What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  They are smoking the pot now and what happens is that Cliff feels that same feeling he had getting out of the jeep and walking down to the ocean on the road to Hana. Everything is bright and he is lighter and he is connected to everything. That is a feeling he has had before and he does not know if he needs to be smoking pot to have it, but he is glad to be having it again.

  Ben says, One year my parents let me bring my girlfriend. That was the best. Everything was heightened. It was like being high the whole time. She was my first girlfriend. My first serious one. It was, I don’t know, kind of like everything was new. Innocent. Like being Adam and Eve or something.

  Blue Lagoon, Cliff says. That is a movie he saw on TV once.

  What? Ben says. Never saw it. My parents left us pretty much alone, and the two of us, Diane and me, we just were so free, so into each other. So — attuned, yeah. On the same wavelength. We didn’t have to say anything. We were just two happy people at the beginning of world.

  There’s something about this story that makes Cliff feel old, much older than Ben.

  What happened to her? he says.

  Oh, we were just too young, Ben says, laughing. I was seventeen, Diane was younger. Fifteen, I think. It can’t last when you’re that young. I don’t think we made it through the next school term.

  Cliff feels shocked. Fifteen? And her parents let her go with you? Here?

  Oh, they sort of knew my parents, Ben says. They were cool with it. Actually, it was only Diane’s mom, now that I think about it. But she was cool with it. She was only worried about Diane being on birth control.

  But fifteen, Cliff says. He knows he’s being uncool but he can’t help it. He’s that shocked. Isn’t that illegal?

  Only if I were some old guy, Ben says. Like, old as I am now, even. This isn’t the fifties, man. Anyway, it wasn’t like that. She was just as into it. I mean, she wasn’t immature. It was the first time for both of us, and we were kind of innocent together, you know?

  Fifteen and seventeen, Cliff thinks. That is not so different. Not so different from almost fourteen and eighteen. Is it?

  What about you, man? Ben asks. You remember, you know, your first time?

  Cliff is not usually comfortable with this kind of talk. He gets enough of it from Ray. Dirty talk. But now, lying here. And there is still that feeling in him from earlier in the day, still that lightness and freedom.

  Do you think eighteen and fourteen is bad, though? he asks.

  You mean, too much age difference? Depends on the girl and the guy, I think. Some girls, they’re pretty mature at thirteen, fourteen. Mentally, too, I mean. They can think circles around a guy a few years older than them. I guess there has to be a cut-off. Thirteen and twenty, that would be creepy, yeah. Fourteen and eighteen, grey area. Depends on the couple. Why?

  Cliff can’t think how to answer.

  You like little girls? Ben asks, as if he doesn’t really care.

  No, Cliff says.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with liking adolescent girls, Ben says. I mean, evolutionarily, it’s probably natural, right? It’s just a legal problem, really.

  I don’t, Cliff says. And this is true. He thinks now surprisingly of the girl in his building, the girl on the floor below him, with the tattoo, who had brought Sophie back, that time. He had looked at her face and seen that youngness, seen that she was only eighteen or so, and had felt something like protectiveness, and not been able to think of her in a sexual way after that.

  It’s the other time that is the problem. The thing in the past. Don’t remember it now, he instructs himself. Though now he can see her, the way she took his hand, laughing in that way, pulling him. Her white top, its little buttons. The fine tendrils of her hair. Her name, which he hasn’t let even his brain say in years. Caitlin. There.

  You know, Ben says. It wouldn’t be surprising if we were attracted to really young chicks, you and me. Because of being, you know, taken care of, basically raised, by our sisters. By Mandalay and Cleo. I mean, our first experiences, being fed and washed and held, you know. By adolescent girls.

  Now Cliff is completely shocked. You’re saying — our sisters taking care of us — set us up. . .?

  I don’t know. Ben’s suddenly embarrassed. I heard my mom talking about it to a friend who’s a psychiatrist, actually. It’s probably all crap. You know shrinks.

  No, I don’t, Cliff says.

  You have had girlfriends, though, Ben asks.

  Cliff hears himself say: Yes, I’ve had girlfriends.

  Oh, of course. Ben says. Large horrible tatas.

  What?

  Sorry. It’s a rude nickname. Sorry.

  Loretta?

  Ben is silent.

  Cliff thinks, again: He is much younger than I am. Sometimes.

  Sorry, man, Ben says.

  Large horrible tatas, Cliff says. He gets it. If you take the name Loretta apart and put other words in. L-hor-tata. Loretta.

  Sorry, Ben says again.

  You are so immature, Cliff says.

  But then they’re both laughing their heads off.

  He asks: Why did you ditch me, that day in the pub?

  You ditched me, Ben says. You went to the can and then didn’t come back, and I finally found you on the other side, the lounge side, with Loretta.

  No, Cliff says. When I came out of the can. . . . What lounge side?

  Oh, man, Ben says. Oh man. You know there’s two bars, right? They’re pretty much the same but one side has a piano and we call it the lounge? And the washrooms are between them; they have doors both ways. . . .

  Oh man, Ben says.

  Okay. He needs to work this through his thoughts.

  I was in the wrong bar, he says. I came out of the can and I was in the wrong bar. That’s why I couldn’t find you guys.

  Holy shit, eh, Ben says. Talk about random. Like stepping into an alternative universe.

  He doesn’t know whether he’s more relieved or angry. Or whether he just feels stupid.

  THE WAVE SEIZES HIM and tosses him over and slams him down. There’s a sharp tug on his wrist: The sea is trying to tear off his hand. No: the board, which is being sucked backward, away from the beach. His hand strikes the bottom and he scrabbles with his feet but the sand is being sucked away; his feet won’t stay under him. Another wave slams him then: He’s being tossed like a seal pup by an orca. He’s helpless. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to hold pressure in his nose but the water shoots into his nostrils. His chin scrapes along the sand.

  Then the tether goes slack, and he thinks: I have lost the board. But the water stills, he stands up, he can see the board, still attached. Ben zips by him, whooping, gives him a high-five. He gets back on the board.

  Again and again he swims out, tries to sense the ripeness and the angle of the waves. Too late, and they break closer to shore, and he bobs uselessly behind. Too early, and they crash down on him, so that he is slammed, churned, roughed up. Each time the waves catch him, he feels himself helpless, and then his knees or elbows or ears connect with the sand or the board and he is bruised and scraped, and each time he feels the salt water scour out the inner channels of his brain. And always the fear, when he is tumbled, of being pulled under too long, of being sucked out to sea, of drowning, of annihilation.

  But the water is warm, and he does not drown, and he learns to give himself up to it, to let his shoulders and spine soften into it, to let the surf have its moment of power over him. And then it seems to relent, to thrash him less fiercely. It bats at him; it strikes him without claws. Then his fear diminishes, and he feels in its place an opening, a respect, a curiosity.

  When his body tires so that he can hardly stand, he rides the board in, lying on it prone, hanging on with all his grip. It’s like an incredibly fast sled ride. It’s like he’s tobogganing down the spine of the planet.

  On the beach he flattens himself and it’s a relief to just breathe, and Ben comes in and lies down too.

  Ben say
s, You’re doing great, man.

  No, he isn’t. He has barely stood up for a few minutes, in all that time. He has managed to stay upright, to ride a wave for a few seconds, consecutively. But I have learned a lot about wiping out, he says.

  Even lying on the hot sand, he can still feel the rhythmic pull of surf on his body, his torso and legs correcting for it. It’s the oddest sensation. It feels as if something has changed inside him, at the cellular level. Something has been replaced. This is a new body, with new senses, new knowledge, new power. He thinks: Nothing will ever be the same.

  He remembers again Caitlin’s face, the prettiness of it, how it had just made him happy. How she had drawn him into the field, into the tall corn. She had pulled off his T-shirt, undone his jeans, put his hands to her breasts, then into her underwear. He can still feel, see her: the softness of her face and hair, her nipples, which he has not seen anything like since, the size and texture and colour of the little wild strawberries that grew in the meadows, but not really: Really they were just like themselves. He remembers the silkiness of her, between her legs, the small warm slippery space that he had come to want, with every cell, to be one with. It had felt as clean and natural as rain. His first time, and she had guided him, and said it would be alright. Innocent, Ben had said, and he had felt that, innocent.

  But at the same time, he had known better. He had known he shouldn’t. That she had been in trouble and the Giesbrechts were her last chance, and he should not fool around with her. He had been told, not in so many words, but let know, that she was off limits.

  He had not known that she was just shy of her fifteenth birthday, not then. But even if she had been older, sixteen, he should not have touched her.

  But the silkiness of her, the softness, the way she took his hand.

  It was okay and not okay. That was the thing. It was okay and not okay at the same time. That is the thing he has never been able to understand until now.

  What Mr. Giesbrecht and the others had done, though: That was not okay. He felt, still, the deep shame of that. He sees himself, now, at eighteen, in the circle of their dark suits, their heavy men’s bodies. He does not want to think about that but he makes himself look at it. The shame makes his mind shut down but he calls it by its name, shame, and makes it smaller. He makes himself hold the shame in his arms like a sack of feed and look closely at himself in that circle. Their heaviness, which he tries also to name. Anger. Disapproval. And fear, the thought comes to him. How fear, though? The force of them, in their complete authority, their complete belief that they were right and he was wrong. How fear, when there were so many of them (but were there? Was it not just three: Mr. Giesbrecht — Elder Giesbrecht, he was called at church — and his neighbour, also a farmer, and the other man, who might have been — but his mind won’t let him see that right now). So even three of them: their weight, their force.

  Had they beat him, pushed him around? His heart is beating so quickly, right now, his nerves are telling him to stop thinking about it, but he holds himself steady. He breathes and he hears the surf and feels the land breeze touch his cheek and he holds himself steady, as if lowering himself carefully, carefully, into a well. Had they beaten him? No: He can say that. Had they threatened to beat him? He has to listen, now. He had once heard the neighbouring farmer threaten to staple someone’s balls together. His own son’s. Cliff had been sent over to borrow some tool, had come around a corner of a truck and heard that. I catch you doing that again I staple your balls together.

  But he had not heard the neighbour say that to him. No: They had worn their dark suits and talked to him about God and punishment. That kind of threat. Which he hadn’t really believed in anyway, but he thought they all did and that gave it force.

  But he knows there was a threat. Something that had scared him, had come down on him like a great mountain of rock and dirt, had crushed him so he couldn’t think.

  He lets himself feel the safe harness that’s holding him, lets himself down the well a little more. Looks at the circle. Where is it? It is in one of the Sunday School rooms at the church. He sees now the pinky-brown curtains at the window, the silver-coloured latch, a semi-circle with a little tab, the lower half of the window open. He’d thought about diving through but the opening was too small. And there was a heavy-duty screen, anyway. The walls were cinderblock painted thickly white, the floor was white tile of some sort of rubber or plastic, with streaks in it. It had never occurred to him, staring at that floor Sunday after Sunday, that it was meant to look like stone but he sees that now. The green chalkboard, with the metal ledge below and the rolled projector screen above. It was a classroom. The door, heavy pinky-brown painted metal, with a silver metal grill at shin level. The door is shut: two of the men between it and him. The painted metal folding chairs. Two of the men, Elder Giesbrecht and the farmer, they were large men, and sat with their legs apart, the bulges of the Sunday-suit crotches and their white-shirted bellies heavy, substantial. (Who was the other man?)

  He also in a white shirt, dark pants. His tie in a roll in his pocket. He had been walking out of the chapel, after the service. A hand on his shoulder. Come this way, please.

  Then the talk of trust, of generosity, of opening their hearts and homes. Like a son. He had not seen what was coming, still, then. Only after that, the swerve in the conversation, the going down a track he hadn’t foreseen, couldn’t see the end of, only that he was likely not going to get off it in once piece.

  Confess, they’d said, but he had not. He had not admitted it. Stronger than his fear of them had been the conviction that what had happened between him and Caitlin was private, none of their business. He’d just sat there and said nothing.

  For a while he’d blamed her, Caitlin. For the first little while. He’s been angry at her, wondered why she’d told them. Why she’d got him in trouble, set him up to go through that misery. But then he’d seen her: They’d sent her somewhere else but he’d seen her briefly, at the bus depot, and seen in her his own fear, and known. Then he hadn’t been angry any more.

  What had they threatened her with? Why had she felt it necessary to tell? How had they even known to take her into a little room and question her? He didn’t know that. But he had remembered, later, seeing her come out of a room, the three of them around her. After youth group, that had been. Tuesday night. Not really unusual but that she didn’t look at him. And that Ed Dyck’s hand had been on her shoulder, and her twisting slightly under it, and he’d wanted to knock it off, but she had looked away from him, turned her back to him.

  That was the third guy. Ed Dyck. Yes. Always at youth group, Tuesdays. Always taking them to the pool or to Dairy Queen, giving one of them a ride in his pickup cab. The rest had to sit in the back, the bed of the truck. Always one of the girls in the cab.

  Where is his mind going now? He is not going in a useful direction, for now.

  So, Ed Dyck in that room. Yes. His brush cut, his reddened face. A cop. No, not a cop. Security guard, maybe. It was him, though.

  Your name is going on record, do you understand? You’ll always have a record. If you get so much as a speeding ticket, a parking ticket, the police will look it up and they’ll see that you have committed a felony. That’s what it is, Cliff. It’s a felony. Statutory rape. And you should be going to jail. It’s the mercy of these elders here that you’re not, but that’s what will happen if you ever get in trouble again.

  He sees now that there are a few holes in this threat. He’s never thought it through, never let himself really think about it, but he sees now. First of all. There was no record. He wasn’t arrested. There would not be a record. He’s watched enough crime dramas on TV to know that. Second of all. They didn’t really want to know. They didn’t want to go too deeply into it. Because who knows what Caitlin would have said. What other girls would have said. They really didn’t want to know.

  This he sees in images, rather than thoughts, lying on the warm cream-coloured sand. He’s sweating and
the breeze from the ocean washes over him, cooling him, wicking the sweat from his face and chest. He’s splayed on his back, open and helpless under the great blue sky. And the very air is drying him, bathing him with coolness and light.

  It had been wrong and it had not been wrong. Inside a small dark circle on a small farm in a small community in a scarcely populated corner of a country, it was wrong. And maybe it was wrong in other ways, for other reasons. But under this huge blue sky, in the warm sea, it is not wrong or right, and it no longer matters. The warm sea has washed it from him.

  The fear that has followed him — uniforms, handcuffs, court, jail — is suddenly not the problem, he sees. It’s smoke: It dissipates in clear air. As he looks at it. He feels that his mind has cleared, is ticking along better than it used to. Like a big whack of matted wet grass has been shaken out.

  He feels the damp and cool, now, through the sand: feels the earth beneath him, pressing up at him, holding him, just the right shape and temperature for his body. The planet is very large, and there is room for him on it: room for him to live, and to not be under anyone’s jealous eye.

  After

  THE SECRET COLOUR of the forest is orange. That’s the colour it is if you don’t listen to the green. If you listen properly with your eyes shut. All around you is orange light.

  She is colouring the orange trees and Mariah says: Trees are green. But Mariah doesn’t know everything. She makes the trees orange and she presses harder on one side to make the shading, like Auntie Mandalay showed her. She makes the bark scribbly and she makes the branches come down like arms, even though Mariah says: Tree branches go up like this. She draws them down like sweaters with too-long arms. She colours softly with a different crayon to make the light, the secret light around the trees.

  It’s a forest fire, Jacob says but she tells him it is not. All around the edge she makes the blue light that the trees keep out. And at the bottom, the browny-red roots of the trees, which Uncle Cliff says are as big as the trees. She has forgotten to leave enough room, so she draws just some of them.