by Amy Hempel
He nods slowly, his hands gripping the straps tight as he imagines it—the snatch, the basement, the months alone and everything that comes after. He has been seeing it for a long time, the story in his head, the way it will happen. It was a dream the first time, a nightmare, grabby hands and the skin scraped off his knees—a nightmare of sweaty basement walls and dirt in his mouth. But by the third or fourth time he dreamed it, everything receded and it was not so nightmarish. He was fighting back and able to think. Then it was magical how he started thinking about it in the daytime, daydreaming it, planning what he would do, how he would handle things. Then what came after the snatch became more and more important. He had started imagining the person he would be afterward. He didn’t think so much about the kidnapping then, or even the kidnappers. It was all about him and the basement and what he did down there, who he would become, who he was meant to become. It was set and in motion. It was coming, Jason was sure of it. Not that he thought he was psychic or anything, it was just that this big thing was coming, so big he could feel it, and he had thought it through and whatever happened, he was going to be ready.
He stumbles and stops. He is almost gasping, smelling the sweat on his neck, the dust on the road, the acrid breeze from the eucalyptus trees past the stand of old-growth stunted apple trees around the curve. He leans forward, stretching his back, and straightens to watch a turkey buzzard circling the hill to his left. No hurry. It is only half a mile to his mom’s place, two twists in the road and an uphill grade. Jason shakes his head. He knows this road in its whole length, two and a half miles and every decrepit house along the way, every crumbling garage and leaning fence. Of course, everyone here also knows him, which is sometimes more than he can stand. But somewhere someone who does not know him is coming along, and they will change everything. He nods and resumes a steady pace. Everything will be made over—and he will never know when or why. It will be a mystery.
He thinks of the basement room, that dim space with the windows boarded over. Nothing much will be down there, but he won’t need much. He would love a piano, of course, but a guitar is more the kind of thing you might find in a basement. Nothing fancy. Some dented old acoustic. Jason thinks about it, the throw-away object he will use. God knows what he will have to do to tune the thing. Not likely to be any help in the junk people keep in basements. But there will be paper or notebooks. The notebooks will have pages marked up, of course, but he can work around that, use the backs of pages or something. It is what he creates in the silence that will need to be written down, the songs or poems. Lyrics. He will write it all down—easy to imagine that—him singing to himself in the quiet. The pencil marks along the pages. Of course his music notation sucks. He’s never been too good at that. He sighs and stops again.
Maybe there will be a recorder—some old thing probably. A little old tape recorder, not a good digital. But hey it will get the job done. He smiles and hears above him the turkey buzzard’s awkward call. Ugly sound from an ugly bird. He watches a big white pickup truck drive slowly up and past him. Big metal locks clamp down on the storage bin at the front of the truck bed.
Connie’s boyfriend, Grange, told Jason you could bust most of those locks with the right chisel and mallet. “It’s all in the angle. Got to hit it right.”
Jason has a chisel in his backpack but no mallet. He licks his lips and resumes his slow hike between the ditch and the road. You got to have the right stuff to get anything done. Unless you are lucky or have an edge.
Famous is the way to go, he thinks. You get stuff once you are famous.
Jason wipes sweat off his neck as he walks and imagines it again—the reporter, the camera, the intensity of the lights, the intensity of his genius. It will take time, but he will figure it out. Maybe it won’t be music. Maybe it will be words. He’s damn good with words, not like those assholes at school who talk all the time. He knows the value of words, keeps them in his head, not always spilling them out like they mean nothing. He doesn’t have to tell what he knows. He just knows—lyrics and poetry and all that stuff. Good poetry, he tells himself. Not that crap they want him to read in school. Kind of stuff makes your neck go stiff, that kind of poetry, that’s what he likes. He looks at the dust on his hand, sweat-darkened and spotted with little grey-green bits. Little nubbins of weeds and grass flung up with the dust as the trucks pass. He’ll get on the computer tonight, look up all the words for grey-green. Emerald, olive-drab, unripe fruit, something or the other. Nothing too hard about getting the words right.
Jason wipes his hands on his jeans, enjoying the feel of the fabric under his palms. Truth is more important than how you tell it, he thinks. And he knows stuff, lots of stuff, secrets and stuff. He has stories.
Maybe that will be it, the stories he tells himself to pass the time. Movie scripts, plays, dialogues between characters that come and go when he is all gaunt and feverish. In the basement, they won’t feed him much, so he will get all dramatic skinny and probably have lots of fever dreams. He’ll write them down, everything. His hands will cramp and he’ll go on writing, get up and pace back and forth and write some more. Pages on pages will pile up. He’ll bathe his face in cool water and walk some more. He’ll drink so much water his skin will clear up. His mom is always telling him that if he washed his face more, drank more water and yeah, and ate more vegetables, his skin would do that right away. Maybe she has a point. Maybe in the basement that’s all they will give him. Vegetables and water—lots of water, ’cause you know they ain’t gonna waste no greasy expensive stuff on no captive. No Coke, no potato chips, no Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Pure water and rivers of words. Jason grins and lengthens his stride. Maybe after a while he won’t care what he eats, or he will learn to make an apple taste like a pie. That would be the kind of thing might happen. He could learn to eat imaginary meals and taste every bite—donuts and hot barbecue wings—and stay all skinny and pure. That would be something. He could teach people how to do that afterwards maybe. Some day he might run an ashram like the one his mama used to talk about.
The turkey buzzard swoops low and arcs downhill toward the river. Jason stops to watch its flight. A moment in time and the bird disappears. Things can change that fast. Anything could happen and you can’t predict what might come along. But what he knows is that there won’t be any distractions down in the basement, anything to get in the way. Cold walls and dim light and maybe just a shower. Might be it will only run cold water, but he can handle that. What he hates is tub baths, sitting in dirty water. No way there is not gonna be a shower in the basement, or, all right, maybe only a hose and a drain in the floor. But he knows he will bathe himself a lot ’cause what else will there be to do? ’Cept write what he knows and use the weights set. He laughs out loud. Maybe there won’t be no weights, though every shed or garage he knows has some stacked in some corner or the other. If there’s nothing like that in his basement, still there will be stuff, something he can use.
He grabs his backpack straps again and begins the uphill grade. His steps slow and he focuses on the notion of making do, figuring out what he will use. Stuff like old cans of paint or bundles of rebar or bricks left lying around. He’ll Tarantino it all, laying on the concrete floor and pushing up and down over and over till his arms get all muscled, and his legs too. He’ll push off against the wall or doorjamb or something. He’s gonna be bored out of his mind. He’ll get desperate. He’ll be working out, running in place and lifting heavy things—whatever he finds. Yeah, he’ll get pretty well muscled. He grins. That is how it will be. He’s going to come out just amazing.
Jason looks up the road, quarter of a mile to his mom’s turnoff. He’s right at the spot where the old firebreak cuts uphill, right up to his dad’s place. He can almost see around the redwoods along the hill up to the house. He won’t be like his dad, he thinks, he won’t waste his chances. He’ll grab what comes and run with it. When he comes out of that basement, he’ll be slick. That is what it is all gonna be. S
lick and sure, and he will know how to manage it, not wind up house-sitting for some crappy old guy wants you to carry stuff and keep an eye on the dogs.
Fuck it. Jason says it out loud. “Fuck it!” He’s gonna come out of that basement Brad-Pitt handsome and ready for anything. He’ll be ready, all soulful and quirky like that guy from the White Stripes, only he won’t take himself too seriously. Everyone else will do that for him. He’ll know how to behave.
Jason laughs out loud again. “Yeah,” he says. Yeah.
Serious. Yes. That’s the word. He is going to be seriously famous.
That’s when his mom will realize how shitty she has treated him. Then his dad will hear about it, for sure—and maybe let him come back up to the house and hang out. Of course that creep that owns the property will be around too, but Jason knows it won’t be scary like last time. He’ll have all those muscles, and he will have gotten past being scared of small shit like grabby old guys and dads that don’t give a shit.
It will be different. It will all be different. His mom and his dad will work it all out. His dad will be his manager, his mom will take over the press stuff. You got to have someone handle that stuff, and if the creepy guy comes round to stake some kind of claim, it won’t be no big deal. Everyone will know how to handle him—what to believe and what to laugh at. He can almost hear his dad talking loud in his growly hoarse voice. He can hear him finally saying what he wanted him to say before.
“Jason didn’t take nothing off you, old man. Look at him. What would he need off you?”
Yeah.
But maybe he will let the old guy hang around. Jason thinks about it, looking uphill and remembering. He gnaws at the nail on his left little finger.
Maybe not.
Why would he want that old bastard around?
He thinks about his dad, what he looks like now, all puffy and grey around the eyes with his hair so thin on top. His dad had this belly on him that he tries to hide under loose shirts, and he’s always worried about money and stuff. That kind of old is embarrassing. After the basement though, his dad will be all different. He’ll be old, but not so gross. He’ll be more like Clint Eastwood old, craggy and wise. That’s the notion, and his dad will have figured stuff out all that time worrying about Jason. Things will be different once he sees his son clear. Maybe he’ll even own the property by then. The old guy can’t live forever. Maybe he’ll just give his dad the top of the hill as a kind of death tip. Might be it will turn out like that guy in Forestville a few years back, that black guy who got the thirty acres in the will of the man he worked for all that time.
That could happen. And then if his dad needs someone to help him with things, Jason will be there. That bad leg will hurt his dad a lot by then, even though he will try not to show it. Jason could do stuff—carry things for him and give him a hand. Maybe that is how they work it out—all the anger and guilt and shame and resentment. He can see that too, hear how it will go, them finally talking.
“You had no business running off like that, leaving Mom and me, I was just a little kid.”
“You don’t know how it was, how desperate I had gotten. I couldn’t take care of you the way I wanted to, and you know your mom. She was always telling me I was lazy and the world wasn’t gonna wait for me to get myself together.”
That was just the kind of thing his mom said all the time. Jason nods. His mom can be a real pain in the ass. He sees himself looking at his dad and trying to imagine how he had felt when he had left. Maybe his dad had left in order to get himself together, to try and make something of himself so he could come back and take good care of them. After all that time cold and miserable and hungry in the basement, he will be able to feel stuff differently. Even standing in the dust of the road he can imagine his dad looking at him with an open face. Maybe they could talk finally, and it would shift all the anger around.
Maybe his dad will get to the point where he can look at him and see Jason clearly, see how he became so strong in that basement. Maybe he will finally see himself in his son. Of course, like everyone, his dad will know the story, how the kidnappers beat him, and starved him, and how Jason endured everything and stood up to them. It will make stuff in his dad shift around. He will get all wet-eyed and ashamed of himself. Jason can see that—the moment between them as real as the interviewer and the cameras, the moment burning him right through to his backbone. He almost sobs out loud, but then stops himself. His eyes are closed. The wind is picking up the way it always does as the afternoon settles toward evening. There is a birdcall somewhere up in the trees, but Jason is inside seeing into what is coming, what has to come.
They will touch each other like men do. Men. Yeah. Maybe his dad will embrace him, say his name. Jason can see that. It is as clear as anything. That is how it is in stories, how it is in his head, how it could be.
Jason sways a little there by the side of the road in the sun’s heat. His ears are ringing with electric cricket sounds, the buzzard’s cries, and the movement of the wind. Still, he hears a vehicle coming and the sound of its tires on the gritty tarmac. Rock and redwood debris grinding into dust and crackling as the wheels turn into the bend. Jason can see that, the wheels revolving and grinding forward. He imagines the kidnapper’s truck, white and thick like one of those big Dodge Fat Boys, but one with a camper on the back—just the thing for snatching a guy off the road. Slowly Jason lets his face relax into a lazy smile. He doesn’t look back. He keeps his eyes forward. His mom is always telling him to stop living in a dream, to be in the real world. But this is the real world, the road and the truck and everything that is coming toward him.
Anything can happen any time.
Everything can change, and it is going to, any time now.
Any time.
Any time.
Now.
Dorothy Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina, but these days she lives just outside Guerneville, California, with her partner, Alix Layman, and teenage son, Wolf Michael. Her books include the novels Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Cavedweller (1997); a book of essays, Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature; and a book of poetry, The women who hate me; as well as a collection of short stories, Trash (2003). A novel, She Who, is forthcoming.
This story started when I was stopped at the main intersection in the little town where I live and found myself watching the boys who were hanging around the gas station, hands in pockets and hoods pulled forward. They were working hard at appearing tough and grown-up, but I knew enough of them to be sure none was more than sixteen.
One of the boys suddenly turned and stalked off alone, his backpack hanging over one shoulder and his muddy shoes almost coming off with every step. The slump of his shoulders seemed impossibly sad, but as he turned to head for the bridge he threw one hand up and shot out a middle finger as if he were cursing not any particular person but the whole world. “Boy needs someone to shake him hard,” I thought but then flushed with heat. He was no one I knew, a child in the world and for all I knew someone had already shaken him hard. I started imagining him, who he was, what he was thinking, that long walk across the river and up into the hills.
A few weeks before I had heard another writer say that he was sure he could finish his new book if only he could connive a stay in jail. “Too many distractions out here,” he told me. I had laughed and nodded.
“But jail is pretty noisy,” I told him. “You wouldn’t get as much time to think as you imagine. What you need is to be shipwrecked somewhere with an empty notebook.”
“Tuna fish,” he said pensively. “A stack of notebooks and a case of tuna fish. I could get everything done.”
I had laughed again, but his fantasy was no so far off my fantasy. Maybe we all imagine what might be if only. If only. This is that story, the one about living in hope if only.
Ann Pancake
ARSONISTS
(from The Georgia Review)
The phone rings just as he’s zipping his suitcase shut, even
though he hasn’t seeped a word to anyone in town, but Dell is not surprised. Kenny always knows. Five years ago, Dell would have let it ring; ten, he would have cussed it, too. Now he cups the back of his head with one hand, shuts his eyes, and says hello.
The first call is Becky, gobbling desperate—“Dell, you got to get up here, get him to himself”—before the receiver is grabbed. Dell hears the scuffle, and the connection thumbed off. Within fifteen seconds, it rings again, Kenny this time—“You just stay where you’re at, boy, I don’t need nothing from you”—before that call goes dead, too. Dell waits until the glow of the number pad darkens in his hand, then calls them back.
“Listen, Becky.” He says his words like flat creek rocks laid. “I’m sorry. I am. But it’s my little granddaughter’s birthday. I’m just out the door to northern Virginia.”
“Oh, Dell, I’m sorry, too, I’m just as sorry as I can be, but I’ve been trying to talk sense to him for two hours. It’s the them-coming-to-burn-us-out again, only now he’s saying he’s got a bomb strapped to his wheelchair and’s gonna blow us all up when they get here, Dell, I don’t know where else to turn.”
Dell tips the receiver away from his mouth. The birthday present lies beside him on the bed. “Can’t you at least try?”
“He don’t want me in there, you know that better’n I do, please, Dell.”
The wrapping is twisted sloppy, the white undersides of the birthday paper showing. It was Carol always took care of that. Dell shuts his eyes again, his middle and first fingers forked below his brows. “All right,” he says. “I’ll be up.”
“Oh, I thank ye, Dell” . . . the gobbling again, “I thank ye, if it weren’t—”
“Put him on first.”
He waits. When enough time has passed for Kenny to lift the phone to his ear, Dell speaks to the silence. “They ain’t yet burned one with people still in it, Kenny.”