The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017

by Sarah Vowell

  MARK POLANZAK

  ■

  Giant

  FROM The Southern Review

  The surprisingly few eyewitness reports stated that the giant walked, more or less, up Main Street from the west, stepping on the pavement and sometimes in patches of trees in parks and backyards, just before dawn. He stopped in the square, choosing to sit in the brick courtyard of the city hall, and leaned back against the big stone church, blocking off traffic on Elm and Putnam. Authorities discovered that he had successfully avoided stomping on parked cars and most of the city’s infrastructure, but that many swing sets, water fountains, jungle gyms, basketball hoops, grills, and gardens had been “smooshed.” No one knew if any birds or squirrels, likely sleeping in the parks and backyards, had been flattened.

  The giant was still sitting in the square in the morning. A crisp and blue Monday morning in September. We found police cruisers and fire trucks parked with lights flashing in a two-block radius around the giant. Residents of the buildings within the zone were evacuated. Businesses were cleared and shuttered. There wasn’t a TV or radio station broadcasting anything but news of the giant. Live footage from a helicopter aired endlessly. The giant was taller than the city hall, the stone church, and the apartment buildings, even while sitting. Few of us saw him erect. He wore baggy tattered brown pants drawn by a red rope, an ill-fitting faded green shirt, and no shoes. He was human. He had human feet. Human hands. A brown satchel was strapped around his torso. He occasionally reached into the satchel to remove handfuls of giant berries and something else that crunched and echoed throughout town. He had long, stringy blond hair that fell on either side of his face, down to his shoulders—except in back, where a few strands had been pulled and tied up with a giant red band. No one had heard him speak. No one, as far as we knew, had attempted to communicate.

  Since the giant seemed to have purposefully avoided crushing our homes and cars and had made no indication that he wanted to hurt us, we did not panic. Even the flashing lights and sirens did not inspire anxiety. The newscasts were not fear-driven. The reporters were curious. It wasn’t an emergency to anyone. It was awe-striking. Eventually, the sirens were silenced. The flashers were shut off. You could hear laughter in the streets. When he reached for more food, there were gasps of joy. Children were held on shoulders to have a look.

  The mayor, around three o’clock that first day, was raised up on a cherry picker and handed a megaphone. He said to the giant, “Hello.” The whole town was silent, awaiting a response. When, after a minute had passed and the giant had reached for another handful of food, the mayor repeated himself, adding his name, title, the name of our city, and a welcome message. To our great delight, the giant finally acknowledged the mayor, turning to him and emanating a ground-shaking, three-syllable reply. But we could not understand. He was not an English speaker.

  Professors from the language department of the university listened to the recording, determining that it was not something they had ever heard before. Linguistic anthropologists then went to work on the recording. They were not sure either. Verbal communication was placed on hold.

  None of us went to work that first day. No child went to school. Many of us chuckled after remarking that the giant had put things in perspective. Our work seemed small. Our schools seemed small. The giant was all we cared about, and no one disputed it. How could we get our paperwork done with the giant down the street? How could any teacher concentrate on her lesson? There was no way our kids would do math problems with a real, live giant outside.

  The influx of reporters and visitors slammed our streets and hotels and bars and restaurants that first night. You could talk with the person seated next to you. There wasn’t a chance they’d be discussing anything else. You could talk with anyone on the street. What do you do in a situation like this? He doesn’t want to hurt us. He can’t talk with us. He just looks tired, don’t you think? He keeps sighing and eating. Have you seen that he fell asleep? He sleeps with his head resting on the post office? Did you hear him snore? It sounded like low rolling thunder. Yes, it was soothing. And how he scoops gallons of water from the river with his hand?

  Although the mayor had spoken with him, no one had attempted to touch him until the third day. After town meetings to devise the best plan to approach the giant, it was decided that the mayor and thirty policemen would carry flags with every conceivable peaceful symbol drawn on them. A peace sign. A pure-white flag. Two hands shaking. The word LOVE. The word WELCOME. Pictures of people waving and smiling. Big flags. Big signs. They would walk cautiously up to the giant. We decided to make an offering. A barrel of orange juice. A loaf of bread the size of a school bus. We would place these before him and back away, waiting for him to notice that we were being kind. Then the mayor and policemen would walk closer and closer, extending hands and shaking each others’ hands to demonstrate what we meant.

  Everything went as planned. But the giant never reached down to touch anyone. When the mayor got close enough, he touched the giant’s heel. The giant did not notice. This was frustrating. He ate the bread in a single chomp. He tossed the barrel of OJ into his mouth, crunched, and swallowed. He went back to sighing, wiping his brow, and resting.

  The giant is not interested in us. He is not curious about us in the slightest. He eats, drinks, rests, sighs, and sleeps. He has made no attempt to look any of us, save for the mayor that first day, in the eye. He has not thanked us for the food. He has not apologized for trampling our parks and gardens and recreation areas. He has not offered any help of any kind.

  Not long ago, we began to wonder why we were so curious. What, apart from his obvious size, made him any more interesting than any of us? Why were we constantly talking about him, for days and weeks on end? Why were we fascinated every time he reached for his satchel or scratched his forearm? We all still talked to each other, but the conversation turned. We had waited long enough. We wanted to know if anything was going to happen, or if we were just going to have to live with a giant in our square. A dumb oaf that caused people to move out of their homes, that caused the government to move the offices of city hall and the post office to other buildings. If he were of normal size, he would be completely uninteresting. He would be mentally deficient, mangy. We would pity him. He contributed nothing. He took. He stole. He trespassed. He destroyed. He frustrated and incensed. He was boring.

  When we travel, when we mention where we live and people ask, Isn’t that the town with the giant? we sigh, Yes. When we return home, we ask if it is still there. And our neighbors give the sarcastic answer, Oh, he wouldn’t go anywhere, don’t you worry. When we walk to the bus stop, we glance up at him with as much amazement as we do down to our watches. We know what we’d see. We would see a giant, sitting there, eating and drinking. We’d see a tired monster, not interesting enough to even hurt us. We’d see him wipe his brow. Then we’d check the time.

  MELISSA RAGSLY

  ■

  Tattoo

  FROM Epiphany

  It took a while for him to tell me he was God. It was maybe the second or third talk we had. Talks were special times when San would take only one of us girls into his room at the back of the house, where we’d station ourselves in the two pumpernickel leather chairs by the windows. Above one chair was a portrait of his father, above the other his mother. He told us he had painted them himself.

  I had been in the single-storied clapboard house for a few weeks before I was summoned for a talk. My stomach burned when he called me, like how the whale must have felt when Jonah lit a candle inside its belly.

  I entered with mugs of chamomile tea, spoons circling around the lip of the cups as I walked across the floor. The tea’s steam rose between us. San had told us, when he went over the rules of the talk, that when the steam stopped, the words could start. It wouldn’t matter who spoke first, just as long as they were words worthy of the talk. Most of us let San start. Even Shelly-Rebecca, the girl who wasn’t afraid to roll her golden-dollar
eyes when he turned away, displaying his wide, linen shoulders. She could be seen, only by us girls, muttering under her breath as she swept up the kitchen.

  I was sitting in the chair across from San, making sure my cottoned knees touched. My feet were wide apart in heavy, black boots tied in bows with serrated ribbons. He commented positively on them, and I looked down into myself and squeaked out a thanks. My zipper scratched my chin where it would break out every month. San said the breakout was how he knew when I was bleeding.

  He lifted my face with his secure hands. That’s when I first noticed a tattoo peeking out of his shirtsleeve on the top of his wrist, where a watch’s face would be. “Is that a peacock?” I asked, since I always did fancy birds. And unlike the other girls, blue was my favorite color. But then I saw this tattooed bird’s red wattle, which I didn’t think peacocks had—but I had never been to a zoo, so I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “It’s not, Nora-Lynn. It’s a cassowary. It’s like a peacock but different. They both don’t fly,” he said, his voice slow and definite, paved with pebbles like the road into town. His teeth were small, but cleanly bright. He took care of them and taught us to as well. His gift to each of us when we first joined the house was a soft-bristled toothbrush in princess colors with stars and hearts on the handles.

  “That is a shame, isn’t it? When a bird can’t get off the ground?” I tensed up and looked down at my feet after I spoke. My right bow was bigger than my left. San could put me in the closet for this, for asking a question. Lara-Michelle was put in the pantry for two days for asking San why the pumpkins he grew weren’t as big as the pumpkins they saw down at the German’s farm on the way to the market. We were supposed to spit on her whenever we opened the door for canned goods. In a slice of light, Lara-Michelle winced when our saliva hit her sallow face. It might have been harsh, but we all learned something from it. Shelly-Rebecca thought it was cruel, but I told her to keep an eye on Lara-Michelle after the punishment. Watch what she does. After she was allowed to leave the closet, I gave her a hug. As I released the embrace, I grabbed her face, gently but automatically. She was softened, I could tell. As Shelly-Rebecca lurched to hug her, Lara-Michelle breezed passed us both to sit next to San. She bowed her head in forgiveness, and I could feel San pass some warm thought to her. I would have liked to say I was jealous—that would be expected. I wasn’t. I felt I conveyed the same message to Lara-Michelle that San had. That of protection and pride, like I imagined a caretaker might feel.

  San said questions were just fine, as long as they weren’t trap questions. “If you ask me something trying to catch me without an answer just to prove a point, I know you must have some evil in you.” It was his belief, and consequently the belief of all of us girls, that evil became confused in the dark. It was so dark itself that when it was confronted with nothing but the same, it fell into itself like a black hole. Bad things don’t exist in the dark, San used to like to say. That’s why punishments were in the closet.

  “It is a shame isn’t it? When you realize something’s limitations. But people can’t fly and we somehow managed to figure out how to make a machine that does. So our limitations don’t have to be a burden. They can be an inspiration,” San drawled his thoughts while patting my head. My honey hair frizzed, since the curly hair shampoo and conditioner I used to use was too expensive for us girls’ budget. We took ivory-white bars of soap and smoothed them over our wet scalps. We could wash ourselves in our bathroom with warm water and a rough cloth whenever we felt necessary, but we got a proper bath with soap once a week in San’s tub. His bathroom would steam as he drew the water as hot as skin could take it. He’d watch us as we dipped our toes in to test it. We wore white cotton dressing gowns in the tub, as San had read they did years ago, when people still believed in the sanctity of the human form. He’d make sure we were safe and comfortable as the cloth shielded our nakedness. As I would recline deeper in the bath, the water made the gown transparent, almost forming just another layer of skin. San would light a candle and give us privacy as he sat on the other side of the closed door, ready with a towel.

  That day of the talk my hair was clean, so I didn’t flinch when he stroked it. I was relieved; I had asked a thoughtful question, one he could teach me a lesson with. “Is that why you have that tattoo? To remind you of your limitations?” I thought this was a proper follow-up and he would stroke my hair again. He pulled back into the comfort of his chair, swigged some chamomile and brushed his adroit fingers over the bird with its plumed cape of feathers.

  “Nora-Lynn, I’m going to tell you something. I haven’t told the other girls yet.” There was a tightness in my body, an automatic response to his stimuli. The other girls had more talks. Shelly-Rebecca was on her eighth, so close to the dozen you needed for the transformation. Yet I was being treated as special.

  “I knew it would happen, but I didn’t know when. It’s begun,” he beamed, his cheeks expanding like a bullfrog sated with flies.

  “What is it?” I was no longer timid; I lurched forward, feeling sweat forming on my lower back where the patch of hair grew that my brothers had always made fun of back when I was at home. I unzipped my jacket and unsheathed my arms. I could smell the pie I had helped bake that morning on my aproned paisley dress. When San extended his fist toward me, I sank back in fear, but he was just showing me the cassowary up-close. It was true, sometimes I just got things wrong.

  “I was told to get this tattoo, not in a dream really—I wasn’t asleep. I was just working. Filling in potholes down in Tatonville last summer. And I heard the voice. I was supposed to defile my body for the sake of the Lord, and in turn I would find out why. But I never knew when. Now it’s all becoming clear.” He told me, in the lambent light of the sun, that it would burn. The mark flamed red in the brutal heat and needed to be soothed with petroleum jelly several times a day. He heard a voice saying the pain was worth it. And that as it healed, it would only burn again when he was close to someone with the potential to go beyond her limitations. And how it burned when he met Ann-Eleanor truantly smoking at High Cliff Park, Shelly-Rebecca at the bus station coming off a Greyhound from Jackson City, Lara-Michelle by the tracks down on High Street, and me when I was begging for change by the Family Dollar, two weeks shy of my fifteenth birthday. I was already out of the money I had pilfered from the hall closet of the house I grew up in. I had fingered each pocket for bills and change before I left early one morning. Seventeen dollars had lasted me a few sunrises, but it was gone soon enough. I had been living off chicken bones for a few days and hoping to get enough money to buy myself a burger. And that’s when I had met San.

  As we sat under the portraits of his parents, he continued his story. The tattoo he got, the cassowary, was created on the back of his hand. The tattoo artist, an Asian woman—which was rare around these parts, he noted—had to shave some stray hairs off his fist. Now the tattoo was on his wrist. It had moved. It was the proof that San was divine. He told me, and I believed him.

  The first summer we were all with San, when it got too hot in the house, our perspiration sticking to everything our bodies touched, San would take us in the flatbed to the pond on Lynchfield Road. If we went early enough, it would just be the five of us. Sometimes there were newborns with their mothers in skirted bathing suits or old couples holding hands under shading umbrellas. San would sit on the blanket draped over the sand, letting the breeze cool him while us girls dove into the crisp water. Ann-Eleanor was a crack swimmer. She’d breaststroke to the other side and back, Lara-Michelle at the ready with plump splashes upon her return. I liked to go underwater, grabbing a handful of sand and scrubbing my skin with it. I always felt so clean after a dip in the pond. I thought that was why San would usually pick me for talks on those days.

  By then, all the girls had noticed the tattoo. San wanted to be modest and wear a shirt to the beach, but it was too hot. We all understood when he unfastened the white buttons of his shirt, slipping his arms out of his sleev
es, and then lifted off his tank top. He had the body of a worker, strong and dense with muscle. We tried not to look at his chest, and our pharmacy sunglasses camouflaged our gazes. But we all saw the cassowary making its way up his arm. By then it sat right over the crook in his elbow. We were fascinated by its migration and spent hot nights in our pitch-black room guessing its destination.

  “It’s going to go down his other arm. And then disappear! And something big will happen, like a war. And San will protect us.” Lara-Michelle craved the destruction of the world, and, I thought, the rest of us girls, so she could be alone with San.

  I thought it might stop when it got to his heart, and I nodded off thinking of it beating, the bird moving on the skin above it. If it got to his heart, maybe it would finally fly.

  Shelly-Rebecca was confused by the tattoo. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the impossible. It scared her that San might be that powerful, might be chosen. She felt she didn’t deserve to be so close to a deity. All throughout that summer, she threatened to leave. Not to San. But to us.

  One day, in the kitchen, evaluating the intake from the garden, Shelly-Rebecca told me she wondered if the tattoo was even real.

  “You can leave whenever you want. You’re not a prisoner. Don’t go talking garbage about your family.” I chopped the overgrown stem off of a rutted carrot. It looked like green feathers, like the kind on a boa. I tickled her arm with it, making my way up to her shoulder.

  “Shoulda stayed with my mother. At least she would pass out sometimes. I don’t know what he wants. It’s hard to trust a man with a fake tattoo.”