The Flying Troutmans

by Miriam Toews

  Lucille’s baked, said Freak. She loves everyone. But I don’t really love her. She doesn’t know it, though. I got her from a junkie who was going to rehab and couldn’t keep her. I’ve only had her for like a week and she’s already broken into my stash four times. Her name was The Beef, but I’m a vegan and I changed it.

  Why? said Thebes. Were you going to eat her?

  No way, man, said Freak, she’s all muscle. That bitch is ripped. She’s mellow now, though, but I still don’t love her the way she deserves to be loved.

  Well, said Thebes, what does she answer to better, The Beef or Lucille?

  Neither, said Freak, she doesn’t answer to anything. You can call her whatever you want.

  I’m gonna call her Rajbeer, said Thebes.

  After that kid in your class who doesn’t know you’re a person? I said.

  Yeah, said Thebes.

  Why? asked Adam.

  Because I like his name, said Thebes, and because I really wanted to be friends with him.

  Cool, said Freak. Rajbeer. He said he was gonna get to work on the van and we should make ourselves at home, his casa was our casa, and there was beer in the fridge.

  Cherkis had tried to see the kids after Min had chased him down the street, screaming, with Thebes on her hip and me and Logan playing inferno in the backyard. He had sent letters and a bit of money, when he had it, and had tried to ask Min if she wanted him to take the kids for a while, or forever, so she could try to get her life together. But every time she’d told him to go to hell, she could handle it on her own.

  I tried to tell her that he only wanted to see them every once in a while, he was their dad, he missed them, he just wanted to say hi. He was trying to help. One time he showed up at their house and asked to see the kids and she freaked out and told him she’d call the cops and then called me and I had to go over there and ask him to leave and then she bundled the kids up, it was January or something, and put them in the car and they all drove away to one of her friends’ places so Cherkis wouldn’t be able to find them.

  One Christmas I called him up in Tokyo. Min had told me that he was living there then, with another woman. I just wanted to ask him how he was doing and to tell him that the kids were fine, he didn’t have to worry. He seemed pretty happy to hear from me and he asked some questions about the kids, like how were they doing at school, did they have friends, were they healthy, were they happy? Did Logan ever talk about him? Thebes was too young to remember him. I told him yeah, oh yeah, all that stuff, they’re really good. I asked him how he was doing and he said he was all right, wanted to quit drinking quite so much, but all right. He didn’t ask me how Min was, probably because it was too hard to hear the truth, and I didn’t tell him, because it was also really hard to tell the truth.

  Thebes wanted to hang with Freak and play with the dog, so Adam and I went into the house and wandered around looking at things and being awkward with each other, saying things like, you’re so great, no you are, no you are, and then he suggested that I sit down with him on the couch and look at Freak’s crazy photo album of burned-out cars. When I reached out to smooth the wrinkled plastic covering one of the shots, he put his hand on mine and then some time passed and he was kissing me and I was melting into the couch and moving my hands around on his back and through his tangled hair and then I stopped and reminded him that he had a girlfriend and he said well, yeah, kind of, but about a month ago he’d experimented with quitting smoking pot and during that time, and it was a rough three weeks, he’d realized how stupid she was.

  Hey, c’mon, I said, that’s not a nice thing to say, she likes you, and he said that didn’t really prove anything but she was…whatever, anyway, we didn’t need to stop, did we?

  Hey, I said, why don’t you say some sexy things to me in Sango or whatever that language is that you speak. I told him it’d be great because I wouldn’t understand what I was missing and life was so much easier that way. He said something interesting-sounding and oblique and I smiled and nodded. He really wanted me to know what he had said but I begged him not to translate. We messed around sweetly and clumsily on Freak’s grimy couch until Thebes crashed through the front door.

  Bonjourno! she said.

  We flew to opposite ends of the couch like kids and grinned at her like morons.

  Hey, sweet crib, she said. What’s shakin’, homies? Rajbeer was with her. And then Freak and Logan walked in, Freak had apparently convinced him that the dog was harmless, and then he went to the fridge and got everyone, except Thebes, a beer and told us the van was running like a top, cheers, wicked.

  More difficult goodbyes. Adam asked for my phone number and I told him I didn’t really have one right then. I didn’t actually have a home, either, I told him.

  Well, you’re at home in the universe, he said.

  Which universe? I said. I asked him for his number and he said it was disconnected.

  Freak said I could call his place and leave a message for Adam if I felt like it and I wrote down his number on the back of a lottery ticket that had let him down months ago. Then Freak asked Thebes if she wanted to keep Lucille because Lucille needed love, and Logan and I put our hands up like stop, stop, stop, but it was way too late.

  We were headed down the 40 West towards our final destination. Thebes was filthy all over again but who cares, she was alive, and Logan’s cast was getting soggy and soft and fraying at the ends and I was aching with love or maybe something shallower and deeper at the same time for Adam, another guy I’d never see again in my life, and Rajbeer had eaten all the food Adam had made us and reeked like hell and wouldn’t stop barking at the dying boy on the dash and we were all a little pissed off and sad and worried and silent. Except that, in spite of all that, I was also feeling kind of okay because I thought, I was pretty sure, I knew what I had to do and what I wanted to do.

  You didn’t call Min, said Logan.

  And there was that. I was the world’s worst guardian of children. I was like the neighbourhood cat lady, but with kids. They were filthy, broken and eating themselves and soon they’d feed on my old corpse. I had told them I’d phone their mother—after a really bad night of running away and being abandoned and cutting wrists, all they wanted was to talk to their mom—but instead I’d used that time to fool around with a disenfranchised American pothead.

  Well, no, actually, I tried, I said. But I couldn’t get through.

  You did not, said Logan. Gimme a break.

  I put in a CD and Logan took it out again and replaced it with one of his. It’s my turn, he said. I’ve been keeping track. This is going out to Junkie. That was his name for Lucille/Rajbeer/The Beef. He cranked the volume on “Atomic Dog.” Do you like George Clinton? he asked me.

  Yeah, I do, I said. He told me he was thinking of starting a band when he got home and calling it The Missed Appointments.

  Good name, I said. Do you play an instrument? He said he could play a few chords on the guitar, nothing much.

  Hey, said Thebes, did you write this? She was talking to Logan, waving a green piece of construction paper around. It turned out he’d played Poetry Class with her after all and had written a poem while he was in the van hiding out from the dog.

  Can I read it out loud? she asked him.

  No, he said. Give me that. He tried to grab it but she yanked it away. Fuck off, Thebes, he said. Give it to me. She started to read. He swore and disappeared into his hoodie.

  Bury 22 footers (in your eye)

  Run the floor

  Elevate, finish the deuce

  Move the feet, lock it down

  Box out

  Rise up

  Start the break

  Hard dribble, pull up (on your head).

  Forearm to the chest

  Finish with the left

  Hard pick, knock you off your feet.

  Box out

  Rise up

  Put back

  Shake your head

  Jab step, release (in your face) />
  Get low (put a body on ’em)

  Board with one hand

  Dribble, spin, fade

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  It’s a basketball poem! said Thebes.

  Give me that, said Logan. Please? He grabbed it from her and tore it up, and then opened the window and threw out the pieces.

  Why did you do that? I said. That was a good poem.

  Whatever, said Logan.

  The rain had started again and it was foggy. I’d forgotten to ask Freak if he could fix the windshield wiper.

  We should try to tie the shirt around the thing again, I said.

  I can do it, said Logan.

  I pulled over and Logan grabbed the T-shirt and got out of the van. Stay in here, Thebes, it’s raining, I said.

  I took a plastic bag out of the back and joined Logan outside. I asked him to put the bag over his cast so it wouldn’t get wet and decompose but he said it would be okay, it wasn’t raining that hard. It sure was foggy, though. I told Logan that I had really liked his poem and that he shouldn’t have thrown it away. He didn’t say anything. He was trying hard to wrap the T-shirt around the wiper blade so that it wouldn’t fly off.

  You know? I said. He was quiet. Hey, I said. What…are you crying?

  He ignored me and kept working on the wiper. The T-shirt wouldn’t stop slipping off the blade and semis were spraying water all over us as they passed and the earth shook every time. Logan stopped fiddling around with the wiper and turned to look at me.

  This is so messed up, he said. He was crying.

  I put my arms around him and told him things would be okay, we’d figure it out, Min would get better, but he just shook his head and said he didn’t know. Thebes was looking at us through the window.

  Let’s go over here, I said, and took Logan’s hand and led him through the ditch and up onto the other side and through a hole in an electric fence into an empty field. We sat on a rock in the rain and he cried and I tried to think of something to say that would comfort him, something true.

  I know it wasn’t my mom’s idea for us to find Cherkis, said Logan. I’ve known that all along.

  Yeah? I said. Okay. You’re right, it wasn’t. It was my idea and I’m really sorry for lying to you. I really am. I thought this was the best thing to do. The only thing I could think of was finding Cherkis and asking him to take care of you guys so at least…I don’t know. It was probably a stupid idea but I was desperate.

  I don’t know either, said Logan. It’s messed up.

  Yeah, it is, I said. Right now it is, but it won’t always be.

  I kind of think it always will be, said Logan.

  Yeah, I know, I said. It seems that way, but—

  No, it really is that way, he said. He was crying hard, trying to talk. Even when she gets better, he said, it’s for like three days or maybe a week and then it’s over, she gives up, it’s just so…I think Thebes and I are on our own.

  No, no, I said. You’re not on—

  Yeah, said Logan, we are. I don’t know how to take care of a kid, but she’s my sister, so…that’s that. I can get a job somewhere, I think. I’ll be sixteen in a month.

  I know, I said, but…that’s not…You’re not on your own.

  Hat, I’m not stupid, said Logan. You can go back to Paris, or wherever, you don’t have to take care of us. I’ve got it.

  Let’s go back to the van, I said. C’mon. I pulled him up off the rock and he smiled and said I had a pretty decent grip. Let’s get out of here, I said.

  But the van wasn’t there, and the fog was so thick I could barely see Logan’s face. Jesus Christ, I said. Oh god. Oh man. What the…why…?

  Did you leave the keys in the van? asked Logan.

  I was kneeling on the side of the highway, holding onto my head like a prisoner of war.

  Thebes! Logan yelled her name once and then again and then he started running down the highway and quickly disappeared in the fog.

  A minute later I saw the van reversing towards me. It stopped and Logan jumped out and ran around to where I was sitting and helped me up. He opened up the passenger side door and shoved me in. Thebes was sitting in the back seat with her arm around the dog.

  Good one, eh? she said. No? Who knew I could drive?

  Min and I were kids. Our parents had rented a cottage at some lake. There was a long dock and Min ran the length of it and leaped into the water and disappeared. My parents and I stood on the dock screaming her name. My father jumped into the water but couldn’t find her and our mother ran to the cottage to phone the search and rescue. Twenty minutes later Min poked her head out from under the dock. There’d been six inches or so of space between the wooden planks and the water and she’d hid there listening to us go crazy looking for her. She didn’t get it. She couldn’t understand how or why we’d be angry because damn it, it was so funny, so smooth.

  That night she and I lay in our bunk beds and I asked her if she wouldn’t have panicked if it had been me hiding under the dock and she didn’t know where I was because the last thing she’d seen of me was me jumping into the water, and she said yeah, she would have panicked. She told me there was only one person in the world she loved and that person was me.

  The rain had stopped and the fog had lifted. Min, I said to myself, we’re here. Do we keep going? I didn’t know what else to say. I tried to remember the Uncertainty Principle but couldn’t. I waited for her to answer. I told myself that if in ten seconds I looked out the window and happened to see water, I would know that Min had answered. No, I thought, I’m going to change that to a tree. We were in a really dry part of the United States. No, I thought, actually we’re in a desert, I’m going to change it to a cactus. No, wait, a bird. I counted to ten. I looked out the window and thought for sure, definitely, I had just seen some type of flying creature. Yes, I had. It was a giant circling vulture and he had many friends and they were closing in on the shredded carcass of half a cow. Still. I would consider the vulture to be Min’s answer. I didn’t know what dark meaning it held, but maybe, hopefully, none.

  When Logan was a little kid he would run away from home. He’d go outside and hide behind the giant elm in their front yard. Sometimes he’d stand there for hours, waiting to be found.

  One time Min and the kids and I were having lunch in a restaurant. Thebes was in a high chair having a fit over something and Min and I were trying to get her to calm down. When she finally did, Logan was gone. He’d left a note, spelled out in square letters along the edge of a round coaster. I have run away for the 3 time, it said. We ran out of the restaurant and found him halfway down the block watching a busker perform magic tricks. I still have the coaster somewhere. I should give it to Min, or Logan. It was a coaster advertising some coffee with the words “Select Discoveries” in the centre.

  Let’s stop for gas, I said. Thebes was in the back, building something, quietly singing a Smokey Robinson tune, “I Second That Emotion,” and the dog was asleep on the floor. The water in the cooler sloshed around so much that if we didn’t have music playing it sounded like we were in a small fishing boat on a slightly choppy lake. I imagine that it’s the boat in Logan’s dream, the one that we’re all in, out at sea, and my father pops up from the water with his glasses on and says how happy he is to see us.

  Logan careened into the parking lot of the gas station, filled the van up and then dribbled his basketball around for a while. Thebes zipped into the washroom and I could hear her singing in there while I stood and paid at the counter. Kid’s happy, said the clerk. She came out and I bought her an Archie comic, and when we were walking back to the van I asked her what she was thinking about.

  I don’t know, she said.

  C’mon, you do so, I said.

  I’m just wondering if Cherkis is going to like me, she said.

  Heads up, T., said Logan. Thebes rammed her Archie into her mouth to free up her hands and caught the ball like a pro and fired it right back at him. The side door on the van was
open and Rajbeer leapt out all caught up in the excitement of the game and then one of the gas station employees came out and asked us please to put that pit bull away and also no playing in the parking lot, because they get a lot of tour buses full of seniors who enjoy serenity when they disembark.

  While Logan drove, I put my feet on the dash. The world whipped past us. You should slow down a bit, I told Logan. Thebes lay down in the back and said she wanted to think about things for a while but if something earth-shattering happened we should let her know. Then she said all right, she was finished thinking about things and she started reading us stuff about Kingman from an Arizona travel book she’d picked up along the way.

  Did you know, she said, that Kingman is the site of BLEVE. The Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion?

  No, neither Logan or I were aware of that.

  Firefighters from around the world study it, said Thebes. And did you know, she said, that Pamela Anderson did one of her Playboy photo shoots at the corner of Fourth Street and Andy Devine Avenue and was brought into the Kingman Police Department for indecent exposure?

  Really? said Logan.

  No, I didn’t know that either, I said.

  She wasn’t charged, said Thebes, but she was asked to write a letter of apology.

  Yeah, they must have been really mad, said Logan. Are there photos in that book?

  No, said Thebes, only maps.

  Did the Pamela Lee Anderson thing coincide with the expanding liquid explosion thing? he asked.

  It doesn’t say, said Thebes. I don’t think so.

  There was something about Thebes not twigging to Logan’s dirty joking that made me want to cry, made me think of Min and me as kids and made me want to travel backwards but not exactly back to where we’d come from.

  And did you know, she said, that Kingman is called the Heart of Historic Route 66? The longest original stretch of Route 66 runs right through downtown Kingman. It’s called the Mother Road. Thebes liked that. The Mother Road. But she didn’t know what Route 66 was. Neither did Logan, really.