by David Connor
Twenty minutes with Rohan felt like an hour. After chatty Emery, the silence was kind of weird. AC was just about to turn up the radio when Rohan decided to roll the window on his side all the way down.
“Um…c-c-can you p-pu…”
Rohan didn’t even look over.
“R-r-ro-Rohan.”
Nothing. So, AC tapped him on the shoulder, startling the guy, who jumped so high, he nearly hit the roof. Still, not a word was spoken. Rohan’s eyebrows did the talking, coming together to form a questioning V.
AC pointed to the window. Spud was already up, with AC holding him back while trying to steer in heavy traffic on the thruway, neither task going particularly well.
Once again, Rohan did not budge. He didn’t even look up at the blare of the car horn when the van drifted into another lane.
Fuck! Pissed off now, AC took his hand off the wheel a second time, nudged Rohan harder, and then mimed like he was turning the window handle himself. He hitched a thumb toward Spud afterward, trying for what he hoped was an apologetic expression, as opposed to one that might show how he truly felt.
“The cat. Sorry.” Rohan smacked his forehead, like “Duh,” and then hurriedly spun the crank until the glass came back up.
When AC gestured toward the console, the vent buttons and air conditioning controls, Rohan waved the thought away. Apparently, the ambient temperature was just fine now. AC seriously considered another gesture, a one-digit salute.
That was where the conversation—if one could call it that—ended for a while. AC counted eighty-five guardrail posts and was actually starting to miss Emery’s sneezes, which he’d come to find quite endearing by the end of two hours. The sigh he let out apparently went unnoticed.
Finally, around guardrail 109, Rohan spoke again. “I don’t want you to think I’m not talking because of your, you know.”
AC wished he hadn’t. How the hell was he supposed to respond to that? He decided not to, which left the pair in a state of silence for another six entire miles. Even the radio had gone quiet, because they were surrounded by mountains. AC was just about to go for his phone for some tunes, when Rohan started humming “Joy to the World.” Immediately, the song took AC back to Christmas morning, 1993.
* * * *
The whole family was still around the tree. Atticus had asked Santa for a Talkboy, the special cassette tape recorder Kevin McCallister had used in the movie Home Alone 2 to change his voice. The thing was magic, Atticus knew. He could talk into it, it would change his speech, and when he played it back, his stutter would be gone. He could sing into it, he figured, and make a joyful noise, like he’d tried in first grade, but not much since, even when Wendy would encourage him to. What better song was there for that than the one everyone had sung in church the night before—everyone but Atticus—”Joy to the World?”
Atticus snuck off to the bathroom. After taking a few minutes to figure everything out, how to record, what buttons to push, and where to sing, he sang “Joy to the World,” at barely a whisper into the microphone.
Giddy by the time he got back out to the living room, he couldn’t wait to hit Play for his parents and older siblings. “I w-w-was s-s-sing-s-singing for G-g-g…”
“God?” His mother asked.
Atticus nodded. He was practically jumping up and down. “It’s g-g-go-ing t-t-to be p-p-p…”
“Perfect?”
He nodded again, but when he hit play, the Talkboy didn’t work like he thought it would.
“J-j-j-joy t-t-t-to th-the w-w-w-world.”
His brothers started laughing before the tape could go any farther, all five, Gabriel, Bartholomew, Sullivan, Emmanuel, and Montgomery.
“Sh-sh-shut—”
“Spit it out, boy!” Gabriel laughed the hardest, when Atticus threw the stupid toy against the floor and ran up the stairs to his room.
* * * *
When AC came back to 2018 and highway 35, Rohan was tapping on his lap. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
AC did it back, drumming on the steering wheel. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
Immediately, Rohan offered something longer. Rat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Rat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Rat-a-tat. Ta-tat. Ta-tat-tat-tat.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Rat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Rat-a-tat. Ta-tat. Ta-tat-tat-tat. AC echoed it once more.
“Wow. You’re good.”
“N-nah.”
The drumming sound changed when Rohan switched to the rounded, padded part at the top of the passenger side door. Boomity, boom. Pause. Boomity, boom. Pause. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boomity, boom.
Boomity, boom. Pause. Boomity, boom. Pause. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boomity, boom.
When Spud curled up tighter and put one of his front paws over his face, his critique resulted in a boisterous duet of laughter that ended in two deep sighs, as AC and Rohan both worked to catch their breath.
“Oh, my.” Following those two words from Rohan, the uncomfortable silence returned, lingering a good five minutes, until he started tapping again.
The drumming seemed to be coming from him without thought this time, at least at first. Rohan hummed a short refrain of “The Little Drummer Boy,” and then put down a complicated rhythm using everything around him, the door panel, his lap, his chest, tummy, and even both cheeks.
“One more t-time?” When Rohan didn’t respond, AC added a tap on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
“I didn’t g-g-get the whh-whole thing. What y-y-you p-played.” AC couldn’t recall the last time he’d said so many words. He even added some more. “I w-w-want to t-t-try it.”
“Oh. I was just…” Rohan still spoke so quietly he was hard to hear. “I’m deaf in that ear.” He pointed to the left one. “Lost part of my hearing in Afghanistan with my tooth. That’s my red badge of courage. It’s nothing. So many guys lost more than that, things they can’t fix.”
“Oh.” AC felt like an ass.
“Sorry. I’m not sure what I played. I was just messing around. During ‘The Little Drummer Boy,’ we all just go off and riff. Kind of improv…on the spot. I guess I was just doing that. I sometimes slip into my own world.”
“It’s f-f-fine. Th-thank you for your s-ser-service. Sin-s-s-sin-cerely.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Huh?”
“You’re welcome.” Rohan raised his volume. “Words…talking.” He rolled his amber eyes.
“Yeah.” AC did the same.
“I assume I’m talking too loud sometimes, so then I get quiet, and no one can hear me,” Rohan said. “Overthinking every word that comes out of my mouth can be exhausting.”
“T-tell me abou-about it.”
“I just did.” Rohan laughed. It was contagious, and he and AC giggled for a long time again.
“Y-y-you’re fine.”
“Try this,” Rohan said afterward.
AC listened closely. The beat went something like, Boom, boom, tap. Pause. Tappity, boom, boom. Boom, boom, tap. Pause. Tappity, boom. Ratta-tat, tatta, tat, boomity, rat-ta-tat. Boom, boom, rat-a-tat, tappity, boop.
The “Boop” was spoken aloud, and with it, Rohan brought a fingertip to AC’s nose. “Oh.” He lingered there, and AC swallowed hard. “Did you, uh, get that, all of it?”
“Um…M-m-maybe.” AC looked over briefly, but then turned right back to the road.
“I’ll do it again.”
Boom, boom, tap. Pause. Tappity, boom, boom. Boom, boom, tap. Pause. Tappity, boom. Ratta-tat, tatta, tat, boomity, rat-ta-tat. Boom, boom, rat-a-tat, tappity, boop.
At a red light, while sitting there, AC replicated the entire cadence, ending with the “boop” and the slightest tap on Rohan’s lips, having missed his intended target. “Y-you f-f-forgot that the s-second time. Boop.” He moved his finger upward, and their eyes met, maybe for the first time on purpose. If not the first, definitely the longest.
“Who needs words?” Rohan asked.
“N-not
us.”
When the light turned green, and AC hit the gas, Rohan started playing again. “I bet you can learn the whole show. You pick up fast.” He turned sideways in his seat. “A lot of people think drumming isn’t really playing an instrument, but if you don’t have the head for beats, you’re never going to get it. You got good head.”
AC cringed.
“Let’s go back to that no talking thing.”
He also laughed. “It’s all g-g-good, Rohan.”
“I’m just going to play.”
Instead of executing the beats only on himself and parts of the van, Rohan often put his hands on AC, all over him, forearm, shoulder, the top of his head, and several times, his bare upper legs, dangerously close to AC’s crotch. By the end of Rohan’s two hours, AC had many of the rhythms down. Also, more than once, his dick was up. Throbbing percussion was hot.
Chapter 5
Rick: Three stars. Teal shirt. Dopey. Silly. Goofy. Cute buzzcut, bearded ginger, all orange and freckles. Average bod. Playful with all the guys.
The next person up front was Rick, according to his shirt. He cracked a lot of jokes, was always tickling the others, and even gave some of the smaller guys piggyback rides outside during initial load in and at some of the stops. Rick looked to be in his late forties. He was somewhere between an otter and a chub, a red one, with his hairy arms and chest fur sticking out of the collar of his T-shirt. After what Emery had said about Rick running a weed store, AC wondered if the dopiness was the result of something smoked or ingested, rather than just a personality trait.
Rick settled into the seat, and then closed his eyes. AC thought he might be planning on a nap, but the moment they pulled back into traffic, Rick’s eyes snapped open, and he stared straight ahead. “So fast, man.”
They were still in first gear. AC hadn’t even put on his seatbelt yet.
“Cars going by us on both sides. I grew up where there were only two lanes on a road. Not even divided. Dirt roads, brown and dusty.”
When AC did shift into second, Rick looked down at the four speed knob and seemed transfixed. Dude was high as a kite! When everyone else was eating chocolate or Cheez-Its, Rick was apparently getting baked. Spud made a beeline for the guy. AC wondered if weed smelled like catnip to a cat.
“It’s a cat, man.”
AC nodded.
“Check out all the pretty colors.”
When AC looked at Spud, he only saw two, light orange and white.
“No, man, like each hair is different,” Rick said, as if he could read AC’s mind. “There’s light orange, and dark orange, and medium orange, and light orange, and dark orange, and medium orange.”
Was reefer Rick about to count each individual strand on Spud’s body?
“Way cool.”
AC cracked the window to avoid any chance of a contact high, switched into the center lane, and recalled the first time he’d tried pot.
* * * *
Atticus was sixteen when he made the decision to take his stuttering problem into his own hands, with a little help from his brother Bartholomew. Years of therapy, trips to neurologists, medication, none of it had made a marked difference.
“Did you get the stuff?” They were in AC’s bedroom. Atticus had made the change to AC around age thirteen, because it was easier to say. The space was decorated in shades of brown, with images of famous fictional cats painted on the walls. Garfield, Sylvester, Tom, Tigger, Pink Panther, all drawn by AC, were engaged in various academic and sporty activities, things AC had often wished he could be a part of.
“Shh.” Bartholomew pulled the small Ziploc bag from his pocket. Fortunately, a rolled doobie, as he called it, was in the bag with some loose herb. Bartholomew thought he was cool, but the truth was, between the two of them, they wouldn’t be able to roll a joint if their lives depended on it.
“F-f-fi…F-f-fi…F-f-fire it u-u-up.”
“You sound worse when you’re freaked out.”
“I’m n-n-n-n…Sh-sh-shu-shut up.”
“You shut up.” Bartholomew chucked the plastic bag at AC’s head. “And you light it.”
“Y-y-y-you’re o-o-older.”
“I don’t stutter.”
“F-f-f-fu…” AC gave up on the “fuck you,” but he did unzip the baggie, and then reached for the lighter.
* * * *
Back in the present, Rick had gotten quiet. AC wondered if he’d fallen asleep after all. When he glanced over, he caught Rick staring back. His teal shirt in his hand, he kept looking back and forth between it and the button down one in a similar shade AC had slipped on over his tank top.
“Do you like bananas?”
AC nodded and wondered how two teal shirts reminded Rick of bananas.
“What about lemons? I like lemon pie. Do people eat lemons plain, like an orange? Just peel one and eat it?”
“I d-d-don’t th-think s-s-so.”
Rick didn’t interrupt or say the words to speed things along. He had all the time in the world. Either that, or he didn’t have a clue what AC was saying. “Yeah. Me neither. Apples.”
What about them? AC wondered but didn’t ask.
“Pears.”
Maybe Rick was just going to start naming fruit now, he figured.
“A spud is a potato.”
The cat was still in Rick’s lap.
“I like carrots.”
And so it went for another ten minutes, before some of the buzz apparently started to wear off.
“Have you ever tried weed for your stutter?” Rick asked then.
AC felt the constriction in his chest. The question had come out of nowhere. “Y-y-yes.”
“Did it work?” Rick asked.
“S-s-sort of. I c-c-c-can’t be s-s-stoned all the t-t-time, though.”
“True that.” Rick rubbed the sides of his head. “I, uh, use it for epilepsy. Sometimes I seem stoned even when I haven’t used. It works for me, though, ya know? These guys are cool with it.”
“N-n-nice.”
“I had a seizure back there.”
AC gasped.
“Nah. I’m good, man. The others offered to let me ride up front all the time, but that didn’t have anything to do with why. Fact is, we d-d-d-on’t k-now why. See.” Rick smiled when AC glanced his way. “I do it, too, sometimes. That was me coming out of one, b-by the way. I’m different stoned. You’ll see.” Rick smiled.
“Y-y-you’re o-o-okay?”
“Yup. Good now. My seizure activity has diminished significantly since my t-teens. That was my first one in months. I haven’t been paying attention to my sleep. I know better.” Rick ran his hand down Spud’s back. “Imagine being a gay epileptic sixteen-year-old. No wonder I was a virgin until I was forty.”
AC snapped around before he had a chance to think better of it.
“Yeah. You heard me right. Most of it was up here, though. Well, all of it was up here, but not neurological. I could have been fucked, like, a thousand times more had I not been so scared. I wasn’t even afraid of seizing out in the middle of a blow job. It was more about ‘Who the hell would want to take that on?’ So, I just kind of hid myself away for a really long time, until first, I discovered the healing powers of cannabis, and then, a few years later, I found these guys. I’m the senior member,” Rick said proudly. “Been around even longer than Murph. He took over leadership, though, when Darren left. See, the stutter’s gone already.” Rick groaned. “Shoot. Sorry, man.”
AC looked at him. “F-f-for w-what?”
“That sounded like a jerky thing to say, considering.”
“N-not at a-a-all. I’m g-glad for y-you.” AC grimaced.
“You know what. Let me tell you something. To the listener, the stutter doesn’t sound nearly as bad as it does to the stutterer.”
AC hadn’t really meant to make the face he did. Skeptical. Kind of, “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious,” Rick said. “Take it from someone on both sides of it. Your words, the good stuff, l
ike ‘Merry Christmas,’ ‘Happy Birthday,’ ‘Kiss me,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘Fuck me hard,’ he whispered. “They all sound just as wonderful with an extra syllable or two when said by someone special, like a parent, a sibling, or a lover.”
AC kept quiet.
“It’s been a while, the lover part,” Rick said. “The last guy I dated stole my bicycle when I had a seizure.”
“W-w-what an asshole.”
“Ha! No stutter when you curse.”
AC smiled. “S-s-s-sometimes.”
“Haven’t had a date or a bicycle since.”
“D-don’t give up.”
“On which one?”
“Ei-either. Both.”
“You got it, man. I guess not everyone’s a jerk.” Rick yawned. “A seizure often leaves me sleepy. Is it okay if I drift off a while?”
“S-s-sure.”
“Cozy cat on my lap, comfy seat, I might not be able to help myself.”
It was more than okay. If Rick was sleeping, he wouldn’t notice AC sniffling so much. Unlike Emery, it had nothing to do with histamine levels.
Chapter 6
Yoshi: Three stars. Wearing pink. Doc. Middle-aged. Carries some extra weight. Heavy. Worst haircut I’ve ever seen. I do like hot nerds, though. How long has it been since I’ve been wrapped in the cozy arms of a cushy, soft man to make me feel safe when I don’t and warm when I’m cold?
When AC thought back to what he’d written about Rick, Manny, Emery, and Rohan, he regretted even starting his stupid notebook, the one with the unfair, mean, and childish ratings. He’d change every one so far. Hell, if he could go back, he wouldn’t start it at all. AC wished he could just burn the damned thing as he put his hand in Yoshi’s for a shake.
Murphy had asked when they might stop for the night. Twelve guys in all, AC figured maybe after the sixth. The halfway point seemed to make sense.
“The sunset is pretty. Hard to believe how fast it gets cooler. We’re barely out of Texas and I’m freezing. Hmm.” Yoshi wrapped his arms around his barrel chest after he buckled up. “Texas is big. We’ll go through several states now in the same amount of time it took to get through Texas.