John Brandon - A Million Heavens

In eleventh grade, Arn got his pants pulled down in the lunch line by a big football player, a senior, causing the entire cafeteria to laugh. Arn went out to the parking lot and slashed the tires of the guy’s Mustang. He left a note under the windshield explaining to the football player that they were even now but if he chose to give Arn any more trouble, it would end in someone’s death. If the football player decided to trade harassments with Arn, Arn explained in the note, he would have to either kill Arn or be killed. If it’s worth all that , Arn wrote, go ahead and make the next move .

Arn got a job at a car wash. It took about one week for the owner to realize Arn was a better worker than any of the other kids, and he was promoted to assistant manager, which meant he got an extra two bucks an hour and he was the one who pulled the cars around and drove them onto the tracks of the car wash. Arn hadn’t had his license very long, so driving a bunch of strange cars, even in second gear, was fun for him. His life wasn’t bad there for a while. He had a job that wasn’t drudgery and soon enough he would graduate and be free.

At the house, the ongoing problem was that Arn’s foster father had not been sleeping. He’d been more on edge, and had instituted a bunch of new rules. He gave demonstrations of how to do things quietly, how to make a sandwich without jangling the silverware drawer, how to plug headphones into the television. He’d shown Arn and his real son how to turn a doorknob first and then gently pull the door closed, rather than forcing it shut so the knob had to click. The real son, nine or ten at this point, did not heed any of this. Since Arn had moved in, the boy had lost interest in baseball and had started reading a lot. He never had friends over, and took a lot of showers, sometimes three in a day. Arn reminded him over and over to be quiet, wanting to prevent conflict in the house, but conflict avoidance no longer seemed to be this boy’s program.

One night Arn awoke to a scuffle, to his foster father’s grunts and his foster brother’s whimpering. Arn went into the dining room and the father had the son cornered, hemmed in by the china cabinet and the big wooden table, and was kicking him, just booting the shit out of him over and over. Arn froze, though not for long. The situation wasn’t complicated. A defenseless kid was getting beaten to a pulp. Arn brushed past his foster mother and into the boy’s room, where he got a good grip on an aluminum baseball bat. He returned to the dining room and set his feet and dinged his foster father in the back of the head. Arn didn’t swing his hardest, but hard enough. The man stood up straight a moment before slumping to his knees and then the rest of the way down. His son didn’t leave the corner. The kid stared at Arn like he thought Arn was coming after him next. The foster father moaned, rocking on the carpet. The mother stared, not at anyone, seeming for once to need comforting herself.

Arn didn’t have a chance to take stock until he was on the train. There were probably a hundred reasons why it was hard to admit that he was on the run, but the most prominent was that it felt silly. It was silly to think of himself as some kind of fugitive, as wanted , as fleeing justice. It felt surreal, thinking that the cops had been called, a photo of Arn had been turned over, the whole incident in the living room had been recounted, that taxpayer money would be used to track Arn down. Probably all that was happening. Probably the foster mother and foster brother were making Arn out as a dangerous psychopath, pinning the kid’s bruises on Arn to spare the father. Probably an upper-level-type cop would be assigned Arn’s case, a cop who wore a suit and didn’t report to anyone, and if that cop found Arn he would be tried as an adult and would rot in jail. Assault with a deadly weapon. He was only a few short months from eighteen. The family would form a united front against him in court. Arn could see himself in a collared shirt that didn’t quite fit, standing before a judge, listening as he was made out to be jealous and angry and ungrateful and everything else foster kids were supposed to be, listening as his foster father was made out to be a saint. He’d have a big bandage on his head, the foster father, or maybe he’d talk with a slur. Arn wouldn’t bother telling his side. The judge wouldn’t even be disgusted with him; she’d feel pity.

Arn was really on a train. He was really hightailing it out of town.

Arn had his own little area on the train. He had his bag on the seat next to him and his feet up. He watched the river. It wasn’t a river anymore. It was a sound or a bay or something. A raffle was announced over the speakers. Whoever had the right number on their ticket would receive a free bowl of oatmeal, fancy oatmeal that came with raisins and brown sugar and cream. Arn pulled out his ticket and listened. He didn’t win. There were about nine people on the train, but someone else won the oatmeal. Arn found the restrooms then returned to his seat. He couldn’t decide if the train was covering ground or if it was piddling along. At some point, he was going to have to get off. He was going to have to choose a stop. He’d paid enough to get to Portland, Oregon, which would at least get him out of Washington. He was moving again, but this was different than foster moving. Arn was controlling this move. He didn’t have anyone to answer to. He had nothing but slack, enough to lasso the world or enough to hang himself.

There was a girl at the other end of Arn’s car. He’d gotten a good look at her when he’d gone to the bathroom. All he could see now was her boot, sticking into the aisle. She had a music player and a cell phone and a book and magazines. She wore colorful tights. It heartened Arn to think that this girl did not know him at all. If they were to speak to each other the girl would form opinions about Arn, beliefs about who Arn was, and these beliefs would be wrong. Anyone who passed by Arn could think he was comfortable with his life. They could think he had a bright future, that he was already living his future.

When Arn got to Portland he paid more money and stayed on the train. He didn’t feel up to dealing with a city. He stayed on, putting more miles between himself and his past, and finally got off at a town with one small college and one big bakery and stands everywhere that sold expensive coffee and expensive nuts and candles. There were a bunch of wine bars. There didn’t seem to be any heavy industry. There were limousine ads posted everywhere, for people who wanted to be driven around to vineyards.

Arn checked himself into a hotel room with a little window. He put the TV on and locked the door and almost slept, thinking of that little shit purposely making noise in the middle of the night, thinking of the oatmeal he hadn’t won, thinking of that girl with the tights. She’d gotten off at Portland, toting all her wired, clumsy possessions with her like medical equipment she needed to keep breathing. This town Arn was in was sunny and dry. A different part of the country.

When he awoke it was past lunchtime. He walked down the street and ate a sandwich and then ate another one. He emptied his tray into the trash then pushed out into the sunshine and began asking around for work. He asked at a couple restaurants and had no luck, relieved, despite himself, at being turned down right away instead of having to fill out applications that would ask him for a bunch of information he didn’t want to give. He asked about winery work, knowing that migrants often did work like that and that migrants, like himself, weren’t able to fill out applications to anyone’s satisfaction. But it was the off-season. A time known as The Crush would come along in a few months, but there was nothing doing at the moment. There wasn’t a big supermarket in the town, a place Arn might collect carts or stock shelves.