“Go ahead,” Darby said. “You can pet him now.”
The dog crunched the biscuit, watched The Kid’s hand move over the top of his head. Darby squeezed Steve’s scruff, the skin tight between his fingers. He talked low to the dog and The Kid. The Kid set his hand down on top of the dog’s head. Patted the dog’s head once, twice, then moved his hand over the dog’s ears, down to Darby’s hand at the back of the dog’s neck. Darby took The Kid’s hand, squeezed it over the dog’s scruff, moved his own hands away. The dog finished the biscuit, The Kid holding him by the scruff. Darby stood, knees popping, took a slow step back. The Kid put his free hand on the dog’s back, patted down the hair that was still standing on end.
They ordered pizza and sat in the pickup listening to the news. The day getting soft, the sky going pink. Steve Rogers lay on the front porch, droopy-eyed, drying in the evening air. Darby couldn’t stop thinking about the apartment in Chinatown. The unfinished room, the rabbit on the dresser. The speck, the fleck in his throat; he coughed to try to jar it loose, spat out the window onto the lawn.
The Kid was pulling the sleeve of his undershirt, asking him something in the notebook.
What was it like?
“What was what like?” Darby said.
The Kid turned a page, clicked on the dome light so it was easier for Darby to read.
Where you grew up.
Darby pushed back at the thought of the unfinished apartment. He focused on The Kid, on The Kid’s question.
“It was quiet,” Darby said. “That was the main thing. How quiet it was.”
How quiet was it?
Darby turned the radio down. “What do you hear?”
The Kid tilted his head toward the window, listened. Wrote slowly, as each thing came to him.
Fire sirens. Helicopter. Cars on Vermont.
“There was none of that,” Darby said. “There was still some noise. Cars that came through on the highway, big rigs, air conditioners in some of the trailers, generators humming. But not like this. And there was nothing at night. Everything was still. No noise except coyotes howling out in the dark, past where the last lights reached.”
What did that sound like?
“Sounded like coyotes howling.”
The Kid shook his head. He didn’t know that sound.
Darby took in a deep breath and let out a loud coyote howl, held it until his lungs had emptied. The sound trailed away out of the pickup, through the yard, up and over the house.
The Kid smiled.
“Sounded like that,” Darby said.
It was the stillness that he missed, that came back to him in dreams. The flat, deadened days, heavy with sun and heat, the air unmoving, Darby floating on his back, watching the tops of palm trees against the purple sky as he drifted slowly, one end of the pool to the other.
A retirement community was being built at the foot of the mountains, about a mile from the trailer park. A walled neighborhood of flamingo pink bungalows arranged around the curving greens of a private golf course. Construction would take most of the summer, trucks moving sand, moving earth, a large crew of white guys and Mexicans and a couple Cahuilla Indians building the bungalows, importing great loads of sod, palm trees, shrubs, rose bushes. Seeding grass, digging ponds, installing fountains, paving streets, laying the high cement perimeter wall, painting it all pink. Darby was fifteen years old and he and some friends biked down there almost every day after school, during school if they ditched, and asked for work, unloading trees from trucks or seeding the grass or hauling tools from one end of the site to the other. Chickenshit, buck-an-hour jobs, but some cash for beer or cigarettes, for a bag of weed or a packet of ephedrine tablets from the truck stop by the highway. It was like some kind of saccharine fever dream, the place taking shape around them, pastel stucco and sculpted hedges, grass so green it seemed fake. The workers rode golf carts around the thin, twisting streets, gunning the carts as fast as their electric engines would go, taking the corners on two wheels, tipping over more often than not, disgorging tools and sod and mulch across the rich new asphalt in a torrent of belly-laughs and curses, calling for Darby and his friends, whoever had shown up that day, because this was one of their jobs, cleaning up after the workers had flipped a cart.
As the months went on, fewer of Darby’s friends went with him to the site. They didn’t understand his fascination with the place. It was hot, repetitive work, no money, all to build houses where rich old people would come to die. But Darby was entranced by the place, by the process, the progression of its construction and the accumulating end result. The strangeness of what was being built. He went down to the site almost every day. The foreman grew to expect him, had a list of things for him to do when he arrived, chewed him out if he didn’t show.
At five o’clock they’d call it a day and sit out on the newly poured cement patio behind the first tee, or by one of the pools they’d filled prematurely, soaking their feet, drinking beers, passing bottles of tequila. When it got dark, someone would give him a ride home in the back of a pickup, drop him off at the entrance to the trailer park, muscles aching, woozy with booze and sun. He’d sit in the front room of the trailer and have a beer with Eustice and tell her all the things he’d learned at school that day. She’d listen and smile, Darby never quite sure if she believed his stories or just liked to hear him tell them.
There were days when it was too hot to work, and Darby would find the front gate locked, no sign of activity within. He’d climb the wall and walk the streets, the golf course, careful to stay off the seeded areas, giving the grass a chance to grow. He felt protective of the place. He’d helped build this, helped bring this remarkable thing to the desert. He relished those days alone, knowing it would all be over soon, that the crew would go on to the next job, leaving him behind, and the place would be filled by a colony of the aged, retirees and blue hairs, leather-skinned sunbathers by the pool, visiting grandchildren, the cautious carts of morning golfers, afternoon naps and cocktail hour, a massive Lincoln or Buick in every garage.
He would find a filled pool and strip down to his underpants, lie on his back and float. Watching the tops of palm trees moving against the purple sky, feeling the warmth of the water, his skin taking on sun. When his ears bobbed under there was a rushing sound, a seashell roar, and when they came back above there was nothing, just the silence of the desert. He’d float until the day faded, and then he’d gather his clothes and walk back along the coiled streets, evening coming slowly, the stillness around him becoming more complete.
In his bed in the back room of the trailer he slept soundly those nights, despite the heat, and on the rare occasion that he slept soundly now out in the pickup it was because he had dreams of that place, the last weeks before the colony arrived, the floating stillness, an entire day like a held breath.
He told The Kid all of this, minus the drinking and drugs. The Kid listened, looked out the windshield of the pickup at the dog dozing on the porch steps. Darby sat back in the seat, looked out at the house, the graying sky beyond. The night around them had paused, the silence had paused, so Darby kept talking.
One night toward the end of construction, after a couple of hours sitting and drinking at the first tee, some of the crew drove to a tattoo parlor in Palm Springs. Darby tagged along. He wanted to be part of this. A rite of manhood. Ink on your arm. He sat in the neon-lit shop, listening to the needle buzz, sketching an idea on the back of a hot rod magazine while the other guys got their tattoos. The artist was a Cahuilla with a Fu-Manchu mustache named Gil, and when it was finally Darby’s turn, he showed the sketch to Gil, to the other guys, who all thought it was some kind of headless snake. A long, elaborate curve that would start at the top of Darby’s right shoulder, twisting and turning in on itself, branching off into other curves that circled his bicep before meeting again down at his elbow. Darby let them believe it was a snake. He knew that the truth would bring a shower of ragging and name-calling. The curves were actually the str
eets that moved through the retirement community, the white stone paths that hugged the bungalows and the greens of the golf course. He had walked them countless times, was able to draw them accurately from memory. It was a map of what they had built, but he let them believe it was a snake. Darby pulled off his t-shirt and Gil swabbed his arm and got to work. He didn’t object when Gil added a snake’s head to the end of the curves where all the streets met, what would be the community’s front gate, didn’t object when Gil inked yellow eyes and a flicking tongue, an inscription below the open mouth: Don’t Tread. The map was the important thing, getting it down so he’d never forget what they’d built.
Within a week they were finished, the last bungalow up, the last fairway seeded. They took a final, celebratory drink at the eighteenth hole, packed the equipment and locked the gate behind them. The crew split and moved on to other jobs, some going back to Los Angeles, some going north or east where more golf courses were being conjured from the desert. Only Darby remained, back to school, back to his friends, who were all impressed with the badass snake twisting down his right arm. His skin was still tender and pink when he saw the first cars pull off the highway, air-conditioned Lincolns and Buicks, windows rolled up against the heat, the first gray settlers heading up toward the pink stucco walls.
He never went back. He was tempted, he thought about hopping the wall late some night, sneaking past the dozing security guards, stripping down and sliding into the cool water of one of the pools. But he resisted the urge. He knew it wouldn’t be the same, knew that the place no longer belonged to him. In another year, he would buy a battered GTO with the money he’d saved from the job, and six months later he would leave that place for good, leave school and Eustice and the trailer, heading west into the sprawling city.
The Kid had his head cocked toward the open pickup window, listening. He’d continued his list of night sounds in his notebook. Dog barking, woman yelling, back gate swinging open and shut. Darby watched the curve of The Kid’s ear. It was her ear, Lucy’s; it was the same gentle slope. The Kid was growing to look more like her, had her ears and her eyes, her unruly thatch of straw-blond hair. Darby didn’t know where it would end, if it would end. Didn’t know if soon he would look over at The Kid and see more of her face than he could bear.
I want to go, The Kid wrote. I want to see the place where you grew up.
Darby looked back at the house, turned the radio up. A survivalist expert and a talk show host were debating the Tehachapi situation, what should or shouldn’t be done if it was discovered that children were in the compound.
“We’ll go,” Darby said. “Someday we’ll drive out and I’ll show you where I’m from.”
If you want to see a secret, meet at midnight at the bus stop outside the library. The city library, not the school library. You can’t tell anyone else what we’re doing. You’ll have to sneak out of your house without getting caught. Bring a flashlight. Write I WILL BE THERE on the back of this note if you want to come. If you don’t want to come, flush this note down the toilet. TELL NO ONE ELSE.
The Kid made two of these notes while the class was waiting in line for lunch, careful to make sure no one else saw. He folded the first note into the palm of his hand and then offered his hand to Matthew to shake. Matthew looked at him like he was crazy. They’d never shaken hands before. But The Kid kept thrusting out his hand until Matthew took it and felt the note hidden there. Matthew looked at the folded paper. The Kid gave him a secretive, under-the-eyebrows look, and Matthew pushed the note down into the front pocket of his pants.
The Kid knew that girls didn’t really shake hands, so for the second note he walked past Michelle and dropped the folded paper at the toe of her grungy sneaker.
“Kid, you dropped something,” she said, too loud, and a couple of the girls in line turned to look, their faces scrunching with disgust seeing Michelle and The Kid standing so close by.
The Kid pointed quickly at the note, looked away, tried to act like nothing was happening.
“Kid, you dropped something,” Michelle said again.
The Kid shook his head, kicked the note up onto Michelle’s sneaker, walked quickly to his place in line. When he looked back, Michelle was bending over, picking up the note, unfolding the paper, mouthing the words as she read.
The Kid laid out the plan at lunch. Michelle didn’t have a problem with the plan, but Matthew complained that there was no way he could get out of his house without his father knowing. The Kid told him he would have to find a way if he wanted to come. Matthew said that this was no problem for The Kid because The Kid’s dad wasn’t always around at night. The Kid told Matthew that he understood there were risks involved, but that what he was going to show them would be worth the risks.
Michelle pulled her note out of the pocket of her jeans, turned it over, wrote I WILL BE THERE on the back. Slid it across the table to The Kid. Matthew looked at his note. He couldn’t decide. He seemed even smaller than usual. He looked like he was going to cry with the weight of the decision.
“Stop being such a pussy,” Michelle said. “Stop being such a whiny bitch.”
“You don’t understand,” Matthew said.
“What don’t I understand? You’re either a whiny bitch or you’re not.”
Matthew grabbed The Kid’s pencil, scribbled I WILL BE THERE on the back of his note, pushed it across the table to The Kid. Sat back with his arms folded. He still looked like he was going to cry.
Then it’s settled, The Kid wrote. We’ll meet tonight.
The Kid took the fastest route home, even though it was a route he didn’t particularly like, the least safe of all his routes. He wanted to get home and start planning the midnight excursion. He’d need to go back into his dad’s toolbox and borrow a couple more masks and goggles for Matthew and Michelle. He might need to draw maps in case they got separated on the way to the burned house. There was a lot to do.
The real shortcut part of the route was a long, tight alleyway between two apartment buildings. The opening of the alleyway was on a side street past Sunset, and the other end dumped The Kid out just two blocks from home. It was like a galactic wormhole in an outer space comic: you went in the mouth, down the long stretch, and came out the other end at an impossible distance. The alleyway was only about two of The Kid’s shoulder widths wide, so once he entered he had to either continue forward or head back. There were no other options, there was nowhere else to go. This was why he didn’t really like that route. He knew that the alley was the perfect place for an ambush.
He stood in the entrance, looked all the way down its length to the daylight at the other end. That light was only two blocks from home. If he ran fast enough, if he was quick enough and lucky enough, he’d be there in no time at all.
He took a deep breath and sprinted into the alleyway, sneakers jumping, arms pumping, pushing as hard, running as fast as he could for that opening.
He wasn’t quick. He wasn’t lucky. They’d known somehow, or they’d guessed correctly. Halfway down the alleyway, Razz appeared at the opposite end, blocking the exit. The Kid stumbled to a halt, falling to one knee, a cold tingling in his fingers and toes. He turned back, desperate to see that the entrance was still clear. But there was something there, a familiar figure backlit by the falling sun. The figure moved in slowly, tall and lean, an exaggerated horror-movie stalk, its long arms out, fingers dragging across the red brick of the alley’s walls.
Brian made pig noises as he approached, oink oink sounds through his nose. He called “Here piggy, piggy,” in a low, soothing voice, a voice like The Kid’s dad had used with Steve Rogers, a voice used to trap an animal.
Razz walked in from the other end, laughing a little, a raspy hatchet sound.
“I keep seeing you around my girlfriend, piggy,” Brian said. “Why do you keep bothering my girlfriend?”
The Kid wished he had some of the courage he’d had back at school that day, when Arizona was a guest on his talk show, when he w
as making those jokes about Brian. The Kid wished he had the courage to open his notebook and write, She’s Not Your Girlfriend, or, You might think she is, but she isn’t. But The Kid’s courage had fled, had found a way up and out of the alley.
“She tells me you keep bothering her, you keep following her,” Brian said. “She said you smell like piss and shit. That you get so excited around her that you piss and shit yourself.”
Arizona wouldn’t say those things. The Kid knew she wouldn’t say those things, but there was nothing he could do about it. Brian saying them out loud made them as good as true.
“Cochino,” Razz growled. “Here, piggy, piggy.”
The Kid was breathing hard, sweating. There was no way out of the alleyway. No way past Razz, certainly no way past Brian. He looked around frantically for something he missed, something he wasn’t seeing, some way out, some way around, but there was nothing. He’d made an awful mistake, taking this route home.
“I don’t want you going near her,” Brian said. His tone was changing, getting deeper, rougher. He bit off the ends of his words. “I don’t want you talking to her, sitting next to her, touching her. I don’t want you infecting her, pig. Do you understand me?”
Brian was maybe ten feet away. The Kid looked at Brian, tried to nod, to give up, but his head wouldn’t move.
“I didn’t hear you,” Brian said.
The Kid tried to nod, but nothing worked, nothing moved. He imagined what a relief it would be to call out, to yell, Help! Help! What a relief it would be to let his voice loose.
Razz shoved The Kid in the back, hard. The Kid stumbled forward, stopping a few feet from Brian.
“I know you can talk,” Brian said. “I want to hear you say something. If I don’t hear you say something, I’m going to kill you.”
Razz shoved him again from behind. The Kid flew forward, crashing into Brian, and Brian pushed him back into Razz, and then Brian was upon him. The Kid started swinging, kicking, hitting Brian in the chest, in the arms, but this only made Brian stronger, only made him furious, tight-faced and red, and then Razz was pulling The Kid to the ground and Brian was on top of him, teenager-strength almost, dad-strength almost, pinning him down, holding The Kid’s wrists with his hands, trapping The Kid’s legs with his legs.
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