American Road Trip

by Patrick Flores-Scott

  “That’s good,” she says. “But some of that stuff has me confused. Like how did you go from a big, shiny house into a horrible little rental? I’m guessing there’s a story there, Teodoro. Like a big story.”

  “I know, Wendy, but—”

  “And you’re working on a design for the stand? Aren’t we supposed to be doing that together?”

  “I’ll show you as soon as we get back. You’ll love it.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just you could have told me.”

  It’s quiet in the truck as we leave the green of Valley Drive and head into dusty Hatch.

  I try to explain all our moving. I tell her Papi thought we needed more space. So we got the big house. Then Fauntleroy shut down and he and Mami lost their jobs. So we ended up in the rental.

  She listens real quiet.

  I try to tell her how I got sucked into that design program.

  What I don’t say is doing that program was like discovering something I was really good at. My thing. I don’t know why, but I had to protect it. Keep it for myself. I don’t know why. And I can’t explain it.

  She asks if there’s anything else she needs to know about me.

  I tell her there isn’t.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Positive?”

  “Yeah.”

  We get to the dump and slide the junk off the back end of the Dodge.

  It’s a quiet ride back to the farm. We’re done for the day.

  Wendy spends the afternoon reading.

  I spend it worrying I might be too much of an idiot to pull this off.

  * * *

  I’m on the floor, stewing, bouncing a ball against the wall when Manny walks in. He’s home from another group meeting.

  He watches me bounce and catch and bounce. He can tell I’m messed up. He asks me what’s going on.

  I tell him what happened with Wendy. Just enough so he gets it.

  He says all I can do is move on and show Wendy my best self.

  “I’m not sure what that is, Manny. So it’s not gonna be easy.”

  Manny takes off his pants and climbs into bed. He reaches over and picks a pill bottle up off his nightstand. Makes like he’s gonna pop the top. But he doesn’t. He just sets it back down.

  I think I should say something.

  But I don’t wanna bug him.

  We lay there in silence.

  And not bugging him feels lame. “None of my business, but I’ve watched you take one of those every night. What’s going on?”

  He looks at me like it’s none of my business.

  Then he tells me I’m right. He says he had been taking them three times a day. But now Doc Fuentes says if he’s feeling good at night, he can skip his third dose.

  “Sounds good, Man.”

  I don’t know why I say that. Because it doesn’t sound good at all.

  Manny turns out the light. He closes his eyes and sleeps.

  I cannot sleep.

  * * *

  Something wakes me.

  It’s pitch-black in the room.

  “Manny?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I hop up. Shake his bed. He’s not there.

  I look out the door, down the hallway.

  He’s not there.

  I check the bathroom.

  No Manny.

  I slip on shoes and run downstairs.

  I bust through the front door, into the cool desert night.

  And I fly right by Manny sitting on a porch step. I try to put on my brakes, but I’m going so fast I almost fall over.

  Manny drops a notebook and pen to his side and looks at me like he didn’t just do that.

  “Hey, Man.”

  “Where you running, T?”

  I tell him I needed some fresh air.

  He says it looks like I needed it in a hurry.

  I ask if he minds if I take a seat.

  He doesn’t say no.

  We sit awhile.

  Then I tell him I got worried when he wasn’t in bed.

  “Just sitting here, T.” He looks out into the dark.

  I point to the notebook on the ground and ask him what he’s writing.

  He grunts. “Group stuff.”

  “I’ll let you write, then,” I say.

  “I’m not writing,” he says.

  I ask him why not.

  He doesn’t look back at me or say anything.

  Feels like my cue to leave. But I don’t. I stay right next to my brother. “Besides the writing, how’s group been?”

  “They won’t stop talking war. I get it, already. I get it. I get it.”

  I try to tell him it sounds miserable, but he stands and says, “Maybe that works for them. But I’m done.” He bends the notebook in half and launches it into the dark.

  We hear it hit dirt, far out in the fields.

  “All right, then,” I say.

  He sits back down on the step, his arms wrapped around his head, his head wedged between his knees.

  “Manny?”

  He doesn’t respond so I go back up to the room and poke my head out the window.

  I watch my brother sit for a long time. Until he falls asleep. Right there on the porch.

  I take a blanket down and cover him up.

  Then I walk back upstairs.

  Back to the window.

  Back to watching.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 2009

  I’m in the shack. I got my notebook out. Calculator ready. But first I have to talk to Wendy. Like really talk.

  She walks in.

  “Hi, Wendy.”

  “Hi.” She gets her tutor materials and sits on the bench.

  “Wendy, I’m sorry I never told you about our housing situation. Ask me anything you want.”

  “I already asked you.”

  “What did you ask me?”

  “I asked you if there’s anything else you need to tell me. And you said no.”

  Oh, hell. She knows something.

  “Teodoro, you never told me how sick Manny was when he came back. You never told me how bad he got. You never told me what happened that night in the rental house. Xochitl told me. And she told me the real reason she needed to bring Manny here.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “She wasn’t squealing on you, Teodoro. She told me because she’s worried about Manny. And she’s worried about you.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She told me you left home. You moved out and you’re not living with your family.”

  “I’m sorry, Wendy.”

  “I like you so much, Teodoro.”

  “I like you so much, too, Wendy.”

  “So much that in my mind I figured out a way to understand why you wouldn’t tell me what was going on. And why you lied to me at U-Dub.”

  “I wanted you to like me, Wendy. And it wouldn’t have worked if I came out with a bunch of negative drama I wasn’t handling very well. It would’ve been too much information. Too much emotion.”

  “I understand. It makes sense.”

  “It does?”

  “It makes sense if it’s just some abstract people hiding stuff from each other. But it’s us, Teodoro.” Tears start rolling down her face. She looks like somebody just died.

  She reaches one hand to her other wrist and slips off the bracelet.

  She holds it out for me.

  I don’t take it because this is not happening.

  “I bought it for you, Wendy. Keep it.”

  “I can’t, Teodoro.”

  “Please, Wendy.”

  “Take it.”

  “No.”

  “Take and hold on to it. Because maybe someday…”

  “Maybe someday what?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll feel better if I know you still have it.”

  I take the bracelet. And shove it in my pocket.

  I look down at my math notebook. “What now?”

  “I’m no
t sure,” she says.

  I can’t take the thought of us broken up and trying to keep this tutoring thing going.

  But I can’t take the thought of her going back to Vancouver, either. “Wendy,” I say. “Are you gonna leave?”

  She shakes her head like she can’t believe I asked her that. “Teodoro,” she says, looking at me hard and deep, “are you going to leave?”

  * * *

  At night, I’m deep in this dream where I’m working at Home Depot with Papi. He’s, like, seventy-five years old. I’m pushing fifty. And we’re arguing about what part a customer should buy to fix his leaky toilet. I lift a pipe to show them and wrapped around my wrist is a raggedy old shells-and-beads bracelet.

  So the dream sucks already. Then Papi looks at me and starts shouting, “Show me your identification!”

  That wakes me right up.

  Turns out the shouting is real. But it’s Manny doing it. He’s standing on my bed in his underwear, pointing an imaginary rifle at my face. “Show me your ID. Now!” Every muscle in his body is flexed to the breaking point.

  I look up at my brother. “It’s me, Manny.”

  “Down!” he shouts. “Get on the ground!”

  I don’t know what else to do, so I get down.

  He looks ready to kill. “On the ground, now!”

  “I’m on the ground!”

  He yells something in, like, Arabic?

  “I don’t understand!”

  He tells me to get down, over and over.

  “I can’t get any more down, Manny!”

  He goes to crack me with the butt of the invisible rifle when Xochitl flies in the room and tackles him. They slam onto the mattress.

  “Wake up!” she says, still gripping Manny.

  He keeps shouting military stuff.

  She slaps his cheek. “Wake up!”

  Manny shakes his head. Looks around the dark room.

  I turn on the light.

  He looks scared. Doesn’t know where he is.

  He looks at me.

  He looks at Xochitl.

  I move slowly to my bed.

  She guides Manny back to his. “We’re at Tío Ed’s,” Xochitl says.

  He starts shivering and he looks around the room, like he’s still trying to figure it out.

  Xochitl helps him slip into a sweatshirt. “You had a bad dream. That’s all.”

  She tucks him in. Kisses his forehead. “Sleep, Manuel. Then I’m taking you to see Dr. Fuentes in the morning.”

  Xochitl walks over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  She leaves us.

  I pretend I’m asleep. But I got my eye on Manny.

  He sits up. Presses his back against the wall. Watches the door. The window. The door again. At some point he slips all the way under the covers and it looks like he’s going to sleep.

  I watch Manny till he’s snoring hard. And I tell myself it’s okay to shut my eyes.

  Then the tapping starts.

  I don’t know what he’s got in his hand. But he’s tapping it against the wall.

  Click-click, click-click, click-click …

  SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2009

  I walk into the kitchen and Wendy is sitting there. “Cereal, Teodoro?”

  She doesn’t wait for an answer. She just starts pouring.

  We sit and slurp.

  Sounds of spoons clinking bowls.

  “You look tired,” she says.

  “I didn’t sleep much,” I say.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Wendy pours coffee.

  “You heard all that?” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Can we talk, please?”

  “About what?”

  I snap at her with that.

  “About what we’re going to do next.”

  “Nope.” I’m too tired and too messed up to deal. I push myself away from the table. “I can’t do this.”

  * * *

  I drive the Dodge fast down I-10.

  I pull out my phone.

  Caleb picks up and asks me who it is.

  “You know it’s me.”

  He says my voice sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

  “Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I need to talk to you, Caleb.”

  I tell him I’m coming home.

  I talk as I drive past Las Cruces. I tell him all about our road trip. I try to tell him everything. Past tiny Anthony, New Mexico, and tiny Anthony, Texas.

  Past cattle ranches and dirt-mound dairy farms. I tell Caleb how great everything was with Wendy. In Florence and here on the farm. I tell him everything about Manny.

  Past the outskirt sprawl of El Paso housing tracts and the brown Franklin Mountains. I tell him how positive things seemed. But really Manny’s as bad as ever. Wendy will never trust me again. It’s all too much. And I want to come home.

  “Are you done talking?”

  “I guess so.”

  I exit the freeway onto busy Mesa Street and pull into a movie theater parking lot.

  “T, for a second I let myself get pumped about you coming home.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “You started talking for real.”

  Caleb tells me I have unfinished business. He says if I come home now I’ll never know how it might have turned out.

  I tell him I know exactly how it would have turned out. Like crap.

  “Well, my friend,” he says, “Sometimes it’s better to walk through the crap than to walk around it.”

  “Oh my God, what?”

  “Imagine you walk to the store and you don’t step in any crap. Then, on the way home, you also don’t step in any crap. That’s a successful shopping trip. But what do you learn from it?”

  “I learn that sometimes life actually works the way it’s supposed to.”

  “No, you idiot! You never think about it again and you don’t learn anything.”

  “Kinda like this lecture.”

  “Listen up, T. What if you’re almost to that store and you step in a big ol’ steaming pile of dog crap?”

  “Is this the best you can do, Caleb?”

  “Yes, it is. And you made me lose my place.”

  “You had me stepping in—”

  “Dog crap. Exactly, T. You got a mess on your shoes. And you have to clean it up. But how? Do you use a stick? A wadded-up Kleenex? Your bare finger? No matter how hard you try, you’ll still have a poop smear that’s gonna stink up that store. But you’re too far from home. You can’t turn back. You gotta get your granny the medicine.”

  “What granny? What medicine?”

  “The point is, if you open yourself up to the possibility of a crappy shoe, then sometimes you’ll get crap on your shoes and you’ll stink places up real bad. And when that happens, you know you’re living a full life and you got stories to tell.”

  “I miss you, Caleb.”

  “I miss you, too. But if you come home now, someday you’re going to wonder what would have happened.”

  I tell him I’ll think about it.

  But my mind is one hundred percent made up. I’m gonna drive back to the farm, pack my bag, buy my ticket, say my good-byes, and fly home.

  * * *

  I don’t want to get to Tío Ed’s early. I don’t wanna see anyone. So I go into the theater and I watch the new Transformers movie twice. I can’t possibly sit through that thing a third time, so I get back in the truck. I’m heading north toward Hatch, but it’s still early, so I exit onto Transmountain Highway, just outside of El Paso.

  I end up on a Franklin Mountains trail. I hike till it’s too hot to move. I hide under a big shade rock and turn off my buzzing phone. And I fall asleep.

  A couple hours later, I wake up and climb to the top of the mountain. I watch the sun go down on El Paso, then scramble down the mountain and drive the dark desert freeway back to Hatch.

&nb
sp; No one’s up when I get there.

  I creep into the room.

  Manny’s sound asleep. No clicking tonight.

  I pull my bag out from under the bed. Open the dresser. Throw in clothes. Throw in my notebooks.

  I tuck in and close my eyes.

  In the morning, I’m on my way home.

  * * *

  The slow click of the bedroom door latching into place. That’s what wakes me.

  I look over at Manny’s empty bed.

  He’s probably on the porch again.

  I check the window.

  He’s not down there.

  I check the bathroom. Sneak to the kitchen. Back up to the room.

  No Manny.

  I wrestle with a pair of pants, but I got ’em going backward, so I yank them off and slip shoes on fast. I bounce down the stairs and out the door, toward the fields.

  I spot Manny walking near the storage barn, not far from the road, on the other side of the driveway from the shack.

  I don’t shout his name. I don’t say a word. I just run fast and quiet.

  I get to the barn. He’s gone.

  I look toward the road and catch his silhouette, moving between rows of plants.

  I run at him. I’m about half a football field away, and I can see him clearly now, lit up by the stars and moon.

  He stops walking. Looks up at the sky.

  I don’t stop running.

  He drops to his knees.

  Plants whipping my bare legs.

  He looks down at something.

  Fumbles with something.

  No, Manny!

  He lifts a pistol up to his head—Aw, God, where’d he get that?

  I’m twenty yards away.

  Manny looks up at the stars again.

  A click as he releases the safety.

  Twenty feet away.

  I can hear him breathe.

  I can’t believe he can’t hear me.

  I lock my jaw.

  Clench my fists.

  Manny hauls in a last deep breath.

  I lower my shoulder.

  A howl blasts out of me.

  Manny turns. His eyes catch mine.

  I explode into my brother. My shoulder cracks his back. My head knocks his head.

  My knuckles burn as I punch the gun away.

  Manny crumples to the ground.

  A clap of thunder as the gun flies into the air.

  I slide right over him, into the dirt, over a row of plants.