“I don’t know, Jimmy.”
“The thing is, Gwennie, the thing you gotta think about. Lost. The whole idea of lost. What the hell does lost even mean? Who is lost? The person who isn’t there or the person who hasn’t found them?”
“Jimmy, it’s late. We got an early start tomorrow, yeah?”
“It’s the wrongness. They can’t be lost. They can’t be nowhere. Wherever they are, that’s somewhere. And just because you can’t see them doesn’t make them lost.” My brother covers his eyes with his hand. “I can’t see you, Gwennie, where did you get to? Are you lost, Gwennie?” His voice is weirdly singsong.
“Jimmy, listen. You can stay here for tonight. If you want.” My brother takes his hand from his eyes and looks at it, flexes the fingers. “The thing is, Gwennie? The thing is. What if I got it all wrong? What if it’s just that, the not seeing them? The not seeing them that makes them lost?”
“Jesus, Jimmy. I don’t know. I don’t know why it matters. I don’t know why you gotta sit on my front porch and drink my beer and talk some bullshit you got off your loser friends.”
Now my brother is openly crying. His hands move in tandem, patting up his arms then down again. Prentiss snorts himself awake and waddles off, casting a reproachful look over his shoulder. I feel like a shit.
“Chrissakes, Gwennie, chrissakes,” my brother is saying. Pat pat pat. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”
The thing is. The thing is, Jimmy, I don’t know how to anymore.
It started with the broken washing machine. Jimmy got it cheap from one of the Twinbro’s friends, cash in hand and off the back of a night truck, a real good deal and nothing his little sister need worry about. The thing was, he could fix it up. Fix it up good with some parts from the old one, and the fact that the old one was still working and the new one was not never crossed his mind. Of course, Tom got involved after the boot room flooded. Tom could fix it, Tom could fix anything. To that I could agree; Tom was mighty good with his hands and he could fix anything, loved the whole idea in fact. Our place had piled up with things Tom could fix but somehow never did, at least not when we were still together. The washing machine sat in Tom’s backyard and Jimmy began showing up in my kitchen, smelling unloved. Of course he could wash his clothes in my machine, just until his own got fixed, like.
It was no big thing to feed him while he was there. I had to cook for myself; I might as well cook for two. And I always liked feeding up a man, especially one as hungry as Jimmy. God knows, Tom never ate much — a nibble here or there then off to whatever new thing he was dismantling.
Tom showed up one night while we were eating. He wanted to tell Jimmy about the washing machine, how he’d figured the problem but didn’t have the parts. Of course I offered him a plate and of course he declined. He picked at the salad and broke bits off the bread, standing the whole time and spraying crumbs when he laughed.
We took our plates out to the porch the next time Tom came by. It was no big thing. The nights were on the turn and it was good to sit in early evening light.
Jimmy was around nearly every day by then. I didn’t mind. I could check his face for the tell-tale tightness, his hands for that patting thing he did. I could watch for the thousand yard stare and call Dr. Pederson if it all got going again.
That Tom came by so often was a surprise at first. I thought maybe it was me, that maybe he had some ideas that way, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about this one way or another. I thought that maybe I could put up with it, having a man around again. And he’d always been good with Jimmy.
It turned out Tom had a motorcycle in his kitchen. In pieces, on newspaper — he wanted me to know that, that he’d put down newspaper to protect the lino from oil and sparks. He wanted me to know he was eating at Mickey D’s a lot, and he remembered what I said about salt and fat, and how it was no good for his heart. But it was too damn much trouble to cook, with the motorcycle on the floor and the oven door missing and the part for the microwave still on backorder. And he was real grateful for the food. He’d make me something nice in return, soon as he got on top of the other stuff.
So we took our plates out to the porch on the warmer nights. It was nice, just the three of us and Prentiss. Like we’d done when Tom and I were still married, and Jimmy would come over and join us, before that thing with the crossbow and pigeons. I don’t remember much of what we talked about; probably the people we’d known in school, who was getting divorced or fat, who was doing okay and who was going under. If the conversation dried up or got all sad and dangerous, Tom could get Prentiss to roll over and fart on command, and that always made us laugh.
We didn’t talk about the lost boys. There was never any weird stuff like that.
I knew my brother was still smoking when Curly showed up with his plastic baggies. Jimmy was supposed to have quit; it interfered with his meds or something. Curly was big and stupid and stunk of Cheezies, and he talked nonstop about The Bitch. The Bitch was his ex, a wife or girlfriend, or maybe a mashup of women, some kind of uber-femme that Curly was dead set against on principle. I made myself scarce when Curly was around. There weren’t enough lawn chairs anyway. I did tell him off for the skunky smell drifting through the kitchen window and he took care to exhale into the rhododendrons after that. I could hear the three of them out there, talking about the toxins planted in vaccines and tap water and Coca Cola, and how it was making us all stupid and that’s what the government wanted, even if the Bitch said they didn’t exactly need toxins to do that. I mean, I could hear Curly talking and Tom saying yeah maybe could be and the quick suck of Jimmy inhaling. I don’t know when or why the Twinbros starting coming around, but the pair of them leant against the porch posts and agreed to everything Curly said. They always knew someone the exact same thing had happened to, no shit. And it was all part of the plan, the Big Plan they got going to keep guys like them down, out of work and out of luck while the fat cats got the babes and the cars and the big houses in the better part of town. Curly nodded so hard to this that hot ash fell onto his greasy jeans. Tom had to douse the smouldering hole with beer.
But I didn’t mind too much. Sure, I had to make some adjustments. I put out Styrofoam and serviettes after someone dropped the third glass from the good set, the ones I got with Canadian Tire money. I gave up on making supper and setting the table, and opened bulk bags of corn chips instead. Curly lit one on fire and it glowed blue. He said that proved it, what he was saying about the toxins.
But the thing was, Jimmy was happy. He sat in his lawn chair and listened, and sometimes laughed with his face all loose and his hands resting on his belly. I guess it was all the talk; Curly skipping from thing to thing, the Twinbros interrupting and running over each other’s sentences, Tom reigning it in and steering it somewhere else. All that talk just filled up the porch and left no room for anything else.
The lost boys? That started with something the Twinbros said had happened to a friend of theirs. To their son, a young guy on his way to university which proved he wasn’t a dumbass and wouldn’t do anything stupid. So he leaves the family home in the morning, says he’ll call when he gets there, and he’s got all his stuff in the car, his fancy phone and skis and a new bike on the roof rack —
“Asshole,” said Curly, “he work for all that stuff?”
“Shut up, he’s a good kid,” said one of the Twinbros, “and the point is, he’s driving alone.”
He’s driving alone, but he’s on the highway. Plenty of people around, right? So the phone rings hours before it should, and the family thinks it’s him, he’s got car trouble or something. But it’s not him, it’s the police. They found the car by the side of the road, door wide open and engine still running. Bike and skis still there, i-phone on the console. No sign of the kid. So there’s a massive search, dogs and helicopters, even his mom crying on the national news. That was three years ago. Nothing, nada, zilch. Kid disappeared without a trace.
“Bullshit,” said Curly. “The
re’s always a trace. Bet they covered it up.”
“They? Like a government thing?” said Tom. “Why would they do that?”
“Mutated genes, duh,” said Curly. “Kid was probably one of those made-in-the-lab kinds, mother’s a career bitch and got too old to do it the real way. They can do anything in those labs now; human ears on a mouse, chicken cutlets, a whole baby. Sometimes it goes real wrong. Kid probably starting growing scales or killing sheep every full moon, something like that. G-men want to close that shit down real quick, believe you me.”
“So why not just run him over when he’s crossing the street? Spike his drink at the next frat party? Why make his disappearance look so weird?”
“I dunno. I’m not a scientist.” Curly took a long drag on the doobie and passed it to the Twinbros.
“He’s not lost,” said Jimmy.
“Maybe a bear ate him,” said Tom.
“No blood, no guts, no bones. No trace.”
“So he sees a bear, stops the car to take a look. The bear grabs him, hauls him away and eats him. Scavengers take the rest and there you are. No trace.”
“Why the hell would he get out of the car to look at a bear?”
“I dunno. Maybe he’s a scientist.”
I remembered that Tom could be funny sometimes.
“He’s not lost,” said Jimmy.
The Twinbros looked pleased with themselves. One of them said, “Bet he shows up three years later, a mile or two from the car and butt-naked in some farmer’s field. Not a day older, but burn marks all over his belly.”
The talk turned to alien abduction, a hot topic on porch nights. The guys had a fascination with anal probes, which they found both repulsive and hilarious. When they were stoned enough they took turns staring at the stars and swearing they were moving, zooming and zigzagging, disappearing only to show up in another place. One of them would start up . . . “Hey Jimmy they’re coming to get you, cover your ass . . . ” and the rest would follow with don’t drop the soap jokes.
I hovered at the screen door, half in and half out. Funny thing about those nights; the guys didn’t talk to me if I pulled a kitchen chair out to the porch, but they seemed to need me around nonetheless.
“Hey, Jimmy, where’s your sister?” one of them would say if left.
“Gwennie? Gwendolyn?” My brother’s voice.
I didn’t mind. The talk was dumb, sure, but the house got quiet sometimes. After Tom left, I used to throw my voice around the place . . . humming, whistling, prattling to Prentiss or the plants . . . just to feel like I was still there. It’s true I didn’t talk much to the guys, but I insisted that they wipe their feet at the door, broke up the party if I had to work the next day, told them to throw their empties into the recycling before they left. It got so the guys would pause on the doormat like they knew they were supposed to do something, but needed me to tell them what. It was like being married again.
And sometimes it was different. Sometimes, if it was late enough, something real came out. Tom, in tears because he missed his mom, wished he’d phoned her more before she died. Curly telling the others he still bought The Bitch a Christmas present every year, and never got around to sending it. The Twinbros, so hard to tell apart that sometimes they didn’t know it themselves, and one would have to call the other just to make sure he answered to the right name. Jimmy, saying he knew his thoughts weren’t real but he couldn’t stop them; that thinking things through was like trying to do the crossword with a jar of flies let loose in your head.
And that thing about the kid, gone from his car with the engine still running? I thought about it, when I was folding laundry or waiting to answer the phone at work. I remember seeing a movie where the killer dressed like a cop and stopped people on the highway. All of us there in the audience yelled and hooted but they still opened the door, because you would, wouldn’t you? You’d think the cop was there to save you. It got to me, that movie. There was something about how the victims were crying, smiling, so damn grateful even as the knife came down, something about everything you trusted gone wrong.
A few weeks passed before the next lost boys story.
It was Curly who told it, and that surprised me. He said he’d read it on the internet. Curly didn’t look like someone who went on the internet to read.
It was like the one about the university kid, except this time it was a young man going to see his girlfriend. The driver’s door left open, the engine still running. No skis, no bike, no expensive phone, but a can of root beer upended and fizzing onto the seat leather. The police had called an APB and a search.
“They won’t find him,” said Curly.
“He’s not lost,” said Jimmy.
The guys went through the usual scenario — government conspiracy, alien abduction — and discounted a bear attack. There would have been teeth marks on the can of root beer. Bears like sweet things. Curly thought maybe it was a beautiful woman, standing on the side of the road in shortie shorts, flagging the kid down. She would have been a blonde with big hair, big boobs, one of them dotty tops that ties in the front and shows off some tanned abs, but not too muscly. Guy would’ve gunned the gas if he saw all that snaky female bodybuilder stuff going on.
“So how’s she gonna wrestle him out of the car, do him in, dispose of the body? Cute little hitchhiker like that?” That was Tom.
“Wasn’t her, duh,” said Curly. “She got the rest of the biker gang hiding in the bushes, just waiting for signal. Gang of bikers could get rid of him easy.”
“Why would they want to? Jesus Curly, maybe it don’t work for you, but most people need a reason.”
“For his organs. They got a cooler filled with ice, they got connections. Rich old codgers pay big money for a new heart or liver.”
I leaned in the doorway and listened to them debate how long a human heart could survive on ice. Someone wondered whether the new Harleys had room for a cooler on the back, or whether they’d need a special side car. I wasn’t listening; I was looking at Jimmy. He wasn’t saying much, and that wasn’t too unusual in itself, but his right hand was patting his left arm. Pat, pat, pat, all the way up and all the way down, switching hands and starting on the other arm. He saw me watching and stopped.
“You know it’s all bullshit,” I said to him later. “The lost boys? It’s just the guys talking. Probably something they heard, some movie they watched and forgot they saw.”
“They’re not lost,” said Jimmy. “They’re still here. I gotta believe that.”
“Okay, sure. That’s probably true.” I kept my voice light, my palms open. Dr. Pederson had warned me about arguing with Jimmy too much when he was in one of his moods.
The spring came early that year. Pretty soon Jimmy and I were talking about hauling the barbecue from the basement to the porch, maybe grilling a few sausages for the boys. I can’t remember why we didn’t. I don’t know whether this would have changed things or not.
Tom asked if he could use my printer on the next porch night. His wasn’t working after he tinkered with it, trying to find the obsolescence chip that all the new technology has now. The boys brayed and asked him to print out a babe for each of them too; a blonde with big boobs, a brunette with a fat ass. Curly saw me standing there and tucked his chin. “No offence, darling.”
“Aw she’s fine.” That was Tom with a handful of paper. “Gwennie knows what we’re like. She don’t take offence.” He handed me the printout.
It was an article. A real article, from a newspaper I recognised. Some of the words were spelled wrong, but the newspaper’s name was there, in big bold letters.
A squad car this time. Engine running, driver’s door wide open. The constable had failed to answer his radio and the car was tracked down quickly enough, to a remote road a few miles north of us. His gun was lying on the passenger seat, fully loaded. His dashboard camera was turned off.
“See? I told you it was a biker gang. Not even a cop’s gonna mess with a biker gang.” Curly was s
o excited the spit was flying from his mouth.
“He wasn’t so young this time.” I got that from the last line of the article, where it said he had two teenage children.
“Don’t matter. He’s a cop, he’s in shape. His organs are good.”
Tom snorted. “Jesus, Curly. You seen some of those guys? We could put you in uniform, stick a badge on you, and you could get yourself some free donuts on your loyalty card.”
And the talk passed to a Simpsons episode, the one where Homer’s head turns into a donut and he’s last seen eating pieces of himself, and the guys agreed that this was the trippiest thing ever. Jimmy didn’t join in. His lawn chair was empty.
I found him under the apple tree staring at the sky. “What’s up?”
“Why did he turn off his dashboard camera? Why did he do that to us?”
“What are you talking about, Jimmy?”
“We could have known. If he’d kept the goddamn camera on, we could have known for sure.”
“Jimmy,” I could feel my hands rising, reaching for the right words.
“Chrissakes, Gwennie. He isn’t lost. You can’t be lost if you’re still there.”
So I agreed, and left him standing there while I went to talk to the guys. I said what Dr. Pederson had told me, about information being sticky and Jimmy’s brain being Velcro, about how the weirdest things could snag. I reminded them about the thing with the pigeons and the crossbow, and the trouble after.
“That wasn’t his fault. It was dark. You could see how he’d get confused. And he was lucky. He didn’t hurt anyone.” That was Tom, trying to soften the edges again.
Curly laughed. “He’s fine, we’re fine. Long as we don’t get mistooken for a pigeon, eh?”
But we agreed. Simpsons, babes, baseball and beer: all good. Lost boys, no. No more lost boys on this porch. Lost boys could stick hard for Jimmy.
They stayed for some time, and left laughing at a stupid thing the Twinbros said. Jimmy came inside to say goodbye at the door. There were man hugs, back clapping, arm punches when Curly grabbed Tom’s ass. It felt like any other porch night. It felt fine.
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