“I just love to piss,” the Bummer said, slipping his feet to widen his stance. “You young fellas can have your sex, but I’ll take a good long piss any day. Nothing like it. Am I right?”
“Right,” I said. What does one say to talk like that? My parents taught me better than to antagonize homicidal maniacs. Sadly, they had not trained me well enough to avoid predicaments like this one.
“You and your buddy okay? This is going to get a little rougher, you know,” the Bummer said. He shook off and zipped up. “No matter how much you wiggle and dance.”
I looked at his face for a few seconds. “Can you really find his brother? Or are you just fucking with us?”
“I can find him,” he said with the same rusty bravado he had used in his trailer.
I wanted to ask him what the useless drive out into the middle of nowhere was all about, but I didn’t.
Richard stumbled out to join us. He peed while he yawned wide. “Are we there yet?”
“Just about,” I said. “I guess we’re closer. Bummer here tells me he really can find Tad.”
“Righto,” Richard said. “I was hoping all this fog meant that this was a fucking dream.”
House
When I asked Linda to marry me she thought I was joking. She started laughing immediately and I have to say that it hurt my feelings. Then she caught the look on my face. Perhaps it was dismay or disappointment, maybe simply embarrassment, but she stopped laughing. I was at least not idiotic enough to attempt the proposal in a public place, out of aesthetic choice or timidity, I still don’t know, but instead I asked her on the back porch of the house I shared with Richard on Baltimore Avenue in Philadelphia. Richard wasn’t there. It was midafternoon and the neighbor’s dog, a whippet, would not stop barking. She touched my face.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“You’ve said more romantic things,” I told her.
“Yes, Kevin Pace, I will marry you.” She smiled and made me relax. “Who else would have you?”
“That’s why I’m asking you.”
We walked down the street to the little shop that sold nothing but carrot cakes, all kinds of carrot cakes. We bought her favorite, carob and raspberry, brought it back to the house, ate it all and drank wine while we sat in the bay window.
“Do you think we will have a good life together?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say yes if I thought otherwise.” She sipped her wine and stared at me. “Are you all right?”
“You ask because I proposed?”
“No. I ask because ever since you came back from El Salvador you seem distant. Different. I don’t know. Are you sad about something?”
“Just nervous,” I lied. “I’m relieved you said yes.”
“Are you now?”
“I didn’t want to have to go to the next name on the list,” I told her.
“Really now.”
“I thought three deep was enough.”
Linda smiled, touched my hand. “You’re a lucky man. Are you sure you’re okay? Did something happen down in El Salvador with Richard?”
“Nothing happened.” I could not stomach the idea that she might think my proposal was tied to sadness, my failure. And as I didn’t tell her then, I knew that I could not tell her, would not tell her ever. Whether my intended commitment to Linda, my newfound resolve, was in some way an act of self-preservative distancing or merely an attempt to make things feel normal I would never know, perhaps did not want to know. We lay together that night and I think she might have slept or she could have been pretending like me. When I was a kid I would pretend to fall asleep on car trips with my family and then I would pretend to dream. That night with Linda I pretended to dream a painting that would change our lives.
I made the canvas. It was a large canvas, eight by six feet. It was called Two Yellows and it had on it two yellows, corn yellow and icterine, very close, but importantly different. A review by a well-known critic said that I had made the happy colors somber, the bright hues subdued and unsmiling. It all seemed to be a good thing to the critic, but to me he seemed to be saying that the canvas was lugubrious, morose and joyless, which was true enough. I had not painted it with a sense of irony, but it was all so ironic. To me the yellows were two of those colors between green and orange, violet being the complement. Yellow in nature is the most visible color, easy to find, but perhaps, I imagined, not so easy to see.
Butterflies.
Paris
I could not go with Linda to her gate because of security and there were no restaurants outside the gates at Charles de Gaulle, so we sat on a bench just outside the terminal. Linda seemed to have second thoughts about my remaining in Paris.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said.
“Me too. But you have work to get back to and it seems I have work here,” I said. “I’ll be here less than two weeks.”
“Is that really why you’re staying? Work?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Kevin, we’ve been married for a long time,” she said.
“And?”
“You know.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Have you ever?” I asked.
She shook her head, but she was lying. I was surprised, but not hurt, nor was I encouraged or validated, the absence of these feelings, convenient rationalizations immediately evident to me. I didn’t care, but realized that I wanted Linda to have her secrets. I wanted to let her off the hook.
“Do you remember Two Yellows?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“It’s just a painting,” I told her. “The more it tells you the less you know. A lesson from nature.”
She stared at me, rightly confused. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It would help if I did,” I said.
Time came for her to go. I watched her walk through passport control and then I took the RER back to Paris. The train was empty but for a tattooed girl who sat facing me, staring. Her left arm was a sleeve of tiger stripes. She had several rings in her lower lip, all on the right side.
The train kept moving and we just stared at each other. Then it occurred to me that she was American. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. Her black vest over a T-shirt was in no way a giveaway. Her jeans were just jeans and her boots were like those I had seen many French young women wearing.
“You are American,” I said.
She was stunned.
“So am I,” I said. “Do those rings in your lip hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where are you from?”
“Portland, Oregon. What about you?”
“Rhode Island.”
A load of young people noisily boarded the car at Gare du Nord. I watched Tiger Arm attend to them. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell.”
I went to a café near the Odéon. I sat on the street and watched people as I waited for Victoire. I was eager to see her. I was interested in seeing her, a strange feeling, but the description was accurate. When I did spot her half a block away I felt relief. It wasn’t that I considered at all that she would stand me up, but I simply felt set free by seeing her. It was a good feeling, a guilty feeling, a good feeling because of the guilt and it was a vanishing guilt because it felt so good. As she crossed the Boulevard Saint-Michel, catching me staring as she approached, she smiled, not the same flirtatious, kittenish smile she had used before, but a real smile and I felt, for lack of a better word, happy.
1979
The fog had not burned off an hour later when we took a turn off the same road we had traveled the previous day. I was driving and the Bummer was in the passenger seat, leaning forward, peering through the haze. His attitude was different again, even more serious, nervous, pensive, and charged, perhaps a little frightened.
“I can see a little better now,” I said.
“We just stop here anyway and walk,” the Bummer said. He pointed to the shell of a shack.
The Bummer stood directly beneath the birds and pointed the muzzle of his black rifle at them. “Bang,” he said. He turned and smiled at us. “Easy hunting. Anybody hungry?”
“We’re good,” Richard said.
I was surprised by how much relief I felt when he did not pull the trigger. I then realized just how tense my body had become. I tried to focus on my breathing, so that I could keep breathing. We walked on past the two walls and onto a trail that led down a hill through a stand of trees. It was damp in the thickly wooded area, but strangely warmer. Monkeys made sounds far off and parrots and other birds were calling more and more. I was several yards behind the Bummer, and Richard was crowding up behind me.
“Another goose chase?” Richard asked.
“Probably. I hope there’s some food wherever we’re going.” I looked at Richard and sighed. “You owe me big time.” I looked at the back of the Bummer’s head, discovered I did not like the shape of it. “Bummer, just where are we going? Fill us in on your method, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The Bummer stopped, his shoulders sagged, and he sighed. He turned around and looked at us, at me.
“I’m trying to find your friend’s brother,” he said, evenly.
“How?”
“If the missing boy is into drugs then I have to check out some places.”
“What kind of places?” Richard asked.
“Drug kind of places. Now what do you know? Not much, right? Just let me do my job.”
The trail ended at a narrow, yellowish dirt road, soaked from rain. It was so rutted that it looked more like an old wagon trail, but it was well scarred with the tracks of truck tires.
“This way,” the Bummer said and led us left along the lane. I had long ago lost any inkling of direction. With the fogginess I could not even tell where the sun had come up. It started to drizzle, then it rained harder. The water beat down on us. It rolled through my hair and onto my face, which I had to keep wiping with my hand.
Ahead of us there were several huts and behind them a couple of houses, a village. “Is this a village?” I asked.
The Bummer held his fist up by his head and crouched as he moved toward the right side of the road. He was standing in an ankle-deep puddle, but didn’t seem to care or even notice. He held his M16 differently now, his right hand on the trigger housing but his finger away from the trigger. He walked slowly on and we followed.
I noticed a smell in the air, a burnt something, sulfur, a trace of ammonia. The hair on my neck stood on end. Ahead of us, in the middle of the muddy road, there appeared to be a garment, a sack, a red sweater. Closer, it looked like a doll, but only momentarily. The middle of it was sunk down into the mud. There were little feet, one foot dressed in a sock and shoe. The face was turned away from us. The Bummer stood erect and turned in a circle to see all around us, his finger tapping the trigger now.
“What the fuck?” I said. I started scanning the area. There was no sign of anyone else. “What the fuck is this?” I was staring at the Bummer, but he was paying no attention to me. He was peering down and up the lane and at the buildings.
“That’s a kid,” Richard said.
I nodded. I turned to see the body again and now I couldn’t look away. Her blood was black mixed in with the mud, making a black and mustard soup, and she seemed to have been split in two like in a magician’s act.
“That’s a kid,” Richard said again.
And again I nodded. “What the hell is going on here?” I asked the Bummer.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Keep your fucking eyes open.”
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“There was a lot of shooting here,” the Bummer said. “Smell that powder. Ammonia in that stench—.223, smell it? Soldiers.”
“Soldiers?” Richard said. “Christ.”
The three of us jumped when we heard a clang, like a kicked pail, from behind a hut. My instinct was to get low and so I took a knee, but that put me closer to the dead child, a girl. Her dress was blue and her skin was the color of mine and she was framed by the stew her life had left in the mud. Her left hand was missing, an absence made more pronounced by the fact that her other hand had been washed clean by the rain and looked still alive. Richard stood behind the Bummer.
“Salga!” the Bummer shouted. “Salga, ahora!”
A small man and a very little boy walked out from behind the shack. They were shaking, soaked, unarmed. The Bummer lowered his rifle. He motioned for them to come closer, which they did.
“Dónde está todo el mundo?” the Bummer asked the man.
The man shook his head, tried to steal a peek at the body in the road.
“Dónde está Carlos?” The Bummer snapped his fingers in the man’s face to get his attention. “Carlos.”
“No sé.”
“Fuck,” the Bummer said to no one in particular. He looked at the dead girl and back at the man. “Su hija?”
“Sí.”
“It’s his kid,” Richard said to me. And to himself.
Together, we all stood staring down at the girl. The man was crying, but making no sound. The boy was wide-eyed, silent, struck; he could have been four or a tiny seven, I didn’t know. Then the man fell to pieces. Sinking to his knees, he covered his face with his muddy hands. He reached over and pulled the boy to him.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before whoever did this comes back,” the Bummer said.
I looked at Richard. I had never seen him truly afraid before. “What are we supposed to do?” I asked.
Richard couldn’t speak.
“We’re supposed to get the fuck out of here,” the Bummer said.
The little man got up and walked over to the outside wall of a nearby hut and grabbed a spade. He walked in a circle looking at the ground until he found a spot and started digging. The rain fell harder.
“Let’s go,” the Bummer said.
I didn’t respond to him. I walked over and grabbed a square shovel from the same wall and joined the man in digging. Richard came over and took the spade from the father and he and I dug the grave together.
“You guys are fucking idiots,” the Bummer said. He sat on a metal chair that had been left outside and kept watch. He kept saying fuck every few minutes. “Hurry the fuck up.” He lit a cigarette and smoked in the rain. “Fuck.”
“What are we doing here?” Richard asked me.
I tossed dirt out of the hole. “The only thing we can do.” I didn’t know if what I said was true. I didn’t know if we were doing the right thing and frankly didn’t care. I knew only that I had to do something, that I had to dig.
“I want to go home. Don’t you want to go home?” Richard asked.
“I’m assuming that’s rhetorical.”
“Hurry the fuck up!” the Bummer shouted.
We kept digging, the wet earth offering no dust until we were a foot down. The digging became increasingly difficult as we got deeper and the color of the soil changed, became redder and rockier. There was a splinter between my thumb and forefinger, but I didn’t care. I kept digging. I was focused on the digging because I didn’t want to consider the child, the father.
I was crying when the man carried his daughter in pieces to the grave. He had taken off his yellow shirt and wrapped her head, covered her face. The wet fabric clung to her and I could still see her tiny features. I felt as if there was ice in my stomach. We didn’t touch her, but let the man lay his daughter on the floor of the hole we’d made. The man took the spade from Richard and tossed in some dirt. He looked at me and added som
e more. I helped him cover her. My hands trembled the whole time, but the work, using the shovel, moving the dirt, steadied them.
When the grave was about half full, and a grave is never half empty, I noticed that the rain had stopped. I leaned on the shovel to rest, looked at the sliver deep in my flesh. The boy came to me, offered me something, confused me, then I realized that he was giving me his sister’s left hand. It had not made it into the grave, but must have been lost in the mud and blood puddle. His shirt was cobalt blue. The severed hand was fairly blue black. There was no red to be seen, as if blood was never red. The father did not see me take the hand. In my own hand the piece of a person felt like a feather, a wet nothing. Before the man turned to see it, I dropped it into the grave and covered it. Richard didn’t see what had happened. The Bummer was quietly sitting guard, smoking another cigarette. I shared this with the boy and the boy alone. I was never told his name, but in my mind, in my story, in my world, his name was Luis.
Paris
The air was much cooler than it had been, but the heat lamp made our sitting outside more than comfortable. Victoire ordered a coffee, crossed her legs, and leaned against me in a familiar way that I did not expect.
“So, you have remained for me,” she said.
I said nothing. I had remained because of my gallerist’s request, but I could not tell her that she was wrong. I accepted her pleasant weight against me and watched the traffic.
Once her coffee had arrived and she had blown on it and taken a sip, Victoire sighed and said, “Are we going to sit here all day?”
“We just got here.”
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