Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

The speed limit on most highways in Alaska seemed to be sixty-five, but the Chateau would not exceed forty-eight. It took inordinately long to get to forty, and ten minutes of asthmatic heaving to get from forty to forty-seven, and after that the whole assembly seemed ready to pull apart like an exploding star. So for the first few hours Josie drove at forty-eight, while the traffic around her was going twenty miles faster. On two-lane roads, there were usually four or six cars behind her, honking and cursing until Josie could find a wide shoulder where she could pull over, allow them all to pass and then get back on the road, knowing in five minutes she would accumulate another line of angry followers. Stan had said nothing about any of this.

She’d made the kids sandwiches, and served them on actual plates, and now they were finished and wanted to know where to put the plates. She told them to put them on the counter, and at the next stoplight the plates fell to the ground, breaking and sending the remnants of lunch to every Chateau nook and cranny. The trip had begun.

Josie knew nothing about Seward but it was somewhere near Homer so she decided that would be their destination for the day. They drove an hour or so, and found some brutally gorgeous bay, the water a hard mirror, white mountains rising beyond like a wall of dead presidents. Josie pulled over, just for a picture or two, but already everything inside the vehicle was filthy — the floor was muddy, there were clothes and wrappers strewn about, and most of Ana’s chips were on the floor. Josie felt a sudden exhaustion come over her. She pulled the blinds, let the kids watch Tom and Jerry —in Spanish, it was the only DVD they’d brought, leaving in a hurry as they did — and on their little machine they watched the cartoons as trucks hammered past them, each giving the Chateau a gentle rocking. Twenty minutes later the children were asleep and she was still awake.

She moved into the passenger seat, opened a twist-off pinot, poured herself a cup, and settled in with a copy of Old West magazine. Stan had left five copies in the Chateau — a forty-year-old magazine offering TRUE TALES OF THE OLD WEST. In it there was a column called “Trails Grown Dim,” where readers would send in requests for information about long-lost kin.

“In the Republic of Texas census of 1840,” read one, “is word of Thomas Clifton of Austin County with the statement that he owned 349 acres of land. I would like to hear from any of his descendants.” That was signed by one Reginald Hayes. Josie considered Mr. Hayes, feeling for him, imagining the fascinating legal battles he had in store when he tried to reclaim those 349 Austin County acres.

“Perhaps someone could help us locate my mother’s sisters,” the next entry read, “the daughters of Walter Loomis and Mary Snell. My mother Bess was the oldest. She last saw her sisters in Arkansas in 1926. There was Rose, Mavis and Lorna. My mother, a wanderer, didn’t write and has never heard from them since. We would love to hear from anyone knowing about them. They would be in their fifties now, I believe.”

The rest of the page was filled with half-told stories of abandonment and distress, and the occasional hint of larceny or homicide.

“David Arnold died in Colorado in 1912 and was buried in McPherson, Kansas,” read the page’s last item. “A wife and four children survived him. Two daughters are now living, I believe. Would like a copy of his obituary for family records or would like to know where he died and if murder was ever proved. Also, was it ever proved that the deaths of his two sons in 1913 were tied in with his murder? He was my great-uncle.”

Josie filled her cup again. She put the magazine down and looked out the window. A smile spread across her lips. Being so far from Carl and his crimes made her smile. She and Carl had parted ways a few years into his phase of heavy urination. Extraordinary, unprecedented frequency. He had been a healthy man! Maybe not a man who could carry her across the threshold — he was thin, she was not so thin — but still an active non-consumptive man with two arms, two legs, a flat stomach. So why did he piss all night and all day? The image of Carl that came to mind, now eighteen months after their split, was of him standing, a wide stance, at the toilet, the door open, waiting to piss. Or actually pissing. Or shaking after pissing. Unzipping before or after pissing. Changing his plaid housepants because he didn’t shake well enough after pissing and had dribbled on them and they now smelled like piss. Pissing twice in the early morning. Pissing six or seven times after dinner. Pissing all day. Getting out of bed three times every night to piss.

It’s your prostate , Josie told him.

You’re a dentist , he told her.

It wasn’t his prostate, his proctologist said. But the proctologist had no idea what it was, either. No one had any idea what it was. Carl shat all the time, too. You could count his daily shits but why would you?

At least six. Starting with his first cup of coffee. First sip. Again Josie pictured his back, saw him standing at the kitchen counter in front of his single-serve coffeemaker. Wearing his plaid housepants. The plaid housepants, made of wool, were too short, too thick, and were spattered with white paint — he’d painted the kids’ bathroom and had done a terrible job. And he wore these paint-spattered pants why? To remind himself and the world that he was a man of action. A man who could paint (poorly) a child’s bathroom. So he would stand there, waiting for the machine to fill his little blue cup. Finally his little blue cup would get filled, and he would take it, lean against the counter, look out in the yard, and then, at the first sip, as if that first drop had liquidated his innards, loosened all that was stuck, he would rush to the bathroom, the one near the garage, and begin his day of shitting. Eight, ten shits a day. Why was she thinking about this?

Then he’d come out, bragging to the kids about how he did some good work in there, or that he did the job like a man should do . He knew he shat a lot and tried to make it funny. Josie committed a fatal mistake early in their union, allowing him to think he was funny, giggling along with him when he giggled at his own jokes — then she had to keep laughing. Years of strained laughter. But how could a person keep laughing under conditions like that? The kids barely saw him away from the toilet. He would have discussions with them while on the toilet. He once fixed Paul’s walkie-talkie while sitting on that toilet — as Carl laid down the batteries, the machinery of his bowels was grinding wetly below. And then they tested the walkie-talkies! While he continued to shit, or try to shit. Carl sitting there, Paul in another room. “Breaker 1–9,” Carl said, then: “Breaker B-M!”

It was an abomination. She took to leaving the house before it began. It was like Schrödinger’s cat. She knew the shitting would happen, but if she was gone, out the door before his first sip of coffee, would the shitting actually happen? Yes and no. Josie tried to put a stop to it, but he countered. What, he said, you’d rather have an anal-retentive? He was serious. She took a long pull on her pinot. It cooled her, opened her.

Early on they decided not to tell people Carl had been a patient when they’d met. Explaining it all rendered it all too pedestrian — he was looking to get his teeth cleaned and looked online for local dentists. Her office was the only one with a last-minute opening. For any feeling human, would that qualify as romantic? She barely noticed him during the exam. Then, a few weeks later, she was at Foot Locker, looking for socks, when a man, a customer sitting below her, one hand in a shoe, looked up and said hello. She had no idea who he was. But he was handsome, with alabaster skin, green eyes and long lashes.