The Bewildered

by Peter Rock

  She checked the clock on the wall. Forty-five minutes left. A school night, they said, they had to get home and get their sleep to be sharp for school, for classes. Sleep. She used to need more of it. She wasn’t tired now; she felt the same, plenty of energy, even too much. She’d go days without sleeping, even thinking about it. And then she’d sleep for forty, fifty hours straight, and be up for a week. Scientists admitted they didn’t know why people needed it. Dolphins slept half of their brain at a time, otherwise they’d drown; perhaps that was how she was doing it—never all the way asleep or awake.

  Alone in the diner, she felt the pressure rising, a faint hot wind from the faces of the electrical outlets, invisible and silent sparks, all closing down, rushing in, a surge snaking toward her. Snarled, forked, bristling and gone slack. In came a snapping hiss at all the switches and light fixtures, and she heard the cook drop something in the kitchen. She heard his cursing voice as all the lights went out.

  There was no rising, sizzling wind, no spark, no ball of flame. Just a sudden loud pop and Leon jerking there like all the bones gone from his body, so high above the ground. His arms wildly slapped and his legs kicked the pole, gouging the wood, raining splinters into their squinting eyes. It went on and on; it would not set him loose. The heavy clipper was clenched in his hand still, shattering porcelain insulators, knocking crossbeams loose. The cut copper wire came slicing down.

  Kayla screamed. She collided into Chris; they both looked upward, necks bent back as at last Leon came loose. His spikes kicked in, he slid in the harness, twisting in the canvas belt, forty feet overhead. He slid five feet, snagged, slid a little more. His eyes wide open, not seeing a thing, facedown and slithering closer, right at them, headfirst and tangled, finally hung up four feet from the ground.

  They both held back; neither wanted to touch him, his pale face with all the skin twitching, hissing flecks of spit and snot, eyes staring. His limp arms hung down, his hand finally letting loose of the clipper, its damp thud in the grass. At last, Kayla reached out, then Chris. They brought their friend down to the ground.

  “Is he breathing?” Chris said. “Is he alive?”

  Leon was not moving. Now even the skin of his face settled and smoothed, eyelids sliding closed.

  Kayla knelt next to him. She tilted back his head, opened his mouth. She pinched her nose and breathed into him, and checked to see his chest rise, and did it again, gasping herself. She waited, and Leon’s chest rose without her.

  “He’s all right,” Chris said. “He’ll be all right.”

  “He tastes burnt,” Kayla said.

  Leon pulled up his arms; he put his folded hands under his cheek, as if he were sleeping. All his hair was singed away on one side. He began to twitch again, his limbs faintly jerking. His jaw opened; he ground his teeth as if he were chewing, then swallowed like he was drinking. His eyes rolled, then closed again.

  A car rattled by, not slowing. They did not notice. A warm wave of rain passed over them, then eased.

  “It had to be lightning,” Kayla said, repeating it. “Miles away where we didn’t see it. Lightning, lightning.” She was trying to get the belt, the spikes off him, as if that would help.

  “Don’t touch me,” Leon said, suddenly. He sat up, twisting his head from side to side, his expression confused.

  “Can you hear me? I’m right here.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Wait, Leon. Stay down.”

  Chris looked over at Kayla, who looked back at him, both of them lost in that moment. A cool wind swept through the tall grass, around them. And then Natalie was there. They had not heard her truck, nor seen it arrive.

  “Let’s go!” she was saying, “What’s the slowdown, here? What’s up with your hair? Was it that way before?”

  Chris kept looking at Kayla, not certain what to say.

  “Yes,” Kayla said. “It was that way.” Her flashlight was in her jeans’ pocket, forgotten, still on; it shone, a darker blue circle through the fabric.

  Leon turned his head and looked at them with dawning recognition.

  “Is everything all right?” Natalie said. “We need to get the wire in the truck, and then get out of here. We’re compromising the whole situation.”

  “We’re resting,” Chris said. “We’ve got three balls done.”

  “Resting?” Natalie said. “What about that last wire?” She pointed to it, loose in the tall grass, weighing it down, the wire that Leon had cut just as things went wrong.

  “Yes,” Leon said, his voice thick and slow. “Well, let’s go now.”

  He seemed about to tilt, to fall over on his side, but then began to crawl toward the rolls of wire; after fifty feet he stumbled up, barely walking, and Chris and Kayla trailed, staying close to help him and to keep Natalie from seeing. But she was not paying attention; she was out ahead, already stripping the wire with long, powerful jerks, tearing it up from the grass and coiling it. She still wore her coveralls, only now instead of her black boots she was in blue sandals, and she swayed to keep her balance as she gathered the last of the wire.

  “Headlights!” she suddenly shouted. “Truck!” And they all fell flat in the long, wet grass, waiting, holding their breaths.

  The rain had stopped; a swirling wind kicked up. The four of them rose again, all converging on the truck, each carrying one heavy skein, long strands of green grass snagged in the copper wire. Somehow Leon had also gathered the belt, the clippers, the headset, the trombone case. The bottom of his left shoe was blackened, the sole flapping; Chris stepped in front, so Natalie wouldn’t notice. But she was already lifting the wire, rolling the balls into the back of the truck.

  “We’ll all ride back here,” Kayla said.

  “Suit yourselves.”

  They crawled in, over the tailgate, pressed close together, damp and safe, crowded by the skateboards and backpacks and wire. Natalie’s face was visible for a moment, through the back window as she closed it down, and then there was the sound of the engine, the feel of the highway passing beneath them. The balls of wire began to roll around the back of the truck, bristly, catching on their clothing, pulling at their hair; the three sat with their feet outstretched, holding the wire away. They leaned into each other; they held each other close.

  3.

  NATALIE SAT IN THE CAB OF HER TRUCK, parked later that same night, once again on East Burnside, watching her children skate away. Her black boots stood on the seat next to her, the sandals on her feet a nightmare to drive in—she’d been in a hurry after the blackout, eager to check on the children, to see how involved they were. And something was up with those three, something; they were too scared to admit it, happy with their secrecy and that was fine, none of it mattered except that they got the wire, wire she had hopes for. She chuckled as she watched them disappear—laden with their backpacks, their instrument cases, staying tight together as they rolled down the sidewalk, startling pedestrians.

  She shifted into gear, eased into the sparse nighttime traffic, turned south on MLK, past the Mexican restaurants and strip clubs, the clown supply warehouse. The girl, Kayla, had switched the radio to this terrible classical station, and now Natalie spun the dial into static. Once, perhaps, she’d been able to listen to classical, even enjoy it on a wound-up night like this; she suddenly recalled that she had really used to love the blues; names came from nowhere—Buddy Guy and Robert Johnson and Johnny Winter. These days she couldn’t really bear any music; she preferred the static, the bristles rising and twisting higher, magnetic as the storms passed over. As she drove she could hear the balls of wire, cutting through the static: they rolled their way around the bed of the truck—a scratching, a muffled ricochet—as if charged and trying to work their way free.

  She was ravenous! She accelerated, swooping up the Tacoma exit, then back over MLK, toward her place off Johnson Creek. She passed through the dark streets, the run-down houses, the wet dogs with their raspy, worn-down voices. The street she lived on went from blackt
op to gravel to dirt; she could drive the last eighth of a mile with her eyes closed, and often practiced doing so.

  Her only neighbor was an abandoned, boarded-up house, and her trailer wasn’t even a double-wide, and it wasn’t level, cinderblocks sinking into the soft ground. Pale blue, with a white stripe under the windows, rusted, dented on the far side where it likely tipped over in some past transport. She liked the sense that her house, too, had a past, that it had lived other places, housed other people and possibilities.

  She skidded under the tall cedar, switched off the ignition, the radio static out of her ears and—boots in hand, truck door slamming, chain-link gate dragged open—she kept moving. Clumps of crabgrass made up the yard, growing around the previous tenants’ bottle caps, shreds of magazines left out to cure and weather. The broken screen door hung loose, ready for her to clatter past, to push the storm door and then step on top of the forwarded letters, the job offers, the flyers from credit card companies.

  She hit all the switches. She liked the lights bright, fluorescent, flickering so fast no one could tell they weren’t steady. She was home, here where no one could hide; the weight of a footstep was felt, wherever you were. Two bedrooms, a living-dining area separated from the kitchen by a bar, and the bar and table covered in magazines, the way she liked it.

  She jerked open the refrigerator, mixed herself a glass of weak Tang, just orange-tinted water, and tore into a Slim Jim, chewing fiercely as she poured water into a pot, put it on to boil. As she was getting it all going, getting past the initial craving, the shakiness, she paged through a magazine—April 1976, Denise Michele in a grass hut, near a rope hammock, no surprise. Her legs are shorter than most, her skin darker (though the lines of her string bikini are evident; not everyone gets to see all this), her left hip cocked up and her striped sarong held open as if she’s taking it off, dropping it on the floor or about to put it on, tie it, though now she won’t, now that she’s been startled—her expression is surprised, pleasantly surprised, her wide eyes, her long black hair on her bare, smooth shoulders as she stands next to that bamboo ladder, her right arm glistening, still wet.

  The pot was boiling over! Natalie turned, angry, impatient with herself. She dialed down the burner, tried to find the foil packet. What if someone were watching this, through the windows? What would they understand? She went to close the blinds at the windows—the windows frozen shut in their screeching tracks—and there were no blinds so instead she turned out the lights, and then switched them back on, and returned to the stove. Mostly, she felt as good as she ever had, better, but sometimes she did only the things she found herself already doing, and she only wished she could anticipate the days she’d be sharp and the days she wouldn’t.

  Boiling again. She boiled curries and potatoes in foil packets. She ate dried fruit roll-ups, energy bars. Astronaut food. She thought of it as her astronaut diet; she never sat down to eat; like now, she bounced around the kitchen, imagining she was in zero gravity. Her throat, the cilia there, had to work extra hard to keep all the food from jerking back out of her, floating around the room. As she floated, as she chewed and swallowed, she held open the magazine with her free hand and read, and looked closely at the bamboo ladder next to Denise Michele. It’s lashed together, not nailed—that would be inauthentic, but it is authentic, as real as Denise’s expression, her face so hopeful, she has freedom and can taste it, the future impossible to know and yet unavoidably delightful, a limitless promise; and she’s proud of her breasts with good reason, round and high and full, the undersides pale (the same bikini), the dark nipples that she is eager to share. She is innocent, surprised without her clothes, but happy to be surprised this way, naturally, not at all ashamed.

  The phone was ringing. Natalie did not recognize it, at first. It took a moment to find it, beneath another magazine.

  “Natalie,” the man said. “Did you have success, this evening? My sources at the facility saw no new wire there.”

  “Holy crow,” she said. “I forgot—”

  “I can’t have you forgetting.”

  “No,” she said. “Yes. I mean, what I meant was that I didn’t forget, that I did have success, that I only forgot to drop off the wire. I got caught up. I had success. It’s still in the truck.”

  “You know what to do, then,” the man said. “And when I’d like you to do it.”

  Natalie hung up the phone. She looked at the beads of water on Denise’s breasts, her throat, at her glistening right arm, trying to figure it; past the waterfall, the grand piano—two pages back, there, she is in the bath; a bubble bath that is another reason to be hopeful, for anticipation—not that she isn’t always clean; she washes for fun, for pleasure, the way she wrings the washcloth so the bubbles catch here and there—

  The phone rang again, just once, as if to remind Natalie, startle her loose.

  —and yes, there were things to do. Yes, yes. The food she’d been chewing was suddenly tasteless in her mouth. The wire. She had had success. Miss April! She set Denise Michele aside, they’d meet another time, no doubt, back in 1976, in Hawaii. Denise is Hawaiian after all, the forty-ninth state and the freedom more recent, fresher, more appreciated and demonstrated, as she herself demonstrates it; she’s been working as a Polynesian dancer, had a bit part in an episode of Hawaii Five-O. She has a fiery temper, but she can also be affectionate and sensual, and yet Natalie had to put her aside, had to get out of these sandals, into those boots, and out the door, across the yard, toward the truck.

  She opened the back, jerked the tailgate so it bounced open, flat. Crawling inside, she reached out to touch the four balls of wire her children had harvested for her. Three were ordinary, only average, but the fourth ball, the last wire, was of a different grade—completely different and wonderful, still humming deep within. She pressed her cheek against it, then felt for the sharpened, cut end, then unwound the thinnest strand, thin as a hair yet stronger, for twenty inches; she bent it back and forth until it loosened, weakened, gave way; then she twisted it into a loop, tied it around her neck for strength.

  She had to drive! What was she doing? Outside again, closing the back, climbing into the cab, she found the key, fired the ignition, accelerated out onto the dirt road. The truck roared, jerking sleeping dogs awake, back out through the neighborhood, retracing her path up MLK. She twisted the rearview mirror. The balls of copper wire were still waiting, anxious. She had forgotten, almost. The man had reminded her. Forgetfulness wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it could make things difficult. What did she really need to remember? In the trailer she had a drawer of facts—her name, her bank accounts, a calendar where she marked down the times the man told her, the places. Sometimes she even forgot about the drawer, and then opened it by chance and surprised herself, and remembered. Forgetfulness disconnected the past from the future, took her in a different direction, and she suspected that this was not something she could always deny. For the temptation was not to remember, to really forget, to embrace her best days, like lately when she felt as free as her girls look free, moving forward, her energy multiplying, never lapsing.

  Could she forget to forget? Fall into habit and routine? Was forgetting to forget actually remembering? She had to be brave! To move forward, not to circle back. Yet in her pocket she still carried her address, though she almost never forgot that, and her phone number. The man had called, to remind her. How did he find her? Did she find him? That was back in those early, difficult days, right after she’d moved to Portland. After a night when she went out, when she had lost some time, where she woke up the next morning with a phone number in her pocket. He had opportunities for her, he’d told her. He understood her situation. He didn’t want any commitment, they would never meet, he would always call her and not the other way around. She’d tried his number again, weeks later, and it had been disconnected; still, he knew how to reach her and did. He paid her promptly, too, with a receipt, as if this were all legal.

  4.

&nbs
p; THE THREE RODE THE MAX, the blue line, the train sliding west out of the city and speeding through the dark buildings. It was just after midnight, and Kayla sat between Leon and Chris, her knees knocking each of theirs. The boys had to lie to be out this late, but not Kayla; she lived with her father, who worked the night shift and slept most of the day. Her freedom was rarely compromised.

  On buses, the three always sat in the very back, shoulder to shoulder; on the MAX, they went as far to the rear as they could without having to face backward. They liked to be able to see where they were headed.

  “So I heard this story,” Kayla said. “No, forget it.”

  There was only one other passenger on the MAX, five seats ahead of them—a tall, skinny man with his long legs bent out into the aisle, his narrow, black leather shoes stretching to sharp points. His black beard was also pointed, hooking down his jaw, meeting in a sharp V beneath his mouth. He may have been sleeping; he may have been watching them through the slits of his eyes.

  “Tell it,” Leon said.

  “No,” Kayla said. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Whatever,” Chris said, “but you can’t come halfway like that, you know we have a policy—”

  “All right,” she said. “Anyway, I heard about this guy, somewhere down in California, whose dick was so long it would drag on the ground when he walked—”

  “Who told you this?” Chris said.

  “Don’t interrupt,” Leon said. “Remember, Kayla decided we had to hear this.”

  “So,” Kayla said, “this guy, just to walk down the street, had to wrap his thing around and around his leg, tie it there. But then one day he saw something that made him get a hard-on, and you know what happened?”