Rules for Becoming a Legend (11 page)

•   •   •

Genny Mori Kirkus found her husband sobbing and rolling back and forth in the soupy tide. He looked to her in that moment a huge baby, face knotted up and red, fists pounding the sand. There was blood on his face and his thin hair was in his eyes. Black sand drooled from his lips. His pants, heavy with sand and sea, had come down, showing half his butt. Genny sat on a nearby log. She shook her head and laughed to herself. Was this how her mother felt when Genny's father split town? Why hadn't she got out before it was too late? What was it? Had she been scared or just lazy? What a choice. Funny, in a small, sour way.

She was tired. Felt destined to take care of this man for always. She was level, she was fine—it was he who had the binges and purges. He who needed the guiding hand. Maybe she didn't run around the house playing Cowboys and Indians with the boys, but she was consistent while he was one phone call away from breakdown. There was a sucking feeling in her heart for him and on one hand it depressed her, but on the other it proved she felt
something still, and this relieved her. If life was not going to plan—no out from Columbia City, Oregon, for her—at least she still had the capacity to be devastated by the man she married. “Feel better?” she asked.

•   •   •

Todd was too out of it for Genny's presence to be a surprise, and he said the first thing that came to mind. “You're drunk.”

“Says the man eating sand. I think what you meant to say is, ‘
I'm drunk.
'”

“This isn't funny.”

“Get up, Todd. Ronnie O'Rourke is missing his truck and your son wants to tell you about his first day of school. Rumor has it he's inherited your basketball skills.”

Todd sat up, his back making a suction sound. The wind came in. Cold hit him hard, teeth chattered. It felt good to have his wife, his Genny Mori, sweep in, but he couldn't give in this easily. Something in him needed to push. “I guess you love this.”

“I don't.” Genny Mori looked off down the beach, the wind taunting her eyes.

“I guess our kid could be the best in the league. Everyone'll want a piece and he's only five.” Todd wanted to be mean to her. He needed to be mean to her. “Maybe Jimmy makes it to the NBA. Maybe he doesn't let you down like I did . . . How much money you figure you'll need off him?”

“He's five fucking years old. NBA? I'm not the one putting pressure on him.” Then, strange, Genny Mori started to cry. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don't think I miss Suzie too?” She slid her hand up and she was palming her forehead. “I wasn't here, you were. You were here with Suzie.”

The name hit Todd hard, as did her tears, but mostly the blame. Something she'd withheld from giving, even when it had rightfully belonged to him. Here it was. He'd wanted to push, but not
this much. He looked past her to buy time, and there he saw his two boys standing on the top of the dunes. When Jimmy met his eyes, his son turned and disappeared, sweet Dex not far behind.

“He saw me,” Todd said, tears welling, but Genny didn't understand him. She offered her hand. He took it and stood. The wind picked up, making the cold so piercing, he felt bitten. He hugged her, and her warmth and the breathing of her body shocked him, as did her willingness to be hugged. In her ear he whispered, “It was my fault.”

“Don't say that.”

“She was wearing a blue coat.”

“I know, I dressed her.”

“I bought it for her.”

“I know, I was there.”

“It was too much money. But I bought it for her.”

“I know. I know.”

And he was happy that she knew.

They stayed like that, almost perfect, for three seconds maybe, and then Genny Mori pushed her husband away.

Cracked heart versus broken one.

“Come on,” she said, “You're soaked and we got a lot to do.”

Todd squeezed the cut on his thumb from earlier in the day. If he pressed hard enough, blood still came to the surface. He knew she was right, there was too much to do.

At home, Genny Mori drew Todd a warm bath and put the boys in front of a movie. She made him tea and left to go smooth things over with Mr. O'Rourke by bringing a pint of clam chowder from Norma's, his favorite. Mrs. O'Rourke watched suspiciously from just inside the door.

“The funniest thing, Mr. O'Rourke,” Genny said, “Todd got two front flats while going the back way to Fred Meyer, and, you know how that back road is ever since the new highway opened,
hardly anyone uses it. One flat, fine, he can use the spare, but two? I'm just glad I got there when I did.”

Down the block, porch lights lit up, window curtains tugged to the side. Genny could feel people's eyes.

Who's that at the O'Rourke's so late
?

It's Genny Mori, poor thing, come to beg for Todd's job.

Mr. O'Rourke's eyes told her that he too noticed people noticing. Genny saw how his temper melted with the shame of her standing like a beggar at his door, the salty aroma of the chowder and her pretty face. “Make sure Todd's ready for work tomorrow.” He took the bag with the chowder inside. “And tell him I'm switching him to night shifts with the high school kids.” He looked down the street and then back at Genny, speaking louder. “And I'm docking every single broken bottle.”

•   •   •

Todd listened to Genny come home, feed the boys, and tuck them in. He was under the covers, still shivering slightly. Finally, she came into the bedroom and changed into pajamas. Todd watched her and was reminded of what had attracted him to Genny Mori in the first place. She had a brain in her head and guts in her stomach.

She told him casually, “You got the night shift tomorrow. Ronnie O'Rourke expects you.” She climbed into bed.

“Genny, my Genny,” he said. She had been the one girl who hadn't come easy. He liked that in her. Meant she wouldn't go easy either. And then he acted on a feeling he hadn't had in too long. Draped a thick arm over her side, pushed his pelvis up against the cushion of her butt. His body all pins and needles. She squeezed his hand, not unkindly, and took it off her hip. “You need to talk to them.”

So Todd went. God bless her, it was the best she'd ever be to him, for in his misreading of the mood, in trying to make a pass at
her when that was the last thing she wanted, when he had been a blubbering child when she needed a man, he had leaned into the first punch of her fight to stop loving him.

Todd crept into the room Dex and Jimmy shared. Jimmy was awake, staring at the ceiling, his eyes lit up by the pumpkin night-light plugged into the wall.

“Your mother tells me you had quite a day,” he whispered. He rubbed his hands down his face. Somehow they still felt cold from the ocean. “Something about basketball?”

“What were you doing, pops?”

Todd played dumb. “What do you mean?”

“In the water. You always say no playing in water.”

Todd considered it.
What was the best way to do this?
A thought came to him. “Well, I got bitten.”

“Bitten?”

“Have I ever told you about the Sand Toad?”

“No, not ever,” Dex said—apparently awake and listening the entire time.

“Well, boys,” Todd rubbed his hands together as if it would bring forth the story he needed to tell—and strangely, it did. “There's a certain kind of toad that lives on the beach. She's always cold and muddy. She can't jump very far or move very fast. She's ugly and smells bad too.”

“Gross,” Dex said.

Todd fed off the reaction. “Yeah, gross. Only thing special about a sand toad is she takes growing seriously. Big as a car.”

“You're kidding us,” Dex said sincerely.

“I'm not kidding you, I wouldn't kid about something like this . . . She's huge but it's very weird because she thinks she's small.”

“What's she eat?” Jimmy asked, one eyebrow higher than the other, just like the Flying Finn.

“What's she eat?” Todd wanted to wipe that look off Jimmy's face. How'd the old man find a way in? “They eat. Well, seagulls of course. She opens up her big mouth—and it's just the same color and feel as wet, grimy sand—and she flicks her tongue. A trick tongue. On the very tip there's a part that looks like the tastiest bread crumb you ever saw. When a seagull flies down to get it, then, WHAM, the sand toad closes her mouth and dinner is served.” Todd clapped his hands and startled his sons. He had them now. Oh boy, did he ever.

“But see, here's the thing. The sand toad isn't happy. She doesn't think she's special. She hates being cold and muddy and scared all the time. She hates sitting in the sand all day long and feeling small. Worst of all, she can't stand the taste of seagulls. She
haaaaates
the taste of seagulls.

“The one and only thing a sand toad wants is to be human. Be warm and eat all kinds of delicious food.” Todd paused and dropped his voice into a whisper. “And there's only one way for a sand toad to change human. She has to get brave enough and bite three people on the foot. Then she'll change into a human herself.”

“Bite?” Dex asked.

“Scary, I know. But it's even
moooooore
scary for her,” he held up a finger, “because remember, she
thinks
she's tiny. She
thinks
she's going to be stepped on. With the first bite she'll be the same shape as a human. This takes, oh, three months. But she's still got the
skin
like a sand toad, wet, grimy, and gray; and she's still got the
eyes
of a sand toad, yellow and slanted; and she's still got the
tongue
of a sand toad, thing with a bump on the end just like the tastiest bread crumb you ever saw.”

“And then what?” Dex, again.

“When she bites someone else, she'll lose the sandy skin and the yellow eyes, but she won't be able to talk because her tongue
still has a thing like a bread crumb on the end. She won't be able to hide anymore because she's got human skin. So she'll go live in the forest or the bathrooms of a mall, waiting until she can bite one more human . . .”

Todd paused, let them squirm.

“And if she bites that last human, she'll be a full person. Smartest kind too. She'll make lots of money. She'll spend it all on food and clothes and heat for her house. She wants to get rid of the small and un-special feeling of being a sand toad. She'll pay a person to sit by her. This person's only job is to tell her how big she looks, how special she is.”

Jimmy kicked away his blankets. “And you got bitten! What happens to people bitten? The bitten people? What happens to them?”

“They start turning slowly into sand toads. That's where sand toads come from. First their eyes go yellow, then their skin goes sandy, and then all the rest. That is unless the bitten person goes back to the beach every time something on him changes and gets some sand toad tears. If he drinks these then the changes stop.”

The story lingered in the air. Todd stood, went to the doorway. “At least for a little while.”

Friday, December 21, 2007

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD—FOUR DAYS AFTER THE WALL.

I
t's in a shoebox in the very back of the closet. Underneath the limp, drifting hem of Genny's old wedding dress got at discount from Geno's—lace caught with jaundice now. This is the shoe box Jimmy's first basketball shoes came in. Todd hadn't been there when Jimmy opened them but Genny said she had never seen the kid so happy. Running circles, saying how fast his new sneakers made him, Dex trying to keep up. Poor little kid just wanting Jimmy to stop a second so he could confirm his suspicion that the shoes glowed in the dark. Poor little kid.

Todd Kirkus flips the box top and pulls it out. A yellowed newspaper clipping. He comes back to this more often than he'd ever admit. It's an anonymous letter to the editor that ran in the
Columbia City Standard
November 22, 1985. He reads it again now because he was with Jimmy three days ago during his low point, his black abyss. The thought of his son smashing his own head into a wall has kept Todd up these past three nights, going over Jimmy's life, his own, his father's—everyone ever connected to the kid—to try and figure out how something like this could happen. All that bullshit about the Kirkus Curse, was it real? Was his family destined for crash down, flameout? The newspaper scrap is an artifact of his mental dig. When it was published it wasn't the low point for Todd, not anywhere near it, but it was the start.
Maybe if he can remember himself from that age, when things started to go wrong, he can understand his son better.

Could Freight Train Derail Fishermen Basketball?

Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus missed a Fishermen preseason game against Clatskanie yesterday. He didn't have the flu, or a death in the family, or low grades—Todd Kirkus missed the game because he was playing for someone else.

The Knights are a tournament team based officially out of Portland, but they pull kids from all over the state. Their colors are red and silver, the very same colors as our rivals, the Seagulls. But who cares, right? They're just colors.

I'll tell you who should care: Coach Kelly, Finn Kirkus, and most importantly Todd himself.

I know people will say it's all about numbers, and he got more exposure playing in the Northwest Invitational than a preseason game. Well, I agree: it's all about numbers. Let's crunch them.

44, 12 and 11: that's the number of points, rebounds, and assists our Freight Train racked up on his way to being named MVP of the Northwest Invitational. There were a lot of college coaches and even some NBA scouts there to watch, but does it really matter anymore? Todd Kirkus is going to be able to play wherever he pleases, with or without the Northwest Invitational.

1, 1 and 11: That's the number of games played, the number of games lost, and the number of other Fishermen players who had to watch their run at a championship repeat pause for the Todd Kirkus show.

Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus is derailing Fishermen basketball and yet we still cheer him on. After all, not since the Tall Firs has Columbia City been blessed with such basketball success and we'll do anything to be a part of it.

The problem is, it's a crash we're going to get—because make no mistake, the selfishness of Todd Kirkus will only lead the Fishermen astray—when we showed up for, and deserve, something greater.

The Flying Finn had been livid when the morning paper came. Wanted to know just who the hell wrote this thing. In a small town where it almost seemed everyone's name could fit in Bic on the back of your hand, it was shocking to think there might be a stranger, a traitor, in their midst. It made Todd self-conscious. And while he was no stranger to his father's erratic outbursts of rage or jubilation or an odd, comical mixture of the two, this was something on a whole new level.

Shortly after slamming the paper down and breaking a glass in the process, but before chugging the remains of his coffee and choking on the grinds so his white shirt was spattered with brown splashes, and then ripping the collar as he tried to take it off, and then giving up halfway and keeping the tattering, spotted shirt on, the Flying Finn yelled, “I'm gonna tear the roof off! Give them a star player and they starts a witch hunt!” The Flying Finn went off in a storm to the
Columbia City Standard
's office, looking much like the destitute man he was destined to become.

Todd stayed home, embarrassed by a father so vocal and public. And the letter to the editor? Was it really so bad as it made it seem? He figured the guys would have rolled Clatskanie without him. Little team from out in the woods. How was he supposed to know they'd choke? And what did it matter? Clatskanie wasn't a league game; it didn't even count for their official record. He couldn't be expected to do everything for the team. He had to look out for himself sometimes.

A couple of hours later, the Flying Finn came home looking exhausted and sad.

“What happened, pop, you find the guy?”

“Don't worry. Never worry. Anonymous letter means nobody.”

And it occurred to Todd that his father looked a way he had never looked up until then. Old.

•   •   •

So Freight Train reads the letter now to remember what it was like. One line sticks with him especially:
Make no mistake, the selfishness of Todd Kirkus will only lead the Fishermen astray.
It burns. He'd been one game away from proving them all wrong. But why should he have ever had to? He comes to a conclusion. In cases like his and his son's, the whole town is at fault. They're awful, despicable, child-abandoning people. 'Cause when you start telling a kid they're special and better than everyone else—and they aren't even your own kid—then hell, you're adopting them. You don't have any right to put that kind of weight on someone's shoulders. When they win, fine, but what about when they lose, and there's no faith left, and you leave them alone, drowning? That's neglect right there. They wouldn't have been in a position to take on so much water in the first place if you hadn't of convinced them they could make it rain.

For Todd, the whole town of Columbia City let his son down. They let him down. Todd has half a mind to pack the van, load up his school-skipping, self-destructive son, and be gone.

Instead Freight Train reads the article again, to figure out the secret code inside. He knows he can make things easier for Jimmy. He's sure the key's in there somewhere. Something that will let his poor son sidestep the Mack truck of attention bearing down on him.

And hell, he might be right. Anything that's not nothing is something.

•   •   •

The first time Jimmy called Sarah Parson, RN, was yesterday, from a pay phone. She had answered on the fourth ring. He heard the sounds of people talking in the background.

“Hello?” she said. “Hello?” she said again, this time breaking into a higher pitch on the second syllable. Then she had shocked him by saying his name. “Jimmy? Is this Jimmy?”

He hung up on her. Now he's calling again. It's Friday, the fourth day in a row he's playing hooky from school and wandering the woods instead. Head's feeling better, though still mushy, still dull with pain. He's at the pay phone outside the Mormon church—or do they call it a temple? Jimmy doesn't remember, he just knows that when he sees them around town in pairs, so dorky in their shirt-and-tie getups, he feels comforted to know there are people even lower in the social hierarchy than he.

“Hello?”

He waits out a car tooling past, as if whoever was driving could eavesdrop from forty feet away. “It's Jimmy.”

“Jimmy. You want to talk?”

“You said it's never bad as it seems.”

“I believe that; it never is.”

He's gripping the phone handle. Thoughts of Dex, his mom circling. Can't get the scene from wearing out the reels in his head. Imagines every detail as though it were happening to him. Can't stop. Then when he tells himself to stop, he's
still
thinking about it because he's purposely not thinking about it. Hell. “It's pretty fucking bad for me.”

She breathes out. A beeping sound passes by in the background on her end and Jimmy imagines himself on a hospital stretcher, rushed to a new room, all hands on deck. Save his life. Back into the whirring machine. Mind reader. “Yes, Jimmy, it's pretty bad for you.”

“You ever seen me play?” He isn't sure why he's asked this, but there it is, and he finds he can't wait to hear the answer.

“Play what?”

He laughs, like yeah right. Then her silence, so he says, “Basketball.”

“I've never been one for the sports.”

“You're screwing with me, right?
The sports?
You've heard about me, about me playing ball?”

“No, Jimmy, I haven't. I mean, I should have guessed it. I used to watch your father play and—”

She's cut off, a recorded voice asking if he would like to put in more money to extend the call. Naw. This is a good out. He hangs up.

Breathing hard, this reminds him of coming home after his first day of kindergarten, having discovered basketball. Flying up the sidewalk and through the front door. He had so much to tell. He'd been to school! He'd made friends with a boy who spoke two languages! He'd been in a fight! He'd been in trouble! And most importantly, the biggest thing of all, he'd learned about basketball! He had rolled the word around his mouth with the tip of his tongue.
Basketball, basketball, basketball
. But nobody was in the living room, the place his pops said he'd meet him to hear all about that first day of school. “Pops?” Jimmy called out. “Pops!” He ran through the dining room and the kitchen. Still no Pops, no Dex either. In his parents' bedroom he stopped. There was his mom. Come into a situation expecting joy? Anything but can lay you flat. Same here with Nurse Parson. Only opposite. Expect after-school-special-too-sticky-sweet and come away from it actually feeling better. What the hell?

•   •   •

Later, from the cover of the trees, he's watching two men in Subway uniforms throw up half-assed shots at Peter Pan Courts as he dulls the edge of Sarah Parson, RN's words in his head.
I've never been one for the sports.
One of the guys shooting isn't bad. Clearly he's played a little ball in his day.

Jimmy hears the bushes behind him rustle. He's not scared though. Hell, when kid Jimmy and Dex used to creep for hours back and forth through the bush-whacked animal highways on
their missions to find the beautiful game, they came across all sorts of things. Raccoons, deer, stray dogs, half-naked teenagers. He remembers one time coming up on a couple of kids, probably still in middle school—though they seemed huge to him then. They sat side by side, staring straight ahead. The boy had his left hand up the girl's shirt and was moaning, saying, “I got them.”

Then Dex threw a stick. Crash. They both scrambled off the log like it had been a grenade, boy running ahead as girl called after him, “Hey! Come back!” She fought to straighten her shirt. Fucking Dex, always looking for an angle on a joke.

What if you like hard-boiled eggs and hatching has nothing to do with it? Then you think it's OK to count your chickens before they hatch 'cause you're only after the egg anyway?

So Jimmy isn't startled by the noise now. Whatever it is, he's seen it before. He turns and faces the bushes. Out comes an old man. He's back to wearing that green motorcycle helmet and is dirty as hell, but he's the same guy in the face and eyes. Look close, it's the Flying Finn.

“Grandpa, what the hell?”

“Jimmy, that you?” The Flying Finn's eyes are milky and his chin keeps shaking. “Jesus, you are the sight for the eye sores. I hear some the guys say you crazy, all the way around the loop, or the bend, or however people say this thing, and I told those guys, I's say, look who's calling who crazy, you crazies!”

Jimmy doesn't think his grandpa can even see out of those opaque marbles he calls eyes and this makes him almost sob. “Grandpa, I—Are you doing OK? I haven't seen you in—”

“Would you quit crying already? There's been enough of that for a whole long while. Only reason to cry now is if you lose a lovey, and I's lost plenty and yous lost none, 'cause you never get loveys. Are you a gay boy?”

“Grandpa, your bike's gone.”

“Last thing I need is a kid telling me things I already knows.”

“Where is it?”

“My coach stole it. A Swede bastard.” The Flying Finn looks down at his hands turned to claws from scraping up food from wherever he can—always half-sprung into a grasp. Then his eyes water a little and he looks up with the same twinkle Jimmy remembers from back when the old man made him and Dex cut flowers out of Genny's little front-yard garden for his loveys. “You go into Peter Pan store and you buy old Flying Finn some eats. Huh? What you say for that?”

Jimmy's still got lunch money his pops gave him, so he comes out of the bushes in the middle of the day when he should be in class. Out from the wilderness. He walks across Peter Pan Park to the small market that's been selling sweets to the kids of Columbia City since back when the Flying Finn first came to town.

The two Subway workers have stopped playing basketball. They sit smoking cigarettes on a bench. When they see Jimmy, they stop talking. The bruise on his forehead might as well be green neon and in the shape of a pair of legs the way they're staring at it. Hungry almost. Jimmy hurries. His balance shifts, as it has so often in these days since the wall. He stumbles one step to the side, he worries he'll vomit.

“Hey there, Jimmy,” one of them says.

Jimmy ignores him.

“Hey, Kirkus, they say you're crazy.”

“Crazy.” The other one laughs and then sputters his lips with his index finger, making loopy sounds until they're both just busting up. Jimmy guesses they're high. He hurries on to the store.