The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015

by Adam Johnson

  The settlement had not been much. “An outrage,” Bertie said to anyone who would listen. She tried to get another lawyer to take on the case. Jack would sit with his mother in cluttered offices, staring at the floor, telling the suits what he’d seen. “Happens every seven seconds,” one lawyer said with disturbing enthusiasm, as if discussing the odds of winning the lottery. “Plus, you know how people in Tucson love their Rotts and their pits.” Unfortunately, he explained, a jackpot settlement was usually tied to an attack catching the right wave of publicity. “Your moment has probably passed,” he said with a wince, a shrug.

  “That baby,” Bertie would complain, referring to what she considered Lisa’s competition.

  The same summer, a two-year-old had been mauled near Sabino Canyon. There’d been a fund-raising campaign. “Foothills,” Bertie had scoffed, after seeing the child’s parents on television, their big house on a ridge. “As if they need help! We should start our own campaign,” she’d muttered, after a sip, to Jack.

  “We could make posters,” he’d suggested sheepishly.

  “Posters, TV commercials, the whole shebang.” His mother pulled more deeply from her Captain Morgan mug, the ice clinking like money inside a piggy bank.

  “Wanna make them pop, though,” she said of the posters. “Need to get us some big-ass pieces of paper.”

  It would have been easy. Jack was artistic (everyone said so), and Bertie had balls. But, in the end, they’d never done a thing; never called a TV station or decorated a coffee can with ribbons and a picture of Lisa’s face. Never took the case back to court—even though it was clear, after the initial surgeries, that Lisa would require more. The procedures couldn’t be rushed, though. The doctor had recommended that Lisa wait before going back under the knife: “Too much trauma already. Let’s see how the current work heals.”

  What little remained of the settlement money was kept in a separate account, like a vacation fund or a Christmas club, some perverse dowry. Money for the future, earmarked for surgery.

  Jack had helped, at some point, hadn’t he? Standing at the edge of the alley, he scratched his leg—a vague recollection that he’d given Lisa some of his own skin. It had been more compatible than Bertie’s.

  In the fall, Lisa had refused to go back to school for her junior year. She mostly stayed inside, in her bedroom. There was a lot of pain medication—which was apparently, Jack learned, something to be shared. “I’m in pain, too,” Bertie had cried, defensively, when he caught her one night with the bottle. “Anyway,” she chided, changing the subject, “your sister can’t live in a fog for the rest of her life. She needs to get a job.”

  Jack didn’t understand why a person in Lisa’s position couldn’t be allowed to stay inside, in a dark bedroom, for the rest of her life. Bertie had a thing, though, about self-improvement and positive thinking, which often made her children shrink from her as if she were a terrorist.

  Amazingly, Lisa had found a job fairly quickly, full time at a telemarketing firm. “You see,” Bertie had chirped. “Up and at ’em,” practically shoving Lisa out the door, her hair strategically feathered over her cheeks. “Minimum wage,” Lisa said, and Bertie replied that there was no shame in that. All day, Lisa had sat in a cubicle, talked on the phone in her new, funny voice. But maybe, thought Jack, the people his sister called just assumed she had a toothache, or an accent.

  No one on the phone would have known that his sister was a highschool dropout in Tucson—or that she’d been mutilated. That was a word no one had used—not the doctors or Lisa’s friends or even the truth-obsessed women from Bertie’s so-called church. No one ever said maimed, destroyed, ruined.

  Bitten, people preferred to say, modestly, as if Lisa’s misfortune had been the work of an ant, or a fly.

  Jack rubbed his eye, swatted his cheek. As he headed downtown in long, loping strides, his body was dangerously taut, a telephone wire stretched between time zones. He needed to bring his thinking back to 2000-whatever-the-fuck-it-was—this day, this street. “Excuse me,” he said to a woman with a briefcase and praying-mantis sunglasses—but, before he could explain his purpose, she darted away and leaped into a black sedan. The woman obviously had issues; even from inside the vehicle, she was waving her hands at him in extreme sign language: no tengo no tengo no tengo.

  After an hour and a half, he’d managed to assemble two dollars (a few quarters from a laundromat, a few obtained by outright begging). When he climbed on the bus and dropped the coins in the chute, they made a sound like a slot machine promising a payout.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked the driver.

  “Nothing,” mumbled Jack, taking a seat at the back.

  He’d been looking forward to the air-conditioning, but now it made him shake—the cold air, like pins on his face. Sometimes he’d met Lisa after her shift, to accompany her home. She hadn’t liked to take the bus alone. She’d wanted Jack to ride with her in the mornings as well—but how could he? He was fifteen; he had school.

  Anyway, the afternoons were enough. The walk to the back of the bus had always seemed to take a lifetime. People stared, kids laughed. Lisa never said anything, but sometimes she took Jack’s hand, which embarrassed him: what if people thought she was his girlfriend? Sometimes he could hear her breathing; sometimes, a sound in her throat like twigs snapping.

  That same year, Jack met Flaco. The first time they went fast together, in Flaco’s enamel-black bedroom, it was like, oh yes—total understanding, total big picture, all the nagging little details washed away. Soon Jack stopped meeting Lisa after work. He let her take the bus alone, with nothing but her feathered hair to protect her; her head drooping like a dead flower; a white glove on her right hand like Michael Jackson, the pinkie stuffed with cotton.

  It was okay, though. Because the funny thing was, he’d been able to love her more, and with less effort, from a distance. He felt that by going fast he was actually helping Lisa, he was helping all of them. He was building a white city out of crystal, inside his heart. When it was finished, there’d be room for everyone. For the first time in his life Jack had understood Bertie’s nonsense about positive thinking, about taking responsibility for your own life. After Jack met Flaco, there were nights he didn’t come home at all. Sometimes their flights lasted for days. Bertie might have complained, but she, too, was spending more and more time at her meetings. It was no surprise when Lisa said she was going away.

  “Away? Where could you possibly go?” cried Bertie.

  Lisa said she’d heard there was a good doctor in Phoenix; she’d start there.

  “For how long?” Bertie had asked—and, when Lisa didn’t answer—“And I suppose you plan on taking the money with you?”

  “It is mine,” said Lisa.

  No one could argue with that.

  Jack pulled the cord, made his way to the rear exit of the bus. The door opened with a life-support hiss.

  Whiplash of light coming off a skyscraper. Jack held up his hand to block the sun’s reflection, a roundish blur of ghostly ectoplasm that hovered somewhere around the twentieth floor—which the boy’s street sense interpreted, correctly, as roughly five o’clock.

  Please be over soon, he thought, knowing full well that the day would linger for hours yet. Even after sunset, the heat would be terrible—the sidewalks, the streets, the buildings, radiating back the fire they’d absorbed all day. There’d be no relief until well after midnight.

  Jack walked south, toward the barrio, toward the sound of firecrackers, the whistle of bottle rockets. Later, at dark, the neon pompoms would come—the big holiday displays at the foothills resorts, and the city-sponsored show on Sentinel Peak, which half the time had to be stopped due to the scrub catching on fire. From the valley, you could watch the flames flowing down the mountain like lava. People looked forward to that as much as to the fireworks.

  Jack walked with no particular purpose, and was surprised when he found himself standing before Flaco’s house. There was the
white storybook fence around the neatly swept yard; the saint with her garland of artificial flowers, standing on a lake of tinfoil. At the Virgin’s feet, a weird mix of things: playing cards and plastic beads, and what looked like pieces of old bread. Jack had always loved this diorama, which lived inside a little cage like a chicken coop. To protect it from the rain, Flaco’s mother had explained.

  He wondered if she’d still recognize him, maybe give him some carne seca wrapped in a tortilla as thin as tissue paper. In so many ways, his life had started in this house. A thousand hopes and dreams. Jack wondered if they were still in there, inside Flaco’s spray-painted bedroom. Wondered, too, if there might be any crystal left in one of the old hiding spots.

  Five years was a long time, though. Someone would already have smoked it, or flushed it down the drain. And, besides, Jack didn’t have the stamina to crawl through another window. He was done with windows and doors. He half considered climbing inside the chicken coop with the saint.

  The sadness bloomed in his belly. It always started there—a radioactive flower, chaotic, spinning out in weird fractals until it found its way to his arms and legs, his quivering lips. Then the telltale buzz of electricity in his hair.

  See, this was the reason it was better to go fast with another person—so that, when you crashed, you weren’t alone. The high, too, was better when shared. Sometimes he and Flaco, as a team, could increase the effect of the drugs, pinballing around the bedroom, generating so much heat they could barely stand the feel of their clothing. Often they’d ripped off their shirts, lain next to each other on the bed, watched in amazement as their words turned into flames, rose into the air like rockets.

  Flaco—and this was something Jack wished to mention in his documentary—Flaco had not died from crystal. It had been something else, something stupid, a car.

  Walking away from the imprisoned saint, Jack passed old women putting lawn chairs along the street, claiming spots. Brujas in flowered smocks and slappy flip-flops, some with brooms, territorial. Later, they’d sit there with glasses of watermelon juice and watch the fireworks, the burning mountain.

  Farther south now, past Birrieria Guadalajara, where he and Flaco used to eat everything, even tongue.

  Lengua.

  Words no longer seemed chimeric to Jack, no longer seemed approximations for something else. They were earthbound now, which was what happened when you were sober. Jack clenched his fists—untrimmed nails digging into his flesh. All he wanted was to find a safe place before the blooms made a mess of the sky.

  He stopped at the railroad tracks. Stopped right between the iron rails, kicked aside some trash, and sat. In his dark jeans, his dirt-brown shirt, they might not even see him. “Ow,” he said, because of the stones as he lay down.

  While the sun cooked him, he became aware of how dirty he was. He could smell himself, even a slight tang of shit. Disgusting. His breath stank—and his stomach was bubbling, an ungodly flatulence from a diet of protein bars and black smoke. It was understandable why others would despise him. Most people lived their entire lives straight, and had no ability whatsoever to see through surfaces—unlike Jack, who’d been schooled in crystal, and who understood how easy it was to forgive.

  Who knew if Lisa forgave him? He hoped she didn’t. He was the one who’d thrown the Frisbee over the fence, a total spaz, missing Lisa by a mile. She’d pulled a face and told him to go get it. “You’re closer,” he’d shouted back. “You get it.”

  Jack turned his head, to see if he could spot the train. Flicker of distant traffic: metal and glass. Lost saguaros, catatonic, above which birds drifted in slow circles, like pieces of ash. To the east, the mountains, shrouded in dust, were all but invisible. The train would come eventually, the crazy quilt of boxcars, the fractious whistle.

  Oh, but it was so boring waiting for death! Jack had come to the tracks before. When the signal light began to flash, he jumped up. He wasn’t an idiot.

  Besides, he couldn’t help himself; his sadness was like a river, carrying him home.

  “You don’t like your life, make up another one.” Something Bertie used to say. Her children had, in the end, listened to her.

  Jack kept running, and when he got to Jamie’s he didn’t knock; he walked right in, sat at the table.

  It wasn’t long before Jamie came into the kitchen in his phony orange kimono (“Mijo! Mijo!”), flapping his arms, flushing, like something out of a Mexican soap opera.

  And though Jack didn’t laugh, he remembered the part of himself that had—and not so long ago. Still, he flinched when the man tried to touch his face.

  In the silence that followed, Jamie began to smile.

  “What?” said Jack—and Jamie said, “I’m just looking at you.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  Jack shrugged, evasive. “I’m sort of hungry.”

  “Well,” Jamie said grandly, “you’re dealing with an expert on that subject. The only question is: animal, vegetable, or mineral?” This last word sugarcoated, singsong.

  Jack looked up, hopefully.

  “Yes, mijo.” Jamie patted the pocket of his kimono. “I do I do I do.”

  “I do,” repeated Jack, feeling his heart leap straight into the man’s fat little hand.

  SHANE BAUER, JOSH FATTAL, SARAH SHOURD

  780 Days of Solitude

  FROM Mother Jones

  SHANE

  The nightmare began on July 31, 2009. I was living in Damascus, covering the Middle East as a freelance journalist, with my girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, a teacher. Our friend Josh Fattal had come to see us, and to celebrate, we took a short trip to Iraqi Kurdistan. The autonomous region—isolated from the violence that wracked the rest of Iraq—was a budding Western tourist destination. After two days of visiting castles and museums, we headed to the Zagros Mountains, where locals directed us to a campground near a waterfall. After a breakfast of bread and cheese, we hiked up a trail we’d been told offered beautiful views. We walked for a few hours, up a winding valley between brown mountains mottled with patches of yellow grass that looked like lion’s fur. We didn’t know that we were headed toward the worst 26 months of our lives.

  JOSH (July 31, 2009)

  “You guys,” Sarah says with hesitancy. “I think we should head back.”

  “Really?” Shane sounds surprised. “How could we not pop up to the ridge? We’re so close.”

  Shane knows I want to reach the top. “Josh, what do you want to do?” he asks.

  “I think we should just go to the ridge—it’s only a couple minutes away. Let’s take a quick peek, then come right back down.” Just as we’re setting out, Sarah stops in her tracks. “There’s a soldier on the ridge. He’s got a gun,” she says. “He’s waving us up the trail.” I pause and look at my friends. Maybe it’s an Iraqi army outpost. We stride silently uphill. I can feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

  The soldier is young and nonchalant, and he beckons us to him with a wave. When we finally approach him, he asks, “Farsi?”

  “Faransi?” Shane asks, then continues in Arabic. “I don’t speak French. Do you speak Arabic?”

  “Shane!” I whisper urgently. “He asked if we speak Farsi!” I notice the red, white, and green flag on the soldier’s lapel. This isn’t an Iraqi soldier. We’re in Iran.

  The soldier signals us to follow him to a small, unmarked building. Around us, mountains unfold in all directions. A portly man in a pink shirt who looks like he just woke up starts barking orders. He stays with us as his soldiers dig through our bags. His eyes are on Sarah—scanning up and down. I can feel her tensing up.

  I keep asking, “Iran? Iraq?” trying to figure out where the border lies and pleading with them to let us go. Sarah finds a guy who speaks a little English and seems trustworthy. He points to the ground under his feet and says, “Iran.” Then he points to the road we came on and says, “Iraq.” We start making a fuss, insisting we should be allowed to leave because th
ey called us over their border. He agrees and says in awkward English, “You are true.” It’s a remote outpost and our arrival is probably the most interesting thing that has happened for years.

  The English speaker approaches us again after talking to the commander. “You. Go,” he says. “You. Go. Iran.”

  SHANE (August 2, 2009)

  Beneath the night sky, the city is smearing slowly past our windows. Who are these two men in the front seats? Where are they taking us? They aren’t speaking. The pudgy man in the passenger seat is making the little movements that nervous people do: coughing fake coughs; adjusting his seating position compulsively. Everyone in the car is trying to prove to one another, and maybe to ourselves, that we aren’t afraid.

  But Sarah’s hand is growing limp in mine. Something is very wrong.

  “He’s got a gun,” Josh says, startled but calm. “He just put it on the dash.”

  “Where are we going?” Sarah asks in a disarming, honey-sweet voice. “Sssssss!” the pudgy man hisses, turning around and putting his finger to his lips. The headlights of the car trailing us light up his face, revealing his cold, bored eyes. He picks up the gun in his right hand and cocks it.

  Sarah’s eyes widen. She leans toward the man in front and, with a note of desperation, says, “Ahmadinejad good!” (thumbs up) “Obama bad!” (thumbs down). The pistol is resting in his lap. He turns to face us again and holds both his hands out with palms facing each other. “Iran,” he says, nodding toward one hand. “America,” he says, lifting the other. “Problem,” he says, stretching out the distance between them.

  Sarah turns to me. “Do you think he is going to hurt us?” she asks. I don’t know whether to respond or just stare at her.

  In my mind, I see us pulling over to the side of the road and leaving the car quietly. My tremulous legs will convey me mechanically over the rocky earth. I will be holding Sarah’s hand and maybe Josh’s too, but I will be mostly gone already, walking flesh with no spirit. We won’t kiss passionately in our final moments before the trigger pull. We won’t scream. We won’t run. We won’t utter fabulous words of defiance as we stare down the gun barrel. We will be like mice, paralyzed by fear, limp in the slack jaw of a cat.