Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing (6 page)

I saw her again, late, past midnight. The rides shut down, the games closing up, most people gone home, I walked out into the field, far out to where I could turn and see the midway lights from a distance. Already thinking about packing up the truck, slamming the tailgate shut on everything I own. At night I like to do this, imagine the field once we've left it: the deer coming out of the woods, noses working over crumpled napkins, the foxes creeping out onto the trampled paths, sawdust scattering in the wind. It's usually a comfort, knowing the field will recover without a trace of us, just days after we're gone. But there's a danger to picturing a place without you in it. After a while you can start to feel like nothing at all.

When I walked back up towards Camper City, I went past the grandstand again, empty now. By the bleachers, I happened to notice a teddy bear. It was bright orange, a prize off a game, glowing a little in the dirt. It reminded me of something, and I almost bent to pick it up, but then I heard them. A scuffling like animals, a hollow sound as she banged against the bleachers. When I peered into the darkness it took a few seconds to make sense of it. She had changed out of her pink dress and into a pair of jean shorts, which were down around her knees. But she was still wearing her sash, crooked now, flapping like she was unraveling. He was behind her, hands in her hair, yanking her head back a little with each thrust, his big white T-shirt billowing. I stood there and watched the whole thing, nothing but a pair of eyes. It was over fast. When he let go she didn't
move, just stayed there hanging on the support strut of the bleachers, then slowly bent down and picked up the bear and tenderly brushed off the dirt.

I stepped into the shadow of a ticket booth as he turned and zipped his fly. I couldn't see his face, but I recognized the shirt immediately. It was one of Dub's—
THE HUNTER'S NIGHTMARE
—a deer riding an ATV with a rifle strapped across its shoulders, a dead man in camo tied to the back.

Five months on the road and already I've seen too much. Too much to feel any shred of hope for the long-gone world. I feel the burden of it all clattering behind me, slowing me down, like cans tied on for a honeymoon. Sometimes I wonder why it hasn't all burned up or broken down already. Sometimes it makes me want to lie down right where I am and just let the grass grow over me.

 

The sky, by two, is yellow and angry. A wash of worried murmurs moves through the crowd. Mothers peer up at the bloated clouds, clutching raincoats, old men mutter and tell their wives they're ready to go home. Little kids run shrieking down the path, oblivious. I sell a chipped butter crock to a blue-haired, heavy-faced woman with white plastic shopping bags strung along her arms like buoys. “What'll you all do if it rains?” she asks, swinging her head towards the midway, bags rustling. She widens her eyes in concern, as if she can think of no more terrible a fate.

I look up, ready to be done with these people, put Thunderbird in the rearview as I tear off down the road. “Same thing as you,” I say, snapping the money box closed. “Get wet.”

It is only a legend, the Thunderbird. A myth the settlers stole from the Indians to scare little boys out of venturing too far from home. But they told the story enough times that they started to believe it themselves. Started whispering the terrible
what if
s
,
started to keep an eye on the sky. Always watching for the dark shape in the trees that might be waiting to swoop down and carry their children away. A hundred years ago, two traveling men pulled into town proclaiming they had captured the beast, that they had it alive and caged in a tent, to be viewed for two bits admission. When the crowd gathered, one of them went around collecting money, working the people up, describing the creature's great ferocity, the size and crushing strength of its talons and beak. And then just at the moment before the unveiling, the other one came running out from behind the tent, screaming, “It's escaped! Run for your lives!” And in the pandemonium that followed, they packed it all up quick and took off for the next town. Dub told me the story, doubled up with laughter. “You'd think that would have put an end to it,” he said. But every year, even now, there are one or two more sightings. I can imagine it, looking out at the mute woods: how you might think you have glimpsed a wing or a passing shadow, the shuddering near-miss of catastrophe.

I know how they felt, those travelers: telling the same story
town after town, the faces and the story must have eventually blurred, so they no longer knew what was hoax and what was truth.

I'm ready to take a break, clear my head, walk away for a while, when a group of teenagers comes careening down the path and slides to a stop in front of Dub's tent. Three boys in low-slung jeans jab a pink cloud of cotton candy in one another's faces, laughing and bumping into people. With them, in tight jeans and a tank top but still in her sash and crown, is Miss Hopewell County, giggling and slapping at their arms, trying to get in the middle of it all. She looks over and catches my eye, flashes a smile. I look down and grind my fist into my thigh. Sixty-six thousand miles an hour, the earth whips around the sun, while girls like this brush their hair, paint their nails, call their friends, believe that it all revolves around them. Suddenly she's in front of me, shimmering in the heat, still with that center-of-the-universe smile.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hello,” I say through my teeth. I can see the top of her bra as she leans over the table—lacy, white, expectant.

“Cool,” she says, reaching to touch an old pillbox hat. Up close, her face has a blank innocence, like a field ready for the plow. She probably still thinks that one of those boys is going to sweep her off her feet, carry her away from here.

She gasps. “My necklace,” she says, her hand flying to her throat. She looks up at me with big blinking eyes. “Where'd you find it?”

I look over her shoulder at the boys, who seem to have tired of their game, and are standing around like cows, gazing dumbly at the horizon. I wonder which one wrapped his fingers in her hair last night, leaned her up against the bleachers. Which one might do it tonight. A meanness takes hold of me.

“What are you talking about?” I say, still looking at the boys.

“That's my locket. I lost it last night. I've been looking for it all day.”
All day.
She says it with a suffering sigh, as if a day was an interminable amount of time, as if we lived on a giant planet that turned infinitely slowly around the sun. Under my clothes, all the humidity of the air collects, heating up.

“What a coincidence,” I say, “that I've got one just like it. I've had this one for months.” My face burns. Sweat breaks. I squeeze my hands together behind my back, fighting the urge to pull off my shirt.

“But it's mine,” she says, trying to laugh. I can see she has decided I must be teasing her. She's a little drunk, lining her words up carefully, like she's placing them on a tightrope. “Here,” she says, reaching for it. “I can prove it.” I find myself grabbing her hand and pushing it back from the table. Startled, she jerks it away.

“It's forty-five bucks,” I say. Willing her, just willing her, to go away.

“But it's mine. If you look—”

“Forty. I can go as low as forty.” I wipe sweat from my face with the back of my hand. I'm wet all over now, my clothes
clinging to me, sweat running down my face. “Afraid I can't go any lower than that.”

“It's mine,” she says again, but quietly, dazed, with the voice of a little girl. Suddenly I can see her bedroom, in a brick ranch on the edge of her daddy's cornfield. Her mother closing the drapes and turning on the lamps every afternoon at five, though the sun is still throwing wild light across the corn. I feel a wave of sympathy. She must think it will never change.

She turns and looks back at the boys. “Who are you, anyway?” she says with her head turned, her voice filling with tears. But it's clear I've won. Without looking back, she goes over to the boys and disappears into the pack as they slouch up towards the midway.

The inside of my mouth, fingertips, toes, everything's buzzing, ringing, like I've just come crashing back down through the atmosphere. As soon as they're out of sight, I lay my hand flat over the necklace, close my fingers around it, and slip it in my back pocket.

 

On the drive in two days ago, I stopped at a historical marker, just to break up the numbness of the unbroken fields along the road. It was a plaque about the Hopewell people, who thousands of years ago lived on this land and built ceremonial earthworks, great burial mounds where they laid their dead to rest along with pottery, crude figurines, and stone tools. And there it was across the field, the
mound, nothing spectacular about it at all. I got out of the truck and walked over, thinking it might be more impressive up close. There were daffodils growing along the sides of it, and a beer can had rolled down from the top. I picked it up and stood there and tried to feel some sense of the sacred, of the permanence. But I felt nothing, just the late blankness of an August afternoon, a plane droning overhead. Then, as I stood there flexing the can under my thumb, the loneliness of the ages suddenly grazed past—the shards of clay pots and bits of stone blades, the bottles and cans of countless teenage parties, the boxes of silverware and reading glasses and overcoats that I am always hauling out of other people's attics—all the things people leave behind, and how they really can tell us nothing, nothing about a life lived, nothing about an entire civilization that has disappeared from the face of the earth. I pictured some future race, trying to make sense of what will be left of us, all of our precious treasures sad and useless in the rubble and ruin. It flashed past with a ringing in my ears, left me staggering with irrelevance. Then I let the beer can fall and walked back to the truck, the miles ahead stretching out before me like a staircase that leads nowhere.

The rain starts at four. Slow, just a drizzle, and people duck under shelter to wait, not wanting to go home. After a while, they begin to venture back out, holding plastic bags over their heads. Umbrellas bloom in the pathways. The Mexicans come down from the midway and shake straw over the churned-up ground, kick at the power cords, giving
each other dark, dubious looks. The Ferris wheel keeps turning in the grizzled air. Someone hits the jackpot up at B–52 Breakdown, the lights flash and the sirens wail, and everyone freezes for a minute, their faces full of alarm, as if the unthinkable has happened. They laugh nervously when they realize their mistake, take another bite of their hot dogs, keep making the rounds.

All afternoon I've been slipping my hand into my back pocket, pressing my thumb against the point of the necklace's heart. Just to feel the dull prick, just to be sure it is still there. I keep searching the revolving faces, hoping and dreading that she might streak by. Her tight jeans would be soaked now, her hair wet, the white satin sash flashing behind her. I wonder if she would stop again. I want her to stop again. I know exactly what I would say:
You don't want it
.

But after a while I start to get cold, my jeans heavy and wet, the rain feeling like it's seeping through me. I unfold the tarp over the table and go to Dub's to wait it out. It's crowded in the tent, warm with bodies. I drop into the folding chair in the corner and watch the people jostle one another, grabbing for shirts. I lift one off the pile closest to me.
THE HUNTER'S NIGHTMARE
.
What the boy under the bleachers was wearing. My stomach clenches.

“Hey, Dub,” I shout across the chaos. “Where'd you get that necklace?”

“What necklace?” he calls back, looking up from his cash register as he hands someone his change.

“Come on,” I say, no patience for this.

He ignores me, stuffing half a dozen shirts in a bag. The deer on the shirt looks at me with a near-human face. It strikes me as the most indecent thing I've ever seen. I hold it halfway up. “How can you sell this garbage?” I say, loud, trying to turn some heads.

Dub, unfazed, looks over. “I don't have to,” he shouts over the din. “It sells itself.” Several customers' eyes widen when they see the shirt in my hand, and they elbow their way over to get a better look. I let it fall back down on the table and push my chair back. Dub comes over and grabs it. “Made in Malaysia, man. Only the finest.” He throws it to a fat ten-year-old, whose face jiggles when he catches it. “Come on, Cole, where's your sense of humor?”

“I think I lost it somewhere back in Ohio,” I say.

“Under the bleachers,” he says. “But now I'm giving away all my secrets.”

 

I hang around at my table another half hour, not knowing what else to do. The rain keeps coming, falling in big, heavy drops, and it must be apparent to even the most optimistic that it's not going to stop. A distant clap of thunder sounds. The crowd is steadily thinning, and finally I give up on it. I pack up my table, wrapping things haphazardly in newspapers and rags, throw all of it in my crates. I see Dub shoo a pack of boys out of his tent, and they pull up the hoods of their sweatshirts and head doggedly back up to the midway,
determined, like soldiers. He stands at the door with his palm stretched out and makes a face at me that says he's quitting too. “I got a pocket full of dead presidents,” he shouts. “I ain't complaining.”

I shove my crates under the table and tie down the tarp. I'm ready for the warmth of Kathy's bus, the sterile, off-the-lot smell of it, the huge leather couch that slides out from the wall at the press of a button. As I head up the paths, I see that the only people left on them are teenagers. The only ones willing to get soaked to the bone for one last go on the Tempest or Zipper, now that there are no lines. They're still eating hot dogs and funnel cake off soggy paper plates. I reach into my pocket, touch the necklace, and wonder if she's gone home. Home to the solid brick ranch beside the cornfield. A stillness inside, as her family sits together in the living room, listening to the storm. Grateful for their lightning rod and foundation. As I pass the wing stand, I hear Bob practicing his chord progressions. “Goddamn it all,” he says. “Damn it to hell.”