I never felt so puny as I felt while standing beside that massive plane, next to a girl I wanted but couldn’t have, in a place that was no place at all. I reached up and pressed my palm against the airplane and felt the cold metal.
Can I ask you something? Ashley said.
Sounds serious.
Not really.
What is it?
Well, Ashley said. Your hand.
I took my hand away from the aircraft and held it before her, wiggling the stump. Let me guess, I said. You want to know what happened.
I already know. Your brother told me.
Oh.
I was wondering if you could still feel it.
What do you mean, like a phantom limb?
Yeah.
I lifted my hand and curled and uncurled my fingers.
Sometimes I feel like I can, I said. You know when there’s a word on the tip of your tongue, and no matter how hard you think and concentrate, the word won’t appear?
Yeah?
It sort of feels like that.
Ashley smiled. The stud in her nose shined in the bright sun. The wind played with her hair and it rib-boned across her face. I wanted to kiss her. Another one of Oliver’s rocks gonged against the 747.
Ashley pointed at the ground. Lizard, lizard! she cried out, all excited.
The lizard was small, about six inches long from head to tail. Its scaly skin was made of miniature octagons in different shades of gray. He lay very still on the ground with his reptilian head cocked in our direction. When Enrique and I were kids, I used to catch lizards in our backyard. I’d pull off their tail and we’d watch it move by itself, side to side like a windshield wiper. Are you sure he’ll grow another tail? Enrique wanted to know.
Positive, I said.
It would be cool if people could do that too.
Later on that day I fetched a pair of rusty scissors from the garage. I looked inside the green bucket where I held the lizard captive and reached in. The lizard scrambled around, frantic, but still I managed to snip off one of its arms. I wanted to see if it would grow another one. I wanted to see if the severed arm would move all by itself the way its tail had, but it just lay there, useless. The next day I looked inside the bucket to see if the lizard had a new arm, but he wasn’t moving. A fly crawled up his back.
A few weeks later I had the accident and lost my finger and I knew better than to hope that it might grow back.
I have to take a leak, Oliver said as we headed back to the Picklewagon, kicking up dust. He jogged a few yards out into a field while Ashley and I climbed in the car. Enrique was still zonked out in the backseat, his mouth half open. Drool glistened on the side of his chin. Ashley aimed her camera inches from his face and pressed the shutter button and then she turned to me and smiled. I gave her the thumbs-up sign.
Oliver stood in the field with his back toward us, his hands at his crotch, looking down, then up at the herd of fluffy clouds in the deep blue sky.
Catface jumped on my lap and swayed her tail from side to side. Hey you, I said. Before I could start scratching her head she jumped into the backseat and onto Ashley’s lap. You have to pee too, Catface? Ashley cooed. She saw me looking at her and then winked at me again. It was confusing me—all her winking.
Oliver trotted back, relieved. Hey, did you know that Gandhi used to drink his own piss?
Eww, Ashley said, her mouth twisted in disgust.
So did John Lennon, I added.
Shut up, Digit, Oliver said.
It’s true, man. What do you think that yellow submarine song is all about?
You’re full of it.
Whatever, I said. I know what I’m talking about.
Oliver released the hand brake and stepped on the accelerator.
Enrique’s eyes fluttered open. He was still out of it and his voice came to us as if from underwater: Are we there yet?
8
AW, MAN, WHO FARTED? Oliver wanted to know.
Don’t look at me, I said. Enrique?
Wasn’t me.
Then we saw the field of cows to our right, stretching out into the horizon. Black cows and beige cows, white cows and spotted cows. The scent of manure filled the Buick like cigarette smoke blown into a beer bottle.
Ashley covered her mouth and nose with one hand. Gross!
Oh, Jesus, Enrique moaned.
Roll up the windows, Oliver said.
I lifted my shirt from the collar, covering my face from the eyes down. I looked at the cows. Some were standing and some were lying down. Some were chewing bales of hay stacked side by side along the fence. The ones that faced the highway and watched us zoom past looked bored. It took a good five, ten minutes before the stench left the car but an hour more before we stopped talking about the cows. Ashley vowed to become a vegetarian. Enrique vowed to eat more hamburgers. Oliver said his uncle in Texas works at a slaughterhouse, that he has to wear goggles and rubber gloves and galoshes because there’s so much blood splashing around.
I can’t believe how many cows there were, I said.
It was like Lollapalooza for cows, Oliver said. The Flaming Cows were playing.
And Modest Cow, I added.
Sonic Cow.
The Polyphonic Cow.
Cows of the Stone Age.
Yeah, and the Cows, Enrique said.
We all looked at him. Even Oliver turned around for a second. The Cows? he said. That’s the best that you could do?
Enrique shrugged.
We drove on in relative silence. There was the soft hum of the engine and the pop of Ashley’s bubble gum and the occasional yawn from Enrique. I imagined there was probably a whole mess of other kids out there just like us, who listened to the same music and wore the same faded jeans, kids who drank the same beer, puffed on the occasional joint and laughed in the gray smoke, whose fathers died or beat them up. I looked at the empty field to my right and imagined all those kids standing there, the whole dissatisfied throng, T-shirted and disheveled and angry at the world.
I was there the last time my dad beat Enrique. I was there and saw it coming, how they circled around each other all morning, brooding, the air sizzling with tension.
Are you going to clean your room today? my dad asked from behind the newspaper.
Maybe, Enrique said.
What do you mean maybe?
I mean I might clean it or I might not clean it. Enrique opened the refrigerator and took out the milk.
I think you might want to if you know what’s best for you.
Oh, you know what’s best for me now?
Watch it, my dad said, peering over the paper.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating leftover pancakes from the Pancake House, my heart beating fast.
My Zoloft is what’s best for me, Enrique said, uncapping the milk and pouring it into a glass. Without that, I’m screwed. And I wonder why I’m so fucked up.
Don’t talk to me that way, my dad said. He put down the newspaper and walked briskly toward Enrique. Who the hell do you think you are, huh?
Enrique opened the fridge and put the milk back and turned around and faced my dad. I’m Enrique Mendoza, he said. I’m fifteen years old. I’m half Argentinean and half Peruvian. I live in Cerritos with my brother, Marcus, my mother, Nora, and my psychotic fath—
My dad’s fist landed square on his mouth and Enrique fell backward, slamming against the fridge. He covered his mouth and when he removed it there was blood all over his lips and chin.
A few weeks earlier I’d made a promise to myself that the next time my father hit Enrique I would jump in for a change, I would make him stop. But I stayed out of it like I always did, cutting my pancakes with the side of the fork, wishing I had the guts to do what my mind was screaming: Stop him. Fuck your pancakes and just stop him.
Enrique spit blood on the kitchen floor. See, he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. You’re psychotic.
My dad raised his fist and punched Enrique on the mo
uth again. There was a crunching sound like pebbles under a tire. Enrique was on the floor holding his mouth, the blood dripping steadily now onto his shirt. Then my dad lifted his leg and kicked him in the stomach and when I heard Enrique moan, I jumped from the table—yes, finally I did something, finally I put down my fork and scooted back so the chair legs screeched, finally I stood—and lunged at my dad and put him in a headlock. Enrique grabbed his legs and we wrestled him to the floor, grunting, our bodies banging against the cabinets, the dishwasher. I heard the glass door open and my mom shouting, What’s going on? Stop it, stop it!
Motherfucker, Enrique growled. I could see the bloody destruction of his mouth, the large gaps in his teeth.
My dad flailed and cursed, an elbow caught me in the ribs, and the pain was an electric current through my body. I tightened my grip around his neck and he squirmed and coughed. My dad was choking and I didn’t care. No mas, Marcus, he wheezed.
I let go. We all stopped and the only sound was the sound of our collective breathing, of my mother’s quiet whimpering in the living room. Enrique rose and stood before the sink and spat blood down the drain. My dad went into his office and banged the door shut. I went to my room and turned on the stereo and sat on my bed, my ribs throbbing where my dad’s elbow had stabbed me. We were like repelling magnets that pushed against one another to the corners of the house.
Later on in the afternoon my mom and I crouched down on the kitchen floor and cleaned up the blood with sponges and paper towels. We found two of Enrique’s teeth. They looked like chips of white marble. She put them inside a plastic Baggie and would carry them in her purse when she took Enrique to the dentist the following week, thinking perhaps they could be glued back in place, as if Enrique were a model airplane with a snapped-off landing gear that could be repaired.
That night, Fourth of July fireworks cracked and boomed a few blocks from our house. I watched the horizontal blinds of my bedroom window glowing pink and emerald and blue. Every now and then a bottle rocket whizzed overhead and popped like a cap gun. I allowed myself to cry a little and fell asleep with my cheeks still wet. In the morning, Enrique woke me up.
Asshole’s gone, he said. His mouth was swollen and purple with a crimson cut down the bottom lip. He held my dad’s handwritten note, the lined piece of paper that read: I’m leaving. Don’t look for me.
Finally, he was out of our lives.
Or so we thought.
This is wrong, you guys, Oliver said. I think we missed our freeway.
We were driving through a town called Crows Landing, a town—from what we could see from the highway—that was no town at all. Just hills and a high chain-link fence to the west. The hills were blond except where blackened patches from a brushfire swirled through the landscape. It looked like marble cake.
Why’s it called Crows Landing? Enrique asked while chomping on some Cheetos. I don’t see any crows.
I flattened out the creases of a map of Central California and followed highway 5 with my finger. I glanced over the blue veins of rivers, followed the black veins of roads and freeways. I found many cities—Los Banos, Santa Nella, Gustine, Newman—but no Crows Landing.
Come on, Marcus, Ashley teased. I thought you were our navigator.
Sorry, guys, I said, feeling incompetent.
Do we need to turn around? Enrique wanted to know.
No, I said, my eyes racing around the map. I don’t think so.
Oliver sighed. If Nub was Columbus’s navigator, we’d all be living in Greenland now.
The backseat erupted with laughter.
Catface began to meow. Someone’s hungry, Oliver said.
You think she’ll eat some of my Cheetos?
She’ll eat anything. She’ll eat her tail if you put ketchup on it.
I finally found Crows Landing on the map—way north of the freeway that would take us straight to Monterey. Shit, I said. We need to turn around.
Great, Oliver mumbled.
I knew it, Enrique said.
Ashley held one of the Cheetos up to Catface. She hesitated, then leaned forward and sniffed at the orange treat. Come on, Ashley said.
Catface sneezed and shook her head wildly.
Great, I’ve got cat snot all over my hand! Ashley held her arm out stiffly as if she were wearing a cast.
Enrique laughed again and I looked at his tongue, orange from the Cheetos. I looked at his perfect teeth. I couldn’t even tell that he had caps. The dentist had told us that three were knocked out, not two. We figured the third one must’ve slid under the refrigerator during the scuffle and was now collecting dust.
Our dad had been gone for almost a week when I found the third tooth. The dark purple bruise around Enrique’s mouth was now yellow, as if someone had taken a highlighter to it. My mom was ironing one of her blouses and watching a soap opera, her eyes going back and forth from the screen to the board. Enrique was on the couch, his feet kicked up on the coffee table, and I sat across from him with my sketchbook. He was foreshortened, a tricky angle to draw—his legs were crossed and pointed toward me, his head small beside the bottom of his shoes. The iron hissed. There was melodrama coming from the television, shouting and tears and moody piano music. Enrique yawned and scratched his head. Stop moving, I said. Hurry up already, he replied. I’m bored to death. That’s when I saw it, his third tooth, wedged between the treads of his shoe like a piece of white plastic, like a chip of seashell, some fragment washed up on the shore with all the other broken things.
9
WE WERE SEVENTY MILES outside of Monterey when Oliver pulled off the highway and into a gas station. We were surrounded by flatlands and a few anorexic trees and nothing much else. There were dozens of dead bugs on the windshield, tiny winged things reduced to yellow streaks. The air was hot and dry and made my skin feel like cardboard. While Oliver was filling up the gas tank in the Picklewagon, I opened my sketchbook and worked on a drawing I had started the day before: a giant crow perched on a house, the bird’s wingspan wider than the roof. Ashley leaned forward between the headrests.
That’s cool, Marcus, she said.
Thanks.
How did you learn to draw like that?
I don’t know, I said, making hatch marks on the side of the house. Family genes, I guess.
Ashley turned around. Can you draw, babe?
Nope. I didn’t get that gene.
Ashley leaned forward again and looked over my shoulder. Hey, can you draw a picture for me?
Sure, I said, my hands getting all clammy. What do you want me to draw?
I want to get another tattoo, she said. When I was a kid I had a dream about this hummingbird. It was blue and green and it was drinking from a flower that was shaped like a heart. Would that be hard to draw?
Ashley’s breath smelled like cinnamon bubble gum. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted her to know that I wanted to kiss her.
I could do that, I said.
Cool.
Where do you want the tat? Enrique wanted to know.
My chest. Right over my heart.
Enrique pulled Ashley toward him and started kissing her neck.
Oliver popped his head into the car window. Anyone need to use the bathroom?
Me, I said, and jumped out of the car and into the dry heat.
I had to get away from them. I was liking Ashley more and it was really starting to hurt. I thought about her coming to our house day after day, what that would do to me. I pictured her sitting at our dinner table, the side of her fork sliding through my mother’s flan, the perfect shape of her lips as she slipped another sweet bite into her mouth.
The bathroom at the gas station had stall doors painted mint green and on one of them someone had drawn a gigantic penis with a black marker. The balls were two adjoined circles with short lines radiating outward, quick dashes that were supposed to be pubic hair. It looked like a dick stuck on a cactus.
Oliver walked into the bathroom whistling. That’s about how big mine is, he sai
d, gesturing toward the vandalized door.
Sure it is, I said. I was wetting my face at the only sink in the bathroom, and the mirror above it was all scratched up with more graffiti—gang names and fuck-yous and a heart skewered on an arrow.
Oliver was pissing in one of the urinals and the back of his T-shirt was damp with sweat. So how long do you think your brother and Ashley are going to last? he said.
I don’t know.
I give them a month.
He seems pretty happy with her, I said. For a depressive, I added.
Oliver hit the silver bar on the urinal to flush and zipped up and moved toward the sink. Hey, has your brother ever tried to commit suicide?
No, I said. Not that I know of.
Oliver’s hands were under the faucet’s column of water, wetting them.
Why, have you ever thought about it? I asked.
No. You?
Nuh-uh.
Oliver shut off the water and yanked out a few paper towels from the chrome dispenser. I wanted to tell you something, he said.
Shoot, I said.
Those pictures.
What pictures?
The ones in the glove compartment. That wasn’t my aunt in the photo, he said. He wiped his hands on the paper towels and balled them up and then dropped them into the trash can. That was some woman my dad was screwing and got pregnant.
I leaned against the wall. Does your mom know?
Yeah. She went to the same church that my parents went to.
That’s messed up.
I know, Oliver said. My father paid for her abortion. Three days later he hanged himself.
Shit, I said.
Enrique walked into the bathroom with a bounce in his stride. Thought I didn’t have to go, he said, and stood before one of the urinals and unzipped. How much farther do we have to go? he asked over his shoulder.
About an hour, I said.
Oliver was quiet and his face was blank like a sheet of paper with two eyes. There was a small cricket on the floor and he watched it crawl across the tile. The cricket moved quickly in one direction, stopped, moved quickly in another direction, stopped again.
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