We're in Trouble (5 page)

The man looks sideways, a little, when he says the last
part. The boy keeps his head turned toward his window. His cheek is red, colored by sunburn, sunset.

You okay?

Yeah.

I can stop, if you want.

No.

L
ATER, AFTER MIDNIGHT
, they're parked at a rest stop. The man tries to doze, to get an hour or so in; he has a sweatshirt bundled behind his head. The boy napped for an hour on the road, and now he holds a flashlight over his lap.

A waterfall, the boy says. Seven letters. Second one's an A.

The man thinks, groggily.

Do you know it? he asks. Or are you just testing me?

The boy grins at him. Oh, I know it. Do you?

No. You should get some sleep.

Nah. I'm all awake now.

But the boy does, eventually, get sleepy; he turns the flashlight off half an hour later. He curls into himself against his door. After another minute he reaches under the seat, rustles around, and then spreads his jacket over his chest and arms.

Cold? the man asks.

Yeah.

You can lean on me if you want.

The boy hasn't slept against him since he was a toddler. The man tries to keep his eyes half closed, play it cool—has he given it away? How much he wants the boy to say yes? But the boy just shakes his head.

I'm fine like this.

All right, the man says.

Do you know it yet? the boy asks.

Know what?

Cascade
, the boy says, almost cruelly. It's cascade.

The boy, curled on his side on the soft motel bed, watches through slit eyes as the man sleeps. The boy lies still for quite a while, listening to the air conditioner rattle, making sure of the depth of the man's breathing. When he's sure, the boy sits up on the bed, hoping it won't squeak, though if it does he'll just say he's going to the bathroom. But the man keeps snoring. The man's hair is wet; he's sweating in his sleep; the air conditioner doesn't work that well. Hot sunlight seeps in past the blinds.

The man had told him they'd drive straight through, if they could, but at noon he said he was too tired, that they should get a room and try to sleep. But the boy slept already; he's not tired now. His whole life he's only managed to sleep in short spurts. At home his mother is used to him slipping into the living room at night to watch television. But the man made him turn the TV off before they went to bed.

The boy puts his feet over the side of the bed, and then stands, shifting his weight over to the arm he has leaning on the bed table. The man asked the desk clerk for a wake-up call at five; it's only two now. Three hours in here listening to snores will be forever.

The boy sits on the floor and ties his shoes. Now, if he's asked, he'll say he wanted to go downstairs to the big lounge and watch TV. The man will tell him no, but it's a nice story and won't make him feel bad. The man has tried hard to keep
the boy happy—the boy knows that, and even if this feels strange to him, even if sometimes he thinks the man is lying, he knows the man wants him not to be sad.

When his shoes are tied the boy walks carefully to the door. The room's carpeting is thick and muffles his sounds. The man has left a chair near the door, with his pants draped across it. The boy knows why. The man's keys and change are in the pants; the man thinks that if the boy tries to leave the room he might make noise. Tricky. The boy scoots the chair back, inch by inch. The change jingles a bit, but not much, and the snores never stop.

The door is the real trick. The boy tells himself to be patient, and, moving just a few inches at a time, he unhooks the door chain and turns the dead bolt as slowly and quietly as he can. He reads the instructions on the back of the door to distract himself, about where the motel guests are supposed to go if there's a fire. There's a diagram of the rooms; theirs is blacked in. The boy tries to imagine a fire, dying in a fire. When he was six his best friend up the street died in a fire. Someone set it, but they never caught whoever it was. His mother won't tell him about it, even though he's asked; he wants to explain to her that it's worse not to know, even if she is trying to protect him from things she thinks he's too young to understand. The boy dislikes her sometimes, when she gets like that. He's deliberately burned his fingers twice on the burners of the stove, trying to imagine. He holds his breath sometimes, too, trying to figure out what it's like to breathe smoke—but that's harder; he gets too dizzy.

His mother wouldn't let him go to the funeral.

The man, though, told him a little; he was around for a while then. The man has always tried to answer the boy's
questions, which is why, when he doesn't answer now, the boy knows he's lying.

Either that, or his mother really
is
very sick; it's not a lie; it's worse than the boy supposes, than the man is telling. The boy can't figure it out.

He hears the door latch click, and then the door swings in toward him. He opens it just enough to slip out into the cool hallway, smelling of cleaner and the weird burned odor of vacuumed carpet. Outside, he pulls the door shut, slowly, and he thinks the latch isn't so loud when it catches.

No one is in the hallway. He hears the television playing in a couple of rooms as he passes. One room's door is open. A fat woman is inside, pulling bedsheets tight.

He descends an open stairwell into the lobby of the motel. It's not a very good motel. The plants are plastic and dusty, and the carpet's worn. Two kids are running around the lobby, both younger than the boy; their weary parents are checking in at the desk, and the mother shouts at the young ones in such a tone that even the boy, watching, snaps to. They come to her side and begin whining. The boy fights an urge to go over and pinch them. He does that at school a lot, to younger kids.

He doesn't like kids much. He has two friends his age who read comic books with him, but he doesn't go over to their houses if he can avoid it. They all sit together at lunch, at school, and they try not to attract the attention of older kids, who do more than pinch. His mother doesn't know that the three of them have the nicknames Faggot One, Faggot Two, and Faggot Three. The boy is F2. F1 has it the worst: he's fat. F3 is a coward: he runs away, but he usually gets caught and tripped. The boy just tries to be invisible, and for the most
part the strategy works. He wouldn't want to be either of his friends.

When the couple has left the desk, the boy asks the girl behind the counter if there's a pay phone, and she points across the lobby, to a dark niche next to the restrooms.

He puts a quarter into the phone and picks up the receiver, but there's no dial tone.

It's broken, he tells the girl at the counter.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. I was supposed to put a sign up, but it got all busy there for a while. Can't you just call from your room?

He shakes his head.

I need my quarter back, he says, and she gives it to him, clucking her tongue. She then goes back to reading a novel—a mystery, it looks like.

The boy walks out the motel's front doors, and stands in the misty heat. The motel is maybe a half mile away from the interstate, but the boy can still see it, off in the hazy distance; he can hear the big trucks moaning. He's not sure where this place is exactly. He napped and read almost until the man pulled into the parking lot, and then they went to their room without talking much. Up and down the street he can see restaurants and strip malls, a big water tower, and some houses. Most of the license plates on the cars say Missouri.

Finally, across the street, next to a stone building at the center of a small, grassy park, he sees a pay phone. No one's at the park, as far as he can tell. There's a basketball hoop, a couple of horses mounted on thick, rusty springs—and a jungle gym, which he likes. He slips between the cars of the parking lot and then crosses the street, running through a gap
in the traffic. It's very hot; even that bit of running makes him sweat. The stone building holds restrooms, which smell foul as he passes their open doorways. On the wall between the restroom doors is a drinking fountain; the boy tries it, but the water is warm and tastes a little bit like dirt.

Then the boy puts his quarter in the phone and dials his number in Chicago. An automated voice comes on the line and asks for more money.

For a few minutes he searches the sidewalk and the grass for more change, but only finds a penny. He could go back into the room and get the change from the man's pants, but he's not sure that's enough. Really, he's relieved. He's breathing fast—was he really afraid? Of what? Why wouldn't he want to know? Is he afraid of what happens next, if it turns out the man's lying?

A lot of what the boy feels is a surprise to him. He wonders, not for the first time, if he's crazy. He says a few cuss words under his breath, then looks around to see if anyone is near. He's still alone.

He checks his watch, but it's only been a few minutes since he left the motel. He walks to the jungle gym, then climbs to the top. After a few minutes he starts to imagine it's a skyscraper that he's working on, that the drop beneath him is many hundreds of feet. This makes his palms agreeably sweaty. He talks to himself, acting out a conversation between two workers. He hangs from both hands, and says, It's okay, while the other worker says, Hang on! Don't look down! Grab my hand!

He loses himself at this, wobbling on the edge of the bars. It's an hour later when he feels the need to pee. He climbs off the jungle gym, then looks back and forth between the motel
across the street and the restroom in the park The traffic has picked up on the street. He takes a breath, then walks into the stinking bathroom.

The restroom doesn't have a door; the entrance is just a U-turn around a concrete wall. The boy hates that kind; anyone could lean in and see him. He doesn't like to be seen while he pees—he can't pee, actually, when someone's in a bathroom with him. This one has a urinal inside, and two stalls. The urinal is out of the question. The toilet in the stall nearest the urinal looks and smells like it's been clogged for days; the one in the corner, next to the wall, seems all right. He walks in and latches the door behind him.

He's halfway through peeing when he hears footsteps. Then someone clears his throat, outside the stall door. The boy reddens; he feels the heat in his face, even behind his sunburn. His pee stops.

He doesn't want to go back out into the bathroom past whoever's there, so he pulls his shorts down and sits on the toilet, prepared to wait it out.

The man outside the stall whistles for a bit. He walks back and forth, and the boy sees a scuffed pair of brown shoes, and white sockless ankles, one of them scabbed over.

Whew-eee, says the man outside. His voice is deep and graveled. That's one shitty mess, ain't it? Stinks to heaven.

The boy doesn't say anything. He's still blushing. Outside, beyond the stone wall, he can hear the traffic on the road, the wind in the trees that line the park.

I know you're in there, says the man. It's all right. You can answer me.

I'll be done in a minute, the boy says, too loud. His voice cracks.

Yeah. That's what I figure.

The boy looks at the door, terrified for a second that he forgot to latch it. But it's latched. As he looks up from the latch he sees a sliver of the man's face. An eye. The man's looking through the crack in the door frame at him. The boy wants to moan; he bends over himself instead.

You going? the man asks. Or you just hiding?

My dad's outside, the boy says. The lie comes out as a half whisper.

The man laughs. I watched you for a while, playing. I didn't see your poppa.

He's coming. Any minute.

How old are you? the man asks, but the boy doesn't answer.

I guess about eight, the man says. Am I right?

The boy hears his feet shuffle, and then, suddenly, the man jerks on the door of the stall. It rattles against the latch; the stall walls shake. The man chuckles again.

I want to show you something, the man says. The boy, who's been watching the shoes under the door, looks up and sees the man's eye pressed close to the crack again. His eye is brown; the white looks yellow.

Look, the man says.

Lower down the crack, the boy sees a knife blade, poking into the stall. He blinks, wondering if he can really be seeing it. It looks like a kitchen steak knife, with a jagged bottom edge. The metal is dirty and stained. The man rattles it back and forth between the door and the frame, then pulls it out with a rasp.

You know what that is? the man asks.

The boy doesn't answer. He wants to run, to try and sneak out, under the side of the stall. But first he has to pull up his
shorts; it would take too much time. There's a window over his head, in the stone wall, but it's too small even for him, and the glass is behind chicken wire, and the man would just reach over the stall and get him, and could do it anyway, any time he wants—

That's my dick, the man says. You want to see my knife?

The boy hears a zipper opening. He closes his eyes. His hands and feet are numb.

Look here, the man says. The boy glances up, without meaning to, for only a second. He can just see it, pressed against the crack, pink and brown.

Now you tell me, kiddo, the man says, which one you want me to put in you.

Go away, the boy whispers.

No. I want you to answer me. Tell me which one. You just say.

No.

The man rattles the door again, and then, as the boy watches, he kneels. Dirty fingers grip the underside of the door. The man's bearded face bends low, into sight. He grunts, his mouth twisted. He smiles, showing brown teeth, lifts his head out of sight, then looks again, smiles again.

Peekaboo.

That's when the boy hears his name called.

Here! he shrieks. I'm in here!

The man outside the door growls and jerks upright.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The man, somewhere outside, calls the boy's name again.

Next time, you little piece of shit, says the man with the knife. The boy sees the scuffed shoes turning, hears rapid steps, hears the silence come back into the bathroom.

The boy quickly stands and pulls up his shorts. His hands and arms are trembling. He hears his name again, hears the man's panting as he enters the restroom. The boy opens the door and flings himself out of the stall, and there's a moment where the man's back is turned, and the boy nearly screams; he thinks for a second it's the man with the knife, waiting for him. But then he sees it isn't; this man is
his
, and without thinking about it the boy throws his arms around him, and is sobbing, his face pressed into the man's belly.

T
HE MAN PACKS
their things quickly. He tells the boy to stay next to him. They don't have much, between them; the man throws it all back into a duffel bag, and they walk out the side door to where the truck is parked. The boy has tried not to cry, but he can't help it. Since the bathroom, whenever he's tried to say anything, he's snuffled in giant sobs, and the words don't come.

Finally, by the truck, he stammers, Are we going to call the police?

The man doesn't say anything. He shoves the duffel behind the seat of the pickup. When he's done he lifts his head and glances around the parking lot.

Aren't we? the boy says.

They'll make us stay in town, the man says, and then looks at the boy. We need to get going.