The Slide: A Novel Page 8

  Stuart held the joint between his lips and patted his shorts for a lighter. I watched the topless girl rise from the lounger, breasts exposed and bouncing a little with each step toward the table. Various articles over the years had named the Schnucks supermarket on Clayton Road a Top 5 Local Spot to Meet Singles. The girl pulled out a chair and nodded at me as if from beneath a Stetson. When he passed the joint, the girl received it in her open palm, so quaintly wrong a gesture I immediately liked her. She took a shallow pull and closed her eyes. The sacred red and white Budweiser cans sweat condensation. I allowed myself quick glances at her breasts. In a vacuum, such indulgences of the body seemed vain and flauntingly arrogant. But something about this girl’s demeanor, her generously plain face and peacefully closed eyes, made it okay. Stuart’s past relationships were brief codependencies with gorgeous but hideous New York daughters linked to inheritances in the range of his own. Here was a girl bred within the ethos of our middle land, reared among field and stream and earnestness. Others wore nudity like some costume, but not her. I looked at Stuart, then back to her, and had to give them credit for such brazen disregard for the regime of time.

  But my watch said it was time to go back to the warehouse. I had to empty the empties from the van, break down cardboard boxes and fill out paperwork, return home to shower away the job’s evidence, and prepare for the night’s Cardinals game.

  “I am too much in the sun. What about tonight? I hope you don’t mind driving.”

  “I enjoy driving,” Stuart said to the topless brunette.

  “To the game, I mean. A sea of red. Beer delivered from the brewery to the stadium through a system of subterranean pipes.”

  “That’s right, yes, game tonight.” Now some gear clicked and he turned to me, and there was his crook-toothed smile. “I’ve got to go pick something up and I’ll come get you. Oh Jesus are you going to love this.”

  Walking backward with tired, swollen arms spread outward, I watched the two of them battle for the joint, the Missouri girl’s eyes focused on my friend.

  There were caterers wearing tuxedos moving through the kitchen. I sat at the counter and thought of Freddy in the attic and his top-down vantage. Because I assumed Freddy had X-ray vision, and that sometimes he watched us with judgment in his eyes, sometimes shaking his head at the preposterous fancies of the living. My mother waded among the tuxedos, overseeing and occasionally salting a dish.

  When my father came home the circus reached a new level of absurdity, the caterers suddenly torn between who to fear and respect. My mother still essentially running things, my father changed from work shirt and tie to entertaining shirt and tie. Then he returned to stand by the counter and speak to me, so ambivalent to the inconvenience this created for everyone scurrying around the kitchen that I felt immensely proud to be the man’s son.

  “How’s your back doing?” he asked. “Sore? I’ll bet it is. You’d expect as much, a good and sore back to remind you of the day.”

  My back ached enough that it was starting to affect the way I saw the world. And I was beginning to wonder if this nebulous maturation everyone spoke of, capital Growing capital Up, was really nothing more than the psyche’s lunge to catch up with a deteriorating body.

  “Not too sore,” I said.

  “I envy you. Getting out there into the day and building a little sweat. Have I ever told you about my first job?”

  “I forget.”

  “I shoveled horse crap for about fifty cents an hour.” He reached for a stuffed mushroom cap. “Basically been shoveling it ever since.”

  My mother said, “Richard.”

  “Who’s dinner tonight?” I asked.

  “An assortment. Dan Wennings and his wife. The tallest of Senator Dunleavy’s daughters and her new husband, who I believe is attached to the D.A.’s office. Who else? Hard to say without counting chairs. Various old colleagues of mine and other politicians. I’m sure we’ll discuss the progress with Hooray! They’re watching me always. Tonight we have an informal meal that is officially not on any record. Strictly social as I nudge you with my elbow. Are we having salmon, Carla? About two out of three of these dinners are salmon.”

  I heard Stuart’s honk outside. My mother assured me she would tuck a plate away for me if I was hungry later. I thanked her and said good luck with the people. She said something to my father I didn’t catch, and the caterers cleared a path for me through the kitchen. He followed and caught me as I opened the front door.

  “You know, among the things these people tonight can do is get us some good tickets to a game. What do you say? I’ll get Dan’s tickets, Dan Wennings. You and your old dad. When was the last time we went to a game? Years, at least.”

  “Anytime. You pick a game and I’ll go,” I said, and we both raised eyebrows and nodded.

  The car waiting in the driveway was not the old Explorer or Stuart’s father’s car or any of the other cars they owned, which were many, but a garish and outrageous Volkswagen Beetle, painted in that fluorescent that eyes gravitated to but nobody ever really wanted to see. There was yellow and orange and purple, along with red shapes wrapped diagonally around the domed hood and roof and across the door. Letters, red letters.

  I squinted. “Does this say . . . St. Louis Tan Company?”

  “I have been given a car for the summer. To drive. For free.”

  We pulled onto the highway and made our way downtown. I watched people consider our rolling advertisement, look and squint to decipher the nature of our product. I looked into the exterior mirror and saw myself bordered by neon and tried not to think of skateboarding and BASE jumping.

  “A car has been given to the wealthiest person I know.”

  “We are witnessing an evolution in the universe of promotion. What a glorious time to be alive.”

  “I’m counting your family’s cars. I’m up to seven.”

  “This right here is a cog of our very gears, a rolling manifestation of all we stand for. This ironically German automobile.”

  Stuart had spent his four years at Brown plowing through continental philosophy. His bachelor’s thesis applied Hegel’s notion of Aufhebung to the lyrics of House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” Professors called his attempt ambitious, brave, and endearingly ridiculous. In an e-mail he detailed to me a serious consideration of pursuing a PhD until he awoke one morning with his copy of Zettel open on his lap, its pages the unfortunate recipients of his first ever wet dream, at the age of twenty-two. After that he stopped reading German philosophy.

  “I appreciate the nonchalance of the letters,” I said, “as if they just fell onto the car.”

  “Fifteen franchises in the greater metropolitan area, all open until two A.M., seven days a week. And they are blowing up in West County.”

  “Tell me who tans at two A.M.”

  Stuart’s grin expanded. “The masses.”

  Traffic grew thick as we approached the stadium, cars packed tight amid a flurry of red-shirted fans making their way en masse from the less expensive lots. Men and women in orange vests waved orange flags. Park here. This many dollars. Stuart turned into the parking area closest to Busch Stadium and handed the girl a Diamond Preferred parking ticket. Out of the car, we were absorbed into the crowd. Stuart shouldered his way through and nobody seemed to mind. A saxophonist played “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and peanut vendors shouted into the dank evening. I was happy to follow his lead, through the gates of our giant concrete stadium, down beer-soaked steps to the field-box level, all the way to the concession line.

  “I want to discuss the answer to your problem.”

  “There’s really no need to rush,” I said. “Audrey has delayed her return, so the element of hurry is gone.”

  Stuart appeared to consider this development. “Good. This will give us time for a second phase. Wherein you spend concentrated time around and learning from Edsel Denk.”

  That beard dripping as the massive beast man emerged from the pool, the cocksucker retu
rns to the diving board. The plunge and the emergence. A beard like the pelt of some forest mammal stuck to his chin. Displaced Appalachian woodsman.

  “No thank you. Pretty confident I’m not up for phase two.”

  “Right now I need you to trust me, Poot. Think about where you are in this process. Is it fair to say you’re a wreck?”

  We stepped forward as the line grew shorter. A father and son moved from the counter to the condiment table.

  “You are a wreck. We both know it. The evidence is right in front of us. Everything you thought you believed about this girl is no longer believable. You may still love her. Or you may not. You may have never loved her to begin with. Unfortunately, you no longer have authority to say, because you’re too entangled within the question. What you need to do is move outside yourself. Trust me when I say I appreciate the importance of this decision. Could possibly be the most important decision a man can make.”

  A bald man behind the counter operated two taps at once.

  “Which is why you’re going to spend time with Edsel Denk.”

  “Wait. No. Naive as it was, fine, naive and silly, but there was a definite period when I truly thought I was going to marry Meredith Flackman. She was my first love. Until that asshole came along and stole her, Stubes. Theft of a lover.”

  “Consider it a social internship. Anthropology, if you want. I’m going to in fact order you to do so. Follow him around and observe. He has seen things you and I have not. Partake in his behavior, maybe. Say what you want about Edsel, call him misogynist and label him asshole, but his is the nature of man in the world. The qualities he embodies are those of manhood, swollen brawn and brute force. You likely won’t like the experience, but it will definitely be good for you.”

  We had reached the counter. I waited for Stuart to tell the woman what we’d be having. I sure as hell wasn’t going to step forward and take charge of a single thing.

  “Beers,” Stuart said. “Will be on you tonight.”

  The cashier glared. “I’m gonna have to see some ID.”

  june

  seven

  what a mysterious array of forms and sounds emerge from dark silent solitude. I stacked three cardboard boxes against the only window to block the streetlight, then sat and waited. Against the uniform blackness of deep attic corners I saw patches of darker darkness, amorphous and phantasmal but in the end still lacking the definition and presence of true specter. I had a place to spread out, a short line of boxes slid together to approximate some kind of mattress. I’d begun coming up here when sleep in my bed proved unfeasible, which I could now safely conclude was not the fault of the squirrels that had disappeared altogether. I lay across the boxes and let my sight be drawn into the attic’s gloomiest recesses, drifting into and out of shallow sleep. Even without Freddy, there was a therapeutic timelessness up here, my clever stack of boxes voiding the effect of sunrise. Still, I kept my cell phone in my pocket, alarm set, just in case I did sleep heavily. Increasingly, my job had become something I relied on, and I feared the potential calamity of losing it.

  Summer was gathering force. I spent the better part of a day in Illinois at a series of small churches Dennis the bigot refused to visit, out of racial concerns. I added bottles to each delivery, and thus the list of people in the region who thought me generous grew by the day. On my way back into town I hit gridlock on the bridge and stuttered forward with my eyes locked on the Arch’s legs as they appeared to close, briefly become one, then open. Thick wet warm air swirled like convection through the van, the smell all semi exhaust and hops. Soon the heat would be too much, and people would venture outside only when absolutely necessary, birds singing to no one but themselves. My forearms were thickening into something like extremely low-gauge wire, tumid and strained from the repeated labor of lift.

  Right now I was at the point in the system when I left downtown and went back to retrieve the cooler I’d left at the Worpleys’. But of course since there was no inventory at Pine Ridge, or official review, this was just an excuse, my own little contrivance, of which I was eminently aware.

  I parked the van by the sidewalk and walked the dirt path, stopped short where bits of cement detritus littered the dusty yard. Like the first time, a mélange of high-pitched screams and crashes streamed from the television and out of the home. Something was going to happen here. Either the skinny son or world-weary father would come to the door. I knocked on the frame of the loosely shut screen door, wiped my brow, and waited.

  It was the son who answered. He held one hand against the door, not pushing, just touching the screen.

  “Hello,” I said. “I was here about a week ago.”

  “Yeah, I remember. You brought the cooler and then ran away like a girl when my dad got home. It was funny.”

  “The thing is that I need to get that cooler back.”

  “Figures.”

  The kid turned and left me standing on the porch. I let myself inside, where all the same feelings from the last visit were reiterated. The young Worpley’s feet crackled as he walked, the slappy-click of bare steps across a licked-lollipop linoleum floor. The old fridge had been replaced by another old one with a door. The cooler was in the corner, emitting the faintest buzz as it tried its best to do its job. A bold orange extension cord trailed out the kitchen’s back door like some sort of pathetic tail.

  “Go on and take it if you have to.”

  “You plugged it in,” I said.

  “Dad said I could use the cord until he needs it.”

  I thought about taking the boy instead of the cooler. Leave it standing with no bottle and throw him over my shoulder. Carry him to the van and tear the lone side-view mirror from the passenger door so he wouldn’t have to look back, and then go.

  “My name’s Potter.”

  The boy stared at the floor. “I’m Ian.”

  A dog somewhere began barking, and soon at least two other dogs were barking back at it. A woman’s voice screamed for them to shut the hell up, and they did. The cooler hummed in the corner.

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “He works every day but Wednesday. He works for the city. On the roads.”

  “And you’re here alone the rest of the time?”

  “Sometimes he gets to work the jackhammer. And not one of those wimpy little fifty-pound things but the eighty-pound ones. He says you can feel your teeth jiggle.”

  “What are your thoughts about being alone for so long?”

  “It’s only seventy-four days, then school starts back up.”

  I dropped to a knee and separated the orange plug from the black end coming out of the cooler. The motor wound down in an extended sigh. In its absence, the silence in the kitchen felt far more audible than the idle hum there before.

  “Dad says most people don’t get how heavy eighty pounds is. You know what my dad says is the heaviest thing an adult ever carries? A regular adult?”

  “Tell me.”

  “A gallon of milk,” Ian said.

  “You want to guess how much a gallon of water weighs?”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “I can’t guess in water.”

  I waddled the cooler away from the wall so I could get at its handle. The coolers themselves weighed less than a bottle, but their weight was distributed so unevenly there was really no best way to carry them. The longer you worked with things, the better you became at handling their specific system of challenges. The calluses on my hands proved my body’s proclivity to make its job easier. But I hadn’t been exposed to enough poor children alone with nothing but cartoons and darkness to get them through the day.

  “Eight pounds,” I said. “Eight per gallon.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And milk probably weighs a little more, because of its density.”

  Ian shut his eyes and whispered, “Density.”

  Something was wrong. My character was not supposed to be here. I realized if I didn’t get out of there with
all possible diligence, there was going to be failure. Something was sure to crash, the system would fracture, and everything in this kid’s already shitty plane would go even further to shit. I picked up the cooler and began the walk to the door. I heard the kid’s footsteps behind me and started walking faster. Halfway through the living room, I stepped on some floorborne object and dropped the cooler to the ground. Of course. The kid stood behind me and watched. I bent and picked up an inexpensive baseball mitt. Tucked inside was a brown-green baseball, scraped with the marks of street use.

  “If you’re gonna take the cooler we should at least play some catch.” He was wearing swimming trunks and a peach T-shirt with fluorescent designs puffy-painted in bright yellow. “Fair’s supposed to be fair.”

  “We need another glove,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. Me and Dad both got one at Glove Night. It was a long time ago. The guy at the gate gave me a glove just for coming. Free except for paying for the game. I got one and so did Dad, ’cause he found one sitting outside the bathroom. It’s in the closet somewhere.”

  I opened the closet and found two winter coats, both turquoise, hanging among a dozen empty hangers. The floor was a pile of assorted balls and skates and hockey sticks. The other glove was on a shelf above the hangers, stuck between board games and the wall. In the front yard we stood only a few paces apart and tossed lazy overhands that arced and fell into basket catches. Gradually, we spread farther apart and began throwing with more velocity. There was catharsis: the movement to reel in Ian’s throw, eye–hand coordination, the quick rescue of ragged ball from glove, spun with intuition into throwing hand so that index and middle fingers crossed the fraying seams. And finally the pendulum drop to the waist before rising behind my head. Release with follow-through. There was artistry somewhere within this sequence of muscle memory; too long dormant, awakened now by this filthy poor little kid and a pair of complimentary pleather gloves.

  After a while our throws crossed the length of the yard. I was shocked by the strength of his tiny little arm. Arms like this were reserved for corn-fed little machine boys who went to summer camps with Louisville bags and sliding pants and sweatbands, who wore protective cups even before they knew why. I stood backed against the old porch and Ian was near the van. Back, forth. Each throw and catch was a link to the continuum of baseball procedure and lore. There was tradition here.