John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

You’re fucked up.

At first I didn’t push him away when he tried to kiss me. He tasted like the peanut butter crackers he’d just eaten. In the tree we heard a penetrating preet. The black shirts finally noticed me, demanded that I tell them who I was, and I said, I don’t know, ask Eammon. When they did, he acted proud to be in trouble. On the bus I had to sit apart from him, and I ended up beside the dark-haired boy who’d trampled thorns, who said to me, You oughta stay away from Fifty Teeth, or yours could get like his. Which is the last thing you need. He hit a passing station wagon’s hood with his used-up bubble gum. He drew an oval on my gums to check for foreign fangs that might have sprouted up like corn when Eammon had touched my mouth with his contagions in the graveyard, and I couldn’t even move.

On that bus the thing was to wear as many bracelets as you could. Eammon gave me one that night at the house, a painted chain, and we stared at each other. It takes so long to think of how to say a sentence. By the end it’s hard to locate the beginning. When he shut his mouth, he looked like certain prisoners, the good ones who can’t help it. Lots of people look like that.

Don’t you get lonely living everywhere? said Eammon.

Only when I’m around people.

That doesn’t make any sense, he said.

Look it up in the dictionary.

Sense?

Lonely.

All we’ve got is the Farmer’s Almanac, he said.

There’s one on-line, I said.

Did you get on my computer without asking?

His chain was too big, and it fell off my wrist.

How do you know what’s on there and what isn’t?

Shut up, Fifty Teeth Comin Outta One Place.

There’s a password.

I bet I could figure it out.

You couldn’t.

There’s only two or three things it could be, I said. Suddenly we heard Hiram moaning, the thumping of feet across the hall, and Eammon closed his bedroom door, embarrassed. The moans inside the wall were as constant as a radiator’s hum, and I forgot them until they stopped when footsteps clomped along the hall, a door closed, a toilet flushed as Mother laughed and Hiram said, I can remember when you could walk out of this house and it would be 1975 outside.

The silence was Mother nodding, looking interested, Eammon pressing me into the waterbed to make waves. We rose upon the crests and sank into the troughs.

It wasn’t carpet up here back then, said Hiram, his words distorted like he was saying them all twice. It was hardwood, just like the downstairs is.

When Mother giggled, I realized we might stay forever. I wanted to leave the house. Eammon had the keys to Hiram’s car. He drove us up the mountain to the largest star on earth, an hour past dusk. Most naturally occurring stars are much larger. We walked to the wooden deck beneath the neon. I tried to force each tooth into its right place with my tongue. He smelled like a boy in a motel pool in Oregon whose name was Korin, whose voice was like he’d known me since our childhoods. I want to place my naked body on your naked body, he had said, and so I’d laughed at him until no one would ever talk that way again and here was Eammon forging grunts as thunder crackled, and he said, What would you do if I asked you to stand over me and piss on me? The clouds were ready to erupt on yet another mountain. The next time a boy speaks to me in Oregon, I won’t laugh or be afraid. Eammon’s head kept shaking as he said, You know I was just kidding. He must have had strong gums to hold those teeth together, one on top of the other.

I’ll be gone soon, I said.

You’re not going anywhere, he said.

Mother has been talking about the south.

Tower lights were red like a midnight highway into the west. Lightning didn’t hit them, because they weren’t any higher than we were.

This is the south, said Eammon.

Florida, I said. An island.

But she’s in love with my dad, he said, sliding his arm around me like it was something we should share. Maybe Hiram was asking Mother to piss on him, too, and it was hereditary, and their ancestors had done it in the Civil War.

He’s got a huge cock, said Eammon, is why they all like him so much.

We need to leave, I said, and pointed at the star.

We need to stay.

This is where the lightning’s gonna hit.

Lightning isn’t gonna hit the star.

If I were lightning, I would hit the star.

I took a shower with him when I was a little kid, is how I know, said Eammon.

I want to leave.

It was three times as big as mine was.

Of course it was, if you were a little kid.

I mean now, he said, annoyed that I had questioned him. I remember what it was.

I tried to laugh hard so he’d think he was ridiculous, but I stopped when it sounded fake.

You must of took a shower with your mom when you were little, he said. Did all that shit look huge just cause you were little?

I don’t remember, I said.

You must remember something, he said.

All I remember is hair.

When we got to the car, he opened my door for me, and I slammed it shut and opened it again. He rubbed his hands together in front of the air vent and backed up.

Maybe they died while we were up here, I said.

Who? he said.

Your father, and my mother.

He narrowed his eyes and said, Why?

Ebola, I said.

You’re weird, he said.

It would be even weirder if they were dead.

That’s not weird, it’s sick.

But if I predicted it just now, and I was right, it would be weird.

Eammon hit his knuckles on the Kenwood. My dad says to always keep some wood to knock on in your car, said Eammon, for when you think of something bad, cause cars aren’t made with wood no more.

I don’t see any wood, I said.

I don’t have any, he said, like he was sad over it. I felt so tired my blood was only floating through my arms. An Olds-mobile circled up the mountain, and Eammon and the woman switched to their low beams at the same time. She was probably more connected to him then than I was, and he drove around a cardboard box at least a meter high and burst out laughing.

Just think if there was a baby in that box, he said.

What about it, if there was?

That fuckin baby would be fucked.

His laughter didn’t stop until the radio played Bon Jovi. He sang along and nudged my upper arm and blew his horn. There was plenty of wood around, although it wasn’t in the car. His voice erupted into a falsetto, and he shut up like he was ready to be ridiculed, but I didn’t say a thing to him. The houses were all the same house painted other colors, rearranged so all the roads had different names. I faded into the turns. Each time I fell asleep I opened my eyes again until they were closed for good, and then I woke up in the middle of the night in all my clothes, my entire arm lodged in the crack of Eammon’s waterbed. I used my other arm to lift it out. It felt like the appendage of a corpse as I rubbed it back to life. Moonlit clouds in the window fell apart. The squarest cloud was really the computer screen. Hiram sat at Eammon’s side and whispered, No.

But I like her, Eammon said.

But she don’t like me.

Not her, said Eammon. Libby.

She don’t like me either, Hiram said.

Goddamn it, Eammon said. Don’t screw this up.

You’ve got to find me another one.

Be quiet. She’ll hear.

Get on there and do like you did last time. You got those letters saved.

You haven’t even tried to make her like you.

You shut up, said Hiram. You don’t know.

Buy her something expensive, like a stereo.

Get onto that computer now and make it hook up to the other computers.

Eammon folded his arms and shook his head. Tears were in his eyes.