Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

He looked at his cast. He banged it against the dash a couple of times. Then he looked at the map and said, Monticello, Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat, Tuba City, Flagstaff. He wished he had his knife so he could carve those names into the dash.

Do you use an IUD, Hattie? asked Thebes.

What? I said. Why are you asking me that? Min would have stayed calm and classy and answered honestly and respectfully and then maybe have used the occasion for an informative discussion on birth control.

No, I said. Do you? Stop reading that dictionary.

IN THE WORLD OF CHILDREN, Min was a genius, she could navigate it in her sleep. She could read book after book to them, sing song after song, soothe them for hours, tenderly and humorously cajole them out of their tantrums, build cities and empires with them in the sandbox for an entire day and answer a million questions in a row without ever losing her cool. She had conceived them, given birth to them and nursed them into life. But out there, in that other world, she was continually crashing into things.

I should give her permission to kill herself, I thought. No, not permission, that’s the wrong word. I should give her my blessing. No, not even blessing. I don’t know what it would be that I’d be giving her, necessarily, by telling her she could do whatever she wanted with her life.

One day this guy came to her door and asked her if she had any money, he said his wife and kids were freezing to death somewhere, and she said oh, you know what, no, I’m so sorry. So the guy asked her if she had money in the bank. Well, yeah, she said. A bit. And then the guy said well, I’ve got my car here, and I know where there’s an ATM, why don’t we go there right now and you can get some money out of your account. Well, said Min, yeah, okay. So off they go and Min takes out sixty bucks and gives it to him and he asks her if that’s all she has and she says yeah, I’m so sorry, and he takes off, and she walks home alone through the icy streets still worrying about the guy’s wife and kids. And then she tells Cherkis about this and he tells me and asks me what the hell is wrong with that woman? He didn’t say it spitefully or angrily. He said it quietly. He shook his head. He was stumped, genuinely. He wanted to know as badly as I did.

Once, after she’d deep-sixed another one of her art projects early in its infancy, Min decided that what she really needed was religion and she started going to some church in the north end, in some dilapidated neighbourhood off Main Street.

At first it was great but then the pastor of the church told the congregation that they were going to start locking the doors of the church during the Sunday sermon because prostitutes were coming in off the street to warm up in the lobby and kids in the hood were coming in off the street to steal coats from the cloakroom.

Min was enraged. Since when does a church lock its doors, and especially to the community’s most vulnerable individuals? The next Sunday she brought a lawn chair and plunked it down by the front door, which she’d propped open with a sign that said All Are Welcome, and then, clipboard in hand, counted the number of prostitutes and street kids and other disenfranchised folks entering the church.

None! Zero. She did this Sunday after Sunday, there was no thieving going on at all, and then, when her good work was finished, she stormed the pulpit in the middle of his sermon, grabbed the mike and presented her findings to the entire assembly and said if this was Christianity she didn’t want any part of it, she’d rather sell her ass for crack.

We were making good time now, barrelling through the bodacious curves of southeastern Utah and ignoring all impending signs of trouble with the van. At least I was.

You guys happy? I said.

The kids smiled at me like I was a dog chasing my tail, sweet but stupid, and looked away.

Thebes decided that she and Logan should have Art Class in the van. She would be the teacher and he would be her star pupil. She wanted Logan to attempt, somehow, in whatever medium he chose, to render the majestic beauty of our surroundings.

Logan said he didn’t want her to impose her definition of art on him and he’d only play if he could do whatever he wanted to do.

Fine, Thebes said. What do you want to do?

Logan asked her if he could use the mannequin head she’d brought along and she reluctantly agreed. She had been saving it for something big, but fine, okay, he could have it. Logan crawled into the back with Thebes, for better access to her art supplies, and they hunkered down and got to work. It was difficult for Logan to work with the cast on, but Thebes helped him out with the finer details. They were at it for hours, it was a long class. At one point Logan asked me to pull over onto the shoulder so he could do something to the head. I wasn’t allowed to look. The final project was going to be a surprise.

By the time he finished, his teacher had fallen fast asleep. Okay, he said, here it is. I pulled over again so I could have a decent look at it.

He handed me a bloody mannequin head.

It’s called This Boy Is Obviously Dying, he said.

On the neck part of the mannequin he’d drawn little pictures of a sun, a girl, the road, a CD player and a basketball jersey.

There’s a written explanation that goes with the piece, he said. He handed me a scrap of paper.

I’m driving, I said. Read it to me.

He began: The goal of this piece was to depict a fictional young victim of typical street violence, attaching a certain level of humanity to a conventional urban casualty. To give it as realistic a feel as possible, I took the head onto the shoulder of a highway somewhere in Utah in the afternoon and beat it with a heavy metal rod for ten minutes. I then painted the head to look as though it was bleeding from all the places where it was damaged or scraped up. The images on the lower neck represent two contrasting influences on the dying kid, one material, violent and destructive, and the other loving, peaceful and uplifting. I see the presence of these two divergent influences as a fundamental conflict within everyone. A conflict this kid lost.

God, um…yeah, he did, didn’t he? I said.

Logan had also included the materials and resources he used for the project: mannequin head, acrylic paint, ballpoint pen, pencil, metal rod, highway shoulder, glue gun.

Where’d you get a metal rod? I asked him.

Thebes, he said.

I put the boy’s head on the dash, facing out towards the road. There was so much blood on it and it looked so real. His hair was covered in it and it was dripping down his face. I didn’t want to look at it or touch it or attempt to understand it. Logan didn’t ask me what I thought. He seemed pretty pleased with it.

It’s great, I said. Kind of dark, but great. I like the explanation.

He told me I didn’t have to keep it on the dash if I didn’t want to. In fact, he said, we could throw it out or burn it. He was just trying to make Thebes happy.

No, no, I said. I like it up here. It makes an interesting contrast with the hearts and rainbows on the back windows. Think it’ll bring us luck?

Logan put in a CD and closed his eyes.

Are you going to sleep? I said.

No answer.

Logan?

Yeah?

Are you—?

No, I’m just thinking, he said.

About what?

He kept his eyes closed while he talked. I don’t know how to say it, really, he said.

Say what? I asked.

You know, he said, I kind of know that this whole thing wasn’t Min’s idea. He opened his eyes and looked at me and then turned around and checked to make sure that Thebes was sleeping. Then he closed them again.