Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“It smells,” Ana said from the back.

Josie turned down the radio.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Paul agreed, something was off. Ana suggested skunk, but it was not skunk. It smelled like something in the engine, but then again it wasn’t the smell of oil or gears or gasoline.

Josie opened the windows in the cab and Paul opened the kitchen windows. The smell dissipated but was still present.

“I can really smell it here,” Paul said. Ana said her head hurt, then Paul had a headache, too.

At a rest stop Josie pulled over and crawled back to the kitchenette. Now the smell was much stronger — it was a faintly industrial smell that spoke of great evil.

“Get out,” she said.

Ana thought this was funny, and pretended to be asleep, her head resting on the kitchenette table.

“Now!” Josie yelled, and Paul unbuckled her and pushed her in front of him until the two of them were down the steps.

“Get on the grass,” Josie said. Now she knew what it was. The gas was on. All four knobs had been turned full right. She had the momentary thought that she should jump out, that the whole vehicle might explode if she even touched the stove. But, inexplicably wanting to preserve the Chateau, their new home, she reached over, turned all four knobs hard left and then jumped down from the doorway, pushing Paul and Ana, who were standing on the grass, Paul behind Ana, hands on her shoulders, until they were all fifty yards away and panting. The Chateau stood still, unexploded.

A car passed, heading toward the RV, and Josie ran to the parking lot, directing them to make a wide berth around the Chateau. “What is it?” the man asked. He was a grandfather with three kids in the backseat.

“Gas was turned on. From the stove,” Josie said.

“You should turn it off,” Grandpa said.

“Thank you,” Josie said. “You’re very helpful.”

He turned his station wagon around, and Josie crouched in front of Ana, who was holding her ThunderCats figure in front of her in self-defense. How had she grabbed that on her way out? She had found time to grab her ThunderCats figure while fleeing an imminent gas explosion. “Did you know you almost caused a very bad accident?” Josie asked her.

Ana shook her head, her eyes wide but defiant.

“She turned the gas on?” Paul asked Josie. He turned to Ana. “Did you turn all the knobs on the stove?”

Ana looked at her knees.

“Ana, that’s really bad,” he said. This was, Josie knew, the worst thing he’d ever said to her. Ana’s chin shook, and she began to cry, and Josie stood, satisfied. She wanted Ana to cry for once, to feel remorse for once. Ana’s nickname for most of last year was Sorry, given how often she had to say the word, but this had almost no effect on her tendency to put herself and her family in grave danger.

This is a kind of life, Josie thought. She stood, looking around, noticing now that they had parked next to a beautiful round lake, the surface so clean and placid that the sky was reflected in it, in perfect symmetry. Looking at it, Josie felt a certain calm as she cycled through some questions and observations. She wondered how close to death they’d actually been. Could they have all died at midmorning, on a sunny Alaskan day? She wondered, with some seriousness, if Ana was an emissary from another realm, disguised as a child but tasked with the murder of Josie and Paul. She wondered how long they needed before the Chateau was clear of deadly fumes. She wondered what a life was — if this was a life. Was this a life? And she wondered about the gene she possessed, some strangling DNA thread that told her, daily, that she was not where she should be. In college she changed her major every semester — first psychology, then international studies, then art history, then political science, and all the while she was on campus she wanted to be away, away from the pedestrian workaday nonsense of most of her classes and the directionless pathos of most of her peers. She went to Panama, and felt briefly vital, but then tired of shitting in a hole and sleeping under a net, and wanted to be in London. In London she wanted to be in Oregon. In Oregon she wanted to be in Ohio, and in Ohio she was sure she needed to be here, in Alaska, and now, she wanted to be where? Where, for fuck’s sake? For starters, somewhere high above all this filth and calamity.

“Mom, take my picture.” It was Ana. Her pants were around her ankles, her hands outstretched, as if ready to catch a falling man.

Josie took her picture.

—

They made it to Homer. It was only one o’clock. Josie pulled into the Cliffside RV park and paid sixty-five dollars for the night, and then they headed out again, down the road, toward the spit. Or the Spit. It was where most of the action in Homer was, Sam had said, so Josie descended from the hills and down the two-lane road onto the narrow promontory jutting into Kachemak Bay. Sure, it was pretty, Josie thought, without being Seward. For Josie nothing had compared to Seward. Maybe the closeness of those mountains. The hard mirror of that bay. The icebergs like lost ships. Charlie.

On the Spit’s main drag there were some old buildings that had real or former fishing operations in them, and there was a stretch of stores and restaurants, so, realizing they hadn’t eaten, Josie parked the Chateau next to another, far more luxurious recreational vehicle, knowing this would make its owners happy, to know they were better than her, than her children. Josie ducked under the sink, pulled a handful of twenties from the velvet bag, and they left.

She took Paul and Ana by their hands and crossed traffic, heading for a pizza restaurant that looked, from the outside, as though it had been made from broken ships — the exterior was a mess of bent walls and masts and crooked windows, everything blue-grey, like driftwood. The door was covered in stickers denying entry to those without shoes, with dogs, to unaccompanied children, to smokers and Republicans. Under that last admonition were the words “Just Kidding,” and under that, “Not Really.” Inside it was light-filled and warm and staffed exclusively by women. It seemed to be some kind of political pizza place, a pizza restaurant embodying its version of utopia. There was a giant stone oven in the middle of the first floor, and five or so young women buzzed about it, all in white aprons and blue shirts, all with short hair or ponytails. Josie ordered a pizza, afraid to look at the price, and the woman behind the counter, with a pixie cut and exhausted eyes, told her to sit upstairs anywhere.

The second floor was bright, glassed in and overlooking the sound. The sun was so hot there that they all took off their jackets and long-sleeve shirts and were still warm in their short sleeves. Ana asked if she could have a knife and Josie said no. Paul tried to explain to his sister why knives were dangerous but Ana had already gone to the bathroom and in seconds there was the sound of something falling. She returned to the table, saying nothing.

“Can you check the bathroom?” Josie asked Paul, and he leapt up, knowing he was on a mission that combined his dual loves: checking after his sister, and pointing out the wrongness of someone else’s behavior.

He returned. “Looks pretty bad,” he said, and turned to Ana. Ana wasn’t listening; she had caught sight of a motorboat cutting across the bay.

Josie stepped into the bathroom and found a towel rack on the ground, knowing Ana had made it this way, and knowing that only Ana could have separated the towel rack from the wall this quickly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of customers had no doubt used this bathroom and this rack without breaking it, but Ana had done so in less than ninety seconds.

The political pizza place had had an intoxicating effect on her already, for Josie found herself not caring about the towel rack. In fact she was briefly stunned, undeniably impressed, that this girl had that acute a sense for the weakness of objects. That she could enter any room, any bathroom in Homer, and know the object most likely to be broken, and just how to go about it.