Peter Carey - His Illegal Self

A sheet of yellow paper slapped the windshield and when it departed there appeared one more man-red face, one-hundred-ten-volt blue eyes, long white hair stretching up into the night.

The mother lowered her window and the storm rushed in like a tomcat, occupying the backseat and spraying the inside of the windshield.

Five dollars for the lot of youse, the man shouted. Room for all. I’ve got a nice clean Globe Trotter.

The boy began gathering the Uno cards but the mother dragged him out before he got done. Here, she told the man, here’s five.

Trevor and the Rabbitoh fled like cowards, suddenly reversing onto the highway, and the stinging gravel was cruel on his bare legs. The boy and his mother ran toward a trailer home shivering on its blocks.

Then the generator failed, so the boy would recall when he only lived inside the memory of a man.

Under hypnotism on East Seventy-sixth Street he would once more see the spooky-eyed proprietor lighting two propane lights which roared like jets at forty thousand feet. At that moment he was recognized, he was certain, and he stared straight back. Years later he understood-he had wanted to get caught. After the hypnosis he drank Armagnac in the Carlyle, flirting mildly with the waitress. You look familiar, she said.

In a minute the pair of them were up the ladder beneath the dented metal and the mother held him to her in the rocking bed.

It’s better here, Dial, he said. We’re doing fine.

I’m proud of you, she said. You spoke up for us.

His usual sleeping thoughts were of his mother coming to rescue him. Now he had her, he was safe and inside the heaving chest of storm; he went to sleep and when he was tipped out it was hours later and he was falling to the earth.

Throughout the night the trailer was punched and hammered so unpredictably, with such force, it seemed this thing might really kill them. There was nothing for Dail to do but hold the boy, listen to the adenoidal whispers of his sleep, while her legs ached with all the terror she had banned from her embrace.

There were some calmer stretches, but each return of violence seemed more drunken. The trailer began to lift and drop and the noise was soon so loud that the physical world lost all cohesion, and Dial found herself clinging to the axles of a ghost train. She could not let go, could not make it stop. She lay rigid in the bed, whispering to the boy-prayers, thoughts, wishes, things she hoped would worm their way like pretty threads into his sleeping brain.

There was no moon, no lightning that she could see. When she was tipped over it was into a sea of ink, her body wrapped around the sleeping child.

Her head cracked. She saw stars. She thought, Comic strip.

It’s OK, baby, it’s OK, babe. She was not knocked out but she could feel the ceiling with her backbone, sliding along the ground, grinding across stones as the trailer moved along the earth while she remained rigid, anticipating some horror, a stabbing blade, a hoe turned lethal in the night.

Baby. Che.

He did not answer and she thought, He’s dead.

What happened, Mom?

Shush, she said, feeling the terror of that word even in the middle of this other fear. Hush. It’s just the storm.

Are we OK?

Shush, she ordered.

Then came a noise without meaning, like a giant Mexican tin crow flapping its wings against the walls. She thought, What does it matter who his mother is? We are being torn apart.

We’re OK, baby, it’ll finish soon.

Then he was very quiet.

Che?

He was asleep.

Their blankets had fallen with them and she wrapped him tight, keeping her ear near his mouth so she could know he was alive. She tried to feel his pulse but he tugged his arm free in irritation and slept with his nose down and his bottom in the air.

Perhaps he was in a coma-Manslaughter, she thought. They were rocketed and buffeted, wheels in the air, soft belly offered to the sky until, finally, there came a time when the movement was not much worse than being in a dinghy moored too tightly for the chop. Her sleep was cut with something white and sharp, a knife of light went clear through her lids. She opened her eyes, saw the furry velvet shapes and then the lightning. Not lightning. She thought oxyacetylene. A rescue team. She carefully untangled herself from the boy, leaving him with his arms thrown wide, his lips gone violet-brown.

Sitting on the ceiling she could see through the top half of the door, showers of exploding sparks rising into the rain, a dancing snake of power line on a Kombi van. Figures dressed in trash bags stood before this wild machine while the water lapped at their feet, electric worms wriggling inside the river’s molten plastic-looking heart.

Dial found her backpack, then realized it was directly beneath a leak. So what, she thought. They were both alive. Her scarf was dripping wet, but the passports were OK inside their plastic sleeves. In the bottom she found some papers, a soggy mess of railway timetables and directions to Vassar, also her letter of appointment. It was nothing. Easily get another, but she sat cross-legged in the intermittent gloom and extracted the envelope and very carefully peeled the four tips apart so that the letter itself was exposed, sodden and vulnerable but blessedly whole. It meant nothing, but she held it in two hands, as if fearful she would burst its secret yolk. Carefully she placed it flat on the aluminum ceiling that was now her floor. Then, using her wet scarf, she began to smooth it flat, and as she squeezed out the final bubble the paper tore in half. Fuck it. She balled it in her fist and squeezed it, wringing the water into her lap. Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it. The fucking professor gave her Susan’s number, but no one made her call it. She did not even like the Selkirks. Vassar should take her back, fuck them, fuck it. She did not even know that she was crying. But he did, the boy.

Are you OK? he whispered.

She had no choice. She had to be OK. She came back to bed and held him.

Are you crying, Dial?

I’m fine, baby. I didn’t sleep much, that’s all.

Why are you crying?

It’s nothing, baby, something that happened a long time ago.

What had happened long ago was she had been a total fool. That was a long time ago and very recent. She believed people, always had-for instance, the handwriting on the ticket. Change of plan. Mrs. Selkirk expects you back tonight. The worst was-she believed it because the hand was so dogged, so dull, so lacking in imagination. She was such a snob she did not see the lie. And so she had let herself be their instrument, be used to steal the child.

He was a sweet boy, in many ways, but he was not hers. And this was definitely not her life.

The Philly Greyhound station had been a scuzzy place and it was with serious reluctance that she had left him in the waiting room alone. The telephone was just outside the door, by the restrooms, by the back door to the pizza parlor. She did not yet know she had been manipulated. She was still being a good girl and a snob all at once. She phoned the Philadelphia number written on her ticket. The line was busy. As the coin returned a strung-out woman, very white with scared blond hair and puffy eyes, came through from the pizza parlor. They locked eyes before Dial turned away.

Here you are, honey.

The woman was holding up a string of pearls. One of her nails was missing. Make me an offer, baby. I’ll give you a good price.

The number was busy. She shook her head at the pearls. The woman had a red line running up her leg from her sneaker to her knee. She hunched over her purse and removed four quarters and realized she was being misunderstood.

She deposited the quarters and listened to the phone ringing on Park Avenue. The woman was close behind her. She could smell stale bread and antiseptic.