Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Why not?

I don’t know. We were so baked from the sun and probably dehydrated and malnourished.

Oh, said Thebes.

Logan’s chin clunked onto his chest and then snapped back up, then down again. He was out.

Hey, let’s draw on him, said Thebes. She was waving around a Sharpie.

No, don’t, I said.

I’ll put 666 on his forehead.

No, don’t, I said again.

But eventually you got off the island, she said.

Yeah, I said, so then finally, there was this guy, his name was Pantilas, I think, something like that, and he hated us, so he told us he’d make sure to get us to the boat on time.

Why did he hate you?

Because we were terrible olive pickers, I said. We tried to work for him.

Nothing you guys did worked out! she said.

I adjusted my rear-view mirror and considered my current plan. Min had told me that at one point Cherkis was the curator of an art gallery in the middle of a field somewhere outside Murdo, South Dakota. It was an old, abandoned farmhouse. Cherkis had crammed all his art onto the main floor and was living in the second storey and the attic. He had taken a lot of blurry photographs. Min had once told me that Cherkis’s life’s work had been, maybe still was, to create the perfect level of pixel breakdown without compromising the essence of the image. He didn’t feel right about charging admission and hated the idea of advertising, plus nobody really showed up anyway, where the hell is Murdo, let alone a field outside of it, let alone a dilapidated farmhouse/gallery, so eventually, actually really quickly, he went broke. But that’s where we were going. Point A.

So, Murdo, eh? said Thebes.

Yeah, I said. He won’t be there, but maybe there’ll be someone who knows where he went.

He used to balance me on his face when I was a baby, and he tie-dyed all my onesies, said Thebes. Min told me.

Logan remembered smashing into a tree while trying to show off his flashing runners and Cherkis carrying him eight or nine blocks all the way to the hospital. They were both covered in Logan’s blood. Cherkis held him down while the Emergency staff stitched up Logan’s head, then he returned his kid intact to Min, and, with streaks of blood still on his face, left town in a silver rental car loaded with options.

I’ D FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE BORDER. Logan had dozed off again. I yanked on his hoodie and told him to wake up.

What the F, he said. Where are we?

Checkpoint Charlie, said Thebes. Act natural. We cruised past the wanky little “tuck stand,” as Logan called our Canada Customs building. Nobody was coming into Canada, the guy inside the cracked booth looked like he was busy counting his ribs or something, and we pulled up to the shiny space-station Star Wars thing on the American side.

Don’t say anything, Thebie, I mean it, I said to her.

Geez Louise! she said. Bust a cap in my—

Seriously, keep your mouth shut. Please? I’ll give you a dollar.

I will too, said Logan.

Thebes dropped out of sight and hit the floor of the van.

No, no, I said, don’t lie on the floor, Thebie, they’ll think we’re kidnapping you. She popped up again, sat there in this ridiculously erect position, and mimed zipping up her lips and throwing away the key.

Hello, I said to the guy. How are you?

He ignored the question and asked me where we were from, where we were headed (family reunion in Minneapolis) and how long we’d be gone (forty-eight hours). These your kids? he asked.

No, they’re my niece and nephew. They wanted to ride with me, uh, but their parents are going too. Flying. I stuck my arms out and made a whooshing sound that I’ll regret all my life.

Is that true? the guy asked Logan.

Yeah.

This your aunt? he asked Thebes.

Nothing.

Hey there, darlin’, said the guy, this your aunt?

Nothing.

Logan turned around and looked at her. I stared straight ahead into the great nation of America, waiting for the onset of dogs and AK-47s.

She doesn’t talk, said Logan. Like, she can’t. She’s profoundly retarded.

The guy looked at me. She don’t talk? he said.

Right, I said. She makes sounds sometimes but it’s impossible to know what she means. I felt Thebie’s foot through the back of my seat, gradually exerting pressure.

Her folks should get her checked out, said the guy.

Oh, I know, they have, but—

It’s your guys’ health care, right? he said. Socialism is really nice in theory but not when you’ve got a retarded kid that needs treatment, right?

I smiled. Yeah, exactly, I said.

It’s too bad, he said. He looked at Thebes, shook his head.

I know, I said. Logan cleared his throat and started tapping the dashboard with his foot.

All right, said the guy, well, y’all have a good reunion. It’s real sweet you’re taking her with you.

Hey, yeah, I said. Thanks. She likes to travel.

Thebes picked up a book and lay down in the back seat. What are you reading? I asked her.

Corporate Media: Threat to Democracy, she said.

Thebes, man, said Logan, just say “this” and then hold up the book. God. Like you would actually say “Corporate Media: Threat to Democracy.”

Well, she said, I don’t date a girl who wets her bed.

She doesn’t wet her bed, said Logan.

She wears Batman bedsheets, said Thebes.

Logan turned up the volume on his Discman and then stuck his head out the window like one of those stop signs that pops out of the side of a school bus. Thebes said that if she was eighteen and old enough to drink she’d start a book club.

We drove straight south into the heartland. Billboards told us not to abort our fetuses or to let our sins get us down or to worry about our bad credit and criminal records. For instant cash all we had to do was call a certain number. Bingo. Logan pulled his head back into the van and took a knife from his pocket.

What the hell is that? I asked him. A shiv?

Don’t say “shiv,” he said. He started to carve something into the dashboard.

Whoa, I said, stop that. He kept carving. Stop that! I said again.

What’s he doing? asked Thebes. What’s he doing? She was sucking on ice that she’d taken out of the cooler and water was dripping down her face and onto her terry cloth outfit. She took an ice cube out of her mouth and rubbed it on her forehead and then popped it back into her mouth. She was wearing a necklace with a huge, pear-sized plastic jewel dangling from it and a ring with an angel, arms outstretched.

Where’d you get that? I asked her.

Logan, she said. For Christmas.

My hands were shaking. We passed a lot of fields and a few houses and a barn with giant words painted on the side. Bubba Where Are You, it said.

I miss Min, said Thebes. She leaned forward and put an arm around each of us.

I know, I said. I wanted to ask her why she regretted being born, if it was a knife-in-the-heart all-consuming regret or an intermittent, passing regret like a loose tooth you worry with your tongue every once in a while. I didn’t know how to say the words. I didn’t know how I’d answer her answer.

Why can’t she be happy? asked Thebes.

She often is, I said. Life takes a long time. What the hell does that mean, anyway? Why would I say that to a kid who was already regretting being born?

Thebes sat back and tapped her Sharpie against her teeth. In the rear-view mirror I saw her squint against the setting sun like a desperado trying to get oriented. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I was bracing myself for another question I wouldn’t be able to answer. But she didn’t ask it. Just kept knocking on her teeth with her marker and staring out at the darkening world. Logan had ignored my plea about not carving into the van and had written into the dash the words Fear Yourself.