Читать книгу Man Alive - Thomas Page McBee - Страница 21

12

South Carolina

August 2010 ♦ 29 years old

The rain came in torrents and I let the wipers push the mess of water back and forth, let the sound remind me of how small I was. I tried to locate, as I had in the months between the mugging and this trip to South Carolina, the moment I had sprung back to life. I kept coming back to the mugger’s mercy, the marvel I’d felt at my body’s mechanics, the night air in my lungs, the running an earthquake opening the earth beneath me and yet also a winged possibility, soaring above the shaky ground.

I’d been running ever since: long, sweaty loops around my neighborhood, trying to get that kite-feeling back. When I couldn’t find it, I knew I needed to run farther still.

Which is how I found myself in the soupy South, driving toward a too-cheap motel, past mattress store billboards and scripture PSAs, following the logic of my hammering heart despite the twinge in Parker’s smile at the airport drop-off.

At least she hadn’t fought me on it, and I was glad to not have to explain my sense that something tremendous was at work, a grace I was too scared to name—worried I’d sound lost, or worse, religious.

Ghost hunting, I’d told her, as if that were any explanation. I wanted to see where my father grew up, to hear family stories, to try to figure out the anatomy of his freeze, why he hadn’t broken out of it, why he’d always come for me with glazed eyes, what made him and me different.

So I’d packed a bag, got on the plane, not admitting until I was in the air that doing so was a matter of survival.

♦

Once a body is in motion, it stays in motion.

Since the mugging, a bearded version of myself ran shirtless through my dreams. I’d awaken energized and damp with sweat, as if I were actually thawing. Slick and a little seasick, I’d get out of bed and force myself to really see my hips, my smooth skin and narrow jaw. My chest, flat from the top surgery I’d had two years ago, no longer looked like a proud distinction of androgyny.

I looked like a blank slate, waiting.

A good man is hard to find, I thought, turning in to the dingy motel parking lot. I made my mouth serious, told myself to remember to look everyone in the eye. Then I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked real slow past three stringy-haired hunters with bloody coolers standing sentry by the sliding glass doors.

Fear fluttered my chest and I let it; I listened to its song. The guys eyed me in my fitted white T-shirt and tight jeans and tattoos. I knew they thought I was gay, or—I couldn’t decide which was scarier—they’d read me as not-male. They fell silent as I drew closer, their hands shoved in pockets, a council of crows watching me pass into the building.

Keep going, something in me said, something more beautiful than a ghost. My knees, in their holiness, carried me on.

Alligators and secrets; chlorine and dog. I pulled my cap down low and hoped for the best as I gave the weaselly guy in the fluorescent light my credit card, my girl-name stamped clearly across the front.

He looked a beat too long before handing me my key.

“There’s a bar across the street, sir,” he said, handing the card back to me. I didn’t like the knowing tone of his voice, so I just nodded and turned away, remembering that the sound of my voice was still enough to change the story.