The John Green Collection (46 page)

“The snake probably didn’t care that she was ugly,” Colin pointed out. “They have very poor eyesight.”

Starnes look over at Lindsey Lee Wells. “Your friend here is a regular fountain of knowledge.”

“He sure God is,” she said, drawling.

“What was I talking about?” asked Starnes.

“Gutshot. Boxing. The old days,” Colin answered quickly.

“Right, yes, well. It was a town for trouble back then before the factory brought in families. Just a rough sharecropper town. My mama told me the
town didn’t have no name. But then they started bringing in boxers. Boys from all over the country would come here and they’d fight for five or ten dollars, winner take all, and make extra money betting on themselves. But to get around the prizefighting laws, they had this rule: you couldn’t hit below the belt or above the shoulders. Gutshot boxing. The town became famous for it, and that’s what we got called.”

Colin wiped the back of his sweaty palm against his sweaty forehead, spreading the moisture around rather than truly dealing with it, and took several gulps of tea.

“Mary and I got married in 1944,” Starnes went on, “when I was supposed to go off to the war.” And Colin thought that Starnes might benefit from a lesson from his eleventh-grade English teacher Mr. Holtsclaw, who taught them about
transitions.
Colin couldn’t tell a story to save his life, admittedly, but at least he’d
heard
of transitions. Still, it was fun to listen to Starnes. “Anyway, I didn’t go off to the war because I shot off two of my toes because I’m a coward. I’m an old man so I can tell you that frankly. I wasn’t afraid of war, you know. War never scared me. I just didn’t want to go all the way-hell over there to fight one. I had a reputation after that—I pretended I shot myself by accident, but everyone knew. I never did lose that reputation, but now most everyone is dead, and y’all ain’t got any stories from them, so you have to believe mine by default: They were cowards, too. Everyone is.

“But we got married and oh Lord we sure loved each other. Always did till the very end. She never liked me much, but she sure loved me, if you know what I’m saying.” Colin glanced at Hassan, who glanced back, his eyes wide in horror. They both feared they knew
exactly
what Starnes was saying. “She died in 1997. Heart attack. She was nothing but good and I was nothing but bad, but then she died, and I didn’t.”

He showed them pictures then; they crowded around his La-Z-Boy as his wrinkled hands flipped slowly through a photo album thick with memories. The oldest pictures were faded and yellowing, and Colin thought about how even in pictures of their youth, old people look old. He watched as the pictures moved to a crisp black-and-white and then to the bland color of Polaroids, watched as children were born and then grew up, as hair fell out and was replaced by wrinkles. And all the while Starnes and Mary stayed in the pictures together, from their wedding to their fiftieth anniversary.
I will have that
, Colin thought.
I will have it. I will. With Katherine. But I won’t be only that
, he resolved.
I will leave behind something more than one photo album where I always look old.

Later, Colin knew their six hours were up when Lindsey Lee Wells stood up and said, “Well we gotta get going, Starnes.”

“All right,” he said. “Good to have you. And Lindsey, you just look perfect.”

“You need an air conditioner, bud? It’s awful hot in here, and Hollis could get you one no problem,” Lindsey said.

“I get by all right. She’s done good by me.” Starnes stood up and walked them to the door. Colin shook the old man’s shaky hand.

•  •  •

In the Hearse Colin drove as fast as the roads would permit, with the windows down to try to cool off.

Hassan said, “I think I just lost sixty pounds in sweat.”

“Then you could stand to stay out in the heat a while longer,” Lindsey said. “That was the easiest hundred dollars anyone ever made in Gutshot. Hey, no, don’t turn. I need you to take me to the store.”

“So we can all hang out with The Other Colin in the sweet, sweet air-conditioning?”

Lindsey shook her head. “Uh-uh. You get to drop me off and then you make yourselves scarce till you pick me up in two hours and then we tell Hollis that we spent the afternoon running around the country.”

“Well,” said Hassan, sounding somewhat annoyed, “we will certainly miss your abundant charm and bubbly personality.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just kidding around. Anyway, I like you,
Hassan; it’s the Smartypants I find unbearable.” Colin glanced through the rearview into the backseat. She was smiling at him with her lips closed. He knew she was kidding, or thought she was, but he still felt anger rise up in his throat, and he knew the hurt was betrayed in his eyes. “Jesus, Singleton, I’m just kidding.”

“You’ve got to remember that usually when he hears a girl call him unbearable, it’s the last words of a Katherine,” explained Hassan, talking like Colin wasn’t behind the wheel. “He’s pretty touchy on the whole subject of his being unbearable.”

“Dingleberries,” said Colin.

“Gotcha.”

•  •  •

After dropping off Lindsey, they ended up back at Hardee’s, eating a mid-afternoon snack of double cheeseburgers and fries limp with the weight of their own grease. Colin read from Byron for the first thirty minutes while Hassan repeatedly sighed and said, “God, you’re boring,” until finally Colin put the book down.

They still had an hour to kill when the meal was over. Standing in the parking lot with the heat radiating in waves off the pavement, Hassan wiped his forehead and said, “I think we should stop by the Gutshot General Store.”

They pulled into the store’s dirt parking lot fifty minutes early and strode up the staircase and into a blast of air-conditioning. Behind the counter, Lindsey Lee Wells was sitting on what appeared to be a boy, who had an arm draped across her lap.

“Hello,” said Colin. TOC peeked out from behind Lindsey. He nodded at Colin without smiling or blinking or in any way moving any of the muscles in his strong, round face.

“What’s up,” said TOC.

“Not much,” said Colin.

“You’re a lucky couple a guys, to get to live with Lindsey.” Lindsey let loose a chirpy laugh and contorted herself to kiss her boyfriend sweetly on the neck. “Oh, we’ll live together one day,” she said.

“If you touch her,” TOC said out of the blue, “I’ll kill you.”

“That’s a little clickéd,” Hassan called out from the candy aisle. “And if we
touch
her? I mean, what if I brush up against her as we walk through a hallway?”

TOC glowered. “Well,” he said, “this has been fun. But Lindsey and I were in the middle of a very important talk, so if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

To defuse the tension, Colin said, “Oh, sorry. Yeah, we’ll just, uh, take a walk or something.”

“Here,” Lindsey said, and tossed them a set of keys. “Colin’s truck has AC.”

“Don’t take that truck out of park,” TOC said gruffly.

As they walked out the door, Colin heard TOC ask Lindsey, “Who’s the genius—the fat one or the skinny one?” But he didn’t hang around to hear Lindsey’s response. As they walked across the dirt parking lot toward TOC’s SUV, Hassan said, “God, he’s built like a brick shithouse, isn’t he? Listen, The Fat One’s gonna take a piss in the field.”

“The Skinny One will wait for The Fat One in the truck,” Colin said. Colin climbed in, turned the key, and put the AC on full-blast, although at first it only pumped out hot air.

Hassan opened the passenger door and immediately started talking. “She’s so bubbly around him, but then around us she’s just one of the guys, just slinging shit, and then around Starnes she was all y’allin’ it up and talking Southern.”

“Do you have a crush on her or something?” asked Colin suddenly.

“No. I was just thinking aloud. For the last time, I’m not interested in dating a girl I’m not gonna marry. Dating Lindsey would be
haram.
⁵⁰
Also, she’s got a big nose. I don’t go in for noses.”

“Well, not to start an argument, but you do all kinds of shit that is
haram.
”

Hassan nodded. “Yeah, but the
haram
shit I do is, like, having a dog. It’s not like smoking crack or talking behind people’s backs or stealing or lying to my mom or fugging girls.”

“Moral relativism,” Colin said.

“No it’s not. I don’t think God gives a shit if we have a dog or if a woman wears shorts. I think He gives a shit about whether you’re a good person.”

The words “good person” made Colin immediately think about Katherine XIX. She would be leaving Chicago soon for a camp in Wisconsin where she worked every summer as a counselor. The camp was for kids with physical disabilities. They taught them how to ride horses. She was such a good person, and he missed her all over his body. He missed her like crazycakes.
⁵¹
But he felt, in the throbbing missing piece inside him, that she didn’t long for him like that. She was probably relieved. If she were thinking of him, she’d call.
Unless
. . .

“I think I’m going to call her.”

“That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Hassan replied immediately. “The. Worst. Idea. Ever.”

“No, it’s not, because what if she’s just waiting for me to call like I’m waiting for her to call?”

“Right, but you’re the Dumpee. Dumpees don’t call. You know that,
kafir.
Dumpees must never, never call. There’s no exception to that rule. None. Never call. Never. You can’t call.” Colin reached into his pocket. “Don’t do it, dude. You’re pulling the pin on a grenade. You’re covered in gasoline and the phone is a lit match.”

Colin flipped open the phone. “Dingleberries,” he said.

Hassan threw up his hands. “You can’t dingleberry that! That’s a flagrant misuse of the dingleberry! I dingleberry you calling her!”

Colin closed the phone and mulled it over. Pensive, he bit at the inside of his thumb. “Okay,” he said, sliding the phone back into his pocket. “I won’t.”

Hassan sighed heavily. “That was a close one. Thank goodness for the Double Reverse Dingleberry.”

They sat in silence for a moment and then Colin said, “I want to go home.”

“To Chicago?”

“No, to Lindsey’s. But we still have forty minutes to kill.”

Hassan stared out through the windshield and nodded his head slowly. After a few quiet moments, he said, “Okay. Okay. Fat kid asthma attack. It’s an oldie, but it’s a goodie.”

“What?”

Hassan rolled his eyes. “What, are you deaf? Fat kid asthma attack. It’s the oldest trick in the whole fat kid book. Just follow my lead.”

They got out of the car and Hassan started wheezing very loudly. His every inhalation sounded like the cry of a dying duck.
HEEEEEENH
; exhale;
HEEEENH
; exhale. He placed his hand against his chest, and ran into the Gutshot General Store.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lindsey asked Colin. Before he could answer, Hassan started talking amid his wheezes.

“
HEEEEENH.
Asthma.
HEEEENH.
Attack.
HEEEENH.
Bad one.
HEEEENH.
”

“Oh shit,” said Lindsey. She hopped off TOC’s lap, turned around, grabbed her first-aid box, and started looking through it in vain for asthma meds. The Other Colin sat silently on the stool, no doubt displeased by the interruption.

“He’ll be fine,” Colin said. “It happens. I just need to get him home to his inhaler.”

“Hollis doesn’t like it when people show up when she’s working,” Lindsey said.

“Well, she’ll make an exception,” said Colin.

Hassan kept up his wheezing for the drive home, and as he raced up the Pink Mansion’s stairs toward his room. Colin sat with Lindsey in the living room. They could both hear Hollis in the kitchen saying, “This is an American product. It’s made with American labor. That’s a selling point. That’s a marketable, promotable facet of our product. People buy American. I’ve got a study here . . .” Colin had wondered whether maybe Hollis just watched the Home Shopping Network all day and left other people to run the business, but obviously she
did
work.

Hollis came out then and the first thing she said was, “Please don’t interrupt me during working hours,” and then Lindsey said Hassan had an asthma attack and forgot his inhaler, and then Hollis took off running up the stairs. Colin followed quickly, shouting, “I hope you’re okay, Hassan!” so that Hassan would know she was coming, and when they all got to his room, he was lying peacefully on the bed.

“Sorry I forgot my inhaler,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

•  •  •

They ate a dinner of hamburgers and steamed asparagus in the Wells family backyard. Colin’s backyard in Chicago measured twelve feet by ten feet; this backyard went on for football fields. To their left, a hill rose to its peak, the forest broken up only by a few rocky outcroppings. To their right, a well-kept lawn stretched on down the hill toward a soybean field (he’d found out from Starnes that they were soybeans). As the sun set behind them, a citronella candle burned in a bucket in the center of the table to ward off mosquitoes. Colin liked how Gutshot felt wide open and endless.

When he finished eating, Colin’s mind returned to Katherine XIX. He glanced at his phone to see if she’d called and noticed it was time to call his parents.

For whatever reason, Colin could never get reception in his house in the third-largest city in America but had all five bars in Gutshot, Tennessee. His father picked up.

“I’m still in the same town as yesterday. Gutshot, Tennessee,” Colin began. “I’m staying with a woman named Hollis Wells.”

“Thank you for calling on time. Should that name be familiar to me?” asked his dad.

“No, but she’s listed in the phone book. I checked. She owns a factory here. I think we’re going to stay here a few days,” Colin said, fibbing. “Inexplicably, Hassan loves it here, and also we seem to have gotten jobs.”

“You can’t just
stay with strangers
, Colin.”