Eric Puchner - Model Home

The descent into Antelope Valley was windier than usual, the big rigs rattling like train cars when Hector passed. The pain in his stomach tightened. The image of Jonas — hungry, trembling, sleeping behind a Dumpster or worse — kept invading his thoughts. He fantasized about finding the boy on the side of the highway and returning him safely to the Zillers. They would embrace Hector, transported by gratitude. Lyle would explain that she was in love with him, even now, and he would have the precious burden of breaking her heart. A stupid fantasy that made him feel even worse. It was only when he saw the Auburn Fields sign up ahead, its curlicue lettering and gold-spoked sun peeking over the N, that he realized why his stomach was cramping. He’d decided to confess once and for all. Tell the Zillers who was really to blame. They might attack him, strangle him, charge him with arson. But what a relief it would be, to free himself of Dustin’s face.

Hector pulled off at the exit and followed the dusty, familiar road to the open gate of Auburn Fields. Jonas’s bike lay by the curb near the gate, cooking in the sun; perhaps they couldn’t bear to bring it into the garage. Hector drove through the gate. No sooner had he turned up the block of identical homes, singling out the Zillers’ by the potted cactus on their porch, than the door opened and Mrs. Ziller rushed out into the front yard, her bearded husband squinting behind her, Dustin and Lyle joining them in the dirt. At first Hector believed they were excited to see him. Then he realized they’d mistaken him for someone else, someone with news about their son. As he drove closer, their shoulders seemed to droop. Mrs. Ziller sat down in the dirt. One by one, like children — first Mr. Ziller and then Lyle and then Dustin — the others sat down with her. Hector could feel his nerve beginning to cave. He stared at them helplessly: dazed with grief, the only people for miles, sitting in the dirt that should have been a lawn.

Jonas had to pee so badly he couldn’t think. He moaned under his breath, clutching his khakis. It had been two hours, maybe more, since he woke up in the RV. In his catalog of painful deaths, he’d never considered dying from an exploded bladder. He could see the open bathroom from the sleeping loft, beckoning him like paradise. The deaf woman with beaded hair sat beside it, drinking Diet Cokes and playing solitaire on a little fold-out tray. Twice, suffering terribly, Jonas had watched her get up and use the toilet without closing the door.

There were two other people as well, men, riding up front. Jonas could hear their voices now and then, talking over the docile, boinky guitar solos on the stereo.

Jonas decided to wet his pants. There was no other alternative. He wondered with dread if he wouldn’t be able to, but then the slow hiss began in his crotch, more a feeling than an actual noise, his khakis pooling with a sickening warmth that seeped down his thighs. Carefully, so as not to alert the deaf woman, he peeled his smelly pants and BVDs down his legs, trying to kick the heavy, pee-logged clothes over his sneakers. In the struggle, one of the sneakers popped off and tumbled out of the sleeping loft, crashing into the sink. The deaf woman looked up from her solitaire game. So lovely was the sound she made, low and mermaidy and obscene, that it took Jonas a second to realize she was screaming.

“What in the monkey’s ass is going on?” a guy in a ponytail said, ducking into view. He saw Jonas in the sleeping loft and startled, grabbing onto the ladder. Jonas kept his mouth shut, deciding the best strategy would be to pretend he didn’t speak English.

“Pull over, Captain,” the guy said to the driver. “There’s a half-naked boy in the loft.”

“What?”

“A boy with no pants.”

The RV slowed and they pulled to a stop. The air smelled like salt; from the sound of mewling seagulls, Jonas guessed they were near the beach. The driver emerged from the front seat, his face dripping with a straggly red beard. Jonas began to get frightened. The beard looked like something you were supposed to clean off a shellfish. Also, though Halloween was two months away, he was wearing a glove on one hand made to resemble a werewolf’s paw.

“Who is he?” the driver said. He put the hairy paw to his forehead and squinted at Jonas.

“An angel?”

“A guardian angel,” the driver said optimistically. He looked at the khakis wadded at Jonas’s feet. “I think he wet his pants.”

“Typical, really. Just our luck.”

The driver stuck out his hairy paw, introducing himself as Captain Lobo. “This is Major Meltdown. Over there, sitting in the chair, is Miss Anthropy. Known to acquaintances by her first name, Griselda.”

“He’s not being cruel,” the guy with the ponytail said, folding a piece of gum into his mouth. “That’s her real name.”

The woman came over to where they were standing, her hands fluttering in front of her face. Jonas was not embarrassed to be naked. He felt as if it gave him a tactical advantage. Also, the woman had no qualms about flinging her hands about.

“She’s asking do you have any parents,” the guy with the ponytail said, snapping a bubble.

Jonas shook his head.

“An orphan troll child.”

“Looking, no doubt, for a home.”

“Nevertheless,” the guy with the werewolf paw said, “this recreational vehicle only sleeps three adults . My italics.”

The other man yawned. “We can’t let him out on the street half-naked.”

“Why not?”

“There are perverts. Unitalicized.”

The driver nodded. “And yet somehow he makes his way, without pants.”

“I see what you mean. It’s inspirational.”

“Raped repeatedly, and yet he goes on to prominence. Founds a program for the abused.”

The way the men talked intrigued Jonas: it was real and not real at the same time, as if the words were presents waiting to be unwrapped. Inside each wrapping was an empty box. The deaf woman reached up and touched Jonas’s hair, combing it behind his ear while speaking in her vowelly voice. He didn’t understand a word.

“She’s asking if you listen to the Dead.”

Jonas didn’t know what to say. “Sometimes I feel like one myself.”

“What?”

“A dead person.”

The guy with the ponytail laughed. “Welcome to the club.”

“What club?” Jonas asked politely.

“The dead people. You found us.”

He took the gum from his mouth and placed it in Jonas’s hair, like a benediction. Jonas could feel its secret weight in his bangs.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“You’re a kid. You’re supposed to have gum in your hair.”

The first thing they did was get Jonas some pants. “The living demand it,” Captain Lobo said, driving into a neighborhood of skinny houses with old couches on the porches and garage doors you had to tug down with a rope. Without warning, he screeched to a stop, dashed over to a clothesline in someone’s yard, and stole a pair of blue jeans, replacing them with Jonas’s pee-stained khakis. The jeans, crisp as a leaf, had flowers on them and little zippers at the bottoms of the legs. Jonas decided not to complain, even when he found an old Jolly Rancher gluing the front pocket together.

“What’s it today?” Major Meltdown asked later, sitting in the back next to Jonas. He had a bad cold but seemed uninterested in wiping his nose; his face was half covered in snot, as if he’d just plopped out of a cow. “American Foundation for the Deaf?”

“Negatory,” Captain Lobo said from behind the wheel. “Ran out of stationery last week.”

“Roof repair?”

“Are you forgetting one of us left the fold-out ladder in Colorado Springs?”