White Plains

by David Hicks

  He wondered what he would do if his kids were in the car with him—Nathan in front, Janey in the back. He was glad they weren’t there; he was glad they were safe with Rachel, who always took good care of them. She was a good mother—that much he could say about her. She loved them to death. And she had a stable life. Right now, considering the condition he was in, he had no business daydreaming about being their custodial parent.

  At 3:17 a.m., Flynn awoke to stillness. The fuel gauge had barely moved. The snow had covered his driver’s-side window, but the storm had passed, and it had been more bluster than bite: not much accumulation, but the wind had blown a great deal of it against the car.

  He tried to open his door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  He put on his hiking boots, now dry from the heat vent, clambered over to the passenger seat, and stepped out the door on that side to check the exhaust pipe. As soon as he did, he saw a streak of cosmic dust slicing across the sky. He watched, shivering in the sharp cold, as several bluish-white meteors streaked in unpredictable curves, one slicing off to the south, another to the north, all originating from the same domed area to the east, in the hook of Leo. Then a pause, then many all at once—some darting, others taking four full seconds to streak and dissipate. For a long time Flynn watched the meteors, his bare head lifted, his mouth open. My god, the kids would love this. He felt for the first time the actual movement of the earth through space, and understood that it was ceaselessly surging forward, blasting its way around the sun. Any pause, any stasis, would mean instant death.

  Before he got back in his car, Flynn checked the exhaust pipe, and brushed the snow off the tail lights so an encroaching plow would see them. Then he glanced up once more to watch the meteors, but they were almost too beautiful to bear.

  He got in, took off his boots, and put his sneakers back on. Nobody in White Plains would ever witness such a sight, for as long as they lived. Nobody.

  Flynn had been living in Colorado for almost a year. That feeling he used to get, when he would fly in on weekends to visit Casey, was with him all the time now. He had thought it was in her, but it wasn’t. It was in the land.

  *

  By the time another vehicle came by, it was 7:21 a.m., and the sun was about to rise. The truck slowed as it approached Flynn’s car, then pulled up alongside him. It was the same man Flynn had seen in Lake City three mornings earlier. He was a carpenter, headed to South Fork to pick up some lumber. He had chained tires and a tow line.

  “How was that deer?” Flynn asked.

  “Nice and tender,” the man said, glancing at Flynn’s sneakers.

  They got back into their vehicles, and the man eased ahead of Flynn’s car, backed up, got out, pulled out his tow chain, hooked the Sidekick to his truck, and got back in. He proceeded to pull Flynn out of the snowdrift, then through nine or ten more. Sitting in his car behind the stronger truck, Flynn sometimes accelerated and sometimes slipped the car into neutral, allowing himself to be pulled.

  When the snowdrifts ended and the road cleared, close to the Rio Grande headwaters, the man stopped his truck, came back, and released him. Flynn felt that something had happened. He got out of his car, shook the man’s hand, squinted into the low sunlight, and breathed in the crisp air.

  The man threw the tow chain into the bed of his truck, waved, and drove off.

  Flynn looked around. It was a bright day. Off to the side, a herd of elk stared at him, waiting to see what he would do.

  FIELD OF BATTLE

  Up to that point it had been a pretty crappy day. I am known as a pretty chill kid, but if I was honest I would tell you that sometimes I get into these dark moods and I can’t tell you why. What I mean is, nothing triggers it. My dad might say it’s because I’m dehydrated, or I haven’t eaten my fruits and vegetables, but he’s not around much anymore. And anyway it still happens no matter what I eat or drink.

  My sister was in kindergarten at the time, so maybe she had a different schedule than I did—well I can’t remember why she wasn’t there, but I do know I came home first that afternoon. My mom always kept the key in a magnetic holder by the garage door, so I would let myself in and get jumped on by the dogs, only one of which I ever liked and that was Mollie the Collie, but my mom backed the car over her a few weeks before the day I’m talking about so Mollie was gone by then, it was just Tigger and Jeter, who were what my mom calls barkaholics, really annoying. So that day I got off the bus, which totally sucks by the way because there are some complete idiots in my town, total douchebags. They do stuff like stick gum in your hair or punch you hard in the shoulder when they walk past you on their way to the back of the bus. In town they harass the Mennonites, in school they harass the nerdy kids, but on the bus they harass everyone. Oh, and also this day I’m talking about was about a week after I had a terrible embarrassing thing happen when I was at school and I’m not going to talk about that.

  So it was a crappy day, like I said, meaning normal for where we live, cloudy and drizzly, like not snow and not rain either, and when I got home I kicked Tigger and Jeter away and there was a blanket concealing a lump on the dining room table and a note that said “Game on!”

  When I looked under the blanket, I found a huge brand-new Nerf gun.

  Now, this wasn’t just any Nerf gun. This was a fifty-round beast of a machine. I grabbed it and held it in my hands. It was the gun I would have requested for my birthday if I had thought of it. I pumped it until it wouldn’t pump anymore and looked toward the living room.

  Sam was in there. Sam was Mom’s boyfriend, and he lived with us off and on. This was one of the “on” periods. He had reddish hair and a goatee, and he liked goofing around with me. He had two kids of his own, older than us, and he was kind of in my dad’s position. What I mean is, his wife was angry with him and didn’t let him see his kids very much.

  I tiptoed through the dining room and kitchen, holding the Nerf gun in the shooting position. The dogs were barking but I didn’t pay any attention. I was focused. I was ready for battle.

  This much I knew: Sam’s gun options were slim. He probably had my single-shot Nerf spring-action rifle, and maybe also the Nerf assault rifle with three different bullet types. I doubted he had bought a fifty-rounder for himself. In other words, I was pretty sure I had the bigger gun.

  As I went through the kitchen to the living room, I noticed that all the cushions—from the couch, the blue chair, and the loveseat—had been removed. I looked to my right toward the stairwell, then to my left, and I saw what Sam had done. In the sun room was a gigantic cushion fort, and a gun barrel staring right at me.

  I jumped back behind the wall as the shooting erupted. I counted shots; Sam fired four bullets from what looked like my Nerf assault rifle, which meant he had six left. I took a deep breath, shouldered my weapon, and rapid-fired toward the cushion fort as I ran across the room and dove behind the love seat. I would position myself there for the remainder of the battle.

  I checked my gun. During all the excitement I had expended half my rounds, about twenty-five Nerf bullets. Shooting such a big gun was so enticing that my finger had stayed on the trigger for too long. I crouched behind the love seat for a while, trying to come up with a strategy. He was completely protected behind the cushions; there was no way I could hit him from my position. I needed a full-fledged ground assault.

  I lifted my head to draw his fire, then did it again, and each time I counted how many bullets he shot. When I was sure he had fired all ten, I jumped out again, let out a warrior yell, and charged the cushion fort. I quickly kicked out all the cushions and found Sam struggling to reload and pump the gun. I had him! I unloaded the remainder of my arsenal and he dropped his weapon and died an agonizing death. Then he started laughing and I collapsed onto the cushions and started laughing too.

  I didn’t want the game to end, so I declared a timeout for us to reclaim our ammo and start again. I foun
d a really good spot to hide, inside the Christmas box where the fake tree was stored in the attic. It was such a great spot that Sam didn’t find me for at least fifteen minutes. The whole time I was in the box, grinning, my gun poised. I couldn’t wait to leap out and shoot him. But I wound up waiting so long that I finally had to get out, run downstairs, and jump back into the field of battle.

  We played like this until my mom came home, yelled out, “What are you knuckleheads doing? I just cleaned this house!” and the game was over.

  §

  I finally figured out how I could talk to the kids. Every day, they would get home from school at around 3:15, and then they’d be alone for about an hour, watching TV, until Rachel came home from work. A neighbor whose daughter went to the same school was on call in case anything happened. The last time I had seen the kids, a visit that had to be arranged by my lawyer, Nathan had divulged all this, so I took him aside and told him the ringer on his house phone was shut off. I told him that every day at 3:30, he should stop whatever he was doing and watch the phone; if he saw the light blinking, that was me calling him, and he should pick it up. He asked me if he should just turn the ringer on every day when he came home, but I said no, because he might forget to turn it back off afterwards, and his mother would know what was up. So he said he would remember to watch the phone.

  Some days he forgot, and on other days 3:30, 1:30 Mountain Time, would slip past me. But on this day he answered on the fourth ring, out of breath. I asked him how he was doing, and he told me he didn’t mean to get in trouble at school, and please not to worry about the letter I was about to get. During recess, he and his friends were sword-fighting with orange construction cones and he had been written up for distracting the students who were watching them out their classroom window. A few days later, on a morning after the floors had been waxed, he and those same friends had taken turns running full speed down the hall, sliding on their bellies and crashing headfirst into the lockers. I laughed and told him I didn’t care; both those things seemed like a lot of fun.

  Janey got on the extension, also out of breath, and interrupted Nathan to tell me that a few days earlier her cat had caught a mole and had been playing with it like it was a toy, and she had saved the mole and put it in a box with grass, but it had died. When she told me about it, she starting crying as if it had just happened. I told her she was very nice to try to save the mole, but that she probably shouldn’t do that again, because they had claws and germs. I told her she shouldn’t be so angry with the cat; it wasn’t the cat’s fault—that’s just what cats did.

  Nathan interrupted and asked me if I was still with the lady who bought them puppets, and I said no, I was living with my friends Len and Sydney now, but not for long. In fact I would be seeing them very soon. I had found a job at a university near them and was moving back east.

  PENNSYLVANIA

  ALL THE WRONG MOVES

  The houses on Severance Lane were stooped and weary, slouched behind gnarled trees whose roots heaved up the sidewalks. Flynn found the address he was looking for, with a mailbox that said Siczlytsky and a For Rent sign on the garage. He rang the doorbell and glanced around. It might be a nice enough neighborhood, but it was hard to tell with the sky so gray.

  When nobody came to the door, he rang again, then peeked inside the bay window and saw an old woman sleeping in an armchair with the television on. He tapped on the glass, then rapped, until the woman finally jerked awake.

  She opened the door, squinting at the general vicinity of Flynn’s head. She was a plump, wrinkled sock, more muppet than woman, with a blonde mop for hair, watery eyes, jittery hands. She wore yellow pants, a pink blouse, and red shoes. She could have been a youthful ninety or an insane seventy. On her blouse was a blue-and-white sticker:

  HELLO

  my name is

  Helen

  *

  “He’s gone,” she said. “My boy.” She lurched past Flynn down the stairs, clutching her car keys, her wig tipping to the side. Flynn trailed her, ready to catch the wig if it fell off, but as she got to the powder-blue Cutlass at the curb she stopped and turned. “Are you the young man who called about the room?” She reached for his face, and Flynn jerked back at first, but then let himself be touched—his cheeks, his hair, his chin. Her hands smelled vaguely of salami.

  “This way,” she said, scurrying toward the garage.

  Inside, the walls were plastered with yellowed newspaper clippings about Jack Siczlytsky, a high-school wrestler. Helen patted one of them before opening the door to the basement.

  Downstairs, there was a washing machine with petrified sponges on top, waterlogged boxes stuffed with photo albums, and a bathroom with a moldy shower stall, a cracked toilet seat, and a rusted sink. Flynn ducked under the pipes, ready to tell Helen he wasn’t interested, that when the head of the English Department search committee had told him about this room for rent, just one block from campus, he hadn’t realized it was in a basement, but now that he’d seen it, he knew he’d never spend a single night in this hellhole. But when she couldn’t stop shaking as she tried to open the lock to the room, she handed him the key and said, “It’s a hundred dollars a week, and I really need the money now that my boy is gone.”

  Flynn opened the door. The room smelled vaguely of mold and cat urine. There was a twin bed on a metal frame against the wall, an old refrigerator with a microwave on top, a plaid couch, and a coffee table with placemats depicting Pennsylvania landscapes: a herd of deer, a creek bordered by azaleas, a dirt path cutting through a forest. “That’s what it used to look like,” Helen said, pointing out the window. Now, she said, it was where everyone did their shopping: Walmart, Kmart, Lowe’s. “Still looks like this,” she said, “up in Nicholson, Tunkhannock, those parts. That’s where my boy— ” Her eyes welled, and she looked about the room with a vacant expression.

  “I’ve lost someone too,” Flynn said, but then felt like an imposter.

  “Eighty-five a week,” she said, fingering Flynn’s shirtsleeve. “It would be nice to have a man in the house. The washing machine. . . ” Her fingers fluttered on his arm. “Eighty? Seventy-five?”

  Flynn placed his hand on top of hers. He had driven two thousand miles, and he was exhausted. It was either this place or a hotel that would cost seven times as much. “All right,” he said. “Seventy-five. But just for a few weeks. And I’m sorry, I’m not good at fixing things.”

  *

  Two months earlier, just after Flynn had accepted the position at Sacred Heart College in Scranton, he and his friend Sydney hiked up the eastern ridge of the Colorado National Monument. Sydney hated to hike—she hated any physical activity, including sex with her boyfriend Len if she had to be on top—but she had agreed to go on the hike once she found out Flynn was leaving.

  On Serpents Trail, every switchback provided a higher, broader view of the Grand Valley. The city of Grand Junction shimmered in the heat, with Grand Mesa guarding the valley on the other side. In the distance, the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers meandered separately before joining forces on their way towards the Grand Canyon. Before they reached the top of the trail, Sydney stopped suddenly, sat on a rock, and took out a pack of Virginia Slims. “And you could have all this,” she said, waving the pack at the landscape. “And every day you make it more impossible.”

  Flynn sat down next to her. “I’ll miss you too,” he said. When he had first arrived at Mesa State, Sydney had given him the cold shoulder: in her view, Flynn had just waltzed into the dean’s office and stolen the full-time instructorship that had been promised her. But after he had made friends with Len and started staying at their house two nights a week, watching baseball on the couch together and talking about their kids (Len was fifty, with three children from his first marriage), Sydney eventually warmed to Flynn, and in the months that followed, theirs had grown into the closer friendship.

  “Leaving this place for Scrotum,
Pennsylvania,” she said as she lit a cigarette and looked out over the Grand Valley, “is like leaving Penelope Cruz for Judi Dench.”

  “Scranton,” Flynn said, plucking some leaves off a sage brush and rubbing them into his hand. “And Judi Dench is gorgeous.”

  “All right, it’s like leaving me for Joyce Carol Oates,” she said, jutting out her chest. Sydney was a thirty-year-old writer who taught creative writing and 20th Century American literature, while Len taught Spanish part-time and had a small landscaping business on the side. When Flynn had broken things off with Casey, they had let him move in for good, in exchange for doing some of the cooking and helping Len on weekends. Flynn enjoyed the landscaping work so much he would have done it whether or not there was free rent at stake.

  “My kids will be only an hour away,” Flynn reminded her. He had applied to six teaching jobs within a 100-mile radius of Binghamton, New York, and landed three interviews and two job offers. He’d taken the Sacred Heart job because it was the closest, and if he found a place to live north of campus, he’d be even closer. “I could see them every weekend,” he said. “I could go to Parents Night and Open House and school plays and all that stuff.”