Wildman

by J. C. Geiger

  A Bend number. And a voice from another dimension.

  “Hey Lance?” the man says.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Mr. Leeds. Just wanted to do a quick check-in on your speech.”

  Mr. Leeds. The absurd voice of his guidance counselor rips him out of Washington, sucks him through the receiver, and jams him into a tiny, windowless office with the smell of sour gym clothes. He feels dizzy.

  “Everything’s fine,” Lance says. “The speech is almost ready.”

  “Sure, Lance. I’m not worried, personally.” Mr. Leeds is talking casually, with an under-the-breath familiarity. Like they’re old buddies, just shooting the breeze. “I told your mom I’d call. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” Lance says.

  “So what are the chances you’ll have it memorized?”

  “Still working on it.” Lance tries to envision a single sentence from his speech. Just one word. All he can picture is the page of required administrative signatures and student witnesses. Three peers who had attested the speech was representative of the character of both school and speaker.

  “Hey. One thing, buddy. Please remember the part about the kids not throwing caps at the end of the ceremony. It’s just chaos, you know?” Mr. Leeds laughs.

  “Right. Tell them not to throw their caps.”

  “It’s better, coming from a peer. If I were you, I’d end your speech on that note. So that’s what they remember.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Great. I knew you wouldn’t mind. So how did your audition go? Seattle, right?”

  “It was a really good audition.” Saying it, he realizes it’s true. It was the best he’d ever played. Probably the best audition of his life. He looks at his horn, and his eyes sting.

  “I did already send your transcripts to OSU. That’s where you’re headed, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.” Lance squeezes his hands shut. Nails bite into palms.

  “Okay, Lance. You sound kind of busy. I’ll let you get back to it. See you Friday, bud!”

  Many times, Lance had needed Mr. Leeds. He’d queued up to get into his office, to pore over schedules and test scores, cozying up to his desk for a peek at the roster of students to see where he fell in the rankings. Mr. Leeds had given him the special green folder where he was told to keep his speech. Another composition to memorize and play perfectly.

  Lance opens the green folder. Stares at the speech.

  Three knocks at his door.

  TAP TAP TAP

  Lance shuts the folder and drops to the floor. Police!

  TAP TAP TAP

  “Lance? Are you there?” Not the police, but he’s shaking. He stands and makes the doorknob work and it’s her. Dakota. Somehow Dakota, wearing a white sundress and smelling the way she smells, is right there in front of him.

  “No way,” she says, leaning forward. “You. Is it really you?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  She’s holding two glasses and a bottle of white wine. The glass is sweating, dripping onto painted blue wood. Her toenails, a few shades lighter. Blue like the sky.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Do I have to invite you?” he says. “Are you a vampire?”

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “Then yes.”

  The wineglasses touch like soft chimes as she crosses the room. She sets them on the green folder, using it like a coaster. Lance laughs.

  “What?” she asks.

  “That’s my speech. My guidance counselor just called me.”

  “Oh my god,” she says.

  “I know. It’s in three days.”

  “No. Oh my god you have a guidance counselor. What am I doing?”

  “Corrupting a minor.”

  “Guilty,” she says. She twists off the bottle’s cap and pours a few generous glugs in each glass.

  “You’re not wasting any time.”

  “No,” Dakota says. “This is all stolen time now. We have to spend it all.”

  They touch glasses and drink. The wine is crisp and grassy and delicious. He’s never had white wine before.

  “So, this is your place,” she says, pacing around the bed. “Nice.”

  “I’ve been here so long. I feel responsible for the decorations.”

  She laughs. “I love what you’ve done with it. The sailboat says I’m a dreamer and into craft sales. While these cats say I’m weird and maybe don’t have any friends. It’s a great balance.” She’s looking straight at him. Not hiding. A fresh heat flushes her cheeks, like she just spent a week in Florida.

  “You look different today,” he says.

  “Yeah?” she says. “Good different?”

  “Glowing different.”

  “I am different today,” she says.

  They both drink. He’s grateful for the wine.

  “Not a vampire,” he says, looking in the bathroom mirror. “I can see your reflection.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Kind of. I’ve always wanted to see a vampire.”

  “I’m over vampires,” she says. “You know what I want to see?”

  “What?”

  “A ghost,” she says. She sits on the bed and crosses her legs. The dress slides up just above her knee. “Not a little orb in a photograph, a real one. I’ve gone to every haunted house within a hundred miles. I’ve been to Aux Sable a hundred times, but it’s never happened.”

  “That’s probably good.”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure what I’d do.”

  “Run away screaming,” he says.

  “But I mean afterward,” she says. “How could I go back to my regular life? How could I ever think about life and death and science and religion the same way? If you really think about what it means to see a ghost—it would make you a different person. It would change everything.”

  “So what would you do?”

  “Become a Believer.”

  “With a capital B.”

  “Yep,” Dakota says. “Like those people who see Bigfoot on a camping trip, then quit their jobs and buy an RV and recording equipment. And waders. That’s all they can do. Drive around and try to see Bigfoot again.”

  “There are worse ways to live.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So are you shopping for RVs?”

  She finishes her wine. She looks up at him.

  “Nobody kisses like that, Lance. They just think they do.”

  Between his ears there is a white-noise seashell sound, like a long hush, and Dakota is sitting on the corner of the bed in a dress, too close and too far away. Springs tighten in his knees and calves. He could leap and crash into her body and tumble into the bed and roll into a brand-new life that would not have to be here nor Bend nor anywhere he ever dared consider. It’s suddenly possible. The full freight of his life, balanced on one corner.

  And his phone is ringing. Still ringing. He looks at the number and suddenly the phone is ringing at a different pitch, vibrating in a new way.

  “A Seattle number,” he says. “My audition.”

  “No,” she says, clenching her hands. “Take it! Take it!”

  TakeitTakeitTakeitTakeit!

  She’s still telling him as he walks out the motel door, closing it behind him.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Lance? This is Mr. Kay, from the Seattle School of Music.”

  He must breathe. Must unclench his throat.

  “Oh, hi. I was really looking forward to hearing from you.”

  “This an okay time?”

  “Perfect time.” He smiles at the door, Dakota beyond it. “It’s a perfect time.”

  “Well bud, I’m sorry to say we don’t have room for you this year.”

  Lance tries to translate the words. A cliff, coming toward him in slow motion. Brain skidding sideways, no surface to grip.

  “Excuse me.”

  “We’re full up. Only ten spaces, you know?”

  “What?”
<
br />   “Sorry, my friend. You blew really well.”

  “How—but how did I not get in?”

  “You were great, Lance. Really great. The improvisation got you, just a little bit.”

  “I can improvise for you right now,” Lance says. “I’ve got my horn. Let me just—”

  Mr. Kay laughs. “I’m sorry, man. We can’t do that.”

  He could make this right. Had to make this right.

  “Is there a wait list?”

  “No one really gets in on the wait list. You were close, you know? A lot of people play out a little. Take a year, then c’mon back next fall if—”

  A loud ringing overtakes his voice. Panic alarm. The red lever. He’d break more glass, pull it again and his mother would go over Mr. Kay’s head to the person with the big desk and plush chairs who hired and fired people like Mr. Kay, and that person would get A Serious Phone Call and Lance would end up in Seattle where he was meant to be.

  Except his mother does not want him there. The lever will not work. And in the place where her help has always been, there is a void. There is nothing. And all he has for Mr. Kay is goodbye.

  His phone is a block of ice. He puts it in his pocket, stares at the door.

  She can smell his failure through the wall. He’ll drink wine. He’ll walk in and gulp a glass because the Seattle School of Music doesn’t matter. It never mattered. He was never going to Seattle, and so he enters the room and Dakota looks up at him and flinches. She has never looked at him this way before. Because she knows.

  Or because the green folder is open on her lap. His speech.

  “What are you doing?” he says.

  “Did you get in?” she asks.

  Dakota has flipped past the page of teacher and student approval signatures. She is two pages into his speech, which means she has read past the introduction. The words of his speech, so elusive up until now, crystallize in his brain with uncanny clarity:

  As we graduate from Bend High School, it occurs to me we will all be stars. Each of us, in our own way. And in the galaxy of our shared futures, we will shine brightly. We’ll drift apart and become our own suns, lighting our own paths. Finding new planets in the orbits we choose.

  Words he is responsible for.

  “That’s private,” Lance says.

  “Aren’t you giving this speech to a thousand people in three days?”

  “Well, I mean, if I just left my journal laying out on a table, would you read it?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugs. “Probably.”

  “Well, that’s wrong.”

  Outside, a car thunders into the parking space just below his window. Doors clap open and shut. Young voices. Laughter. Hair raises on the back of Lance’s neck.

  “Okay. But how is this private? There’s a hundred signatures on the first page.”

  “They’re teachers.”

  “And three student witnesses. Whatever that means.” She puts it down. “Oh. I get it.”

  “What?”

  “This is from your real life. Right? I’m not allowed to see it.”

  “Dakota.”

  His phone is buzzing. Mr. Kay! He fumbles for his phone and hope leaps in his chest, a flood of endorphins and forgiveness. Don’t worry, Dakota, it’s okay, and guess what, I did get in! There was a terrible mistake!

  But it’s not Mr. Kay. It’s Jonathan. Lance doesn’t answer.

  His throat is tight again and the voices outside are swelling, ballooning up in the air and pressing against his window. An icy-hot mixture sloshes in his gut. His body knows something his brain does not.

  Lance walks over to the blinds, parts them with a finger. There’s a Mustang. A white Mustang with Oregon plates. His molars lock. He stops breathing. Dakota is saying something underwater. Something he can’t hear.

  “Lance?” she says, breaking through.

  In the Trainsong parking lot, figures from another life: Jonathan. Darren. Miriam. Miriam is in the parking lot. He pinches his left forearm. This fails to erase his friends. He bites the palm of his hand.

  “What are you doing, Lance?”

  “You have to go,” he whispers.

  “What?” she asks. “Why?”

  “You have to go right now.”

  This girl. This perfect girl. Her brow knit. Startled eyes, like she’s just been stung. It was the way she looked at the bag of soda cans in the parking lot, only this time it’s him. She turns away and cuts across the room.

  “Dakota,” he says.

  “Laaaaa-aaance!” someone calls from outside.

  Dakota stops, hand on the doorknob. “Who is that?”

  “Lance!” Jonathan screams from below. “Where are youuuuuu!”

  Lance finishes his wine. He can barely speak.

  “Bend is here.”

  They’re coming.

  His room is a crime scene. A ten-by-twelve-foot glossy photograph of him cheating on his girlfriend. He had snipped out Dakota but could still see the scissor lines. Sharp edges where she’d just been. The wine bottle. Two glasses. Her shape, pressed into the bed.

  The Bend Parade is coming upstairs. They’d gotten to Cheri. They are coming for him. Lance runs a series of wall-to-wall sprints—a human pinball, bouncing off corners, snatching up wineglasses, smoothing bedsheets.

  Fists on his wooden door. Shouting.

  They’ve come for the Wildman.

  “Lancelot!” Jonathan says. “Open up!”

  Lancelot. His nickname does it, turns a final gear in his head that automates his elbow and hand and causes him to unlock the door, and in rolls the storm.

  “Whoa!” Darren says. He fills the door frame—life-size, freckled, with dark hair twisting up behind his neck. Miriam dubbed the look shaggy chic, but Darren was clearly flirting with a mullet. Darren, looking him up and down, soaking up information. Lance looks at himself. Fitted T-shirt. Tattered jeans. It was as if he had carefully hidden all evidence of his criminality, then answered the door in an orange jumpsuit.

  “Whoa, Lance. Are you wearing a costume?” Darren asks.

  “Let me see.”

  Miriam. There she is. Miriam. A real person.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Well, look at you,” she says. He can’t tell exactly what she means. They hug, tight and close, and the essence of Miriam whips up around him: her perfume like fresh-cut grass, the familiar press of her body. They’re on an early-morning bus to a concert, side by side on her basement sofa, talking beside her locker. Laughing. Two years in a flash, slapping him awake.

  She smiles at him and it feels good.

  “So are you going to invite us in?” Jonathan asks, squeezing around Miriam. His perfectly square jaw. A blond sweep of hair over his eyes. Lance reminds himself: This is your best friend.

  “He doesn’t have to invite us,” Darren says, shoving past him. He carries a giant red cooler. Duct tape letters on top spell b-e-e-r. They’re inside. Reflected in the mirror. And Lance sees his room through their eyes. The muddy path worn into the beige carpet. Giant box of a television. Gray fur on the lampshade.

  “I’ve always wanted to get wasted in a seedy motel room,” Darren says. “Beer me.”

  “I don’t know if this qualifies as seedy,” Jonathan says, tossing Darren a beer. Lance catches the next one.

  “Are you kidding?” Miriam says. “I would rather pitch a tent than sleep in here.”

  “It’s the cat picture,” Jonathan says, handing Miriam a beer. “It shows a certain attention to detail.”

  “How did you get here?” Lance asks Miriam.

  “We drove,” she says. “It’s not that far.”

  “We’re on a mission from God,” Darren says.

  “Your mother,” Jonathan says. “Close enough.”

  “She bought gas. Meals. Snacks,” Darren says, grabbing up a paper sack. It was from Oodles!, his mother’s favorite grocery store. “She’s so nice, that Mrs. Hendricks.”

  “Generous woman,” Jonathan says.


  “And we drove the whole way without opening a beer,” Darren says. “Mission accomplished.”

  They knock beer cans, pop them open. Foam dribbles onto the carpet.

  “Looks like Lancelot’s already started,” Jonathan says, pointing to the wine bottle. “Drinking alone, are we?”

  An eel slithers in Lance’s stomach. He glances at the bathroom, where he hid Dakota’s wineglass. He closed the cupboard beneath the sink, right? He must’ve, but can’t specifically remember doing it.

  “Not alone,” Darren says, crossing the room. Lance’s heart jolts. Darren is walking to the TV, reaching behind the TV. What has he found? Dakota’s keys? Her book? He must tackle Darren before he can show anyone.

  “Lance has been hiding something from us,” Darren says. With a flourish, he holds up Mr. Jangles.

  AHH-HAHAHAHA!

  Lance shudders.

  “Jangles is a whisky man,” Jonathan says.

  “How do you know he’s a man?” Miriam says.

  “Please put that thing away,” Lance says.

  “Speaking of whisky, we’re going to that bar,” Darren says. “And my ass is getting served.”

  “Well—” Lance starts.

  “As long as someone can drive back to Bend,” Miriam says.

  “Why do you think we brought you, Miriam?” Jonathan says.

  Ooooooooo. Laughter. Miriam punches him.

  “Dude,” Darren says. “What’s up with not answering texts?”

  “No service,” Lance says.

  “Well look,” Darren says, staring at his phone. “I have perfectly good service.”

  “Most of the time,” Lance says. “It’s in and out.”

  “How about you, Jonathan? You got service?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Miriam?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Lance, let me see your phone.”

  “Piss off, Darren.”

  “Language, Lance!” Jonathan says.

  “You’d better be careful when you give your big speech,” Darren says. “Don’t let any of that Redneck Washington creep in.”

  “Is Leeds completely losing his mind?” Jonathan asks. “Your mother and him have been talking. Quite a little consortium.” Jonathan squares his shoulders and pulls his arms into his shirt so only his hands show—doing his best Mr. Leeds impression: “Way I see it, graduation is the most important event of your young lives. What I can’t understand is why some of you haven’t been measured for your gowns yet. Your arms. They may not fit. Look at me. Just look at me!”