by Andrew Roe
With the exception of my three and a half years of college, I’ve lived in Rayburn all my life. Why? It’s a good question. Prospects here—economic, spiritual, you name it—are few and far between. The town itself isn’t small enough to be intimate and charming, but neither is it big enough to offer any cosmopolitan amenities. Most of the women close to my age are either unavailable or have sworn off the habit of men forever. And the rain—we’re always wet, drizzled on, sun-deprived. But after a certain point in life, you just get used to a place, how it’s laid out, how it looks, how it feels. It’s what you know. It’s where you live. You’ve made your choice even though it doesn’t really feel like one, and there’s no specific moment you made that decision, it just happened, and now there are too many miles and too many years between you and that moment that never happened.
•
We find Carl and Dale in the parking lot, warming up their pickup truck and drinking 7-Eleven coffee. They wear camouflage fatigues, green rain ponchos, baseball caps that advertise the manufacturers of large farm equipment. You could mistake them for twins except that one sports a prodigious beard and one does not. Both are burly, thick, men of one-syllable pleasures. Malcolm approaches the truck and tells them who I am.
“Want to tag along, chief?” one of them says. “We’re heading out to Timmins Ranch. We got a report of a confused elderly white female roaming the area. Would that there description fit your mother?”
“Generally, yes.”
“Well hop in then, captain.”
I scrunch into the back portion of the cab, totally soaked. Introductions are made. Carl is the driver. Dale, the one who’s been speaking and has the beard, shakes my hand, crushes it actually. It’s then, while waiting for the circulation to return to my white-collar fingers, that I notice the rifles.
“So Mike. What is it you do in the real world?” Dale asks.
I hesitate. I feel like my answer is being recorded, will be scrutinized, judged. I regret—and not for the first time—my particular career path. “I’m a payroll clerk over at Jackson General.”
Dale purses his mouth some, as if considering whether or not this fit his criteria for a respectable profession.
“Carl’s been there.”
Carl nods as he pulls onto the main highway. His hands on the steering wheel look raw, capable of sudden violence. Three guns. Rifles. With those scope things you look through. One two three.
“Damn near killed himself a few years back,” Dale continues. “Done got caught under a mudslide. But Carl made it out. Survived. His dog didn’t, though.”
“That was a damn fine specimen of dog,” says Carl. “Only wished I’d breeded him.”
We drive in silence for a while, until they resume a conversation they’d been having earlier. Carl mentions that his wife’s sister’s roommate is pregnant. Again. There’s some question about the identity and race of the father. All the while I keep trying to come up with various ways to casually inquire about the guns. Finally, Dale realizes what’s making me so uneasy.
“What, those things? Don’t worry none. There’s no real bullets. These are just tranquilizers. Like what vets and nature people use and stuff. It’ll knock you out. But it won’t kill you, not hardly.”
“So you shoot them? You actually shoot the people you’re looking for?”
“Like I said, tranquilizer. They get hit, they go to sleep, they wake up back at A.A., good as new.”
“And you do this regularly?”
“Say again there, Mike.”
“Work for the home. Track down people who’ve left.”
“It’s—what you call it? A fluctuating market, like anything else. Carl and I, we have a couple of different business ventures in the works. Diversify. That’s our motto. Today’s entrepreneur can’t limit himself to just one deal. Think different, think out of the box, synergy and all that. But the work’s been pretty steady as of late. We were just talking yesterday about how we need another person. An apprentice like. You interested in switching careers, Mike? Left, Carl, left.”
The truck veers off the highway onto an unpaved road. There’s a barn to our left, crops of some kind on our right. Everything is green and wet. “We’ll just wait and see how you do,” says Dale. “How’s that sound? A little on-the-job training.”
Carl brings the truck to a stop in a clearing and cuts the engine. Hanging from the rearview mirror is a pair of handcuffs. Empty cigarette packs and crumpled fast-food bags litter the dashboard. I can see their breath inside the cab, steady gusts escaping then disappearing. Dale hands me a rifle.
“Lock and load,” he says.
It’s Sunday. Day of rest. Day of atonement. Day of football and naps and The Simpsons. Tomorrow I’ll be back at work, at my desk, poorly postured as I type numbers into a computer. Then I’ll come home and Raymond will be there, eyes aglaze with TV and weed, nursing a Zima and quoting lines from The Big Lebowski, regaling me with factoids about James Polk’s sexual appetites and recent outbreaks of whooping cough, providing a blow-by-blow account of the bidding battle for an obscure toy or game from his childhood that he found on eBay. But for now I’m following Dale and Carl, the rain thrumming down, and we’re hunting my mother.
They move quickly—faster than you’d think, based on their bodies and ample bellies—and I have a tough time keeping up. Visibility is pretty minimal because of the rain, but Dale and Carl forge ahead, as if they know exactly where they’re going, men of the wild, suckled by wolves. We enter a heavily forested patch where hardly any rain falls. Pine soaks the air, along with the damp of leaves and earth. I chase after their green shapes as best I can. The asthma: it snakes around my lungs then squeezes like a motherfucker. “Through here,” Dale yells, motioning for me to hurry.
At the top of a small ridge Carl scans the area below with his high-tech-looking binoculars. “This is where we found one of them last week,” he says, handing the binoculars to Dale. “They usually follow the highway then turn up that road we took. Once they get past the farm there ain’t much elsewhere they can go, see, just straight into this big meadow which is where we’re going. Like shooting ducks in a bathtub. The only trouble is, is when some of the more stubborn ones wander over onto the army base, what with all the exercises and maneuvers and such they’re always doing. We’ve had a few ugly situations there. You say this is your mother?”
“I don’t know. It could be her. All I know is she’s been reported missing.”
“There’s been a lot of that lately,” Dale says. “That’s where Carl here comes in handy. He’s kind of psychic on these matters.”
Carl produces a sock from inside his poncho. He holds it up for my inspection. “This your mother’s sock?” It’s a white sock gone gray, washed too many times. I can’t identify it as my mother’s. It’s a sock.
“Carl takes an object of the person who’s missing—say a sock, a shirt, a purse, a used wad of Kleenex—and he can sense where the person is,” Dale explains. “You probably seen this kind of stuff on Dateline or 20/20. Carl here’s got a gift.”
“And I’ve got a real bead on this sock,” says Carl, sounding almost wistful. “I’m thinking that way.” He points north. Or is it south? The rain lets up momentarily. Dale shakes his head, says, “It won’t hold. The rain’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Let’s keep a moving.” They take off down a narrow trail, graceful as elk in a PBS documentary, and soon I’m once again huffing horribly like a repentant smoker.
The Tetris woman had said freelance. So did Carl and Dale get paid on a per-person basis? And whose policy was this? The director’s? Shooting residents, hunting them like animals? Certainly this wasn’t legal. Certainly I could complain to the proper authorities. I began to compose police blotter sketches of Dale and Carl as well as Malcolm and the Tetris woman. Arrests were no doubt imminent. Until then, however, I’d have to remain calm, act cordial, let things play out.
“Mike. Over here.”
My rifle grows hea
vier. Have I ever fired a gun? No, I have not. I slog through some more foliage, through more mud and muck, and emerge into another clearing. Sure, there is a slight elation, the euphoria of the predator. But I keep having to remind myself: this is my mother, the woman who gave birth to me, not a deer or quail. Mud covers my shoes and most of my pants. My jacket is now just an extra layer of wet. I squint ahead and see Carl pointing like a Civil War general. Down below us, moving at a labored pace, as if blind, is a woman, obviously old, obviously confused. “I knew that sock was powerful,” Carl says.
Dale clasps his comrade’s shoulder. “Bingo. There’s our runner. That her?” he asks me.
At first I can’t be certain. The woman is too far away. But slowly she comes into focus and I’m pretty sure it’s my mother. It’s been years since I’ve seen her without a wig, but yes, it’s her. I recognize the hobbled body, the osteoporosis lurch, the powder-blue terry cloth robe I gave her years ago.
“Carl, I believe this one’s yours,” says Dale.
Carl smiles like a villain in a James Bond movie, drawing the rifle up to his eye. I expect him to speak with an unidentifiable accent.
“Just a second and I’ll have a pretty clear shot. Come on. Come on you bitch. Keep moving.”
“Hey,” says Dale. “That’s his mother you’re talking about.”
“Sorry there, skipper,” Carl apologizes. “Nothing personal.”
The woman, my mother, is the most fragile creature I’ve ever seen. From up here, she’s so alone, so small, not at all the person I grew up with. She’s just a sad, lonely, old woman who shouldn’t be out in the rain and lost and scared and making a run for it. I see my failure.
Carl continues to peer through the scope thing, anticipating. Dale pulls out a cigarette and smokes in the rain.
And I don’t know precisely why or how, but just in time I’m possessed by some kind of recessive heroic gene finally come to life and my arms start moving and then I’m running and charging like a blitzing linebacker and I grab the snout of Carl’s gun as he’s pulling the trigger and the shot falls short, way short. There’s immediate wrestling, pounding, I’m on the ground, knees in my chest, boot heels in my stomach. I taste bark, blood. Carl and Dale roll me over and pin my arms behind my back. Breathing isn’t an option. I’m completely covered in mud and ooze, practically primordial. “What the shit boy?” They drag me to my feet. Standing requires all my remaining energy. “Hold him.” Carl grabs my throat, weighing the possibilities.
Amazing: one action, one desperate and foolish move—and this is what happens. Things change. Or could change. The outcome possibly altered. So sudden. That simple.
“You’re one big fucking inconvenience, Mr. Payroll Clerk,” says Dale.
But I have no illusions, not even in my fuzzy state. I know it’s only temporary, that sooner or later they’ll bring my mother back to Arcadian Acres and that she’ll resume her life of solitude and I’ll return to my equally ascetic existence. But even if it got her only a few minutes more, then it was worth it. To have that much more freedom. It’s the only gift I can give her. Maybe she’s somewhere else in her mind and this will allow her to stay there a little longer. Maybe she’s reliving her childhood at this very moment. Maybe she’s remembering what it was like to be a young girl with no idea of what lay ahead, no conception of towns like Rayburn and nursing homes and disappointing husbands and distant sons.
The blood surges in my head. It’s like a blender in there, puréeing like mad. I won’t be vertical for much longer, this I know. My legs weakening, gravity saying fuck it, too bad. Dale lifts his rifle, tossing the cigarette and stabbing it out with his boot. I want to yell run, to warn her of the piercing tranquilizer about to enter her body and put an end to her doomed journey. But it’s impossible to speak with Carl’s fingers locked around my throat. He smiles because he hadn’t expected such drama today. But this time there won’t be any last-minute heroics. Still, I’ve done something, no matter how stupid or small. As my body gives way (it happens in slow-mo, and it’s not at all unwelcome) I feel satisfied for the first time since I don’t know when. The last thing I see before everything goes black is a lone figure streaking across the soggy landscape below, slow but steady, a cautious body finding its way in the world.
I wake up in my mother’s room, slumped in a chair, body aching and waterlogged, throat sore and scratchy from my adventure with Carl and Dale. She’s in bed, asleep, and I just listen and watch her; mouth open, the restless intake of air, the geriatric wheeze, the weak rise of her chest. It’s the most time we’ve spent together in ages. I watch and watch for I don’t know how long, realizing that there is another gift I can give her.
There: a phone on the dresser by the bed. The phone I never called her on. It works.
“Raymond, hey, it’s me, Michael,” I say. “Yeah. Look. There’s no real way to work up to this, so, but something has come up and you’re going to have to move out.”
I explain that my mother will be coming back home, that it’s just one of those things, nothing personal, life happens the way it happens.
But he must be high, immersed in rerun bliss, because all he says is “Cool, that’s cool,” probably not understanding that he’ll soon have to vacate the house and answer classified ads and start leeching off someone else.
“And if you do go by a store on the way back, could you get some tortillas and cheese, too?” asks Raymond.
Again, I watch my mother sleep. The deep, branching lines in her face and forehead and neck seem to go on and on, evidence, the nameless markings of a life. She’s still unwigged. The last few remaining patches of thin white hair cling to her scalp. A blanket hides the rest of her body, and it’s easy to imagine someone—a coroner, a priest—pulling it up over her face and pronouncing her dead. But she’s not. She’s breathing, albeit slowly. I wonder if she’s cold, if she could use another blanket. But I don’t want to wake her up. She needs sleep. She needs time. She needs a son who can be a son.
Maybe we’ll pick up where we left off. Maybe it will be different. Either way, it will be better for her than being here. And either way, I’ll be changing her diaper and crushing up the pills that are too big for her to swallow whole, dissolving the powder in applesauce or pudding, ministering as best I can, hiring someone to take care of her while I’m at work. But I’m trying not to worry about the details. Not now. Not yet.
Later on, just as it’s starting to turn dark, the long day finally conceding to night, someone enters the room. Doesn’t knock. Just walks right in. A man.
“Mr. Ormsby,” he whispers. “I’m Dr. Daniel Todd, the director. I see you’re awake.”
And I know there will be explanations, forms to fill out, the red tape to be sifted through and fussed over and finalized, but for now a simple declaration will do: Yes, I’m awake.
THE BOYFRIEND
The boyfriend knows he should say something. It’s the proper time, the right amount of silence has uncomfortably elapsed, and if he doesn’t utter some kind of solace or at the very least resort to a well-traveled cliché pretty soon here, she will start to wonder what’s going on and why he isn’t reciprocating, isn’t responding to her immediate needs, which are really quite simple: for him to say something, anything, although ideally something reassuring and supportive of her place in the world as a human being of import and snowflake uniqueness. And he should be saying something along those lines, he should be responding and reciprocating and so on. It shouldn’t be so difficult. He knows this. It’s the time-honored boyfriendly thing to do, he’s fully aware, and plus he’s been the boyfriend for a long enough period of time that he should be able to read her many female moods and nuances and signs (some subtle, some not so subtle, as was the case with her exclamation, only seconds ago, of “My life is fuck-fucking shit”) and thus intuit what is, what could be, the right thing to say. At least get a ballpark sense. Only he cannot. He cannot summon the necessary language that will end this swelling stalemate and m
ake everything all right so that she will then continue on with her crying and confessing and whatever else requires release, knowing that if nothing else he has acknowledged her pain in the obligatory boyfriend way, accepted it, perhaps even understood it a little, maybe. Instead, as he holds her, growing impatient in spite of himself, smelling her unwashed hair, his mind races with all kinds of weird, unrelated stuff that boyfriends most definitely should not be thinking of at a time like this (like how her hair smells unwashed, and who but him is dumb enough to talk smack to a cop after you’ve already had two DUIs this year, and what’s up with all those celebrities who are into Scientology?), and just now he detects the slightest, smallest hint of nipple blooming underneath her blouse, but there it is, what can he do—not notice? As a boyfriend, he knows that such A.D.D. insensitivity could be considered a major liability in the eyes of most girlfriends, including his. He reasons, however, that he is the boyfriend and not the husband, not the father, and that there is a significant distinction here. This helps calm him. This differentiation—between the words “boyfriend” and, on the other hand, “husband” and “father”—this, he gratifyingly realizes, makes a huge big fucking difference. Just the boyfriend. The freedom that that allows. Which is after all part of the attraction, the lure, of being the boyfriend and nothing more. Truth is, he doesn’t see how he’ll ever reach the point where he can be anything but that, the boyfriend, but who knows, he is young, life bitch-slaps you around in ways you never expect or see coming (his cousin in Florida, for instance, who one day was making good money at UPS and the next was on disability and eating all his meals through a tube), and too there’s the fact that he has some friends—disturbingly increasing in number come to think of it—who have graduated from boyfriends to husbands and/or fathers, although they do not talk too much about this transformation, which he’s pretty sure is a few years away for him personally, if ever, but then again you never know, as the example of his cousin in Florida illustrates. Really, who knows anything. Like for instance: she might be pregnant and that might be the real reason why she is crying—not because some S.S. supervisor at work embarrassed her in front of everyone and spurred a self-confidence crisis, but because she has not been able to bring herself to tell him of the pregnancy because he is not husband/father material let alone boyfriend material—and soon, very soon, his life will dramatically change and he doesn’t even know it yet, like a dope he’s been going to his job and working out at the gym and renting movies he’s already seen like three times while this unspoken fate awaits him, and it has all narrowed down to this moment, sitting here, present tense, on the itchy sofa he’s always hated (in his defense, hardly a conducive setting for cuddling and intimacy) with her head still buried in his chest and he’s stroking her hair but it’s just not the same as saying something to console her, for which it’s too late now anyway. I’m just a boyfriend, he tries to reassure himself, only it doesn’t work as well as it did a few seconds ago. She stirs a little, pulls away some. And that small retreat contains multitudes. And he knows she’s not pregnant, that’s not it. No, it’s what he initially suspected, simply that there’s been the escalation he’d dreaded, only now it’s official, verified: the situation at hand is no longer merely about her self-confidence crisis but also now involves the issue of his response, his lack of response, his silence, his guilt, his inadequacy—not only his own, which was considerable, but his entire gender’s, maybe. It’s not the first time this has come up, with this particular girlfriend in addition to others in the past. Not surprisingly, the boyfriend’s track record as a boyfriend has not been good, not good at all, but the girlfriend, it should probably be pointed out, knew this going into the relationship, which has had its ups and downs, but no more or less than usual.