What is Real (23 page)

I breathe in and out. I try not to think about the air and how it tasted and smelled. How real it was.

It was real.

“Dad,” I start.

But he interrupts me. “And here we go,” he says. “Cops.”

I follow his gaze out the window. Coming through the swathe of blackberries and other shrubbery that marks the end of Our Joe's property is the RCMP.

“I won't let them in, Dad,” I say. “Don't worry.”

“Just get me back into my chair,” he says. “I'll deal with it. Shut your mouth.”

“Fine,” I go. “Fine.” I hoist him off the edge of his bed and shove him into the chair hard enough that if he could feel his legs, it probably would have hurt. But he can't feel them, so who cares, right?

“Hey,” he says, a warning in his voice.

“What?” I go.

“Careful,” he says. His words are sharp and clear. Something is different.

“Did you take your pills?” I say.

“None of your business,” he says. “Now get out of my way, I'll take care of this. I knew it was coming. I'm not as dumb as I look.”

The knock on the door is loud. I sit down on Dad's unmade bed. Sometimes I hate him. I want him to pay. I want him to pay. I wanted him to pay. And I said, “I don't care what happens to me, but he can pay.” I said that. It was a hot day. The ground was cracked and dry. The lake had shrunk back into itself so it was more of a pond, but we still swam in it. For someone who hates water, I sure spend a lot of time in it.

I hate my dad.

I don't hate my dad.

What did I do?

There are cops.

I stand up and start stripping off the sheets. My arms and legs move mechanically, Transformer smooth. I put on the new sheets, pulling each one tight. I can hear men's voices in the front hall, but I can't make out what they are saying.

Then I hear my dad, loud and clear, “Do I need a lawyer for this? You say the word, and I'll call my guy. I don't like where this is going.”

“We have to talk to him, sir,” a voice says. Then my name is called, loudly. “Dexter Pratt,” says the voice. “Don't make us come in and get you.”

I finish tucking in the last sheet and I make a decision, because I don't hate my dad but I do hate myself. I'll take the heat. Man up. That's what Dad used to always say when I cried as a kid, a goddamn kid who fell off my bike and bled from my knees and elbows, road burn on my legs. Man up, goddamn it.

But I can't.

What Our Joe did was unforgiveable, and he will pay. Suddenly, I have clarity. Too much clarity. Like the house itself is humming a perfect high C and all around me the glass shatters, and behind all the glass, I see it. Our Joe has to pay for Tanis, but when I compared my dad and Our Joe, at the lake, looking at the cracked ground, I said, “Dad's just as bad, and the whole fucking house is full of…”

And I said, “Foster care would be better.”

And I said, “Fuck him and fuck him and fuck Our Joe and fuck you.”

What I meant was, “Sorry.”

But it came out wrong. How do I explain? I want to explain. I have to explain. I smooth the sheet again and again and pull it tighter, and then I rip it off and lift it again, and it billows up and flattens, and in that second I forget why I hated my dad so much anyway.

I look at myself in the mirror, like I'm checking with myself to see if it's okay. I look like I haven't slept in a week. Self-consciously, I pat my tufty hair into some semblance of order and square my shoulders. I take a deep breath and step into the front hall.

I am not me, I remind myself. I am just some kid playing me on tv.

This is not real.

chapter 28

My dad is barring the door with his chair, but I can see four RCMP officers in full uniform, guns hanging off their hips. I recognize only one of them. He's the local guy, the guy who's stuck with our little patch of land as his home base. I nod at him and he smiles, like this is a party and not a shit-storm that's about to ruin my life.

“Dex?” he says. I know his kid. Lundstrom. He's on the team.

“Yeah,” I go. I make eye contact with Dad.

“Don't say anything,” Dad says.

“Look, sir,” says Lundstrom, “there's no problem here. We 're just asking questions.”

“I'm a lawyer,” my dad says.

“Can you please step outside, Dex?” says the older-looking guy in this superconversational tone, like we're old friends.

“I don't know,” I say.

“It's okay,” says Dad. “Outside.” He gives me a meaningful look. I get it. He wants to keep them out of the house, away from the low-level hum of the grow lights that I don't even notice anymore but, for anyone else who happens to be listening, is a dead giveaway. And then there's the smell. Maybe, I think hopefully, maybe they're not here about the pot at all.

We had a plan. But not all plans are good. I was so high. It was supposed to be like dominoes, falling in a pattern that made the crop circle that symbolized something. But what the fuck, right? And then they would fall and neatly take down Our Joe and Dad, and then there would only be Tan and me and a bunch of stillness. I don't know what she meant by that or what I was thinking, but she was crying too much to really make any sense.

I go outside and march purposefully down the steps. They follow me closely, like maybe I'm about to make a run for it. I think about it for maybe a second. I have this idea of running through the corn, past the crop knot, beyond and into the corn maze. I imagine them shouting my name. I see myself dodging and running, away from a spray of bullets that come toward me in slow motion, ripping through my skin and bones and showing everyone that underneath it all, I'm just like everyone.

Normal.

A body.

Dark red blood pooling out onto the ground as I reach for it.

Sticky and hot.

Landing.

Dying.

A close-up of my eyes, the light going out. Which happens, you know. I've seen it: the light, dying.

But this isn't a movie.

Nothing is a movie.

My camera is somewhere under the stairs. I wanted to dump it at the airport, but I didn't. I lied. I had an idea that I would dump it at the airport. I could see myself doing it. I saw myself doing it. I filmed myself doing it.

I didn't film myself doing it.

For a while, I believed that I had done it. But I didn't.

There is more to that story.

All lies have background. If you think about it, the truth is like a blank wall, painted white. A lie is paneling, and behind the paneling is a door and behind the door is a tunnel and behind the tunnel is a reason. And isn't that just more interesting, after all?

I want my camera.

I want to run.

About twenty feet from the front door, there's a stone bench. I sit down on it and look up at the policemen who have followed me. The stone is cold through my pants, the kind of cold that makes me think of death and corpses. They don't say anything, but they are staring like they can uncover the truth by just looking for it long enough.

I won't win a staring contest, so I say, “So?”

Lundstrom plops down next to me. I smell toothpaste and sweat. I wonder if they drew straws to see who would be the one to talk to me. He says, “I got it, guys.” The other three disperse into the overgrown roses that mark the front “lawn” of our house. There are some still blooming, big fat red flowers that look like red balloons bobbing against the pale gray sky.

There are bees, even though it should be too cold for them by now. One lands on Lundstrom's leg. “Shit,” he says and flicks it off. Then catching my look, he says, “Sorry, I'm allergic.”

“Global warming,” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“It's not cold enough for them to die,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. He looks tired. He looks like someone's dad. He
is
someone's dad.

He straightens up and flips open his little notebook. I always wonder why cops have such tiny little pads of paper. This guy looks like he can hardly see it, it's so small. He holds it at arm's length and squints. Wouldn't it be easier to write on a clipboard? A laptop?

In the distance, there's a rainbow. It looks surreal over the backdrop of Our Joe's usually quiet farm, now alive with all the freaks who travel far and wide to see crop circles to prove the point of their own existence. It's like all the grubs in the dirt have become overgrown and are giants, swarming the land. I've seen license plates from as far away as Georgia and New Brunswick.

Come on. It's just a crop circle. Don't these things pop up every day?

I don't realize that I say it out loud until he goes, “I've never seen anything like it. And before this, I worked on the prairies. Nothing but corn and wheat as far as the eye could see.”

We sit there side by side, just watching. Because this part of our yard is higher than the fields, we can see everything.

Then he suddenly shakes, like he's snapping himself awake or a ghost is on his grave and says, “Right, okay. We are following up on reports that you are”—he flips open his notebook to a different page and squints at his own handwriting—“‘bragging all over school' about how you ‘engineered and built the design yourself using a piece of lumber and a…'” He pauses. “And a…horse?”

“A horse?” I repeat. I don't even know how to respond. I swallow a laugh. How could a horse and piece of lumber make a design this big? I look at him. He's not laughing.

“Um,” I say. “Well, that's ridiculous. I don't have a horse. I mean, the only horses in town are Zach's. I've never even ridden one. A horse. I wouldn't know how.”

“We have a signed statement from a witness who says she—” He coughs. “Excuse me,” he says. “Who says she or he saw you with dirt on your clothes and you looked like you'd been…exerting.”

“I was running,” I say. “Look. A piece of wood and a horse? That would be impossible.
Look
at that thing.”

He scratches his head with his pen and sighs. “We have to follow up,” he says. “Did you do it?”

“Can you even ask me that?” I say.

“You can tell me whatever you want to tell me,” he says.

“Right,” I go. “But that's entrapment, right?”

He gives me a long, hard stare. “Kid,” he says, “you watch too much tv.”

“I think my dad should be here,” I say.

“Fine, get him,” he says. He looks like a stone wall, his jaw is set so tight.

“I will,” I say.

I stand up on shaking legs and go up to the porch where my dad is sitting, smoking. A regular cigarette, of course. Nothing illegal.

“Dad,” I go.

At first I think he's mad; then he breaks into laughter. “They think you did it, eh?” he says. “That's the funniest thing I've ever heard. I thought they were here about… well, the other
thing
.”

He wheels down the ramp so quick that his chair bounces on the uneven ground. I think he's going to tip over and fall out, but he recovers. I watch, without helping, as he approaches Lundstrom. I can't hear what they are saying. My ears are ringing. All of a sudden, I'm back in the field. Dirt on my back. The light. The smell. The smooth marble slick of the giant eyes.

I fall back into the chair and scream, but it comes out as more of a gasp. Sweat is pouring down my brow.

“You okay, Dex?” It's Dad, wheeling slowly back up the ramp. The RCMP are gone.

I nod. “Panic attack,” I whisper. I'm so dizzy.

He looks at me quizzically.

“They're gone,” he says finally. “But they'll be back.”

At first, I think he's talking about the
aliens.
Because if I did make this crop circle, then the aliens weren't real. But they were. They goddamn were. And I didn't make this crop circle because I still don't know how but I do remember something about a tractor and some boards and a map and I don't want to know.

“I don't want to know,” I say.

“They wouldn't charge you with much more than mischief anyway,” he says. “Not much of a crime to draw a picture in a field.”

“Get it together,” I mutter.

“What?” he says.

“I mean, yeah,” I say. “Okay. Whatever.”

“We 're going to have to do something,” he says, shaking his head. “What a goddamned mess.”

I can hear him rolling away, but I can't stand up and follow him. My legs are shaking too hard. It's probably five o'clock already.

I've missed the game.

This is part of the plan. This is the first part. But I can't remember the second part and I'm so hungry. I can't feel my hands.