Nothing broken. Nothing shot. She’s going to be bruised from head to toe, though.
I reach to pick a twig from her hair.
“This place is an asylum,” she says.
Dad yells from the cabin. “You all right?”
“Be there in a minute!” I call back.
But neither of us moves toward him. Instead, I sink back against a log. My body feels shaky.
This is how Sam must have felt after her run-in with Hazel.
“And I thought I was saving you from some bad-luck guy for the night,” I say.
“The woods are full of them.”
I start laughing then. I can’t help it. I’m not sure whether it’s all laughing, or laughing with a bit of crying mixed in. Whatever it is, Judith’s doing the same. Soon I have to sit like Sam was, with my head between my knees.
We’re still on the ground when Dad stomps over.
“What’s all this about?” he says, staring down at us.
“Maybe…trying not to get shot?”
His gaze shifts from me to Judith — as if her arrival and the gunshots might be connected — then back to me.
“Don’t be a smart aleck,” he says. “Helicopter must have riled him up. You should have called out as you approached.”
I tell myself that he was scared, and that he doesn’t mean to be so curt, and that this is how his thoughts come out under stress. But sitting beside Judith makes me hear his words the way she must hear them. No welcome. No apology for Walt, who just tried to kill us. Nothing but a shake of his head, as if he can’t believe how stupid we are.
He stomps away, leaving us to pick ourselves up and brush each other off.
“Home sweet home,” Judith mutters as she starts walking.
We reach the cabin just as Mom arrives, half-dripping, her hair wrapped in a towel. She must have been at the pool up the creek.
“Judith! You’re here! But I heard shots…” Her eyes flick back and forth between us.
“We’re fine,” I tell her.
“Walt,” Judith says.
Mom wraps her arms around my sister and ushers her into the cabin. Soon the two of them are chattering like chipmunks. I follow them inside and pretend to do homework while I listen. When Judith tells Mom about Garrett, she says he’s an accountant. She doesn’t bring up the brewery, or the fact they met at the bar.
Walt glares from his chair in the corner. When Dad comes in, he tries to say hello, but the girl talk takes up the whole cabin. He grunts and heads outside again to wash.
Hazel pokes her nose inside, her hind legs on the ground and her front legs on the stoop.
“If you get out of the way, I’ll come out,” I tell her.
She drops to all fours and backs up a step, allowing me to squeeze past.
I walk a little ways to the edge of the trees. Then I sit on a stump. When she settles beside me, I throw an arm around her.
“They’re all nuts, you know.”
Her head bobs. She shifts a little under my hand so I can scratch behind her ear.
I watch Dad tug his boots off again and close the door behind him. Through the walls I can hear the rumble of his voice and the softer sounds of Judith and Mom. Laughter. Then a string of curses from Walt, hard and sharp as bullets.
The bullets were a harsh bit of culture shock for Judith, but at least she knows these woods and this cabin. I imagine the scene the way Sam would have seen it if she’d come a couple miles farther through the bush.
What would she think of us all?
Walt’s easy to explain. Deranged hippie. Something happened in the middle of his Vietnam tour, and my grandpa talked himself onto a plane and flew himself home to Oregon. He crossed the border to Canada and joined a commune west of here, in the Slocan Valley, with a big group of draft dodgers. That’s where he met my grandma. But the commune didn’t work out, so he and Grandma left to start their own little utopia, growing weed.
I know this much from Dad. Walt doesn’t talk about any of it.
Grandma got cancer when Dad was a kid, and by the time she was diagnosed, it was too late. I guess Walt saw no reason to leave the mountains after that. No reason he couldn’t raise a son in the woods. I imagine things were just as he wanted them, until his stroke.
What would Sam think of Mom and Dad? Neo-hippies, maybe. Is there such a thing? Or maybe she’d see them as criminals. Or hermits. Anarchists. Libertarians.
How many kids get shot at on the way home from school? For a brief moment, I see my family in a Jackson Pollock splatter painting, all explosions of color. This is not the type of painting I want to create.
There’s a thought pushing at me, the way Hazel pushes her head under my chin, demanding more attention. I shove it away as the cabin door swings open.
“Isaac?” Mom calls. “Dinner’s ready!”
“On my way,” I answer, using Hazel’s flank to push myself up.
Dinner takes a bad turn halfway through. I don’t know why Mom and Dad can’t just enjoy the moment.
Dad starts it.
“How’s work? Still at the hotel?”
“It’s fine,” Judith says.
“Must be busy,” Mom says.
“I’m fine.”
“Going to church?” Dad asks.
Judith smiles. I can see her trying to keep the conversation light. “Sometimes I sit in the orchard and have my own church. Kinda like yours,” she says.
For a minute, there’s only chewing. Dad’s knife scrapes against his plate as he cuts through his slice of pheasant.
I can’t help picturing the guy coming out of Judith’s bus. They weren’t praying in there.
“Fucking prick,” Walt says. Hopefully his stroke hasn’t given him telepathic powers.
It’s enough to set Dad off.
“Don’t go making excuses to yourself,” he says, punctuating his words with little jabs of his fork in the air. “Before you know it, you’re on the wrong road.”
“Dad, I’m not on the wrong road.”
“I’m just saying that living on your own can be rough. You got dreams, this psychologist thing, you work hard to make it happen. You don’t sit around in the orchard pretending you’re getting somewhere.”
“I’m taking classes, Dad,” Judith says.
“Otherwise you may as well come back here,” he says.
“Fucking prick,” Walt offers.
“You gotta be accomplishing — ”
“Pass the potatoes, please.” Mom’s voice is a little shaky. When I look up, she’s blinking fast.
“Now, Marion,” Dad says.
“I know. I know,” Mom says, forcing a smile. She reaches over and squeezes Judith toward her briefly. “I just miss her. That’s all.”
“I’m only telling her — ”
“It’s okay, Dad. I get it,” Judith says.
But they’ve ruined it. She’s already pushing back her chair and picking up her plate. And I know why. A dose of Mom guilt is just as crushing as a Dad lecture.
“Isaac, I know it’s late, but you think you could give me a ride home?” Judith asks. “You can stay the night.”
Goodbyes are quiet, although Mom hugs Judith so hard and so long that my sister practically has to pry herself away.
Outside, we get about three steps from the cabin before Hazel blocks the way. I can see the dark outline of Big Bugger, too, and Queenie at the edge of the trees.
“Jeez,” Judith mutters. “Why doesn’t Walt shoot something useful?” She tries to skirt Hazel, but the bear moves to follow.
“Isaac, can you get her away from me? I can’t handle this right now.”
So I give the big hairy head a push. “Stay home. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Hazel settles onto her haunches with a little groan, like a kid getting left behind. The
other bears decide to keep their distance.
We stumble our way down the trail by flashlight, the route twice as long in the dark. At one point there’s a strange, crackling cry above us, then the answering hoot of a mother owl from a short distance away, reassuring.
It starts to rain as we climb onto the ATV. Within minutes, we’re soaked through.
“What on earth made me think I wanted to go home for a family dinner?” Judith yells into my ear, as I lean forward to pick out the rutted track in the headlights.
I have no answer.
Once she’s safely tucked into the passenger seat of my truck, Judith wrings the water from her hair. I rub my hands together, waiting for the blood to return before I turn the key.
I’m down the logging road, through the gate and onto the pavement before my sister speaks again.
“Isaac, our family is certifiable.”
I grunt.
“I’m serious,” she says, putting a hand on my arm. “You don’t see it because you’ve always been there, but that’s not what life is supposed to be. We should be going to parties and meeting people and exploring job options.”
“You’re doing all those things,” I say.
“Trying, at least. What about you? You can’t keep living with lunatics.”
And there it is — the thought that was pushing at me as I sat outside before dinner.
It’s me that’s crazy, not Sam. I live in the middle of a forest. On a grow-op. With bears. And I get shot at on my way home.
But this is how I’ve spent every single day of my life.
“I can’t leave,” I tell Judith.
“They’re grown-ups. They choose to live there. You can choose something else,” she says.
I can’t.
But maybe I can take half a step away. A temporary emotional leave of absence. Maybe I can get to know Sam, just for this last month or so before I graduate. Maybe I can even make some real progress in my painting, before I retreat to the woods on a more permanent basis.
Would it be so unforgivable if I took a little time off, for fun?
“Promise me you’ll think about it,” Judith says.
All the way to town, the spin of the truck wheels on the wet pavement and the swish of the wipers sound like words. Temporary. Absence. Temporary. Absence.
By the time we pull into Judith’s driveway, it’s almost eleven.
As she unlocks her door, I can hear her cell buzzing from inside. She’s left it sitting on her counter.
It stops, but starts again before we’ve peeled off our jackets.
Judith grabs it and has a whispered conversation with whoever’s on the other end.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, I understand. You didn’t mean it.”
“Of course.”
“I can’t right now.”
“My brother.”
“Okay, then.”
Partway through the call, Judith tucks her chin and twirls her hair in her fingers. Her voice turns softer. After she puts the phone down, it rings again. She picks it up, listens, giggles and hangs up. When her eyes meet mine, she blushes.
“What?” she says.
“That your new guy?”
“I don’t know if I’d call him my guy. Yet.” She touches her hair again.
I know I shouldn’t say it, but the words come out anyway. I’m no better than Dad, I guess.
“I didn’t like the looks of him.”
“You don’t even know him, Isaac.”
I shrug. Can’t argue with that.
“Besides, you’ve got your own issues to deal with.”
Can’t argue with that, either.
“Don’t be so hard on people, Isaac. We’re all muddling through, you know?”
She folds down her kitchen table into a lumpy foam bed, tucks a sheet around the edges and tosses me a pillow and blanket.
“Thanks for bringing me home,” she says. The boyfriend/girlfriend conversation appears closed.
“Anytime.” I put a hand on her arm before she can walk away. “You know I’d do anything you needed, right?”
A sappy smile crinkles her eyes. She nods.
“I know,” she says. A few minutes later, she whispers goodnight from her bunk and flicks off the light.
The darkness isn’t as complete here as it is at home. Through the edges of the curtains I can see the glow of a distant porch lamp. Instead of the creek, I hear the drum of rain on the metal roof.
Am I hard on people? I like to think I’m open-minded, but maybe I’m not.
I flip over on the thin foam, punching my pillow into a better shape.
Sam told her friends about Hazel, but to her, Hazel was just a bear. Most people would probably tell their friends about running into a wild animal in the woods. And it wasn’t really Sam’s fault she embarrassed me, either. Plenty of guys would have laughed when they found their locker decked out in lipstick. Lucas did.
In the morning, I’ll explain that I’m not the kind of guy who likes the spotlight.
Then I’ll get to work on my temporary leave of absence.
6
Lucas leans against his locker, absorbed in a car manual of some sort. When I get close, he looks up and smiles.
“I didn’t mean to give you a hard time yesterday,” he says.
“No big deal.” I shove my pack into my locker.
“Bygones?” he asks.
I don’t know why he’s so concerned, but he appears sincere.
“Bygones,” I repeat.
“Good. ’Cause I like you, man. I’d hate to think things were going to be uncomfortable.” Then he holds out his fist and I follow, and he leads the sort of complicated handshake at which drug lords in movies are inherently skilled.
I am not skilled.
I do have drugs, however. They’re in a paper bag that looks as if it might contain a peanut-butter sandwich. When I pass it over, he stuffs it in his pack. In return, I accept enough cash to fund a couple of fast-food meals. Ever since Judith got me hooked on fries, Mom’s roasted balsamroot has never tasted quite the same.
“I have to find Sam before the bell,” I tell Lucas.
Which is a stupid thing to say, because he nods knowingly.
I walk away before our newly sealed friendship gets cracked again.
It was that nod — that too-cool-for-this-life head tilt — that got me supplying Lucas in the first place.
These days, no one pays me much attention at school. I’m like an extra drinking fountain or a spare shoe under a locker. But a few years ago, it felt as if I wore bumper stickers on my forehead. Uncomfortable in Public. Misses All Pop Culture References.
Going from the backwoods to the petri dish of eighth grade was not without challenges. So when I smelled a whiff of pot on Lucas one day, I asked if he smoked. He said only when he could get his hands on weed, which wasn’t nearly often enough. The next morning I turned up with our first paper bag. I guess I bought myself some insulation, though I didn’t think of it that way at the time.
I can hear Sam’s voice before I even open the door to the auditorium. I slip inside, wiping my palms on my jeans. While I’m hiding in the shadows between the door and the back row of seats, she’s at center stage, shading her eyes with one hand, calling instructions to the person in the lighting booth. Something about blocking. She doesn’t see me until I inch my way up the aisle. Then she stops, mid-sentence.
“I’ll be back in a bit, okay?” she calls to the person in the booth before hopping from the stage. When she reaches me, I take her hand and pull her into the back row.
As soon as we’ve dropped into the seats, she starts talking.
“I embarrassed you. I’m so sorry. It’s a failing of mine. I’m generally embarrassing to be around.
I can only be friends with insensitive people because of it.” She presses my hand earnestly while she talks.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I saw Lucas and he said you were uncomfortable.”
I shrug. I’m not used to these torrents of words.
“I was hoping you’d come find me at lunch yesterday, Zac.”
I like the way she’s chosen her own name for me. One that no one else uses.
“This whole thing is twisted because my card was meant to be an apology,” she says. “Now I’m apologizing for apologizing.”
“You don’t have to. I wanted to — ”
My words will only seep, the way you can press on moss, and a few drops squish out around the edges.
But she’s waiting now, biting the edge of her lip. She looks like she’ll wait forever.
Get it together, I tell myself. Spit it out.
“I’m the one who should apologize. I overreacted.”
Her smile hits at high wattage. Like someone swiveled the stage lights onto us.
“I don’t like being the center of attention,” I tell her.
“Listen, there are people who love it and people who avoid it. I tend to be a spotlight personality, and you’re not. But opposites attract, right?”
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. Does she mean “attract” as a reference to physical attraction, or as a figure of speech? I try to find a way to ask, but maybe I’ve already squished all available water from the moss. Hopefully she can’t see my red cheeks in the semi-darkness.
“I could make it up to you,” Sam says.
“I’m not sure I can handle that.” There. My words are back.
She laughs, and any remaining tension drops from my shoulders. I lean back in my seat. I think I’m smiling again.
“How about a milkshake after school? My treat.”
“All right.”
“All right?” She’s bouncing a little on the chair.
“All right.”
She kisses me. Not a romance movie, deep-throat kiss. But a kiss. On the lips. And then she’s racing back up the aisle toward the stage, yelling instructions and apologies to the other people on stage, and laughing at the same time.
I stand slowly and fumble my way to the double doors.
Prince of Pot Page 5