Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  Billy hands him another beer. “You don’t get violent when you drink, do you? Just curious.”

  “Not that you would notice.”

  “ ’Cause if you get violent,” Billy says, “somebody will get hurt, and I like all these people. Including me.”

  “It’d be better if there was one person, just one person, it was okay to hurt.”

  “I guess that’s true. I don’t know, though. Who’d volunteer for such work?”

  “Doesn’t seem like too much to ask. There’s a fuckload of people in the world.”

  “Life’s hard,” Billy agrees, “but also surprising.”

  “How can you know if you’ve got surprises coming?”

  “You can’t,” Billy says, “but I guarantee you do.”

  “You’re fucking with my head.”

  Earlier, standing beside Rhine’s tent, watching Lolly and Violet sleep within it while the others gathered around the castle or person or possibly bear that Karly was sculpting, Billy tried to tell Barnstone that Jimmy wasn’t coming back. She turned to engage him, but across a stretch of sand Andujar was opening the van door and climbing in. “I have to lower some windows,” she told Billy, and then there was no one to tell. Jimmy is not coming back to the Center, not coming back to Lolly, not going back to Lise, and not likely returning to his house. Billy guesses that he’s in a hotel somewhere, trying to make up his mind what to do. He hopes it isn’t a high-rise hotel, though he doesn’t think Jimmy will jump out a window like his brother. He isn’t the right sort of person to kill himself.

  What sort of person is he then? If anyone should know, it’s Billy.

  Vex is talking now about Bob Whitman’s rototiller, which has 392 pieces, if you count every screw and washer. Billy realizes that he’ll need to find new things for Vex to take apart after Whitman retires. Otherwise, the guy is liable to throttle somebody. While Billy considers what all he might offer—Karly’s dishwasher, the lousy air conditioner on Karly’s roof, the Dart—it occurs to him that Jimmy is out there somewhere doing the same thing: taking his life apart in order to put it back together. If Pook were alive, Billy reasons, he would live with Jimmy, and Jimmy wouldn’t be a counselor but whatever he’s genuinely cut out to be. Maybe he would have written comic books—or some kind of books—that Pook would have illustrated. Who but Billy knows this? Billy doesn’t have a PhD or even a skill, besides pizza cook, but about this subject he is the supreme expert. No one knows as much about Jimmy Candler as Billy, including, most obviously, Jimmy himself.

  “See that?” Vex points at the ocean. “I’m slowing that wave down just with my mind.”

  It does look slower than the other waves. “You think that bonk on the head gave you superpowers?”

  “Anybody can do it, but I’m the only one makes the effort.”

  “I used to think if I went to pee during a key moment in a baseball game I was watching on TV that my team would suffer.”

  “That’s fucking stupid,” Vex says. “Mind waves can’t go through television. You can’t digitize mind waves. That’s dumb as fuck.”

  “I’m feeling nostalgic,” Billy admits. “Happy and nostalgic at the same time.”

  “Must be getting your dick wet every night. It depletes the chemicals in your brain to come so much. What you think is happiness is just holes in the gray matter. Why you think stupid fucks are so happy all the time?”

  “You must be an effing genius then.”

  “If I knew how to want the right things,” Vex says, “I’d want them.

  Anyone would. But even if you know the right things, which nobody does, it doesn’t mean you fucking want them, even if you want to want them.”

  “That sounds like a pop song,” Billy says. “I want to want you, baby.” Vex stoops to pick up a chipped white shell. “You ever thought how clouds look like garbage?” He tosses the shell like a Frisbee. “You’ve asked me that a million times. I can’t see it. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.”

  “Garbage without all the fucking friction. So it floats. Friction ought to be a four-letter word.”

  “Why don’t you say friction instead of fuck or shit or motherfucking? People would immediately like you more.”

  Vex finishes his beer, drops the can into the sand, and stomps on it, leaps on it. He picks up the flattened can and sticks it in his back pocket. “Just like that? People will like me?”

  “No, not really, but you could still try it.”

  “Shut the friction up,” he says. “Friction your mother. I’ve got crazy bullfriction in my head.” Tears appear in his eyes. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  A cloud moves in front of the sun, and both men lift their heads to admire it. The evening of the shower sex, Billy and Karly ate hamburgers and watched a dumb movie on television that made both of them laugh. When they went to bed, he did not want to sleep. He wanted to hold tight to his happiness. Not many days would be like this one, he thought, and he did not want to let it slip away just yet. At the same time, he understood that happiness was only one thing that this marriage would permit him to claim, and the other things might be complicated and difficult and contradictory. But happiness was what he could claim that evening, and he gripped the sheet in his fists as if to hold on to it. Today, strolling along the beach, he feels the same. Who knew such pleasure was available to a person? The cloud moves off the sun, and the men resume walking.

  “It’s like this,” Vex says, “I take things apart and I put them back together.”

  “That’s the late-breaking news?” Billy laughs. “I’d sorta noticed that already. The question is, why do you do it? What does it teach you?”

  “Everything ’cept the magic,” Vex says. “What, you know, puts spark into the world.”

  Billy considers this for several steps. “That’s still a lot to know. If you know all that, then you must have some guess about the spark.”

  Vex shakes his head. “It’s like a deaf motherfucker inventing drums.”

  “You should join me on my exercise program.”

  “The last thing I need to lose is fucking weight.”

  “Friction weight.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’ll give you something to do besides take stuff apart.”

  Vex sighs. “I’m not going to hurt anyone today. Quit worrying. I haven’t hurt anyone for a long time. Like weeks.”

  Billy pats him on the back. They’re just the same, he and Vex. Not that Billy is the slightest bit violent and his own head doesn’t have a crazy fireball bouncing around in it, but there’s something between them that’s the same. He likes knowing that. He finishes his beer and drops the can on the beach at Vex’s feet.

  He says, “Be my guest.”

  If Mick Coury dies in the Onyx Springs hospital, Candler is in a hotel room, on the twelfth floor, standing on a balcony that overlooks the ocean. If Mick Coury pisses on the pills instead of swallowing them, Candler is in the Laguna Mountains, at Bob Whitman’s cabin, on the screened porch, one hand raised to a roof beam. He’s drinking from the same bottle of scotch either way. The rail around the balcony is wrought iron and reaches mid thigh. A sliding glass door is open to its full length, letting the wind off the water sweep past him and into the room. It is a wet, warm wind. Conifers tower over the cabin, and a chipmunk scrambles under the porch. The sound of what might be a mountain stream infiltrates his ears. The sun is sinking. Candler stares at the ocean and smells the pines.

  Bob Whitman’s Jeep ascends the gravel drive. It is still light, but Bob has his headlights on. The Jeep turns in the narrow lane and makes a precise maneuver to back around Candler’s rental car and up to the porch. Lashed to the bumper is a rectangular gray container. Candler sets down his coffee cup of scotch. He has spent three nights on the mountain, and it’s Saturday afternoon. The cabin has electricity and running water, but no phone, internet, or television. His cell phone gets no re
ception. There is an old radio, and he has listened to the Padres bungle leads, drop fly balls, get thrown out at home. Down a slender path from the porch, in a narrow depression, lies a miniature lake, a blue lozenge surrounded by trees. Candler thought he might fish, but he hasn’t touched the pole or tackle box. Each day, he has taken a book to the lakeside, settled in the shade, and read, books that he found in Bob Whitman’s cabin, war novels, detective stories, and now a science fiction epic called Ramshackle, about the conceivable future, survival after the world has fallen apart and then fallen down, a lively, messy book, full of characters. And he has reread the note that Lise tacked to her front door. He uses it to mark his place, reads it each day before opening the book. He remembers the girl in L.A. to whom the note refers, the bleached blonde, the stripper, the novice prostitute, but he cannot make her into Lise. The transformation seems to him more than cosmetic, as if the molecules of her body were altered.

  Deer have approached the cabin to nibble the grass; fish have made circles on the lake’s surface, flipping their silver bodies joyously into the air; a hawk has coasted serenely overhead; and the chipmunks that live under the porch have skittered and scrambled about aimlessly; but Bob Whitman is the first human Candler has seen in three days.

  “How’s it going?” Bob asks. Candler helps him unload the container—a trash barrel with snap locks for the lid. The barrel has to go back and forth each time anyone visits the cabin. “Otherwise you get bears,” Bob explains. He tells a story Candler has heard before about arriving to find a big black bear stretched out on the porch, a battered trash barrel spilled across the plank floor. “Scared him off with the car horn,” Bob says, “or I don’t know what I’d’ve done.”

  Traffic in the street below sounds almost composed, like the impossible piano music of Joseph Andujar Freeman, like the impossible portraits of Candler’s big brother, like all the impossible things that haunt the living. Candler has cut himself off from everyone he loves, but he is not about to jump. He has no intention of jumping. And yet he cannot help but imagine Pook standing on a similar balcony, and he understands that his brother did not jump. Jump is the wrong word. He would have thrown one leg over and then the other, seated himself on the rail, perhaps for a long time, resting there, noticing, and then he would have let himself slide off; perhaps he would have taken one step. But he did not jump. This is not something Candler can know definitively, and yet he does.

  A pelican skims the surface of the ocean, the sun sinking behind it. The dying light is the purple of a dead boy’s exhausted flesh, and the skimming bird, in that crazy light, seeks fish foolish enough to swim near the surface. A shout comes from the street or beach, exultant or angry, male or female, from this distance it is impossible to tell. This is his third night in the hotel. Except to step onto the balcony, he has not set foot outside his room. He is getting to know the staff. He has read and reread the note that Lise left him, but he has not listened to the messages on his phone. Most seem to be from John Egri, but not all of them. He does not want to listen to them, but he wonders who sent them. Clay Hao has called, as has Kat McIntyre, but they may have called and hung up. If the call goes to voicemail, is that a missed call or a received call? He resolves the mystery by erasing all the messages and turning the phone off. On the day he arrived, he read one email before packing away his laptop. Genevieve Coury emailed to say the service would be private and she knows he will understand.

  “I just got the window unit repaired,” Bob Whitman tells him, opening the Jeep’s rear hatch. “This time of year, you need the a.c. during the day and a sweater at night.” He and Candler carry the unit to the back of the cabin. Candler has not walked to this side of the cabin, and he is surprised by a wide, green yard with a reclining chair. The grass is mildly overgrown. There’s likely a mower here somewhere, he thinks. They remove the screen and set the unit in place. Wings on either side of the device close the gaps.

  “I appreciate this,” Candler says, meaning the cabin, the a.c., the trash barrel, Bob’s trek up the mountain.

  Bob sidles up to him and pats him gently on the back. “Solitude,” Bob says. “Sometimes it’s the only cure for what ails us.”

  What does ail him? He has withdrawn from the promotion. He has moved out of his house and away from his fiancée. He has sold his car. He has inadvertently helped his best friend bed a client. He has run Lise out of California. He messed up the conversation between Mick and Karly, causing Mick to have a breakdown. But Mick seems to be better. It is Mick, after all, leading the others to the ocean. They should be there by now. They may even be on their way home.

  “I brought you a few supplies,” Bob says, retracing his steps around the house and to the Jeep. He lifts a cooler from the rear seat and hauls it to the porch—a metal cooler with dents in the side. “If you decide to fish,” Bob tells him, “you can set this right in the lake. Stay cold forever.” Inside the dinged metal box: sandwich meat, a loaf of bread, shards of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cheddar cheese, Dijon mustard, dill pickles, hamburger patties, several bottles of beer. “And the kitchen cupboard ought to be full of canned goods,” Bob continues, gesturing to the door. “Soup and corn and whatall. I hope you’ve helped yourself to whatever you need.” He unfolds chairs from a slanting rack against the wall. “Sit down and have a beer with me,” he says, “and then I’ll leave you to your business.”

  Candler leans back in the folding chair, rocks back until the front legs rise from the porch. He takes in a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. He has not seen a bear up here, but a bear has watched him. It watches him now, from the forest, standing on all fours. What the bear sees through the porch screen are the blurred forms of two humans. The screen makes them mysterious. Their voices remind him of moving water.

  Candler is not exactly pleased to have Bob Whitman dawdle on the porch, but what does it matter? So what if he is forced to spend time with someone who is not at all important to him—a minor player in his life? The man has done him a favor. Several favors. The small-time players in our lives often wind up mattering more than any one of us can possibly predict.

  Someone is at the door. Tapping professionally at the door. Room service. Candler hasn’t eaten. Pook’s painting is propped against the mini bar, and Candler has to step around it, Candler’s brother’s limpid body (mon, two, wen, thrus, fry). The painting stares out at the ocean, at the pelican, at the purple light. Candler opens the door on a man in a red jacket, white shirt, black pants. He holds a silver tray on one shoulder. A new face, the weekend crew. Welcome to my humble abode, Candler thinks. He says, “You can put it on the bed.”

  “Motherfucker,” the man replies and follows Candler in. He sets the tray on the bed.

  Candler is not deaf. He has heard the man but thinks he must have misunderstood. He reconciles the line by recalling that he has been drinking. More than he realized, evidently, as now he’s hearing things. “The tip is added in,” he says, “right?” He knows the tip is included. He has eaten nothing but room service since arriving.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” the man asks.

  Candler examines him then. His bland, pale, bumpy face is like a sack filled with miniature doughnuts. It’s Les Crews. Candler blinks and refocuses to be certain: Les Crews who once ran the sheltered workshop.

  “I’ll be damned,” Candler says. “I wondered what became of you.”

  “Bob Whitman fired me,” he says. “I got this job a few days after. Sorry ’bout messing up. I owed you for that job, and I let you down.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Bob Whitman says, snapping open a bottle and passing it to Candler. It’s a big bottle. Bob is in no hurry to depart. “This is the only beer I drink these days,” he goes on, levering another bottle cap, which bounces against the plank floor of the porch. The bottle opener is part of his key ring, and he deposits it in his pants pocket. His pants have enormous pockets outlined with discontinuous yel
low thread. In the sci-fi novel Candler is reading, keys play a big part, and key rings are talismanic objects. Everything electronic has been replaced with mechanical parts. Even spaceships have no computers and must be run by the manipulation of levers and pulleys and cranks that swirl around the pilots, requiring a constant dance to stay afloat. Everything has changed since the collapse.

  “You bring a sweater?” Bob asks. “Coat? Has it been brisk at night?” He points with the beer bottle to a stack of wood and what looks to be a new red ax at the far end of the porch. “Build a fire if you want. You won’t really need it, but a fire can be comforting.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Candler says. “I’m fine.” The beer complicates his mouth, a cold stew of flavors. He swallows and examines the bottle.

  “It’s a double IPA made up in Sonoma.” Bob savors a sip and shakes his head in appreciation. “Let me just say, I don’t blame you for dropping out of the race,” he says, imagining this prying so subtle as to defy recognition. “And don’t feel you have to talk about it.”

  “You never owed me,” Candler says.

  “Like hell I didn’t,” Crews responds. “It’s just that I needed money and took a second job, which was fine till I started cheating on the workshop. I shouldn’t’ve done that. It’s just that my girlfriend was pregnant, and I wanted to show her something. You get me? Wanted to put some cash in the bank. Wanted her to move in with me and start thinking that I could be a permanent solution.”

  It takes this conversation for Candler to recall that he recommended Crews for the job. Before he moved from Onyx Springs to the Corners, Candler played basketball every Sunday morning with a group of guys, and Les Crews was one of them. That Sunday game seems like something out of the distant past, played outside on a concrete court, and Les Crews with a decent set shot—easy to block but effective if he could get it off. He had been looking for a job just as Candler got approval for the sheltered workshop.