Boonville (6 page)

The crowd applauded. Men exchanged money. They weighed comparisons of past exhibitions. A group bowled cans of beer at the Kurtses from a cooler in the back of a pickup. Others threw open bottles that smashed in the street and covered the two men with foam and fragments of glass. Some couples kissed as if the New Year had arrived. Then, as rapidly as it had assembled, the horde reconvened inside the Lodge, leaving the Kurtses unconscious in the middle of the road with the noise of the crickets.

“What was that?” John asked whoever was keeping him from falling down.

“Oh,” a female voice replied, “That's something the Kurts do.”

“No it ain't,” a voice disagreed. “They're tryin' to stop the tourists from comin'.”

“We should help,” John mumbled.

“Damn straight!” the second voice confirmed.

And the last thing John remembered was lying down next to the Kurtses in the center of Highway 128 and the coolness of concrete against his face and pebbles digging into his rubbery cheek and holding somebody's hand and an ache in his knee and the smell of beer and the warmth of bodies and wondering what Christina was doing at this exact moment and if Grandma was rolling over in her grave for being buried in Miami instead of Arizona or right here in Boonville and wanting to cry and a soft kiss on his lips and being amazed at the darkness of the night and the brightness of the stars and somebody saying, “I hope that's not a fuckin' car.”

J
ohn's grandma had always smelled of gin and vaginal infection. He remembered crawling onto her lap as a child, careful not to spill her drink, getting a big whiff and then gagging like he'd swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. The scent of heredity. As quickly as he could, he scrambled away from her to hide. From the closet in his bedroom, he could hear her calling to him, “What's the matter, John? Come back to Grandma, my love.”

As John awoke, that same smell bit at him, producing memories of holiday dinners, family squabbles, and the first time he had oral sex. Noon sun slashed at his eyes. He realized he was outside on what must be the porch of Grandma's shack, crumpled into a wicker love seat. He shoved his fists into his eyes and rubbed them as two 20-foot squirrels flanking his position came into focus, wearing the same carved expression he had modeled on Grandma's lap. His stomach surged.

After going for the Big Spit, John felt ready to face the squirrels. He imagined how pitiful he must appear to them, red-eyed, unshaven, encrusted in what he hoped was his own vomit. The squirrels were definitely frowning. But aside from their totemic silence, there wasn't much else in the front yard of his new domicile. Grandma's cabin was situated in the middle of a hill, trees rising left and right, madrone, redwood, fir, pine, land sloping ahead of him toward a wire fence covered with brambles of blackberry bushes, then dropping drastically to give him a view of the valley; across to the east were hills of scrub oak; a receding fog bank covered the north; to the south his sight line was obstructed by forest. Down in the flat, he saw an airstrip, a field of horses, a school, a cluster of houses, and part of a small town. Boonville.

His head was pounding. But all things considered, he thought, it wasn't such a bad thing to wallow in your excrement—a certain womblike quality—the way he had felt as a boy discovering he had wet his bed, warm and safe, as long as the morning air didn't get between him and the pee-soaked sheets. But then he moved.

Lifting from the love seat, pain shot through his body, tearing at joints and nerve endings, screaming for him to sit back down. Even his hair hurt. He limped to the shack's front door, which he found to be locked. Fuckup number one, he had failed to get the keys from Grandma's friend Pensive Prairie Sunset. He tried a Bruce Lee entrance, a flurry of kicks and karate chops to the midsection of the door, yelling, “Why, why, why!” But his kung fu was no good here. The outburst made him feel nauseated. He tried another approach, through cracked lips pleading, “Open sesame.” Both strategies failing, he sent Plan C into action, the standard “find an open window.”

Circling the cabin, John saw Grandma's shack had five windows, one each in the bedroom and kitchen, two curtained picture windows in the living room, and one small screen window partially open in the bathroom that he could squeeze through if he could find something to stand on. He also discovered Grandma's Datsun was parked behind the cabin, smashed and missing parts; gone were the headlights, hub caps, hood, bumper, grille. To compensate for their loss, a mountain of steel had been stacked on the roof. Coming closer, he realized the sheets of metal were road signs, some still attached to their posts.

“Hmm,” he said, calmed by the alcohol still flooding his bloodstream. “This, I don't remember.”

He tried to open the Datsun's door, but it was locked. All doors were locked, including the trunk, while his possessions remained where he had put them in the backseat. He spied the keys dangling from the ignition and an empty whiskey bottle in the passenger's seat.

Dilemm-o-rama, John thought, staggering off in the direction of a rock planted at the base of a shrub. He dug the stone from the dirt with his fingers. Unearthed and in his hands, it felt as heavy as a mountain. Wasn't there a parable about burden, involving a boulder, a saint, and a bottomless chalice? Or was that the beginning of a dirty joke? Unable to distinguish Bible stories from
borscht-belt humor, John carried the stone to the Datsun and hurled it through the driver's side window.

The car started on the first try. He steered it to the cabin's bathroom wall, set the brake, then climbed on top of the car roof and road signs, reading the warning beneath his splattered shoes, “Deaf Child Near,” and tore away the window screen. He slid open the window and hopped into the opening. There was a moment of precarious equilibrium in which John was balanced half in and half out of the bathroom before he tipped the scale with a wriggle, dropping to the floor on his head.

He was tempted to lie there on the linoleum, let the day go by, but a miniature squirrel sculpture he had knocked off the window sill glowered at him. He got to his feet and flicked on the light switch. They were everywhere, bathtub, toilet tank, medicine chest, hallway, kitchen, living room, coffee table, bookshelves, bureau, nightstand, various widths and heights, well over a thousand, all with a look of sour disapproval. Squirrels, squirrels, squirrels. John suppressed a scream, hurrying to open the rest of the cabin windows, hoping fresh air might change the squirrels' expression, or more accurately, his own.

Then he piled his belongings from the Datsun into the center of the living room, sweating 120 proof and flaking hardened gastric juices. He didn't feel all there. Or maybe he was “all there,” but with more of himself on the outside than he was used to. He looked through his luggage for a towel to take a shower, deciding that the best thing about being hung over was the totality of effort it took to conquer simple tasks. Moving at half-speed, there wasn't enough energy to expand your focus beyond survival, causing you to disregard those obstacles that persuaded you to get swacked in the first place. It was the after-effects of alcohol that helped more than intoxication; John had wanted to get back to basics, to separate the neurotic from the necessary, and now he could accomplish that goal, wash, unpack, try not to vomit, and feel like he had put in a full day.

In the bathroom, the water trickling from the shower head was brown and smelled of sulfur. Enamel had been eaten away in spots from the tub's bottom. Rust stains circled the drain. The sliver of soap in the soap dish was an unnatural color. It took a while for the water to get hot. When John finally entered the spray, it had the effect of smelling salts. Nose espresso, he thought,
trying to convince himself that tourists paid top dollar for this kind of free-flowing mud bath.

Toweling off, he negotiated all odors with a splash of cologne Christina had given him. John didn't like cologne, believing natural scents were sexier. He thought he had left it behind, taking only his toothbrush, travel toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, comb, and a few hotel freebies of shampoo and conditioner from their bathroom. Somehow the cologne had made the trip. Today, it was a welcomed accessory. He wished he had snared some of Christina's other products accidentally-on-purpose, a moisturizer, an exfolient, shaving rasage. He wouldn't know where to buy some of that stuff. You might have to speak French to get it. They weren't going to stock it in Boonville.

John dressed, and after bagging his former clothes to be washed or thrown out later, he felt ready to settle into his new home. Someone, presumably Pensive Prairie Sunset, had already swept and vacuumed, mopped and dusted. There were no major cobwebs or ghost turds. The coffee table glistened with a wet sheen. The trash can beneath the sink had been lined with a new bag. The refrigerator was clean. John checked the cupboards, satisfied with Grandma's supply of pots, pans, glassware, plates, and utensils. The telephone was dead. He would have to get it connected. In the bedroom, he stuffed his socks, underwear, T-shirts, and sweats into the chest of drawers, hanging his good pants, ties, and dress shirts in the closet. He made a pile of Grandma's clothes for the Goodwill. When he realized there was no cable, he stuck the TV in the closet as well, finding a shotgun and three boxes of shells sitting in the corner. He remembered the rumor that Grandma had shot someone. He left the gun and ammunition alone, wondering what the real story was and why Grandma felt she had needed a gun.

Feeling motivated, he decided to make a general upgrade of aesthetics. With a whisk of his arm, he cleared a chessboard's worth of squirrel sculptures from the coffee table in the living room. Mud-glazed ceramic forms joined the squirrels in empty fruit crates for storage. There were too many cushions on the couch. He cut the number in half. He took decorative baskets, flowers, and feathers off the walls. He let hang a Georgia O'Keeffe print of an aroused lily and a photograph of Grandma as a girl, staring into the camera like a gunfighter. A painting of a seascape done on
cardboard with glue and sand crumbled in his hands when he tried to center it. There was a rusted wheelbarrow full of broken glass standing near the front door as if someone had intended to dump the shards onto the living room floor as a prank. John decided it was sculpture. Instead of rolling it outside, he moved it closer to the front window so it could catch the light. Lastly, he placed a picture of Christina on the nightstand near his bed.

Just a bit of torture, he told himself. Just a bit of home.

That done, John shut the windows and looked for a newspaper to start a fire in the woodburning stove that stood on bricks in the corner of the living room. It had never been cold enough in Miami to start an actual fire. People didn't have central heating there, let alone fireplaces. Children didn't go through a pyro stage in Florida because it was so hot. There was only air conditioning. John's nose twitched.

Not finding any newspaper, he turned to the bookshelves. Except for Grandma's copy of Emily Dickinson's poetry, most of it looked like metaphysics, stuff he could torch without much moral conflict. He selected a book by John White Eagle Free Soul, a discourse on inner peace through intuitive strength. Where did they get their names? What was Free Soul supposed to be? Irish? And White Eagle? He must have picked that up in the seventies when everybody was claiming to be half Cherokee or part Seminole. If they were going to change their names, those authors should be forced to name themselves Horseshit or Asshole, he thought, and then number themselves off like Muslims: Horseshit no. 1, Asshole no. 56.

Another book of poetry caught John's eye,
Puppies Make a Porch More Cute
by Margaret Washington. He knew she lived in the area and Grandma had belonged to her Radical Petunia Arts Community. He also knew the film based on her book
Cecilia
was touted as an important feminist statement. After seeing it, John had wanted his money back and two hours of his life returned. Christina had cried. The theater was thick with Kleenex. Leaving the cineplex, John saw a line of moviegoers wrapping around the block, waiting for their turn to weep. He didn't want to ruin Christina's experience, so he said nothing on the ride home. But his silence revealed to her that he had not been moved. She accused him of insensitivity. He was going to tell her that he cried every time he saw
Dumbo
, but she switched on the radio and
turned away from him. They didn't have sex for a month.

John opened
Puppies Make a Porch More Cute
to see it had been inscribed: “Ruth, Remember in order to give birth you have to experience labor pains, Peace and love, Margaret Washington.”

Flipping pages, John read a poem entitled “All White Men Are Evil Rapists.”

Our foremothers cooked and cleaned and smiled

as they stirred the pots that fed us all,

sweat slipping down beautiful black skin

while being repeatedly abused,

though always standing strong.

But if the world were perfect,

we would sit in a green field holding hands;

a calm constructive conversation,

even the cows would join in.

But no white men,

because all white men are evil rapists.

John tore that page out first, feeling it crumple in his hand before he tossed it into the stove. Without reading another sentence, the rest of the book followed. He threw on a dozen squirrel sculptures for kindling, a large one for a log. He lit the fire with a foot-long match, feeling the heat on his face. Lying down on the carpet, he tried not to think about Grandma or Margaret Washington, instead concentrating on the silence that surrounded the crackling flames.

He had only experienced quiet like this on mornings when Christina jogged. Not knowing what to do, he usually fell back to sleep, reawakening to the sound of her shower, a Billy Joel cassette, the steaming gurgle of the coffeemaker. He had been reared on stimulus and distraction; introspection had not been encouraged as a pastime. Silence was as forbidden as masturbation. As a boy, John watched children's shows where men in animal costumes introduced cartoons, lusted after Girl Scouts, and ran around, yelling, “Hold that bus!” In high school, he studied while Meatloaf screamed and Frampton came alive at 200 watts per channel. College was the drone of the campus radio station and students singing the theme to “The Love Boat” outside his door. Even in bed with Christina, Johnny or Dave delivered their late night monologues with the sound of the city as background, boom boxes, screeching tires, stray gunfire. Never silence.

John resisted the urge to sleep, pondering instead the unfinished business he had to complete before he would feel established in his new residence. First, he had to call Christina and let his friends and parents know he had arrived. He still needed to get the keys from Pensive Prairie Sunset so he could lock the cabin. He had to buy groceries, do laundry, get rid of those road signs. Wine tasting was out of the question for a few days, but he could go to the coast, explore the area, write postcards, read that biography on Jim Jones. He also wanted to talk to that blue-eyed Sarah.

Enough quiet time.

Outside, he shoved the signs off the roof of the Datsun. Taking the helm of the battered vehicle, he wound down the hill toward town, his stomach protesting at each turn. He reached for the whiskey bottle in the passenger seat, running it along the edges of the broken driver's side window, eliminating the remaining glass fragments. Unsullied air blew against his face. The drive straightened. To his right, he saw a red house on a knoll and the field of horses he had spotted from Grandma's cabin. The tiny airstrip and the Anderson Valley Junior/Senior High School were on his left, then basketball courts, a pair of strange geodesic domes, a “Home of the Panthers” sign, a creek bridge, a stop sign, and Highway 128. The crossroads.