He looked at the gloves in his hands. Someone had tied the laces together so many times that the dozens of knots looked like a hive. He told himself not to start picking at them. He wanted to pick at them so bad. Like a sickness. Undo the knots and put on the gloves. Get a feel for the grip. Think about the combinations he’d throw.
But no. If he started that up again, what kind of life was he moving toward? Probably not a better one for his girl. He’d have to try to let it go. Maybe not in mind but in body. In action. He feared it would kill him. To lose the movement. The grace. His only way of being. The only way he knew how to exist in a world he didn’t otherwise understand.
“Dear! Dear!” he heard someone yell. It startled him so much he dropped the gloves. He picked them up and set them on the shelf.
Trucks felt like he’d been awakened from a dream.
The elderly clerk at the register yelled across the store. She waved her hand overhead. “We have fitting rooms for that!”
Trucks looked to where she was looking. Claudia was on the floor in her underwear, her pajama bottoms next to her. She was on her side, struggling to pull on a pair of jeans.
Trucks and the clerk arrived at the same time.
“Is this your daughter?” she asked.
Trucks bent down to help Claudia out of the pants.
“Couldn’t be anyone else’s with moves like that,” he joked.
The clerk didn’t look amused. “Changing rooms are in the corner if you need them,” she said. She pointed at the changing rooms for emphasis.
“Got it,” Trucks said.
He helped Claudia wiggle out of the pants and back into her pajama bottoms. The clerk walked to the register. The gawkers went back to shopping.
“Well, that was something,” Trucks said.
“I just wanted to try them on,” Claudia said. She looked embarrassed.
“That’s why most stores have a changing room. So people don’t see your privates.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey. Nothing to be sorry about, Pepper Flake. You didn’t know.”
“I feel stupid,” she said. Then she looked around to see if anyone was staring. Her face was all red.
Trucks cupped her cheek.
“Not stupid. Not,” he said.
Claudia was silent. She looked at the floor.
Trucks got down on a knee.
“You’re not stupid because you don’t know something. It’s not your fault you don’t know it. Just another thing you learned now. Think of it like that. And there’s a shitload I don’t even know, so imagine all the things you’ll learn along the way. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“This is all just new experiences. Us going. Learning all these things together we don’t know yet. Now look up at me.”
She looked up.
“Tell me, what’d you pick out?”
Claudia grabbed two pairs of jeans from the floor—the black one she’d attempted to try on and a dark blue pair. Trucks took them. She handed him two T-shirts. One was a light caramel color with a roaring cartoon lion standing on a gray rock. The other was dark purple covered in fluttering butterflies. Then she showed him a sweatshirt. It was green with a reindeer on it. A dialogue bubble appeared next to the reindeer’s open mouth. It said, “I’d rather be prancing.”
“It’s funny,” she said. “It’d be fun to prance.”
“I’m sure it would.”
“Can I have these?”
“I said no T-shirts.”
“But I got a sweatshirt like you said. And pants.”
“What are you gonna do with T-shirts in winter?”
“Put them under the long shirt.”
“You don’t need them.”
“But I like them.”
“We live off need, not want.”
Claudia pouted.
“Christ,” he said.
“Please?”
He looked in her eyes. They sparkled under the store lights.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
Trucks slung the shirts over his shoulder, squatted down, and held the pants up to Claudia to check the size from waist to ankle.
“I did that already,” she said.
“Then why’d you take your pants off in the middle of the store and try to put these on?”
“I wanted to be sure they fit good.”
“Solid thinking,” he said. “We can’t go wasting money.”
“Because we don’t have it?”
“And maybe never will. At least not the way a lot of other people do. But it’s not important. What matters is what’s in your heart and what you do for others. That’s all there really is.”
Claudia thought a moment.
“But what if we ‘need borrow’ like we did at the other store?”
The jeans were five dollars each. The sweatshirt three dollars. The T-shirts two dollars each. She’d picked all the ones with yellow dots. Cut at 50 percent, it’d be eight-and-a-half bucks. No sales tax in Montana—one bonus Gerald had mentioned. But still. A Third of their remaining cash on clothes? Not a chance.
“You like the black or the dark blue better?”
“Hmm, black,” she said, pointing to the jeans.
“Okay. And butterflies or the lion?”
“But I like them both.”
“Pick one.”
“I don’t like decisions.”
“Tough.”
“Urrrrrgh.”
“Come on.”
“Fine. The lion.”
He handed her the dark blue jeans and the butterfly T-shirt.
“Put these back where you found them.”
“Fine,” she said, and took the clothes back to the rack.
Trucks watched her place the T-shirt on its hanger. She clipped the jeans to a thicker hanger and sifted through the clothes. He thought he heard her humming. He stood there in a daze watching over her. Something so sweet and delicate about how she fingered the clothing like it would shatter if touched with too much force.
Trucks walked over to her. He looked around. A staff member helped an older man unravel a garden hose. The register clerk sorted hangers.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Grab the butterfly shirt.”
She did.
“You think it fits?”
She nodded.
“Give it to me.”
She handed it over.
‘Unzip your coat halfway.”
She unzipped it.
“Here.”
Trucks stuffed the shirt into her coat.
“Up,” he said.
She zipped up her coat with a smile.
Trucks put a finger to his lips.
They walked to the counter, an intense energy between them. Trucks paid five dollars for the items. The woman placed them in a plastic bag, and they left the store.
When they got outside and the door banged shut, Claudia growled with excitement.
“A nice rush, huh?” Trucks said.
“Yeah!”
They were a half block down the street when Claudia stopped. She opened her coat and pulled out the shirt. Then she put the shirt to her face and inhaled.
“Still smells like old stuff,” she said.
“It’ll take a few washes in the sink to get that out,” he said. “Now tuck it away before you get us busted.”
Claudia put the shirt inside her coat and zipped it up.
“So what’s that called?” she asked. “What we did just now.”
“Another version of need borrowing, I guess,” he said.
“So there are more kinds of it?”
“Sure. Nothing’s just black and white, Pepper Flake. Everything’s gray in the world, except that you’ll live and you’ll die. There’s no gray in that. It’s certain.”
Claudia looked distressed.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. We’ve got so much time left you couldn’t even count it all if you wanted to.”
CATCHING THE GHOS
T
The first night in the shelter was all right. The blankets were stiff and scratchy. The same feel he’d remembered from all his times taking Claudia to shelters before he and Elle landed that dive row house near the tracks. He was thankful Claudia didn’t remember.
Trucks didn’t sleep. He lay in the small cot beside Claudia and watched her rest. He suddenly felt he’d lost control. It was strange, considering they were safe, fed, and had a place to stay. He was grateful for it. No matter how uncomfortable it made him to be there, he was grateful. But being in a shelter wasn’t the life he’d intended. He lay there thinking of it. Constantly scanning the room for movement. He was always defensive, so being in a shelter with dozens of strangers didn’t do his stress any good. Having his girl there only made it worse. Heightened his fight instincts. His protective nature.
Trucks put his hands behind his head and looked up. After enough time in the darkness he could see. The staff had left a few nightlights on, but one of the homeless men had shut them off or plucked them out of the sockets soon after lights out.
There was a slight hum in the room. Trucks looked over at Claudia. She was on her side in the lower bunk. He had her sleep against the close edge so he could see her. He was lower than her on the cot, so he could only look at that angle.
No. This wasn’t the life he’d imagined when he decided he’d take his girl back. The thought was more idealistic than this. The two of them hitching all those miles. Meeting strangers with interesting stories and lives. Showing his girl parts of the country she’d never seen. He’d accomplished some of it. But being in Billings, sleeping in the shelter, felt static. Like their lives were frozen. Maybe that’s why he loved boxing so much, the constant movement. Up on the toes. Throw when there’s an opening, shift the position, always on the hunt or the run. It was the only way he knew how to live. It was the way he liked to live. He was trying to figure out how to bring this to his girl. How to bring that to the life they were leading now. He didn’t know how to do it without boxing. But he could try. Wasn’t this trying?
For no reason, he thought about the ghost of Holly Jack Rose. Wondered where he was now. If he was still slipping punches out in Detroit like a slick apparition. A flicker of movement. There and gone. Poof. Trucks had always wondered how he’d worked his feet in that way. Was mesmerized by the movement. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ever really clipped Holly Jack Rose. Or was it a wishful memory? Something he’d created and tucked away to make him feel like he’d caught the ghost so maybe he could put it to bed in his own way.
Trucks rubbed his eyes. He put his hands on his stomach. The free clinic had introduced him to a naturopath once who told him to use the power in his hands to transfer the energy between his organs and palms. Whatever the hell that meant. Sure, he knew how to displace energy. He’d done it all his life. Had trained in the art of bringing it up from the legs and the hips. Putting it all into the torque of the body. The output of punishment from his fists like quick-pap lightning strikes. A therapist at the same free clinic had told him years ago that she wished he’d use that violent energy in some other way. He’d asked, like what? She’d said, like to love yourself. The concept had never occurred to him. But it bothered him for years after.
He thought now about what it meant to love himself. He’d been left by his parents. Known surrogates at children’s homes all his life. Nothing real. Nothing blood. His family was in the gym. It’s what he made it into, anyway. Though he didn’t know if he could say he loved any of the people he’d met there. And had he really loved Elle? Or was it merely the sickness? Caused by that chemical reaction of the two of them together that made him burn inside when she was close. Had he just been clinging to a person he’d wanted to show him love but never truly did? Did it happen that way because it was all he knew? Was it just something he’d made? He never knew who or what to blame. Always himself, in the end. Probably the best answer. And he often lay awake at night wondering how a person like him could ever love himself. How sick someone else would have to be to love him back.
But there was always Claudia. A happy mistake. He’d put all the energy he had left—between putting in rounds at the gym and taking fights—into her and her life. But had it been enough? Would it ever be?
Without realizing it, he was rotating fist over fist. Staring at the ceiling. All those learned responses to tension. Things he never thought of. Things he just did on instinct. Like the going. The going was what he knew. What he craved. What his body told him to do when it pulled at him in the night.
Trucks looked over at Claudia. He reached out and put his hand on her. He felt her pulsing warmth against his palm. He closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the room.
NONPEOPLE
In the morning he checked the opportunities board posted in the shelter lobby. Several jobs and cleanup programs were listed. He was thankful he wasn’t an addict. At least with substances. A lot of the jobs required a high school diploma, which he didn’t have.
Claudia tugged on his coat sleeve.
“Hang on a minute,” he said.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Soon. I promise,” he said.
She let go and leaned against the wall, pulled the copper gambling token from her pocket.
Trucks looked over the board and the city map. He’d have to walk her around town and see if there were any openings at the universities and community centers. The board became a blur. It wasn’t his kind of thing, looking for regular jobs like this. He’d relied so long on his fists, his instincts, taking that smooth stride across the ring. This felt stiff. False. Like he was living in someone else’s body. But he was doing it for her. Everything for his girl. He had to keep telling himself that. He must.
After breakfast they got to walking.
“It’s gonna take a couple hours,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“We’re looking for a new job for me,” he said. “It’s not boxing. I’m not boxing,” he said, more to himself than her.
“I don’t wanna see you all hurt anymore,” she said. “It’s just real bad.”
They walked through the cold and the gray. Past lots of people who seemed to brighten when they saw the two of them. Always something about a man and his girl.
They stopped at the community center to check the main desk and bulletin boards for job openings. The community center had little to offer, mostly a place for retirees and senior citizens to gather and play cards, have donuts and coffee, talk about the past they all missed. Claudia had spotted an older guy in a maroon sweater with a bowler hat and thought it was Gerald. It wasn’t. But it made Trucks wonder where her mind was.
They headed northwest and walked around the Montana State University satellite campus. Claudia got a lot of smiles from girls rushing between classes with books in their arms. Backpacks weighing them down. It made Trucks feel old. Out of place. He realized he’d never been on a college campus before. It didn’t feel impressive. The buildings red stone and boxy and generic.
Then they came across a full-size horse statue. It stared dead-eyed over the sidewalk.
“I wanna get on,” Claudia said. “Can I get on?”
Trucks looked around. He pulled out his sachet of antibacterial wipes and scrubbed down the horse. Then he boosted her up.
“Brrrrr, it’s cold on my butt!” she said.
Trucks laughed. He looked around again. The students were walking and chatting. Paying them no mind.
Claudia put her hands at the sides of the horse’s thick neck. She looked into its mane like a crystal ball. Trucks walked around and stood in front of the horse. He stared into its intense, dark eyes.
“So where we going?” Trucks asked.
“Riding to the water,” Claudia said. “Bup-a, bup-a, bup-a, bup.”
The sounds took Trucks back to his days learning the speed bag. Just a young kid floating the streets. Didn’t know anyone. Didn’t trust anyone. Didn’t have a friend to talk the day
away. Instead he listened to the trainers and the older kids. Put a wooden box on the floor of that old gym and stepped up. Faced the speed bag. Took him weeks to find the rhythm. To hit the bag more than a few consecutive times without messing up. But once he got it, learned how to catch the speed bag with the outer edge of the fist, it was like he had a new friend. He’d work both hands. Go for a while with the right, switch to the left. Go intermittent with both. And once he had it down and that speed bag was blurring, he’d close his eyes and listen to its fast bang against the upper board. The sweet swing of the short chain. Fist on resin. And it’d speak to him. Go: Bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup. And when he was down and lonely and hurt, thinking of how his mother and father had taken off, dumped him under the eaves of a children’s home, which lead to home after home after nobody-gives-a-fuck-about-you home, he’d run to the gym. He’d breathe hard and wrap his hands. Step up on that wooden box and talk to his only friend: Bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup, bop-a-dup. The push and swing. The power of those small fists and what they could make in the world. What they could break.
And he heard again now: “Bup-a, bup-a, bup-a, bup.” And it brought him back.
“Where…where to the water?” Trucks asked.
“Where there’s no sharks,” Claudia said. “I don’t wanna get bit.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
“It’d hurt real bad. You’d die,” she said.
“You would,” he said. “Probably.”
Claudia sat up straight. She put her big-gloved hands on her knees.
“People survive big attacks like that sometimes,” Trucks said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Pure luck. Can’t be anything more. A big beast like that. All those huge, jagged teeth. I can’t imagine.”
“Yuck.”
“Yeah. But they’re pretty sleek how they move. Just got that one vicious goal: go forward and attack.”
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