Words We Don't Say

by K. J. Reilly

  I was thinking, What the fuck are you saying? but basically I ReThought and said, “Yes, sir, I understand,” even though I was not the least bit sure that I did.

  “And there’s a field of asparagus behind the green barn that doesn’t even get harvested anymore. Just left there to go to seed. Close to half an acre that goes unpicked every season, in fact. They’re perennials. That means that they come up every year on their own. Grow like the dickens, too. Can’t pick ’em fast enough. They wouldn’t go noticed if they disappeared either. Coming up now, as a matter of fact.”

  “Asparagus?”

  “You do know what asparagus are, don’t you, son?”

  And I said, “Of course I know what fucking asparagus are. I haven’t been living in a fucking underground bunker.” I just left off the “Of course” and the two “fucking”s and the part about “living underground in a bunker,” so I basically said, “Yes, sir.”

  Then I added, “But you’re saying that if I were—”

  “I’m not saying anything, but people gotta eat. One way or another.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you’re looking for something to hold some boards together you might want to look into brackets. Like these here,” he said, holding up something that looked damned perfect for what I had in mind. “I gotta run now. You have a nice day. Say hi to your dad for me. Name’s Miller.”

  Mr. Miller started to walk away and then he turned back around. “I ran into Brice Torrington the other day,” he said. “She said that you volunteer at the soup kitchen up on Hendricks.”

  “On Wednesdays.”

  “Right, Wednesdays…Ever had a poached egg on a bed of steamed asparagus?”

  “No, sir, I have not.”

  “Just about the best damned thing in the world. You might want to try it sometime. And I’m betting that the patrons up at Brice’s soup kitchen might enjoy it, too.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I nodded my head.

  We looked at each other long and hard after that and then he turned and went up the stairs. I could see him as he bent down and gave Jacey and old Beau a pat on their heads. Mr. Miller got the short tail thump and then I watched as he gave old Beau a tummy rub and Beau then went the extra mile and gave Mr. Miller a little wet nose nuzzle on the palm of his hand as payment in kind. Which reminded me that there’s just something about dogs. They always seem to know who the good guys are.

  one fine monster.

  Right there in the monster trap that we set up in his closet after we got home from Brinkley’s. I had promised to sleep in his bed with him or at least stand guard that night until we heard it go snap, which was not the broken-neck snap of a regular mousetrap but the closing of the gate on a tiny cage kind of snap, but it went snap almost immediately after we set it up and then Jace peed all over himself and he said, “See, there are too monsters,” and I said, “Let’s go see what we caught.” Jace looked ridiculous ’cause he was wearing those feet-y pajamas with his toes sticking out and now they were all wet because him peeing all the time was another one of those problems Jesus, Mary thought would extinguish if we ignored it, so I didn’t even mention the fact that he needed to change. I think he really expected to find a character from one of his books like a real Minpin or maybe even a Hobbit or one of the Borrowers right there in the little trap. And when we opened the closet door and cleared a path to the back, there he was.

  Our monster.

  “Not so scary after all,” I said to Jace.

  The whole plan backfired though ’cause I was planning on letting the mouse monster go somewhere far off in the woods so he wouldn’t find his way back, but now that Jace saw how cute he was he wanted to keep him.

  Which is how we got Scabbers.

  “That’s what Ron called his mouse in Harry Potter,” Jace told me.

  I had to take his word on that on account of the fact that I hadn’t read any of the Harry Potter books.

  Yep. I’m that guy. The only person in the fucking world who hasn’t read even one Harry Potter book.

  On the plus side, Jacey slept in his own bed after that with the door mostly closed and the lights mostly off with only a night light on. But the problem was that the clock was ticking on how long this setup was going to last.

  Now I had two things to hide.

  The mouse from the Harry Potter books in Jace’s closet and a gun in the garage.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO ANDY 8:22 p.m.

  Jacey and I have a pet mouse. You would think it’s dumb but it’s cool.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO ANDY 1:50 a.m.

  Okay. I have some suspicious new symptoms. Pretty much it’s onychomycosis.

  Which is toenail fungus. It’s just not on my toenails. So it’s weird. But doctors in the Netherlands are working on a cure so don’t worry. I emailed one of them and attached a picture. It’s gross.

  Benj was always asking anyone who was standing around what-if driving questions.

  This time it was, “What if you’re driving down a steep hill toward an intersection with heavy traffic and you lose your brakes and there’s a tractor trailer sitting directly in front of you and the traffic isn’t moving because of a red light and you’re going to hit the truck broadside if you don’t do something fast to avoid it. Do you:

  A. Lean on the horn and hope that the traffic will move enough to let you in and then make a wide, arced ninety-degree turn to absorb some of your speed and then make a second arced turn, this one on the banked entrance ramp into the Burger King parking lot and then crash the car into the snowbank that the plows piled up in the back to absorb any remaining speed, or

  B. As you are careening down the hill, but before you hit the truck broadside, slam the car into reverse to jam the transmission then pull on the parking brake and then turn the wheel a sharp one hundred and eighty degrees so you crash into the trees because the timing on option A is impossible?”

  Alex B. Renner said, “Holy shit that’s a lot of detail. Who says there’s a Burger King with a snowbank or—”

  “Jesus,” I said, interrupting him. “Who says there’s anything? He just made the whole thing up, so go with it.”

  “Then if Kutchner can make stuff up so can I. And I would either launch the parachute out the back of the Batmobile I was driving to bring it to a stop or accelerate then engage the Batmobile wings that I had Alfred install and then I’d fly my brakeless car right over the tractor trailer and land at Teterboro Airport, which is where I park the Batplane.”

  I said, “Dude, you can’t even drive a Ford Fiesta, so I don’t think you could handle the Batmobile or the Batplane.”

  Then Benj said, “That’s it. Alex B. Renner can’t play.”

  “Okay, Benj,” I said. “How’s this? I’d pull the emergency brake, slip the car into neutral, then turn off the ignition to slow it down, ’cause putting it into reverse won’t actually do anything, and then I’d exit the vehicle before impact.”

  “You mean jump out?”

  “More of a roll. Put my head down and shoulder into it.”

  “That’s cool, Joel. I didn’t think of that. That you could jump out maybe before the crash. Thanks.”

  “No problem, man. Can I have your socks?”

  “What?”

  “Your socks. Can I have them?”

  “Okay.”

  Benj sat down to take his socks off.

  Then Alex B. Renner said, “What the hell is going on between you two?”

  But neither one of us answered.

  I was getting two pairs of socks a week from Benj at this point, which was good on account of the fact that I had no socks of my own left and Jesus, Mary was now saying to Jackson, “This is ridiculous, Jackson! What has happened to all of your socks?” And he would say, “Jesus, Mary, how the hell should I know? You do the laundry.”

  and pick asparagus with me at the Richardsons’ farm.

  With her hand on her hip and suspicion on her face she said, “Why do I have to wear camouflage, Jo
el?”

  And I said it was on account of the fact that it was a crime to let food rot on the ground when people were hungry. We were standing by our lockers and school had just let out and she looked at the camouflage shirt and pants I was holding out for her to take that Jackson bought one year for my mom on their anniversary but my mom refused to wear because she said hunting fatigues were the worst anniversary gift in the history of the world, and Eli said, “Joel, are you saying that we are going to be stealing?” And I said, “No way, I got permission.” But I left off the part about it not being from the actual owner of the farm and she said, “So, we are not stealing, right?” And I said, “Pretty much that would be a no.” And she said, “What on earth does that mean? Because to me it sounds like you’re not sure and you not being sure sounds a whole lot like stealing.” And I said, “Trust me. The two of us collecting eggs and picking asparagus from some run-down farm to bring to the soup kitchen is something that God would approve of. I am certain of that.”

  I think I pretty much got her with the God argument because she took the clothes from me and went into the girls’ bathroom and put them on and then we took the bus that dropped off at the edge of town and the kids all stared at us because it was weird that we were dressed in camouflage like army rangers or hunters and then we got off the bus and walked up to the Richardsons’ farm and we entered on the same path Rooster used to push his cart on and I made a wide berth around his shack so Eli wouldn’t see it because that would have broken her heart. Then we snuck into the henhouse, which was not hard to find because of all the clucking and crowing, and gathered dozens of eggs that we put in the crates that I found stacked on the side of the building. After a few minutes I looked up at Eli and said, “Have you ever had a poached egg on a bed of steamed asparagus?” and she burst out laughing ’cause that sounded like a ridiculous thing for me to have said and then she looked right at me and smiled and said, “No, I have not.”

  There were little baby chicks running around at our feet and the sun was streaming in through the rafters and it made her look so pretty and I said, “Well, you’re in for a real treat, then, ’cause it’s just about the best thing on earth,” and she said, “Joel, it can’t be better than cake,” and I wanted to kiss her. Like really wanted to kiss her.

  But I didn’t dare because if she got mad—or threw up—it would ruin everything. Plus, we were in a henhouse and there were chickens squawking and it stunk worse than Kutchner’s gym locker and I didn’t want our first kiss to be in a place like that. So I said, “We are going to serve poached eggs on asparagus at the soup kitchen tomorrow.” And Eli said, “Joel Higgins, you are too cute.” And I was going to tell her again that Too Cute was a TV show about kittens and puppies that Jacey watched with my mom but instead I stepped in closer and was about to tell her that I was in love with her but I ReThought and saved those words as a draft just like that kiss and all of those text messages and I said, “Let’s go pick asparagus before we get caught in here.” And Eli said, “Joel, I thought we weren’t stealing?” And I said, “Technically, we’re not.” And Eli said, “Joel!” and then she ran out of the henhouse without the crates full of the eggs she had collected and I had to carry out hers and mine and then run after her. I carefully stacked the crates on the side of one of the outbuildings, and then after I caught up with her, it took us a while to find the asparagus field because we didn’t really know what we were looking for even though Mr. Miller said it was behind the green barn. That’s because when we finally found it, it didn’t look like much at all. There were just asparagus sticking up out of the ground and they were half-hidden in the tangle of grass and weeds. I mean, I was expecting something that looked like a garden with neat rows and obvious plants but that’s not what we found. The asparagus we see in the store is literally the entire plant and it grows directly out of the ground with no extra leaves or anything. It was the funniest vegetable thing I had ever seen in my entire life. I mean, try to imagine a field of carrots where the carrots didn’t grow underground; they were just naked carrots sticking up out of the dirt with no green stuff at all. How ridiculous would that be?

  We picked as much as we could carry.

  Heaps of them.

  We just snapped them off and filled up the six plastic bags that I had brought from home.

  I kept looking up at Eli the whole time we were at the farm and she looked so happy. Like maybe she could like me.

  Or be a farmer.

  That was probably more like it.

  I decided that she was definitely happy because of the farmer thing.

  Not the Joel thing.

  There was no Joel thing.

  I had to keep reminding myself of that when I got confused.

  Or overly optimistic.

  Or both.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO PRINCIPAL REDMAN 5:16 p.m.

  If we go ahead with the whole plow-up-the-teachers’-parking-lot thing, I think we should plant asparagus.

  And maybe we could raise chickens in the gym.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO PRINCIPAL REDMAN 5:44 p.m.

  Maybe we should bulldoze the football field and grow food for the hungry there too.

  Then kids could learn farming instead of football. I mean, come on. Football basically sucks.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO PRINCIPAL REDMAN 9:44 p.m.

  We should really do the football-field-conversion-to-a-farm thing. Maybe make the soccer field into a farm too. And we might as well do the track, as long as we’re at it. I was thinking we could grow potatoes and strawberries maybe.

  Or wheat and corn.

  And we should do the whole car/bus-swap-up thing too.

  TEXT FROM JOEL TO ANDY 10:11 p.m.

  I have a few new symptoms. They’re pretty nasty. I won’t get into them here. But just so you know.

  with the food we might possibly have stolen a bit from the Richardsons’ farm, being that we had permission from Mr. Miller, but not Mr. or Mrs. Richardson.

  She had Macy and Margaret poach all of the 132 eggs since seven broke and they steamed all of the eighteen pounds of asparagus for exactly four minutes. I insisted that they rinse them in cold water after cooking just like Martha Stewart suggested on her website and that we serve the eggs directly on top of the asparagus like Mr. Miller said to do and everyone said it was the best thing they had ever eaten in their entire lives and it was.

  When Spindini was eating his asparagus and eggs he asked me and Eli to sit down with him, which was something he did a lot, but this time it seemed different. He was sitting alone and picking up the asparagus spears with his fingers and dipping them in the runny egg yolks and eating them slowly and I could see that he was enjoying every bite, but something seemed off with him. In between mouthfuls he said, “Sometimes during the day I sit home and just watch war movies on TV, one after another.” Then he shook his head from side to side and added, “The directors get it fucking wrong, every time, man. The actors’ uniforms are too clean. That really fucking bothers me.”

  He looked straight ahead like he was somewhere else and Eli and I exchanged a glance. Then Spindini said, “Being a soldier is like going on an odyssey to a foreign place in a way that makes coming back home really hard. When you’re sent back to the place that is supposed to be your home sometimes it doesn’t feel like home anymore even though you speak the language and you lived there your entire fucking life. Even when your family is there and your girlfriend is waiting for you.

  “When you come back home after being deployed, when your tour is up and you get shipped back to the states, it can seem different, so fucking different.”

  Eli and me were real quiet. I was pretty much looking at the floor and Eli couldn’t decide where to look so her eyes kept jumping around the room like she was looking for a safe place to look but knew she wasn’t going to find one.

  “And the thing of it is, it’s not so much because home changed, it’s because you changed.”

  Eli started to say, “Can I get you anything e
lse to eat, like…” But Spindini didn’t hear her, so her voice just trailed off.

  “That fucking place you were? Even though it was more awful than you could have ever imagined and there was a fucking war going on and the cities and towns were nothing but dust and rubble, it can feel more like home to you than home does.”

  He shook his head and then said, “When I got home? My girlfriend wanted me to look at wedding dresses.” He stared off into the distance. “Jesus. Fucking wedding dresses!

  “She held up a picture on her phone and asked me, ‘Which one do you like better? The one with the pearled bodice or the one with the long train?’ I’ll never forget that.

  “Then she told me that her friend Barbara got a new car. Then she complained that her boss ate the same sandwich every day. She thought that was really annoying. Man, I just looked at her with a blank stare because it was all something that I couldn’t understand and I fucking wanted to tell her that there are places, the places I went to, that are so hot and covered in so much sand that you can’t see clearly or breathe.”

  I looked up from the floor and Eli caught my eye and we exchanged a look that said we didn’t know what to do and we were scared where this was headed but Spindini kept going like this was a train wreck that had to happen and we were gonna watch it whether we liked it or not.

  “And you want to tell your girlfriend that when you were there you couldn’t shower for weeks and they warn you that if you’re stationed at a post and you sit too long in the same position tucked inside a tank that’s protecting a supply convoy or crouched behind a road embankment armed with a RPG rocket launcher with fire coming at you from all sides you can get deep vein thrombosis and a clot can travel to your brain or your lungs and kill you. Just for doing your job and fucking sitting there. And you learn on day one that the soldier’s creed is no man left behind and that you chamber your last round so you can’t be taken alive and the first thing you do if your hand is blown off is apply a tourniquet so you don’t bleed out. And I wanted to tell her that you’re never safe, even when you’re sleeping and that sometimes supplies are so low that you have to make your own armor—hillbilly armor we called it—which means that you weld sheets of old rusty steel to the inside doors of the vehicle you’ll be riding in so just maybe you won’t die. And I want to tell her that things can just blow up with no notice even if you’re just walking in a village trying to help people or are part of a caravan delivering supplies just driving up a dusty road littered with checkpoints and the skeletons of abandoned, burned-out military vehicles. I wanted to tell her that everyone looks like a civilian even if they are the enemy and carrying guns or planting IEDs and trying to kill you.”