It occurred to me that he was probably only a couple of years younger than me. Or maybe even my age. He didn’t seem to wonder why two women with five kids were travelling around in an old van. I wondered what his girlfriend was like. She obviously liked to give hickeys and drive around in hot cars. He was probably crazy about her. I wanted to be her. I wanted to touch his arms. I really wanted to touch his arms. I wanted to forget about Dill just for a while and feel those hard brown arms. I wanted to ride in the Dream Weaver with him and see those dirty hands of his holding onto the wheel. Driving fast. I wanted my life to go back about ten years so I could do it over and figure things out before I went ahead living it. And everybody else’s life, too. I wanted him to be Dill’s father. I wanted my mother. I wanted my father. I just wanted.
When he bent over to hook up the cables from his car to our van, his jeans slid down slightly and the girls could see the crack in his smooth, hairless ass. They talked about that for at least an hour while Lish and I had some peace in the front. Or as much peace as you can feel when you think you’re searching for a man you don’t know if you hate or love, and as much peace as you can feel when you’re headlong into the biggest lie you’ve ever told and wonder if you’ve done the right thing or ruined somebody’s life forever.
We were headed for the Badlands, for Murdo and Wall Drug. I kept meaning to bring up Lish’s snoring problem, but I thought really it was just a problem for me and I didn’t normally sleep with her, so why bother. Really we didn’t talk much at all during that stretch to the Badlands. It had stopped raining. The fields were turning into grassy sandy plains. The earth was getting dryer and the air was getting warmer and as we approached the entrance to the Badlands I could see that not much lived around there. Nothing we could see, anyway. It was sort of a relief to see all that eroded rock and sand and hot air. There was less life than Lish and I and all the kids were used to, living in Half-a-Life public housing during one of the rainiest, most mosquito infested summers in the history of Winnipeg, city of extremes, city of thunder, centre of the universe. And the absence of all that life, all that noisy relentless non-stop life, was quite a relief. In the Badlands you kind of see the miracle of your own living body in the midst of all this crumbly clay. It’s standing out for a change, as a unique living thing instead of more of the same. Then there’s the movement of your limbs and the way your eyes dart over a landscape and the urge to pee and the dryness in your mouth and the ability to recall a childhood memory just by feeling the texture of the dry sand as it slips through your fingers.
It was in Cactus Flats that everything was supposed to happen. According to the plan Teresa and I had made, Lish and I would call Teresa to find out what was happening and she’d tell me that Lish had received a postcard from one of Gotcha’s friends, saying that Gotcha was dead, killed outside a movie theatre, shot randomly by some drug dealer or buyer or whatever. An American thing. She’d say that in the postcard the guy, Gotcha’s friend, had written that Gotcha had never forgotten Lish and up to the day he died remembered her the most fondly of all the women he’d known on the road. As the most fun. And he’d never forget all that wild black hair. And that he always regretted stealing her wallet. It would say that his parents had already retrieved the body and buried it in their local cemetery in — the guy couldn’t remember where Gotcha was from — but he’d never forget him. And, oh yeah, he loved kids and had always wanted one (or two) of his own. It would say that Gotcha had said that he was happy that Lish had that big silver spoon, at least, as a reminder of their love.
I had written the postcard before we left so Lish would be able to get her hands on it just as soon as we got back. It was written badly, like all the others, but I thought it important that I was consistent.
It was strange: tricking Lish this way I was filled with a sense of wellbeing and an overwhelming sense of dread at the same time. Every five miles or so my mood would shift from one to the other, but I tried to ride it up the middle and focus on my project and convince myself it was for the best. I looked at the twins and tried to tell myself that Gotcha would never ever have shown up anyway, not after five years of no communication at all, and so for their father to be dead was best. Hell, even if he did show up some time, it would be a great story for the twins to tell their friends. Out dad died and came back to life so he could see us. Oh god, the next five-mile section of dread was coming up. What was I doing?
When I was eight, my parents bought a cabin at Falcon Lake, and every Sunday we went to church and Sunday School at an outdoor tent set up a few miles down the road. I had short hair and red jeans and a Jimmy Walker shirt that said “dyn-o-mite” on it and everyone thought I was a boy. I wanted to be a boy. So I said, “Yeah, my name’s uh … Jimmy,” and I got to go in the boys’ Sunday School for weeks and play with the boys until one Sunday the minister guy came up to my mom and dad and me in the car and said, “So how’s Jimmy liking Sunday School?” And they said, “Who?” And the minister smiled and smiled, looking back at me and them, and I buried my face in my mom’s lap and cried all the way home, while my mom and dad tried not to laugh. After that I refused to go back to the outdoor church and so we all quit.
I think it was a big relief for everyone. Except for a while there I was hung up on the Rapture story that I had heard in Sunday School. If I came home from school and nobody was home, my dad gone, even my mom and her clients nowhere to be seen, no murmuring coming from her office, I’d think the Rapture had happened and I’d been left behind to fend for myself on earth while everybody else had managed to get taken to heaven. For those split seconds I’d be afraid and pissed off, too. I thought Geez, even my mom’s clients who were so messed up managed to get to heaven and I, an innocent child, was left behind. Go figure. What had I done? What had I done? For a while there I couldn’t go to sleep until I had gotten down on my knees and thanked God for everything in my life and asked to be forgiven for just about everything I had said and thought that day. I had scraps of paper with terrible things I had thought and said during the day so I wouldn’t forget come forgiveness time. For some reason I never worried about dying during the day at school or something without being forgiven. It was only at home at night in my bed that I feared the morning would never come.
I also made myself read two pages of tiny print in the King James version of the Bible, which is almost entirely incomprehensible. If I didn’t do that I’d fear for my life and worry about eternal damnation. It got to be a problem, a real problem, though, because I’d lie in bed almost asleep and think an evil thought just because I knew I wasn’t supposed to and then poof I’d be on my knees again praying for forgiveness. I had to be kneeling to be forgiven, this I knew. Eventually I told myself to fall asleep kneeling against my bed in a repentant pose so I wouldn’t miss being forgiven for every single bad thing I thought before I fell asleep. During the day I was dragging myself around, totally exhausted and hurting from a terrible crick in my neck. My mom started to worry and took me to three doctors before she finally caught me kneeling at my bed, head in my hands, fast asleep at three in the morning. She had come in to close my window. She told me evil thoughts are normal and beneficiaclass="underline" they are God’s way of preventing us from actually carrying out evil deeds. And when we have good thoughts, you know, kind and gentle ones, we’ll be so pleasantly surprised that we’ll want to have more. She told me there are two things I should not do. They were lie and throw stones.