The Vast Fields of Ordinary (9 page)

“Dade,” I said.

“Sorry. Dade.”

On the screen Jack Jackson sprinted across the quad, a preppy pink sweater tied around his neck and a legion of snarling werewolves on his tail. It felt weird to be watching the movie in this creepy little house when I’d seen it so many times in the comfort of the family room. The idea drew an invisible line between this strange, dark moment and the rest of my life.

“So what can I get for you boys?” Dingo asked.

“Just some good old-fashioned marijuana,” Alex said. “Same as always.”

“I think I can do that. Follow me.”

He led the four of us back into the kitchen, where we took the stairs down to the basement. There was a turquoise-colored washing machine with a matching dryer against the wall, a weight bench, and a circle of metal folding chairs around a large wooden crate. In the corner was a drum kit, two huge amplifiers, and two beat-up guitars that looked like they’d been tossed to the concrete floor in a fit of punk rock indifference. The floor was littered with cigarettes and ash.

“You guys in a band?” I asked.

“We are,” said Dingo. “We’re called Death Grip.”

“I still don’t like that name,” Louie said.

“I like it,” said Thomas.

“That’s because you like things that are dumb.”

“Alex is our manager,” Dingo said.

“What he means is sometimes I hang out and watch them play and tell them what songs suck, which is all of them,” Alex said.

“Har har,” Dingo muttered.

We each took a seat around a crate. Dingo opened it up and pulled out a cigar box filled with little bags of weed.

“You guys want to smoke some before we transact?” Dingo asked.

“Let’s do it,” said Alex.

Alex and Dingo both looked over at me.

“Just a little,” I said. “I don’t wanna get too stoned or what ever.”

“Suit yourself,” Dingo said. He pulled a joint from the box, lit it, and took a hit. “Here, kid,” he said, passing it to me while still holding smoke in his lungs.

I took a medium-size hit. The smoke was sweet and liquidy, like sugar water rolling around in my mouth. I sucked it down into my lungs, and told myself not to cough, that I didn’t want to look like an amateur in front of these guys. I exhaled a large cloud of smoke toward Thomas and Louie and then handed the joint to Alex.

The pot haze came quickly, like a blanket dropped around my head. My heartbeat sped up, and I crossed my legs slowly like I was moving through melted caramel. I wondered how much longer we were going to be there. I thought of my mother lying in bed, fading in and out of a dreamless sleep. And where was my father? With Vicki, of course, in a motel room that my mind created at that very moment, someplace with brown sheets and a tattered Bible in the nightstand, red velvet wallpaper and a bathtub with a clogged drain.

“You guys hear about that girl in town who got kidnapped?” Louie asked after taking his hit.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “She’s been gone for like a week or something.”

“I think it’s only been a few days,” I said.

“But still,” Thomas said.

“A week, a few days,” Dingo said. “What’s the difference? She’s dead. Gotta be.”

“They could find her,” Alex said.

“She’s artistic, right?” Louie said. “My step-cousin is artistic. She wanders off all the time.”

“It’s autistic, moron,” Dingo said.

“Oh.”

“They’ll never find her,” Thomas mumbled.

“People on TV keep talking about her in the present tense like that’s what’s gonna keep her alive,” I said. “So weird.”

Everyone looked over at me as if it was the smartest thing they’d heard all day. Dingo nodded slowly in resigned agreement, the others kept quiet. The topic had dimmed everyone into themselves. The joint had burned down to a roach. Dingo tossed it onto the floor and grinded it with the sole of his boot. He then opened the cigar box that was still sitting on top of the crate.

“How much do you want?” he asked.

“Just like an ounce,” Alex said. “All I need for now.”

Dingo flipped through the bags.

“There’s exactly an ounce in this box,” he said.

Alex jokingly asked if he took checks, but nobody laughed. He reached into his pocket and tossed him a wad of cash. Dingo handed the cigar box to Alex.

“Don’t smoke it all in one place,” he said, flipping through the money.

I was ready to leave. The house was depressing, and the mere thought of all the lonesome farmland just outside was depressing as well. Strangely enough, I found myself longing for the sterile safety of my subdivision, for the brightness of our foyer and the way every room in our house was perfumed with a candle that my mother had bought at the Crafty Candle Company at the Cedarville Mall.

“You ready to go?” Alex asked. “We should be getting back.”

I nodded slowly and stood, and we all headed upstairs. My body felt so tired and wobbly that for a moment I was scared I wouldn’t make it up. Alex was in front of me, and without thinking I put my hand on his back to steady myself.

“Whoa, partner,” Alex said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, quickly pulling my hand back. “Sorry. Dizzy spell.”

Up in the kitchen I stood off to the side as the four of them said their good-byes. I was trying to make myself less high by breathing in and out, but it wasn’t working. I stared out the window over the kitchen sink to where the corn waved under the night sky like a jagged black ocean. I tried to imagine what it would be like to dive into an ink-black body of water, and then I thought to myself,
All you do is look for places to get lost.

“You ready?” Alex asked.

I snapped out of my trance and brought myself back into the house.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”

“Nice meeting you, Dade,” Dingo said.

Louie and Thomas were back in the living room watching TV.

“Nice meeting you too, man,” I said. The words fell from my mouth like lumps of wet clay. The two of them looked at each other and laughed.

“Okay, kiddo,” Alex said, slapping me on the back. “Let’s get you back home to Mommy and Daddy.”

I was too messed up to find his comment patronizing. In fact, going home was exactly what I wanted. We stepped out of the house and into the warm night. The yard was dotted with fireflies, nothing like we’d seen on the way out, but enough to make me smile dumbly to myself at the beauty of summer, of the world in general. Alex and I walked silently into the cornfield. The night teetered in my vision. Alex took my hand as if he could sense this.

“You okay there, partner?” he asked. “You’re kind of wobbling back and forth.”

“I am?” I asked. “I didn’t notice.”

He laughed. “You are.”

“I’m stoned,” I said in an apologetic tone.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of you.”

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect thing for him to say. We ambled through the field, not in any sort of rush. I suddenly felt so happy and relaxed and free that I began laughing out loud. I hooted and hollered at the night sky. I let out an especially severe yell and a flock of birds sprang from where they were roosting and spread out in a black swarm over our heads. Alex just laughed and shook his head.

“Captain Crazy Person over there,” he said. He was walking down the row next to me, a companion so shadowy, he may as well have been imaginary.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Little bits of laughter kept tumbling from my mouth. “I’ll be quiet now.”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “By all means, let it out. It’d be a shame to let all this space go to waste.”

We came out on the other side of the field and he suggested we sit on the roof of his car and share a cigarette before going anywhere. We sat there sharing a smoke in silence. I kept looking over at him. I wanted to kiss him. Pablo was the only guy I’d ever kissed, and those kisses only came about in the heat of the moment when he was so messed up that he forgot to push me away.

“We should hang out again,” he said. “Unless you’re scared of me.”

I wasn’t expecting him to say that. But he was right. I was scared of him. Just a little bit. But I wasn’t scared of what he would do to me; I was scared of what being around someone like him could make
me
do. I felt different around him, unpredictable to even myself.

“No,” I said. “I’d like that.”

We each pulled out our cell phones and exchanged numbers. My hands shook as I typed out his name. A-L-E-X. A magic word.

The next day I came downstairs in my boxer shorts and found my mother drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper at the kitchen table.

“Good morning,” she said. “Do you want coffee?”

She never offered me coffee. Juice or milk, but never coffee. Ever since I could remember, she’d told me that coffee would stunt my growth and there was no way she would allow me to drink it, not in her house. I looked around the kitchen. Everything was immaculately clean. The television on the fridge was playing some morning news show on mute. The scent of the coffee mingled with a warm floral scent that was probably coming from some new electric air-freshener.

“Coffee would be good,” I said.

I moved toward the coffeemaker, but she sprung up from her seat.

“Let me get it,” she said. She smiled at me when she passed by. “You sit down. Let’s talk.”

I sat at the kitchen table and watched as she prepared my coffee. She didn’t ask if I took cream or sugar. She just added liberal portions of each.

“Since when can I drink coffee?” I asked. “I usually have to sneak coffee to my room in the morning.”

“Well,” she said, coming back to the table. She placed the coffee in front of me and sat down. “I think it’s time that there were some changes around here.”

Great
, I thought.
More changes.

She smiled and watched as I sipped the coffee.

“So, you seem to be in a good mood,” I said. “Did you and Dad work things out?”

“No,” she said. “I actually haven’t seen your father since he left for work yesterday morning. He didn’t come home last night.”

“So where is he?”

She shrugged casually. “I really don’t know.”

“And that’s . . . okay?”

She furrowed her brow and squinted one eye toward the ceiling. She was one of those people who wanted you to know when her brain was working. I took this as my cue to wait.

“The reality of this is that you’re not going to be here in two months,” she finally said. “I don’t see any reason for your father and me to create some big mess out of your last weeks at home. Seems like a waste of time.”

“So you’re just not going to do anything?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say
nothing
,” she said. “But I would say that I plan on doing as little as possible.”

“Why don’t you leave him?” I asked. “Why don’t you tell him to stop seeing that woman or else?”

“Or else what?” she said with a little laugh. “Dade, your father is going to do whatever he wants to do. I’m not giving him any ultimatums. I think that’s best for everyone. And I’m not holding anything against you, Dade. Your father put you in a terrible, terrible position. I need to recognize it and place the blame in the appropriate box.”

The appropriate box? This was obviously crap she’d picked up from some self-help book.

“Aren’t you mad at him?” I asked. “Don’t you want to strangle him? I mean, he’s got a picture of her in his study. It’s in some book that she gave to him.”

A cloud passed over her face, not one strong enough to completely wipe away her happy façade, but enough to reveal that underneath it all she was still hurting.

“I hate this,” I said. “I hate the fact that he’s off doing whatever he wants and we’re here being miserable about it.”

“A picture?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Up in his study. In some book for his dumb poetry.”

She looked away for a second, but then brought her eyes back to me, and the smile returned, as empty as ever.

“Like I said, your father is going to do whatever he wants to do. But that being said, so are we.” She paused. That mildly triumphant statement hung over our heads, a banner announcing the summer’s theme. “I know we’ve been talking about going out and getting you things for school. Should we do that today?”

“Um . . . sure. Like, what are we gonna get?”

“Well, you’ll need a new backpack. A refrigerator for your dorm room.”

“What about the backpack I have now? It’s fine.”

“Somebody wrote
vas deferens
on it.”

“I wrote that. The Vas Deferens are my favorite band.”

“Are you serious?” she said, making a face. It was like she’d never heard me mention them before. “That name makes me ill. Please. Let me buy you a new one.”

“Why does it make you ill?”

“Dade . . .”

“Seriously. Why?”

“You’re getting a new backpack.”

“Fine. New backpack. Whatever.”

“You’re going to need all sorts of things. Maybe we can even find a little dorm refrigerator with a built-in television. That would be fun, right?”

“That would be beyond ridiculous.”

She widened her smile. “Well, why don’t you go upstairs and shower and get dressed and we’ll go?”