Mosquitoland (12 page)

In the distance, Caleb is splashing around, making a ridiculous racket.

Walt looks toward the lake, then whispers, “He won't like it.”

May the House of Walt live forever and ever, Amen!

“No he won't, Walt.”

Run, Run, Run

IT FEELS NICE
to be out of those cutoffs and into some real clothes again. Downright delightful, actually. Pulling my repacked JanSport tight, I wrap one of Walt's extra blankets between the straps and my chest. The kid has spent the last few minutes packing one of those hard, fifties-style suitcases full of canned hams, blankets, and God knows what else from that decrepit blue tent.

“Okay.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “We just need to get back to the overpass. We can get a ride from there, okay? Just stick close and—”

Suddenly, Walt raises an arm. In his hand, he's holding my mother's lipstick like a champion's torch. “I found your shiny,” he says, avoiding eye contact.

I reach for it, but can't stop looking at Walt—the kid is about to cry.

“Thank you, Walt,” I say, taking the lipstick in my hands.

Without another word, he reaches his arms around my waist in a gentle hug. I'm surprised how natural it feels, as if a team of scientists designed his arms to fit the precise specifications of a heartfelt embrace. In his hug, I feel the things he tries to say but can't. I feel his pain and childlike innocence, his unencumbered joy and I-don't-know-what . . . life, I suppose. All the good things from the very best of places.

“We need to get going,” I whisper, slipping the lipstick in my pocket. Caleb has gone quiet, conjuring all manner of nerve-racking scenarios in my head.

Walt straightens his Cubs cap, grabs his suitcase in one hand, his Rubik's Cube in the other, and leads the way down the hill.

In an all-out sprint.

The shrubbery is dense but doesn't slow him one bit; he's weaving in and out of bushes and trees with surprising agility. By contrast, I follow behind like an errant sled, haphazard and zigzagged.

A minute later, I hear it—behind us—a third set of scurrying leaves. Walt must hear it, too, because he picks up the pace considerably.

“Where y'all running off to?” Caleb's voice comes in rasps.

Ten paces ahead, Walt is absolutely hoofing it. “Mim?” he yells over his shoulder.

“I'm here, buddy! Keep going!”

Behind me, Caleb gasps like he wants to say something, but can't. Clearly, the cigarettes have taken their toll; his lungs are absolutely screaming for air. Unfortunately, he's not the only one wearing down. Either the aftereffects of last night's woeful sleep have kicked in or my youthful stamina is wavering. At the bottom of the hill, we hurdle the metal guardrail. It's early morning on a holiday weekend, so highway traffic is scarce. Right now, I would give all the cash in Kathy's can for a passing car, truck, van, just . . .
someone
. My head droops, my backpack sags, my shoes lag, the
slap-slap
of their worn soles on asphalt growing slower with each passing step. Under the bridge, we sprint past the very spot where I met Walt. It was only yesterday, but God, it feels like a month ago. On the other side, Walt races around a miniature hill, through a line of shrubs and bushes, and into the gravel parking lot of the same derelict building I'd seen from the window of the Subaru. Off-white. The offest white there ever was. A single pump in the middle of the lot has a handwritten sign taped over the handle:
87
OR BUST
.

It's a gas station.

Like a track star, Walt digs in on the homestretch. Even with that hard suitcase slamming his knees, he reaches the front door at least twenty paces ahead of us. I watch him pull a set of keys from behind an ice machine, open the door, and step inside. Caleb is only feet behind me now. I will my burning legs through the entrance, hear Walt slam and lock the door behind me just as Caleb flings himself against the double-paned glass. And like that, the cool and collected Caleb is gone, replaced by some zombie-eyed maniac pounding his fists against the door, gasping for breath, raging-bull mad.

I turn in a circle, trying to catch my own breath. The gas station is dark and empty, still closed for the day. “Walt, what are we doing here?”

“Obeying,” says Walt, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “He said run. Run and let him know. When there's trouble, I have to let him know.”

I take a second to catch my breath, letting Walt's bizarre statement sink in. “Who?”

Walt bends at the waist, setting his suitcase and Rubik's Cube on the tile floor. He turns toward the refrigerated section, pulls out a Mountain Dew, pops the cap, takes a long swig, then wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“The karate kid,” he says.

Rooftop Revelations

BLIMEY, THIS KID'S
full of surprises.

“The what?” Only it's more like,
the-hell-you-say???

He looks at me with a blank expression, tilts his head like a dog.

“Walt?”

Nothing. At all. And then—everything at once. He tosses the empty twenty-ouncer into a trash can, throws his suitcase over the checkout counter, hops over after it, and disappears around a back corner.

Like I said . . .
surprises
.

I throw my bag over the counter and jump it myself. These last couple days have been tough on my poor leg. At this rate, that cut will probably heal into some horrible disfigurement. Just add it to my list of medical oddities.

Around the corner, I spot Walt's green Chucks on the top rung of a ladder, now disappearing through a trapdoor in the ceiling.

“Wait up, Walt!”

Caleb has stopped banging on the front door, which is unsettling, to say the least. I picture him crawling like a snake through the ductwork—hissing, spitting, eagerly calculating an alternate point of entry.

After scurrying up the ladder, I emerge through the same trapdoor and climb out onto the roof. It's still morning, but the sun is out in full force, beating down on the gravel and cement. Broad pipes, ventilation fans, and all manner of rusty eyesores sprout up like weeds every five feet or so. Planted right in the middle of the gas station roof is a massive tank; it's circular, like an aboveground pool, only taller. Standing at least eight feet high, it takes up more than half the surface area of the roof.

“Where is he, Al?”

I follow Walt's voice around the side of the tank and find him standing next to a 340-pound whale of a man in aviator sunglasses. The guy is lounging shirtless in a folding chair, sipping an umbrella drink. He's frightfully pale, a condition magnified by dark oil stains smeared across his face. Layer after folding layer, his stomach hangs down over his swimming trunks.

“Walt”—I point toward the fat guy—“you see him, too, right?”

The man's blubber shakes as he laughs. He sips his daiquiri through a crazy straw, looks from Walt to me. “Nah, I'm just a figment of your imagination, kid. What, you were expecting a hookah-smoking caterpillar?”

Walt, ignoring us both, bounces up and down on the heels of his feet. “Where is he, Al, where is he?”

I cross the roof, joining them in the partial shade of a fake palm tree, doing my best not to throw up on the Pale Whale's third circle of blubber. “Walt, we gotta get off this roof, man. We're sitting ducks up here.”

“Who the hell are you?” asks the Pale Whale.

An image, from the most vivid quarters of my imagination: a car changing this man's oil. “Mim,” I say. All I can muster.

“Ma'am?!” he blurts. “What kind of name is that?”

I find it hard to believe this man could criticize anybody's anything. “You find the bottom of that daiquiri yet? What is it, eight a.m.?” I turn to Walt. “Listen. We don't have time for this. Caleb's insane. It's only a matter of time—”

“That's just bad manners, see.”

Spinning, I see Caleb round the circular tank, holding a sizeable hunting knife. A trickle of blood drips from his hands onto the gravel roof. He coughs, then pulls a cigarette from his back pocket and lights it. “Sorry, Al—had to bust a double-paned window to get in.” Inhaling, his eyes dart around. “Where's your boyfriend?”

Gas station plus boyfriend.

“Karate class in Union,” says the Pale Whale, smacking his lips around the straw.

An odd smile spreads across Caleb's face. He steps closer, the sharp end of the hunting blade shimmering in the light of the morning sun. “Like a fuckin' six-year-old,” he mumbles.

Al pinches one nostril, blows snot out the other—just like a whale's blowhole. Sliding his meaty hands behind his head, he sighs, and for a moment it's quiet, as if none of us are entirely sure whose turn it is to talk. Then, with the subtlety befitting a man of his stature, Albert breaks the silence. “You're a freak show, you know that, Caleb?” The folding chair squeaks under his weight. “Seriously, you should sell tickets. People would come from miles around to see you talk to yourself. Speaking of which—when you do that, is it a natural, everyday sort of thing, like putting on socks?”

Caleb's eyes twitch, but he doesn't answer.

“I shouldn't make fun,” continues Albert, rubbing his aviators on the bottom of his shorts. “I suppose that's a brand of bat-shit crazy you just can't help.”

Caleb stands frozen, blood still dripping from the cut on his hand.

Al raises his daiquiri to his lips. A stubborn slice of strawberry gets stuck in the straw. He sucks harder, squeezing it like Augustus through the glass tube in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. He swallows it down, tilts his head at Caleb. Like an old-fashioned pistol duel, it's not about who draws first, but who draws quickest.

“Get the hell off my roof,” says Albert, each of his stomachs rising, falling.

Caleb pulls back his shoulders, and once again, I notice his red hoodie. The same as my own. I picture my Abilitol in the bottom of my bag, shrouded in the darkness of its canvas tomb, screaming a promise of normalcy.

“I'm not crazy,” whispers Caleb, twirling the knife in his hands.

And suddenly, from months ago, my father's voice:
“Here, Mim.”
I take the bottle and roll my eyes.
“Don't look at me like that,”
says Dad
. “I'm trying to help. Just get in the habit of taking one with breakfast every day. Habit is king.”
I glance at the label on the bottle, wondering how it got this far.
“Dad. I don't need them.”
He pulls orange juice out of the refrigerator, pours a glass.
“I need you to trust me on this, Mim. You don't want to end up like Aunt Isabel, do you?”
That's when I know he's scraping the bottom of the barrel, searching for anything to get me to cooperate. Taking the glass from his hand, I pop a pill in my mouth and drown it down with the rest of his juice. Every last drop. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand, stare him dead in the face.
“I'm not crazy.”

“Sure you're not crazy, Caleb,” says the Pale Whale. “You just keep living your little fantasy life, son. Lord knows, I've been there.” He slaps his belly. “But damn it all, I wouldn't trade these rolls for your level of crazy, not for all the rotisserie chickens in Kentucky. You know why? 'Cause at the end of the day, when my fat ass tumbles into its king-sized waterbed, I sleep like a baby. I know who I am.”

“Oh yeah?” Caleb twirls the knife again, arching one eyebrow unnaturally high. “And who are you?”

Albert the Pale Whale sips his daiquiri, smacks his lips together, then leans back and sighs. “I'm Albert, motherfucker. Who are you?”

As Caleb steps toward Albert, I grip the war paint in my pocket and picture the long blade piercing those layers of blubber. Gallons of fluid would gush from the wound like a fire hydrant; hidden arteries, having spent the last two decades being stretched and filled to their fullest capacity, would now be exposed, severed, freed from the heaviest of loads. The wailing, whaling mess would pool around his bloated ankles, gather under the folding chair, then rise up and up, lifting the leviathan carcass off the roof, spinning him like a top, and tossing him off the edge of his own broke-ass, off-white gas station. We'd be swept up in the Blood Flood, too, Walt and I, carried away like Noah's Ark, or rather, like the animals of afterthought, left to fend for themselves in the apocalyptic precursor to the rainbow.

This is what I imagine.

But it never happens.

Just as Caleb reaches Albert's chair, a blurred figure plummets on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Within seconds, Caleb is back on his feet, wielding the hunting knife at this new adversary. At first glance, the man seems too ridiculous to be real. He's wearing a black strip of cloth around his forehead like a ninja, goggles, a long gold chain around his neck, a flowery wife-beater, and a pair of shockingly familiar cutoff jeans. Dripping wet from head to toe, he's smiling like he's having a ball.

Next to me, Walt claps, while Albert chuckles and sips his drink. “Fuck him up, Ahab.”

Never mind my epiglottis—my entire body flutters at this.

It's him.

It's them
.

The fight doesn't last more than a minute. In a roundhouse kick that would have made Jet Li proud, Arlene's legendary nephew sends Caleb's hunting knife sailing over the edge of the roof. With him disarmed, it's hardly a fight at all. A couple of hook-kick combos and graceful strikes to the chest, arms, and head, and Ahab has a whimpering Caleb trapped in a half nelson on the gravel roof.

“Walt,” says Ahab, dripping wet, smiling from ear to ear. “Go downstairs, call the Independence police station. Ask for Randy, tell him to get his ass over here.”

Walt giggles, runs around to the trapdoor.

“You okay, honey?” Ahab looks up at Albert, leaving me to wonder at the sheer physics of their relationship.

“I'm all right,” grunts the Pale Whale. “Thanks to my knight in shimmering armor.”

“Shining,” I whisper, still gripping my war paint and trying to piece together the sequence of the last few minutes.

Ahab notices me, seemingly for the first time. “Who're you?”

“That's Ma'am,” says Albert, slurping the last of his daiquiri, then pulling a brand-new one out from under his chair.

I clear my throat. “It's Mim,” I say, rapping my knuckles against the side of the tank. “What's this?”

“We call it the Pequod,” says Ahab. “Perfect place for a little sun and relaxation.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What—inside?”

The Pale Whale chuckles and sips.

Ahab tightens his grip on Caleb. “It's a pool, kid.”

Looking from Ahab to the tank, I can't help but wonder what kind of people drink daiquiris and go swimming on top of a gas stations at eight a.m. on chilly fall mornings. But I'll thank the gods of, you know, whatever, that they do. Because I'd be dead right now without these two.

Walt comes running around the tank. Pool. Whatever.

“Randy's on his way,” he says.

“Good.” Ahab hoists Caleb to his feet. “You guys can hang downstairs till he gets here. He's a dick of a dick, so he'll probably wanna take you down to the station for questioning out of sheer boredom. Don't say anything about the pool, okay? He'd find some city bylaw and have it removed.”

Walt gives him a thumbs-up, scurries down the rungs. I stand still for a moment, wondering if this is the right time. Certainly, it's not how I pictured it happening.

“What's up, Ma'am?”

I take a knee, unzip my JanSport, and produce Arlene's wooden box.

For a second, no one says anything. Finally, Ahab says, “Where did you get that?”

His question is quiet, not accusatory.

“Arlene,” I whisper. “Your aunt—I was on the bus with her. The one that crashed.”

Albert sits up in his chair and takes off his aviators. There's something in his eyes, some deep well of empathy.

“What's wrong with everybody?” grunts Caleb, still in Ahab's clenches. “It's just a box.”

Without thinking twice, Ahab lifts Caleb up by his hoodie, and punches him once, twice, three times in the face. Blood splatters across the gravel roof, as well as a single tooth. The look in Ahab's eyes isn't murderous. It's the look of a man who did what had to be done. Caleb drops to the ground unconscious. Considering the solemnity of the moment he interrupted, I'm thinking he got off pretty easy.

Ahab is in front of me now, looking at the box, then at me, and I suddenly can't stop crying. It's crazy, because Arlene was his aunt, not mine. I didn't know her all that well, not really. I didn't know her favorite color or movie, or what kind of music she liked, or if she preferred lakes to oceans. I didn't even know her last name. But maybe those aren't the things that channel love. Maybe the true conduit is more elusive than that. Maybe. And I think Ahab understands, because now his hand is on my shoulder, and he's crying, too, and he doesn't ask any questions, which I'm beyond grateful for. Handing the box over, I search for something memorable and eloquent to mark the occasion. Arlene was one of a kind, a true friend when I needed one, a grande dame from the old school. She was the sweetest of old ladies, and I will miss her dearly. All of these things are true, but the words I choose are far more profound.

“She smelled like cookies,” I whisper through tears.

Ahab laughs and so do I, and it occurs to me again how often laughter accompanies tears. Now Albert has joined us, and when I look up at him, the sun hits me squarely in the face. He slides his aviators into my hands, then pats me on the back.

“Finder's fee,” he says.

Ahab lifts the gold chain off his neck. Dangling from the end, an old-fashioned skeleton key fits the lock perfectly. He turns his wrist, opening the box with a click.

This is his, not mine.

I pick up my backpack and walk halfway around the tank when his voice stops me. “You wanna know what's inside?”

Maybe it's the sun, or the emotion of reuniting Ahab with some piece of his dear dead aunt, but whatever the reason—in this moment, on the rooftop of this gas station—I miss my mother terribly.

I turn, take one last look at Ahab, dripping wet in his ridiculous clothes, holding his precious wooden box; behind him, his whale of a boyfriend is back in his chair, lounging in the shade, sipping a daiquiri like he's on the beaches of Aruba.

“You could tell me,” I say, rounding the tank. Then, slipping on Albert's aviators, I throw open the trapdoor. “But I probably wouldn't believe you.”