Let's No One Get Hurt

by Jon Pineda

  * * *

  After my father leaves to teach his classes, my mother and I sit on the floor. My mother scatters mail-order catalogs around us. We don’t have the money to buy any of these things, but that’s not the point. There are pictures of families where everyone looks happy.

  One of the catalogs is from L.L.Bean, I think. There’s a river in one picture that blurs into the background. A man stands at the edge of it, dressed in waders, with a fly rod and a creel.

  “This fishing pole looks weird.” I trace my fingertip around the reel. It could be a strainer for our kitchen sink.

  My mother glances over. “That’s for fly-fishing.”

  “Fly-fishing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would anyone fish for flies?”

  She eyes me. I’ve disappointed her.

  She thinks I’m trying to be funny, but I’m not trying to be anything.

  “It takes a lot of practice to cast,” she says.

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  She laughs now.

  It feels good to make her laugh.

  “My uncle,” she says.

  “You never talk about him.”

  “I’ve told you, you just weren’t listening.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “No, he just passed.”

  “Passed?”

  “He died.”

  “Oh.”

  I trace a circle around the metal reel.

  “When I was a girl, I would visit him,” my mother says. “He had land near a river.”

  “Like this one?” I point at the page.

  “Yeah.”

  “We should go there.”

  She laughs, but I can tell she’s forcing it now. I feel like I’ve lost her.

  “Can you even imagine your father?” she says. “He hates the outdoors. We’d never hear the end of it.”

  “So.”

  “One day, maybe.”

  I study the picture. The water looks like fog.

  “What was he like?” I say.

  “Who?” Her eyes narrow.

  “Your uncle.”

  “He was nice. He told dirty jokes. He made us laugh.”

  I turn a page and count the number of smiling adults.

  “So did your uncle teach you to fly-fish?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “There was a boy I saw. He would stand in the river. I would watch him from my uncle’s pier.”

  I wait for her to keep going, but she doesn’t.

  * * *

  “Are you hungry?” she says.

  I nod.

  “Then let’s get you something to eat.”

  She makes me a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. She cuts the sandwich into four triangles. She holds up one and waits.

  “Isosceles?” I say.

  “Very good.”

  She lets me take my lunch into the living room. We sit on the floor and pore through more catalogs. I don’t look up at her.

  “Who was the boy you were telling me about?”

  I feign interest in one of the pictures and pretend like I’m reading the caption. My mother’s story is a deer I’m trying not to startle.

  “I didn’t really know him. He was a kid my uncle knew. I would come out in the evenings to watch the boats go by, and he would be in the water casting back and forth, sending the line out in loops. The loops are what I remember most. Like he was writing in cursive.”

  I’m studying her face. She seems calmed by the memory.

  “I can write in cursive,” I say. “I can read it, too.”

  “Who do you think taught you? But don’t brag. It’s not a good look on you, Pearl.”

  * * *

  After lunch, my mother holds a large pair of scissors and I have a kid’s pair that sometimes messes up and sticks. Because the blades aren’t sharp, they often fold over the page I’m trying to cut and crease it instead.

  “Did I upset you?”

  “You didn’t upset me.”

  “Good. It shouldn’t have upset you.”

  “Okay.”

  She finds a catalog with children my age modeling clothes. “Here, pick out something.”

  We’ve never done this, not once.

  I shake my head.

  “What?” she says.

  “Dad says we shouldn’t buy anything.”

  “You don’t worry about that. We might be coming into some money.”

  “You have money?”

  “Only for you. You choose whatever you want. You’re my daughter, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  I smile. There are a few dresses I like. There’s also a pair of cute sandals. I wonder if it’s too much. I don’t want my mother to think I’m greedy.

  “Actually, I don’t want anything. I’m good.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “What?”

  “Pretend like everything is fine.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “No? Then pick something good. There has to be something.”

  I skim the rest of the catalog, but not for things I missed. I look for the things I think my mother would want me to have, but that’s even harder to do.

  “What about you?” I say.

  “Me?”

  I nod.

  “I have everything I want,” she says.

  I feel like I’ve become my father to her. I’m someone else she needs to deceive.

  “If you could be anything,” I say, “what would you be?”

  “Easy. I would be your mother.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “I’m not cheating. I mean it.”

  “But you’re already my mother. You have to be someone else.”

  “Someone else, or something else?”

  “Okay, something else.” The option makes me laugh.

  “You want me to be something else?” She reaches for another catalog.

  “You said it, not me.”

  She glances at the layouts. Her face brightens. She drops a fingertip into the middle of a page, pointing to an elderly woman reading in a plush blue chair.

  “An old woman?” I say.

  “No. I would be that open book.”

  I WAKE TO MARIANNE MOORE trying to bark. It’s already the afternoon. I peek my head out the upstairs window to the front yard, where I find Main Boy standing next to his glittery red golf cart and staring up at the house. His bunched towhead even poofs out at the sides like Warhol’s wig. He’s also wearing the signature Wayfarers. Main Boy shakes his head at something, or maybe it’s nothing.

  My father’s pickup is gone, but off to the side, the blue tarp has been pulled from the Gran Torino. The tarp covers a tall, rectangle-shaped pile. It’s the sheets of plywood Dox and Fritter must have scavenged. Broken bricks hold the tarp at its corners. Main Boy waves me down.

  * * *

  I double up on T-shirts, but my nipples still show. I step around the hanging bedsheet that divides the room and grab a pair of my father’s pants from his side. I cinch the waist with rope, and roll up the bottoms. My tan legs are twigs, and my toenails are so dirty they look like I’m balancing bright coins on the ends. I slip my feet into the tennis shoes, but the shoes are just as filthy. I drape my hair in front of me and stuff it inside an old Tidewater Tides baseball cap I found in the river. I peer into the broken mirror my father and I share.

  “Fuck it,” I whisper.

  * * *

  “Sorry about yesterday,” Main Boy says. “We were being dumbasses.”

  I stand on the front steps, my arms holding my chest. “That’s a given. You didn’t have to come out here to say that.”

  “Yeah?” The yearning in his voice makes me want to puke.

  If anyone’s a dumbass, it’s Main Boy for thinking girls are precious. I have news for him. We’re not precious. We’re the least precious things in this world.

  Boy
s, on the other hand, are fragile as glass.

  “You go shooting last night?”

  He takes the cue that we’re good for now, at least, and grins. “Hit all the signs on the road between here and the big bridge.”

  “Post the video yet?”

  “Nah.”

  “That’s a lot of destruction for nothing.”

  He full on grins. “Clint was a fool and didn’t charge his cart. We had to leave it on the side of the road. I was thinking about going back for it, if you want to come.” He pats the spare battery sitting on the rubber floorboard.

  “Why isn’t he here?”

  “My cart only holds two people.”

  Main Boy doesn’t even try to hide his smile.

  “I stink,” I say. “Just so you know.”

  “No shit. You’re like Pig-Pen.”

  “Fuck you, Charlie Brown.”

  “Okay, if you insist.”

  * * *

  I yell for Dox and Fritter, but no one answers. They must have gone with my father on a run to scavenge more things. Main Boy is studying the blue tarp and wants to know what we’re building.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “it just showed up.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I don’t know. Jesus.”

  It feels weird watching him take it all in.

  “How long you planning on staying out here?” he says.

  “As long as we can, I guess.”

  “You have electricity in there?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “No running water?”

  I look at him and then look down my getup. It takes him a second.

  “My dad doesn’t know you’re here, right?”

  I don’t say anything.

  He surveys the property and this time touches his chin like he’s doing some deep thinking. I want to tell him that’s the fastest way to hurt himself.

  * * *

  Marianne Moore follows us down the road for a ways, but I can’t take it anymore. I yell her name and tell her to get until she gives up.

  “Who named her that?” he says.

  “My father.”

  “That’s a strange name.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she needs to be put down, if you ask me.”

  We both watch her hobble off.

  “I’m working on it,” I say. “By the by, I was already supposed to.”

  “Supposed to what?”

  “You know what.”

  I hold my index finger to his face and cock back my thumb. I pretend to shoot him with it. I even fake the recoil. The scenery around us slides by on an invisible conveyor belt.

  “Shit, I can do it for you,” Main Boy says, “if you’re too scared. My dad made me do it for a couple of our hunting dogs.”

  “Your flies aren’t around.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can cut the shit and stop being Mr. Man.”

  He mumbles, “Fucking Pig-Pen.”

  * * *

  When we turn onto the state road, I see the first speed-limit sign. There are so many tiny holes. It looks like a dented colander someone would use to strain pasta.

  “That your work?”

  “Mine and Wythe’s.”

  “What did you use? There’s still some sign left.”

  “A four-ten.”

  “Peashooter.” I spit.

  “If you say so.”

  WE KEEP TO THE SIDE of the road because the stretch is 45 mph with a series of blind curves. Main Boy starts whistling, letting his free hand become an airplane that glides up and dips down and back up again. His new polished white Nikes on the one pedal are pushed flush to the floorboard, the spare battery still somewhat between us. I don’t say anything about how he seems truly lost in thought. I don’t even know if he has that ability, or if there’s any sincerity in him at all.

  * * *

  The river is on our left. I let my mind drift. There’s a sailboat way past the cruising skiffs. I take them all in. These are the boats my mother loved. The sailboat’s curved sheets are taut with wind. When we approach the next sign, Main Boy lets out an honest-to-God laugh.

  * * *

  “Who did that?” I say.

  “Clint had his daddy’s twelve-gauge. Two shots in it. It was the second one that blew it off the post. It would’ve only taken me the first try, just so you know.”

  “You think you can really do it?”

  “Hell yeah, my daddy’s twelve-gauge would’ve shredded that sign.”

  “I’m not talking about the sign.” I look at the river.

  “Your dog?” He nods.

  “That’s right. Marianne Effing Moore.”

  He laughs. “What’s the F stand for?”

  “France.”

  “Really?”

  Main Boy is such a dumbass.

  * * *

  Clint’s orange golf cart is angled near the ditch, like it was on a crash course straight for the muddy bank, before it ran out of juice. I jump in the front as Main Boy switches out the battery with a few twists and pats the back of the seat for me to take off. I slam the pedal to the floor and make a hard left turn onto the paved road. I don’t see the oncoming car until it’s too late.

  I TURN THE WHEEL a hard right and run up a grass embankment. The black Honda skids and takes out Main Boy’s golf cart. The air is burnt rubber and smoke. A woven basket wedged in the back of the cart goes flying. Tupperware containers pop open. Loads of red sauce and spaghetti splash the pavement. I smell fresh gas. There are napkins that flutter now. I hate that I even see them as wings. They’re just napkins. The shattered end of a champagne bottle stabs the rest of the scene. The black Honda keeps on going, but everything around it slows. The brake lights vanish into the car. Grass and swaying branches pull into the red glow that snuffs out. It’s all silence now, everything cinched together.

  When I spot Main Boy on the ground, I scream. The world opens up again. The edges of glass cut with bright green light. A bass line fades. There are little holes in the way I’m thinking about this moment. Things have jarred loose. I know it’s Main Boy on the ground, but I don’t want to think about it just yet. When the wind comes back and fills the trees, it sounds like someone shaking a bottle of pills in my face.

  MAIN BOY GETS UP AND dusts himself off. His Wayfarers have managed to stay on his nose somehow. A blade of grass is in his hair, but that’s it.

  “Did you see that asshole?” he says. “He must’ve been going ninety.”

  “That was crazy.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I would be, yeah, if people respected the goddamned speed limit.”

  I hide a smile, though I’m shaking.

  “What?” Main Boy says.

  “Nothing.”

  “I didn’t get hurt.”

  “It’s not that.”

  He grins. “What is it then?”

  “Please stop talking.”

  “You thought I got hurt? You know what that means.”

  “It means nothing.”

  “Just for a second, you missed me.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  He laughs, but there’s no one there to join him. “I can see it written all over your face, Pig-Pen.”

  I lean close to him. “There was nothing to miss.”

  He uses his Wayfarers to lift the hair away from his face. The flecks in his beige eyes look like midges I sometimes find wriggling on the river’s surface, just before a fish rises to gulp them down.

  He has no good comeback.

  * * *

  We get in Clint’s cart and go back the way we came. I drive now. I avoid looking over at the river. We don’t comment on how Main Boy had, for whatever reason, brought a basket of food and even champagne.

  We find the speed-limit sign lying in the grass.

  “Will your dad be mad at you?” I can’t imagine what a tricked-out golf
cart like that must cost.

  “For what? Why would he be mad? Insurance will cover it.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Yeah, you know what that is, don’t you?”

  “I know what insurance is.”

  “What is it?”

  I channel my father. “It’s a racket.”

  “Yeah, until you need it.”

  NOT LONG AGO MY FATHER told me a story involving the French poet Paul Verlaine. My father had found it in some of my mother’s handwritten notes. Verlaine’s mother kept her two stillborn children in pickling jars in her bedroom. She wanted them close, never wanted to let go of them. The young Verlaine must have grown weary, perhaps even jealous, of his mother’s obsession, for one day he went into her bedroom and smashed each jar on the floor. When my father finished the story, he laughed and could barely catch his breath. “Some mothers are just fucked-up,” my father said. Dox pretended not to hear. I could only picture the babies on the ground, their dead weight covered in glass.

  WHEN WE PASS THE SPEED-LIMIT sign that looks like a colander, Main Boy says he forgot something at his house. We need to go there before he’ll take me home.

  I lift my foot off the pedal and we coast to a stop. I know he’s full of shit, but I still ask, “What did you forget?”

  “My gun.”

  “Your gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  He jokes that he wants to be ready in case we get ambushed by a bunch of terrorists.

  “You know,” I say, “I was just kidding about Marianne Moore.”

  “Who’s Marianne Moore?”

  * * *

  We backtrack for miles. After a while, he points at the turnoff for the golf course, like I can’t see the imported palm trees wrapped in decorative lights. We’re quiet as we pass the bubbling faux-marble fountain and enter through the lit gates. I remember the donut I left on one of the greens out in the distance. I smile. A paved, lava-smooth path winds us through tall cypresses. It takes us a while to navigate the mishmash of scenery. All of it is supposed to signal something, but I can’t for the life of me think what it is or where I’m supposed to be.