Natalie looks over her shoulder and nods her chin in the direction of her house. “I don’t like to read inside that house. That’s for sure.”
“Why not?”
She looks right at me, right at my eyes, and she doesn’t blink.
I look away. Turn and stare out across the lake. The lights on the back porches of the mobile homes on the west side are like cheap imitations of stars.
My fishing line zips and my rod bends. Then the pole rips overboard. “Oh, damn.” I stash my paddle and dive in after my fishing pole. Catch it as it drags across the top of the water. When I get ahold of the pole, I lean back against the weight of the fish, tread water, and sidestroke back to the dock. I have to kick my legs hard, grip the pole in my off hand and paddle with my right. When I get to the dock, I hold the pole up. “Take this.”
“What?” Natalie’s laughing so hard that she’s bent over.
“Just take it.”
Natalie is still laughing, but she grabs it, and I turn around and swim to my canoe, take hold of the side, and push it back in. Then I pull myself up onto the dock, grab the bowline, and hitch the boat to the cleat. Natalie’s holding the fishing pole but not controlling it, letting it whip one way, then the other. She hasn’t reeled the fish in at all.
I say, “You’ve gotta hold that steady and reel it, or that fish will snag the line or break it off. Or break your pole.”
“Oh, okay.” Natalie tries to turn the reel the wrong way and it won’t go. Then she cranks it the other way and starts to bring the fish in. As soon as she starts reeling, I can tell that the fish is a carp. The fish makes heavy S movements in the water, but doesn’t jump or make a run.
Natalie reels until the fish breaks the surface 10 feet away. “Oh my God. It’s huge.”
“Yeah,” I say, “big, big carp out here. They’re no good to eat, but they’re fun to catch.”
“Why can’t you eat them?”
“Well, you can,” I say. “I’ve eaten them before. But they taste like mud. And in this lake they kind of taste like goose-poop mud. Plus, there’s lots of bones in them.”
“That’s a great combination.”
“Yep.” I reach down and wet my hands. Natalie has the fish next to the dock, and I take the line and pull it in. Then I reach the fish, put my left thumb in the roof of the mouth to hold it, and with my right hand, I pull the treble from its lower jaw, the barb making a wet click sound as it tears through the edge of the lip.
Natalie says, “Oh, that’s nasty.”
“Yeah, not the best sound, huh?” I hold the fish at the waterline. Because it’s a carp, it doesn’t struggle to swim away. I say, “Do you want to release it?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t?”
Natalie exhales. “Okay.” She kneels down next to me. “What do I do?”
She smells good, her hair, like some kind of shampoo or conditioner when it’s wet. I breathe in the smell of her. Say, “Wet your hands, then put your hands over the top of mine. I’ll slide my hands away and you’ll be holding the fish.”
She follows my directions. Doesn’t say anything. I slide my fingers back and out of her way, and she holds the fish in her hands. That carp has to be at least 10 pounds, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen in the lake.
I say, “Now with one of your hands, stroke down the side of its body, real mellow.”
She pets the fish with the tips of her fingers. “Like this?”
“Yeah. Now run your fingers down the side a little harder and the fish will flip its tail and swim away.”
She pets twice more, and all of a sudden that carp whips its tail and rips forward into the water. Natalie screams and pulls her hands back. “Oh my gosh,” she says, and sits back laughing. “That scared the shit out of me.”
“But that’s how you know you’re doing it right. Cause if you pet the fish right, it’ll snap to life just like that.”
She shakes her head.
“Cool, huh?”
“Pretty cool, but it still scared me.” She smells her hands. “And oh wow.” She smells her hands again. Makes a face.
“Not so good?”
“No,” she says. “Smell yours. They smell phenomenal.”
“We can get some of that smell off in the water, but mud or sand or something helps even more.” I reach down and pull some algae, scrub my hands with it, and rinse them in the water. I smell my palms and fingers and they smell a lot better. I grab some more algae and do it again.
Natalie raises her eyebrows. “Does that work?”
“Sort of. Mostly.”
She scrubs with algae too. As we’re leaning over and scrubbing our hands next to each other, I can smell her again, a little bit of whatever she cleans her hair with, and the fainter smell of her skin. I dated a girl the year before, during basketball season, but that girl sprayed a lot of flowery perfume in her hair and on her neck. Every time I kissed her it sort of overwhelmed me, like we were kissing in the Glade aisle at Target. But Natalie, whatever she uses and however she smells, I like it.
Natalie scrubs her hands three times and rinses them. Sniffs and wrinkles her nose each time. “It’s still not all the way gone.”
“No,” I say. “You might need a little soap to get the rest off.”
“But it’s better, I guess. It doesn’t make me gag now.”
I sit down and let my feet dangle in the water. Natalie sits down next to me.
I say, “I meant to ask you—why do you hate bass so much? You said that you hate them, remember?”
Natalie kicks her feet in the water. “They eat frogs.”
“And you like frogs?”
“Yeah,” she says, “I love frogs.”
“Why’s that?”
“I know it sounds weird.” She shrugs. “But I guess I always did. At my old house on the edge of Lake Oswego, there was a slough nearby, and I used to catch frogs there pretty much every night in the summer. I’d go down and catch one, hold it, sing to it….” She scratches her nose with her forearm. “I guess I was a strange little girl.”
“Sounds normal enough to me.”
“Well, anyway, I loved them. And I heard that bass eat frogs, that they rip their legs off sometimes and leave the rest of them to die. So I hate bass. Fuck bass.”
“All right,” I say. “Fuck bass. Kill ’em all.”
Natalie smiles. She says, “Do you go to Taft too?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you play any sports?”
“Basketball.”
“Wait,” she says. “You play basketball?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much all I ever did growing up. All I ever do now.”
Natalie says, “I don’t know why, but I didn’t think of you as a basketball player.” She tilts her head and looks at me.
I look out at the water in front of us, the black ripples bigger with the wind, yellow lantern lines on black. I hate it when people don’t think of me as a basketball player. I know that’s stupid since they wouldn’t know unless they were watching me play, but somehow I wish it were more obvious. If I looked like Creature, they wouldn’t even ask me if I played.
“Sorry,” Natalie says. “I didn’t mean anything by that. There just aren’t a lot of basketball players under six feet, you know?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You probably get that a lot, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Sorry.” Natalie splashes the water with her feet again. “Sometimes I just say things.”
I point to the scar on her knee, half lit from the lamp. She leans back and lets the light fall directly on her leg. Now I can see that the scar is one long line with four dots to the side.
I say, “What’s that from?”
She shakes her head. “Long story. Maybe I’ll tell you some other time.” She stands up. “But I’m gonna go wash my hands now.” She smells her palms again and makes another face. “It was nice hanging out, though.
” She picks up her lantern by its handle. Grabs her Catcher in the Rye.
I stand up. “I’ll see you around?”
“All right,” she says, and walks up the dock.
WALLFLOWER
In my tent, I can’t stop thinking about Natalie, can’t fall asleep. I keep thinking about how it would feel to kiss her, the smell of her hair when she leaned down next to me, her strong legs, those brightly colored bra straps, how she loves frogs and swims after them in the dark, how she reads alone at night on her dock, and the light of the lantern casting shadows across the angles of her body.
I imagine her in my small tent with me, how the tent would fill with the smell of her, her breath, her lips, her body on top of me, the good weight of her. Then I’d turn and roll on top, feel her underneath me.
I think about all of that, and pretty soon I’m wide, wide awake.
TOMBSTONE BLUES
We slept in a Dumpster the first two times we got kicked out of motels, but that makes it sound a lot worse than it was. The Dumpster was mostly filled with cardboard, and the first time we slept in there, we slept between a new refrigerator box and a big brown box that said FRAGILE. Both smelled like paper.
We put our two suitcases in the Dumpster with us, our army blanket, and our sleeping bag. We swam down four layers in the cardboard before we laid out the blanket and pulled it flat, then settled in next to each other with the sleeping bag over the top of us.
I was fine until my mom said we had to shut the lid. I didn’t want to do that.
She said, “You want someone to see us in here?”
“No.”
“Or to toss bottles in on top of us?”
“No,” I said. “We can shut it.”
So she shut the lid.
Then the Dumpster didn’t smell as good. It still smelled like cardboard next to us, cardboard on both sides, but there were other smells that came through. Smells from the corners, smells from below us on the Dumpster’s floor. And it didn’t feel like there was quite enough air in there either. But we slept all night. We were fine.
We slept in the same Dumpster the next time, but it didn’t smell as clean as before. When my mom closed the lid that second time, the bad smells were almost too much to fall asleep. But we were between layers of cardboard again, so I knew it could have been worse, and I finally did fall asleep. I had to pee in the middle of the night. I woke up having to go, and the dark of the Dumpster was too dark, and the smell of something near my head was overwhelming. I don’t know what it was. But my mom was asleep, and I didn’t wake her up. I kept counting to 100, waiting for morning, and at some point I fell back asleep with my hands between my legs, and I had a bad dream before I woke up and it was daylight. I’d peed my pants during the dream. I knew I was too old to do that, so I didn’t tell my mom in the morning. I kept turning sideways so she wouldn’t see the wet on the front of me, and I let it dry like that. Then it itched all day.
Walking down the street, we both smelled terrible. My mom said, “We can’t do that again. Something’s not right in that Dumpster.”
I nodded.
So after that, we slept down by the river anytime we got kicked out of a motel.
YOUR FEET
These I don’t know well. But I worry about them because of what I’ve heard.
It rains 200 days a year in this valley. If you live outside, your feet will be wet. If you have bad shoes, your feet will be badly wet, always wet, soaked through and staying wet, never less than damp. Most of the fall, all of the winter, and most of the spring. Your socks will mildew, then mold, then rot. Your rotting socks against your skin will begin to rot your skin.
Your skin, once pink, is now white, thickened and spongy. I’ve been told that they call it “trench foot” because soldiers stood in water-flooded trenches for months during the wars. Trench foot is what the homeless have.
You need to change your socks. You need to air out your feet at least twice a day. You need to let your shoes dry, or find a second pair of shoes and trade off, back and forth.
But you don’t have extra shoes. Extra shoes isn’t what you’re trying to score.
LIKE COYOTES IN PDX
I can hear the screams from four houses away and since I’m the youngest resident on the loop, I get there first.
Maribel Calhoun is screaming, “Oh help me, God! Help me!”
I run around the side of her house and up her back stairs. When I jump onto her porch, I almost step on the caiman. It’s right there on the porch, its head up. The caiman hisses as I plant my foot next to it and I jump, hurdle over a chair, and jump again. I slide behind the screen door. Pull that door back like a shield and stand behind it. “Oh my goodness….”
Mrs. Calhoun is right behind me, inside her house, the back door cracked open, and her nose sticking out. She’s still saying, “Oh God, oh God…,” but she’s also crying and gasping for air, staring at the caiman, and now that I’m safely behind the screen door, I stare too.
And what we see isn’t pretty.
The caiman has a cat, or what’s left of a cat. The body doesn’t have a head anymore, and the right front leg is gone too. The caiman’s halfway through its meal, and it’s standing over its food, defending what it’s caught.
“Ma’am,” I say, “is that your cat or someone else’s?”
Mrs. Calhoun’s crying too hard to answer me.
I say, “It’s okay, ma’am. It’s all right.” But it isn’t exactly all right, at least not for the cat. Or for Mrs. Calhoun. There’s a small crocodile on her back porch and a headless pet in front of us. I know it’s wrong, but I have an urge to laugh. I bite my lip. Say, “Let’s scare it off, okay?” I step out from behind the screen door and move forward. I yell, “Go on! Get!”
The caiman hisses. Opens its mouth. The bright peach of its gums is lined with an incredible set of teeth, top and bottom. The thing has grown in the last couple of weeks, and the mouth seems to have grown the most. I yell again, “Get out of here! Go!”
It still has its mouth open and it takes a couple of steps toward me, hisses again, and opens that mouth wider. I slide back behind the screen door. Look at Mrs. Calhoun, her nose and her glasses showing in the crack of the door. I say, “Well, that didn’t work. Do you have a shovel or a rake or something?”
She keeps staring at the caiman. She isn’t screaming anymore, she’s just sort of whimpering and hyperventilating. She hasn’t said a word to me yet, and she doesn’t answer me now.
I say again, “Ma’am, do you have a shovel or a rake I can use?”
Just then, Bob Thomas, the neighbor from the other side, shows up. He’s tucking in his shirt as he comes around the corner. When he sees the caiman there on the porch, he says, “Holy jiminy!” He sneaks in from the right side and slides in next to me behind the screen door.
I say, “It’s impressive, huh?”
He says, “It’s like a crocodile. Where the heck did that come from?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “Weird, huh?”
Mr. Thomas pulls a small black pistol out of his pocket.
“Whoa,” I say. “Are you gonna shoot it?”
He waves the gun back and forth in the air. “This isn’t real. It’s a starter’s pistol. I’m a volunteer for the middle school track program. Better plug your ears, though.” He takes a step toward the caiman, which doesn’t back up at all. Mr. Thomas says, “Hope this works.”
He shoots the gun and the caiman lurches like it’s been shot with a real bullet and sidewinds off the porch and down the steps. It takes off across the grass, and Mr. Thomas and I get to the porch’s railing just in time to see the caiman disappear into the undergrowth of the brambles near the water’s edge.
“Holy smokes alive.” Mr. Thomas whistles. “That animal is something.”
We both stare at the blackberry bushes like that caiman might come back out, but it’s gone. Mr. Thomas says, “We better help Maribel with her cat.”
I point at the torn-up
carcass.
Mr. Thomas kneels down and examines the carnage. “Or what’s left of her cat.”
“Right.”
I find a shovel in the shed, and Mr. Thomas goes over to his house to get bleach, paper towels, and a white plastic Walmart bag. He holds the bag open and I slide the shovel underneath the body of the cat, lift it, and drop it in the bag. Then I take the bag from him.
“That was sad,” Mr. Thomas says. “She really loved Mr. Fluffers.”
“Mr. Fluffers?”
“The cat,” he says.
“That was the cat’s name?”
Mr. Thomas smiles. “Kind of a gruesome end for a cat named Mr. Fluffers, huh?”
I put my hand over my mouth and Mr. Thomas stifles a laugh too. We both hold our breath and look at our feet. Mr. Thomas puffs his cheeks out and swallows. He says, “Should we do something with that bag?”
“Probably.”
The neighbors are all showing up. There’s about a dozen of them now in the side yard or on the bank by the lake. They’ve got flashlights and they’re shining them into the undergrowth. I hear someone say, “I think I see its big, white eyes.”
Everyone huddles next to him.
“No,” someone says, “those aren’t eyes. Look. Those are PVC caps.”
Another neighbor says, “I don’t think any of us are safe anymore.”
Mr. Thomas flips on the porch light. “We better bury Mr. Fluffers. Maribel doesn’t need to see that body again.”
One of the neighbors goes back to his house to get more shovels. Another neighbor says, “Maribel would like it if we were to bury it in that open space over there, and if she wants me to, I could make a little cross for it.”
Three of us dig a hole. The neighbors who aren’t digging keep giving us directions on how to dig, tips on how to pry out rocks, suggestions for depth and width. I dig most of the grave, try to get it done quickly, and let them sort out the details while I finish. When the hole’s about three feet deep, Mr. Thomas says, “That’s probably good enough,” so I stop.
There are maybe 20 people in Mrs. Calhoun’s house now, and they all come out for the burial. I put the Walmart bag in the bottom of the hole and Mrs. Calhoun sprinkles a little dirt on top of the plastic. Then I shovel in the rest of the dirt.
This is the Part Where You Laugh Page 7