We're in Trouble (6 page)

Don't you think they ought to catch him?

Yeah, the man says. Come on, get in.

But—

The man sighs and then puts his arm around the boy's shoulders.

I don't want you near him again. I don't want to worry
your mother. I know, I know. I
know.
He was a bad man. But your mother—

The man's face looks strange now, an odd gray color.

Let's not frighten her, okay? the man says.

The boy stares up at him.

You'd have to stay here, the man says. You'd have to testify, and pick him out of a lineup. Do you really want to have to do that?

The boy looks down at his hands. He sees a man out of the corner of his eye, and turns. It's an older man, getting into a car, just a gray-haired old man, but he still feels his heart hammering.

Come on, the man says. Let's get out of here. Okay?

Okay, says the boy. He gets in the truck. The man dips in his seat belt for him. The man smells sweaty, and he's breathing hard. And, the boy realizes, so is he, until they're on the road and the city and the motel and the park all fall away behind them.

Long after dark, the man pulls into a truck stop, somewhere deep in Kansas. They've come most of the way now. Since he rescued the boy from the park toilet the two of them have driven nonstop, barely speaking. The boy hasn't slept. He tries to read, but the man sees that he's faking it; the boy looks bleary-eyed, nearly shell-shocked. He nods off every once in a while, but he always snaps back awake. Though he won't say anything, the boy often looks around him, as though he sees, has thought to see, a threat nearby.

The foul-smelling vagrant in the bathroom. The man can still see him, pushing past him and running away, into the trees on the other side of the park. He smelled awful, like a dog that's been living on garbage. The man can barely stand the thought of it. He still sees the boy's tear-stained face, can still hear his hiccuping sobs. The man wishes he'd stopped the vagrant, leaped at him, wrestled him to the dirt, and choked him dead. The boy won't say exactly what happened in there, but the man can guess well enough.

The truck stop is huge; at the center of it, behind the pumps, there's a diner and a gift shop—even a twenty-four-hour garage, with mechanics for the big trucks. It's like a small city; it glitters in the dark and is crawling with people. The man parks at the edge of the lot, next to the road.

Are you hungry? he asks the boy.

The boy shakes his head.

Are you all right?

The boy nods, automatically.

I'd like to try and get some sleep, the man says. Will you be all right if I do?

I guess, the boy says.

The man locks the doors. He rolls up a shirt under his head and leans against his door. He feels the boy sitting, still, on the other side of the truck.

You miss your mother, don't you?

Mm-hm.

The man can't help it. You'll see her soon, he says. He can't tell the future, despite his plans for it. He wonders if he's lied or told the truth.

The boy looks out the side window.

Is she really sick? the boy asks.

Yes, the man says.

You're lying.

No, the man says tenderly.

The boy sniffles.

I just want to say, the man says and pauses, clearing his throat. He can't bear it, if the boy cries. He could never bear that. He can barely stand to be in his own skin, knowing that something he's done has made the boy cry. Knowing that this whole enterprise can only lead to the boy crying, the boy saddened, the boy less a boy than when this all began. He puts his hand on the boy's shoulder.

I just mean. I know it's been a while, but—

The man's vision blurs with tears, surprising him.

But you've always been important to me.

The boy nods.

You have to believe me. I don't want to hurt you. I love you.

The boy looks at his hands, curled on his bare thighs, lingers gripping thumbs to palms.

Will you come over here? the man asks softly.

He lifts his arm. The man can't say how he knows the boy will come, but the boy does, sliding across the seat and under his arm. The boy puts his face against the man's chest. The man lowers his face into the boy's hair and smells it, smells his scalp, beautiful even through the smell of the boy's sweat and fear, beautiful in the same way the boy's face, even beneath its dirt and shine and sunburn, is beautiful and white and pure. He takes the boy's slim, light hand.

The boy sleeps for a while, like that. The man stays awake longer, treasuring the closeness. The boy jerks awake, maybe a half hour later; when he sees where he is, he pulls quickly away and sits against the door, his face tight and offended.

Hey, the man says. The boy folds his arms against his chest and looks out the window.

It's all right, the man says. You used to sleep against me like that, when you were young. Do you remember?

The boy shakes his head.

B
UT HE DOES
remember. He hadn't, until the man said it. He remembers the man coming home at night, kissing the boy's mother, sitting with them on the couch in front of the television. He remembers the three of them eating dinner, watching TV. He remembers sitting between his mother and the man. He hears the adults laughing. Remembers the weight of the man's arm. Remembers being carried upstairs, his head bumping against the man's chest.

The man squeezes him.

He remembers a kiss good night.

Always know I love you, the man says now. It sounds like he's crying.

T
HEY EAT INSIDE
the diner, very late. The boy orders pancakes, and the man sits and smokes and watches the boy eat The boy wishes he wouldn't: he'd like to do something without the man staring. But he has, hasn't he? He went to the park without being watched, and look what happened.

He shivers and feels his stomach try to force his dinner back up into his throat.

He's tired. He wants to sleep, to sleep in a bed. In his own bed back home. He'd like to sleep now, or just eat his meal, but every once in a while he looks up and thinks he sees the man with the knife, across the diner in a booth or coming in the door. And then there's the man sitting next to him, staring
and staring. The man's worried about him, the boy knows that, but he still doesn't like it. So he tries to keep his eyes on his plate.

Across the diner another boy eats breakfast, too. A man's with him, sleeping with his head on his curled arms. The other boy stares at him, and they watch each other until the man says, You'd better finish on up. We have to hit the road.

The boy across the diner drops his eyes, as though he saw something he didn't like.

I
N THE TRUCK
the man kisses him. The boy is putting on his seat belt when the man leans over and kisses him on the cheek. He does it with a loud showy smacking of his lips; the sound is startling, popping through the fuzzy insides of the boy's head.

The boy draws back from the kiss and looks up to see the man smiling at him, his face inches away, smelling of coffee and cigarettes and the gum he chews to cover up the smell. The boy leans away, but the man puts his heavy arm across his shoulders.

Well, he says. By noon I think we'll be there.

The boy, despite himself, begins to cry. It just spills out. He hates himself for doing it, but he can't help it, not anymore. He hates the sounds that squeak out of him, hates the way his nose runs into the hand he cups over his mouth.

Hey, the man says, rubbing his back. Hey, hey, hey.

The man leans forward and touches his forehead against the boy's. His breath comes very quickly.

It's okay. You're with me. I'll take care of it. Leave it to me, okay?

The boy can only keep crying, feeling his arms quiver. He's never cried like this.

Hey hey hey.

Headlights wash over them, and the man pulls back, quickly, with an intake of breath. The boy squints against the light and curls up on his seat. The man starts the truck, begins to drive. The boy hopes for sleep, anything to end his tears; he curls into himself and tries to will himself away from it all, into the deepest blackness he can find.

I
T'S MORNING
, a little past dawn. The man drives; the boy is asleep. He watches the boy's curled shape, warily. He squints at the new sunlight in the rearview mirror. Sometime just before sunrise they passed the Colorado state line.

After the sun rises fully the boy wakes up, yawning and tousled. For a moment he looks befuddled, unaware, but then his face sets itself; he remembers.

The man says, Guess what? We're in Colorado.

The boy looks out the windows; the man keeps an eye on him, trying to judge the state of the poor kid's mind.

I thought there were mountains, the boy says after a minute. This looks like Kansas.

This half does. Only the west side has mountains.

How far are we?

An hour or so.

The boy looks forward, out the window, craning his neck.

I used to play a game with my father when we came out here, the man says. We'd try to be the first one to spot Pikes Peak. You can see it from pretty far off.

The boy looks through the windshield with more intent.

Tell you what, the man says. See it before I do and I'll get you an ice cream.

What if I don't?

We'll think of something, the man says, and laughs. He pokes the boy in the ribs.

The boy draws away, unsmiling, and then watches the distance.

You'd better keep an eye peeled, the man says. I'm pretty good at this.

The man turns on the radio and smiles to himself as they drive. Both of them look forward, to where the mountains will be; the truck buzzes, rattles, hums. It's hard to see the actual shape of the horizon; the edge never quite comes into focus. A bump might be a mountain, or a cloud, or a bug on the windshield.

The boy is watching carefully, almost forgetting to blink. The man can't help himself. He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of the boy's neck. The boy glances over, then resumes his watch, tight-lipped, owlish behind his glasses.

It's something, touching the boy. The man wants to weep that he can. It feels to him as if all his nerves are now concentrated in his palm. It's . . . it's as if the boy's neck is rippling, like the road, jumping up, falling away, shocking the man's hand—and through it, his whole body—with every movement.

Does the boy know what's happening to them? All that
could
happen? The man doubts it. You have to be older, he thinks, even to guess. Or do you? Maybe before yesterday this was true for the boy, but today the poor little guy could be thinking anything.

Love and pity swell up in the man.
My boy.
He rubs his thumb carefully across the downy space between the boy's jaw and throat, and the boy makes a movement, almost a shiver,
or—what? The man can't see; he doesn't want to turn and stare.

He tightens his grip on the wheel, and concentrates instead on what he knows: The flat horizon stretched out ahead. The soft warmth of the boy's neck. His hand resting on it. The way his fingers curl, to fit its shape.

I
N THE LATE AFTERNOON OF MY HUSBAND'S FOURTH DAY
of climbing, his base camp calls me via satellite phone. The news is not so good. After climbing straight through the night, Jozef is now two-thirds of the way up the west face of Shipton's Peak. He has come farther on the face than anyone ever has. But now his radio is malfunctioning.

Jozef's friend Hugo says to me, We were talking, and then it just cut off. He says, Of course we worried. But there were no avalanches on the face, and then we spotted him through the binoculars. When the sun set he flashed down with his headlamp that he was all right.

I tell myself, over and over, until my heart doesn't pound so much: Jozef is still alive.

What now? I ask.

Hugo tells me Jozef's options, and I write them down. I always answer these calls in my studio, away from Stane, our son, who is eight. This is a superstition of mine; in case the news is bad, I want to compose myself before I have to face our boy. And when Hugo and I hang up, I sit for a while, thinking of what I will say. Then I take the manila folder full of pictures and walk into the living room. Stane is sitting on the sofa with Jozef's brother Karel, playing on Karel's laptop computer. As soon as Stane sees me he wriggles out from under Karel's arm.

Was that Hugo? he asks. Can I talk to him? You hung up?

I give Karel a look, and he puts his hand on Stane's head.

Hush for now, Karel says.

I sit down on the sofa, a little ways from Karel. I pat the space between us and Stane sits. Karel puts his arm around Stane; his arms are so long that his fingertips nearly brush my shoulder.

Papa's all right, I say. But his radio is broken.

Did he get hurt? Stane's face is more curious than frightened.

No. It just broke. Once it got dark, he used his headlamp to signal he's all right. But it's not very good news.

Stane is watching me carefully. Karel is twisting the beard over his chin with his thumb and forefinger. He knows right away what losing the radio means. But it is as if both of them are waiting for me to tell them how
I
feel about this, about Jozef having his chances reduced, when they were so low to begin with already. I tell myself not to be angry. If I do not know what to feel, how can I expect anything from them?

Is Papa in trouble? Stane asks, his voice quieter now.

I say, Yes. They use the radio to tell your papa where he ought to climb next. It's hard for him to know, when he's in
the middle of the face. And he can't climb back down the pillar. He doesn't have the right equipment. He's going to have to change his route.

I open the folder and we look at pictures of the west face, all 3,900 meters of it. Before he left for Nepal, Jozef printed this picture for us, overlaid with a grid. Hugo has the same photo in base camp, with the same grid. Every time he calls he gives me Jozef's coordinates; and afterward Stane and I make a line with a wax pencil: the day's progress. My husband's life, like a stock on the market.

I point out a square in the center of the face, at the foot of a sloping field of ice a kilometer high and wide.

Papa's here, I say. He can't go straight up, like he wanted. So instead he has to go this way up the ice field, here to the ridge. From there he could come home, or go on to the summit. Either way it is very dangerous for him now. It won't be easy for him to make the ridge.

Stane asks, Could he die?

This question takes me by surprise. Jozef sat down with Stane before leaving and talked to him about the west face, about how no one has ever climbed it before. He told Stane it was dangerous, that he could get hurt. We have always talked to our son in terms of danger, and not death. He sees death on the television, of course, and he knows about animals that die to make meat. He knows his uncle Gaspar died and went to heaven before he was born, that he fell on a big mountain while climbing with Papa. But who knows what all of this means to him? Now he has asked me the very thing I am trying to say to Karel between my words.

He could, I say, and I keep my eyes on Stane's. This is a very dangerous place for Papa to be. That was true even
before he lost the radio, and now it's even more true. Going to the ridge is risky, and if he gets hurt he can't call for anyone.

Stane thinks this over, his mouth screwed up. This is his thinking face, which at other times has made me smile behind my hand. Not now.

He should come home then, Stane says. By the ridge.

That's what I think, too.

Can I see the picture?

Stane holds the photo on his lap, and Karel looks at it over Stane's other shoulder, as Stane traces his papa's route with his small square finger.

The radio was all he lost? Karel asks me now, his voice husky.

I don't know. He didn't signal much to Hugo.

Did he signal anything for
us
? Stane asks.

Jozef has been passing along messages to us, both through Hugo and through the website Hugo and his team have been updating from base camp. These messages are only a few lines long, but all the same they are what Stane lives for—and why not? His papa might as well be calling from a rocket ship. I would like to lie to him here, but I don't have the heart to do it.

No, I say, he didn't. I don't think he had time.

Stane's pink fingertip moves across the photo, the black triangular cliffs of the headwall, the little icy smears that maybe—or maybe not—will provide a route. Stane looks up at me and Karel, and talks like he has information we do not, like it is in little boy's heads that these issues are decided.

Papa will be okay, he says. He's good on ice.

Karel runs his fingers through his hair, and over the top of Stane's head gives me a look full of fear and relief. He has
no children of his own to ask him questions like this. To him, parents are magicians: keeping Stane peaceful is the same as pulling a coin from his ear.

Yes, he is, I tell my son, and kiss his forehead, trying my best to sound as sure as he does: calm, hopeful, as though he and I have not just discussed his father's death.

As though I do not want to scream, to call Jozef the callous bastard that, in my heart right now, he is.

L
ATER
S
TANE GOES
outside to play with his plastic toy men; he has been fighting a war across the complicated terrain of the yard and the drive, and even onto the low and crumbling Roman wall that follows the road for the length of our valley, halfway to Kamnik. Casualties are heavy in this war; many of his men die, only to be resurrected the following morning. I hear him sometimes, making explosions under his breath, mimicking screams. I'm being naïve. All little boys are eager to know about death, and the ways it happens.

I should remember, too—such things are not just the domain of boys. When I was a girl not much older than Stane I became obsessed with the Holocaust. I had just begun painting: I filled canvas upon canvas with skulls and bones and gray swirls of smoke, until my mother told me I would have to see a doctor if I continued.

Karel is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, student essays at his elbow. I can see he is only pretending to read them.

I'll make dinner, if you'd like, he says.

No, you sit right there.

Really, Ani, you've been running all day. Rest and let me pull my weight.

Karel has been with us all week; he arrived from Ljubljana Saturday, the day before Jozef began his solo. Jozef had been in Nepal almost six weeks by then, acclimatizing, and talking to me and Karel both from base camp at night. It was Jozef who asked Karel to come and stay with us.

I tried to argue—I did not think I wanted company for the week of a climb. But Jozef said,
It will be good for both of you. Don't tell Karel I said so, but he and Marja have been fighting. You two can worry about each other instead of me.

Karel and I are good friends, we always have been. He is a professor of art history, and even though he and I both know I will never be a great painter, Karel is one of the few people who understands that what I do carries value. He used to paint when he was young. We are the only artists in Jozef's family, and we have always spoken to each other with something like relief.

And in the end Jozef was right—having Karel here has been good for us. Stane loves him. Karel brought his laptop so we can look at the expedition website, and he has been teaching Stane how to use some other programs. He has offered every other second to do housework. In a strange way our house has been more alive since Jozef left; we pay attention to who goes where, to do what.
I'm going to paint
, I always say now. When Jozef is here? I just go.

Karel has been so concerned for me and Stane that he has not spoken of Marja, not yet. I have not asked—other than simple courtesies—but I think Jozef is right about this, too. Karel has been subdued, above and beyond worry for his brother. His shoulders slump, and he sighs heavily, like a much older man. It looks like a long time since he has slept or eaten
well. I tty to put good food in him, but aside from this I don't know what to do.

I have to admit, in a small way, that I have enjoyed worrying about Karel. He is so much easier to worry over than Jozef.

Does Stane ever want to climb himself? Karel asks suddenly.

I start washing potatoes for zlikrofi. I think about how Jozef and I have had this discussion before. Stane is just old enough to want to do what his father does, to be a famous mountain climber, to be on commercials. I have forbidden it. Jozef knows to agree with me, but he also says,
You have to let him make his own decisions. You can say no, but you might just mother him right onto the rock.

I tell Karel, He asks sometimes. But we don't allow it.

Jozef goes along with this?

Jozef loves his son. He doesn't want him risking his life.

Karel seems about to say something more, but we are interrupted by Stane, who opens the door and shouts in that someone is here. Just as he says this I hear the sound of an automobile coming down the road. We live deep in the country; we have neighbors here—mostly people from the city in summer homes—but we do not hear cars very often. I look out the kitchen window and see a van slow in front of our house, a cloud of dust from the dirt road billowing slowly behind it. On the side of the van is the 24ur insignia.

Reporters, I say.

Karel drops his cup to the table in disgust. I'll talk to them, he says.

I can do it.

Let me. Please. You're too rude.

The news people have come every other day since Jozef's climb began: 24ur especially. Jozef's last four climbs, all solo, have made him a celebrity—the best climber not just in Slovenia but maybe in the world. One of Hugo's jobs is sending out press releases. I'm sure the news people know about the broken radio.

Giving in to Karel is a relief this time. Thank you, I say.

He smiles at me, very quickly, and then he goes outside to tell the whole country that Jozef's family would appreciate privacy now, in this very serious time.

A
FTER DINNER
we play games; Karel is teaching Stane chess, and the three of us trade matches for a while until I reach my limit. The boys want to stay at it, so I go to my studio and paint for an hour or two—fussing, mostly. Then Stane comes in to tell me I have been relieved of my bedtime reading duties. Uncle Karel will read, he announces.

My studio is next to Stane's bedroom, and I listen to them while I work. Karel sits and talks with Stane for a few minutes after the bedtime story is over. They have been like this all week: very serious with each other, Karel treating Stane like a little man, and Stane acting like one for his uncle.

I open a window and, standing near it, I smoke the one cigarette I am allowed per day when Jozef is on a climb. I try to send my mind out to Jozef—he will be climbing now—but I keep losing myself in the smoke and the sounds of the voices in the next room.

Then Karel is at the doorway. Stane would like to say good night, he says.

Stane is curled on his side. A toy soldier hangs off one of
the big posts of Stane's bed, attached by a length of string to the knob at the top. Its feet are against the headboard, and it leans back on the rope just like a resting climber, considering the tricky knob up ahead, the best approach.

When did your man go climbing? I ask.

Today. Uncle Karel found some rope and we put him up on it.

Is he careful?

He's very careful.

That's good, I say. I would like to know how the climb goes.

He'll make it, Stane says.

I kiss his forehead and say, I think so, too.

Karel is in the studio, smoking one of my cigarettes, when I return.

I hope you don't mind, he says, turning the cigarette in his hand with obvious relish.

I quit last year, I say.

Me, too. He offers one out of the pack to me.

I lean forward and he fumbles with my lighter and I keep leaning. We are both laughing guilty laughs by the time I take a drag.

You're good with Stane, I say.

He's a smart boy. I hope I don't bore him.

Be serious. He loves you.

He loves his papa, that's for certain. Karel grins. You know, he asked me about the college for a while yesterday, and I still don't think he understands what it is I do there. Finally I told him I look at paintings like yours, and this he understood. Then he said when he grows up
he
will work outside, not sit indoors all day.

I have heard this opinion myself.

I say, Stane's eight. Tomorrow he'll tell you he wants to start a restaurant on the moon.

Karel chuckles, and we sit for a while. With him here I surpass my cigarette limit, and then some. I look out the window and try not to notice that Karel watches me. He is content to do this, I think, and I am content to smoke and be watched. We are quiet and calm.