by Tom Kealey
Nate kicks a soda can. He puts his hands back in his pockets. Merrill has worked on that story all week. She has tried to get it just right. Having told it now, she feels like the second half started to fall apart. She should’ve left out the snoring part. She looks at her watch. It’s almost midnight.
Nate looks ahead. There are a few more houses, though their father’s trailer is still a mile past this neighborhood. Nate spits. This is a habit he has taken up recently. It annoys Merrill to no end. She suddenly shivers. It’s cold out. The stories—especially the creepy chair story for some reason—had kept her warm. She feels as if a thin ghost has passed very quickly and uncomfortably through her. When she remembers this walk, years later, she’ll remember Nate as the one with the shivers.
“Do you think they’re watching us?” she says. “Who?”
She points up at the houses. “The people in there.”
Nate shrugs. “Why would they bother?”
“It might be interesting for them.” Merrill considers the light in the windows. “We seem as if we’re just outside, but we’re actually far, far away.”
FROM BREMERTON
Shelby woke before sunrise, dressed in her warmest clothes in the dark. In the kitchen, she packed her book bag with apples and bread, some peanut butter. She added a map of Seattle, a carton of cigarettes she’d hidden at the top of a cabinet, and then brewed some coffee on the stove. She walked barefoot in the trailer so as not to wake her sister and the boyfriend. It was still dark outside by the time she poured the coffee into her thermos, and out through the window she could see the dull yellow glow of a streetlamp at the edge of the trailer park. Rain fell in the lamp glow, and she could hear the drops clicking against the top of the trailer. She wished she were back in bed, but she’d made a promise the week before, to a boy that she was in love with, although she was not now sure if she was still in love. Lots of things—her love for the boy, her grades in school, her future, or what she hoped to be her future—were in doubt. Wisps of fog disappeared in the rain. Before leaving, and because it was her nature, she put away the beer cans and the pizza boxes from the night before, emptied the ashtrays, wiped down the counters. She slipped into her boots, pulled her woolen cap over her ears, and closed the door, quietly, on her way out.
In the puddles of mud and slush outside she caught a blurred, distant reflection of her own gaze, a reflection that she liked: dark and small, without many features, a work in progress it seemed. She stepped around the puddles when she could, leaning over them, kicking a soda bottle across the park, listening to the rattle across rocks and broken glass. Outside Phillip’s trailer, she could see a light on in the kitchen. A cat, wet and muddy, eyed her from under a small porch as she made her way toward the light.
She knocked, listened to a series of loud thumps from inside the trailer, entered when no one came to the door. Inside, Phillip knelt in a corner holding a shoe above his head. A dozen or so brown splotches—roaches—were scattered on the floor around him. The kitchen smelled of mold and baked chicken.
Phillip turned as she slid a chair out from the table and sat down. His eyes were large, a little irregular, and his bony elbows and wrists seemed like knots on a straight line. He was not a good-looking boy, but Shelby—who was similarly thin, and who’d had painful acne since she was twelve—could find the beautiful parts of him when she put her mind to it. His hair, which was long and smelled of smoke and lemon soap, his lips, his neck and fingers. She liked all of these things, and liked him. Believed him to be good, if not good-looking. She felt a turn in her breathing as she sat watching his large eyes. The boy reached into his pocket, took out a roll of dollar bills, tossed them to her.
“How much?” she said.
“Enough to get us there.”
Under the streetlamp, they sat on an overturned apple crate, watched the first blue-pink rays of the sun appear from across the water. The Olympic Mountains were snow-capped and gray. A half-dozen men and one woman sat on similar crates, on seats torn from old cars. One old man drank from a coffee mug, the steam fogging the man’s glasses each time he sipped. Nothing was said. They all watched the road that led from the trailer park, and those that had them shielded themselves from the rain with umbrellas. Others wore ponchos. Phillip and Shelby sat under a plastic trash bag cut lengthwise down the sides. Phillip slipped a square sheet of white paper from his pocket, unfolded it on his knee. He creased new lines as he refolded it in triangles from each corner, bent those folds inside out and down until he’d made what looked like a fisherman’s rain cap. The man with the coffee mug watched him. Phillip folded two opposite corners together, and then the remaining corners up, folded what was left in half, pressed his finger against the angles to keep the creases. He set the paper right side up and placed it on Shelby’s knee.
“What’s that?” said the old man.
“It’s a sailboat,” said Shelby.
The man squinted and looked doubtful. The woman next to him stamped her boots in the mud, for warmth it seemed, still looking down the road. Behind her, in the distance, the pine trees swayed with the wind.
Shelby placed the sailboat at the edge of one of the puddles, flicked it lightly with her finger. The paper turned back at the motion, the bow pointing up at the sky, but the vessel floated in the red water.
“Nice trick,” said the man. He pulled his poncho closer around his shoulders. “Maybe you can make a roof next.”
Shelby picked up the sailboat, shook out the water as best she could. She unfolded the sail first, watched Phillip out of the corner of her eye as he shook his head. He’d taught her the next folds the week before. She liked that about him: he knew things, even if it was only paper folding and the like. He’d made a compass from a needle and magnet, Halloween masks from feathers, glue, and cardboard. He knew how to draw well and seemed content to teach her what she could learn. She doubled the paper back, refolded the sail, and turned the bow of the boat inside itself. She took out a pen. In the center of the fold she drew a dot within a circle, added some waved lines and shading at the bird’s neck.
She looked over at the man.
“A dinosaur?” he said.
“A rooster.”
“Hmm.”
In the distance, the headlights of a pickup truck appeared through the fog. The woman stood up from the crate and shook out her umbrella, but the men stayed seated, looked out through the rain. Phillip unfolded the rooster, set the paper flat on his knee again, tore slits along some of the folds. They listened to a dog bark in the distance.
When the truck entered the park, they could see three men already in the back huddled against the wooden slats and a driver, sitting alone, in the cab. Rainwater kicked from the tires. Phillip folded and refolded as the truck approached the collection of crates and the window rolled down. A bearded man peered out into the rain.
“I got work for four. Bring you back around eight.”
“How much?” said the woman.
“Fifty.”
“What’re we to do?” she said.
He pointed his thumb at her. “Not you then. I’ll take three of you men and the boy. Decide and get in.”
The woman sat back down on the crate, gave the man a look, although there’d likely be other trucks to come along. The old man and two others shook out their ponchos and umbrellas and climbed into the back of the truck. One of the men remaining lit a cigarette.
“You give my friend a lift?” said Phillip. “Wherever we’re going?”
“Going where I always take you,” the man said. “I said I’d pay for four, now get in or get out.”
“No pay,” said Phillip. “Just a lift.”
The man shifted the truck into gear. “If there’s room,” he said. The window rolled up.
In the back of the truck, Shelby and Phillip stood against the cab, tried to hold the plastic bag against the wind as the truck made its way up the road. The backs of their shirts were wet through their jackets, and they shivered wit
h the cold. In the gray wood, previous workers had carved their initials or nicknames. A few hearts were scattered here and there between the cracks, an etching of an airplane. Next to Shelby’s head, an inscription read Tony hates Eloise.
“Hey,” Phillip said to the man with the coffee mug. “You got any kids?”
The man looked up out of his poncho. “What’s that to you?”
Phillip took out the piece of folded paper, handed it down. The man took it with the tips of his fingers, turned it over in his hands, examined it.
“Brontosaurus,” he said.
“Sure.”
“They’re likely to swallow it,” the man said, but he slipped the paper into his shirt pocket.
During the ride, Shelby imagined a truck much like this, one in her future perhaps, a warmer ride even in Alaska. It would be summertime, and she’d be headed west from the train station in Anchorage, to work the fish lines in a small harbor town. She’d picked some of these towns out on a map, names that she liked: Kasilof, Ninilchik, Port Graham; and she’d read a slim book by a woman who’d done what Shelby hoped to do: worked the lines in the summers, saved her money in the winters, invested in a boat after that—the woman, like Shelby, was no fisher-woman, she’d had others work for her—made her fortune and was making more. The woman, like Shelby, liked the water. Phillip thought it a strange, unlikely wish.
“This woman made it,” Shelby’d said.
“Make sure you read about the ones that didn’t,” he’d said.
They rode the seven miles toward Bremerton, caught a glimpse of the bay during one stretch, the vessels making their way down Saratoga Pass. The rain fell harder the closer they came. Eventually the men made some room and the two teenagers knelt against the cab, covered their heads with the plastic, watched the raindrops through the thin black covering. The light of the sky was becoming a brighter gray.
In Bremerton, they jumped out at a traffic stop, waved back at the men in the truck, who stared dully after them. They cut down an alleyway, past a diner window fogged up from the rain, past the lines of ships moored at the docks, their white masts bobbing in the air like a row of birthday candles, past the stacks of netting. In the ferry terminal they opened a pack from the cigarette carton, lit up, counted out their money. Phillip paid at the counter for his ticket, boarded alone. Shelby waited on the dock, out of sight, she hoped, behind a wall of crab traps and crates. On the ferry, Phillip rolled his ticket stub into a ball, leaned over the railing, looked behind him. He’d hoped to be sly, but he looked guilty as the damned. He threw the stub out over the water, just a few yards, wondered if he’d been spotted. Shelby found the balled stub in a crack between the crates, slipped her hand inside, nabbed it between the tips of her two longest fingers. She held her breath at the gate, held up the ticket, folded flat but looking worn and wet. The teenager, about Shelby’s age, looked to get out of the rain, waved her on, tore the next ticket.
They sat in the cabin, sharing coffee from the thermos, set their socks and sweaters across a bench to dry. They watched the flag at the stern flap in the wind as the ferry pulled out from the bay, headed into the pass, watched the gulls and terns gliding behind the fishing boats headed in the same direction. She’d brought paper, Shelby, and they practiced the folds to pass the time. Made the fish, the baby starling, the teacup, and the seven-pointed star. A young girl sat across from them, next to her mother. Though Halloween had passed, the girl wore a grinning skeleton mask. Her eyes looked wide through the holes, and as Shelby and Phillip completed each figure, each animal or structure, she slipped the mask to the top of her head, hugged the toy elephant doll she held in her hands, looked away and then back again at the folded paper set next to the socks and sweaters. Then the girl pulled the mask back down over her face.
“You’re scary looking,” said Phillip.
“So are you,” said the girl.
The girl’s mother flipped through a magazine, not taking her eyes from the pages. At one point she handed the girl a peppermint and a napkin. The other passengers, few this time of year, looked out on the water or walked out to the deck, feet spread wide with the dip and roll of the vessel. A radio hummed with static, not music but news, a buzz of quiet voices discussing stocks and markets, bills and pending deals. White spray from the water splashed against the decks and the windows.
“Would you like one of these?” said Shelby. She pointed at the folded papers.
“Depends which one,” said the girl.
“You can pick it.”
The girl pushed her mask up to her forehead again. She looked up at her mother for a moment and then back at the line of figures. She ignored the fish and the boot, the cube and the starling. She eyed the teacup.
“I’ll take the star,” she said.
“Go get it,” said Shelby.
The girl slid off the bench, pressed her feet against the floor, hesitated, and then took two steps to the opposite bench. She held her elephant doll tight, then touched one of the sweaters for a moment, and then took her hand away. She clicked her tongue while deciding and took both the star and the teacup, then returned to her own side, leaning against her mother.
“I like your elephant,” said Shelby.
“You can’t have it.”
“I didn’t say I wanted it. I just like it.”
The girl turned the elephant’s face toward her, examined it. “I left the good one at home,” she said.
In the Seattle terminal, they waited, wanting to stay warm. Outside, the rain had not let up, gave no sign that it would. They ate an apple each, shared a sandwich, wiped the peanut butter from each other’s lips. Shelby hoped she might find answers to questions on the boy’s lips, with her finger, wondered if he might be thinking the same thing. They said little though, were comfortable and intrigued with each other’s silence. Phillip brought out a long plastic garbage bag and they tore it in half, a side sheltering each, and walked out into the rain.
They looked for street signs and examined Shelby’s map in the doorway of a bookstore, walked along the dock, staring out at the large black-and-red tankers, the smaller fishing boats, the yachts in the harbor in the rain. A rope trailed after a ship, tied to the stern like a long, thick water snake. Phillip thought about Shelby’s eyes, which he liked. He thought about a lot of things: his mother, who they were going to see, his roll of money in his pocket, the skeleton mask on the girl on the ferryboat. In his notebook he’d drawn similar masks, but they were the faces of aliens, not skeletons, although he saw the resemblance now. When he could afford it, he rented old movies—anything science fiction—read dime novels from the used book store on 7th Street. He watched the sky at night. What would they be like? He drew robots and three-headed creatures, hovering cubes and giant eyes. Then, reading more, he’d become serious. If they came, they’d be near to humans—would appear in that form at least. He was not completely certain, but had settled on this theory, not his own, but read in books.
He thought about the aliens a lot. Thought they might seek him out—not just him, but all the people who believed. He sketched and sketched in his notebook. His mother, when she’d lived with him, thought the drawings foolish. The faces were smooth and expressionless, the limbs he didn’t know about—how many and how long—but the eyes, dark and deep, were warm in his drawings. Eyes looking for an answer, scientific but not unfeeling. He thought he might wait another year, believing. After that, he’d have to give it up. He believed, but he didn’t have faith. It was a problem, he felt, that he had in many areas. Sometimes, he thought life might not be out there after all, and if it was, it might not visit him.
They found the address in a phone booth, shared a cigarette inside the glass, kept out of the rain. After, they found the barbershop on James Street, a shop away from the corner, but they could only make out shapes—people sitting, the motion of hands—through the fogged window.
Inside, they sat down in a row of chairs under a television, kept their eyes on the floor at fir
st, watching the strands of hair turn in the puddles of water, listening to the buzz of a razor, the click of scissors.
“Be with you in a minute,” said the barber.
The man’s head was bald, but he had a full gray beard, thick and clipped at the sideburns and moustache, thin on the chin. He chewed on a toothpick. One of his eyes was gray also, looked damaged in the glow of the fluorescent lights. The customer had his eyes closed, seemed asleep as the barber held the hair between index and middle fingers, snipped some away. A newspaper lay open on the seat next to Shelby, but she watched the reflection of the television in the mirror behind the barber. As they waited the president walked down a ramp from a helicopter, and a crowd, at night, stood outside a building billowing smoke. Two women swam through floodwater in a red river, and an astronaut floated in zero gravity. Space was dark and open behind him. On Earth, a young boy in an orange jumpsuit was led away in shackles, hand and foot.
They listened to the slap of customers’ shoes in the puddle near the door, waited for the bell to ring in the frame. The barber toweled off his hands, set his money in a drawer.
“Which one or both?” he said.
“You know Carney Booth?” said Shelby.
The man set the towel on the chair, closed the lid over the damaged eye for a moment, looked Shelby up and down, then Phillip.
“I might,” he said. “Who’s asking?”
“A friend.”
“There’s a few types of friends out in the world. Which kind would you be?”
“My sister’s his girlfriend.”
The barber nodded. “Seems like he might have a few of those.”
“Maybe,” said Shelby. “But I got one of his favors to call in.”