Neil peered into the rearview, then over his shoulder. “There’s no one around for miles,” he said. “We’re alone.”
I parked the car in the road, in a spot I estimated as the exact center of Cheyenne Bottoms. The heat slammed down. Neil and I got out, and a mosquito lighted on my forearm. It left an apostrophe of blood beneath my hand.
Neil’s mom wriggled free from the backseat, the sack snug in her fist. She arranged the wine and cheese on the car hood. She pulled out three chocolate bars as well, all the while staring, mesmerized, at a flowering shrub nearby. The blooms grew close to the earth, thick white-petaled knobs surrounding red centers that stretched forward like the bells of trumpets. A few bees hovered there. Neil walked over and plucked a flower from the bush, then brought it back and tucked it behind his mom’s ear.
A bullfrog began croaking. Neil tugged at his shirt-one he’d stolen from United Methodist Thrift-and tossed it through the open front seat window. He gulped his wine and sat on the hood, beside the block of cheddar. “Aaaaaaah,” he said, arms stiff in front of him. At the sound of his voice, the frog silenced.
I removed my shirt as well to expose my white skin. Mrs. McCormick donned sunglasses and slipped from her dress, revealing a tight bikini. We joined Neil, our legs stretched on the hood, our backs and heads against the windshield. Neil rested between us, where he belonged. For him, New York was eight hours away.
The three of us ate and drank, eventually abandoning the cheese, but continuing to sip the wine. We stared out at the marshes, listening to crickets, the hissing of dried grasses, the various bird whistles and quacks and trills that somehow managed to harmonize in the steamy air. I kept hoping to see a kingfisher or some equally provocative bird, but none showed up. “Neil has a birthday coming,” his mom said, languidly slurring her words as if easing into a dream. “The first time in nineteen years I won’t be there to celebrate.”
“We’re celebrating now,” he said.
She patted his knee, then leaned across to pat mine. “We are, aren’t we.”
Nearly an hour passed in silence. I found it strange how there was so much to see, to hear, even smell. Cheyenne Bottoms, the land of slow motion. Occasionally a flock of geese flew over the car, caterwauling and honking, and Neil’s arm shot up to follow their path across the sky. The sun devoured any cloud that tried to materialize. The chunks of cheese were practically steaming; Neil gave them a barefooted kick, and they bounced into the sod, a banquet for ants. I looked at his mom to see her reaction. She was sleeping. The flower had fallen from her ear. Her face and shoulders had already lobstered. I retrieved my shirt from the car and covered her sunburn with it.
Neil poured the wine’s remnants into his cup and swigged it. “My bladder’s about to burst,” he announced. He jogged to a ditch, his feet audibly sloshing, and stepped into the reeds. I listened to his zipper unzipping, the patter of his piss as it hit the mud. Overhead, more geese soared in a group so thick they briefly obliterated the sun.
“Eric,” Neil said. “Come here.” I rolled my body off the hood, careful not to wake his mom.
I headed toward the reeds, grasshoppers catapulting every which way. One dive-bombed toward Neil’s back, and I saw him standing there, jeans bunched at his knees. He turned. He gripped his balls and his dick in one hand, displaying himself to me. The other hand scratched idly around the ridge of his pubic hair. “Do me a favor. Take a look.” I bent down, dropping to my knees on the spongy earth. I remembered assuming the same position once, in Neil’s bedroom, under different circumstances. But he wasn’t hard now. “I’m bleeding,” he said. He sounded like an innocent kid. “What’s wrong with me?”
I shooed away the hand that wouldn’t stop scratching. Scattered across the flesh of Neil’s crotch, almost hidden within his hair’s black curls, were tiny dots of blood from his fingernails’ abrasions. And interspersed with the blood were black specks, like little peppercorns, imbedded in his skin. I recognized them immediately as crab lice. I pinched one away. In the sun’s slant, I could see the thing’s whisker-like legs wriggling against my finger. “Gross.” I tossed it and stared up at Neil, his soft dick and its parasites even with my mouth. He had no idea. The reeds around his head rustled softly, haloes of gnats darting between their towers. “You’ve got crabs,” I spat out.
His eyes widened. He smiled, the pained, divided smile a person would make while being tattooed. “Oh.” I wanted to slug him, to preach to him about hustling, about having sex here and there with this guy and that without knowing anything about the consequences. And then my thoughts of Neil’s sex life led to other thoughts, all my surfacing fears of herpes and syphilis and AIDS, and before I could muzzle myself I opened my mouth and said something I should have simply tried to send through brain waves. I said, “You’d better be playing safe.”
Neil stared down at me: beautiful, exquisite, a bronze statue I wanted to worship. “I stay in control,” he said.
At the sound of Neil’s voice, the reeds beside us shuddered, and something lifted in the air, its wings flapping sluggishly. Neil and I glanced up, breathless, and saw a great bird, a heron, its narrow banana-colored bill cutting across the sun, its crested head jutting forward, its neck bowing and dipping, its webbed feet drawing into its body as it ascended. For a brief moment it loomed directly above us. It cast us in its shadow, and I saw that its coat wasn’t white, but sapphire blue, a color even I knew was rare for Kansas herons. It was the raw color of sky before the sun breaks. We watched it leaving. Neil hiked his pants, and we shuffled from the reeds, our eyes fixed on it. His mother still slept, unaware, on the car hood. The heron’s wings coasted and waved, coasted and waved, as it moved farther away, as it flew northeast.
The direction of New York, I thought.
By the time we began seeing signs for Wichita International Airport, most of the day had burned away, the evening now a colorless husk. We had barely spoken since we’d turned onto the highway. I knew we each thought the same thing: what direction would our lives take now? The thought seemed wildly melodramatic, and I concentrated on the road, the wheat fields, the sandy driveways leading to farmhouse after farmhouse.
Neil’s flight-one-way, not round-trip-was scheduled to leave at 7:30 P.M. sharp. He stood before the baggage desk, grinning. An attendant verified his ticket, punching keys on her computer. In the loading zone outside the sliding glass doors, the wounded Gremlin sat, a blue eyesore. I would have to hug Neil now. I knew if I so much as touched him, I would start bawling. Instead, I handed him the sack I’d carried from a Great Bend drugstore after we’d left Cheyenne Bottoms. I’d explained to Neil and his mom how “the grannies need aspirin.” I’d lied. Inside was a box of lice killer, “pediculicide,” the solution to annihilate his crabs. “A little going-away present,” I whispered, and shoved it into his carry-on.
Mrs. McCormick leaned into Neil. She rubbed the tip of her nose against his chin, kissed his cheek, and rested her head on his shoulder. He watched the surrounding airport, his eyes darting among the horde of unfamiliar people, not focusing on me or his mom. “I love you,” she said into his shoulder. Then-as if she knew-“Be careful.”
Neil made a hip-swaying motion, his way of scratching without using his hands. He positioned his bag on the X-ray conveyor and stepped through the security sensor. I would have bet a month’s worth of allowance on it beeping. It didn’t. “Hooray,” said his mom.
On the other side of an enormous plate glass rectangle, the 747 waited, scheduled to board in mere minutes. There was no sense in staying to watch. Neil raised a hand to us, and we turned away.