Criss Cross (9 page)

T
he people singing the song were from California. Hector lay peacefully on his back on his carpeted bedroom floor, letting the music from his radio wash over him. His idea had been to do some sit-ups, but once he got down there, it seemed to make more sense to just lie still and gaze up at the ceiling. That’s where he was when the song came on the radio. It was a song he liked, and he had heard it many times before. It was the Mamas and the Papas. They were singing that words of love so soft and tender wouldn’t win a girl’s heart anymore. And that if you loved her you should (“must”) send her somewhere she had never been before.

It was a metaphor. Hector knew that. He didn’t think they meant that you were supposed to put the girl on an airplane or something. Still, he thought, to take a girl to a new place, to show her something she hadn’t seen. It sounded like a good idea.

Although he wished he were in California, where there were giant redwood trees and Hollywood and canyons and the Pacific Ocean. There were probably a lot of incredible places and things out there that you could show someone for the first time. He tried to think which places you would show someone in Seldem.

As he thought about it Hector realized that, at least at first, the places should be within a fairly short walking distance from guitar lessons. The only places that came to mind immediately were the Tastee-Freez and the gas station. The Tastee-Freez was a good place to go, it was one of his favorite places to go, but he would bet five dollars that Meadow had already been there.

He was going to have to do some research. Using his powerful, well-rested abdominal muscles, he curled to a sitting position and reached for his sneakers.

He started out certain that he would come across any number of interesting spots that had somehow slipped his mind. He had lived here all his life without being bored; he must have been doing or looking at something. But much of what he himself found interesting didn’t seem to have the magnitude or kind of interestingness required to be destinations you would invite someone to go see.

He tried to imagine saying, “Do you want to go see this really interesting pile of dirt with pipes sticking out of it?”

Or, “Have you ever been at a used car lot at sunset, when they turn on the string of lightbulbs?”

There was a picturesque old nun who lived in the old convent by our Lady of Victory. She was a retired nun with a lot of free time on her hands. He had seen her many times, often involved in some unlikely activity that seemed incongruous with her long, flowing, black and white habit. He saw her once clutching a bunch of daffodils in one hand and a ski pole, which she was using as a cane, in the other. Once she was twirling a child’s silvery baton with plastic tassels. Today she was pushing a shopping cart full of watermelons down the sidewalk.

But even if you could imagine yourself saying to a girl, “Hey, wanna go see what the old nun is doing tonight?” and even if she were out doing something picturesque, he didn’t see how it would lead to holding hands or kissing or anything. There were a lot of things like that.

He was looking for something with immediately apparent beauty or interest, like a waterfall or a mountain or a skyscraper. Even a small one.

“Just one thing,” he said to himself. “Just one thing I could show her.”

He was about to give up when he noticed the ravine. There was a ravine, falling away behind a chain-link fence. The fence was almost invisible within the complicated weaving of wild vines, saplings, and weeds growing in and out of it. Hector leaned on it and looked over. Two steep banks of tangled lushness, dappled by sunlight sifting through honey locust trees, plunged in rough symmetry down to a merry brook, complete with stepping stones. About twenty-five or thirty feet along, the brook channeled into a concrete culvert under the access road to the Westinghouse plant. As he stood looking, a trailer truck barreled over the culvert. A small, furry animal stood erect before diving out of sight.

Hector took a step back and surveyed the fence for a point of entry. The fence continued almost to the access road, where there was a narrow opening before the beginning of a low wall that kept trucks from sliding off the road and into the ditch. Or rather, the ravine. Passing through the opening, he saw that others had come before him. No one was here now, but a path had been worn, and when he reached the bottom he found charred pieces of wood, cigarette butts, and empty and broken whiskey bottles. And some other trash. A potato chip bag. A shoe. A plastic cigarette lighter. A comb.

Combs, Hector had noticed, were everywhere. Not here, but when you were walking down the street. They were usually the short, black, plastic kind, as if that kind was especially hard to keep imprisoned in a back pocket or a purse. You could sort of picture them, springing silently out of pockets and purses all over town. All over the world.
Boing, boing, boing.
Free! All over the world, hands digging into pockets and purses, searching. But it was too late. They were gone.

He was thinking now that it might not be a good idea to bring Meadow here if it was, like, a drinking spot. For one thing, he didn’t know whose drinking spot it was, or how often it was used. He felt a sudden sensation, as if maybe he wasn’t alone, as if maybe someone was there right now. He looked, at first just moving his eyes. Then turning around, slowly. But no one was there. He couldn’t see anyone.

It was such a pretty little place. The furry creature reappeared from the brook and scampered calmly along the bank. Hector didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t think it was a rat. He didn’t think rats could swim. The Pied Piper and all that.

He squatted down and started filling the potato chip bag with broken glass and whatever else would fit. The shoe was not going to fit into the bag. He considered some of the circumstances under which a person might lose one shoe without noticing it was missing.

The trash looked old. It wasn’t fresh trash. He thought he would clean it up and check back, and if fresh trash didn’t appear, maybe it would mean that no one came here anymore and it could be his spot. He thought that until a car rumbled by and a paper grocery bag sailed through the foliage just inches from his head. It landed with a thunk and a rip and released its contents at the water’s edge. Someone’s kitchen garbage. Eggshells and coffee grounds, pork chop bones, a ketchup bottle, some cans and plastic, some greasy paper towels …

A breeze stirred the whispering honey locusts, lifted a few wadded-up Kleenexes from the heap, nudged them into the brook. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily. The furry thing was watching, too. Hector felt a kinship with the furry thing. As the so-called higher life form, he felt compelled to remove his fellow-human’s garbage from the furry thing’s home. It occurred to him that the furry thing might like one or two things in the bag. But he wasn’t going to pick through it to find them.

He turned the bag so that the rip was on top and balanced the chip bag full of broken glass on top of that, then carefully stood up and turned. He made his way up the steep path, hoping his unstable parcel of mold, rot, shards, and contagion would not fall apart all over him.

Because his burden of garbage was large and precarious, he could not look down at the path and had to go by the feel of the dirt under his sneakers. He also had to go sideways so he would remain vertical, i.e., not tip over backward. Brambles clawed at his shirttail. Sour aromas filled his nose and swarmed over his skin and clothing. A small jar (olives?) worked itself loose and bounced back down to the bottom.

“I’m sorry,” said Hector. “I can’t come back for you. I would if I could, but I can’t.”

At the top he maneuvered backward between the fence and the bridge wall with luck and grace, and he emerged onto the sidewalk with a feeling of triumph, of savoir faire. Until he realized he didn’t know what to do next. And that there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it. The paper bag was damp. From damp to soggy was a short distance, and from soggy to not even there was even shorter. He strode purposefully toward the center of town, keeping an eye peeled for a garbage can. Something sloshed with each step—he could feel a wetness on his midriff—but he walked on. It was remarkable how under-garbage-canned this area of town was. Also, how much traffic whizzed by, and how so many people stared from their car windows at someone walking down a sidewalk. He tried to maintain a jaunty, nonchalant air as he walked on. A slight ache began to spread through his arms because he could not alter their awkward position.

Hector was within two blocks of the gas station and the blessed garbage can that he knew was there when he felt the paper bag separate into two sections. It was a slight but significant movement. He spread his fingers and tried to increase the viselike grip of his biceps and forearms. He clamped his chin down and shifted into a very fast shuffling walk that had no ups and downs to it, just a smooth forward glide. He moved fluidly in the direction of the garbage can. His whole being was focused on the thought of the can. It was when he reached the edge of the gas station’s property line that he came into view of the can itself and saw, remembered, that it had a top on it, a rounded top with a little swinging door, a door too small for his explosive bundle. He wouldn’t be able to lift it off without letting go. The garbage can was just outside the door, though, and the door was opening. Someone was coming out. Hector shouted.

“Help!” he yelled as loudly as he could without moving his chin. “Take the lid off the garbage can! I’m going to explode!”

The person looked at him quizzically, then grasped the situation and pulled at the lid, though the lid was heavy and grimy and it was clear that the person didn’t want to do it. The lid came up, the heavy load fell in, and Hector experienced an exquisite relief. His arms tingled with renewed circulation. His legs straightened and his major muscle groups spasmed quietly back to their usual configurations. He felt light and free and happy. Then he felt wet and smelly and stupid.

“What are you doing?” said the person who had helped him. Who was his sister, Rowanne.

“So you were going to take this girl to a drainage ditch?” said Rowanne.

“It’s a ravine,” said Hector. “It’s more like a ravine than a drainage ditch. It’s a really pretty spot. Except for the garbage. I don’t think it’s gonna work. I don’t know where else to go, though.”

“Why don’t you just come here?” asked Rowanne. They were sitting on a bench at the Tastee-Freez, eating ice cream cones.

“I mean, for starters,” she said. “Then you could work your way up to the drainage ditch.”

Hector licked his cone, considering. He was a licker. Rowanne was a biter. She was halfway done and he had barely made a dent.

“You could sit on this bench,” she said, “and look at the view.”

“What view?” said Hector. The bench looked out over the A&P parking lot. Also in sight were the used car lot, the gas station, and the Idle Hour Restaurant, with its bobbing neon chicken advertising “Chicken in the Rough.” That meant you ate it out of a plastic basket lined with wax paper instead of from a dish. They were in the heart, though not quite the entirety, of Seldem’s commercial district.

“The chicken sign is pretty cool,” said Rowanne.

“I like it when the lights come on in the car lot,” said Hector.

“Oh, so do I,” said Rowanne.

“Bring her here,” she said. “It’s a good place to start. And then I’ll try to help you think of something else.”

“I’ll try, I guess,” said Hector. “Ice cream is always good.”

“Ice cream is good,” said Rowanne. “Ice cream is always good.”

The plum tree blossoms, the new yearbook is opened. Is that who I am?