Bystanders

by Tara Laskowski

  ***

  Jack has always liked the song “I Am a Rock.” He thinks of the words now as he settles into his too-small chair, tipping back his sixth bottle of beer. It’s just barely September, and we all know what he’s feeling: honestly, what can be better than this, sitting outside with a nice buzz and the night breeze around you, confident in your own view of the world, a rock, an island. He looks at Jen and Bobby and he pities them and their little views of the way things should be. He always has. He remembers going over to his aunt and uncle’s house when he was a kid, and how Jen always wanted to play house. She cooked dinner and he pretended to come home from work. She really enjoyed setting the table and asking him how his day was.

  As if she’s messing with him, Jen claps her hands. “We’ve got dessert!” she says. “Diane’s cake! Who wants some?”

  “I think I want to play some football,” Jack says suddenly, feeling it wash over him in cold certainty.

  Bobby laughs. “You’re nuts.”

  “No, come on,” Jack says again, his eyes darkening. “Just one pass. For old times sake.”

  Jen laughs nervously, her eyes focused on Bobby in a way that Diane can’t read. “You boys and your games,” she says, trailing off at the end. Diane refuses to look at her. She wants her to hang dry on this one. And Diane knows, with a vicious smug satisfaction, that Jack will prevail. We all know it, too, though we can’t help feeling a little sorry for Bobby, who’s surely regretting the sweater vest right about now.

  “All right, just one,” Bobby says, setting down his bottle next to the grill. He walks inside, comes back a few minutes later with a football. Jack grins. He knows Bobby can’t bear to look like a pussy in front of him. All those times at practice, in the locker room, the challenges Bobby never backed down from, the fights he went for even when he knew he’d lose. Bobby tosses Jack the football.

  “Go out,” Jack says, and Bobby starts running. He looks funny to Diane, a banker running in his pressed khakis. She has a bad feeling, the way we used to all feel hauling six-packs up to the old coal mine, but she thinks if she doesn’t pay much attention, if she just goes along with it, everything will be all right.

  “He’s such an asshole,” Jen mutters. Diane doesn’t know who she’s referring to.

  “Farther, farther,” Jack shouts, until Bobby gets almost to the back fence. “Now!” he says and throws a perfect spiral right into Bobby’s open arms. And his daddy always said he should’ve been a quarterback.

  Bobby catches it and starts running back. If his knee is bothering him, he doesn’t show it. He has his hands up in the air, holding the football like he is about to spike it, like the world is about to leap to their feet in wonder, when Jack lunges at him.

  ***

  Let’s freeze this for a moment, the two guys in motion, about to collide. There is something about this moment that seems inevitable, sure, we felt that from the moment Jack and Diane stepped into the house. Too much history there. We know some of it. We know enough to know that even though this is happening, it’s not really going to change much. You can’t change all those years, all the little hurts, the vicious rumors, the day-to-day decisions that people make that pile up, one on top of the other like a very elaborate, sickeningly sweet cake. You just have to take a small slice and eat it.

  Here’s what we know: that Jack, at this moment, has had three-too-many beers. And he’s dying to wipe that smug smile off Bobby’s face. He wants to knock him down, show him they aren’t on the same team anymore. That they were never on the same team. He’s thinking about high school—we all do when we get together in groups—and he’s thinking about Diane.

  We don’t really know the whole story. There were lots of rumors, and after awhile around here rumors become fact. We know that some of Diane’s friends said she was in trouble, of the nine-month variety. We know she and Jack broke up for awhile around that time, for longer than their other break-ups, for long enough that we worried that might really be it. We know she and Bobby were good friends then, that she would trust him to help her. But we can only imagine, along with Jack, what really happened the day she might’ve gone to do it. Bobby’s hand on Diane’s back, comforting her as they walk to the clinic. Diane signing papers, meeting the doctor, hands sweating, thin hospital gown fraying at the edges and curling up around her calves—we imagine it as surreal, we imagine she may have pulled away as though she was watching a movie, watching all this happening to someone else.

  Then Bobby pacing the waiting room, collecting her when it’s over, driving her home, maybe even kissing her cheek, wishing somehow it was different. Wishing maybe he was the one. We don’t know what happened when Diane finally found herself alone, curled up on the bed with her giant stuffed panda, staring at the walls covered in Bryan Adams and Christian Slater posters that only a few of us privileged folks had ever seen. We’re not sure who she told, or even who we ever heard it from in the first place. We don’t know how she feels now.

  That’s the stuff we don’t talk about when we all get together. That’s the stuff we only speculate at home, in bed in the dark with our wives, kids sleeping in the next room, water leaking in the bathtub. That’s when we say it aloud, justifying our own decisions maybe—the real reason we think Jack won’t marry Diane.

  We do know, however, that when Jack throws himself into Bobby’s middle out there in the backyard, he wants to hurt him. He wants to break bone.

  ***

  The two of them crash loudly into the grill and fall to the ground. Jack feels the crush of a beer bottle pressing into his skin and it feels good.

  Jen screams. It takes Diane longer to react and by the time she stands, the guys have rolled away from each other. Jack is groaning, and Diane can see blood on the back of his shirt. Bobby is holding his knee with one hand and with the other he’s still clutching the stupid football.

  “What the fuck?” Jen shouts, her face so red it is almost purple. “What is wrong with you guys? What is wrong?”

  “I’m fine,” Bobby says, but he isn’t and they can all see it.

  “Jesus Christ, you guys will never grow the fuck up,” Jen screams now, and in her pinched face Diane can see her clearly, her bumpy cheeks and thin lips, that small chin that makes her look defensive all the time, all that makeup she uses and always has used, even in high school, how jealous she (and all of us) always were of Diane’s perfect skin. The way she always mocked her with, maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybeline as though by making fun of Diane it would put them on an even plane, make Bobby stop looking at her like that when he thought Jen wasn’t watching.

  Diane pulls the broken bits of glass from Jack’s back. He groans, burps. He feels heavy, large, a massive sack of a burden. Her burden. If he was really hurt, she wonders how the heck she would ever lift him into the car to drive him to the hospital. It overwhelms her in a way she hasn’t felt in a very long time—the idea of being responsible for someone else—and Diane feels like leaping off the side of the deck and running until her legs fall off.

  Jen is still yelling, now through blubbery tears. She has a cordless phone in her hand and waves it around talking about calling an ambulance.

  “Will you just shut up?” Diane says, even though we know what she really wants to say is: Do you realize how much better you have it, you dumb bitch?

  “No one ever gets by me,” Jack says. He sits up, smacks his thigh. Somewhere in the distance, they all hear a loud rumble from some young punk gunning his motorcycle’s engine. “No one. You might think you have, but I know it.”

  Diane sits back on her heels. Somewhere, underneath all the shouting and confusion, she thinks she might hear the chipper beeping of her phone, the electronic tinny version of a rock song popular many years ago, but she’s not really sure, and anyway, it’s too far away.

  The Oregon Trail

  We left at the beginning of summer, figuring at
least three months of good weather. We packed up what we could in the CRV. We had our baby, our camera, and our AAA membership. I quit my job at the dealership outright. Craig wasn’t teaching until the fall, so we had a safety net in case we needed to come back.

  We left because our apartment, and the world, felt small. The only new friends we had were parents who talked endlessly about the safety regulations of car seats and the color of their baby’s poop. We left because the president wasn’t going to get re-elected. We left because someone set fire to the playground near our house. We left because we started fighting clichés—chores, snoring, the cost of cable.

  We left the cats with trusted friends, the bonsai tree with my dad.

  We left because that’s what people do when they are afraid.

  ***

  It was Craig’s idea to follow the Oregon Trail, albeit backwards. It was something, anyway. And we used to play that game, which I hated because my family always got sick and died, while Craig’s family forged through the fucking country and founded a city. He planned and plotted and they thrived.

  So the Oregon Trail it was. I wanted to see cattle, snorting, grazing free-range cattle just doing their thing out on open fields. I wanted to be somewhere where you could see for ten miles without a building getting in the way. I wanted to stand in the wind and let the dust settle in my hair. It sounded romantic. It sounded like just what we needed.

  ***

  We drove for long periods of time, singing along to the radio until that got annoying. The day was hot, the windows down. Around mid-day we stopped at a Farmer’s Market alongside the road. I had to wake Dru. We wandered. At one stand, a farmer was selling blueberries. I bought a pint and shared it with Dru. He loved blueberries. “Boo ber, boo ber,” he’d say, holding out his fat fingers for more.

  ***

  I started to feel sick around late afternoon and finally asked Craig to stop. The sun was hot on my head. It felt like it could burn right through me. I vomited hard on the side of the road. The blueberries. The desert looked unforgiving out there and I imagined suddenly those early pioneers, out here in wagons and petticoats, paving the way in the desert with its rocks and dangerous plants and animals.

  Dru cried inconsolably, like the way he had when he’d been colicky. We kept driving because we weren’t sure what else to do. He shit out the blueberries, diaper after diaper, until we had to stop at an all-night CVS to buy more.

  I sat in the back and sang “The Rainbow Connection,” though I only knew the first verse. Craig wanted me to google the rest. “Some things we just don’t always have to know,” I snapped at him.

  ***

  Saving dollars meant crappy motels that we called “vintage” to make ourselves feel better. We were never good at road trips. I’d forgotten the travel crib sheets and Craig kept second-guessing the route. One week, then two, then three. We began to get on each other’s nerves. The air dried out my contacts, sandpaper in the eyes. The car seat made Dru’s thighs sweat. He giggled like a leprechaun whenever I reached back and yanked on his big toe. “More play.” We listened to books on tape. Craig started eating Pop Tarts right out of the silvery package. I kept thinking of the crumbs everywhere at our feet.

  ***

  The car overheated somewhere just past the Red Desert in Wyoming. We sat in the pitch dark and waited for the tow truck from AAA to find us.

  The lights of the pick-up truck that came up behind us felt like floodlights. The kids stopped beside us, blocking the road, two teenagers with bandannas covering their hair, blasting country music. I recognized the song—something about jumping into the fire to really experience life.

  The kid in the passenger seat looked over. His smile was like peeling back a can of Friskies—cold, sharp, metallic, with a whiff of something foul underneath.

  ***

  When I told my mother I was marrying Craig, she frowned in that disapproving-but-I’m-not-going-to-say-it-out-loud way. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “Ma? Of course. What kind of reaction is that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just that…well,” she trailed off.

  My father finished it for her. “The man knows too much about flowers,” he said. “No man should know that much about flowers.”

  ***

  “You havin’ some kind a problem here?” one of the boys yelled over. He had a can of Yoo-Hoo in his hand.

  “No, everything’s fine,” Craig said in a higher tone than normal. “Thanks.”

  “Doesn’t look fine,” the boy said. His friend, the driver, snickered. He turned down the music, and his friend leaned out of the window to look in our car. Eyes flickered on Dru. Go ahead, look at him again, I thought. I will go for your eyes first. Thrust my thumbs as hard as I can through that pulp and wash out the bits later in a 7-Eleven sink.

  “Tow truck’s on its way,” Craig said. “Should be here any minute.”

  “Right, right,” Yoo-Hoo said. The driver revved the engine. It echoed out into the desert.

  ***

  Craig grew up in Brooklyn with Jewish parents who ate pork. I grew up in Seattle, where we lived, where it always rained and smelled like fish. Craig and I bonded in college over Westerns. Our first date was to see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at the Gateway Theater for Classics Wednesday. Craig brought an airplane bottle of vodka and spiked our soda. He was working on his thesis at the time and pointed out the names of all the desert plants to me. I didn’t mind.

  Later it evolved into a drinking game. We’d watch any kind of cowboy movie—the only rule was you had to do a shot for a shot. We liked the guns, the horses, the morals.

  All we ever wanted was simplicity, green grass, straight whiskey.

  Instead we got a two-bedroom, fifteenth floor apartment in the heart of Seattle, where you could see the Needle in the smallest bedroom window if you pressed your face hard to the glass and looked left. We got jobs in the city and a newspaper subscription. We got pregnant.

  ***

  “Got a joke for ya,” Yoo-Hoo said.

  “Pardon me?” Craig said. He never talked like that, pardon me. It made him sound like an old man, white and weak.

  “What do you call a monkey with a bomb?”

  “What?”

  “Did you not hear me?”

  “I don’t know,” Craig said. I could tell he wanted to roll his window back up. I imagined him doing it and the guys shooting a bullet right through it. Bam.

  No one really wants a cowboy, I used to tell my friend Mindy, who always seemed to fall for anyone with a drawl and a drinking problem. Those kind of guys leave you for bigger, noble purposes. They work too hard, or they die too young, or they have wandering eyes and smell like cow shit.

  “You gotta guess, man. That’s the whole point.” Yoo-Hoo was getting fidgety, twisting around in his seat, cracking his can between his fist.

  I kept looking back at the baby. He was sleeping still, somehow, through all this racket. When we first brought him home, we used to tiptoe around the house during his naps, careful not to clang a pot or close a door too fast. Then one day the neighbors above us had their flooring replaced and Dru was so still through it all I went in his room and rested my hand on his back until it rose with his breath.

  “Just guess,” I said, words spitting out of me like shrapnel. “Just fucking guess.”

  Craig looked at me, his eyes blinking crazily. He was flushed. I could tell that in the dark of the desert. Like he’d just run ten miles.

  “Ape shit,” Craig said. The guy closest to us leaned out, and Craig said it louder. “Ape shit.”

  “Ape shit,” he said to the driver. They repeated it again, laughing. The driver hit his palm against the steering wheel. “Ape shit.” They nodded. “That’s pretty good, man.”

  Craig laughed, too, a little too hard. Yoo Hoo crushed the can wi
th his fist and tossed it into the road. He tipped his head once, twice at us. The driver revved the engine again, tore off, rubber screaming on the hot pavement. He held his horn down for what seemed like miles. If I concentrate hard enough, I can still hear it echoing over the mountain, a wailing, dying sound.

  ***

  We found some small motel with a sombrero sign and a built-in pool. The water was inky and streaked with the reds and blues of the neon hat sign.

  We put Dru in the travel crib between our beds and went outside to stick our feet in the water, the baby monitor between us. It was quiet except for the hum of a generator.

  “This is the life,” Craig said.

  “If only we had some Boone’s wine or what was that stuff—Zima?”

  “Classy.”

  Neither of us would admit what we were thinking: that gentle way our couch back home gave way to your body weight after a long hard day. The homeless guy with the missing finger who sat in the alley across the street. Sesame bread from scratch. The fact that those boys could’ve slit all our throats and left us bleeding it out in the dirt and Craig could do fuck-all to stop it.

  “I googled it, by the way,” I said.

  Craig looked over at me, skimmed his fingers along the water’s surface. “What?”

  “It’s a baboom. A monkey with a bomb. A baboom.”

  The motel manager opened the office door, dragging a garbage bin behind her. She had one of those old lady housecoats on with pastel floral print. She coughed, not bothering to cover her mouth, and looked over at us.

  “Watch yer bums,” she called. “The scorpions come out at night.”

  ***

  You don’t arrive at the Great Plains. They come to you. Suddenly you realize you’re in the middle of those patches of squares you usually only see from airplanes. Suddenly you realize how inconsequential you and your vintage washed jeans are to the earth. It’s been there. It couldn’t care less what you want, what you desire, where you came from, and where you’re going.