West of Here (37 page)

You tried to tell the woman that you didn’t have her baby. You tried to tell her in your silent way that you would help her look for her baby. If she could only get you out of this place.

And she would cry again. And blame herself for losing her baby.

Do you remember the day she came with the picture books? And how, at first, you just looked at the pictures, but then you began to read the talking white spaces, and you recognized the white spaces because you, too, talked in white spaces. At great length, you tried to explain that to the woman, but like everybody else in that place, she could not understand white spaces. She only looked at the pictures.

Everywhere there were shiny things, and colorful things, hard and smooth as bone. Things with no straight lines, which you liked. You picked them up and ran your hands over them, and tried to ask the people questions about the things.

Does this hurt?
they would answer.

Can you feel this?

How many fingers?

They would not let you wander. They followed you where you went. They followed you to the window, where they watched you look out. They led you outside the window and walked you around in circles on the yellow-striped ground. You liked that. You wanted to go farther, but they would not let you.

The food they brought you had strange flavors. It was always too hot. They encouraged you to eat with a fork. The fork was strange and flexible and white. You would turn it over and over in your fingers and bend it this way and that and snap its long white teeth off. You would wave it at them, laughing in white spaces about funny teeth. They would smile, but not really. Mostly they just watched the fork very carefully.

Curtis,
they would say.
This is doctor so-and-so, he’d like to ask you some questions, Curtis.

When the woman came you managed to communicate your desire for more picture books, and for the first time she seemed to understand you. They all seemed to understand you.

He really responds to the kaw mix bux,
they would observe among themselves. They brought you others, but they were not the same. They had white spaces, but no John Proudstar, no Thunderbird. When you tossed them aside, they shook their heads in disappointment. The woman began to cry again.

My baby. What happened to my baby?

AUGUST
2006

With her apron strings still dangling, Rita wrestled her hair into a net, just as she noticed Krig upstairs standing at the smudged Plexiglas window looking down at her. He glanced at his watch and, with a wince, scratched his shaggy neck.

Rita pretended she didn’t see him and took her place on the line next to Hoffstetter who, pausing with a handful of entrails to wipe his mustache on a shirtsleeve, also checked his watch.

Twenty minutes later, Rita found herself seated in Krig’s dingy cubicle, gazing at the mottled brown carpet. She could feel Krig’s eyes upon her as he sprinkled nondairy creamer into his Styrofoam cup and gave it a pensive stir. How long had she been at High Tide? Seven years? Eight? Could it be eight? Jesus.

Though Rita knew it was highly unlikely, part of her hoped Krig would just cut her loose. Part of her wanted her whole world to go up in flames.

“Everything all right at home?” said Krig, finally. How long had Rita been there, he wondered — five, six years? Until three weeks ago, he didn’t even know she had a kid. He hated this managerial bullshit. He hated being the man. The truth is, he liked his years on the line a lot better than the front office, except for the crappy paycheck. He liked the camaraderie of the line. He could remember the late eighties, when they were moving ten, twelve million pounds a year through this place. They’d stack up a lot of overtime in those days. And go to the bars after: Kip Tobin, Williams, the whole bunch of them. Life felt like a Bob Seger song back then. Krig felt like part of something. Port Bonita ruled.

“Everything’s fine,” said Rita.

Krig stifled a sigh and was about to scratch his neck but went for
his coffee instead. Rita could tell that the whole line of questioning was uncomfortable for Krig, and she felt a little sorry for putting him in this position.

“Then, uh, I guess my next question would be … uh …”

“Okay,” she said. “Everything’s not all right at home. Actually, if you want to know — nothing’s all right at home. Not one single thing in my life is all right — it’s all wrong.”

“Ah,” said Krig.

“My son is having serious mental problems … he’s … they’re not even sure if …” Rita pulled up short, fighting back a wave of emotion.

She remembered the night she first brought Curtis home from the hospital. He was a happy baby, calm and curious. He slept through his first night and well into his first morning. Rita watched him sleep most of the night and awoke in the morning curled on the love seat next to the bassinet, clutching her grandmother’s quilt. Where did everything go so wrong? Where did their lives jump track and become so hopelessly derailed? What happened to the calmness, the curiosity? She didn’t even know where her grandma’s quilt was anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just … it’s been a … the last couple weeks have …”

Krig scratched his neck yet again. “No, no. Not a problem. You, uh, need some time off. Or … ?”

“No,” she sniffled. “Look, I can’t afford to. I need this job. I’m barely making it as it is. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Curtis, I just … everything is …” Cursing her weakness, she succumbed finally to hoarse sobs.

Krig felt like a gorilla trying to comfort a canary as he rested his big hand between her shoulder blades. He could feel her spine through her cotton sweatshirt. “We can juggle some stuff around,” he said. “Figure out some kind of arrangement.”

Back when Mullen was GM, and Krig, gooned on Rumplemintz and Old English, had broken his collarbone trying to tackle a weaner pig down at Tobin’s dad’s place, Mullen had worked out a special arrangement for Krig. You had to take care of your people. That’s just
what you did at High Tide. That’s what you did in Port Bonita, USA. If that made him old-fashioned, so be it.

“Look, I’ll talk to Jared,” he said.

Rita sniffled.

“How much time do you need? Two weeks do it?”

Rita nodded, wiping her eyes.

“Let me talk to J-man. Thornburgh and I are drinking buddies.” Rita daubed her smeared mascara and looked at Krig hopefully for the first time. “You drink?”

Krig smiled. “Does the pope shit in the woods?”

SITTING SHOTGUN IN
the Goat, Rita was ashamed of herself for feeling better, but the shame was a lot easier to swallow than the cold hard facts: that her son was likely brain-damaged, her relationship was a powder keg, and she was likely to spin in the same circles the rest of her days — unless she took the initiative to change her orbit. Why risk the heartache, the loss, and all the attending mess? Why confront the naked truth if you couldn’t change it? Why not just feel better? Her thoughts turned reflexively to Randy, and she tried to chase them off, with little success. He was doubtless at home on the sofa, four beers deep into a six-pack, offering up his signature brand of wry commentary aloud to various television advertisements.
Ford, my ass … Pff, NAPA, yeah right, Never Any Parts Available.
Midway through beer six, Randy would begin to wonder where the hell Rita was with dinner. She’d have to tell him she’d been at the clinic with Curtis all evening. He’d grumble about it, but what could he do? She’d pick up a BBQ beef and some Jo Jos from Circle K to placate him. Him. It was always about him. Another guilty finger prodded her at the thought of Curtis. She was using him as a happy hour excuse. Suddenly, she had half a mind to ask Krig to turn back toward the plant. If the Monte Carlo would start, she could still squeeze in a half hour of visiting time.

Last Thursday, Curtis had showed marked improvement. The burns were healing nicely. He’d finally issued his first sound. Baby
talk, sure, but the specialist was heartened. He said there was light in the boy’s eyes, that he seemed to want to communicate something.

The Bushwhacker was slammed when Krig and Rita arrived. Molly was working the bar and the floor, circling the room like a frantic mud shark. Krig spotted an empty stool next to Jerry Rhinehalter and figured if Rita sat in it and Krig loomed like a buzzard, they could probably chase Rhinehalter off in ten minutes flat. The guy was probably supposed to be at a little league game or something anyway. He had a whole gaggle of kids. But as Krig was considering this course of action, a two-top opened up in the far corner, and he ushered Rita across the crowded bar, even as Molly began busing the table. Krig was hoping for a little familiarity from Molly to help him break the ice with Rita.
Hear about the Wal-Mart fire? Guess it was arson.
Something like that — some little piece of news. Something that engendered familiarity or confidence, something that said Krig belonged here.

“I’m out of Kilt Lifter,” she said, promptly sashaying off with a loaded bus tray.

“That’s Molly,” explained Krig.

“Yeah, I know. I used to work with her at Gertie’s.”

“Small world.”

“Mine sure is,” said Rita.

After two PBRs, Rita was able to put Curtis and Randy out of her mind. She found that she liked listening to Krig talk. He was pretty smart. His mind had scope. A lot more scope than Randy. Mostly, Krig was a good distraction. He talked about all kinds of weird shit — Big-foot, Atlantis, something called the Bimini Road. She hoped he was picking up the tab but kept ordering two-dollar PBRs just in case.

“You never know,” he was saying. “There’s a lot of unexplained phenomena out there. You know anything about string theory?”

“No.”

“Me neither, really. Google it — it’s some pretty tripped-out shit, I know that much. Parallel universes and that kind of thing. Worm-holes. Dark matter. I saw it on the Science Channel — not that I put too much stock in the Science Channel. Their Bigfoot coverage is crap.”

“Mm,” said Rita.

“Sorry, if I’m talking too much,” said Krig.

“No, no.”

“I have boundary issues.”

“It’s okay,” said Rita. “It quiets my head.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Thus encouraged, Krig proceeded to enlighten Rita on — among other subjects — the musculature and carriage of the female Sasquatch featured in the Patterson footage.
You couldn’t fake something like that. You have to look at the muscle groups. Watch the flexation in the legs and the butt. The bending of the knee joints and stuff.
Krig talked about the cultural tracks of Sasquatch through centuries of Salish and Klallam cultures, hoping Rita might have some unique Native American insight to offer — something along the lines of what Meriwether Lewis Charles Running Elk had offered him at the Seven Cedars Casino. But Rita just nodded all the while, sipping her PBR at a pretty good clip. Krig talked about the Gaussian curve of the footprints.
Believe me, a hoaxer just isn’t going to understand the weight distribution of a biped that size enough to fake something like that. He’d have to be some kind of expert on the mountain gorilla — there’s no way Patterson knew all that stuff.
But never did Krig broach the subject of his own experiences along the shore of Lake Thornburgh. That’s one boundary he wouldn’t allow himself to cross.

The more Rita listened to Krig, the more she leaned into his curiosity, the more she liked that Krig didn’t profess to have all the answers. Krig was willing to speculate, willing to wait and see. This seemed healthy. Rita had decided long ago that she already knew all the answers. Stunted. That’s how she felt. Like a frost-damaged tree — as if no amount of warmth could ever undo the damage. And yet she seemed to be thawing with each PBR. Until finally it wasn’t enough to listen.

“Do you think people can change?” she said.

Krig very nearly broached the subject of his encounter on Lake Thorn-burgh. Certainly that experience had changed him. “Yeah, sure.”

But it was as though Rita could hear him thinking. “I mean change themselves.”

Krig gazed into his beer, spun it in his grip, and finally took a big gulp. “Well,” he said. “After my dad left, and my mom was … well, she went a little nuts … I was sort of forced to be the —”

“I don’t mean adapt. I mean
change.
Completely reverse everything that’s come before. Obliterate it. Because you decide to, not because something else decides for you.”

Krig was pensive once more. All these questions made him thirsty. Why the sudden turnabout in Rita? Why did it seem that the boundaries were always shifting? Krig had no idea where the line was anymore. “Hmm, okay,” he said. “How about this? Back in my JV days, I was a point guard — I distributed the ball, I tried to make everyone around me better. It was my instinct to pass, see? But Gasper and the rest of those clowns just couldn’t finish. I mean, not even a damn layup. It was like throwing perfectly good passes into the abyss. And none of them could shoot from the perimeter, so we couldn’t beat a zone. So after sophomore year, I decided I could help the team more by shooting. So I developed a wicked —”

“You’re talking about your role on a team. In high school. I’m talking about you. Me. Without roles.” Rita gazed out the window. “Can we really be whoever we want to be, now that we’ve collected all that we are?”

Krig knew the answer was no — for all the mysterious possibilities and unexplained phenomena in the world, the trappings of identity wouldn’t seem to budge. The whole process of becoming was reductive; each choice was like another bar in the prison of self. Everything got smaller. This from a guy whose name had been reduced to a single syllable.

“I think it’s an uphill battle,” he said, at last. “You’d need a lot of momentum.”

“But you still think it’s possible?”

“I do,” he lied. “Maybe the key is to let the person you want to be make your choices.”

Choices, ha! Krig knew about choices. Krig knew that you didn’t
always choose for yourself, no matter who you were. Sometimes other people chose for you. Who passed up a hoops scholarship to Eastern Oregon to stay with his mother? Really, didn’t she make that choice for him? He could’ve been a biologist, a primatologist, an anthropologist, instead of some half-baked cryptozoologist bullshit artist. Maybe then, somebody would believe him about the upper Elwha, maybe then somebody would take him seriously. Maybe if he’d drawn different boundaries for himself in the first place. But he didn’t, did he? Because he was scared shitless, that was the real reason. That’s why he never left P.B. — he was afraid. Exhibit A: his trip to New York for his twenty-first birthday. He was gonna see Ewing at the Garden. He was gonna check out the Chrysler Building, see the Museum of Natural History (he even read books back then). He was gonna drink beer in Times Square, eat a steak at the 21 Club, maybe even take in that dumb
Miss Saigon
on Broadway.