Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

Then he stopped short and pointed to the ground. “Put the wrench around the nozzle. If possible, you want to pull out the riser it’s mounted on too, and the spring around it. But if you can’t, just the nozzle’s okay. Then go twenty feet and look for another nozzle with your flashlight.”

I looked down at the wrench in my hand. “Is that really going to work?”

“According to my study of the diagrams, it should work perfectly.”

“Wylie, this is stupid. Petty vandalism? Their insurance will cover the repairs, and it’ll all be back to normal in a couple of days. What’s the point?”

He glowered at me in the dark. His thin shoulders rose and fell with the swift rhythm of his breath, and his chest heaved in and out, almost too fast to see. “If you’re not here to do this,” he said, “then you should leave.”

He looked like he hated me. But he was my brother, and I missed him in the elemental way that you can only miss your family or your home. I bent down and started to struggle with the wrench, and Wylie ran off in the dark.

I had no idea what I was doing, and was able to accomplish nothing at all with the wrench. Every time it slipped uselessly on the nozzle, I shook my head in amazement. Somehow Wylie was able to extract sprinklers from the ground, keep a twenty-year-old car running, and live successfully in the mountains for days or weeks at a time. I had no idea how he’d come by all these skills. Neither of our parents was mechanically inclined. My father, the scientist, was rendered helpless by the sight of a clogged toilet or a blown tire; after inspecting such problems, he’d shrug vaguely and leave them to my mother, who would then call the appropriate professional.

After a couple of minutes I stood up, leaving the wrench on the grass. Then I saw Angus — even from a distance I could make out his red hair — running toward me in his military posture and knees-up gait. He grabbed my hands and pulled me into a spin that landed us with a thud on the ground.

“I can’t get the thing off,” I told him.

“I know. I’ve got a bolt cutter,” he said. He set to work, his hands fast and sure. A short while later the metal nozzle crunched and a small spray of water spurted from it onto the grass. He handed me the sprinkler head, then ran off to the next person.

I trudged down the fairway looking for Wylie. Down the slope ahead of me, a sand trap lay cut across the grass like a ditch, almost silver in the moonlight. Up by the green my brother was crouched over a sprinkler with a bolt cutter. His backpack was very well supplied.

“I’m done with mine,” I said. “Angus helped me.”

“You only did one?” he said. He ripped the sprinkler loose, an expression distantly related to a smile twisting his mouth, and ran off to find another.

For a few minutes I walked around the golf course without seeing anyone, still holding my sprinkler head, then found everybody gathered on the bank of a pond. We threw our confiscated goods into the water, where they splashed and sank, and Irina beamed at me and said, “Isn’t it wonderful?” There was a lot of manic, happy whispering. I would have liked to join but didn’t feel entitled, due to my total incompetence.

Stan led us to an exit road on the far side of the development, and Angus said, “Let’s all scatter and meet at the apartment.” Irina gestured for me to walk with her, but I shook my head and said, “I’m going with Wylie.” For a second my brother stood there on the sidewalk tensed on the balls of his feet. Then he just shrugged, and people started peeling off.

The moon shone on the reflective surfaces of signs warning of children playing, one-way traffic, resident parking only. Slouched under his backpack, Wylie soldiered on, his fists clenching and unclenching with the rhythm of his hurried steps. I kept waiting for the absolute perfect thing to say to appear in my mind, and the longer I waited, the more absolute and perfect that thing had to be. Meanwhile his silence was so conspicuous that I could practically see it surrounding him. When he was little, instead of refusing to eat food he didn’t like, Wylie just stuck it into a corner of his mouth, sitting at the table like a deranged gerbil, his cheek bulging with brussels sprouts until my mother, half laughing, ordered him to spit it out.

He went inside a 7-Eleven and came out with a bottle of Wild Turkey in a paper bag.

“Could we stop for a second?” I said.

“Why?”

“Because my feet hurt and I’m tired.”

He shrugged again. On the next block, a small, disconsolate playground occupied a patch of dirt. I sat down on the merry-go-round, and Wylie stood punching a tetherball around its pole. We passed the bottle back and forth. Then he pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit it, and we shared that too. I felt slightly better.

“So what’s next?” I finally said.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Didn’t I just ask?”

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “We’ve got a whole summer’s worth of stuff planned. Our launch program will roll out activities on a regular schedule. A city experiencing escalating chaos will have to ask itself if its priorities are in the right place.”

“You think so?”

He sat down next to me, and the merry-go-round shuddered slightly under even his delicate weight. We started to spin, slow but definite, pushing off with the soles of our shoes.

“Lynnie,” he said, his voice urgent and guileless, “what does it mean to have beliefs if you don’t act on them? Doesn’t every single moment of our lives come with a choice attached? You might say these are philosophical questions with no practical bearing, but what I’m trying to tell you is that philosophical questions are the only questions there are.” He lay back against the spinning platform and spread out his skinny arms, the cloth beneath his armpits yellowed with sweat.

“Where are you living?” I said.

“I sleep wherever. Sometimes I camp. I scrounge food from dumpsters. I don’t want to get mired down in trappings. I don’t want to consume.”

“Except for Wild Turkey.”

“Flexibility,” he said, “is the difference between ideology and dogma.”

Across the street, a light went off and slipped us further into darkness. I couldn’t see his face anymore, and but for the rank smell I might have doubted he was there. I let my feet drag in the dirt to stop the spinning. “Listen,” I said. “Speaking of flexibility, I really wish you’d come home. Just for like an hour or something.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Wylie, you’re being so stupid,” I said. “Of course you can.”

We wandered slowly back to the apartment, talking about nothing in particular. Sirens rose and fell in the distance, and the wind flapped my hair across my face and into my mouth. By the time we arrived the party was in full swing, music playing, Irina slow-dancing with Angus, the baby cradled in between them. There was some Wild Turkey left, and also beer and gin. The dog, annoyed by all the commotion, got up and padded into the other room to sleep.

We all lay sprawled on sleeping bags, the sounds of breath and snores mingling in the quiet with the rising clatter of birds. Sledge woke me by licking my ankle and prodding his wet nose repeatedly against my foot. Irina was next to me, her head inadequately pillowed on Wylie’s stomach, with Psyche pillowed in turn on her more ample body. Angus was nowhere to be seen. Sledge licked me again, this time on the cheek, and whined in my ear. I didn’t know why he always picked me. I rolled over, got a dangerous close-up of Stan’s hairy armpit, and rolled back again.

It was my second hangover in as many days, but either I hadn’t drunk as much last night or I was getting used to the condition. I felt surprisingly fine. I opened the front door and followed the dog down the stairs to the gravel parking lot. The sun was bright yet mild, the street empty, and morning glories I hadn’t noticed before bloomed full and blue. Sledge nosed around in the weeds and relieved himself on a prickly-looking shrub with orange flowers. Above me, the apartment door opened and Wylie stepped onto the landing, squinting. “Are you leaving?”