Spinning Out

by David Stahler Jr.

  After the photo shoot, we dug into dinner. The quiet was okay at first—everyone was just eating—but after a while it started to get uncomfortable. I guess none of us really knew what to say. Ralph, for once in his life, was keeping his mouth shut no matter what. You could tell he was terrified of blowing it and wasn’t going to take any chances by saying something stupid. Mom, for her part, kept giving him little glances between bites, with this weird sort of curious look on her face, as if she was wondering when he was going to say something stupid and why he hadn’t already. Having Ralph around was like having a pet chimp in your house—funny and cute for a while, but you never knew when he was suddenly going to take a big crap right in the middle of your floor.

  Mom didn’t seem too thrilled that morning when I first told her I’d invited Ralph over for dinner, but her mood improved almost right away, especially when I mentioned him saying how much he’d missed her, so I figured she was secretly pleased. Still, she seemed a little uncertain at the dinner table. Maybe she was having second thoughts. I couldn’t blame her. I was feeling pretty uncertain too—half pissed at myself for not cutting the douche bag out when I had a chance, half proud of not being a selfish asshole for once in my life.

  Stewart was the only one at the table who seemed oblivious to any awkwardness. He just looked around and smiled from time to time and picked a little at his food without really eating much.

  “Oh, God!” my mother cried. The rest of us jumped a little in our chairs. Even Stewart.

  “Stewart, I’m so sorry. I forgot you were a vegetarian. I should have made you something else.”

  Sure enough, Stewart hadn’t touched his ribs. But he wasn’t a vegetarian. Not anymore. He had been one for most of junior year but fell off the wagon last spring. The whole Bolger family ate meat, actually, but only the organic stuff, and only once in a while.

  “Don Quixote is no vegetarian, my lady,” Stewart said with a stern gaze.

  “Yeah, and neither is Stewart. So don’t worry about it, Mom.”

  “As warriors, we knights are, by nature, carnivorous,” Stewart continued, ignoring me. “However, while on a quest, it is my custom to avoid an excess of food and drink, essentially to fast, if you will. One must purify the body to purify the soul.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, hesitating. “I see.”

  “But make no mistake, my lady,” Stewart added. “This feast you have prepared and the company of your table in this fine castle far exceeds my worthiness. I do humbly say, if I were not already pledged to the beautiful Dulcinea and you were not already under the protection of this most noble gentleman, I would surely undertake to be your knight.”

  “Oh,” my mother said. “Well, that sounds nice.”

  “He just doesn’t want to get barbecue sauce on his beard,” I said.

  “Oh, stop it, Frenchy,” my mother said. She smiled across the table at Stewart. “Thank you, Don, for those kind words. It’s nice to hear the voice of a gentleman for a change.” She cast a quick glance first at me, then at Ralph, who squirmed a little in his seat.

  “No thanks are needed,” Stewart said. “As a knight, it is my duty to honor all fair creatures of virtue such as yourself. There is nothing in this world more worth cherishing than the essences of purity, goodness, and beauty one finds in a lady, nothing except perhaps the love that such an essence brings. I can tell you that the love I bear for my sweet Dulcinea gives me enough strength to fight a hundred battles, to slay a thousand giants. Surely your own knight feels the same way about you.”

  My mother and Ralph swapped shy smiles. Mom gave a quick, nervous laugh. Both of them were blushing. Trying not to gag, I pretended not to notice the exchange. Instead I reached across the table for Stewart’s ribs. No point letting them go to waste, I thought.

  “You know something, Don, you’re one funny bastard,” Ralph said, reaching over to give Stewart an affectionate slap on the back. “All that Dungeons and Dragons talk. That’s crazy shit, bro.”

  It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d sat down for supper, and my mother and I glanced at each other quickly, wondering if the chimp were about to crap. But Ralph went back to gnawing on a rib. Stewart just shook his head a little and gave a sad smile.

  “Crazy?” he said. He paused dramatically. I could tell he was getting ready to really start slinging it. Sure enough, out it came.

  “Some say I, Don Quixote, am mad. But I ask you—when life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams—this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

  We were all quiet for a moment when he finished. Ralph and my mother were both staring at Stewart with their mouths slightly open. I just snorted and shook my head. I’d heard that speech about ten times already in rehearsals last week.

  “Wow, Stewart,” my mother whispered. “That was beautiful.”

  “It’s just a line from the play, Mom,” I said. “That’s all it is. Besides, you can see life as it should be all you want, but that’s not going to stop life as it is from kicking you right in the balls.”

  “I don’t know,” Ralph spoke up. He was shaking his head and had this funny look on his face. I imagined a deep-thought alert (ah-ooh-ga!) going off in his pea-sized brain. “What Don says there is kinda true, if you think about it. I mean, you gotta dream, bro.”

  Stewart nodded his thanks. My mother gave a wistful sort of sigh.

  “Reminds me of your father, Frenchy,” she said. “He used to say the whole world was crazy. Said that’s why he liked being a soldier. War was the only thing that made sense to him.”

  I snorted again. “There’s nothing crazier than war, Mom. It’s just one big clusterfuck.”

  “Not if you’re a soldier,” she said. “You have your mission. You have the enemy. The battle lines are drawn. That’s what he used to say, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well he didn’t say that when he got back.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “No,” she whispered. “I guess not.”

  I looked away, toward Stewart. He just sat there with a faint smile on his lips, not eating, his hands pressed together as if he were praying, his eyes far away.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “We’re not taking any candy,” Stewart said as we set out. It was the only time he broke character all night.

  “But it’s Halloween. Probably my last time trick-or-treating. I got to get something.”

  “You want candy, I’ll buy you some. Tonight is just about promoting the play.”

  “Fine,” I groused. “But pull over a minute.” We were approaching the pit stop.

  “For what purpose, Sancho?” he asked, falling back into his Don Quixote voice.

  “Maybe you can pull this shit off straight, but I can’t. I’ll need some enhancement if we’re going to go around performing for the whole goddam town all night.”

  Stewart sighed and shook his head. “All this talk of ‘need,’ Sancho. I’m disappointed in you, old friend.”

  “Look, do you want me to do this with you or not?”

  Without a word, he slowed down the Volvo and pulled into the field. I started to open the door, then hesitated.

  “You joining me?”

  “Always the peasant, dear Sancho,” he said. “No, thank you. Your crude form of intoxication has no appeal to me.”

  I laughed. “Oh, come on, Stewart. You just smoked up with me last night.”

  “Whatever this Stewart fellow you continue to carry on about did or did not do last night, or any other night, is of no interest to me. Now, if you will please hurry up, Sancho, I’d like to get on with our quest.”

  “Fine.” I slammed the door behind me.

  It was a bit warmer than last night. The clear sky was gone. A breeze was picking up, and the clouds were moving in, low and thick. I fired up the joint, took a few quick puffs, then pu
t it out. For a minute I just stood there, watching the sky glow over the valley from the wind tower lights.

  Glancing down at my outfit, I felt a strange sort of giddiness. I could feel one of those moments coming upon me. You know the kind, where you look around and wonder how you got to this spot, and you think about the person you’re with and the things that happened to bring you both here, and none of it seems real.

  Before I knew it, I was humming, then singing. My voice sounded strange, like someone else’s.

  I’m Sancho! Yes, I’m Sancho! I’ll follow my master till the end. I’ll tell all the world proudly I’m his squire! I’m his—

  The horn beeped twice and the engine started. Don was tired of waiting. I got back in the car.

  “Ready, Your Grace,” I said, and we continued on our way.

  I wasn’t sure how the night was going to go when we started. As we headed up the walkway of the first house, an elderly couple met us on the front porch. They’d seen us coming and had decided to launch a preemptive strike.

  “How old are you boys?” the old man asked.

  I was too busy staring at his long, rubbery earlobes to speak. Fortunately, I had Stewart.

  “My good sir,” he said, “we know no age. I am the illustrious Don Quixote de La Mancha, and this rotund little fellow by my side is my slow but ever-faithful manservant, Sancho Panza!”

  I shot him a dark look as we both bowed.

  “You boys are too old for trick-or-treating!” the old woman barked, glaring at us through a huge pair of glasses. “Go on, shoo!”

  “Oh, fair one—we have no need of your confectionary delights. As you can see, my dear servant is nearly too plump to carry my baggage as it is.”

  “I’m going to kick your ass when this is over,” I whispered to him. He ignored me and kept going.

  “We only wish to entreat you to come to Gilliam High School on November twentieth for the opening night of our play. Refreshments will be served in the lobby at intermission.”

  “Something wrong with that boy,” the old man muttered. He kept saying it as Stewart stepped up and knelt before his wife.

  Stewart produced a rose from somewhere inside his costume.

  “A blossom for a blossom.”

  She took the offered flower, brought it to her face, and gave a tentative sniff.

  “It’s the real thing,” she said, turning to her husband, who just continued to mutter.

  “And now,” Stewart continued, “we’d like to regale you with a brief snippet of what you will enjoy if you make it to any one of our shows.”

  We launched into an early scene where Quixote attacks a windmill with bewildered enthusiasm, mistaking it for an evil giant. It’s one of the most familiar scenes, not to mention one of the most dramatic, with lots of physical comedy. The old woman’s mouth turned up into a smile as we performed, and even the old man stopped scowling for a minute. We ended with a couple verses from the title song, then took a long bow.

  A round of applause and cheering broke out behind us. We turned to see a group of kids watching us wide-eyed in their cute little costumes. They cheered even louder than the parents standing behind them did.

  We took a second low bow. Stewart and I looked at each other with shit-eating grins as the kids ran up to check out our costumes and ask us about the play. It was my first taste of real acting, and I could feel the love that had been growing ever since we started rehearsals take hold on a whole new level. Stewart, of course, was on the money, but I held my own. You might even say I was just as good.

  I have to admit, I was a bit surprised. Until our last stop, the night turned out to be a blast. We went from place to place, hitting houses in the village, then outside of town.

  “That was awesome, Stewart,” I said as we started home. “I mean, we fucking rocked it.”

  “It was a most successful evening indeed, old friend.”

  I thought back to the lines he’d recited at dinner about playing it too safe, being too practical, the problem with too much sanity. Stewart had fallen into the role, had been driving me crazy the last couple weeks with his obsession, but if it weren’t for him becoming Don Quixote, I never would have become Sancho and we never would have made all those people so happy tonight. And remembering the look on my mother’s face, that look of hope, and how he’d cast a spell over them, even that douche bag Ralph—I couldn’t help but think that maybe Stewart becoming Don wasn’t such a bad thing. I hadn’t seen her look that happy since the day my father came back from the Middle East. Maybe Stewart was right. Maybe I needed to start relaxing more, start dreaming more, and not worry so much.

  I was about to tell Stewart when I noticed he’d turned off the main road.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “I thought you said we were done.” I was pretty exhausted and looking forward to heading home and crawling into bed.

  “One more stop, old friend.” He stared straight ahead at the road as it twisted and turned its way up a steep hill.

  I looked around, trying to figure out where we were, but with all the trees it was hard to say. Stewart had grown very quiet in the meantime. When I asked him again where we were going, he smiled.

  The road leveled off. Soon I could see a gate ahead, a chain-link fence stretching away on both sides. Then we were out of the trees, and I suddenly realized where we were.

  I hadn’t been up to the wind towers in the year since they’d become operational. In fact, the only time I’d been here was when work at the site was getting started. Then it was nothing but a bunch of cement trucks and bulldozers buzzing around a vast, blasted-rock-strewn clearing, with cranes unloading huge piles of material from a steady stream of trucks.

  Not anymore. It’s one thing seeing the towers from afar, sprouting from the ridge in a lazy line. Even though the mountain and the surrounding distances give a sense of proportion, it’s another thing entirely to see one up close, to see the massive network of steel soaring into the sky, the sixty-foot blades of the turbine stretching out. I had to lean forward and practically press my forehead against the windshield just to see the top of the nearest tower.

  “Holy shit, Stewart,” I whispered as we came to a stop. I turned to him. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  Stewart didn’t answer. He turned off the headlights and, after the usual struggle, got out of the car. I stayed where I was, listening to my heart pound, while he went around the back and fetched something from the trunk. A moment later my door opened, and there he was, a set of bolt cutters in his hands.

  “Onward to glory we go, Sancho.”

  “You mean there?” I cried, pointing to the towers. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Come, old friend, our quest awaits.”

  “What quest?”

  “The quest for knowledge, of course.”

  He turned and strode off toward the gate. For a second I thought about just staying put, but finally I couldn’t take it and jumped out.

  “This is a bad idea,” I said, catching up to him at the gate. I tried to ignore the signs hanging from the fence. It was too dark to read them, but I could guess what they said.

  “I need to see it, Sancho,” Stewart replied, grunting as he cut through the huge padlock on the gate. “I need to see the Great Enchanter’s work up close with my own two eyes.”

  He pushed through the open gate, and I followed him, glancing around me as we made our way toward the nearest tower.

  I could see pretty well under the tower lights. Not that there was much to see—aside from the row of towers stretching across the treeless ridgeline, the clearing was mostly empty. Just some broken boulders here and there, except along the edges, where the ground was still ripped up, strewn with the remnants of tree stumps and bulldozed piles of torn earth. A few dark spots littered the ground—bird carcasses, all feathers and bone, victims of the turning blades. The lighting was strange. The twenty towers’ shadows cast bizarre patterns, fragmenting the bloodred glare. Strange
st of all was the noise—there was enough of a breeze to get the turbines spinning at a steady pace, setting up a sound that rose and fell between a rumble and a groan. Not the place you want to be on a Halloween night when you’ve been smoking pot. I felt like I was in hell.

  We stopped at the base of the first tower. Stewart wanted to keep going, but I refused. The unrelenting sound, not to mention the fact that we were trespassing, had turned me into one giant exposed nerve. I started to worry that someone was going to come along. Police, security guards, power company ninjas rappelling down from the towers, ready to kill us and attach our bodies to the spinning blades above.

  “Quest completed,” I hollered. “Can we go now?”

  Stewart just looked around, turning slowly in a circle, spreading out his arms.

  “Look at this place, Sancho,” he shouted back. “Behold the Enchanter’s wasteland. The heart of evil!”

  “Yeah, so let’s go.”

  He shook his head and kept turning. Spotting a pile of beer cans nearby, I went over to check it out, happy for the distraction. A bunch of rocks had been put in a circle, a few burned ends of logs still within the ring.

  “Well, someone’s been partying up here,” I called over to Stewart. I kicked one of the cans. “Probably the Pokers. This is their kind of place.”

  Stewart wasn’t listening. He was now crawling around one of the legs, inspecting the base. I watched him for a while as he felt along the steel, tapping and knocking. Finally, I’d had enough.

  “Okay, that’s it,” I shouted. “I’m going back to the car!”

  He looked over at me, then picked himself up, turning back to gaze into the ruby light. The wind had picked up, and the roar along with it, all twenty turbines now ripping at a steady pace. Stewart raised his fist and shouted something, but with all the noise I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  Then he drew his sword.

  I started running toward him just as he swung at the nearest footing with all his strength.