Out There: a novel

by Sarah Stark

  But as he put more and more distance between himself and that solitary man, the encounter began to haunt him. He tried to understand why the man had frightened him so much, and why he had not stopped to talk with him. After he’d traveled several more miles, Jefferson began to feel pity for the man on the side of the road, and he began to write the story of the man’s childhood in his mind.

  His face, with deep pockets on the cheeks left by a difficult adolescence,

  seemed to have been forgiven in its old age by a tub of peppermint water.

  To the tune of a country-western song he’d always liked, Jefferson twanged the line to himself and to the pup and to any living creature that might be listening alongside the highway, hidden inside culverts or behind scraggly bushes. Jefferson had suffered from the cruelty of acne many long months and years, and he’d always felt he needed some kind of forgiveness. The idea of soaking in a tub of peppermint water to wash away your sins seemed now to be what he’d been looking for all those years.

  Miles passed like so much good conversation among simpáticos, and the wide expanses of caliche and scraggly bushes began to be dotted by the occasional junk car and spare tire. A ramshackle barn on the left. Telephone poles and wires in the offing. A faint but indefatigable hint of fry grease, possibly French fries.

  Finally, civilization began to form around him in small pockets, and Jefferson’s heart quickened ever so slightly. The tingling in his fingers, previously a sign of fear, now had an undeniably optimistic flutter to it, tinged with something he might call hope. As he rode into the outskirts of Chihuahua, Jefferson felt some small sense of accomplishment, as if this trip had already changed something within him. Though he could not change the dark past, his relationship with that past was changing. He thought of the list, and realized he had not read it yet that day, a fact that made him slightly anxious—for he had made an informal promise to himself to read it every day—but also a little jubilant. The chanting of the list never failed to inspire him.

  From where could he read the list on this day? He scanned the near horizon and identified a tree a hundred yards off in the scrub. There it was. His tribute place.

  Off the road he directed the bike as far as he could and then left it in the sand and walked the rest of the way, Remedios at his heels, to what looked like a tangled thirsty oak. It was an inexplicable beauty in the middle of the desert and for this reason Jefferson knew it was the place for which he had been searching without knowing he had been searching for anything at all.

  Leaving the pup to watch from below, he climbed the tree with the list, then, looking out over the land to see that the moment was right, he gathered his breath to read out the names and the ages and the other details he had written on the page.

  This made sense to him. This was what he was meant to do as he made his way through the dry mountains of Mexico. Even if he was unable to find the great writer, even if the great writer turned out to be inhospitable or aloof or uncooperative or—God bless Our Lady of Guadalupe—dead, Jefferson would have this moment in the oak tree, reading and chanting and singing the list that was becoming both more a part of him and less a nightmare with each passing mile. Inexplicable though it was, Jefferson began to feel a nostalgia for all that it documented. The memories were what helped now as he breathed, as he searched the sky for patches of understanding clouds, as he began to sing quietly, letting his voice grow in volume, making his mind traverse through the many losses he had witnessed.

  On the forty-seventh day, Ramon, twenty, from Las Cruces was shot in the throat next to me.

  He perched high in the tree like an eagle, and he made his way through the list, vocalizing a line now and then as a particular memory called out to be sung or chanted or shrieked or whispered.

  Father and three young girls in Toyota near Fallujah.

  Oh my god, what can I do?

  All this struck him as the only thing to do in that moment. It was heavy work, the interstices of which he filled with weeping and pleas to God for help. What was he to do? In other pauses he called out to Gabriel García Márquez, who was a deity closer and more tangible than God, and all this he did like a young man learning to be human.

  Hume, twenty-one, of Appleton, Maine. Stupid IED.

  Sang in the evenings like Johnny Cash.

  The rough bark of the tree cut into his thighs and elbows as the position that had begun as secure and comfortable started to feel pinched.

  A guy name Jeff Kleiner from Stockbridge, Georgia, twenty-five,

  who drowned in a lake on the palace compound in Al Fallujah.

  He was less than halfway through the list and not willing to stop, so he readjusted his weight, told himself he’d practice a handstand on the ground for a while afterward to level himself out, and kept on going.

  Sergeant Schoener from Ohio.

  It must have taken almost an hour for him to get to the end of the list that first day in the oak tree, for by the time he was singing about Ray Soto, his friend from Iraq who also loved Gabriel, Jefferson’s feet were numb, and the sun’s globe was resting upon the distant hills.

  Finally, his task complete, he scrambled to the lowest branch and leaped to the ground, tumbling as he hit the hard earth only to receive the wet kisses of his pup. It was late, and he had miles to go and decisions to make about what to do for dinner and where to spend the night, and so he folded the paper carefully back into the book and stuffed both back into the bandage on his chest, for this had again become the right place for the book, he believed. He breathed in deeply once more, identified a patch of level ground in front of him, threw his hands upon it, and kicked his heels behind him and up in the air above his body, securing himself in the inverted pose that had come to be so important to him. Being upside down never failed to bring a rush of activity to his head and, usually, a welcome change in perspective. Remedios seemed versed in the behavior required of her, so she sat near him, quiet, as he stared out at the open plain then—the earth above, the sky below—and as he laughed at the joy of having the full weight of gravity, for the moment, off his feet.

  As he drove on into Chihuahua, Esco’s wariness and Nigel’s encouragement and Dr. Monika’s faith—all of it love, it seemed to him now—joined the wind in his ears, the straight road south, its occasional hill, its rocks, its lizards and roadside crows, all of it arriving in fact and fantasy without the clenching of his jaw, without the holding of his breath, without even a hint of nerves. And not since he’d decided to do this thing had the shaking of his hands overwhelmed him. It could have been because gripping of the handlebars at fifty-five miles per hour required great concentration, but Jefferson was beginning to think that his hands might have stopped shaking for a different reason altogether.

  20

  That night in Chihuahua Jefferson spent $15 for a single room in a small motel, a place with a shower down the hall. Once he had eaten a sandwich and gotten Remedios settled next to him in a nest of towels on the bed, he studied the black-and-white photo of García Márquez on the back cover of the novel, the photo in which the old guy’s eyebrows looked as if they could strangle you from behind, and he thought of the start of it all.

  As is true of so many great love affairs, Jefferson had not loved the writer right away. No. It had been a slow painful process. Having been assigned to read what he thought of as the old guy’s thick novel, full of names that all sounded alike and sentences that rambled across two and three pages, Jefferson initially found Gabriel García Márquez irritating, some smart-ass writer from some intellectual family in South America who had no idea what a pain in the ass he’d made every high school senior’s life.

  In truth, Jefferson hadn’t read much of the novel at Santa Fe High; he’d spent more of his energy debating with the same counselor who would later try to help him with college applications. When Jefferson might have been reading, he was skipping class to sit in her office and listen to her explain once more why she thought so much about young kids sitting ins
ide at stiff desks discussing big ideas. He didn’t care so much for being indoors, sitting at a desk next to the honor roll students at Santa Fe High, discussing big ideas, he told her. Wouldn’t it be better if he could just go outside? Wouldn’t it be better for young people to go out into the world and climb trees and decide for themselves? Who was she to decide what was best for him? he asked, in the most polite way he knew how.

  “Get back to class, Jefferson,” she’d said. “Just get your rear end back to English class.”

  “Gabriel García Márquez. Have you heard of him?” Ms. Tolan asked the Honors English class the second week of second semester of senior year, and some valedictory chica on the second row raised her hand and recited something she must have looked up online the previous night. Jefferson stopped listening after the bit about the writer being a Communist from Colombia.

  It was just nine months after this classroom discussion the fall after he had graduated from Santa Fe High—that Jefferson Long Soldier packed his copy of the novel into his duffel, Ms. Tolan having told him to keep it at the end of the semester. No one else had given him a going-away present, unless you counted the two packs each of clean white socks and underwear Esco got him at Walmart.

  Jefferson knew that many things in life did not make sense. He had experienced the confusion and hyperventilation, the standing on his head and the holding of his breath, the still not comprehending why things were the way they were. The fact that he packed his copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude into his duffel and took it with him across the ocean to Iraq despite his antagonism toward the book, despite his resentment of superintellectual men—this was one of those confounding things that did not make sense. It did not make sense, and yet it happened.

  One possible and partial explanation was that Jefferson liked Ms. Tolan. She called him “dear,” but she wasn’t over-the-top—she was also the kind of lady who sometimes dyed her hair pink, and never pretended to know all the answers. It is possible that because Jefferson liked her so much, he wanted to indulge her. He imagined that Ms. Tolan would love it if he took a piece of literature with him. The García Márquez novel was the last one they’d spent any real time on that spring; after spring break, the teachers knew not to expect much from the seniors. Jefferson couldn’t say for sure, but he guessed they’d read some short stories and poetry in April and May. But he hadn’t forgotten One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel that had beached itself in the dry sands of New Mexico that spring and threatened him from his desk day after day. What a pain that novel had been to him then. And on top of it all, Ms. Tolan loved it. She wasn’t a bit Hispanic, but she’d pulled out her Spanish accent as she’d discussed the Buendía family—José Aureliano and José Arcadio and Fernanda and Remedios—from the front of the classroom, making them construct collages using magazine photos that reminded them of their favorite character. Jefferson knew Ms. Tolan would not have known if he’d left the book under his bed at home, but the most honorable part of him wanted to show his teacher some respect. While she was older than all the students, she wasn’t all that much older, and besides all that, she was the only white woman he’d ever really talked to, so he took her advice and packed the book, even though he had no plans to ever touch the thing again.

  Ms. Tolan believed Jefferson had connected with some of the characters and understood why they behaved the way they behaved. It was surprising how many kids didn’t even try to give this impression. And because of his effort, Ms. Tolan must have thought the story was meaningful to Jefferson—that it was something that would remind him of home when Jefferson was off and away being a soldier. She was sick to her stomach when Jefferson told her he’d signed up for the army. She told him so. “Why are you doing this?” she’d said, shaking her head. “You don’t have to do this. Please don’t do this, Jefferson.”

  It wasn’t her fault, but Ms. Tolan probably didn’t realize how hard life could be, living in Santa Fe with a dirt yard and nothing but a broken-down camper van back by the trash cans to remind him that he’d ever had anyone but a grandmother. She tried to be a good English teacher. She always wore nice clothes, and she seemed to know what she was talking about. She wrote lots of comments on his papers. She was no slacker. But still, when she told Jefferson that day that he should take an important book with him—if he was really going to go through with his crazy plan to be in the army, he should at least pack an important piece of literature!—Jefferson might have laughed in her face. He might have said, “Ms. Tolan, you haven’t got a friggin’ clue.” He might have said “Adiós,” and “Hasta luego.”

  The fact that he didn’t say anything at all, that he held his tongue that day, is also one of those inexplicable facts of life. Not even Jefferson could explain why he left the room and walked down the hall, musing silently about his teacher’s mind. Take the novel? Why? Because it would make him less scared? Because the book would be his friend? Is that what college had taught her?

  He hadn’t cracked the cover of One Hundred Years, didn’t even remember the thing, until about five weeks in, when things started getting rough. He’d met guys from all over the country. Chattanooga, Irving, Little Rock, Memphis. And also a few from New Mexico. Hobbs, Española, Farmington, Las Cruces. His platoon leader was a guy who went by the initials RT, though Jefferson never learned what they stood for. One thing it didn’t take Jefferson long to learn: either RT was not the kind of leader the US Army should have trusted in the first place, or he had been at war too long.

  It was then, five weeks in, when Jefferson’s brain started spinning. What had he done, getting himself caught up in that war? All he’d have had to do was say no to that recruiter, and yes to the Santa Fe High counselor, who just wanted him to meet after school a few afternoons so she could help him with college applications. Beginning in September of his senior year, she’d said he could go almost anywhere he wanted—all kinds of places he’d never heard of—given his combination of good grades, unexpectedly sweet test scores, and the fact that he was three-quarters Native with no real money. One grandma’s love was nice, the counselor said, but it couldn’t pay for college. Even after he’d missed a lot of the deadlines, the counselor didn’t give up. “It’s not too late, Jefferson,” she said—until it was.

  But he was eighteen and full of ideas about digging in the dirt and trimming the trees and all the other things he’d always wanted to do in the backyard. That and climbing the highest peaks in New Mexico and Colorado, even. All those places he wanted to go. The idea of filling out all those applications and moving into a dorm room just so he could study a lot sounded like something a white boy in the movies would go for. What was it going to do for his life? How could reading a bunch more books help?

  Jefferson’s default idea was to get a job outside the store and start helping Esco with the bills. If he got a job and spent more time outside of the house, maybe Josephina would start paying him some attention or maybe he’d meet another nice girl. Maybe he’d have a little extra cash to take a nice girl to the movies. The idea of a nice girl sounded distant, like Hollywood as well, but Jefferson thought that a job and some cash might boost his chances more than a stack of books, and he also thought that a nice girl was probably less distant, if he was really being honest about it, than any chance he had with Josephina, her long dark eyelashes, her sweet round face, and the supple dark skin on her bones. This, too, figured into his decision to join the army. It must have.

  Certainly none of it had seemed very serious, not really dangerous. Jefferson had lived his first sixteen years in peacetime. He’d just started his freshman year at Santa Fe High, fifteen years old, when the planes crashed into those buildings in New York. He could tell it was a big deal by the way all the adults reacted, by the fact that school was closed for a couple of days, by all the crying and candles down on the plaza. And it was pretty unreal to watch the clips over and over again on TV. Like a scene out of a video game.

  Lots of older guys at school began talking to recruiters, s
igning up at the Mall, going away to defend the country, and Jefferson watched and tried to understand how he actually felt about it all. He didn’t really like the idea of war, but maybe this one, with all its high-tech weaponry and computerized bombs and stuff, wasn’t really like those wars they’d studied in American history, those terrible wars in England and Germany and Japan and Korea and Vietnam. Plus, maybe he wouldn’t really have to fight. Everybody always seemed to think that being in the army was about guns and artillery and killing, but what about all those support jobs, all those jobs far away from the front? He didn’t have a girlfriend to talk to, and he knew what Esco and Nigel would say. His whole family seemed to think he was headed for college and some better life beyond that, but no one talked about the details, because, he guessed, no one in his family really knew how to go to college or beyond, a fact that, frankly, scared him a whole lot more than the idea of wearing a uniform and learning to handle a gun.

  So Jefferson thought a lot about it, in the solitude of his own room, staring out at the Jemez Mountains, off and on during ninth and tenth and eleventh grades. When all the college talk began in earnest, senior year, he’d started weighing the pros and cons in a more methodical fashion—a list of pluses and minuses on the back inside cover of his English spiral—and then, over the course of a long weekend in the spring of senior year, his eighteen-year-old brain spit out the answer. Why not? I’ll join the army.

  And he had felt pretty good about the decision. Forward movement out into the world. This was the sort of education that made sense to him. This was the opposite of sitting in a classroom, discussing big ideas with other smart kids in Santa Fe. Besides, he had no real plans to compete with this possibility. There was a chance, he thought, he could make some small difference for his country—maybe save a life or two—and that this would help him be a better person once he was out, back home, setting out on the rest of life’s journey. He assumed he would not be hurt or scarred or changed in any substantial way. It had seemed like it would be nice to have a little money in the bank.