Eric Puchner - Model Home

He ate the second bologna sandwich and immediately regretted it, wishing he’d saved it. It began to drizzle. He clutched his backpack to stay warm. After what seemed like an hour, a woman emerged from one of the rooms, barefoot despite the broken glass, her hair braided with beads so that you could see white lines of scalp. She walked up to the motor home and began to fumble with the door, dropping her keys twice on the pavement. Rings gleamed from her toes, like a practical joke. Jonas cleared his throat, loudly, but she failed to notice him. She got the door open finally but then seemed to forget something, blinking into the RV before heading back to the motel without bothering to close up.

Jonas yawned nervously, the taste of bologna burping into his mouth. He sneaked inside the RV. He did not have a plan but decided it would be a better place to spend the night than outside in the rain. Crouching in the half dark, he picked his way through stray clothes and beer cans and at least one hula hoop, almost tripping over some hiking boots stationed near the sink. The place stank of dirty laundry and wet towels. He climbed up the little ladder to the sleeping compartment over the front seats. The sheets were tangled into a wad at the foot of the bed, next to a stuffed gorilla with what looked like a firecracker sticking out of its nose.

Jonas took off his backpack and pulled the sheets over his body and lay there at the edge of the clammy mattress so he could spy on the door. Before long, the woman returned, the beads in her hair clicking as she ducked inside. She flipped on a light and searched the mess at her feet before rooting impatiently around the RV, picking things up and tossing them around. Jonas worried she might climb up the ladder. Instead she pulled a glass from the sink, her face slackening with relief. The glass was tall and had a sticker of some bears on it kicking their legs like Rockettes. A bong, like the one Dustin used to hide in his closet. Collapsing in a chair, the woman took a plastic bag from her pocket, did something to the bottom of the bong, and then jammed her lips inside it as though trying to suck herself in like a genie. After a long time, she unsucked her face and raised it to the ceiling, blowing out a stupendous cloud of smoke.

She did this five or six times, the RV filling with a smoggy haze that seemed to hang from the roof. Jonas’s throat began to itch. The itch grew into a ticklish burr, making his eyes water. He tried to keep it down but couldn’t. He coughed. Once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. Incredibly, the woman didn’t seem to notice, staring at the clothes by her feet. Jonas clapped his hands. She didn’t look up. He said, “I’m right up here, you stupid idiot.” Nothing. After a while the woman’s hands began to move around, not slowly but quickly, spastic as birds, touching her face and filling the space in front of her with nimble, twittery forms. It was only when a strange sound came out of her, like someone yelling from the inside of a coffin, that he realized she was deaf. The signs began to repeat themselves, whole strings of them, and he understood that she was singing some kind of song. Jonas watched in amazement. His brain felt gooey and undercooked. He closed his eyes but could still see the woman’s hands in front of him, dancing their silent dance, singing him to sleep.

He roamed the house, calling for his father. It was their old house, but this didn’t impress him any more than the fact that he was wearing a backpack indoors. His voice echoed through the empty rooms. Finally he opened the kitchen cabinet: his dad’s face was trapped inside a glass, staring at him from the middle shelf. Jonas opened the other door of the cabinet. His whole family peered back at him, sucked into glasses. They looked scared and unhappy. What power he had over them! He knew the secret genie words to release them. When he said them, they’d bloom forth from their tragic prisons, grateful as flowers.

When Jonas woke up, the RV was moving. Driving. There was real music playing, a fidgety song about someone’s uncle and their band. The roof bounced above his face, pinging up and down. He could see the deaf woman from last night: she was swiveling her seat like a girl, sucking on a Tootsie Roll pop. A man’s voice, gleefully off-key, rose from the driver’s seat below him. Jonas rolled over quietly and looked out the long, skinny window facing the road, hoping to tell which direction they were going, but he didn’t recognize the signs.

Camille followed Warren in the breathtaking heat, trying to keep up with him. His steps were long and aimless, turning abruptly for no reason, beelining through scraggly pieces of brush. The lack of direction infuriated her. She wanted to tackle him, make him walk in a straight line. They’d been over the same area last night, all four of them, combing the desert with flashlights and calling Jonas’s name until they’d lost their voices. Back home again they could only whisper, their house as solemn as a library. Camille hadn’t slept a wink. Every creak, every snort and rustle from Mr. Leonard’s bed, was Jonas at the door. This morning, she’d agreed to come with Warren only because she couldn’t stand to sit around and wait.

The police were conducting their own search, supposedly, but God knows how long it would take them. Jonas knew no one nearby; they lived in the middle of nowhere; there was no place for him to go.

“Have you contacted the neighbors?” the policeman had said, filling out a missing persons report. It was a myth that you had to wait seventy-two hours. Just say “runaway kid” on the phone, 105-degree heat, and they zipped right over.

“We don’t have any neighbors,” Warren had said absently. Jonas’s disappearance seemed to have sunk him into a deeper trance. The policeman had glanced out the window at the darkening saltbush, as if to confirm this.

“Any trouble at home? Marital problems?”

Warren and Camille looked at each other. For a second, she wondered if they’d admit the truth about their marriage. It would be like coming up for air. Instead, Warren got the note from the kitchen counter and showed it to the cop, explaining everything that had happened. As he read the note, the cop’s eyes widened a bit.

“Has he ever exhibited suicidal behavior?”

“He’s not suicidal!” Camille said.

“The note raises some concerns.”

“Jonas is perfectly normal,” Warren said.

“I see,” the policeman said, returning to his checklist. “Right now I’m doing a risk assessment. Standard procedure.”

The cop asked for a recent photograph. Camille got their albums from the bookshelf in the living room and began hunting through them. It occurred to her that, since the accident, neither of them had taken a single picture. The most recent one she could find was from last year, a picture of Jonas at fencing practice. He was posing in the en garde position, pointing the twiggy sword at the camera, his arm raised in a right angle behind him. The expression on his face was comically fierce. Camille remembered that day last summer, when she’d forgotten to pick him up from practice and he’d walked home in his gear, two miles uphill. She had to sit down by herself for a second, the wind knocked out of her like a blow, before handing the picture to the policeman.

She followed the zigzag of Warren’s footprints, the sun scorching her bare arms enough to give her goose bumps. She glanced back at the house now and then for signs of life; Lyle and Dustin had driven to Lancaster, combing the streets in search of their brother. Camille stopped and fished the crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket. Only two left.

“Do you have to smoke at a time like this?” Warren asked, stopping to wait for her. His new beard glistened with sweat.