Transcription

by Ike Hamill

  “It was me,” James said. “I’m the reason she went out that night.” He covered his eyes with his hand and then mopped away the tears that fell.

  “Were your parents divorced or something?”

  “No,” James said. “They were married.”

  “Not separated?”

  “No.”

  “You all lived together?” Bo asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “So he could have killed her anyway,” Bo said. “I mean, he didn’t need to use you as bait. He could have just killed her in her sleep if he was going to do it anyway. Not to be callous or anything. I’m just pointing out, he didn’t need you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” James said.

  “Listen, man, you’re not responsible. A lot of people have shitty fathers. What he did is not your fault.”

  “He was a good man. He sacrificed himself to save a lot of lives,” James said.

  “Okay,” Bo said. “I guess I don’t know the whole story. Regardless, I think it’s safe to say that you shouldn’t feel bad for something that happened when you were a kid. Your mom was killed, but you were also a victim, you know?”

  “That’s fine, Bo,” James said. He let his head rest against against the chair again and then remembered to keep his eyes open. He sat up. “Wait, where is Danielle?”

  “She’s cleaning up a little,” Bo said.

  “Danielle?” James called. His head swam as he pushed to his feet. He blinked as he stared into the dark rectangle of his sliding door. As she came into focus, he knew what he would see. It seemed like a foregone conclusion. She was standing at the counter that divided his living room from his kitchen. Her eyes were down. She was looking at a document, folded over to the first page of a story.

  His voice was flat and resigned when he spoke.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What’s wrong, James? I didn’t mean to intrude. It was just sitting here on the counter.”

  James worked his way over to her. She held out the story and he slapped it down to the counter. James tried to make his eyes focus on the paper. The words were too blurry to read. Danielle found the light switch and James blinked at the suddenly bright text.

  Relief washed through him when he saw the story.

  He sighed. “Oh, thank God.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked again. “Listen—I didn’t mean to be nosy, I just love to read, you know? That’s a good story. It’s a little tame for modern audiences, but it’s got good suspense to it. Did your Dad write it?”

  “Yes,” James said. He nodded.

  It was going to be okay. Things might get a little complicated for Danielle in the next day or two, but she was going to be okay. Lots of people did things a million times worse, and they were fine.

  “Have you ever thought about publishing it?” Danielle asked.

  “No,” James said.

  Bo came up behind him. Now he had two invaders in his little apartment. James couldn’t take it any longer.

  “You guys have to get out. I appreciate your concern, but I’m going to be fine. You can leave by that door.”

  “No,” Bo said. “We’re staying with you an hour. If you can stay awake an hour and you look like you’re getting better, then we’ll leave.”

  “Fine,” James said. “But back on the porch.”

  “Fine,” Bo said.

  They allowed themselves to be ushered back towards the sliding door. Bo waited in the doorway while James folded the story back to the beginning and placed it carefully into its box. He put the lid on and then shuffled after Bo. The light outside hurt his eyes, but James adapted fairly quickly.

  She had been lucky. Not all the stories were framed around murder. Some of them stopped at vandalism or destruction of property. The one she had picked up was somewhere in between. It was the tale of a young man who assaults runners and bicyclists. By the end, a few broken limbs are the extent of the damage. If caught, Danielle might do some prison time, but her life wouldn’t be ruined forever. Her fate could have been so much worse.

  James found his chair again. Bo sat on the railing against the building, and Danielle took the other chair. It was a warm morning that felt like it was going to be an insufferably hot day. For the moment, it felt good. Every now and then, the breeze came the wrong way and wafted the smell of vomit over to James. Aside from that, it was a pleasant place to sit.

  “How old were you, if you don’t mind me asking?” Bo asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “How old were you when your dad… you know.”

  “I was eight I guess. Right around there.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Danielle said.

  “Don’t sweat it,” James said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Bo asked. “As long as the band-aid is off, do you want to squeeze some of the pus out?”

  “Bo!” Danielle said.

  “No. Thanks, but no,” James said. “My pus is fine.”

  “It’s been my experience that people don’t get over shit by keeping it bottled up. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “When I need life advice from someone in his twenties, I’ll ask for it,” James said.

  “You were a lot nicer before,” Bo said. “I mean, all things considered, you’re probably coping pretty well, but you were nicer before.”

  “Thanks for saying,” James said.

  “Give him a break, Bo,” Danielle said.

  “I’m just saying—you get a real sense of a person when you see how they cope with adversity.”

  “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you, Bo?” James asked. “How well did you cope?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Bo said, gripping his chin. “Worst thing? Oh wait—I’ve got one. It’s somewhat apropos, too. When I was sixteen, I finally got up the nerve to come out to my mother. She quoted scripture to me while she kicked me out of the house. I had to live in my car while I finished high school.”

  “That’s terrible, Bo,” Danielle said. “How long did you live in your car?”

  “A year,” Bo said. “I managed to finish school early and I got a job. Eventually, I found a room to rent.”

  “Do you talk to your mother now?” James asked.

  “Holidays and birthdays,” Bo said. “We tolerate each other around family. She has never accepted me, and I never forgave her. She stopped trying to have me arrested, at least.”

  “What?” Danielle asked.

  “Oh yeah, that was another fun thing she did. She got my little sister to claim that I sexually assaulted her. It was a win-win for her. She got her old boyfriend off the hook for the abuse, and she was able to convince everyone for a while that I was a sexual deviant. Win-win,” Bo said. “I never tried to kill myself over it.”

  “Bo,” Danielle said.

  “The day my father killed himself, my best friend murdered his family and himself with silverware,” James said. “I was in the house.”

  “Jesus!” Danielle said.

  “When my mom had me falsely accused, I spent the night in jail. I was raped until I started bleeding. I spent a week in the hospital,” Bo said.

  “This isn’t a competition,” Danielle said. “You’ve both suffered. You don’t need to prove who had it worse.”

  James ignored her. “I’ve spent the last twenty-five years locked away trying to fix a mistake my father made. I missed my entire life so his carelessness wouldn’t kill a ton of people.”

  “And I live in a town where half of the people want to see me come to physical harm just because of the way I was born, and who I happen to love,” Bo said.

  “So move,” James said.

  “So fuck your father’s mistake,” Bo said.

  “Hey!” Danielle shouted. “What are you doing? There’s enough suffering in the world—you’ve both proven that. You don’t need to add to it by having some kind of grief contest.”

  James looked down at his hands.

&
nbsp; “Anger is good,” James mumbled.

  “What’s that?” Danielle asked.

  “Anger is good. It’s better than hopelessness, which is all I’ve been feeling lately. The anger is okay,” James said.

  “You don’t have to accept your fate, man,” Bo said. “Choose your own path.”

  James shot him a glance. “You don’t know everything.”

  “Neither do you,” Bo said.

  “I’m starting to think that neither of you know anything,” Danielle said.

  A voice from below drew their attention.

  “What are you guys doing? I thought you were coming right back,” Chloe yelled from the sidewalk.

  “We got caught up,” Danielle said.

  “We’re going to be late,” Chloe said.

  “You guys go without me,” Bo said. “I’ll stay here with James.”

  “No,” James said. “You’ve got plans and I need to rest. I don’t believe there’s any risk of me falling asleep now.”

  “I’d feel better if you moved around instead of sleeping,” Danielle said. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  James shook his head.

  “Yeah, you know what? That’s a good idea. You’re coming with us.”

  “No,” James said. “Thank you, but no. I don’t think I’m in any shape to move around. I’ll be fine, I swear.”

  “How about this—you come with us, or we leave you here and we call the police to report how we found you? You can spend your day trying to convince them that you’re not a danger to yourself, or you can come have fun with us.”

  James groaned and shook his head.

  # # # # #

  James felt absurd. He felt like he was a mummy, dragged from some black and white horror movie, stripped, and dropped into the river. His skin was so white that it glowed. When the girls finished smearing sunscreen on him, he was whiter still. The bathing suit that Bo had lent him was bunched around his waist like a skirt. When he pulled the drawstring tight, it hung off his hipbones.

  As a final indignity, they dropped his boney form into an inner tube and tied it off to a floating cooler.

  They drifted down the river as a foursome, tethered together by the ropes connecting their tubes.

  “We should get him sunglasses,” Chloe said. “Don’t you think he needs sunglasses?”

  “I’m fine,” James said. He wasn’t. The light hurt his eyes. The sparkles from the surface of the river were so bright that they stabbed like daggers into his brain.

  “I’ve got it,” Bo said. He pulled on the rope of James’s tube. When they were close enough together, he pushed sunglasses onto James’s face. “Perfect.”

  “Those are lovely, Bo,” Danielle said. “Where did you get them?”

  “My sister. She said they were too girly, so she gave them to me,” Bo said.

  Chloe and Danielle laughed.

  “This is absurd,” James said.

  Bo scooped big handfuls of water as he propelled them towards the center of the river. James had to admit that he was still experiencing some effects from the pills. He felt perfectly aware of the current moment, but time seemed to jump forward occasionally, making him wonder exactly how he’d come to be in a tube, floating down the river. He wasn’t even sure which river it was. Someone had mentioned, but the name had already slipped his mind.

  “There’s nobody out here today,” Chloe said. “I can’t believe it. This place is usually packed.”

  “There were a lot of cars in the lot. I bet everyone else just got an earlier start. It’s going to be really hot by the time we get to the falls.”

  “Falls?” James asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Danielle said. “Who wants a beer?”

  “It’s a little early, don’t you think?” Chloe asked.

  “It’s only through breaking social conventions and exploring the boundaries of cultural expectations that we can evolve our society,” Danielle said.

  “Jesus,” Bo said. “Those are some big words for a morning beer-drinker.”

  She laughed as Bo wrestled the lid from the cooler and threw a beer her direction. She caught the can, but then it squirted out of her hands. Danielle rolled and tried to snag it as it bobbed in the water. She let out a little scream as her tube tipped over. She came up holding the tube with one hand and the beer in the other.

  “Well done!” Chloe said.

  Danielle dunked herself back under the water and came up through the center of her tube. Demonstrating her youthful flexibility, she brought her knees up through and managed to pop her legs through the top of the tube without dropping her beer. Bo applauded the performance.

  “I wanted to keep my hair dry,” Danielle said. “Now it’s going to frizz out.”

  “Have you ever been tubing, James?” Chloe asked.

  “No,” Bo answered for him. “He said so in the car, remember?”

  “No,” James said. “First time. Actually, I didn’t even realize it was a thing. When Bo made me put the bathing suit on, I thought we were going swimming. When you guys said ‘tubing’ in the car, I had no idea what to think.”

  “What do you think so far?” Chloe asked.

  “It’s quiet. I like it. Too much sun though. My scalp is burning.”

  “You should have said,” Bo said. He pulled himself back to the cooler again. A second later, he was tossing a bright green hat at James. Over the brim, the hat read, “Annie’s Foodway.”

  “Thanks,” James said. He pulled the hat over his head.

  Danielle laughed.

  “What?”

  “It’s a good look on you—pink glasses with a green hat. It suits you,” she said with a smile.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She laughed again.

  “It’s hard to imagine there’s any strife in the world when you’re floating down a lazy river,” Bo said.

  Chloe made a noise to indicate her agreement.

  “Are there any snakes or anything in this river?” Danielle asked.

  Chloe jerked her feet up out of the water. “Why would you ask something like that? You know how terrified I am.”

  “We have an agreement with the snakes,” Bo said. “We don’t mess with them and they don’t mess with us. They wouldn’t come after you because you’re not their prey.”

  “I was just asking,” Danielle said. “Don’t be so freaky.”

  “It’s not freaky to be afraid of snakes,” Chloe said. “Most people are. It’s instinctual. It goes back to Adam and Eve.”

  “Ugh,” Bo said. “Fear of death doesn’t get you anywhere. Everyone’s going to die, it can’t be helped. The only thing fear does is prevent you from living life to its fullest.”

  “It’s self-preservation, not fear,” Chloe said. “And it’s socially responsible. People who put themselves at unnecessary risk hurt all of us.”

  Bo laughed.

  “What?” she said. “You don’t think it’s important for us all to respect each other?”

  “I’m just so thankful that at the mention of snakes, you lifted your feet out of the water. It was really socially responsible of you. You’ve saved us all so much by your socially responsible response to a perceived threat based on Danny’s question about whether or not there were snakes in this river.”

  “Shut up,” Chloe said. She smiled and splashed water at Bo.

  “Hey!” Danielle said, when some of the water splashed on her. “Open beer here.”

  “A little river water won’t hurt it,” Chloe said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Bo asked. “You know how often the snakes pee in this water? It’s a cesspool of amphibian urine.”

  “Snakes are reptiles, ass,” Chloe said.

  “Still,” Bo said, “it would be socially irresponsible to drink reptile pee. Do you know how much that would burden our healthcare system?”

  “You know,” Chloe said, “you think you’re funny, but you’re really just an ass. One day you’re going to wake up and realize tha
t you wasted most of your youth trying to appear wise by being cynical all the time.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Bo said. “Cynical people don’t get hurt as much as other people. We have a natural barrier against emotional injury. If you think about it, it’s really the most socially responsible way of…”

  He was cut off as Chloe tugged on his rope to pull him closer. When she was within reach, she grabbed Bo’s tube and flipped him over. He rolled into the water with a grunt and a big splash. By the time he came back up, everyone was laughing at him.

  “I lost my damn glasses!” Bo said. He tried to pull himself up onto his tube. It flipped over again and he went under.

  He came up to more laughter. He shook his head sending water splashing in all directions.

  “I can’t believe you would flip me over like that. Now I’m down here with all the damn snakes.”

  Danielle held his tube while he pulled himself up. After a full minute of uncoordinated flopping around, Bo settled back down into his tube.

  “Whoa,” he sighed, breathing hard. “That was difficult.”

  “You should have waited ten seconds,” Danielle said. “The rocks are coming up. It’s like knee-deep there.”

  Bo nodded. “Oh! Hey!” he said. He plunged his hand in the river and pulled it back out with his sunglasses. “How lucky was that? I guess they float.”

  “Yeah, those are fishing sunglasses. They float,” Danielle said.

  “Who knew?” Bo asked.

  “Well, clearly, Danny knew,” Chloe said.

  Everyone was quiet for a minute while they enjoyed the slow drift downstream.

  “I think I’m getting burned,” James said. He wiped sweat from his brow.

  “You look okay,” Danielle said.

  “There’s shade coming up,” Chloe said. “The river goes around a bend and around some rocks. Bo will drag us over to the east side, where there’s more shade.”

  “Of course,” Bo said. He began pulling at the water, doing a tube-version of the backstroke. The slack disappeared from the ropes and the group began to move towards the bank.

  As the river rounded the corner, a bubbling sound drifted over the surface to their ears. James opened his eyes and looked downstream. Hills rose on either bank of the river. The hills were scarred with jutting rock formations that continued down into the river. The channel was dotted with boulders and the turbulence on the surface spoke of rocks just below. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun.