The Best People in the World (16 page)

I was dumbfounded.

Grabbing her shirt by the hem, I lifted it over her head. She did a little shimmy and her skirt dropped to the floor. Her breasts were huge and soft. She bent over in front of me, so that her head and shoulders were inside the shower stall, but her ass and legs were there before me. She stretched onto her tiptoes. The water coursed down her body, soaking into the clothing on the floor.

Inside the shower stall she made a grunting sound.

I bolted from the room, through the living room choked with other people's things, and out onto the porch and fresh air and a retreating blue light.

Down by the pond's edge, Shiloh, Gregor, and Alice were turning in place, looking for something. I was that thing.

“No luck?” asked Alice.

“No luck.”

This exchange seemed to bother Gregor. He frowned. “Why are you without luck?”

“I went looking for dessert.”

“Oh,” said the big man.

“Gregor has offered to give us a tour of the place,” said Shiloh.

A dog loped by with a distended belly. The naked swimmers had left the water and now they'd become pale points scattered through the meadows.

The little girl wandered over to where we stood. She pretended to be preoccupied with a grass stain on her knee.

“Do we know that little wood fairy?” asked Alice.

“That's Sonya,” answered Gregor. We all knew her name.

Sonya seized Alice's arm and demanded to know what fairies were. Gregor did a ridiculous impersonation of a fairy—he couldn't be cunning, quick, or lithe. Alice teased Gregor, saying that he could be an ogre. I suggested a troll. We told Sonya that only fairies could tickle trolls, but no matter how hard she tried, Gregor didn't even fake a giggle. Sonya looked frustrated. The little girl smelled bad, I realized. Granted, a lot of the adults smelled bad, too. For them it was a matter of choice, but with the girl it spoke to a lack of attention.

Alice asked Sonya if she had any siblings. The girl made a face to show she didn't understand the word. Brothers or sisters?

She held up one finger.

“That's right,” said Gregor. “Sonya is the only one.”

The girl held her arms out like wings and zoomed off.

“She's like Switzerland,” said Shiloh, but he didn't explain what he meant.

Gregor started walking and the three of us fell in behind him.

“Magdalena told us you have enemies,” said Alice.

The big man nodded. “If you propose to turn Christianity on its head, this is no wonder.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I introduced gravity to God.”

“How does one do that?” asked Alice.

Gregor hooked a finger under the chain around Alice's neck and raised the shiny piece of metal from between her breasts. “Why do you wear this cross?”

“It was a gift,” said Alice.

“So I expect that it reminds you of a person, not God. This is only natural. Why I am hated is that I've proposed that we put people before God. In traditional models, God is above us, followed by kings and then clergy. At the base you have laypeople. Imagine a pyramid.” Gregor reached his hands upward to trace the slanting walls. “All I did was propose that God can also be found at the bottom, too. If we fall, we fall toward God, rather than away from him. Adam and Eve
were never closer to God than when he kicked them out of paradise. This is lost on some people. They find my ideas heretical, but heretics are often rescued by history.”

We reached a clearing on the opposite side of the pond. Survey stakes marked a house-size square. Gregor had us stand where a front door might go and look out at the rest of the compound. The parachute was now being used to toss a woman into the air—each time she shot up, she clapped her hands over her head, and when she started to fall, she moved them to her dress which she modestly pinned to her thighs.

“Tell them what you told me about this place,” said Shiloh.

“This is the place,” said Gregor.

Shiloh scratched his head.

More than anything I wanted to get back to our own home. I didn't want to see the woman from the shower or the pregnant women or the honest-looking men in their work pants and boots. I belonged to Alice alone.

“I can't tell you what's right for you,” said Gregor. “But I think you're right for us. Shiloh is a very resourceful person, and we need resourceful people. And Alice, as an educator, we could use your gifts to help us shape our next generations—of which Sonya is just the first. We're expecting to be blessed with more children at any moment. So you can understand where I'm coming from. The word I prefer is ‘family' This is an intentional family. We're self-governing, self-reliant, and self-centered. Now Thomas is uncomfortable because I haven't addressed him yet. He is thinking that he is, maybe, disposable. This is not how I see it. You think that I don't recognize your purpose. I've been watching you, Thomas. What you are is the glue holding these people together. I'm not even sure they realize it, but that's what you are. And as much as I want Alice to be here and Shiloh to be here, without you, if they came on their own, for example, I couldn't accept them. I'm not saying I would turn them away. I'm saying that they would be missing something important, and that something is you. That is the thing I want to say to all of you. And even if it's hard for you to scrape up what will probably cost you five
or ten thousand dollars when things are all said and done, well, I think it's worthwhile for you to consider it. I think it's the future for both of us. I believe this and I am rarely wrong about matters like this. You can ask anyone, but especially the women. Women, Alice, are the most valuable members of a society. Women know about the future because they carry it inside them. And, Shiloh, when you look toward the future, can you imagine the sort of influence that you could have when you're acting as part of a society as opposed to acting at the periphery of a society?”

 

It was a tremendous relief to return to our stolen home.

Alice beat me upstairs. I found her naked on our bed, a yellow towel draped over her face. I lifted just the edge of the towel. No peeking, she said. While I removed my clothes, she scissored her arms and legs like she was making angels.

“What's with the towel?”

“This is how we use towels on our planet.”

“On your head?”

“On our heads,” she said; she laughed a little.

I touched her. Goose flesh on her chest and arms.

She held my hand to her breast.

 

A name I hadn't forgotten. He showed up one day, with his terrible van, the headlights set in their chrome dishes like dead eyes. I stood in the yard and watched it creeping down the hill. The van rolled to a stop just a few feet in front of me and we stared at each other through the windshield glass. He had a cigarette holder pinned in the corner of his mouth and he was wearing a leather stovepipe hat.

The door swung open and he stepped into our yard. “I told you we'd cross paths again. Where's your sweet la-de-da?”

There were black scabs on the knuckles of his hands.

“Oh,” he said, “I almost forgot.” He stretched himself over the seat and rooted around. He handed me a box wrapped with cotton string.

I peeked inside the box. Italian cookies.

“A little housewarming gift.” He turned around in the driveway as if he expected people to sneak up behind him.

I asked how he'd found us.

A little bird told him.

“Tanager,” I said, Shiloh's last name.

“That makes you the whiz kid.”

“You're Parker.”

He stuck his hand out.

He tried to force my hand to do something complicated. “That means we're pals. How old are you again?”

“Seventeen.”

“With your face it doesn't matter.”

His dark, curly hair bobbed before his green-brown eyes. He wore leather pants and was barefoot, great, big, filthy feet. He reached an arm into the van and mashed the horn.

“You folks have a nice place here,” he said. He stared at the house. “Isn't this the nowherest corner of this world.”

The front door jerked open. Shiloh came into the yard. They performed a more intricate variation of the handshake.

“I didn't know if you were coming,” said Shiloh.

“I caught your lookout napping.” He pointed his finger at my head.

“Thomas.”

“That kid's face…”

“His face is fine.”

“Says you.”

Alice appeared at the mudroom door. She turned around and went back inside.

“So what's the good word?” asked Parker.

“We're getting along,” said Shiloh.

“From the darkest soil spring the brightest flowers,” said Parker. “That's Gerard Manley Hopkins, I think. I met up with Gregor and those freaks last night. We ate lamb. He's very sharp. You know his parents were missionaries. They disappeared in the Amazon. Sad. He wants me to find him a school bus. I felt very at ease. Good-looking
chicks serving me food. I was starting to think he was on to something. I was stroking this one girl's hair. Then Gregor asks about our old friend. Can you believe that?”

“Asked about him how?”

“Had I seen him recently.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I wasn't necessarily of the opinion that our old friend existed.”

“Oh,” said Shiloh.

“You're telling me. So he stared at me for about twenty minutes and the chick with the soft hair has to go do something by herself and pretty soon yours truly is back in his vehicle alone with his dreams. And then, in the middle of the night, the lamb doesn't agree with me so I have to go off into the bushes. So I'm squatting there, my hands clasped around the trunk of this tree. Well, I hadn't really checked out my surroundings. I look over and see a couple of folks standing waist deep in this pond and they're just watching me.” He paused and looked from Shiloh to me. “I am not without a certain degree of pride, you understand.” He reached into the van and pulled out a little hard-shelled overnight bag.

 

Alice and I sat at the kitchen table eating the stale cookies. Her favorites had a dab of peach preserves. I preferred the ones made of shredded coconut. We hadn't had sweets for a long time. They seemed frivolous.

It was just the two of us in the house. After Parker took a shower, he and Shiloh drove off in the van.

“Promise me,” said Alice, “when Shiloh and I get into it over his friend, you will take my side.”

“Of course I'll take your side. It's not even a contest.”

“Yes it is.”

The refrigerator made a sound like someone had slipped a baseball card between a bicycle's spokes. I went over and wedged a wooden spoon against the vibrating part.

6

Nighthawks

Alice stretched out beside me and so still she might have died in her sleep. I heard bodies come up stairs, the rusty sigh of a leaf-spring suspension, shuffling feet. I crept to the window. Parker had backed the van right up to the front door, neatly docking with the house. Something was being moved into the basement. They worked with whispered grunts. They were conscientious, reining in their voices to protect our sleep. I went back to bed and listened some more. I counted ten trips up the stairs, fifteen. The numbers didn't matter since I had no idea if they started working when I started counting or if I had joined them late. And, not knowing, I left them to their lifting. In the morning, the van was back in the driveway, red curtains pulled across the windows. The front hall swept, the house silent.

7

Apex

Alice wanted to get away, so we got in the car and drove. With the windows down, the air whipped Alice's hair about. I reached across and gathered it in my fist. The road we chose wound its way up a mountainside. At a dirt parking lot, tipped so precariously it seemed poised to slide away, the road came to an end. A man stooped beside a pickup, pulling cockleburs from a pair of Irish setters. He looked worse than exhausted. He scratched his chin and said something unintelligible. I walked over to hear him better. He held a gadget to his Adam's apple and asked me, with a voice like a kazoo, “Picnic?” He'd had a tracheotomy. “Sightseeing,” I said. Keeping my answer clipped was a sympathetic gesture. He straightened himself up. The dogs trembled with anticipation; they were full of this wonderful energy and they forfeited it to him. He opened the tailgate and flicked his hand. The dogs sprang into the bed.

Alice and I scrambled past dwarf pines that burst apart the seams
of rocks, over mats of dense sedge. Before we reached the peak, we came upon a low foundation. Three flagstone stairs took us up to a little square of land, a place level and neat. There were six tombstones standing upright and three small ones on their backs. The gravestones were as slim as books. The names had been erased by rain. I'd heard that, over time, bodies will shift under the soil. I thought of all the bones knotted in a corner. Alice and I kept our voices close to us. Squirrels scratched through last year's leaves. I took Alice's hand and led her down the ringing steps. We followed the path, trusting it would take us where we wanted to go.

Broken stone crowned the top like a balding skull. Alice had never stood on top of a mountain. From that vantage point we could see the full 360 degrees. We took the opportunity to name all the mountains. Alice spotted the Giant's Brow and Mount Fantastic. The Bawdy Virgin's Knees. Nameless Hill. That sacred Indian holy land, Lumpofshit.

On the other side, for a couple of hundred feet, the mountain face was almost sheer. I watched Alice take a crow's hop and fire rocks out over the abyss. My heart seized every time she ran up to the edge.

By now someone has built a place on top of that mountain. They do that sort of thing. Some days it can take my entire life to keep me from driving up there and looking for that road.