Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

I had this dream last night, said Logan. About a poet who finds out that his new book has no words, only thick blue ceramic-tile pages.

Was the poet Cherkis? I asked.

It wasn’t clear, he said.

Logan complained about the birds waking him up. He said it wasn’t even real singing, just crawk, crawk, crawk. I told him that male birds have to send warnings to other birds to stay off their turf and away from their mates, and Logan said he wasn’t interested in their mates, all he wanted was to sleep. He yawned and wiped away a tear.

And this is fucked up, he said, but I also dreamt that I’d had a baby.

So did I! I said. The other night.

Logan rubbed his face and moaned and stared out the window. He didn’t want to be having the same dreams and dark desires as his flabby-armed aunt.

How did you feel being pregnant? I asked him.

I don’t know, he said. Distorted and inhabited.

Oh, okay, so you do know, I said.

I’d prefer to be the father in that type of scenario, he said.

All it means, I think, I said, is that we’re expecting something.

Whatever, he said.

Min had told me a story about when Logan was a newborn baby. The guy in the apartment right next to hers, a Lithuanian philosophy professor, electrocuted himself in his bathtub and his body wasn’t found for days and on the day that they discovered it Min had come in from a walk with Logan and she had cried and cried, thinking of the poor guy next door, and also how it was a terrible thing to come home with a newborn baby to an old guy having killed himself right next door. This old guy’s mom had Alzheimer’s and lived just down the hall in a different apartment and when he was alive she’d go banging on Min’s door calling out for her son and thinking Min’s apartment was his and then he or Min would patiently take her back to her own apartment. Somebody came and moved her away shortly after her son killed himself, but for a while there she’d still come banging on Min’s door looking for him, calling out his name.

Soon after that there was a massive blizzard, the storm of the century they called it, when Cherkis was trapped in a restaurant and Min was alone with Logan and he was twelve days old and all the apartment windows were completely iced up so that it seemed like they were living inside a crystal, or a Christmas ornament, and there was nothing for Min to do but nurse Logan and hold him and take pictures of him and stare at him and listen to True Stories by the Talking Heads and teach herself how to juggle with the tiny Pampers diapers she’d roll up real tightly into balls after Logan had peed in them.

I thought about telling all that to Logan. Maybe Min already had. Or maybe you don’t want to hear that right after being born you came home to a dead guy next door. I didn’t know if that was the sort of thing Logan would think was mildly interesting, colourful, or just a really bad omen. Conversing with children is a fine art, I realized. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word. Or a gradual release of information like time-controlled vitamins. Either way, my own befuddled attempts were pathetic and I really wanted to have more than odd, cryptic conversations with Logan and Thebes.

My mother and I were at Min and Cherkis’s apartment before they brought Logan home from the hospital. Min and Cherkis were young, barely twenty years old, and their apartment was a mess. My mom made Swedish meatballs and washed all of their dishes and cleaned the bathroom. I set up the baby mobile above Logan’s crib and ran up and down four flights of stairs to do their laundry. When they got in, we all crowded around Logan and stared at him and whispered our compliments and beautiful wishes for their fantastic future together. Cherkis held Logan close to his chest — he’d taken his shirt off so Logan could feel his beating heart — and carried him from room to room telling Logan this is the living room, and this is the kitchen, and, buddy, this is the bedroom where you’ll sleep. He took down a photograph he’d taken of a bleeding, screaming punk band because he thought it would disturb Logan and mess up his chi.

We all had some champagne, except for Min, who didn’t want Logan getting drunk on her breast milk, and then Min and Cherkis lay down with Logan between them and my mom put out the incense they’d left burning in the living room and I bent over and kissed them all good night and then my mom came back into the bedroom and also kissed them all good night and then we left.

Did you know, said Thebes, that there’s a shrine in Tokyo, in this park, Yoyogi Park, where you can buy a charm against all evil. All evil!

No, I didn’t, I said.

And did you know that there’s this really tiny building somewhere in Colombia, or maybe Ecuador, that is the official world headquarters of the Department of Unanswered Letters. To work there it’s mandatory that you have a history of killer depression, but I don’t think—

Is that supposed to be a joke or what? said Logan.

Why, do you think depression is funny? said Thebes.

No, but I’m just saying…the way you delivered it sounded like a joke.

Depression’s not a joke, yo, said Thebes.

I know it’s not a joke, said Logan. I said the way you told that anecdote sounded like you were…like it was supposed to be a joke. Forget it.

Hey, said Thebes. How did you know that was air conditioner fluid?

I tasted it, I said.

Logan looked at me and frowned. That might have seemed like a really good idea at the time, he said, but maybe you should have taken a minute or even possibly two minutes to think about what you were doing.

I told you I wasn’t qualified to be talking about that stuff, I said. Logan smiled and it was like…I don’t know what it was like. A hurricane. Childbirth. Heroin. It rocked my world for a few seconds.

Hey, said Thebes, I read something about miners drinking their own urine in order to—

I read that too, said Logan.

Well, then, said Thebes, you know to mix it with tree bark, right? So the uric acid is killed? If you get stuck in an underground mine that’s what you have to do.

There aren’t any trees down there, genius, said Logan.

Well, Stephen Hawking, said Thebes, experienced miners bring their own bark just in case.

And then an animal jumped in front of our van and we hit its rear end and went skittering off the road, spun around and landed backwards in the ditch, but right side up.

What the fuck just happened? said Logan.

We hit a deer, said Thebes. I think it was a deer. Hattie, you killed it!

Are you serious? said Logan.

Oh my god, said Thebes. I can’t believe we hit a deer. Why didn’t you stop?

I didn’t see it at all, I said. It was just there.

Oh my god, said Thebes.

Holy fuck, said Logan.

Are you guys okay? I said.

They said yeah and then we got out of the van and wandered down the highway a ways to see if the deer was still alive but it was lying in the middle of the road and there was blood everywhere and it looked dead. Its eyes were open. I picked up a small stone from the shoulder and slid it gently across the pavement. It hit the deer but the deer didn’t blink or move. Thebes started to cry, she said she was now impeccably sad, and Logan put his arm around her shoulder.

We have to get him out of the middle of the road, I said.

Thebes said she couldn’t touch him. Why did he do that? she said. I mean, like, why?

They just do, I told her. They don’t get traffic.

Logan and I walked over to the deer and grabbed its hind legs and dragged it to the side of the road. Thebes didn’t want to leave the deer, but I told her I’d call someone from the next gas station, some wildlife officer, and they’d take the deer away. There was blood and clumps of fur on the front bumper of the van and a big dent. Logan tried to get the blood off by throwing water on it from the cooler but it didn’t really work, it just turned streaky. Then when I tried to start the van the ignition fell right out of the steering column and I had to use a screwdriver to get it going. Logan picked up the ignition for a closer look and I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.