by Thomas King
There’s no good answer to such questions, so I continue to look at my eye and feel sorry for myself.
“You never asked me what I did when we were apart.”
“Nope.”
“But you must have been curious.”
I check my other eye in case the hemorrhage has spread.
“Or are you afraid to ask?”
“We’re in Prague,” I say. “We’re in Prague, and we’re together.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“It is.”
“You don’t want to call a friend?”
Mimi gets her light jacket. It’s not cold, but after the day she’s had, it’s probably smart to stay warm.
“I’m missing a day,” she says. “I want it back.”
“Hard to do.”
“How about a partial replay. How about we start with the Chinese restaurant?”
“Where I got the rice?”
“Where you met Kalea.”
“I didn’t meet her,” I say. “She knocked me down.”
“And then we can walk over to the hotel where she’s staying,” says Mimi. “Who knows, maybe we’ll run into her. We might even run into her guy.”
“Bryce?”
“You think I’m weird?”
“A little.”
“I’m curious to see how much this Bryce reminds me of you,” says Mimi. “That’s all. I’m just curious.”
FROM TIME TO TIME, Naomi would send me a typewritten letter, the kind of letter you might send to an acquaintance you hadn’t talked to in a while. She would tell me about the machines she had found. Or she would allude to the growing number of young people who were becoming disenchanted with modern electronics.
Twice, she sent me invitations to a typewriter show she had organized. She never mentioned the time we had spent together.
What she said in her letters was always said from a distance.
I never wrote back. I don’t think she expected that I would. Still, I liked getting the letters, liked running my fingers over the paper and feeling the impressions each key had made.
I FOUND THE CHINESE restaurant, and I showed Mimi where I had been knocked down. I’m sorry I hadn’t been cut. Finding dried blood on the pavement would have been dramatic.
And somewhat heroic.
I made one wrong turn, but I found the hotel.
“This is where she’s staying?”
“This is it.”
“Let’s go in.”
“Why?”
“I’d like to meet this woman.”
“Are you upset with me?”
“Curious, curious, curious,” Mimi says. “What’s wrong with being curious? What was her last name? Tomaguchi. Right?”
There is no one registered under Kalea Tomaguchi.
“She’s registered under Bryce’s name,” says Mimi. “That’s disappointing.”
“Yes, there’s a Bryce Osbourne staying at the hotel,” the desk clerk tells us. “Would you like me to ring the room?”
“What do you think?” Mimi turns to me. “Maybe she’d like to meet me.”
I say, sure, why not, we have nothing better to do. Here we are in Prague looking for a dead Indian and a lost bundle, without a hope in the world of finding either. Bothering a young couple in the middle of a crisis is certainly more interesting than touring another church.
Mimi doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “I think it would be nice to meet her. Then we’d have a story to tell, and so would they.”
The desk clerk tries the room.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “but there is no answer. Do you wish to leave a message?”
We wander around for a while. The evening is pleasant. The cloud cover has moved on, and the stars have come out to glisten in the night sky. Every time we pass a couple in the street or we see a man and a woman in a café, Mimi asks if it’s Kalea and Bryce. I make the effort, but the truth is their faces have already faded away, and all I see, as we make our way back to the hotel, is a city of strangers.
X
When I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, Eugene and the Other Demons are waiting for me. I stand by the toilet and ignore them.
And then the first cramp hits, and we all start screaming.
THE YEAR I GRADUATED from high school, I hitchhiked to Oklahoma to try to find my father. I didn’t tell my mother, wasn’t sure how she would feel about my chasing after a man who had left her hanging like laundry on a line. I didn’t think she would be angry, but I was pretty sure she’d be hurt. So I told her that I had a job roofing A-frame chalets at South Shore, Lake Tahoe.
It wasn’t a lie. I did have a job roofing chalets. It lasted two weeks, and by then I had enough money to get me to Oklahoma and back.
I had hitchhiked before. It was no big deal. Those days, everyone was on the move. Hobos, hippies, the unemployed, kids looking for an adventure. The on-ramps to the major highways looked like commuter bus stops.
My first ride was from Truckee to Reno. The guy who picked me up was on his way to a poker tournament in the Biggest Little City in the World.
You going to Oklahoma?
I am.
What the hell for?
It took me two days to get to Denver. Another day to Tulsa. Better part of a morning to Tahlequah.
I didn’t know much about my father. My mother hadn’t spent any time on the subject. Name, rank, serial number. He had been a soldier in the war. At one point, he had been stationed at Fort Sill, and with me in her arms and my brother in her belly, my mother had taken the train across the country to visit her husband. That was the one and only time he ever saw me, and I suppose it would have been the only time I ever saw him.
All that I knew about my father had come from my mother, and she had barely known the man.
“Where was he born?”
“Tahlequah,” my mother told me, “but he was raised in a town called Clinton.”
Tahlequah was a small town in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Clinton was one of the many dots along Highway 40.
“Did he have any brothers or sisters?”
“Couple of half-sisters. Why do you want to know?”
“No reason.”
I figured that Tahlequah was going to be a bust, but I wanted to see where his life had begun.
And to make sure that he hadn’t returned.
I started my search in a small café just off the main street with a copy of the Stilwell Democrat Journal. I read it cover to cover over coffee, a bowl of chicken vegetable soup, and a piece of butternut-squash pie.
The top news story was Lake Tenkiller and the determination by the US Army Corps engineers that fishing there had improved.
There was no mention of any Blackbirds in the paper. I was hoping that I might stumble upon relations left behind when his parents had moved out of the hills and onto the flats, aunts or uncles or cousins, extended family who might have been able to tell me if he was still alive and where he might be found.
I asked the guy at the register.
Blackbird?
Melvin Blackbird. Cherokee.
This here’s the capital of the Cherokee Nation, the man said with a smile. Toss a rock.
Do you have a phone book?
Public phone in front of the drug store. How was the pie?
I found the booth and the book hanging from a chain. There was a handful of Blackbirds scattered around Tahlequah. I got a bunch of dimes and began calling the numbers.
I ran out of people before I ran out of dimes.
THE SCREAMING WAKES MIMI, and she rushes into the bathroom.
“Bird, it’s two in the morning.”
The inside of my right thigh feels as though someone is trying to tear tin off a roof.
“You’re going to have to try to be a little quieter.”
“I’m trying!”
“What if I rub your leg?”
“No!”
“If you keep screaming,” says Mimi,
“someone is going to call the police.”
“Don’t care!”
“Then we better get you into your underpants.”
I’m bent over the sink, holding on to the edges, my knuckles white from the exertion, and Mimi starts singing “Ten Little Ducks,” the song we sang to Nathan whenever he was upset.
Eugene and the Other Demons join in on the chorus.
When she gets down to three ducks, she stops. “Any better?”
The cramps are still coming in waves, but they’re not as fierce now. “A little.”
“Try singing,” she says.
“I don’t want to sing.”
“Not even if it helps?”
I’m awash in sweat from the pain. Mimi gets a towel and drapes it over my back.
“Come on,” she says, “Three little ducks . . .”
I STAYED IN TAHLEQUAH overnight, checked out some of the bars, with the same results. The next afternoon, I caught a ride to Oklahoma City, where I got stuck at an on-ramp for the rest of the day, until a guy in a station wagon picked me up.
A salesman. Floyd something. Auto parts.
“Where you headed?”
Clinton.
“Clinton?”
Clinton.
“Hell, son, nobody goes to Clinton ’cept peckerheads and salesmen. You got business there?”
Maybe.
“Hour thirty. More if I have to stop. Prostate. You wouldn’t know about that.”
Guess not.
“Atlanta to Las Vegas,” Floyd told me. “If it’s auto parts, my name’s on it.”
Floyd had a bottle of Old Fitzgerald in the glovebox, a carton of Camels on the back seat.
“Help yourself,” he told me. “You work for a living or you just on the wander?”
Visiting family.
“Used to live down south in Ardmore. Second wife. Got kin all over the state. Turn over a stone, and there’s a cousin.”
We pulled off the interstate at El Reno. “Too bad we’re not close to a Furr’s. Salisbury steak, fried okra, lemon meringue pie. Damn.”
Floyd drove into town and parked across the street from a small white stucco building with red awnings.
“Robert’s Grill,” he said. “You ever had an onion burger?”
The grill was stuck on a main corner. No interior to speak of. Counter seating only. We found a couple of stools where we could see the burgers being cooked.
I asked Floyd if he had ever run across a Melvin Blackbird.
“Your daddy? How’d you get Blackbird for a first name?”
The onion burger was pretty good. Floyd had a burger and a Coney dog with chili and slaw.
“Man’s got to keep up his strength. You want to tag along and watch me work? Car parts ain’t a bad career.”
We got to Clinton after lunch.
“None of my business, but I’m not sure you chasing after your old man is all that smart.”
Don’t disagree.
“Lot of people do things for no good reason, but once they’re done, well, that’s it.”
No good reason.
“Your old man could have come back. Women are always willing to make allowances. But he didn’t.”
No, he didn’t.
“And what if you find him? What you going to do then? Man’s going to be a stranger. And he could be a whole lot worse.”
I thanked Floyd for the ride and for lunch.
“Long as you’re in Clinton, you should see the big plastic Indian in front of Howe Motors. Can’t miss it. Number one tourist attraction hereabouts.”
SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE.
The cramps finally relent. I lie on the floor, exhausted, my leg jammed between the toilet and the wall to keep pressure on the muscle.
And I have no plans to move.
Mimi brings a blanket and a pillow. “I’m going back to sleep,” she says. “Try not to wake me.”
Kitty sits by the door, her arms wrapped around her knees. Muscle cramps can be an indicator of debilitating diseases such as ALS and muscular dystrophy.
How come we always wind up with the shit? says Chip.
What are you going to do when Mimi leaves you? says Kitty. She’s not going to want to live with a cripple.
Eugene tries to look sympathetic. Can’t say you don’t deserve it.
The twins lie down beside me and take most of the blanket.
I don’t get much sleep. The floor of the bathroom is hard. Each time I have to get up to pee, my leg threatens to seize up. I give up on sleep around seven. Mimi is on the bed in the aftermath of a crocodile death roll, the covers wrapped around her so tightly, it would take a chainsaw to cut her free.
“You awake?”
“No.”
“It’s time for breakfast.”
“You go,” she says. “I had a late night.”
“You should meet Oz.”
“I should sleep.”
I find the lump in the covers that appears to be Mimi’s head and kiss it. “They stop serving at nine thirty.”
“Stay away from the pastries,” she tells me. “You know what they do to your blood sugars.”
FLOYD DROPPED ME OFF on South Fourth Street.
“What’d I tell you.” Floyd tapped out a quick rhythm on the steering wheel. “Big sucker, ain’t he?”
The Indian standing in the car lot was enormous.
“Back in the day, if you guys had looked like that,” said Floyd, “things might have gone a lot different.”
On the big Indian’s belt was “Howe Motors.” I didn’t get the joke right away. And then I did. Indian. Howe. Howe. Indian. Not terribly funny, not terribly stupid. Something out of a high school yearbook.
Floyd pulled the car into gear. “Not much to the town,” he said. “Follow this street, take a left at West Gary, and you’ll wind up back at the highway.”
I stood next to the big Indian and took in the town. My father had been six or so when the family had moved here from the green hill country of northeastern Oklahoma. Looking at the streets and the buildings, the cars and the people, I couldn’t help but wonder what offence the Blackbirds had committed to have been banished to such a place. Maybe Clinton was where Adam and Eve had landed when they were thrown out of the garden.
Under the bright sun and fierce heat, the town felt as though it had been pulled hot from a forge and beaten flat on an anvil, the kind of place where people lived their lives in front of open refrigerators, and dogs melted on the sidewalks.
I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I wasn’t eager to brave the sunshine, so I waited in the shade of the big Indian until a woman in a lime-green Suburban shirt and dark brown slacks came out of the sales office.
“You look like you might could use a car.”
The woman wasn’t heavy-set, but neither was she small.
“Every one of these beauties has air conditioning. If they ain’t got air, we don’t sell ’em.”
The heat had raised a heavy sweat and turned parts of her shirt transparent.
“And I can make you a sweet deal right now.” The woman smiled and wiped her face with a handkerchief. “How about we talk inside? You like a soda?”
WHEN I GET to the breakfast room, Oz is sitting by himself, a globe of the world on the table in front of him.
“You are late.” He holds out both wrists. “I thought perhaps you had gone back to Budapest.”
“Why would I do that?”
“The refugees are the news,” says Oz. “They are now exciting and possibly a tourist attraction.”
I stare at the globe.
“For my granddaughter,” says Oz. “She wants to know about the world. This is the safe way to do that.”
“It’s a nice globe.”
“But erroneous,” says Oz, “as is much of our knowledge of the world.”
I sit down and gently turn the globe. I don’t find the Czech Republic immediately.
“Mercator,” says Oz, “Gall-Peters, Robinson, Winkel tripel, Autha
Graph. Do you have a favourite?”
I turn the globe some more and find Canada.
“This globe is a Mercator,” says Oz. “1569. The Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. Very popular. Unfortunately, it inaccurately increases the relative size of land masses the farther away you get from the equator.”
The server comes by with coffee. Oz orders the egg special. I order the ham and cheese.
“This is why Greenland looks to be the same size as Africa, when in fact Africa is more than thirteen times larger.” Oz rubs his hands together. “And Scandinavia. All of those countries are shown to be larger than India even though India is actually three times their size.”
The globe has a small imperfection in the middle of Texas, and I wonder if it has been dropped or bumped.
“The most accurate map of the world is the AuthaGraph, invented by the Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999, which divides the planet into ninety-six triangles. This allows the land masses to be shown in their correct relationship to one another.”
It could also be a used globe that Oz has picked up in a secondhand store.
“The Mercator method tends to accentuate the size of ‘White’ countries.” Oz places a finger on Africa. “You can put all of the United States and China and India right here, along with Spain, France, Germany, and Italy with room to spare.”
We don’t have a globe at home, but I can imagine having one would be handy.
“So, you see, even a globe can be concerned with politics and race.”
Oz gets to his feet and shuffles to the buffet. I follow him. We move along the line, helping ourselves.
“Your wife? She is feeling better?”
“I think so.”
“But she is still asleep?”
I help myself to the sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.
“So, you will look again today for the uncle Leroy and the bundle?”
“How’s your friend’s game going?”
“The Bears are still winning,” says Oz. “But the Bees are organizing.”
THE WOMAN’S NAME was Bobbie Sherman Darnell.
“Bet you’re surprised to find a woman selling cars.”
I admitted that I was.
“Daddy owns the dealership,” Bobbie told me. “My husband’s normally here, but he’s off playing golf with the boys, so I got the keys to the kingdom.”