Misconception

by Ryan Boudinot

  "I don't know."

  "Well, thank Paul's mom for me, okay?" she said. I hung up disappointed she hadn't begged me to come home.

  During dinner I pretended to laugh at the Dills's family jokes, their gross stories and observations about human flatulence. At one point Sven detailed his vasectomy. I wondered if my parents were sitting down for dinner together and imagined complete silence between them. When we finished I volunteered to do the dishes. Paul was ordered to join me in the disaster of a kitchen, where dusty bunches of dried peppers and garlic hung from the ceiling and an exotic bottle of Asian liquor on the windowsill pickled a dead lizard.

  "Get this," I said. "Veronica invited me to her and George's wedding."

  "Unbelievable," Paul said.

  "I'm thinking of going. You know, show up, pig out on free food, embarrass Kat in front of everybody."

  "If you're going to kill George, that would be the perfect time to do it," Paul said.

  "Who said anything about killing George?"

  "You did. You said you wanted to kill him."

  "Shut up. You know what I meant by saying I want to kill somebody. You say you want to kill your brothers all the time. Not kill kill."

  "Yeah, but what if you did kill him? How would you do it?"

  I thought a while. "Poison?"

  "At the wedding? Like poison the punch or something? Nah, you wouldn't want to risk killing anyone else. Just the sicko child molester. God, it just hit me that that's really what he is. He really did that to Kat? Unbelievable."

  "Maybe we could get a gun."

  "What, you're just going to walk up to him at his wedding and blow him away? Don't you want to do it and not get caught?"

  "It's not like I'd go to regular jail. Just juvie. You can still take high school classes there."

  "You're not going to shoot George."

  "I know I'm not. But what if."

  "Where's the wedding taking place?"

  "Some church. Then a reception at All-Purpose Hall. Kat's going to be the maid of honor. Thing is, if I made him admit at the wedding that he did what he did to Kat, nobody would care if I shot him. They'd probably give me a standing ovation."

  "Yeah, make him get on his knees and admit he's a rapist."

  "Then shoot him right there. Everybody would want me to do it anyway. The witnesses would all say it was selfdefense or whatever. They'd know I killed him because he had it coming."

  "Revenge," Paul said.

  "Better than revenge," I said, "retribution."

  "You're not going to kill him," Paul said.

  "Yeah," I said, "but I know somebody who would."

  Across mountains.

  The next foggy morning while the Dills slept I gathered my belongings in a backpack and rode to the ferry terminal, locking my bike next to the sleek rides of the commuters. I boarded the ferry and sat in a corner of the sun deck with adults reading newspapers and drinking tea from travel mugs. Slowly Seattle came into view, building by building as if from a dreaming mind. I joined the flow of people leaving the boat, hoping to avoid anyone I knew. Then it was up the hill to the Greyhound station, past men sleeping in the doorways of buildings, fresh-haired professional women on their way to work, department store displays full of fur coats and camping equipment. At the station I bought a ticket across the mountains. I wore my baseball hat down low hoping it would make me look older, and it seemed to work. The guy behind the counter didn't appear to think twice about issuing me a ticket. The bus would leave in an hour, so I waited in the Burger King next door. I imagined Paul waking up, realizing I had left, discovering my thank-you note on the kitchen table. I had written that I was heading home, and thanked them for all the awesome food. Right about now my parents were emerging from their separate rooms, mouthing some meaningless niceties at each other over coffee, then parsing through their collective belongings. I'd call them later that day and pretend I was calling from the mall. Assuming I was still staying at Paul's, they wouldn't suspect I was actually calling from a rest stop. I was doing them a favor, getting out of their way while they dealt with the marital jetsam that needed to be codified into documents, agreements, and mutual understandings. My absence was convenient to them, making it easier to justify the mistake they were about to make. My whereabouts would be the least of their worries.

  Boarding call. As the bus pulled away I pressed my forehead against the window. The diesel muscle of the engine was an affirmation that I had actually decided to find Kat's father. The freeway made it more real, and then the hills, penetrated by speeding vehicles. We breached the pass and in thinning foliage and the gentle gradation of earth tones from green to brown, Washington state exposed its dual nature. As I stared through my smudged reflection at the landscape, I had no idea how I was going to find Kat's father, or where I would stay that night. The Greyhound deposited me at the station. I found a phone book hanging from a cable in a booth and scanned the Daniels. Alden Daniels. Carol Daniels. Pete Daniels. SW Daniels. No Jerry Daniels. I called Alden. Disconnected or no longer in service. Carol Daniels's answering machine said she was away from the phone teaching piano lessons and to leave a message after the F sharp. A girl at Pete Daniels's place answered and said she knew no one named Jerry. SW Daniels didn't pick up.

  I turned to the yellow-pages listings for septic system repair services. A woman's voice at Apex Septic said, "Apex Septic, the pumper for your dumper. How can I assist you today?" She confirmed that a Jerry Daniels worked there, but it was his day off. I asked for his number but she said giving out employee numbers was against policy since an incident involving a mechanic's child-support payments. I begged for the number, said I was a friend who had come all the way across the Cascades to see him.

  "Tell you what. You give me the number you're at, and I'll call him and tell him to give you a call."

  "Tell him it's important. It's about his daughter, Kat."

  I gave the woman the phone booth's number and settled onto a bench. Hissing buses arrived and departed. I bought some items from a nearby vending machine. An hour passed. I read a newspaper that looked like it had been mauled. Another hour. For some reason it never occurred to me to call Apex Septic again. Instead, I waited. I had proved this trip was futile. I had come unprepared. And why hadn't I just tried calling Kat's dad to begin with instead of coming all the way over here in person? I forgot to call my parents. The phone rang.

  "Is this Cedar? Kat's boyfriend?"

  "Yeah. I need to talk to you."

  "Where you at?"

  "Greyhound station."

  "I'll be there in ten."

  As Jerry walked in, he chucked a soda cup into the nearest waste can, missed the shot, and neglected to pick up the cup. Unlike the time I had first met him, he was in no mood to impress anybody. He wore his face as a form of protection, not for expression, avoiding eye contact unless absolutely necessary. He'd dressed in the kind of torn jeans, flannel, and Stihl chainsaw hat that years later rock stars would wear. I followed him to his pickup and he suggested a nearby restaurant he called a greasy spoon. He ordered coffee and I ordered coffee, too. Then he slapped his hand on the table and said, "What's this about? I know it ain't good."

  "I came all the way over here to tell you this, because as Kat's dad I thought you should know."

  "Spit it out, son."

  "Veronica is getting married to this guy George, who has been abusing Kat."

  "What do you mean by abusing."

  "He raped her. She got pregnant. She had to get an abortion."

  Nothing changed in Jerry's expression. I almost expected him to say "So what?" After half a minute of silence he said, "Does Veronica know?"

  "Kat hasn't told her anything."

  "And this George guy. You're sure this is the case?"

  "Well, yeah. He and Veronica are getting married on Labor Dav."

  "Okay. Well. Thanks for telling me all this, I guess."

  "I thought you should know."

  "I wish I didn't b
ut I'm glad you told me. Fine then. I've got to get myself to church."

  Some Mexican farm laborers arrived at the restaurant. Jerry watched them over his shoulder until they had all settled at the counter.

  "Think I could take those guys?" Jerry said.

  "The ones who just came in?"

  "Yeah. Problem is, though, they stick tight with their kin. Fifteen cousins to a family. Mess with one bean and you get the whole burrito."

  "Do you know somewhere I could stay the night?" I said.

  "You don't have a motel somewhere? You planning on sleeping in the park if you didn't find me?" he paused. "Veronica, that bitch. Man oh man."

  "I was thinking I'd see about a youth hostel."

  "You can crash at my place. Fuck it. Looks like church is a wash."

  On the way to his place, Jerry seemed to speak just to kill the silence. He wanted me to know about his "little theory."

  "I don't know if this is even what you'd call an original idea or anything. I was installing a Mopar cam on a Chevy when I thought of it. I think I was holding a socket wrench, and I started thinking about how the wrench itself had to of been made in a factory. And that factory was full of machines that were put together with other tools. Then those tools were made by other machines, in other factories, back in time. And at some point in the past, the machines had to of been made with tools that had been made by human hands. And before that, there had to be other, simpler tools to make the newer, better tools. And how the very first metal tools had to of been made with tools made out of something else, like stone, maybe? At one point there were just human hands making things out of rocks, but those rocks led step-by-step to today's huge factories full of complex machines and, eventually, Mopar cams. You can point to any tool and know that it's part of a family tree that started with bare human hands."

  Jerry lived in a little house that he said had once been a shack for migrant workers. It had been renovated half a dozen times, the living room comprising the entirety of the old house. He pointed to a board nailed to the ceiling where a tin chimney used to go. The floor was a jigsaw of stitched-together carpet samples. Wood paneled walls held a dozen or so paint-by-numbers wildlife scenes. Jerry nodded to a brown vinyl couch with stuffing coming out of the arms. "You can take the couch tonight."

  "Thanks. You have a nice place."

  "Whatever, dude. You're not fooling anybody. But think of it this way-four families used to live in this here living room."

  Jerry offered me a can of Oly beer and I tried to act like it wasn't a big deal. He tossed it to me from the kitchen. It slipped from my hands and fell behind the couch. After fishing it out and wiping the lint from it, I cracked the can and slurped the foam running over the edges, over my fingers.

  "I know what you're thinking," he said. "I'm off the wagon, and fuck you for noticing. You like movies?"

  "Sure."

  "Don't tell anyone, but I've got HBO coming in here for free. I tape the movies I like for later. What kind do you like? I got Mad Max, Terminator, Rambo ..."

  "Rambo's good."

  "Shit yeah. That's a classic."

  From a molded-plastic case beside the TV Jerry withdrew a video camera with a shoulder pack. After fiddling with a couple cables, he got the movie to show up. It took me a minute to figure out why it looked funny. Instead of taping the movie directly from the TV, he had set the camera on his coffee table and aimed it at the set while the movie played. The sound was horrible, and five minutes in the tape showed Jerry walking in front of the camera wearing sweatpants.

  When the movie concluded, I asked the question I had been holding for the past few hours. "Do you think you'll try to get custody of Kat?"

  Jerry breathed in through his teeth. "That's a tough one, Cedar. Fact is, I know she wouldn't be thrilled with the idea. Her mom's been able to provide her a lot more than I ever could. Look at this place. Can you imagine Katie moving in here?"

  "But what about George?"

  Jerry pulled the lever on his recliner, propelling his body up and to a standing position. "Yeah, okay, let's look at this situation here. You come on over on a Greyhound to drop this bomb on me, and I guess what I'm thinking is, a guy's gonna take his time figuring out the best course of action in a case like this. I can't just get in my truck and swoop down and take her away with me. You should know this. You were there last time I talked to her. She hates my guts, and truth be told she has good reasons to. It's not as easy as you think. There's fuckin' lawyers to deal with. Hearings and shit. Any cocksucker with a dick can become a dad, but when you stop being a parent, that's when things get real complicated. I'm getting another beer. You?"

  "Okay."

  "You're sure Veronica doesn't know?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Because if she doesn't know about what happened, then that's the step you gotta take before I get involved. Knowing her, she won't stand for that shit. I don't care if the guy drives a Caddy and has a country-club membership, the moment Veronica finds out, they're outta there. Trust me."

  "What if Veronica already knows?"

  The volume of Jerry's voice dropped. "Then things are a lot worse than I think."

  Halfway through the second beer, I began to feel it. I pressed my head back against the couch and closed my eyes. Then I said, "My parents are getting a divorce."

  "That's the pits, no two ways about it."

  "My dad's just taking off, moving into the city with his new girlfriend or something."

  "Sucks."

  "It's like he stopped giving a shit."

  Jerry put his hand on my knee. "This is going to sound like bullshit, but you gotta trust me. He does give a shit. I'm sure he's thinking of you all the time. He's probably embarrassed about the whole thing. He's probably scared to face you. He'll get in touch, I promise. And when he does, he's going to expect you to be pissed. How could you not be? But at some point, not right away, you gotta give your old man a second chance. Trust me, you never stop loving a kid."

  Maybe it was the beer? The weird house? The long day traveling? Whatever it was, I started to cry. Jerry held me tight to his flannel chest. After a few minutes, I could have stopped myself, but instead I refreshed my grief, pictured my father again, and wrung the remaining tears from my insides.

  And then Jerry drank another beer. He slipped in another video, The Road Warrior. A few minutes in, he freeze-framed it, smudgy lines jiggling across the image, and pressed his finger against the screen. "See," he said, "if you look close you can see that dude's got a titty picture pasted to his rig."

  I wanted to get out of this crappy house and into the warm, carpeted interior of a Greyhound. Jerry sat trapped in the movie's gaze, overreacting to it with whoops, spilling his beer, offering me another. I said no and went to the bathroom to piss. Atop the toilet bowl sat a stack of well-thumbed porno mags with exotic names unlike the ones you could get at a gas station. I held on to the edge of the sink and peed. Jerry banged hard on the bathroom door with his fists and I jumped, the stream arcing over the lip of the toilet, hitting the wall. Jerry laughed on the other side. "Just messing with you, bro. I'm gonna make me up some tacos. You up for that?"

  In the living room Mad Max battled punk rockers in the outback for oil. Jerry turned his refrigerator inside out, taco fixings strewn over his already cluttered kitchen counter. He poured vegetable oil into a pan and fired it up, then started making shells. He stopped in the middle of chopping onions and pointed the knife at me. "That fuck hole. He's gonna burn for what he did to my little girl." He whacked at the pile of irregularly cut-up onions some more, then spun around, onion tears welling in his eyes. "You tell me. You ever fuck my little girl?"

  "No. No."

  Jerry grabbed me by the front of my shirt and lifted me off the ground, setting me down facing the stove. I groaned. My reflection wobbled in the heating oil. He stabbed the knife into the cutting board and pushed my head down toward the pan. "Did you fuck her? You know you fucked her, you little shit. Did y
ou fuck her?"

  I struggled out of Jerry's grip and fell against the kitchen table, scattering piles of newspapers, tools, crap. He picked up the knife again and laughed as he continued chopping. "Ah, I know you haven't, man. I was just fucking with you."

  "That wasn't funny."

  "You like whole beans or refried?"

  "I should go."

  "Aw, come on."

  "You're drunk."

  "I'm not! Fucking! Drunk!" Jerry's voice pounded the walls. I ran through the living room, grabbed my backpack, and flew out the door, across the lawn to the street. Behind me Jerry yelled from the doorway, "Come on, man. Hey! I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"

  The houses in this neighborhood were spread out and I had no clue which way to go, so I ran in the direction of the greatest emanation of light. Slowly, the houses began crowding closer together and a Chevron station appeared, its sign a beacon. Panting, I fell into the phone booth and spent a good ten minutes crying. When I recovered I said, "Okay, okay, okay," and tried to formulate a plan. I needed to get into the city. I needed a cab. I called the first cab company in the phone book and told them the names of the nearest street signs. While I waited I bought a prepackaged roast beef sandwich and a pint of chocolate milk and consumed them hungrily, sitting on the curb. The cab arrived. I told the driver's fat neck that I wanted to go to the Greyhound station. He nodded and drove. I pulled out my wallet and recounted my money. I knew how much it would cost for a return ticket, so I folded those bills and counted the rest, then watched the meter slowly approach that number. Five bucks away from my limit, we still seemed nowhere near where I needed to be. I cursed myself for buying food at the gas station. I wanted to tell the driver to stop, but found myself frozen and incapable. The amount on the meter reached my max, then started eating into my bus ticket money. Finally we reached the station. I paid the driver and had ten dollars left. Then I remembered you were supposed to tip cab drivers. I handed him the ten and asked for nine back. He rolled his eyes and told me to keep my money.