Joel Wayne

C H A P T E R 8 Joel Wayne

“Shhhh,” I said. “Stop stop stop. Please.” I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. Hummed a song from light years ago I couldn’t remember the name of, about water and a deer and the word “panteth.” I thought then of church. Of being a boy and playing quarters in the moldy basement of the defunct hospital in the part of town that always l ooded when it rained too much. It was closed now, the upstairs turned into ofi ces—chiropractors, a medium who wore dresses that looked like they were made out of rosemary needles. And our ragtag bride of Christ, stuck downstairs, eating our fruits

of the spirit. Laying on of hands. Speaking in tongues, the interpretation of tongues. Ah, yes. “Howwa huzzoo zoozzoo be azzo lock wocka muck do,” I said to Sammy, or the man claiming to be Sammy but was probably a server, popped out the side of the the reception to smoke pot and eff with love-lost losers still pining over a girl they fumbled with in the dark while Peter Gabriel played in the background, not that one but “Shock the Monkey,” for some reason. I was surprised how easily it came back to me. Sammy cocked his head. Ah, yes. He had not, I realized, received that fruit. Neither the interpretation. I’d have to try something else. I pored through other languages I knew. Two years of Polish in college because I was crushed on the girl who sat next to me— actually Polish, like exchange-student Polish—Lynn Golata. Who’d say “shh, there is class,” to me when I’d do so much as offer her a stick of gum. But I couldn’t remember any Polish. English then, the AP style guide. Bylines may be used only if the journalist was in the datelined location to gather the information reported. I said as much to Sammy but he was studying his nails now. Drat. Music then. Carly Simon! I searched through her catalog before I realized I didn’t know anything besides the one song, and now I couldn’t remember that one. Paul Simon! “And my traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets,” I said, or sang. “I’m looking at ghosts and empties. But I’ve reason to believe, we all will be received in Wonderland.” In Wonderland. No, that wasn’t right. New Mexico was the Land of Enchantment. I said as much to Sammy but he’d gone mute, sitting on the water. A bored Jesus.

“And Alabama is the yellowhammer state, and Minnesota’s the north star state, and Wyoming is the equality state, due to their electing the irst female to public ofice,” I said, getting desperate now. There was the shout of broken glass behind me and I turned, startled. Olivia was sitting, legs knocked out from under her, slipping in the mud. Flute of champagne shattered on a rock by her knee. She tried to stand but her lats—modest things, striped bananas of canvas, “$12!” she had beamed and I appreciated— found no purchase. She sat back, lying lat in the mud. Drunk, I thought. Defeated. Heading towards the Big D and don’t mean Dallas. “What are you doing?” she said to the darkened sky. “Talking to Sammy. He showed up and accused me of selfsabotage,” I said. “Of opting for loneliness over knowledge or eternal life.” I pointed to him but he was gone now, replaced by a black ball of granite, nipple of water burbling out of his top. Ah, yes. The shapeshifter, Jesus turned fountain. “Are you drunk? I think you’re drunk,” she said. “Sammy is still in custody.” I waded to the side of the pond, my shoes sticking in the mud, sucking—sklorp, sklorp—as I sat next to her. “Tell me about it, stud,” I said. “We started writing back and forth. I hadn’t ever done that before, writing to a writer. Besides you, but that doesn’t count,” she said. “Does it?” It had been, she said, his poem about the white and gray horses, coming down out of the hills at night, one getting stuck in the

dog kennel outside the shaky farmhouse, boards groaning in the wind. Father running out with his shotgun, thinking it was… what? And watching as the horse kicked the kennel apart and galloped away. But not before father took a single photo, the eyes of the horse like ghosts, like a scared little girl, no thicker than a seesaw. “Like a boy slipping into the water at church camp, jittery from excitement and possibility,” I thought. “He wrote back and what I thought was nothing became, well, not nothing. Like us. You and I nothing and then not nothing. I don’t have any regrets. Not nothing is something.” I felt as if I should be jealous, the boy in me tugging at the sleeve of my rental tux as he watched Elizabeth O’Rourke kissing Tanner “The Tude” Klegal, even though I’d just asked her to the 6th and 7th grader dance and she said “maybe.”

“Tell me more, tell me more, was it love at irst sight?” I said.

“Don’t be funny, please. Not everything is about you,” she said, though I hadn’t said it was. “This night was supposed to be something for me. Or not me. I don’t know. It was supposed to be about something greater than ourselves, I guess.” She started crying so I did too. Reaching out a hand and setting it on her face, where I felt the tears tickle down my palm. She didn’t pull away. I was glad for that, slipping my other hand into my cummerbund, inger gun in its holster.

“There’s still something we need to do,” she said, under my hand.