Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Let’s go over here, I said, and took Logan’s hand and led him through the ditch and up onto the other side and through a hole in an electric fence into an empty field. We sat on a rock in the rain and he cried and I tried to think of something to say that would comfort him, something true.

I know it wasn’t my mom’s idea for us to find Cherkis, said Logan. I’ve known that all along.

Yeah? I said. Okay. You’re right, it wasn’t. It was my idea and I’m really sorry for lying to you. I really am. I thought this was the best thing to do. The only thing I could think of was finding Cherkis and asking him to take care of you guys so at least…I don’t know. It was probably a stupid idea but I was desperate.

I don’t know either, said Logan. It’s messed up.

Yeah, it is, I said. Right now it is, but it won’t always be.

I kind of think it always will be, said Logan.

Yeah, I know, I said. It seems that way, but—

No, it really is that way, he said. He was crying hard, trying to talk. Even when she gets better, he said, it’s for like three days or maybe a week and then it’s over, she gives up, it’s just so…I think Thebes and I are on our own.

No, no, I said. You’re not on—

Yeah, said Logan, we are. I don’t know how to take care of a kid, but she’s my sister, so…that’s that. I can get a job somewhere, I think. I’ll be sixteen in a month.

I know, I said, but…that’s not…You’re not on your own.

Hat, I’m not stupid, said Logan. You can go back to Paris, or wherever, you don’t have to take care of us. I’ve got it.

Let’s go back to the van, I said. C’mon. I pulled him up off the rock and he smiled and said I had a pretty decent grip. Let’s get out of here, I said.

But the van wasn’t there, and the fog was so thick I could barely see Logan’s face. Jesus Christ, I said. Oh god. Oh man. What the…why…?

Did you leave the keys in the van? asked Logan.

I was kneeling on the side of the highway, holding onto my head like a prisoner of war.

Thebes! Logan yelled her name once and then again and then he started running down the highway and quickly disappeared in the fog.

A minute later I saw the van reversing towards me. It stopped and Logan jumped out and ran around to where I was sitting and helped me up. He opened up the passenger side door and shoved me in. Thebes was sitting in the back seat with her arm around the dog.

Good one, eh? she said. No? Who knew I could drive?

Min and I were kids. Our parents had rented a cottage at some lake. There was a long dock and Min ran the length of it and leaped into the water and disappeared. My parents and I stood on the dock screaming her name. My father jumped into the water but couldn’t find her and our mother ran to the cottage to phone the search and rescue. Twenty minutes later Min poked her head out from under the dock. There’d been six inches or so of space between the wooden planks and the water and she’d hid there listening to us go crazy looking for her. She didn’t get it. She couldn’t understand how or why we’d be angry because damn it, it was so funny, so smooth.

That night she and I lay in our bunk beds and I asked her if she wouldn’t have panicked if it had been me hiding under the dock and she didn’t know where I was because the last thing she’d seen of me was me jumping into the water, and she said yeah, she would have panicked. She told me there was only one person in the world she loved and that person was me.

The rain had stopped and the fog had lifted. Min, I said to myself, we’re here. Do we keep going? I didn’t know what else to say. I tried to remember the Uncertainty Principle but couldn’t. I waited for her to answer. I told myself that if in ten seconds I looked out the window and happened to see water, I would know that Min had answered. No, I thought, I’m going to change that to a tree. We were in a really dry part of the United States. No, I thought, actually we’re in a desert, I’m going to change it to a cactus. No, wait, a bird. I counted to ten. I looked out the window and thought for sure, definitely, I had just seen some type of flying creature. Yes, I had. It was a giant circling vulture and he had many friends and they were closing in on the shredded carcass of half a cow. Still. I would consider the vulture to be Min’s answer. I didn’t know what dark meaning it held, but maybe, hopefully, none.

When Logan was a little kid he would run away from home. He’d go outside and hide behind the giant elm in their front yard. Sometimes he’d stand there for hours, waiting to be found.

One time Min and the kids and I were having lunch in a restaurant. Thebes was in a high chair having a fit over something and Min and I were trying to get her to calm down. When she finally did, Logan was gone. He’d left a note, spelled out in square letters along the edge of a round coaster. I have run away for the 3 time, it said. We ran out of the restaurant and found him halfway down the block watching a busker perform magic tricks. I still have the coaster somewhere. I should give it to Min, or Logan. It was a coaster advertising some coffee with the words “Select Discoveries” in the centre.

Let’s stop for gas, I said. Thebes was in the back, building something, quietly singing a Smokey Robinson tune, “I Second That Emotion,” and the dog was asleep on the floor. The water in the cooler sloshed around so much that if we didn’t have music playing it sounded like we were in a small fishing boat on a slightly choppy lake. I imagine that it’s the boat in Logan’s dream, the one that we’re all in, out at sea, and my father pops up from the water with his glasses on and says how happy he is to see us.

Logan careened into the parking lot of the gas station, filled the van up and then dribbled his basketball around for a while. Thebes zipped into the washroom and I could hear her singing in there while I stood and paid at the counter. Kid’s happy, said the clerk. She came out and I bought her an Archie comic, and when we were walking back to the van I asked her what she was thinking about.

I don’t know, she said.

C’mon, you do so, I said.

I’m just wondering if Cherkis is going to like me, she said.

Heads up, T., said Logan. Thebes rammed her Archie into her mouth to free up her hands and caught the ball like a pro and fired it right back at him. The side door on the van was open and Rajbeer leapt out all caught up in the excitement of the game and then one of the gas station employees came out and asked us please to put that pit bull away and also no playing in the parking lot, because they get a lot of tour buses full of seniors who enjoy serenity when they disembark.

While Logan drove, I put my feet on the dash. The world whipped past us. You should slow down a bit, I told Logan. Thebes lay down in the back and said she wanted to think about things for a while but if something earth-shattering happened we should let her know. Then she said all right, she was finished thinking about things and she started reading us stuff about Kingman from an Arizona travel book she’d picked up along the way.

Did you know, she said, that Kingman is the site of BLEVE. The Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion?

No, neither Logan or I were aware of that.

Firefighters from around the world study it, said Thebes. And did you know, she said, that Pamela Anderson did one of her Playboy photo shoots at the corner of Fourth Street and Andy Devine Avenue and was brought into the Kingman Police Department for indecent exposure?

Really? said Logan.

No, I didn’t know that either, I said.

She wasn’t charged, said Thebes, but she was asked to write a letter of apology.