, he pulls the door shut, slowly, and he thinks the latch isn’t so loud when it catches.

  No one is in the hallway. He hears the television playing in a couple of rooms as he passes. One room’s door is open. A fat woman is inside, pulling bedsheets tight.

  He descends an open stairwell into the lobby of the motel. It’s not a very good motel. The plants are plastic and dusty, and the carpet’s worn. Two kids are running around the lobby, both younger than the boy; their weary parents are checking in at the desk, and the mother shouts at the young ones in such a tone that even the boy, watching, snaps to. They come to her side and begin whining. The boy fights an urge to go over and pinch them. He does that at school a lot, to younger kids.

  He doesn’t like kids much. He has two friends his age who read comic books with him, but he doesn’t go over to their houses if he can avoid it. They all sit together at lunch, at school, and they try not to attract the attention of older kids, who do more than pinch. His mother doesn’t know that the three of them have the nicknames Faggot One, Faggot Two, and Faggot Three. The boy is F2. F1 has it the worst: he’s fat. F3 is a coward: he runs away, but he usually gets caught and tripped. The boy just tries to be invisible, and for the most part the strategy works. He wouldn’t want to be either of his friends.

  When the couple has left the desk, the boy asks the girl behind the counter if there’s a pay phone, and she points across the lobby, to a dark niche next to the restrooms.

  He puts a quarter into the phone and picks up the receiver, but there’s no dial tone.

  It’s broken, he tells the girl at the counter.

  Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. I was supposed to put a sign up, but it got all busy there for a while. Can’t you just call from your room?

  He shakes his head.

  I need my quarter back, he says, and she gives it to him, clucking her tongue. She then goes back to reading a novel—a mystery, it looks like.

  The boy walks out the motel’s front doors, and stands in the misty heat. The motel is maybe a half mile away from the interstate, but the boy can still see it, off in the hazy distance; he can hear the big trucks moaning. He’s not sure where this place is exactly. He napped and read almost until the man pulled into the parking lot, and then they went to their room without talking much. Up and down the street he can see restaurants and strip malls, a big water tower, and some houses. Most of the license plates on the cars say Missouri.

  Finally, across the street, next to a stone building at the center of a small, grassy park, he sees a pay phone. No one’s at the park, as far as he
can tell. There’s a basketball hoop, a couple of horses mounted on thick, rusty springs—and a jungle gym, which he likes. He slips between the cars of the parking lot and then crosses the street, running through a gap in the traffic. It’s very hot; even that bit of running makes him sweat. The stone building holds restrooms, which smell foul as he passes their open doorways. On the wall between the restroom doors is a drinking fountain; the boy tries it, but the water is warm and tastes a little bit like dirt.

  Then the boy puts his quarter in the phone and dials his number in Chicago. An automated voice comes on the line and asks for more money.

  For a few minutes he searches the sidewalk and the grass for more change, but only finds a penny. He could go back into the room and get the change from the man’s pants, but he’s not sure that’s enough. Really, he’s relieved. He’s breathing fast—was he really afraid? Of what? Why wouldn’t he want to know? Is he afraid of what happens next, if it turns out the man’s lying?

  A lot of what the boy feels is a surprise to him. He wonders, not for the first time, if he’s crazy. He says a few cuss words under his breath, then looks around to see if anyone is near. He’s still alone.

  He checks his watch, but it’s only been a few minutes since he left the motel. He walks to the jungle gym, then climbs to the top. After a few minutes he starts to imagine it’s a skyscraper that he’s working on, that the drop beneath him is many hundreds of feet. This makes his palms agreeably sweaty. He talks to himself, acting out a conversation between two workers. He hangs from both hands, and says, It’s okay, while the other worker says, Hang on! Don’t look down! Grab my hand!

  He loses himself at this, wobbling on the edge of the bars. It’s an hour later when he feels the need to pee. He climbs off the jungle gym, then looks back and forth between the motel across the street and the restroom in the park The traffic has picked up on the street. He takes a breath, then walks into the stinking bathroom.