Rules for Becoming a Legend

by Timothy S. Lane

  His truck was the only vehicle in the lot. He listened to the crates of soda shift and fall in the back of the truck. Ronnie would dock his pay for each broken bottle on top of firing him. Todd didn’t care. He was thinking of other things. It was strange to him how the swaying of the trees and bushes growing before the dunes echoed the sounds the crates had made sliding just before they crashed.

  He sat in the cab and stared at the trees. Coming back to this place, this place where he had conceived and lost Suzie Q., this was his punishment. He had let her down, and now his boy too. He reached out for the keys to turn off the truck. Hands shook so bad, it took him three tries. Just a beer, he thought to himself. Cool the nerves and then home.

  While Van Eyck Beverages exclusively bottled PepsiCo products, they also distributed a wide variety of beers and wines. Todd Kirkus opened the back of the truck, smelling evil sea, and broke a can off a sixer. He drank the first beer quicker than he meant to. Gone in a blink. He’d go home, soon enough, he just needed to clear his head of his thoughts, so he drank another. Ronnie O’Rourke and the town putting pressure on his kid already? Another. Jimmy was just a baby. Five years old. And another. Still into bedtime stories and all that.

  He started to feel warm and that was no good. He wanted to be cold. So he took off his coat. He took a bottle of red wine from the back of the truck and knocked the head off the bottle on the bumper of the truck and drank from the uneven, sharp-edged neck on the way down to the beach. He cut his lip. He walked along the water’s edge and it ceased being about cooling off.

  He stopped when he thought he had found the right spot, but of course he could never be sure, the beach was always changing. Much better at moving on than he. Todd lay down in the wet sand, the waves touching his feet on each incoming breath of water. Jimmy had been born three months after Suzie died. And so however many years his son had was also how long he’d been without his daughter. A curse in the numbers. Todd stared at the sky. He drank, pouring the wine straight into his mouth from arm’s length, only bending his wrist. Red everywhere.

  The seagulls screamed at him and the ballooned seaweed, tangled under his head, squeaked when he moved.

  That Pacific Ocean up Oregon way, don’t kid yourself, she’s as cold as they come. As the tide came in farther Todd went numb. He rolled to his side, more weightless with each incoming wave. What a wonderful feeling for a man so used to causing tremors. She had sand everywhere, he remembered. Her ears and nose. He had hooked it out of her still-warm mouth with his pinkie. The tide was coming in now. He opened his mouth to the salty water. He swished it, tasted brine. Still, it was not enough to take his thinking away from his head, so with his numb fingers he scooped in the soupy sand and felt the grains jam deeply into the gaps of his teeth. It helped a little. He tried to swallow. Tasted fishy. He coughed and gagged. The polyester uniform with the Van Eyck logo on the front of the jacket turned dark blue, almost black, with the wetness of the sea.

  • • •

  The Kirkus family had only one car and it was parked down at the Van Eyck bottling plant. Bonnie couldn’t give Genny a lift, she was already at work, and Caleb, the one taxi driver in town, was on a cruise in Mexico, so that left the neighbors. However, after years of feuding with the Flying Finn and then Todd over street parking spaces and responsible lawn upkeep, bridges had been burned. Genny Mori couldn’t bear the looks these neighbors would give her along with a ride.

  So this new take-charge Genny Mori started walking, two boys in tow. It took an hour and a half, but they got there. All on their own, too. Who knew how many people actually saw her—up over the hill, past Peter Pan Park, down the other side, past the post office—and why no one offered to give her a lift, but rest assured everyone in town heard about it before nightfall.

  You see poor Genny Mori and her two boys? Todd can’t even get her a car of her own.

  I saw her up by Peter Pan. The little, chunky one, Dexter? Poor girl had to carry him. I thought she’d be squished!

  After all the chances that man had. And her, she was always so beautiful and smart—different, but pretty too.

  She could have had things better. But you know her parents couldn’t stick so I don’t know what to think.

  At the lot the van wouldn’t start. Genny Mori got it going by having her boys both push against the back bumper while she pushed from the open driver’s side door. Ages five and four, hands already dirty. The car lurched forward when the engine caught. Dex fell down, started to cry.

  “Shut up a second,” Genny Mori said, leaning out of the van, engine revved. “We need to find your father.”

  And Dex, skinned knees and all, he shut up.

  There was a surety in Genny’s thoughts that she knew exactly where her husband was—the same place he always ran to. Still, she strained to keep it a deniable surety. Genny Mori hadn’t yet lost all she had for Todd. There was still enough lightning in his bottle that she could hope for the shock of not finding him on the beach where their daughter had died. An electrical derivative formed from pity for what he’d witnessed and also guilt at her inability to feel as acutely as he had for the loss of their daughter rubbing together inside her. Also a hope that things were not as bad as they might be. She could pull up and find only sand and sea; and the only thing mourning would be the twisted driftwood left behind. Her husband could be waylaid somewhere with a flat tire—perfectly understandable, perfectly loveable. Not some man in a hurry to hurt, five years distant from the blow.

  Still, at the edges, a black doubt that things were just as bad as she imagined. A slow-approaching cold front of anger that she felt for her husband. Their little girl never should have died. Their life would still be right side up, if not for him. It was a feeling she disallowed herself to feel—anger. Bonnie had told her that anger was the right way to feel. But no. Letting even just a little of that in would blow the hinges off the whole thing and she’d suffocate.

  • • •

  Jimmy had rarely ridden with his mother behind the wheel and he was surprised at how fast she went compared to his pops. He and Dex sat in the middle bench seat, not saying a word. Their eyes itched and Dex’s jeans were ripped where he’d skinned his knees. Their mom turned the radio on, whistling as she drove. Jimmy watched her lips move in the mirror, wishing he could be closer. Maybe whistle along, or become the actual sounds that started in her mouth and ended in the air. It was a game he and Dex sometimes played. Pretend you’re a dog, sleep on the floor. Pretend you’re a storm, go blowing through the house. Pretend you’re a bird, fly from chair to couch. Why couldn’t he be his mother’s sounds?

  She knew exactly where she was headed, exactly where their pops had gone missing. In around twenty minutes they pulled up behind a Van Eyck Pepsi truck in the otherwise empty parking lot of Area C where their pops’s truck was.

  Genny Mori moved with a quickness Jimmy couldn’t pin to her. She was different than the mom who was always on the phone or sleeping large swaths of the day away. She took out two Pepsis from the back of the truck, rare treats for the boys whose father refused to feed them sweets, and shut the sliding door by pulling on the tether. She had to hang with all of her weight to get it to come down, but she got it. She could have gotten anything. Out of nowhere she was amazing. In all his years watching her, he hadn’t seen this. “Drink these,” she said to her sons. “Wait here and don’t go near that.” She pointed to the broke-off head of a decapitated wine bottle. “Jimmy, you’re in charge while I’m gone.”

  “OK,” Jimmy said. As he watched his mother climb over the dunes toward the beach, he thought, I like her best now.

  All their lives they hadn’t been allowed to go to the beach on account of what had happened to Suzie, but it was still a presence. Only nine miles away, on the sunny days it shined on the far-off horizon out their kitchen window like lamplights bounced off tinfoil. On the windy days salt air blew through Columbia City
and across their faces. Far off. A made-up place. Now to actually be standing near sand, the ocean’s roar in the background, it was overwhelming.

  If it were up to Dex, they probably would have stayed in the parking lot and ripped through the Van Eyck truck, getting sugar-sick on pop. He was like that. However Jimmy knew something was wrong—horribly, horribly wrong—to make this big of a change in his mom this fast, and he was going to see what. He did something out of the ordinary—hell, the whole day was wobbly anyway—and he took charge. Off he went the same way his mom had gone.

  “Where you going?” Dex asked over the top of his Pepsi bottle, breath catching a whistle at its lip.

  “For a walk.”

  “Mom told us stay; she said.”

  “OK, Dexy, stay here.”

  Jimmy went to the dunes. It was strange, to sink in the sand when he walked. He felt foreign in his own body. Used muscles he didn’t know he had.

  “Wait, Jimmy!” Dex yelled and started to run, but the bottle slipped from his hands and shattered on the cement parking lot. He stopped and watched brown soda fizzle at his feet. He started to run again, crying, to catch up to his brother. He fell many times in the strange sand.

  • • •

  Genny Mori Kirkus found her husband sobbing and rolling back and forth in the soupy tide. He looked to her in that moment a huge baby, face knotted up and red, fists pounding the sand. There was blood on his face and his thin hair was in his eyes. Black sand drooled from his lips. His pants, heavy with sand and sea, had come down, showing half his butt. Genny sat on a nearby log. She shook her head and laughed to herself. Was this how her mother felt when Genny’s father split town? Why hadn’t she got out before it was too late? What was it? Had she been scared or just lazy? What a choice. Funny, in a small, sour way.

  She was tired. Felt destined to take care of this man for always. She was level, she was fine—it was he who had the binges and purges. He who needed the guiding hand. Maybe she didn’t run around the house playing Cowboys and Indians with the boys, but she was consistent while he was one phone call away from breakdown. There was a sucking feeling in her heart for him and on one hand it depressed her, but on the other it proved she felt something still, and this relieved her. If life was not going to plan—no out from Columbia City, Oregon, for her—at least she still had the capacity to be devastated by the man she married. “Feel better?” she asked.

  • • •

  Todd was too out of it for Genny’s presence to be a surprise, and he said the first thing that came to mind. “You’re drunk.”

  “Says the man eating sand. I think what you meant to say is, ‘I’m drunk.’”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “Get up, Todd. Ronnie O’Rourke is missing his truck and your son wants to tell you about his first day of school. Rumor has it he’s inherited your basketball skills.”

  Todd sat up, his back making a suction sound. The wind came in. Cold hit him hard, teeth chattered. It felt good to have his wife, his Genny Mori, sweep in, but he couldn’t give in this easily. Something in him needed to push. “I guess you love this.”

  “I don’t.” Genny Mori looked off down the beach, the wind taunting her eyes.

  “I guess our kid could be the best in the league. Everyone’ll want a piece and he’s only five.” Todd wanted to be mean to her. He needed to be mean to her. “Maybe Jimmy makes it to the NBA. Maybe he doesn’t let you down like I did . . . How much money you figure you’ll need off him?”

  “He’s five fucking years old. NBA? I’m not the one putting pressure on him.” Then, strange, Genny Mori started to cry. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don’t think I miss Suzie too?” She slid her hand up and she was palming her forehead. “I wasn’t here, you were. You were here with Suzie.”

  The name hit Todd hard, as did her tears, but mostly the blame. Something she’d withheld from giving, even when it had rightfully belonged to him. Here it was. He’d wanted to push, but not this much. He looked past her to buy time, and there he saw his two boys standing on the top of the dunes. When Jimmy met his eyes, his son turned and disappeared, sweet Dex not far behind.

  “He saw me,” Todd said, tears welling, but Genny didn’t understand him. She offered her hand. He took it and stood. The wind picked up, making the cold so piercing, he felt bitten. He hugged her, and her warmth and the breathing of her body shocked him, as did her willingness to be hugged. In her ear he whispered, “It was my fault.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “She was wearing a blue coat.”

  “I know, I dressed her.”

  “I bought it for her.”

  “I know, I was there.”

  “It was too much money. But I bought it for her.”

  “I know. I know.”

  And he was happy that she knew.

  They stayed like that, almost perfect, for three seconds maybe, and then Genny Mori pushed her husband away.

  Cracked heart versus broken one.

  “Come on,” she said, “You’re soaked and we got a lot to do.”

  Todd squeezed the cut on his thumb from earlier in the day. If he pressed hard enough, blood still came to the surface. He knew she was right, there was too much to do.

  At home, Genny Mori drew Todd a warm bath and put the boys in front of a movie. She made him tea and left to go smooth things over with Mr. O’Rourke by bringing a pint of clam chowder from Norma’s, his favorite. Mrs. O’Rourke watched suspiciously from just inside the door.

  “The funniest thing, Mr. O’Rourke,” Genny said, “Todd got two front flats while going the back way to Fred Meyer, and, you know how that back road is ever since the new highway opened, hardly anyone uses it. One flat, fine, he can use the spare, but two? I’m just glad I got there when I did.”

  Down the block, porch lights lit up, window curtains tugged to the side. Genny could feel people’s eyes.

  Who’s that at the O’Rourke’s so late?

  It’s Genny Mori, poor thing, come to beg for Todd’s job.

  Mr. O’Rourke’s eyes told her that he too noticed people noticing. Genny saw how his temper melted with the shame of her standing like a beggar at his door, the salty aroma of the chowder and her pretty face. “Make sure Todd’s ready for work tomorrow.” He took the bag with the chowder inside. “And tell him I’m switching him to night shifts with the high school kids.” He looked down the street and then back at Genny, speaking louder. “And I’m docking every single broken bottle.”

  • • •

  Todd listened to Genny come home, feed the boys, and tuck them in. He was under the covers, still shivering slightly. Finally, she came into the bedroom and changed into pajamas. Todd watched her and was reminded of what had attracted him to Genny Mori in the first place. She had a brain in her head and guts in her stomach.

  She told him casually, “You got the night shift tomorrow. Ronnie O’Rourke expects you.” She climbed into bed.

  “Genny, my Genny,” he said. She had been the one girl who hadn’t come easy. He liked that in her. Meant she wouldn’t go easy either. And then he acted on a feeling he hadn’t had in too long. Draped a thick arm over her side, pushed his pelvis up against the cushion of her butt. His body all pins and needles. She squeezed his hand, not unkindly, and took it off her hip. “You need to talk to them.”

  So Todd went. God bless her, it was the best she’d ever be to him, for in his misreading of the mood, in trying to make a pass at her when that was the last thing she wanted, when he had been a blubbering child when she needed a man, he had leaned into the first punch of her fight to stop loving him.

  Todd crept into the room Dex and Jimmy shared. Jimmy was awake, staring at the ceiling, his eyes lit up by the pumpkin night-light plugged into the wall.

  “Your mother tells me you had quite a day,” he whispered. He rubbed his hands down
his face. Somehow they still felt cold from the ocean. “Something about basketball?”

  “What were you doing, pops?”

  Todd played dumb. “What do you mean?”

  “In the water. You always say no playing in water.”

  Todd considered it. What was the best way to do this? A thought came to him. “Well, I got bitten.”

  “Bitten?”

  “Have I ever told you about the Sand Toad?”

  “No, not ever,” Dex said—apparently awake and listening the entire time.

  “Well, boys,” Todd rubbed his hands together as if it would bring forth the story he needed to tell—and strangely, it did. “There’s a certain kind of toad that lives on the beach. She’s always cold and muddy. She can’t jump very far or move very fast. She’s ugly and smells bad too.”

  “Gross,” Dex said.

  Todd fed off the reaction. “Yeah, gross. Only thing special about a sand toad is she takes growing seriously. Big as a car.”

  “You’re kidding us,” Dex said sincerely.

  “I’m not kidding you, I wouldn’t kid about something like this . . . She’s huge but it’s very weird because she thinks she’s small.”

  “What’s she eat?” Jimmy asked, one eyebrow higher than the other, just like the Flying Finn.

  “What’s she eat?” Todd wanted to wipe that look off Jimmy’s face. How’d the old man find a way in? “They eat. Well, seagulls of course. She opens up her big mouth—and it’s just the same color and feel as wet, grimy sand—and she flicks her tongue. A trick tongue. On the very tip there’s a part that looks like the tastiest bread crumb you ever saw. When a seagull flies down to get it, then, WHAM, the sand toad closes her mouth and dinner is served.” Todd clapped his hands and startled his sons. He had them now. Oh boy, did he ever.

  “But see, here’s the thing. The sand toad isn’t happy. She doesn’t think she’s special. She hates being cold and muddy and scared all the time. She hates sitting in the sand all day long and feeling small. Worst of all, she can’t stand the taste of seagulls. She haaaaates the taste of seagulls.