An old man at the west end of the trails is reading a mystery novel with a blue cover. I nod to him and he nods back.
I keep looking. Where the cottonwoods lean over the river, a middle-aged man smokes a cigarette and stares at the water. He’s wearing a wool shirt and a down coat as if it’s 20 degrees out, not 85. The July sunlight beats on his army-green jacket and he sits and soaks it up.
I say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t nod or say anything back to me.
I keep walking. Cut through on the trails east, up past the mini-boulders. There’s a group of men and women with pit bulls at the picnic shelters, under the tin roof, two of the dogs growling at each other, one lunging, then the other lunging back, nearly meeting at the ends of their ties, a foot from each other, off the ground on their hind legs, snarling and thrashing and choking themselves against their collars.
I go back to the river trails, work east past the boat ramp toward the Autzen Footbridge. I look in the hollows, in the berry overgrowths, in places where she might be sleeping, check under a particleboard lean-to and a tarp shelter. But there’s no one under either of those, and I don’t find her, don’t see her dirty hair and green eyes, don’t see the lines across her forehead or her high cheekbones that are always so pink they look like the first layer of skin has been taken off with sandpaper.
I sit down and stare at the water. Feel hopeless. It’s easy for me not to think about the homeless camps when I’m on the surface streets in this city, when I’m biking on the sidewalk or riding in someone’s car through traffic. But down along the river, on the mud paths, at the tents or shelters, or under the bridge, I can’t ignore how these people are living, how she’s living right now, how the elements are always on her, how it’s too hot or too cold, or the rain’s soaking through everything, or the sun’s cracking it open. And on days like this I can’t even find her, and I worry where she could be because there are worse places than these homeless camps. There are the condemned houses out in West Eugene, the motels near Highway 99, rooms with a dozen people passed out, some on top of others, the floor littered with needles, broken bottles in the bathroom. And I can’t save her from that. I can’t even find her.
Biking home, I stop at a traffic light, put my foot down next to a woman at the corner of the 76 gas station. Her cardboard sign reads:
GOD GIVES FOOD AND SHELTER
I give her all the food in my backpack.
The Pervert’s Guide to Russian Princesses
Princess #29 (First Draft)
Princess Catherine Yurievskaya, you sit tall in your photograph, your thick hair pinned up, your head tilted with the weight of it. You are in a formal dress, but I will cut that off of you with a pair of scissors. I don’t want you to be formal forever.
You became a professional singer in France after you left Russia, and you will stand next to me in your slip, dressless, and sing while you look out the window of our house in the country. I will rub lotion into your hands as you sing in French, and when I turn your palms up, I will see the lines of your life extending like a cottonwood tree over a river.
The fighting of the Whites and the Reds passed your city and you wandered between the armies. You walked for miles, hungry, alone, your face like a young girl’s even though you were 39 years old at the time of the Revolution. No one knows your age now, and to me, you are ageless. I cannot see the lines around your eyes or the creases across your forehead. Your lines vanish like disappearing ink.
You were wronged at birth, born to a mistress of the tsar, illegitimate and unrecognized until Alexander II married your mother when you were two. For a year you were the favored child. A toddler. Then the emperor was assassinated and that favor went away. Was that your one blessed year? I want to give you another year like that. Then another year after that.
You will ask me to take off your slip and pour lotion on your back. You will ask me to rub your body as I rubbed your hands, next to the window. I will cover your skin in lotion, the glistening of the lotion like jewels under the moonlight.
You will ask me to lay on top of you and be still, the weight of my body holding you solidly to the earth.
NERDS
Creature folds the pages and puts them in his pocket. “What do you think?”
“Honestly? I think that one was kind of sad, man.”
“Yeah, I know,” Creature says. “When I read the true details about her life, she seemed super sad. Only two family members attended her funeral.”
“Only two people?”
“That’s what I read. But what do you think about the pages?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a writer.”
“Well, did you like it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I was interested the whole time, so that’s a good sign, right?”
Creature pulls the pages back out of his pocket, unfolds them, and looks at them again. He says, “ ’Cause I’m not sure if this entry fits with the rest. The tone’s a lot different on this one.”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe that’s okay, right? I mean, I’m not a writer, but everything doesn’t have to be the same, you know?”
Creature leans his head back and thinks about that. Then he nods and puts the pages back in his pocket.
I say, “You really like reading about Russian history, huh?”
“Yeah,” he says, “it’s super interesting. I never knew anything about Russia until I read a few things online last year, and now I’m hooked. The Revolution was crazy. How they executed the Romanov family and all that? It was like a purge, like an extermination.”
“And you put some of those facts in the book. Some of your facts are real, right?”
“All of them are real but the love stuff. The sex stuff. And I try to make those parts ridiculous. I want my guidebook to be disguised history, like a complex basketball play. Entertainment on top, but reality underneath, something about these lives, these women. Complex.”
“That’s cool,” I say. “I like complex in certain situations. Like basketball.”
“All right,” Creature says, “like basketball. So give me an example.”
This is a game we play sometimes. He gives me a challenge, and I have to answer it quickly.
“All right,” I say. “How about…Let’s see….Set up the high pick like it’s a pick-and-roll for the four and the point. Point baits with a jab step. Roll the four off to the top of the key as the other three run double backdoor cuts. The five screens for the two. The two screens for the three after. So the pick-and-roll is the first bait, and the first backdoor is set up too. Defenders come high and run through. Then the second backdoor is the layin or dunk. Two ball fakes, and the assist comes on a bounce pass or an alley-oop.”
“Oh, baby.” Creature laughs at me. “You’re as nerdy as I am with writing and Russian history.”
“Like you always say, Creat, I know what I like.”
MAYBE THIS IS NOTHING?
The games under the bridge tonight aren’t good, no quality players, and Creature dominates without trying very hard. In one game, the high pick-and-roll fools the other team four times in a row and I hit him for layups and dunks, until it doesn’t fool the other team on the fifth run and I pop a long jumper off the screen.
Creature shrugs and says, “That kind of night, I guess.”
There isn’t a single good game.
Afterward, while we’re unlocking our bikes to go, I see something in the ivy on the lit-up side of the nearby bridge pylon. “Hey, Creat, what is that?”
He looks. “I don’t know.”
Something pink. I walk up there. It’s the hood of a jacket. A woman’s jacket. The woman is mostly hidden by the ivy. She’s sloped downhill, her feet high, her head low, and she’s passed out. One sleeve is rolled up and the needle is still in her arm, attached to the syringe.
Creature says, “Is it her?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I kneel down. “What should we do?�
�
Creature says, “With a passed-out junkie? Nothing. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Is she still breathing?”
“I don’t know,” Creature says. “Come on, baby.”
I lean in and listen for her breath. Watch her chest to see if it rises and falls, and it does. “She’s still breathing.”
“Okay, then let’s go. Come on.”
“No, hold up.” I stand and look at her. Think.
Creature says, “Look, Travis, I get why you care so much, but really, there’s nothing for us to do here. We can’t fix this or even really help her.”
I hold up one finger. “Just a minute. I’m gonna turn her right-side up and onto her side.”
“Why?”
“So she doesn’t choke if she pukes.”
“Okay,” Creature says. “Just don’t get poked with that needle or some shit like that, all right? And junkies sometimes have needles in their pockets too.”
“I know.”
I take hold of the woman’s ankles and I pull her downhill and rotate her around until her feet are below her head. Then I find an old sweatshirt in the ivy, tilt her on her side, and prop her head up on the sweatshirt. “There,” I say.
Creature says, “Okay. Now you’re ready to go?”
“All right.”
We walk down and get our bikes. Pedal across the river at Maurie Jacobs Park, then over Delta Highway on the Neon Bridge, back to the trailer-park loops.
MISSIONARIES
I park my bike behind the shed and go inside to make some food. Grandpa’s in the living room watching the game of the night on ESPN. I make a sandwich and go in next to him. Eat and drink a glass of water while the Indians bat during the 7th inning.
Grandpa stands halfway up, teeters, and falls back onto the couch.
“Grandpa?”
He tries to stand again and makes it to his feet this time, but has to lean over and steady himself by holding the coffee table. He mumbles, “I just…” He sounds like a voice recording played on the wrong speed.
“Grandpa, what the hell?”
“I just…” He giggles and stands back up. Balances. Leans over and holds the table again. “I took some…I smoked a little…”
“A little?”
“I just…”
“Grandpa, what did you do?”
He sits down on the coffee table. Puts his hands out in the air, feeling for something invisible. “Her pills were…”
“Wait, you took Grandma’s pain pills?”
“A few.”
“Grandpa, if you do all this stuff at the same time, you might die. You understand me?”
“Die,” he says, and laughs. He puts both hands on his knees to steady himself. Laughs so hard that he’s shaking.
I stand up. “I’m going back out.”
I leave the house and slam the door. Hop off the porch, get my bike, and start pedaling. I don’t have anywhere to go, so I don’t go far, just down to the Chevron to grab a Coke. I park my bike and lock it next to the bathrooms. Walk around the corner to the front door. There’s a man handing out some kind of pamphlet, and he hands one to me. I start to read it and the man says, “It’s about the battle that changed the world.”
I hold the pamphlet. Look up.
“Son,” he says, and points at me, “there will be things beyond your control in this life. Things you can’t handle.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll need help,” he says. He’s still pointing at me. “This world is dark and difficult. The road is not easy. And there will be things beyond your control.”
I laugh in his face. “Things beyond my control?” I look at the pamphlet in my hand. It has a picture of a man on his knees holding a big black book. In the upper right-hand corner it says SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS.
The man says, “Things far beyond your control. You’re young, though, so you don’t know it yet, but this world is difficult. When you grow up and move out of Mom and Dad’s house, when they’re no longer cooking for you and doing your laundry, and making your life easy, you’re going to find out a whole lot about yourself and the real world.”
“The real world…” I shake my head. I can feel the anger in my body like ripples on a pond, the circles spreading out, expanding, going to the edges of my skin.
“See,” the man says, “you don’t believe me now because your life is so easy, but in the real world, the world you don’t understand yet, there will be…”
I punch him.
I don’t even think about it. I just punch him. And it’s a good punch, one of those shots where it lands right where I aim and everything about it feels perfect, from how I throw it to where it lands. I catch the man on his chin and his head rips sideways and he goes down quick against the wall, and I know he’s knocked out the second he falls.
Then I take a step back. The man is crumpled in front of me and his Seventh-day Adventists pamphlets are spilling onto the cement. There’s a gust of wind, and a few of the pamphlets flap and skitter away like small birds.
Someone across the lot yells, “Hey!”
I turn.
It’s one of the gas-pump attendants. He’s walking toward me from the far pump. He says, “Hold it right there.”
But I sprint around the side of the building to my bike, pull the key out of my pocket, unlock it quick, and hop on. Start pedaling. I look back and see the guy coming around the corner. He yells, “You better stop right there.”
I don’t. I bike behind the Carpet Store to the alley that leads to the Home Depot. It’s dark in that alley, between the industrial Dumpsters, and I slow down to think about where I should go next. But there’s nowhere to go. So I bike the crossroad to the trailer park, the hedge, and the back entrance to the loops. I pedal to my house, park my bike behind the shed, and walk down to my tent.
This is one of those times when I know that things are going to be messed up no matter what. Like when they couldn’t find my mom and the Department of Human Services lady told me they were going to put me in what she called “a temporary placement.” And then those two years. I thought things would be better now since I called my grandparents and I’m living here.
But nothing erases the bad. Nothing puts it away forever. The bad is like one of those overgrown Himalayan blackberry patches that we have everywhere in western Oregon. You can cut it back or even burn it to the ground, you can burn it and dump salt over the top, but it doesn’t matter. It’s coming back. That things has roots, it has incredible unseen roots that live and wait in the dark underground, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s up again, before that thing is growing three inches a day, snaking along the surface, then hoisting itself into the air on unseen wires, animated, and the bright green thorns along the stems are thin and sharp as razor blades. The only way through the thicket is to take the cutting.
SIGN ON THE CROSS
Nighttime. Lying on my sleeping bag. I hear someone’s footsteps in the grass. Flip-flops clicking against the bottoms of someone’s feet. My tent flap is open—I never zipped it closed—so I wait until I can see who it is.
“Creature?” I say.
“Who’s Creature?” It’s a girl’s voice.
“Natalie?”
“Yeah?”
I scramble to my knees and crawl out of my tent. “Why are you…?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe because I had a really shitty day.” Her face is lit from the side by the porch light. Her eyes are pure black.
“Yeah?” I say. “I had a shitty day too.”
Natalie says, “Wanna trade stories, then? See whose day was more messed up?”
“All right, let’s do it.”
We sit down on the bank above the lake. There’s a warm breeze blowing from behind us, little ripples in front of us.
“You go first,” I say. “Why was your day so terrible?”
“Stepdad,” she says. “He’s a dick. But worse than that, he’s
weird.”
I wait for her to say more. Stare at the lake. The lights from the houses opposite are rippling on the water. The reflections are orange and yellow.
I say, “So your stepdad?”
“Yeah, my stepdad. His name’s Will, and he’s a real piece of shit.”
“Because…”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. He acts nice, seems nice. He has a good job, and he dresses well. We have a nice house and all that. People seem to like him, or at least his friends do, but I don’t like his friends.”
“But your mom does?”
“She seems to. She seems to have bought in to that whole nice-house, nice-car crap. But I feel like she doesn’t see who Will really is.”
“Is he good to her?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Natalie takes a deep breath. “He gets pissed about stupid little things sometimes. But then he’s nice most of the time.”
“Okay,” I say. “And…”
“Well,” Natalie says, “he makes me uncomfortable.”
I wait for her to explain.
She says, “See, most of the time I just get a bad feeling, but today it was obvious.”
“What did he do?”
Natalie sighs. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.” I shrug like I don’t care. But the truth is, I really want to know.
“See,” she says, “I went to the park to do a soccer workout, and it was super hot today—you know how hot it was—and I was totally sweaty and gross. So when I got home, I wanted to take a shower. I didn’t even think about it. I just went into the bathroom and took a shower. But when I finished, when I turned the water off and pulled back the curtain to grab my towel, he was right there. Will was right there.”
“What do you mean ‘Will was right there’?”
“He was right there in the bathroom. He was pissing in the toilet right next to me, while I was finishing showering.”
“He what?”
This is the Part Where You Laugh Page 9