Driver's Education

by Grant Ginder

  A little bit closer now, the marlin exploded into the air again. Then it was my granddad’s turn.

  “You!” Alejandro coaxed him toward the seat, where Juan was still working the reel but was showing signs of fatigue. “You go!”

  “All right!” my granddad shouted. He began wringing his hands together and shifting his weight between his heels. “Yes, yes, all right!” Then: “What do I do again?”

  Together they yelled, “YOU FIGHT!”

  At first he thought his arms were going to be pulled from their sockets, he told me. Just ripped clean out into the Sea of Cortez where they’d become chum for the circling gulls. He lurched forward in the chair and Juan had to latch on to one of his shoulders and Alejandro the other in order to keep him from being yanked into the air. He planted both his heels on the deck of the boat as he felt the men’s fingers burrow into his skin, the pole’s handle begin to slip and squirm from his sweaty fingers. He felt the first streams of sweat canyon down his temples and worm into the squinted corners of his eyes, but he didn’t dare wipe them away—he just let them sting. But then there was a moment of stillness, a brief pause during which the marlin must’ve felt it safe to take a breather: the line, in a blinkable instant, went slack. And my granddad, being the sort of man who recognizes Opportunity when it presents itself, seized his chance. He began to fight.

  He arm wrestled with the rod, like he’d seen Juan do minutes before. He ground his teeth together and he clenched down on his upper lip. The marlin darted right, then left, then back to the right in a blistering three count.

  “It was the fastest goddamned waltz I’ve ever danced,” he used to say. “And I swear it knew that’s what we were doing—I swear it knew we were dancing. Because when it jumped out of the water again, it looked right at me. It didn’t even blink.”

  “I don’t think fish have eyelids, Granddad.”

  “You understand what I’m saying, son.”

  When they’d managed to get it within ten yards off the boat’s starboard side, Alejandro took over, slipping his lanky body into the chair. While Juan had muscled the fish in, Alejandro worked with a sense of lyricism, a sense of poetry. He wove the rod in rounded arcs, like he was conducting an orchestra. The marlin’s sharp, sinewy tail drummed along the sea’s surface. Its thrashing was more subdued now—it was succumbing to fatigue, its body growing numb from exhaustion. That’s not to say it didn’t have any life in it—because, as my granddad tells it, when the fish was hauled up onto the deck, when its gills were gulping at nothing, it was still bucking its speared nose, causing the three men to hopscotch around it, blocking their ankles behind plastic coolers.

  “What are we supposed to do?” my granddad shouted, but only half-heartedly. He was transfixed, again, by the blue, the spectacular blue, the sky-into-ocean-into-electric-acid-midnight blue of the beast. He leaned over the steering wheel behind which he was hiding and his eyes grew wide.

  “¡Lo golpeó!” Juan yelled. “Hit it!”

  Here’s another thing about catching marlin: Once you get them into the boat, that isn’t the end of it. Even out of the water, a one-thousand-pound marlin can do quite a bit of damage. So what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to stun them, basically beat them into submission.

  Alejandro brandished a thick steel club. He shuffled to the other side of my grandfather, so that he was directly above the marlin.

  “But wait—”

  “¡Ahora!”

  He said that first hit was too low—six inches down from the head—and the impact sounded fleshy and soft; the fish’s body buckled, and its tale whipped a half-finished bottle of beer into the sea. Alejandro cursed.

  “¡La cabeza!” Juan shouted.

  Alejandro struck again, this time between the marlin’s fear-flecked eyes. There was a crack—or probably more of a thud, like a sandbag being dropped onto cement—and then the eerie onset of stillness. The lapping of the ocean against the boat’s hull. The bitter squawking of gulls as they fought over the soggy remains of Juan’s sandwich.

  My granddad held both hands to his chest. “Did he do it? Was that it?” he asked.

  It was. He did. He must’ve. Because then—very quickly, like film unspooling from a reel—the life began seeping out of the fish. It began at the tips of its fins, where stripes of silver and that cosmic blue dulled to a sickly grey that the sun had no interest in reflecting. And then it spread upward, and outward, to the marlin’s meaty flanks and to its rapier nose, in all directions at once—death blooming efficiently, democratically.

  “What’d you do?” I asked him. We were still in the shark exhibit, watching thrashers spiral around each other.

  “I cried.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did so.”

  I asked, “Did anyone see you cry?”

  “Juan did. I told him there was salt in my eyes.”

  My granddad said something then—something about life being a sigh, and death being a gasp, and that’s what made him cry, the sucker-punch sensation of the gasp, and he told me he never wanted to just fade out, not like that marlin did.

  In fact, he actually said to me, “Finn, don’t ever let that happen to me.”

  “I won’t,” I told him.

  “Swear that you won’t.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Then: “What do you want me to swear on?”

  He dug around in his pockets, which were empty. He looked around the strange, cavernous room. He pressed my five-year-old hand against the cool glass in front of us.

  I said, “I swear on these man-eating sharks that I won’t let you be like that marlin.”

  He laughed to himself and smiled. He took both my shoulders and directed me toward the next exhibit, where my father was waiting for us.

  • • •

  The chair’s frame is wood, and vaguely modern in that its corners are curved instead of sharp, and its upholstery is purple with blue triangles. I sit on the edge of it, and I pull it closer to my granddad’s body. I lean forward until the back legs lift from the ground, until I’m two inches away from the bed, from him, from his hands that are folded like he’s getting ready to hear a good story.

  The technicians roll the last of the machines away.

  I pull a blue blanket over one of my granddad’s toes, which is exposed and colorless, grey, in the fluorescent light. And I suddenly want to grip it, the toe, to see if it’s cold, or alive; to pull myself close, to fold into him, to wrap myself in houses made of records and Charlotte Sparrow and five-hundred-home-run baseballs.

  I’m passing Ernie Banks’s baseball back and forth between my hands, and I notice that the sweat on my palms is causing the autograph’s ink to bleed and leave traces of itself on my fingers. I think about how whenever anyone talks about hospitals the things they mention most are the sounds and the smells, but the truth is right now I don’t smell anything except myself and I don’t hear anything except my father’s voice, which is low and throaty and warm, like it’s passing through a screen of tears.

  The room is divided in two by a blue curtain that’s been pulled shut, even though the bed on the other side of it is empty. We’re in the half of the room that’s closest to the window, and through it I can see the hospital’s half-empty parking lot, and beyond that Irving Street, and then the south slopes of Golden Gate Park. The city’s swamped with its requisite layer of fog, which means that once we leave here, once we get back to my father’s home, we won’t be able to see the bay or the boats gliding across it. I think if my granddad were to ask me what the day he died was like, though, I’d tell him it was sunny. In fact, I’d tell him it was the sunniest goddamned day that San Francisco had ever seen. I’d tell him how there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and how the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf were using their flippers to cover their eyes, and how the rust of the Golden Gate became so bright, so brilliant, that there was more than one motorist who refused to drive over it out of fear that the bridge was, actually, o
n fire.

  Behind me, someone opens a window and I look up. I remember how my granddad told me there’s no such thing as a life that’s ended, there are just more stories that haven’t been told.

  A breeze lifts a few of my father’s pages of memories from the bedside table. I reach out and stop them before they blow away. I set Ernie Banks’s baseball on top of the stack to protect them from the wind.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people who deserve my endless gratitude. So I’ll do my best to thank some of them here.

  Richard Pine, you seem to know exactly what to say and—more important—when to say it. I promise that this gamble we’ve made will pay off.

  Sarah Knight is probably our galaxy’s best editor. Thanks for believing in my words, even before they’d been written, and for reading this thing more times than anyone should ever read anything.

  To the Dream Team at NYU—David Lipsky, Max Ross, Sasha Graybosch, Anelise Chen, Michelle Kim Hall, Anissa Bazari, Ayesha Attah, Kate Brittain, Sarah Willeman, Kayla Rae Whitaker, Maura Roosevelt, Jenny Blackman, Grant Munroe, and all the others—thanks for being kind enough to tell me when things had gone terribly wrong.

  Darin Strauss and Irini Spanidou—I can’t believe you never locked the door and shut off the lights when you saw me coming.

  Peyton Burgess—you’re a hero for driving halfway across the country with me, even though you nearly got us killed in Pittsburgh.

  Ben Harvey, Clare O’Connor, Molly Schulman, Billy Kingsland, Maree Hamilton, and Lucy Carson—thanks for the wine when it was needed.

  Lastly—thank you, Mom and Dad and Reid and Katie. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Grant Ginder’s

  THIS IS

  HOW IT

  STARTS

  “In wickedly beautiful prose, Grant Ginder gives us a twenty-first-century morality tale that rivals any novel I’ve read in a long, long time. This Is How It Starts is a funny, sad, and heartfelt debut by one of America’s best new writers.”

  —Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

  I

  May 5, 2007;

  2:00 P.M.

  So this is how it starts:

  I’m watching Chase Latham lift up the edge of my cousin’s skirt beyond what can be considered polite or appropriate, and I’m just starting to regret introducing them to each other two years ago at that bar in Philadelphia when I see the horse stumble, before buckling at the knees and then collapsing—dead—in an equine pile of hoofs and hair and teeth. Unfortunately for the horse, at that particular moment every man in the Latham, Scripps, Howard, LLP tent is quietly wishing he was one of Chase Latham’s sly, tan fingers, and every woman is fantasizing about being a patched square on Annalee’s madras skirt, so time ticks by for a languid three minutes before anyone notices that the unlucky beast has died.

  A man’s voice crackles and breaks over a loudspeaker and when the feedback finally clears he announces that a horse named Prep School has won, Sophie’s Choice has placed, Enola Gay Ol’ Time has shown, and Light of Our Lives—who was trailing in seventh place—has failed to finish due to sudden death. A wave of low murmurs passes throughout the tent and its exterior and when—thirty seconds later—it’s quieted, it’s been publicly decided that Light of Our Lives was blessed with a fine life and has died honorably: for God, for country, for Gold Cup. I sip my gin and tonic and watch, half curious, half drunk, as a small cluster of girls in pretty flower dresses and boys in navy blue blazers with shiny buttons starts gathering at the rail closest to the horse’s lifeless body. After a few minutes, the congregation of eight-year-olds grows and multiplies to about thirteen mourners who vigorously debate the cause of the horse’s debilitated state (“sleeping,” “tired,” “horsey heaven” seem to be receiving the most votes). It’s a funeral service of sorts, I suppose. It’s something. Poking sticks and giggles aside, these are undoubtedly the best-dressed second graders in northern Virginia: brass buttons just polished and bows freshly tied. They’re not grieving, that’s true, but I’m sure that if they knew any better, they would be, and besides, the Gold Cup is this lavish affair, a celebration of sorts, and if there’s a way to go, this is probably it, among the hats and the cigars and the pearls.

  But then a fly lands on Light of Our Lives’ black marble eye and the first of the eight-year-olds lets out a long, bellowing wail, which causes a mother to stop whispering about Annalee’s lifted skirt long enough to intervene and disband the flock (“sleeping,” it’s decided, is the most probable cause). And I shake my head and I look at a single melting cube of ice in my empty cup as, around me, the world continues apace with some universal metronome whose beat, at least today, I’ve been unable to match.

  The crowd’s doing the waltz, see, and I’m tripping through a tango.

  Maybe it’s the bow tie, I think. After all, I’ve never worn one before and this one (pink seersucker) isn’t even mine, it’s Chase’s, and the lesson he gave me in tying it was hurried and unsatisfactory, at best. I could loosen it, maybe, give my neck a bit of slack, some breathing room. But on second thought I’m not sure how these things work and a little slack could cause the whole thing to unravel and fall apart all together. And I’d ask Chase for his advice, but his hands are otherwise occupied.

  Or maybe it’s the empty cup. Yes. That’s it. That’s what it is; it’s this sudden lack of gin, which I’ve always thought vaguely tastes of pinecones but for some reason seems to be more distinguished, classier, than vodka. No matter it’s likely that intoxication has played accomplice to this sense of mal dans ma peau in the first place. At least if I’m blitzed I’ve got something else on which I can place blame for my disheveled hair and ill-fitting khakis—something other than myself.

  Latham, Scripps, Howard, LLP’s tent is situated inconspicuously along an endless row of white cabanas that are hard to distinguish from one another, if distinguishable at all. In the Tanqueray + sun haze, I wander back into the tent’s populated interior (“LSH Welcomes You to Gold Cup: Eat. Drink. Race!”), which, if a person didn’t know any better, he could easily mistake for a modern re-creation of Versailles, circa 1665. I stumble through the throngs of plunging necklines and correctly constructed bow ties and make my way to the bar that, surprisingly, is empty, which I take as a sign of providence so I order another gin and tonic. As the bartender lets the Bombay waterfall into a clear plastic cup (one finger, two fingers, three fingers . . .) I brush my blond mop, which has become matted with humidity and sweat, away from my forehead and lean against the bar’s high, wood countertop. The bartender—a young man about my age wearing a white dinner jacket—hands me my drink and gives me a nod.

  “So, where’s your money for the next race?” I say as he rearranges a series of bottles. We could be friends, this man and I—buddies. Both intruders in this club of modern nobility.

  “There’s no formal betting at Gold Cup, sir,” he says with a sneer. “Enjoy your fifth gin and tonic.” Then again, maybe not.

  I finish the drink in a single prolonged chug and order another before leaving the bar. Sixth gin and tonic, thank you very much. Comparisons to Versailles may be unfair—exaggerated, I think, as I make my way through the crowded space. After all, there are no kings here, no divine monarchs or bejeweled thrones. There are votes and elections and a healthy and sedated middle class.

  “And so I said, Madam Pelosi, my apologies, but my cuff links are being polished, so you’ll have to settle for a shirt without French cuffs. But it’s flattering that my reputation precedes me.” Chase’s father—tall, impeccably dressed, Kip Latham’s voice cuts above the din of the crowd. I spot him in the tent’s opposite corner, surrounded by a sea of fans who erupt with laughter after each of his sentences. Kip thanks them by flashing a smile that’s been crafted by an intimidating team of orthodontists and dentists from only the best practices along the eastern seaboard. For the past two and a half decades, Latham’s been crafting his repu
tation as the District’s most prominent Republican lobbyist. And from the looks of it, his blueprints have proven to be one of the more booming examples of social construction. The man’s a caricature of success. His hair, flecked with streaks of silver that reflect the sun’s glare like some precious metal, hasn’t changed tones in twelve years. He has a collection of loafers that has received pictorial treatments in Washington Life, Capitol File, and Esquire. To date, he’s the only man I’m aware of who possesses a preternatural knack for bullshitting that’s actually feared, if not actively avoided, on both coasts and in portions of the Midwest. A lunch, a night at the theater, a Nationals game, eighteen holes; they all meant the same thing to a Republican congressman: he was about to be Kipped. He was about to be had, about to be convinced, beguiled, manipulated—even if not for a single second he believed any of the words swimming gracefully from the man’s mouth and into the open air. If Mr. Latham had been operating when Jesus was preaching his monotheistic madness, there would have been no cross or martyrdom or moving rocks. There would have been a misunderstanding; something that could be smoothed over with a little bread and a little wine and maybe (if the mood called for it) some dancing. No one would’ve had to share a cup.

  And so maybe Versailles wasn’t far off, after all.

  Standing next to Kip like two silent Mazarins are the Pauls—Scripps and Howard, respectively. If Latham hosts the palace feasts, these are the men who kill the boars and stuff the pheasants. They’re stoic, I think, as I watch them maintain tight lips and stern faces through Kip’s raucous (and likely inappropriate) jokes. Specimens, really; some kind of nod back to an old guard that I thought, at least before today, was a dying breed. They wear their graying hair—which isn’t nearly as brilliant or as coiffed or as godlike as Kip’s—in the same plantation-inspired southern “swoosh.” Word is they both came from the Hill, where, a decade ago, they worked as chiefs of staff for two senators who had rhyming names. Kip managed to get ahold of them in a skybox at a Knicks game, which was provided courtesy of another top lobbyist, and since then both Pauls have narrowly escaped indictment on four separate occasions (one of which involved the death of a puppy). To soften their image as political assassins, both have had their wives (Bunny and Kitty) featured three times (holding puppies) in Southern Living. While Chase’s father has spent the past fifteen years sculpting the face of an empire, these two men have been building the gears and pulling the strings and flipping the switches that make shit work. It’s impressive, if not menacing and intimidating and—according to Chase—likely illegal.