The Flying Troutmans

by Miriam Toews

  We drove through the heat. We didn’t talk for a long time. Who needs words when you’re having a quiet contest? I saw a fat guy walking slowly down the highway, hunched against the hot wind, with a faded marathon number pinned to his back. He looked tired. He was headed in the same direction as us. I wanted to talk to another adult.

  I pulled up next to him and Logan rolled his window down and I leaned over and said hey.

  Hey, said the guy. He barely looked at us.

  We’re going to Cheyenne, I said. Are you in a race?

  He said no, he had been, but not any more.

  Oh, I said, are you lost?

  No, he said, not exactly. I liked this guy. We could become best friends, I thought. I live in a town eighty miles from here, he said. I’m the caretaker of a church.

  Do you want to ride with us for a while? I asked him.

  Thebes and Logan looked at me, looked at him, looked at me.

  No thank you, he said.

  You’re gonna walk for eighty miles to get home? I asked him. He said he’d stop along the way. Where are you gonna stop? I asked him. He hadn’t decided yet.

  I was desperate to talk to this guy. He kept trudging down the highway and our van crept along beside him. I don’t see any houses or anything around here at all, I said. He shrugged, nodded, yeah, no. So where are you going to stop? I asked him.

  Points yonder, he said, and smiled.

  Points yonder? I repeated. Nice. I smiled back. We kept our glacial pace and eased on down the road. C’mon, I said, hop in, just for a break. Aren’t you tired? I said. He said he was but still, no thank you.

  Is it because we’re strangers? I asked him. He looked at us. He said he just wanted to walk if that was okay with me. Yeah, of course, I said, but how’d you get separated from the pack?

  What pack? he said.

  Your race! I said. I pointed at the number pinned to his back. Logan took a big breath and closed his eyes. The guy didn’t say anything, just shook his head. Are you sure you don’t want a ride, just for a few miles? I said. We won’t hurt you, I promise.

  He smiled wearily and said yeah, he was sure.

  Do you want a drink or something? A bottle of water? Or we’ve got juice! Thebes! I said.

  Yo! she said, and whipped the lid off the cooler and grabbed a bottle of water. Here, she said. She handed the water to Logan, who handed the water to the guy, who took it and said thank you very much.

  Well, do you race often? I asked him.

  He said no, it had been a stupid idea. He hadn’t known what he was doing or what he was getting into. I loved this guy!

  Listen, I said, why don’t you just…get in the van.

  Nope, he said. He told us he’d be just fine, really, but thank you.

  I said yeah, I know but—

  Jesus, Hat, whispered Logan, give it up, man, fuck.

  I thought: Kidnap this odd walking man, be lost and tired together, take care of the church, laugh at our old misguided ways (Oh yeah, what were we thinking? Marathons. Searching for fathers. Hilarious!), change my name from Troutman to something like Grey…

  Mmm-hmm, I said, cool. Okay. I smiled at the guy. Good luck with, you know, the whole…this, I told him, and took off.

  Shh, I said to the kids, who were poised to explode with commentary. At least Thebes was.

  Were you gonna marry that guy or what? she said.

  Logan had said earlier what he’d needed to say. Filled his daily talking quota.

  Hey, do you want to play Zit? said Thebes.

  Not now, I said, okay, Thebie? I reached around and patted her stomach, although I’d been aiming for her knee. Your shirt is crusty, I told her. We’ll have to cut it off you. Logan took out his knife. No, put that away, I said.

  We were in Cheyenne, at a giant rodeo and carnival. The Granddaddy of ’em All, was what the sign said. We were floating over barns and corrals and concession stands and chuckwagons in a huge Ferris wheel. The kids were throwing mini-doughnuts at the crowds on the ground, because, according to Logan, it’s tradition and it doesn’t hurt. He had new headphones, but Thebes had decided to buy a plastic holster and two pistols instead of a crimping iron. She said she’d never take the holster off. Now both the kids were armed. When we were buying them a woman at the store had looked at Thebes and then at me and had said I should comb that girl’s hair…was it purple? And what kind of a mother was I?

  Um, inferior? I said.

  We witnessed a robbery while we were in the store. A young guy, about twenty, came running in and grabbed as many bags of Huggies diapers as he could carry. He went tearing past us and one of them fell, and Logan picked it up and shovel-passed it to the guy, who said thanks, man, and kept on running.

  Next time that guy wants to shoplift he should consider a pack of these bad boys, said Thebes, pointing one of her pistols at a row of Trojan condoms. She fired at them, and blew off the barrel like a pro. Am I right or am I right? she said.

  We got off the Ferris wheel and wandered around. We bought some corn on the cob. We observed Americans at play. Logan was looking at girls. Staring at girls. Thebes took my hand and tried to take one of Logan’s.

  Don’t, he said, and shook it off. We were liabilities, me and Thebes. She started to hum “To Sir with Love.” Other kids were staring at her hair and her holster and her general prodigious strangeness. The fake tattoos she’d had all over her arms and legs had smeared and faded in the pool the other night and her skin had a rainbow glow to it that was pretty and unique in a way, but could also easily be mistaken for some awful skin disease.

  Thebes wanted to watch some bullfighting.

  It’s not bullfighting, said Logan.

  It’s like bull…bull riding? I said.

  Like, busting, he said, or whatever. Bronco busting. I don’t know. It’s not bullfighting. Okay, so Thebes wanted to watch the bulls and Logan said he was going to walk around for a while and check out some other stuff. We arranged to meet back by the Ferris wheel at ten, and then we’d go find a motel for the night.

  Thebes and I watched cowboys get thrown off raging bulls and be rescued by clowns. She had pink cotton candy all over her face and arms and hands and legs and feet and shoulders and back. I wondered if she maybe didn’t have scabies too. A nice old man sitting next to her let her borrow his watch so she could count off the eight seconds, the length of time the cowboys were supposed to stay on the bull’s back. She yelled out the numbers in German and then French and then Spanish. She was very excited and had to be reminded constantly, by the family of haters behind us, to sit down and stay down, they’d paid their money to see the bronco bustin’ and dang if they were gonna have some wild foreign retard leapin’ up every second and blockin’ their view.

  Got that? I said to Thebes. I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close to me. She gave the man his watch.

  Thank you very much, she whispered. I’m sorry if it’s sticky.

  No problem, gunslinger, he said.

  She watched the rest of the cowboys silently. Tears were running down her face and getting mixed up with the cotton candy.

  Let’s go, I said. I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the bleachers and down the ramp and outside into the not-so-fresh night air. Lights were flashing and people were laughing and screaming. We walked over to a dark, empty piece of grass behind a heifer barn and sat down.

  Go ahead, I said.

  It’s just that…, she said.

  I know, I said.

  It’s just that…I’m not retarded, she said.

  I know that, I said.

  I just want Min, she said. She never yells at me. She thinks I’m beauti—

  You are, I said. She couldn’t get very far past that before it all erupted and she was sobbing in my arms and then all the captive little heifers in the barn next to us joined in, crying and lowing like a bovine choir of angels in solidarity with Thebes.

  It was time to meet up with Logan at the Ferris wheel. Here, let
me fix that, I said. I adjusted Thebes’s holster so it hung slightly lower on her narrow hips. It was ten after ten and Logan wasn’t at the Ferris wheel. Thebes and I shared another bag of mini-doughnuts and played Twenty Questions while we waited. After that she told me about her Tag manifesto. She’d written up a set of rules for Tag during recess at school.

  1. No time outs

  2. No quitting and rejoining

  3. No sore rebounding

  4. No cliffhangers

  5. No physical fighting or hurtful tagging

  6. No stabbing

  7. No pulling hats down

  Do people adhere to your manifesto? I asked her.

  Yes, she said. Most of the time.

  What happens if they break a rule? I asked.

  Well, nothing, said Thebes. Because they’re just my rules.

  Stay right here and don’t move, okay? I told Thebes. I’m just gonna take a walk around and see if I can find him. If he shows up here, make sure you guys both stay here. Don’t leave. Okay?

  Roger that, daddio, said Thebes. She had us do one of her elaborate hand shake-punch-slap-grab routines and I headed off in the direction of the arcade emporium. Logan wasn’t there. He wasn’t at the gambling booths either, or at the rodeo, or by any of the food stands or waiting in line for any of the rides. He wasn’t watching the Miss Cheyenne pageant or the Cutest Little Buckaroo contest, and when I returned, he wasn’t back waiting with Thebes, either.

  Hmmmm, I said. What time is it, anyway? I asked Thebes. She’d been talking to the Ferris wheel operator about prime numbers.

  Eleven twelve, she said. Shit. Hey, I said to the operator, you’ll be here for a while, right? It’s okay if she hangs out a little bit longer?

  Totally, said the guy. I’m bored anyway.

  I told Thebes I’d be back really soon, again, and that if Logan showed up, to stay there with him. I really didn’t want to do all the high-five stuff with her again.

  I went to the parking lot and found him in the van with a girl. They were making out on one of the back seats and didn’t see me. I moved a few yards away and gently threw some bits of gravel at the side window. Logan popped his head up and then disappeared again. I waited for them to figure out what they’d do next. I looked at the sky, at the moon, at the position of the moon in the sky, at the formation of clouds surrounding the moon, back at the ground and up again.

  Hey, I said, as they crawled out of the van.

  Logan didn’t say anything, but the girl said hi, um, hi, sorry.

  No, no, I said. I shrugged. We smiled.

  They were both wearing black hoodies. Logan kind of pawed at the girl’s sleeve and gently pulled her over to a dark corner of the parking lot and said something to her and she had her hands in his front pockets and then he gave her a kiss and she walked away and he turned around and looked at me and then at the girl walking away and then for a second back at me, and then back at the girl again. I leaned against the van and lit a cigarette and told him Thebes was waiting all by herself with a guy at the Ferris wheel. He slowly walked over to me and I asked him if he wanted a cigarette.

  I don’t smoke, he said.

  I was kidding, I said.

  Can we not talk? he said.

  Yep, deal, I said. Do you want to stay here while I go get Thebes?

  He said yeah.

  I noticed that he had silver and gold glitter on his face and in his hair. Were you guys doing crafts in there? I asked.

  He looked away, towards Saturn, or farther up, maybe towards some satellite that only he could see. I liked the silver and gold specks. They softened him up. He looked like a sweet, kind of gay, raver alien waiting for his crew to take him back to space, to some benevolent planet that partied hard but happily. I left him to pine and sparkle in the moonlight.

  Thebes and the Ferris wheel operator were sitting cross-legged on the grass, talking. When she saw me coming she jumped up and said, What? No Logan? What fresh hell is this? She told me that was Dorothy Parker, yo, props to her.

  Yeah, I know, I said. It was Min’s favourite combination of words. She said it all the time. I imagined she was still saying it.

  I found him, I said, let’s go, he’s in the van.

  What was he doing in the van? said Thebes.

  Making out with a girl, I said.

  We found a cheap motel and unloaded our paltry crap into the room. There was no pool, no free breakfast and no phones. Well, what do you have? I asked.

  Beds, said the guy.

  Who would just sit there and let someone suck on your throat for four hours or whatever it takes to create an entire hickey necklace? Thebes asked Logan. He was ignoring her, watching TV, and she was sitting next to his head and peering at his neck. That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life, said Thebes. Would you have let Gandhi do that to your neck, Hattie? she asked.

  I shook my head and held my finger to my lips. I was studying the map on the other bed, trying to figure out how to get to Twentynine Palms.

  You’re lucky she didn’t give you an aneurism, said Thebes. She could have sucked your jugular vein right out of you through your skin and you would have bled to death all over my art supplies.

  Logan turned the volume up on the TV.

  Thebes, I said, just leave him alone, okay? Why don’t you see if you can find me some beer in the lobby or something. Or go get some ice. Get both.

  Like, technically, said Thebes, that could be considered an assault. Look at these bruises! She moved her fingers gently over Logan’s throat. You were attacked by a girl. Are you traumatized? She started humming “No Woman No Cry.” She stopped humming. You were violated in there, she said, and now you’re all calm watching TV and—

  Logan whipped the pillow out from under his head and hit Thebes hard in the face. She screamed and fell off the bed. Logan got up and left the room and Thebes ran to the door and put the chain on and then went into the bathroom and locked that door too, until I finally talked her out and calmed her down and tried to explain some stuff about Logan to her.

  She asked me if I thought he was depressed. I said no. He needs to know he’s loved and safe and that he’ll be able to eat when he’s hungry and shoot hoops when he has to bust out and be attractive to girls and have friends to hang out with sometimes. Other than that, I said, there’s not much to do but wait it out. He’s fifteen. I compared Logan to a guy coming home to his apartment (our van/hotel room) to roommates he’s ambivalent about (us) and just wanting to chill out and not be quizzed about anything. I said if he could replace us with a giant-screen TV right now he probably would.

  Do you think he thinks a lot about Cherkis? she asked.

  He might, I said. He might a lot, or maybe hardly at all. We can’t really know. Maybe in five years he’ll talk about it all to a girlfriend or his buddies or a therapist or a stranger in a bar, who knows. Maybe he’ll blame Min, maybe Cherkis, maybe himself, maybe me. Maybe nobody. Maybe everybody. Maybe it’ll be this thing he carries like a fucking cross all through his life, his eternal destiny, or maybe it won’t really be a big deal at all.

  You should have a talk with him, said Thebes.

  I don’t know what to say, I said.

  Well, she said, you could just start out with talking about how you felt when you were fifteen.

  There was a soft knock. Thebes catapulted over to the door and flung it open and threw her arms around her brother. He stood there for a minute and let her hug him, and then he patted her back a couple of times and looked at me for help. He still had a few sparkles on his face, under his eye and on his nose. For one second he looked just like Min when she was younger. Maybe it was the glitter. Maybe it was that expression on his face that said, rescue me. I remembered Min coming home from a party, wasted and pale and skinny but really alive-looking, glowing, at the same time. It was her Bowie period. I said something like oh, it’s the thin white dude, and she’d said duke, Hattie, duke. Okay? Try to remember. She’d sounded so tired
but she’d been sweet about it, patient, and had stayed up for a few minutes telling me about her party, about all the crazy things that had happened and how life was such a gas, a mustard gas.

  So Thebes agreed to watch TV with the volume up high while Logan and I talked privately in the bathroom. She was watching the movie Run Lola Run and had decided to run with Lola, on the spot, in the gap between the beds, and see if she could keep up with her. Logan sat on the counter in the bathroom and played with the taps while I sat on the edge of the tub. I remembered Thebes’s advice.

  I felt pretty fucked up when I was fifteen, I said. I had a lot of secrets, you know, not secrets but things I couldn’t tell anyone.

  Yeah? said Logan.

  And if you need to talk to someone, I’m here, you know, I’ll listen to you, I said.

  Yeah, he said.

  I love you, I said, and Thebes loves you, and so does Min. Like crazy. You know that, right? I thought about saying something like we’ve got to stick together, through good times and bad, blood is thicker than water, something, anything to convince him that he wasn’t alone in the world, but I knew he wouldn’t buy it.

  Yeah, he said.

  I said we all acted like jerks sometimes when we were overwhelmed. Logan said he wasn’t overwhelmed. I said, Okay, good, but we can see each other through stuff like that. Or even if we can’t, it’s just nice to know we want to, right?