300 Miles to Galveston (5 page)

“Sherri?”

He stood, and she was smirking, half awkward, half looking at him sweetly.

“That was nice, what you said.”

His ears turned red.

“4-6-6-3-2-9-3. It spells goodbye.”

He nodded, entered the code, and went inside.

His eyebrows rose. “How have you been?”

“You mean, where?”

“That too.”

“I think the simplest answer would be, ‘lost.’”

He nodded again.

“You know Sophie has given Kristine a walkie-talkie.”

“Yeah, I overheard her talking. Not on purpose, you know.”

“She’s very lonely.”

“Aren’t we all?”

They walked along the path together.

“Sophie tells me you’re taking a trip.”

His heart plunged.
I can’t take my ex-wife on this trip.
His eyes must have widened, because she replied.

“It’sOK. I think it’d be nice for you two to visit my sister. She never hated you for what happened. She was just embarrassed.”

“OK. Cool.” He swallowed, and let her talk.

“I’m not going to crowd you two. I think it’s a neat trip to take. And I certainly don’t have anything that exciting to offer right now.”

“You don’t have to be entertaining.”

“I know.”

“Do you need supplies or anything? We’ve got bottled water and some dried goods at the house, and the church has coffee.”

“Man, coffee would be nice. But then I’d drink too much, too often, and go through that skull-splitting headache thing again when I ran out. No thanks. I just need to be, for a while. I’ll see you guys when you get back. When will that be?”

“I’m not sure.” He didn’t have an accurate lie ready, and it seemed the safest thing to say.

“Right. Well, tell her I said hi.”

They approached a clearing, where Sophie sat on a concrete bench, with Kristine facing her.

It was stunning. They were the same size now, though Sophie was three years younger. Kristine’s hair was lighter, but of course it hadn’t grown. She wasn’t looking at Sophie directly; it was like a blind person listening to a friend. They were touching each other’s hands, and Sophie was doing all the talking.

Kurt approached, knelt by Kristine’s knee. She changed nothing in her posture or demeanor. He placed the flowers in her lap and she turned toward them, as if they made an odd sound, but then straightened her neck and refocused on Sophie. There was a square-cornered lump at her belly, which he knew was the walkie-talkie Sophie had found somewhere and attached to her belt. He pretended not to notice.

The three of them sat together for a while, saying nothing. Sherri looked on and smiled.

Kurt placed his hand on Kristine’s knee to help himself stand, and for the first time in over three years, Kristine looked towards him, then to his shock, looked at him. Right into his eyes. She was not smiling, but neither was she frowning. It was like she was a shell, and her self was a tiny girl in the distance, running, running, saying with her body
I will be there eventually, but right now I’m just too far away, you’re just too far away, I’m lost, I’m lost, but I’ll be home someday.

She placed one hand on Kurt and one hand on Sophie as if performing a baptism, running her thumb along their eyebrows simultaneously.

Then, it was over. She lowered her hands, her eyes glazed, and she swayed in the breeze, like a shrub.

He closed his eyes, sighed, and finished standing up.

“Goodbye, sweetheart. I love you.”

That was all that needed to be said, and for the first time in his life, he understood that.

Chapter 4: Ulysses

When they got to Stonebrook, Bane was reading a book in the shade of a hackberry tree that had somehow survived the hatred of every gardener in the area. He waved. He had a neatly-packed toolkit, a small trailer with two tents, and a bunch of other stuff neither Kurt nor Sophie knew what to make of.

“Sophie, this is... wait. What’s your last name?

“Sirota.”

“Mr. Sirota.”

“Nah. Bane. Hi sweetheart.”

She shook his hand, then looked at her father.

“I think he can help us on our trip. And yes, we’re going to come back, once we have some kind of help. Agreed?”

“OK.” The way she said it was a bond, not an affirmation. She was going to hold him to that, and he knew it.

“So,” she said, “How’d you lose the leg?”

Kurt chuckled, apologetically.

“Little lady, that’s a funny story. And if I tell it right, it’ll last us from one end of Dallas to the other. So, let’s head out, and I’ll start it at the city limits. Deal?”

“Cool.”

They started peddling.

“What’s Sirota mean?”

“What does Fullmer mean?”

“Not full-mer. Fyool-mer. It means famous person.”

“Well, that’s pretty cool. What are you famous for?”

“Asking shame-free questions, Kurt said. And we’ve pronounced it
full-mer
since... I dunno, 1850.”

She growled, and he waved his hand as if to blow Kurt off.

“I’m not famous yet.”

Bane nodded. “Well, it’ll be interesting to find out what you become famous for, little lady.”

Normally “little lady” would have irritated Sophie, but the way he said it was cool. He had a bit of an accent, not Texan, something else. Too enunciated.
Lit-tle
lady, not
liddle
lady.

“Sirota. Where’s that from?”

“Funny story. We came over from Serbia as refugees during the third war. I was born here, but she was afraid, so she kept me at the farm for the first few years of my life, and I only heard her and the radio speak.

“Wow,” Kurt said. “How long?”

Bane looked down. “Eight years.”

“Jesus! Are you kidding?”

This may have been a very bad idea, Kurt thought. But, we can leave him behind if we need to. His cruising speed is fine, but I think that’s about his peak speed, too.

“I learned English from her, and from the radio and books she would get from the library. I liked Hemmingway. Short sentences. Deep stories.”

“What were you reading when I got here?”

“Ulysses.”

“Joyce?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

Bane laughed. “I do not read
Ulysses
because I like it. I read
Ulysses
to endure it.”

Kurt nodded, then laughed.
OK, he thought. My instincts were good.
“I liked
Dubliners
better, but I couldn’t say that in college, because liking a bunch of short stories more than the masterpiece of the modern era just wouldn’t do.”

“Life is a bunch of short stories. When you try to connect them, if you’re careful, you end up with something like
Ulysses
.”

“What happens if you’re not careful?”

“You end up with something you like to read!”

They laughed, and Sophie laughed with them, only because it was fun, not because she understood.

“When you got off the farm, did you go to school?”

“Yes. Up in Grayson County. They let me try fourth grade, but I was bored, so they bumped me to sixth. Then I got bumped from 9th to 11th.”

Kurt whistled.

“I got beaten up a lot.”

They all laughed.

“My mother got sick, so I stayed to take care of her, and got a scholarship to Grayson College.”

What’d you study?

“Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Technology. I needed to get a job, quickly, and that was in demand. Had my own shop for 25 years. Never learned to delegate, though. Just liked doing things myself. So, when I lost the leg, I lost the business. Just too hard to climb around on roofs or through crowded basements.”

“How far are we from Dallas?” asked Sophie.

“Couple of miles,” said Kurt.

“OK then, since we won’t hear the leg-story till then, tell me what Sirota means.”

“My mother’s paperwork got messed up. Her real last name was Zelijko. She was an orphan. Sirota means ‘orphan.’ It was just us on the farm. All I saw was mail addressed to the ‘orphan family,’ so I thought that’s who we were. Mom told me to never leave the farm or talk to strangers, or we’d be arrested, raped, and shot. Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, glancing at Sophie.

“It’s OK,” Kurt said. “I’ve talked to her about those kinds of things.”

“Good. A young girl should be careful. Well, it took me a couple of years out in the real world to realize my mother was damaged.”

“If I can ask, where was your father?”

“I don’t know. Mom said he was killed in the war. I have no direct reason to disbelieve her, but it always felt odd. She didn’t talk about him like she’d lost a husband in the war. She only talked when I pried, and it sent her into such a depression I quit asking.”

“She died about a year after I lost the leg. That was actually a blessing, in a way. I moved back into the house, and we two cripples took care of each other. We laughed at stupid TV shows, and I read her books from the library as she had done for me when I was a child, and we made cornbread and fried okra from our own garden. I thought it was a farm when I was little, but really, it was just a garden. We had a good nine months together. Then, she drifted away. Her body still worked, but she was gone. That was hardest of all.”

Kurt nodded. Ahead, they saw the Dallas city limit sign. They had crossed Plano without an incident, but it was still early morning.

Sophie was flushed, and Bane had grown silent. It was time for a break. Kurt pulled over by the Dallas sign and they all broke out their water bottles.

“I appreciate you inviting me to come along,” Bane said after a rest.

Kurt nodded. “I have to be honest. I can’t explain it. It just felt like the right thing to do.”

“Same here.”

“We’re all connected,” Sophie said. She was thinking back to the moment with Kristine, where she’d touched both herself and her dad.

When they crossed into Dallas, Bane stayed quiet. After what had just been said between them, to tell tall tales would have been profane.

Chapter 5: Shiabu

Sophie and Kurt didn’t know that the first time they met Bane, he had just woken up after getting drunk and trying to kill himself.

He’d started his walk towards death by attaching his mechanical leg – a custom job he had built himself, based off of an inexpensive Yanko design made for land mine victims in poor countries. Using scrap aluminum, hard plastic, and tire rubber, he’d fashioned a leg that looked like a leg, rather than something that worked more efficiently but looked like an attachment to a giant blender. It was mostly white, with grey and black bits, and a red circle with “BS” for Bane Sirota in white on the kneecap.

In his right hand, to offset his missing right leg, he held his cane – another personal creation. Its chromed handle was a gentle curve reminiscent of a snail reaching out to investigate. Its shaft was Texas ironwood, otherwise known as mesquite, hard on chainsaws but great for cooking, thanks to its sweet smoke and slow burn. He wore his best pair of blue jeans and his favorite black t-shirt, with a faded TEXOTICA logo, CUSTOM AMPLIFIERS AND GUITARS, WYLDWOOD, TEXAS. It was as formal as he got.

He took a drink, screwed down the cap, put his flask back into his hip pocket, and stumbled toward the front door of an old two-story house known as the home of the FM35s, a local gang of Filipinos and Mexicans who controlled Farm to Market Road 3537, and advertised themselves as badassses.

As he worked his way up the steps, a slack-eyed young man approached. “You here for shiabu or what, lolo?”
Shiabu
was slang for methamphetamine, and
lolo
meant grandfather, though Bane didn’t know either.

“I’m here for your mother,” he said.

“Bakit?”, which meant
What?
He was so shocked he forgot his English.

“You mother, you rice-picking mongoloid.”

The young man drew his right hand back to slap him, but Bane crashed his cane into his left knee, and the young man howled. Bane swung again into his temple, and the young man spat blood and rolled off the patio. Another young man in an oversized NBA shirt on drew a butterfly knife from his baggy shorts and flipped it open,
clickity-click-click
, saying something low and fast as he lashed out at the lolo’s paunchy stomach. Bane brought his cane down hard onto his forearm, cracking it, then slammed it onto his head, again, and again, until he quit moving.

“Who’s next?” he yelled.

The floorboards creaked as a pot-bellied man opened the front door. He had a dark green tattoo of a dragon on his chest, facing a flower on his shoulder. His swollen belly was crisscrossed with machete scars – from the drugged look in his eyes, and the shallowness of the scars, probably self-inflicted during a meth-induced fit.

He raised an old double-barreled shotgun to Bane’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. He turned his head and yelled, “
Puto!
You didn’t reload!”
Puto
was Spanish for male prostitute, but in the part of Mexico where pot-belly was from, it also meant
traitor
. In the Filipinos’ language, Tagalog,
puto
meant rice cake, so they took it as a mild and peculiar insult.

Unharmed, Bane stumbled forward and jabbed the man in the throat with the tip of his cane. The pot-bellied man choked as he fell backward, then threw up onto the exposed wood slats, clutching his throat as Bane stepped over him.

People throughout the house were waking up, even upstairs. Bane walked into the kitchen and saw an old fashioned oil lamp burning on top of the stove, with some aluminum foil and a syringe nearby. He swatted the lamp with his cane, which spat flames onto the wall, climbing and setting the ceiling alight.

Incoherent yelling, skinny, dazed boys running out of the house, climbing out of windows. Bane enjoyed the flames for a moment, watching them spread like bright clouds across the ceiling. He stumbled through the back door, then entered a dead cornfield, pausing to unscrew his hip flask. “No real men left in Texas. Just women with penises.” Finishing the whiskey, he put the flask back and continued in the direction he’d started – or close enough to it, given how drunk he was. He was not going back. He was not going to stop until he met God or His chosen incarnation of Death – partly because it was hard to turn around, mostly because he didn’t want to.