The Flying Troutmans

by Miriam Toews

  Actually, we do mind, said Thebes.

  Then she started relating to this guy by telling him how, when she was a little kid, she had this magazine and in it was an advertisement for this miniature fake town called Thomas Kinkade Lamplight Village. She wanted to live there so badly. She would lie in her bed gazing at this village, with its cute gabled houses and meandering, narrow pathways and smoking chimneys and thatched roofs and homey lanterns and warm, orange glow and cry her eyes out wishing she was in it.

  Word, said Colt, I’m down. I wished I lived on Moralia. Thebes had found a soulmate in this homicidal cosmonaut. Impeccably, sombrely united in their mutual, impossible longing to live in places that weren’t real, they high-fived and punched and slapped and then gazed for a while out the window at the real world, the one they’d had it with.

  Nice head, said Colt, finally. He pointed to the dash.

  Yeah, I said. The guy sleeping next to you with the knife on his throat made it in Thebes’s art class.

  Who’s Thebes? he said.

  That one, I said, nodding my head in Thebes’s direction.

  In Old English, said Thebes, colt means young ass or camel. She slammed her dictionary shut.

  Hey, isn’t the Grand Canyon around here somewhere? she said.

  Hey, another chunk of the world missing from our lives. Another giant hole in the surface of our universe. Let’s find it!

  Yabsolutely, said Colt. Where are you guys from, anyway?

  The True North strong and free, said Thebes.

  Cool, he said, where are you going?

  Twentynine Palms, she said.

  Where’s that? he asked.

  California, she said.

  What for?

  To meet our father, she said.

  Are you the mother? he asked me.

  I’m the aunt, I said.

  Then Colt told us a story about how he was a conduit for love, but I’d stopped listening.

  Logan woke up and he and Colt politely introduced themselves to each other and then Thebes said we had to see the Grand Canyon. I said I was worried about the van and really wanted to get to Flagstaff. But Logan said yeah, he wouldn’t mind checking out the canyon, and Colt said he wouldn’t mind either, he had a window before he was scheduled to break his girlfriend’s head.

  I don’t know what to say about the Grand Canyon that the name itself doesn’t evoke. It’s big and deep and brown. The four of us stood at the edge of it and looked down and saw a line of donkeys with tourists on them snaking along a path at the bottom.

  With her underwater camera Thebes took a picture of Logan, Colt and me beside the canyon looking slightly dazed and disappointed.

  Let’s get outta here, I said. It gave me the creeps. I snapped at Thebes to back away from the edge. I yelled at Logan when he pretended to push her over, that’s so not fucking funny, and begged Colt for one of his smokes. Yabsolutely!

  I glared at a swarm of tourists who were staring like they recognized me from Rosemary’s Baby and flicked my butt into the canyon when I was done.

  Logan wanted to drive into Flagstaff, so I let him, partly in a glasnost attempt to make up for screaming at him earlier. Wild West. And mostly he was using one hand, his good one, to drive. Someday he’d have a valid licence and in the meantime he needed to practise. I knew he thought it looked lame to be riding into a new town with his sister and his aunt and I knew he thought Colt was a goof. Ideally he would have had us all duck down and make ourselves invisible while he drove around listening to his tunes, playing it cool, pretending he was something other than a fifteen-year-old Canadian boy in a leaking Ford Aerostar minivan.

  We dropped Colt off in a 7-Eleven parking lot. He said he needed to buy a newspaper and a razor and some other things and he could get to where he was going from there.

  Not Moralia, said Thebes. Later, skater. She was yawning.

  Hey, I said, act nice and gentle, eh? Nice meeting you.

  You too, said Colt. Thanks for the ride.

  Take it easy, said Logan. They shook hands, awkwardly because of his cast.

  Logan peeled out of the parking lot and we drove around looking for a hotel. It was late, around ten, and I’d have to find a garage in the morning. We found a cheap Motel 6 and while I checked us in and Thebes lay down on a ratty sofa in the lobby and read some literature on Flagstaff, Logan carried our stuff to the room. When Thebes and I got there the TV was blaring and Logan was pacing around, fuming.

  That fucker jacked my knife, he said.

  Colt? said Thebes. The new one I bought you?

  Yeah, he said, when I was sleeping. He must have.

  I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. We’ll buy you a new one, I said. We’ll just keep buying knives and pistols.

  Thebes lay down beside me and continued to read her brochures. Did you know that Flagstaff has a disproportionate number of methamphetamine addicts and scam artists? she said.

  I didn’t know why a hotel would have a brochure with that kind of information. Is there anything in there about horseback riding or museums or anything like that? I asked. I thought maybe there’d be something fun to do the next day while the van was getting fixed.

  Um, said Thebes, it says there’s a psychiatric museum housed in an abandoned mental asylum somewhere around here. Apparently it’s haunted with—

  Okay, no, we’re not doing that. Maybe we’ll see a movie or something.

  Logan asked if he could take the van and drive around and look for a basketball court.

  No, I said. I was an ugly wall of no. It’s late. It’s dark. And I don’t trust the van. And didn’t you hear what Thebes just said? This place is crawling with meth-heads. I was also afraid that he’d try to find Colt to get his knife back, but I didn’t want to tell him that in case he hadn’t actually thought of it.

  And can you turn that TV off? I said.

  He went into the bathroom and slammed the door and turned on the shower.

  I lay on the bed with my eyes closed and tried to calm myself down doing some yogic breathing Marc had tried to teach me as an alternative to Gauloises. Thebes was quiet too. She was tired. She was already under the blanket. Her holster and the tourist brochures lay on the floor beside the bed.

  Thebie? I said.

  Yo.

  Tomorrow you should have a bath. And brush your hair.

  Why? she said.

  Tomorrow we get to Twentynine Palms, I said. I can help you with your hair if you want.

  Tomorrow?

  Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ll be there tomorrow. Tomorrow night. If we can get the van fixed in the morning, I said.

  I was waiting for her to talk, to spring into action, to illuminate the room with some Theban fact or question or comment or pronouncement or definition or something, anything. I stroked her hair. I put my arms around her and held her close and she didn’t say a word. I wouldn’t think about it. I wouldn’t think about the possibility of this being our last night together for a long time. I could hear Logan swearing in the shower. I could hear Marc breathing next to me. I could hear my father cracking a lame joke and I could hear Min laughing.

  thirteen

  I WOKE UP AROUND MIDNIGHT and tried as delicately as I could to extricate myself from Thebes’s Jurassic grip and to get out of bed and find a cigarette in my backpack. I was trying, and failing, for the most part, to smoke only while she was unconscious. And then I noticed that Logan wasn’t in the other bed. And he wasn’t in the bathroom. And he wasn’t in the closet. He wasn’t in our motel room, period. I went to the window and moved the curtain and looked outside at the parking lot.

  Yeah, the van was gone. Of course it was.

  I know the score, boy, I thought to myself. I’ve run away too. I sat on the edge of the tub in the dark with the fan on and finished my cigarette and then wrote a note for Thebes in case she woke up and wondered why she was all alone.

  I wandered down the road and passed a bunch of other cheap motels and cheesy chain restauran
ts and closed gas stations. If there had been a church I’d have gone inside and prayed. I would have said please bring the little fucker back safe and sound, God, I mean it. But instead the most I could do was say his name over and over. Logan, I whispered. Logan, Logan, Logan. Where the hell are you? I passed a panhandler sitting under a streetlight at an intersection and he had a sign that said Need 37 Million Dollars for Trip to Space. I could get behind that. I gave him two bucks. I headed for a bar across the street and ducked inside to find the pay phone, punched my old Paris number and listened to it ring and ring and ring.

  When I went back out to the parking lot some hippies looked up at me from their toke and said hey.

  What’s up? I said.

  Check out the moon, man, said one of them. He pointed up like maybe I was one of those people who always forgot things like keys and wallets and the location of the moon.

  I stared at it for what seemed like a really long time. I didn’t see Logan in any of the moon’s craters or shadows.

  It’s really beautiful, I said. And I mean really beautiful. Seriously.

  The stoners nodded and agreed and asked me if I wanted to join them.

  Thanks, I said. But I can’t. I’m looking for someone.

  Who are you looking for? one of them asked.

  My nephew, I said. His name is Logan. He’s fifteen. This tall. Black hoodie. He’s driving a Ford Aerostar.

  Whoa! said the guy. Wait. Who?

  My nephew, I said.

  Man, he said, how’d you lose him?

  We’re staying at a motel down there and I fell asleep and he took off, I said.

  That’s messed up, he said.

  Yeah.

  Think you’ll find him? he said.

  What do you mean? I asked. Like, ever? Yeah. He’s probably off shooting somewhere.

  What? said the guy.

  Hoops, I said. Basketball.

  It’s like the middle of the night, he said.

  Hey, do you guys have a car? I asked.

  Noooooo, said the guy. Nope.

  Yeah we do, Ding Dong, said a girl from the huddle.

  We do? said the guy.

  It’s a truck, said a different guy. He had his arm around the girl.

  The car is a truck? said the guy. Cool.

  Do you guys want to drive around and help me look for him? I said.

  Oh, yeah! They were into that.

  I sat in the box with a few of them, including Ding Dong, who said it was totally dope with him if I sat in his lap, and the girl drove. We watched one another’s hair go wild in the wind and the clouds cover and uncover the moon like a blanket, like a nervous mother. It would have been a great time if I hadn’t just lost my sister’s kid.

  None of the people in the truck were actually from Flagstaff, they were all seasonal employees from somewhere else, so they didn’t really know where the basketball courts might be.

  Before we could begin our search we had to go to one of their dorms or lodges or whatever and pick up some more weed. I asked Ding Dong if it was close and he said yeah and that Ding Dong wasn’t actually his name, it was Adam.

  When we got there the others got out of the truck and went in, but Adam said they’d be fine, they could get the stuff, why didn’t he and I just sit there and talk.

  I told him I liked the idea of talking but I was preoccupied with my missing nephew and didn’t really know what to say. I wanted to find Logan. Adam said we’d find Logan. He knew it. He told me a lot of things about himself. He and a friend of his had just been fired by a Spanish religious radio station called Radio Sinai for translating Cheech and Chong dialogues into Spanish and airing them late at night. Or something like that. I found out that he wasn’t close to his father at all but that he and his mother talked pretty often, even though she wasn’t really in touch with her own emotions. He had a girlfriend, sort of, whom he’d recently reconnected with after a couple of years of not talking. She was an actress and sweet but they screamed at each other a lot. He didn’t think she really appreciated him. His sister was a single mother with an eight-year-old daughter and they hung out. He helped her when he could. He told me he spoke a little Sango, a dialect of Ngbandi. He asked me what my nephew and I were doing in Flagstaff and I told him the whole story. When I had finished he put his hand on mine and said he was sorry I was so unhappy. He asked me if I thought all this stuff was happening for a reason.

  No, I said. I don’t think so. Where do you think the others are? I asked him.

  Then he asked me if I’d heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

  I’m not sure, I said.

  He told me it was the idea that the momentum and location of a certain particle cannot be determined at the same time.

  Wow, that’s pretty interesting, I said. I told him I was going to walk back to the hotel because all of this was taking too long and I had to check on Thebes.

  No, man, hold up, he said. I’ll go find out what the deal is. I’ll be right back. Please don’t go, he said. Okay? Please?

  I stared some more at the moon and at the rippled surface of the box that I was sitting in. I thought about how good it felt to have somebody ask me to stay. I thought about how pathetic it was that it felt so good to have somebody ask me to stay. Adam came running back to the truck and said that the others were so done, they’d kind of forgotten about us, they were gonna hang out at the lodge and watch Drugstore Cowboy but they’d given him the key to the truck. They’d said to wish me luck with the search.

  Let’s blast, he said.

  We drove back to the motel first so I could peek in on Thebes. I told Adam he could wait in the truck but he said he’d like to come with me. We went to the room and stood in the doorway and looked at the sleeping Thebes.

  I like her hair, Adam whispered. I nodded and smiled. You’re a good aunt, he said.

  I shook my head and whispered no, I wasn’t. I was a disaster. He put his arm around my shoulder and we looked at Thebes for another minute or two, like we were the brand-new parents of an oversized baby girl, and then we quietly left the room and went back to the truck.

  He asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said yeah, well, no, past tense. But I still loved him. I thought I did.

  Adam said that was cool, that was beautiful, right, why should I stop, we were always meant to be moving in a love direction, always.

  We drove around the dark suburban streets of Flagstaff looking for basketball courts and Logan. Adam played an old Pavement CD and talked the whole time about a variety of things and I tried to listen and occasionally interject with some thought of my own or some polite encouragement but mostly I was thinking about what a colossal mess I’d made of things and trying mentally to defibrillate myself. I was seeing Logan everywhere and then not seeing him. I was having a panic attack. I was having trouble breathing. Adam stopped talking and put his hand on my knee and asked me if I was okay.

  No, I said.

  Do you want to stop for a minute? he asked.

  No, I said.

  Different music? he said.

  No, no, it’s good, I said.

  We’ll find him, said Adam, I guarantee it. Honestly. We won’t stop looking until we do.

  I told Adam about my father, how he’d drowned in the ocean after rescuing Min and me. And how I used to search for Min all the time when we were kids. She’d take off and scare the shit out of everyone, I said. One time she broke out of the hospital and ran eight miles in a rainstorm in her nightgown, barefoot, with cops chasing her the whole time.

  I told Adam how I was still hoping to be with Marc someday, how futile that was, and how tomorrow was the day that we were supposed to find Cherkis, but probably wouldn’t. I told him that Min had run away, again, from the psych ward and that Logan had said he was going to do whatever he wanted to do and I didn’t know what any of it meant.

  Adam parked the truck in front of some ugly, prefab houses and turned off the ignition. He looked around at the houses and drummed his finge
rs against the steering wheel.

  Canadians are not that different from us, after all, he said. What would happen if you slid over just a little?

  Well, we’d be closer, I said. I slid over and he put his arm around my shoulders, again, and sang a Leon Redbone song in a really low key.

  My mom used to sing that to me, he said.

  I thanked him for his friendship and he said I was welcome and thanked me for mine and then he started the truck again, I slid back to my side, and we resumed our search for Logan.

  We finally found him at a court next to a high school, not too far from the motel. It was pitch black but he’d aimed the van lights at one of the hoops so he could see what he was doing. He was playing music softly too, some soul. When we saw him I asked Adam to stop the truck so we could watch him shoot for a few minutes and I could cry from monumental relief without him noticing.

  I told you we’d find him, said Adam.

  C’mon, I said, we both know you didn’t have a clue.

  Mmm, yeah, but you gotta bel—

  Don’t say you gotta believe, I said.

  Nope, okay, he said, I wasn’t. I was gonna say you gotta bleed.

  We were quiet, watching Logan make basket after basket and trying to hear what music he had playing in the van, but it wasn’t loud enough.

  So, Hattie, he said.

  So, Adam, I said.

  Would you be at all interested in necking for a short, short period of time, he said. I mean, look, he pointed at Logan, the kid’s all right, right? Although he does have a cast.

  I said no, I didn’t want to neck, I had to assemble the troops, reunite the troika, but I’d like to kiss him at least once.

  Have you ever kissed an American? he asked.

  Hmmmm, I said, let me think about that for a minute. He waited. No, I said, not really, no. Have you ever kissed a Canadian?

  Well, yeah, he had, you know how it goes. He smiled and shrugged.

  Yeah, no, I said. I kissed him.

  Goodbye, Adam.

  Goodbye, Hattie.

  Love direction, he said.

  I said, Always, dude, ’til the end of time, and got out of the truck and walked towards the light.