Читать книгу The Bewildered - Peter Rock - Страница 9

2.

CHRIS HAD SCRAPED HIS ELBOW. He bent it up so Kayla and Leon could look at it; Leon frowned, and Kayla—the tip of her tongue between her teeth, the jagged part in her hair shining—looked disappointed. The wound was not as serious as they had hoped. It really wasn’t swelling or bleeding the way they would have liked. It hadn’t even been an impressive wipe-out, either—he was simply dropping in off the low wall, and his board went out from under him.

The skatepark beneath the bridge had been crowded, like it always was in the late afternoon, full of older guys with tattoos and stocking caps and pierced eyebrows. Of the three friends, Kayla was the best skater, by far, but she had trouble getting in rides without someone cutting her off. She’d been the only girl at the park; that was why she practiced so early in the morning, hours before school.

“Where is she?” Leon said to Kayla.

“She’s coming.”

“She’s never been late before.”

“And it’s a school night,” Chris said.

The air felt heavy, muggy. This would be the fifth night they’d worked for Natalie in the last month, and still they were anxious. The three of them stood at the curb on East Burnside and MLK, waiting, each with a backpack of books, each with an instrument case in one hand, a skateboard in the other. Leon was taller, bigger, than the other two, but this had not always been the case. They’d met in fourth grade, set apart as gifted students in a program called Horizons; that was more than five years ago, and now all three were fifteen, in high school, inseparable. Over time they’d developed a sharp disdain for their peers, especially as these peers began the slide toward the superficial, pathetic lives of adults. The three believed that there had to be a less desperate way to live one’s life, and this last twist—this Natalie, found by Kayla—felt especially promising.

Kayla sat down on her board, rolling slightly from side to side, her feet on the ground, knees bent up. Leon skated away with his trombone case over his shoulder, up half a block, searching, demonstrating that he wasn’t afraid of the Mexican men who stood there in a group, smoking and speaking Spanish, here in this gathering place like so many others. This was where someone came when they needed illegal, cheap labor, some night work somewhere, off the books. The men didn’t even notice as Leon rolled past, as he skidded the tail of his board, stopped, did a one-eighty, and skated back to Chris and Kayla. He pointed back to the intersection, at the stop light, the rusted-out pickup idling half a block away.

“There,” he said, and already Kayla was standing.

As usual, Natalie drove her broken-down Ford slowly past, as if they had no pre-arranged meeting, as if she were looking for the best possible laborers. A man up the street yelled something in Spanish, stepped off the curb and flexed his arm. Natalie drove past, then stopped, then reversed slowly to where the three stood. She left the engine idling, like every time, as she got out to look them over.

Her long, blond hair hung straight and loose. Her boots were black, heavy. She wore blue coveralls, long sleeved, a zipper up the front.

“You appear to be very hard workers,” she said. “Certainly.” She looked up and down the street and the Mexican men glanced back, interested.

“Yes,” Kayla said.

“Of course,” Natalie said, “you seem very young to me.”

This was all part of it; it was impossible to say if Natalie was kidding at all, or if she forgot, as if it were slightly more than coincidence yet new to her every time. She stood still for a moment, thinking, her old truck—two-tone, brown and white—rattling next to her.

“My name is Natalie,” she said, “and you have never seen me before.”

“Never,” Leon said, and Kayla elbowed him in the side.

“The job I have for you,” Natalie said, “this job is not especially difficult; I will not ask you to break the law or do anything that you don’t want to do. All I ask is secrecy.”

As she spoke, she walked around the back of the truck. A fiberglass top covered the bed. She opened its hatchback, then the truck’s tailgate.

“Your name?”

“Kayla.”

“Kayla, I’d like you to ride up front with me. You boys in the back.”

Leon and Chris tossed in their packs, their instrument cases, and their skateboards, then crawled in after. The truck’s bed was covered by a piece of plywood, a scrap of old, orange shag carpet that smelled of dust and yarn, old sun. The two boys stretched out flat as Natalie closed them in. After a moment, the truck began moving.

“‘I will not ask you to break the law,’” Leon said, and snorted. “Right.” Flat on his back, he clasped his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes.

Leon’s hair was black, curly, and there were dark freckles across his nose. He hated to be called “husky,” but that’s what he was, and strong, his arms and legs muscled, his wrists thick, his movements always slow and calm. He could sleep anywhere. Chris rested on his side, looking at his friend, then rolled onto his back. He stretched out, lining up his feet with Leon’s, then dragged himself up, so they were the same height, lying there with their shoulders touching. He kept his eyes open, staring up at the cracks in the white fiberglass shell.

The truck jerked and jolted, the shock absorbers shot. Chris sat up, to check where they were. They’d crossed the river now and were still on Burnside, traveling through downtown, climbing up a slope. He looked forward, at the back of Natalie’s head; her hair was swept to one side, and he could see her necklace, just four or five thin copper wires against the pale skin of her neck. Two panes of glass separated the front of the truck from the back, two sliding windows there; last time Natalie had opened them, handed pieces of beef jerky back to Chris and Leon. Today she looked straight ahead. Kayla, meanwhile, sat with a heavy book in her lap, reading, probably about electricity. That was her deal—the hard science, the numbers; Chris was better at history, at English; Leon specialized in music, in debate, but he could do it all. Now, he slept.

Chris squinted through the two windows. He saw writing on Kayla’s hand, ballpoint pen. LEON, it said; why hadn’t he noticed that before? And why not his name, too? He checked her other hand. It was bare, unmarked. Then he watched as Kayla leaned forward and changed the radio’s channel; her shirt rode up, and he saw the almost nonexistent hairs at the small of her back, in a crescent there like a rising sun. The soft hairs of his own arm rose in a shiver. He knew that Kayla wished the hair on her own arms was blonder, so it wouldn’t show; he knew that she’d just started shaving her legs. He pressed his ear against the window and heard something, past the truck’s rattle; it sounded like a classical station, some cheesy Mozart. His head facing out, he looked through the porthole window of the fiberglass shell. A cemetery, a hillside of white gravestones, flashed against the dark sky. It was going to rain; Natalie never had work for them when the weather was decent.

Chris checked his elbow again; there was a disappointing lack of blood, and what there had been had already dried. It wouldn’t even be a decent scab.

“Well?” Leon said, his eyes still closed.

“Heading toward Beaverton, maybe.”

“You want to quiz me on my Biology?”

“Not right now,” Chris said.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Did you finish The Sound and the Fury?”

“Over-rated,” Chris said.

Leon sat up, rubbing at his eyes, looking from side to side. “It’s a good thing she has a lid on this thing,” he said. “You know, dogs that ride in the back of trucks are always getting their retinas detached; they go blind. There’s a whole area in any Humane Society, any dog pound. Cages and cages of these blind dogs. Rednecks’ dogs, mostly.”

As he spoke, he pulled his instrument case toward him and undid the hasps. He opened it; instead of his trombone, it held all the equipment that Natalie had given them to keep. All the straps and ropes and buckles and gloves. The orange phone headset spilled out, trailing its cords, alligator clips at the ends. Kayla said she was going to figure out how it worked; she was reading up on it, on the Internet.

“I saw Kayla change the radio channel,” Chris said.

“Perfect. What did Natalie do?”

“Nothing. How old do you think she is?”

“Too old to trust,” Leon said.

Out the window, strip malls and new condo developments trailed off. Open fields stretched; cows and sheep, green grass.

“So what do we think her deal is?” Chris said.

“We’re still gathering information.”

“I know that.”

“It’s interesting,” Leon said. “We’ve all agreed on that. Not boring, yet.”

“Yet,” Chris said.

Natalie skidded to a stop on the highway’s gravel shoulder; Chris and Leon jostled against each other, just sitting upright again as she jerked the back doors open.

“Out!” she said. “Line up, now.”

This was part of it. The skateboards were left behind in the truck, the backpacks, with Chris’s clarinet and Kayla’s flute. Chris stood between Leon and Kayla, facing Natalie, who was excitedly pacing, pointing up and down the highway, at the setting sun, the darkening fields, the black wires between metal towers.

“Beautiful,” Natalie said. “What time is it, now?”

“Eight,” Chris said.

“I’ll be back at ten,” she said.

“Nine-thirty,” Kayla said. “It’s a school night.”

“All right,” Natalie said, turning away, looking over her shoulder. “Don’t disappoint me!”

And then she leapt back into the truck, slammed her door and accelerated away, gone.

“Whoa,” Leon said. “Was she acting that crazed the whole drive?”

“Not really,” Kayla said. “She was just talking.”

“She wasn’t even wearing a watch,” Chris said.

“What was she talking about?” Leon said.

The three friends sat on the shoulder of the highway, alone for miles in every direction, fields stretching out. They began to untangle the harness, the ropes. There was not the slightest hint of a breeze. The power lines ran between metal towers, their tops spread in triangles and with smaller metal triangles like ears on top, so they looked like the faces of cats. The wires stretched over low, distant hills, trees clear-cut to make way.

“Oh, man,” Kayla said. She pointed across the street, to where the lines ran between regular wooden poles. “Not on this side. Let’s go over there, where at least the voltage has been stepped down some. What’s she thinking? Holy crow!”

“What kind of expression is that?” Leon said. “‘Holy crow?’”

“Are you going to disallow it?”

“Not yet.”

The three had rules about clichés and hip phrases, and did not allow cursing.

“So what was Natalie talking about?” Chris said.

“Nothing,” Kayla said. “Creepy questions about being a girl, about which one of you was my boyfriend, just ridiculous and stupid adult stuff.”

“She’s just another adult,” Leon said, “but she pays us, so she’s working for us as much as we’re working for her.”

The horizon flickered; faint thunder sounded; above, the stars were becoming visible.

“Is this smart?”

“Not really.”

The three hurried across the highway, into the tall grass. They continued their preparations, watchful for headlights, their voices low. They only understood some of the equipment; Natalie had given it to them in a bag that said Qwest on it, so it was clear that she’d stolen it from the phone company. They admired that.

“I could do the next one,” Chris said, “or the one after that.”

“We’ll see if I get tired,” Leon said. His feet were the biggest, so the spikes fit him best. He liked to be the one to climb the poles; once he got up there, he’d start to boss them around.

The spikes were hard to walk in, like having long knives attached to your ankles, stabbing into the ground with each step. Chris and Kayla helped Leon to his feet, then to the pole; they got the thick canvas belt around it, then through the harness, and boosted him up. Spikes dug into the wood, Leon slid the belt up, leaned back, dug a little higher. Slowly, he ascended, pausing to pull splinters from his palms. He had forgotten the gloves. Below, Chris and Kayla set to hiding the trombone case, the things they wouldn’t need, and then they returned, ready.

“Only the neutrals!” Kayla shouted, hands belled around her mouth, “don’t touch the live wires with the cutter.”

“Right, right, right.” Leon’s whispered voice hardly reached them. “The air is hotter up here.”

“What?”

“Forget it.” He put his small, metal flashlight in his mouth, so he could get to work.

The first time, Natalie had explained it so fast that it was surprising they hadn’t killed themselves. Each time they knew a little more, and Kayla read about it, so they were a little better at what they had to do.

Leon cut the neutral, the grounding wire that ran with the live ones; it went with a snap and the pole swayed, settled, that tension gone; the heavy copper wire came down like a whip, cracking up and out, winding and unwinding around the other wires and back upon itself, stiff and slackening, coming down.

Kayla and Chris ran after it, racing each other to get the very end. Then, as Leon descended behind them, they began to bend the wire, to roll it into a ball, larger and larger. Chris balled it up, and Kayla lifted the wire from the tall grass, to keep it clear.

When these skeins of wire grew more than a foot in diameter, they became heavy, more difficult to carry. By that time, Leon would have climbed down behind them, taken off the spikes, and caught up with the clipper. He cut the wire, and they set the heavy skein aside and began to roll another, all the way to the next pole, which Leon would climb so they could finish this stretch and begin the next. Now, they kept an eye out for headlights; this highway was not heavily traveled. The night was still, the air close. A cow, grazing nearby, moaned low. It lifted its black and white head and blankly stared at Chris and Kayla.

“Dude’s watching us.”

“Concentrate on what you’re doing,” Kayla said.

“She could help us,” he said. “Natalie. She could at least stick around.”

“Too risky. Besides, she’s an adult. What do you expect?”

“I wonder where she goes.”

Natalie sat in a booth, in a roadside diner, watching the trucks pass on the highway, wondering how her kids were doing out there. Before she had entered the diner, she had gotten out of her coveralls. She wore a silk, flowered blouse and sandals with blue straps, an outfit that owed something to Whitney Kaine, Miss September, 1976.

“Are you ready to order?”

Natalie looked up at the waitress, who wore a hemp necklace, a tattooed ring on her finger.

“Strange weather,” the girl said, eager to fill any silence. “Are you visiting the vineyards? Passing through?”

“Business,” Natalie said.

“What do you do?”

“Maybe I’ll have a steak. Do you have any vegetables that came in tin cans?”

“Only fresh vegetables; we’re an organic restaurant.”

Natalie could not remember the last time she ate a fresh piece of fruit, or a vegetable; she liked the hint of metal in the canned versions, but even they were not a major part of her diet.

“And we don’t serve any meat,” the waitress said.

“Just give me anything. The first thing on the menu.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You don’t really have to order anything.”

“Yes, but I’d like to sit here, I’d like to pay you for the time and space. Does that strike you as suspicious?”

“Do you like things that are hot, spicy?” the waitress said, trying.

“I used to,” Natalie said.

“I’ll bring you the special,” the waitress said. “It’s egg-plant, but I bet you’ll like it.”

Natalie turned away, back to the window. She had no time, no patience for chatter, weather talk, petty divulgements of opinions or vocation. What did she do? How did she come to her current employment? Is that what it was, when she gave away all the earnings to the children, her workers? Number Six hard-drawn copper was running sixty cents a pound, two hundred and forty dollars a mile, at worst. All that mystery she worked on the kids, all that drama and commando bullshit wasn’t really necessary, but she knew exactly how to play them, and didn’t mind feeding their attitude, their sense of superiority. She liked their serious, dependable way, how they acted like miniature experts, how little respect they actually showed her.

She checked the clock on the wall. Forty-five minutes left. A school night, they said, they had to get home and get their sleep to be sharp for school, for classes. Sleep. She used to need more of it. She wasn’t tired now; she felt the same, plenty of energy, even too much. She’d go days without sleeping, even thinking about it. And then she’d sleep for forty, fifty hours straight, and be up for a week. Scientists admitted they didn’t know why people needed it. Dolphins slept half of their brain at a time, otherwise they’d drown; perhaps that was how she was doing it—never all the way asleep or awake.

Alone in the diner, she felt the pressure rising, a faint hot wind from the faces of the electrical outlets, invisible and silent sparks, all closing down, rushing in, a surge snaking toward her. Snarled, forked, bristling and gone slack. In came a snapping hiss at all the switches and light fixtures, and she heard the cook drop something in the kitchen. She heard his cursing voice as all the lights went out.

There was no rising, sizzling wind, no spark, no ball of flame. Just a sudden loud pop and Leon jerking there like all the bones gone from his body, so high above the ground. His arms wildly slapped and his legs kicked the pole, gouging the wood, raining splinters into their squinting eyes. It went on and on; it would not set him loose. The heavy clipper was clenched in his hand still, shattering porcelain insulators, knocking crossbeams loose. The cut copper wire came slicing down.

Kayla screamed. She collided into Chris; they both looked upward, necks bent back as at last Leon came loose. His spikes kicked in, he slid in the harness, twisting in the canvas belt, forty feet overhead. He slid five feet, snagged, slid a little more. His eyes wide open, not seeing a thing, facedown and slithering closer, right at them, headfirst and tangled, finally hung up four feet from the ground.

They both held back; neither wanted to touch him, his pale face with all the skin twitching, hissing flecks of spit and snot, eyes staring. His limp arms hung down, his hand finally letting loose of the clipper, its damp thud in the grass. At last, Kayla reached out, then Chris. They brought their friend down to the ground.

“Is he breathing?” Chris said. “Is he alive?”

Leon was not moving. Now even the skin of his face settled and smoothed, eyelids sliding closed.

Kayla knelt next to him. She tilted back his head, opened his mouth. She pinched her nose and breathed into him, and checked to see his chest rise, and did it again, gasping herself. She waited, and Leon’s chest rose without her.

“He’s all right,” Chris said. “He’ll be all right.”

“He tastes burnt,” Kayla said.

Leon pulled up his arms; he put his folded hands under his cheek, as if he were sleeping. All his hair was singed away on one side. He began to twitch again, his limbs faintly jerking. His jaw opened; he ground his teeth as if he were chewing, then swallowed like he was drinking. His eyes rolled, then closed again.

A car rattled by, not slowing. They did not notice. A warm wave of rain passed over them, then eased.

“It had to be lightning,” Kayla said, repeating it. “Miles away where we didn’t see it. Lightning, lightning.” She was trying to get the belt, the spikes off him, as if that would help.

“Don’t touch me,” Leon said, suddenly. He sat up, twisting his head from side to side, his expression confused.

“Can you hear me? I’m right here.”

“What? Who?”

“Wait, Leon. Stay down.”

Chris looked over at Kayla, who looked back at him, both of them lost in that moment. A cool wind swept through the tall grass, around them. And then Natalie was there. They had not heard her truck, nor seen it arrive.

“Let’s go!” she was saying, “What’s the slowdown, here? What’s up with your hair? Was it that way before?”

Chris kept looking at Kayla, not certain what to say.

“Yes,” Kayla said. “It was that way.” Her flashlight was in her jeans’ pocket, forgotten, still on; it shone, a darker blue circle through the fabric.

Leon turned his head and looked at them with dawning recognition.

“Is everything all right?” Natalie said. “We need to get the wire in the truck, and then get out of here. We’re compromising the whole situation.”

“We’re resting,” Chris said. “We’ve got three balls done.”

“Resting?” Natalie said. “What about that last wire?” She pointed to it, loose in the tall grass, weighing it down, the wire that Leon had cut just as things went wrong.

“Yes,” Leon said, his voice thick and slow. “Well, let’s go now.”

He seemed about to tilt, to fall over on his side, but then began to crawl toward the rolls of wire; after fifty feet he stumbled up, barely walking, and Chris and Kayla trailed, staying close to help him and to keep Natalie from seeing. But she was not paying attention; she was out ahead, already stripping the wire with long, powerful jerks, tearing it up from the grass and coiling it. She still wore her coveralls, only now instead of her black boots she was in blue sandals, and she swayed to keep her balance as she gathered the last of the wire.

“Headlights!” she suddenly shouted. “Truck!” And they all fell flat in the long, wet grass, waiting, holding their breaths.

The rain had stopped; a swirling wind kicked up. The four of them rose again, all converging on the truck, each carrying one heavy skein, long strands of green grass snagged in the copper wire. Somehow Leon had also gathered the belt, the clippers, the headset, the trombone case. The bottom of his left shoe was blackened, the sole flapping; Chris stepped in front, so Natalie wouldn’t notice. But she was already lifting the wire, rolling the balls into the back of the truck.

“We’ll all ride back here,” Kayla said.

“Suit yourselves.”

They crawled in, over the tailgate, pressed close together, damp and safe, crowded by the skateboards and backpacks and wire. Natalie’s face was visible for a moment, through the back window as she closed it down, and then there was the sound of the engine, the feel of the highway passing beneath them. The balls of wire began to roll around the back of the truck, bristly, catching on their clothing, pulling at their hair; the three sat with their feet outstretched, holding the wire away. They leaned into each other; they held each other close.