Everybody Sees the Ants (13 page)

Count me among the 79 percent who felt they didn’t.

I tried to keep Dad updated on my social studies stuff because he seemed so into the idea when we had the meeting with my teachers. Since then he’d tossed out a bunch of suggestions and stats, like, “Don’t forget to tell ’em that the total number of drafted in Vietnam was about 1.8 million” or “Make sure you tell ’em that sixty percent of soldiers killed were under twenty-one.”

His numbers were accurate for the most part, but the more I researched, the more I learned that Dad’s belief that the whole country disrespected Vietnam vets was largely in his head. Left over, I guess, from what Granny Janice had seen all that time she fought for the lives of MIA soldiers. Or maybe left over from what he felt himself.

“How’s the draft lottery thing coming along?” he said during the second week of February.

“Good,” I said. “Speech on Friday.”

“Did you do the graphs on the computer?” Dad asked.

“Yep.”

“I’d love to see them,” he said. But of course he wasn’t around before Friday for me to show him the graphs before my speech.

On Friday, I did my presentation quickly, flashing my
three graphs up on the screen and concluding that kids should really know about the history of the draft, and what it would mean for them, because
they
are the ones who’d be drafted if it ever happened here again. At the very end, I mentioned a little bit about our modern-day selective service program and put up a link to the website in case anyone wanted to research that themselves. There was barely a clap in the room when I finished.

After my next class I went to my locker and found another suicide questionnaire inside. It said:
If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose?
The answer read—in all block capitals and black Sharpie marker:
I’D DRAFT MYSELF AND GET MYSELF BLOWN UP BY A TERRORIST BOMB. MAYBE THEN MY FATHER WOULD NOTICE ME
.

I admit, I thought it was a clever answer.

When I was finally able to show the graphs to Dad that weekend, he didn’t have much to say except, “Nice graphs, Luck.” I pointed out that I’d used the 1970 lottery as my example and showed him the table with the numbers and the birth dates. All he did was nod. I guess it was hard for him to look at the logic behind the draft lotteries, because that same logic had taken away his father. And, anyway, what’s so logical about the day you were born deciding when you might die? That’s just a cruel joke, as I see it.

I
want to make dinner tonight,” I say at breakfast while Mom crunches some granola cereal and Aunt Jodi fiddles with her hair and browses through a
People
magazine. It’s not even eight yet. My body is still on Eastern time or something.

“For who?” she asks.

“For us,” I say.

“All of us? A whole dinner?” Jodi asks, amazed, as if I’ve just turned into a llama or a giant hot-air balloon. As if I didn’t just teach them how to make hamburgers yesterday.

“Yeah. Something homemade.”

Mom grunts in assent while reading about trans fat on the back of her cereal box, and Jodi works herself into a huff.

“I’ve never been so insulted!” she says, and storms from the dining area and out toward the pool.

Mom walks out to the patio, where Jodi is sitting. I didn’t mean to insult her. It’s not like I told her to her face that she can’t cook. But she can’t, so I can’t see the big deal.

At about nine, the doorbell rings, and I open the front door to see the UPS man holding a package a little larger than a toaster. He asks me to sign for it.

“No problem,” I say. He’s staring at my scab. I wonder if he can see West Virginia. I sign and hand the little machine back and smile at him, and the scab cracks a little and I can feel it seeping either blood or that oozy scab stuff as the pizza-oven air hits my face.

“Who was that?” Jodi asks as she and Mom come in from their long talk on the patio.

“UPS.”

“For me?”

“For us. From Dad.”

Jodi inhales as if she’s about to say something moody, but instead she says, “How sweet!”

I open the box and hand a wrapped present to Mom, who winces a bit because she knows Dad well enough to know that whatever is inside the package will embarrass her, be of no interest to her or be the wrong size. This isn’t a put-down. It’s a family joke. Well, if you can find it funny. But I think since she refused to “take it anymore,” this is not a funny joke at all. It’s just another reason to be in Arizona while he’s in Pennsylvania.

Dad included a POW/MIA T-shirt for Jodi and one for Dave. Jodi holds it as if I just gave her a dead man. Away from
her body. Like it smells. In a way, I guess I did just give her the body of a dead man.
Welcome to the life of a Linderman, Aunt Jodi, where every day is a funeral we never had
. The ants say:
And shh! Make sure you don’t talk about it!

“I’m sorry I got so mad before. It’s that time of the month,” she starts, and I can hear Mom groan quietly from across the room because she’d never say that. “I’d love for you to make dinner tonight. Your mom has volunteered to take you to the store for ingredients.”

I say, “Great. Makes me feel like I can pay you back for letting us stay here.”

This sentence somehow brings us all back to reality. My mother and I look at each other like refugees and then look at Aunt Jodi. She pities us and we can feel it.

Mom unwraps her present. It’s a box of melted chocolates. After a morning in the back of a UPS truck during the Arizona summer, I’d call them liquid chocolates. She goes to throw them away, but Jodi insists on putting the box in the fridge, claiming, “It’ll still taste like chocolate even if it isn’t pretty!”

The ants climb into the shipping box full of packing paper and search around. One returns.
Linderman, the gift accounting command has confirmed negative gifts for you. Sorry, son. Your father sucks
.

The grocery store is freezing cold. Mom is shivering. The ants are shivering. One of them is handing out tiny scarves to the others.

I decide to make yogurt-and-red-pepper-marinated chicken, cherry tomatoes and pineapple shish kebabs. Mom seems impressed. This is the first moment I realize that I have never actually cooked a whole meal by myself. Sure, I mixed a lot of banana muffin batter when I was seven, but this will be a bit more than pouring a bunch of premeasured ingredients into a bowl and stirring. Still, I’m confident. I’ve watched enough
FMC
to know how to make marinade, cut chicken and cook rice. It’s not rocket science.

The first thing Aunt Jodi says when she sees our groceries is, “Rice? We don’t eat rice!” I think of what Granddad Harry would say about rice after thirty-eight years of eating rice.

An hour later she eyes the bowl of chicken marinating in the fridge.

“Wow. What
is
that?”

“Marinade.”

“Why’s it look like yogurt?”

“It
is
yogurt.”

“Huh,” she says, and shakes her head. “Yogurt on chicken. This will be an interesting night.”

At dinner Aunt Jodi is eating so fast she doesn’t stop to speak. Dad says a quiet meal is the best indication that you cooked well. I think this is probably the quietest meal my aunt Jodi has ever participated in. I allow Dave to take partial credit because he turned the meat when I told him to, and brushed on more marinade. He even changed plates from raw meat to cooked meat, so he’s learning.

After dinner we meet in the garage, and he spots me as I
do ten reps of fifty-five twice, the most I’ve ever done. I tell him that he’s the coolest guy I ever met.

“Thanks, Luck,” he says. “And you’re the coolest kid I ever met.”

“Yeah, right,” I say, chuckling.

He puts the bar up and says, “What? You think you aren’t cool because some asshole tells you you’re not?”

I want to tell him that he really doesn’t know me. That I’m not very social. That mostly I read books and keep to myself. Instead, I point to my cheek. “Did you notice it’s West Virginia now?”

He squints and cocks his head slightly to the right. “My God. Look at that.”

“Weird, isn’t it?”

We go back to lifting. I’m doing squats with his big dumbbells, and he’s benching. I say, “So you really think I should hit him back?”

He finishes his press. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“You ever hit anyone before?”

“We have one of those big punching bags in the gym at school. I hit that once.”

“Is he big?” he asks.

“Yeah. He’s a wrestler, too. He’d probably kill me.”

“Or pin you to the ground in an act of homoerotic bliss.”

I say, “Yeah, right.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks.

I nod.

“When I was in school, I was a bullying asshole just like that kid.”

Not what I expected. I expected the opposite—a heart-to-heart between victims.

“But the only reason I treated other kids like shit was because I was jealous of them.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t have the guts to be independent or smart. I was too scared to do anything different, so I beat up on the kids who had guts. Sounds pretty pathetic, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember that when you see that guy again. He’s gutless. He only picks on you because he’s jealous.” I nod at this, but I can’t figure out what Nader McMillan would be jealous about. The ants say:
Certainly not your ability to cook basmati rice. Frankly, it was starchy and too sticky
.

I make him spot me for ten more reps, and I can feel the scab crack a bit with my exertion, but I don’t care. Today made me feel awesome. I cooked a kick-ass dinner and lifted fifty-five pounds thirty times. I celebrate by going night swimming.

I dive to the bottom of the deep end and I smile—a real smile, not a fake-for-Jodi-smile—for the first time in six months. When I do this, it makes me laugh underwater, and an eruption of bubbles races me to the surface.

I dry off and lie on a lounge chair at the side of the pool. I stay completely still so the motion-sensor light goes off.

The stars glow brighter and it’s beautiful. I hear kids a few houses away talking. I hear TV intro music. I hear an
occasional car drive around the block, and the background hum of the highway that leads to town. I focus on the common area behind the block of homes, where all the scrubby backyards meet, and I see a group of shadows moving with lit cigarettes. I squint and I see teenagers holding hands and kissing and doing the stuff normal teenagers do.

When they’re gone and I’m about to get up, I see her again—the shadow with the long, swaying hair. She’s scurrying through the landscape like a trained soldier.

I sit up without thinking, and the bright spotlight goes on, reflects off the pool and blinds me.

I’m strapped to a chair, and two blinding lights are in my face.

“Where is she, Lindo-man?”

Something punches me. My mouth is full of hair. I can barely breathe.

“You tell us where she is, and we let you see your grandfather,” the voice says.

I squint and see it is Frankie, the guard from Granddad’s prison camp, but then he’s a tiger. A beautiful orange-and-black-striped tiger. His coat is so shiny and perfect I want to reach out and pet him. His jowls are huge and house teeth so big I can’t look away. This is, without a doubt, the most stunning creature I have ever seen.

“You like the taste of that, Lindo-man? There’s more where that came from.”

He holds up another clawful of hair. It’s long, straight and perfect. It sways.

I spit the hair out of my mouth and look around the room. We’re alone—just the tiger and me.

“I don’t know where she is,” I say.

The tiger laughs. “Why you protecting her? She enemy! She eat you! She worse than us!”

“She’s not the enemy, dipshit. You’re the fucking enemy,” I say. Behind my back I am trying to undo the loose knot in the leather strapping they have used to tie me to the chair. I have my thumb in the knot now. Shouldn’t be much longer.