Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

Outside, I harvest a few flowers but soon find myself staring at my hand in the headlamp’s beam, which is pale and even. The light is eclipse light, as when the moon is in transit across the face of the sun. There was a weekend when Skipper had us sail to Santa Cruz Island to witness an eclipse. On the voyage over, he showed us girlie magazines and told us jokes about sailors and sharks and faggots and priests. We anchored in Potato Harbor, then rowed in teams to the beach. As the eclipse began, the light slowly dimmed. Most of the boys stared upward with their stupid black glasses. Only I recognized the kind of light we were standing in. Suddenly, the Skipper had his hand on my shoulder.

Normally, his Merchant Marines ring flashed aqua, but here it glowed a royal blue.

How had he gotten close without my noticing?

“When most people think of light, they think on or off, ” the Skipper told me. “But the observant scout will see there’s a hundred kinds of light. Just like there’s a hundred kinds of water. Each with its own set of rules.”

He produced a twelve-pack of beer — one for each scout in the troop.

We toasted the sun and the moon and their temporary union. It was my first taste.

“What happens in the eclipse stays in the eclipse,” Skipper announced, and we cheered.

The way he said it was both funny and menacing, like when he’d tell a gay joke. We all knew what he thought of the gays.

—

The next day, the Tiger and the Cub are having a yard sale. They sit at a table covered with household goods. I drift over. The Tiger is wearing gym shorts and a jean jacket. The Cub has on a red hand-me-down hoodie.

When I approach the table, I ask, “Why aren’t you guys in school?”

The Cub says, “It’s Saturday, Mr. Roses.”

This is the closest I’ve been to the Cub. There is no single trait that makes her activate — it’s not the brown ringlets or baby-fat cheeks or exaggerated expressions. It’s just the cusp she’s on. I can see on her face a wide-eyed, trusting openness. She directs this look to a world that has yet to reveal its dark and unapologetic nature. Part of me wants to kill the person who manages to steal that look from her. And a loathsome, unfathomable part thinks it’s only natural to be the thief.

When I let my gaze fall upon a power juicer, the Tiger says, “It’s like new. We never even used it.” And when I look at a waffle iron, the Cub forlornly lifts her eyebrows and says only, “Waffles.”

“You guys trying to save up for something?” I ask.

“Just making ends meet,” the Tiger says.

They are eating slices of frozen French toast straight from the box.

I look over at their apartment, door standing open. “Your mom sleeping?” I ask.

The Cub says, “She’s on tour with a band.”

“What band is this?” I ask.

“We forget,” the Tiger says. “And we can’t check Mom’s blog. The Internet’s not working.”

“The cable, too,” the Cub adds.

“Is your Internet working?” the Tiger asks.

“I don’t have the Internet,” I tell them.

The Tiger nods in sympathy. “Anyway,” she says, “the band is going to be the next Nirvana.”

“Do you know when your mother’s coming back?” I ask. “Are you in contact with her?”

“Yeah,” the Tiger says. “We texted her, and she texted back. She said we shouldn’t worry about her, that she’s just fine.”

The Cub holds up a clock radio. “Five bucks,” she says. “It beams the time on the ceiling.”

“No, thanks,” I say.

“The sad part,” the Tiger says, “is that our place is filled with rock memorabilia.”

“It’s priceless,” the Cub says.

“But we can’t sell any of it,” the Tiger says.

“Because it’s priceless,” the Cub says. Then she adds, “My dad is a rock star.”

“Mine, too,” the Tiger says. “But her dad is seriously famous. Like, sell-out-stadiums famous. He sends us a check every month, which is why we don’t have to work.”

I look at some of their things — a bathroom scale, a pop-up Polaroid camera, a lamp.

I try to remember how long it’s been since I’ve laid eyes on their mother.

“You guys have any relatives looking after you?” I ask. “Some folks you can call?”

They shake their heads, and I nod at the situation.

“I always have to buy something at a yard sale,” I tell them. “It’s an addiction I have.”

“What about a picture?” the Cub asks. From behind the table, she lifts a painting of a boat upon a moonlit velvet sea. The wooden frame is hand-carved and darkly stained. It’s the kind of painting you see Mexican guys selling at stoplights on Sepulveda.

The Tiger says, “I think it’s a clipper ship.”

“It’s actually a sloop,” I tell her. “A Bermuda sloop, rigged to sail alone.”

“You a sailor?” the Cub asks.

“I used to sail,” I say. “I haven’t in a long time. But it’s easy to tell ships apart — you look at the sails and masts. It goes sloop, cutter, ketch, schooner, clipper.”

The Tiger says, “Now you have to buy it.”

“It is a fine painting,” I say, and scratch my chin. “Probably worth more than I can afford.”

The girls look at each other. “Make us an offer,” the Tiger says.

I open my wallet and look inside. I pull out those three one-hundred-dollar bills.

“This is the best I can do,” I tell them.

—

After darkness falls, I sit on my small porch and read the latest National Geographic . I don’t want to be in the same room as my computer, and my heart’s not into gardening tonight. There’s an article about U.S. soldiers who defuse bombs in a distant land. First they must approach the bomb — this is nerve-racking because anything they inspect might contain explosive material. Once they become acquainted with the device, they try to break it down to its elements. They separate the power source from the trigger, then the trigger from the charge. When a device detonates, it’s not like Hollywood, one soldier says. You wake up later and you can’t really be sure what’s real and what’s the echo in your head. He says you can defuse a bomb in the real world, but the bomb in your head, that’s forever.

Somehow, without my noticing it, the Tiger and the Cub have appeared before me on the porch. When I lower my magazine, there they are, the Tiger in her tiger-striped mascot suit, the Cub in pajamas patterned with rainbows and unicorns.

The Tiger says, “Some guy was looking in our window.”

“He was scary,” the Cub says.

“We heard a noise,” the Tiger says. “When we looked up, there he was.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” the Cub says.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I tell them. “Come, let’s have a look.”

We cross my yard, the parking lot and the courtyard to their one-bedroom apartment.

Inside, the walls are covered with guitars, album covers and cymbals autographed in black marker. The Tiger’s Mom has the bedroom, so the girls sleep on the floor in front of the TV. The floors: there are heaps of dirty laundry, cardboard boxes, bikes on their sides, and strips of masking tape worked into the carpet to mark the mascot’s dance steps.

“Where did you see him?” I ask.

They point at the window above a small breakfast table.

“I heard someone say there was a peeper in the neighborhood,” I say.

“What’s a peeper?” the Cub asks.

“He’s a guy,” I say. “He’s a fellow who likes— What he does is—”

“He looks in your windows,” the Tiger says.

“Oh,” the Cub says. “Why would he do that?”

The Tiger looks at me, wondering if she should explain, and I shake my head.