The Porcupine of Truth

by Bill Konigsberg

  “SO THIS IS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN, DADDY. YOU’RE GOING TO WRITE ME OR CALL ME. WE ARE GONNA FIGURE THIS OUT SO THAT WE CAN BE IN EACH OTHER’S LIVES. SO THAT WHEN I HAVE A BABY GIRL OR A BABY BOY, THEY CAN HAVE A GRANDDADDY WHO IS THE GREATEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WERE. ARE. I THINK YOU ARE THAT, AND THE ONLY THING YOU EVER DID WRONG, DADDY, WAS MAKE ME GO. I CAN FORGIVE YOU, BUT ONLY IF YOU CALL ME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT ALL THIS.”

  Her voice gets more calm now.

  “One last thing, Daddy. And as you see, I’ve lowered my voice now, because I’m tired of yelling, and it’s not right to yell at your daddy anyway. I just need to ask you this one thing. You really think God wants you to never see your daughter again? Didn’t Jesus hang out with the sinners? Even if I am a sinner, and I don’t think I am, I think I deserve that much from a man who follows Jesus. I believe he would want that.

  “Love always, your baby girl, Aisha.”

  She looks up at me, and I reach over and hug her tight and bury my face in her frizzy hair. It smells like olives.

  “That’s awesome,” I say, inhaling the scent. “You’re awesome.”

  “Thanks,” she says in my ear. “So I should hit Send?”

  I pull back and look her in the eye and nod. “Hit it,” I say.

  She takes a deep breath, and then she taps a button and puts the phone in her pocket.

  We drive in silence. My heart feels new. It doesn’t feel good, because it hurts still. For Aisha and what she’s going through. For my dad and what he’s going through. But it feels new.

  “Walking wounded no more,” she says, and all I can do is grab her hand and hope that’s true. For both of us.

  We sail through western Utah. There are no exits, no homes, no nothing. The Great Salt Lake seems to go on for hundreds of miles to our right, and to our left is a sandy wasteland. We don’t talk much. I think I fall asleep again.

  When I wake up, we are driving into water. The road ahead is covered in shimmering blue. We’re going to skid into it and die, and Aisha doesn’t seem to see it. “Look out!” I scream, closing my eyes and putting my hands in front of my face.

  She doesn’t stop driving or slow down, but we don’t skid into water either. I lower my hands. The water in front of us recedes. As we drive, it keeps receding. It is always twenty feet ahead.

  “Is that a …?”

  She smiles. “A mirage. Cool, huh?”

  I study it. “Can you stop the car?”

  Aisha decelerates, pulls over, and stops the car. We get out. The same water we’ve been seeing ahead of us is to our right, and I’m not sure if it’s the lake or more of the mirage. We step toward it, onto the sparkly white salt flats. They give a little under our feet, like damp sand might, and it appears there’s a lake about twenty feet ahead. But there are also track marks, like someone drove across the flats and right into the water.

  “You see what I see?” I ask.

  “Yep.”

  We slowly walk out. The salt continues to give, and ten feet in, I exhale dramatically. The water keeps receding.

  “It really is a mirage,” I say.

  “Yup.”

  “I could have sworn — I could have sworn that was actually water.”

  “Me too,” she says.

  “Maybe we can’t trust our senses all the time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I take a deep breath. “I always have felt like, if I can sense it, it exists. And if I can’t, it doesn’t. But what if my senses, like, don’t give me all the information? And what if that means that there actually could be, you know, something? Like —” I can’t even say it.

  “So now God exists?” she asks me, her voice funny.

  I don’t respond. It’s just … I don’t know.

  We get back in the car and drive farther, and my attention stays on the side of the road. Even though I know it’s a mirage, it feels impossible for me to believe it’s not actually water. But it isn’t. My mind spins with new possibilities.

  “Stop!” I say again. It looks real, but it’s not. I need to take a picture.

  We get out and walk on the salt flats again. This time, my sneakers come away wet.

  So the mirage is real? Sometimes? I can’t even figure out what that means. And the salt. So mesmerizing in its shimmering whiteness.

  “I wonder what it tastes like,” I say.

  “Try some.”

  “It’s probably the world’s most poisonous salt.”

  “Only one way to know,” Aisha says, teasing.

  I bend down and scrape my finger across the ground. When I stand up again, we study the salt crystals.

  “You’re like Willy Wonka,” I say. “Tempting me to eat something, and I’ll probably turn into a saltshaker and roll away, and the Oompa Loompas will come out and sing about my personality flaws.”

  We stand there, both lost in thought. And then it comes to us at the same exact moment.

  “Veruca Salt!” we yell, and then we point at each other and laugh.

  Back in the car, Nevada can’t come quickly enough. And then, at Exit 4, as if they know Utah won’t last for much longer, the salt flats end. Four miles later, we cross the state line, and we woo-hoo and high-five.

  We immediately notice that the drivers go faster and veer into the wrong lane far more often than they did in Utah. “Pick a lane,” Aisha yells to the cars in front of us.

  “Nevada: We take the second ‘M’ out of Mormon,” I say, and Aisha laughs.

  WE’RE BOTH FAMISHED when we get to the Reno city limits, as we’ve eaten only ice cream since breakfast at the Baileys’. We choose fast food based on our existential budget. Aisha pulls off the highway at a gas station with a Subway, and we each get five-dollar footlongs.

  It’s not great when a fast-food dinner costs, drinks included, one-fifth of your entire net worth. As I fill up the tank again, I try to decide whether I should tell Aisha just how low we are on cash. After paying for gas, we’re down to sixteen bucks.

  Google tells us we have 219 miles, or three hours and thirty-two minutes, left on our trip. It’s seven fifteen at night, and eleven p.m. seems late to show up at a stranger’s house. But we have no other way of finding Turk Braverman; I’ve called the number I have for him five times now with no answer. As we get back in the car, I’m all buzzy inside, imagining ringing the doorbell on his colorful Victorian in the heart of San Francisco. I have to hope we’ll have better luck than with the Clancys. That maybe, just maybe, Turk will answer, and know my grandfather, and where he is, and why he left.

  Aisha starts up the car.

  And then she starts up the car.

  And again.

  “Shit,” she says.

  “What?” I ask. “Not …”

  “Yeah,” she says. “This is not great.”

  “Oh, come on,” I say to the universe.

  She keeps turning the key, and it makes that wheezing engine sound, like it’s trying to find some momentum, but it never catches. The gauge on the left struggles to rise, and then the noise stops, the gauge collapses to zero, and the engine turns off.

  “Has this ever happened before?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “Come on,” I repeat, thinking that if there is a God, he obviously thinks he’s hilarious.

  “Well, I guess we can forget San Fran for the night,” Aisha sighs. “I might have triple A. I might not. I have no idea if my dad canceled it. I guess we’re about to find out.”

  She gets out of the car and makes a call, and I get out too and listen, having no clue what it would mean if she does have it, and what it would mean if she doesn’t.

  “Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” Aisha says once she’s off the phone.

  “Just tell me,” I say.

  “I’m still a member, so that’s good. They’ll tow us for free to the nearest repair place. Also, I get a discount on parts and labor, like ten percent off.”

&nb
sp; “Okay,” I say.

  “If it’s just the battery, they’ll give us a jump for free and we should be fine. The bad news is that if there’s actually something wrong with the car, we’ll need to pay to have it fixed.”

  “Ah,” I say.

  “Yeah. How much money do you have left?”

  “Honestly?”

  “No, lie to me. Yes, honestly.”

  I squint. “Sixteen dollars?”

  She laughs. I laugh.

  “No, really,” she says.

  “Um,” I say, looking far to my left and then far to my right.

  She shakes her head. “I thought your mom wired you money?”

  “A hundred bucks,” I say.

  “Can she give us more?”

  I shrug. “She ordered me to come home, so, um …”

  Aisha stares at me, mouth open. “And you didn’t tell me this because?”

  I shrug again. “I’m an idiot.”

  She sits on the blacktop of the gas station parking lot, leaning against the door of the Neon. “Carson. Dude.”

  I hate when girls call me dude. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

  Three hours, a tow truck ride, and a plea on the surfingsofas.com bulletin board later, we are homeless and carless on the streets of Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World, whatever that means. We need a new ignition coil, which is a thing. Apparently it’s what fires the spark plug, and hers is busted. It’ll cost $140, and they don’t have the part in stock. They won’t be able to fix it until the morning. And even then, we don’t have the money for it.

  We are sitting at a bus stop along a boulevard with a lot of car traffic but hardly any people traffic. I have the canvas bag with our toiletries and my grandfather’s journal, Aisha has her satin pillow under her armpit, and I’m carrying the Porcupine of Truth, which will not be as good a pillow as Aisha’s satin one. I’m an idiot.

  “Well, I guess there’s some comfort in knowing you’re totally screwed.”

  “I guess,” I say.

  Aisha takes out her phone and checks to see if our SOS on the surfingsofas.com board has garnered a response. Nothing. Nada.

  I think about calling my mother. Nope. Not calling. It’s just me and Aisha.

  We sit and wait for someone from surfingsofas.com to text or call. Then we wait some more. Then we wait some more. Soon it’s midnight, and we’ve been sitting at a bus stop for two hours.

  “Maybe we can find a park,” she says. “We’ll take turns sleeping.”

  Using Google Maps, she finds us a place about half a mile away. It’s a small, mostly empty park, with some grassy areas intersected by a lit path lined with benches and streetlights. The lights are so bright along the path that the pavement glimmers, unnaturally silver. We see a couple of homeless men sleeping on the benches. One wears only his underwear and a blackened sweatshirt. His legs are covered in sores.

  “It’s too bright here.” I point to a hilly area to our left. “Maybe try the grass?”

  Aisha shakes her head. “Too dark. Let’s do the benches.”

  We find a couple of benches across from each other, right under a pair of streetlights, far away from the homeless guys. I lean back on my bench and watch Aisha curl up across from me. She tries her side for a while, which looks uncomfortable. She rolls onto her back and looks up at the sky. She laughs.

  “What?” I say, laughing back.

  “The car, a zoo, the car again, a park in Reno.”

  “You’re naming places you’ve slept recently?”

  “I’m just sensing, you know, a trajectory,” she says.

  “People who use the word ‘trajectory’ generally don’t sleep in parks, do they?”

  “Classist. And apparently we do,” she says. “Good night, Carson.”

  “Sorry, by the way.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t your car that broke down.”

  “Good night.”

  “Night.”

  So this is what it feels like to be homeless, I think. I look up at the streetlight above my bench and wish I could see stars like in Wyoming. I think about how we all share the stars. My grandfather must have his thoughts when he looks up at the sky, and so does Laurelei, and so do I, and we can never really know what other people are thinking, even when we all see the exact same thing. Sometimes I just want to be able to know what the stars look like from another set of eyes. From Aisha’s eyes. I’d love to be inside her head for just one day. To know what it is to be truly beautiful, and also to know what it would take to make her be exactly her but in love with me.

  Because still. There’s a part of me that wishes.

  Before going to bed, I text my mom. As I don’t want her head to explode, I don’t mention that I’m writing her from a park bench in Reno.

  I know you’re pissed. Sorry. We’re okay. I promise when we come back we will have a long, long talk

  about a lot of things. I love you, Mom.

  I’m sorry I’m a pain in the ass.

  It’s the middle of the night, so I don’t expect a text back. I get one anyway.

  Yes, we will talk. I feel a real resentment

  about your behavior, and I know that we’ll

  need to chat about future boundaries.

  I know. Love you.

  She doesn’t respond to that one. And I guess I can’t blame her. But part of me really wishes she would respond with a “Love you too.”

  I put my phone away and pick up my grandfather’s journal. I decide to read the final page.

  I hug the book close to me and quiver. My grandfather and I. We’re two peas in a pod. How is it that I can be so in the dark about what was going on with him, but still feel like the words came from my own pen? He felt stranded and terrified. I’m lying on a park bench in a strange city, and I feel the same way.

  His life changed so fast, it seems like. Whatever it was that made him leave, it all happened quickly. We’re the same. My life has changed so much in nine days.

  Would I change it back now if I could? I’m sleeping in a park. And yet, I don’t think I would. I wonder if my grandfather found something that made it all better for him too.

  I try to figure out what we’re going to do in the morning. I don’t want to call my mom and ask for a bailout. I really don’t. I won’t. We got ourselves here, and it’s up to us to get us out of it.

  My attention is drawn to a rustling near my feet. I look down. In the dim glow of the streetlights above us, I see it. A rat, about the size of a football. It sniffs the ground around my sneaker, its straight-as-an-arrow tail wiggling back and forth.

  I yank my foot up onto the bench, stifling the scream that seems to originate in the pit of my belly. What the hell kind of rat gets so close to a person? A rabid one? Rats can be rabid, right? I begin to tremble.

  All those times in my room, sitting on the radiator, fantasizing about leaving and the utter freedom of being on my own, rats never came to mind. I think of all the things that make me feel unsafe, like, right at this very moment. The guy with the sores on his legs, about fifty feet away from us. Not having shelter. Not being able to afford food. Losing all my stuff. Losing people. Being entirely alone.

  The reality of Aisha’s life smashes me in the face. She was sleeping in the zoo. She was alone out there, no safety net. I knew it, but I didn’t know it.

  The rat saunters across the path to Aisha’s bench. He sniffs around its legs. Her left leg is actually on the ground, about ten inches away from the nasty rodent.

  The rat stands on its hind legs and begins to sniff up the leg of the bench near her feet. I emit a noise I’ve never made before, sort of an unhg sound. If I wake Aisha, she’ll move her leg right into the rat.

  I sit up quietly, my heart pulsing in my neck. I cannot — will not — allow Aisha to get bitten by a possibly rabid rat. I stand, barely breathing. By the way Aisha snores, I know she’s sound asleep.

  I pound the glistening pavement with my right foot, hoping to scare it off. The rat seems not
to care. I stand up and take a step toward the rat. Nothing. It disregards me completely.

  I keep my eye on the rat and feel behind me for the prickly porcupine that I put by my feet on the bench. A bristle jabs my finger. I pick it up and cradle it like a football. I slowly walk around until I’m behind Aisha. The last thing I want to do is scare the rat onto her bench.

  I set my feet, lift my arm, hold my breath, and hurl the porcupine down at the rat. It glances off the bench and ricochets into the rat’s side. The rat squeaks, and then it scurries away, off into the darkness of the bushes behind me.

  Aisha stirs. I see the whites of her eyes as she opens them. I’m looming above her, and she looks up at me and frowns. “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Go back to sleep.”

  She sighs, closes her eyes, and turns over onto her side, pulling her foot off the ground.

  When I feel safe enough to go back to my bench, I walk over and sit down, picking up the porcupine on the way. I take a deep breath. I hear no rats. I turn on my smartphone flashlight app and flash it into the bushes. I see no rats.

  It’s pretty clear I won’t be closing my eyes tonight. Not gonna happen.

  When my heartbeat calms, I go back to figuring out how we’re going to get the money we need. This … this isn’t suitable.

  Oh, what the hell, I think. I close my eyes for a moment.

  God, if you exist: Please give me an idea. If you’re so great, let’s see you do something for us to get us out of this shitstorm I created.

  Amen.

  I CAN’T BRING myself to wake Aisha for her turn at keeping watch. When the sun begins to rise, I haven’t slept a wink, yet I feel remarkably good for someone who just spent a night in the park and narrowly avoided a possibly rabid rat attack.