Adam Johnson - Emporium

“We’re just going to look at the caiman, Dad.”

“Why can’t you leave that gator alone?”

“It’s called a caiman, Dad.”

With a fork in one hand and the platter in other, Marty’s father lifts his arms in a shrug of indifference. “Whatever. I don’t see the attraction. You tell me the appeal.”

He throws the meat on a grill so hot the steaks bounce; they squeak and whine. The wolves go crazy over this. They too let out short, high moans, like children.

The sounds remind me of a nature program I see one night that sticks in my head for reasons that will remain unclear until I eventually meet Ted. On the show, a man walks into brown savanna chewgrass to reconstruct a takedown. From the dirt, he collects whitened ribs and hocks and knuckles. He examines them, noting teeth and claw marks. A horn, he decides, is an important clue. A soundtrack of feasting hyenas plays as he points at trees and hills, deciding how many predators, direction of attack, strategy, and carcass distribution. Then this man looks into the camera. There’s no rest for the hungry, he says. So come, let’s see what the lions are up to, and we watch his Jeep drive off into the plain, the bumper folding down tall grass that springs up behind him, and he is gone.

Ted tells me he has my father’s binoculars, which are all that’s left. He’s been meaning to give them to me.

Marty nods a forget-him look toward his father and leads us to the caiman. Jimbo’s eyes light up at the prospect, and we walk, hands in pockets, in our natural order — indifferent, disruptive, and doubtful — along pool decking bordered by chain link and wolves that cut their faces trying to take our ankles.

In the other corner of the yard is the most ridiculous thing I have seen. Another chain-link fence, complete with posts and gate, stands a foot and a half tall. I mean, it doesn’t even come to your knees.

“You’re kidding me with this,” I say.

“It’s all you need,” Marty says. “Caimans can’t climb.”

“This is such bullshit,” I tell him and make a show of stepping over the fence, rather than through the tiny gate. Jimbo follows my lead. We cross tan gravel that crunches under our boots, stop in front of a lone blue kiddie pool. There is no shade, just brown and blue.

“There it is,” Marty says.

“Did I fuckin’ tell you, or what,” Jimbo says.

Inside the pool floats a four-foot reptile, motionless, with a thin, tooth-rimmed snout. It can’t weigh thirty-five pounds. Its eyes are cataract-black, and it doesn’t even seem to breathe.

In life, some things will come clear to you. There are the knowns — the exact video-feed frequency that unscrambles pornography, for instance, the foot-pounds of lift inside the hot, distorted edge of air cutting over a 737 wing, the speed at which your mother endlessly circles the city in her gold Cadillac after your father leaves, or the way young dictators are known to buy stewardesses drinks in the lounge of the Cayman Royale.

And then there are the others, the things that aren’t so easy. There’s the boxy loop of youth, a decade that leaves your ears ringing with television and loneliness. There is the way Tammy’s body becomes one of the “urecoverables” beneath the D.C. ice. Then there’s an overbright morning at the SkyLounge when Ted mentions that, technically, I might have a younger brother in Africa. Eventually comes a moment you accept the not knowing, like a first step into the blue, when you must trust the shifty cliff gods to see you down.

I stand and stare at the reptile. Reflected in the water is the tower above, the deep ruby strobe seeming to beat from the caiman itself. “That’s totally fake,” I say.

“Come on, look at it,” Jimbo says. “There it is.”

“Fumble,” Marty’s father calls out to us. “Check it out. Rebs’re first and goal.” He is sitting in a folding chair strung with nylon webbing, beer and fork in the same hand, but he’s watching more of us than the game.

The wolves still sprint along the perimeter of their run, frothing and clipping, their legs tripping them into balls that tumble, roll, and emerge as charging blurs.

“The Rebs are going to reverse. Hundred bucks says it. Remember when I taught you the reverse? You weren’t even ten.”

“Sure, Dad.”

“The Rebs are gonna go for it. Bring your friends over and check out the game,” he says, and when we don’t respond, he stands up. “I’m telling you to leave that stupid thing alone.”

Marty and his father have a moment when they eye each other across the pool. Jimbo leans in close to me, his mouth hovering by my ear. “I dare you to touch it,” he whispers. Signals I don’t understand pass between father and son. Marty’s father then heads for us, walking barefoot and stiff-legged around the pool with his beer, throwing dirty looks at the ceaseless wolves. He, too, steps right over the fence and walks gingerly, arms out, over the rocks. He comes to stand beside me at the edge of the kiddie pool, so that he has to yell past me and Jimbo at his son. “What’s the fucking deal with this thing,” he says. “Show me the appeal. It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there.”

“I think it’s fake.”

Drinking his beer, he glares at me like I’m an idiot. “What’s the point? What’s the big deal? You got a car and a girl and a family. Your favorite game’s on. There’s steaks and beer. You do fucking remember what steak tastes like, don’t you?” He stops and turns toward the wolves. “Shut up,” he yells.

“Dad, I’m not hearing you now, not when you’re like this.”

I stare at the caiman that hovers in the water, unblinking, legs out, heartbeat red.

“I’m with him,” I say. “What’s the point?”

“There is no point,” Marty’s father says and kicks the side of the kiddie pool. The sides yaw and wow with the waves, and the caiman, frozen, rides up and down. “See?” he says. “It doesn’t do anything.”

There is no motion from the caiman, nothing.

We look from the pool to Marty’s father as he knocks back the last of his beer. “Watch this,” he says and leans out to drop the can on the caiman’s back. There is only a hollow sound when it bounces off. “Boy, what a barrel of fun this thing is. I’m glad it takes up a third of our yard. I’m glad I can’t sleep for those fucking wolves, too.”

“That’s it. We’re leaving,” Marty says, as if this isn’t really our plan.

I look at Jimbo, who shrugs. “It’s fake anyway,” I tell him.

Without taking his eyes off us, Marty’s father shouts “shut up” over his shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To Fly Away.”

“You’re going to Fly Away?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the rest of the family will just pal around with the gator then.” He leans out, dips his toes in the pool, and splashes water on it. “I know, ‘It’s a caiman.’”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Marty says.

Marty’s father puts a hand on my shoulder for balance. With this touch, things suddenly become real for me, and my eyes shift from the hand that grips me to the bare leg below it, swinging back into the blue of the kiddie pool.

This is how a toe comes off. When it happens, it is simple: a sound seems to come before the water even moves, the cracking of a wet sheet maybe, and the caiman rises in motion, turning, too fast to take in. The light changes on the water, there is the popping sound of a hock joint, and I feel fingers grip deep into my shoulder. Then Marty’s father turns from us.

We all just stand there as he hobbles across the gravel, and we watch what is to be one, slow lap around the pool, alone. As he moves past the pool’s shallow steps, the blood starts in earnest, and when he rounds the deep end, we can see his big toe is hanging by a flap.