Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

Soon she saw the rooftops of the RV park. Now she saw the first trailers and trucks, and passed a child on a scooter. Now the path connected with the dirt road that connected to the gravel road that connected to the paved road and now she saw the underpass, and it felt so good to follow in the Mennonites’ footsteps, grinning while careening under it, knowing she would see her children now, would reclaim them from Jim, and she would kiss Jim in some way. Innocent, simple, maybe a long and tight embrace and later she could pleasure herself in the passenger seat. But what about Jim? Here she was, able to be at liberty at dusk, on this wayward bike, to enjoy the beauty of the world, alone, because of Jim. This was the boon of a second parent — he could provide these moments alone, the temporary clarity of vision to see this golden light and see these gorgeous mammals, to see the play of shadows on the hills. She had the thought that she could stay. Her children loved it here, and Jim was so calm, and they could live in his log cabin, and she could become an innkeeper’s wife. She had never had a partner, never a real partner, in her parenting, Carl being a child himself. What if she had an actual man nearby, who could catch and gut and grill fish, and could draw well-endowed elephants but could be dissuaded from that in the future? But that would mean living here, and with Jim, who she did not think she could love, who had an Urgent Fury tattoo on his arm and who knew what else on his chest and shoulders — he could have some kind of battleship, a squadron of bombers. What to do with a life? One second she believed fervently that it was enough to be with her children, the next moment they bored her to tears and were an impediment to all her dreams. Goddamn them, her terrible robber children, robbing her of so much, giving her everything and robbing her of everything else, her gorgeous perfect thieving children damn them, bless them, she couldn’t wait to lie down with them, holding her old cold hands against their hot smooth faces.

—

She dropped the bike messily in the shed and walked to the office, where she found a unnamed clerk but not Jim, and no sign of her children. “He took them back to your RV,” the clerk said. At the Chateau she expected them to be outside, watching him draw or whatever other outdoor activity he might conjure, but no one was outside, and the door was closed, and rushing to the Chateau Josie paused. Had this man put her children to bed or was he doing something terrible in there? She listened and heard a man’s booming voice talking about giant poos.

She stepped up and found Paul and Ana up in their bed over the cab, and Jim sitting in the dinette, reading from a paperback Captain Underpants book. He had brought it himself.

“Again,” Ana said to Jim, and then to Josie: “Jim’s gonna do it again.”

Jim then read a passage about a villain accidentally turning himself into a forty-foot-tall walking and talking feces log. After this passage Jim turned the book to show Josie the picture, revealing that the giant feces-man was wearing a cowboy hat. The kids were giggling wildly, delighted that this older man had validated and honored this story with his theatrical reading. Finally he closed the book with slow gravitas, as if he’d just wrapped up some long and distinguished volume, and placed it on the kitchen counter.

“Night, guys,” Jim said to the children, and stepped down from the RV.

Josie climbed up and kissed her children’s foreheads as they dangled over the ledge, and then stepped down from the Chateau and returned to Jim.

IN THE RELENTLESS MORNING SUN Josie drove, exhausted and angry and tired of watching the bottle break across her face, but knowing she deserved it. What kind of person takes it from behind in a trailer park, with her children sleeping mere feet away? From a retired man named Jim, veteran of Operation Urgent Fury? In her visions, the bottle sometimes broke against her head, but today, first, it just bounced off with a loud low ring, like a gong. Four, five times it would strike her head, making the sound of the gong before finally breaking and spraying her face with glass.

What had she done?

After kissing her children good night she had stepped outside and all was right, all was appropriate. This older man who had babysat her children masterfully, who had allowed her the glorious ride through the forest at dusk, was sitting in one of Stan’s chairs, and she took the other, and she told him what she’d seen. She told him about the fox, and the rabbit, and the light on the hills, and Jim took pleasure in this, and feeling her mojito glow fading, Josie told Jim she’d fix them up, and stepped up into the Chateau, happy to find her children already asleep. She could only see Ana’s face but could hear Paul’s steady breathing.

She found a bottle of chardonnay, three-quarters full, and went to the bathroom to retrieve two glasses from the shower floor. The wine was warm, so she found ice in the freezer and was pouring generously for herself and Jim when she felt his presence behind her. The sound of the ice rattling in the glasses had allowed him to sneak up behind her unnoticed and now his breath was hot on her neck, his hands on her hips, and then, very much like an animal would do, he began to rub his hardness against Josie’s waist.

“Let’s take this off,” he said, and removed Josie’s STRAIGHT ARROW visor and began kissing her neck. Had he seen the bald square on her head yet? Whatever was happening here, whatever wholly wrong physical nonsense, would end when he saw the stitches’ crooked smile on her skull.

“Hm,” he murmured, touching it briefly, then sweeping his hand back through her hair and down to her chest. That was all the interest he had in the wound. He didn’t care. He returned to his grinding and the systematic kissing of every exposed part of her neck.

There are appropriate people, she thought, as she drove away from Jim. So many appropriate people, who know how to act with dignity. Think of the wedding party! she thought. Think of the father of the groom, with his generous, forgiving eyes and outstretched hands. Think of the groom carrying Ana around. The red-haired groomsman who brought Paul to bed. These were decent people who knew how to behave. There were no people at that wedding allowing an older man to rub his hard penis against their waists inside the Chateau. They knew the limits of propriety. They knew what separated humans from beasts.

But not Josie. Josie, at that moment, thought it was wonderful. Wonderful that this strange man, in his late fifties, was rubbing his hard penis against her, in the Chateau, in Bumblefuck, Alaska. She found it wonderfully spontaneous and alluring, and even had a momentary conflation, imagining it was burly Smokey the Bear, not Jim, behind her. His stove-pipe arms, his barrel chest. She thought of an elephant, too, an elephant with a man-sized penis. No, this is Jim, she noted. Grenada Jim, who you don’t know. Meanwhile her children were sleeping sweatily above. Ana’s sleeping face was visible! Paul’s was not. Then Jim, the retired man who ran the RV park, was kissing Josie’s neck, and Josie was wet, and he did some masterful things, maneuvers that showed he had learned things in his many years, had retained some knowledge and could act on it. His arm had come around her, and was resting against her chest, like a bolt laid across a door. Her pants dropped silently to the floor, far quicker than she might have been able to get them off herself. His hand was on her stomach, then two long fingers plunged in and up. She had certain thoughts: that she wanted him inside her, and also — this was important — that she believed, given his roaring arousal and heavy breathing, that whatever was about to happen would not take long.