The Story of Beautiful Girl (22 page)

He pulled back onto the road, following Sam’s pointing stick. He had no idea where Sam wanted to go, but without a clue about his own route, Homan just drove, making the most of being in
charge of a vehicle. He found the turn signals. He figured out the cigarette lighter. He reached for the wipers and got a spray of water instead. A few miles later, Sam called Homan’s attention to another bag, this one filled with bubble gum. Sam popped in a piece and blew a huge bubble. Homan tried but didn’t know how, until Sam showed him. It took a few rounds, and soon they were blowing pink bubbles together.

Many miles later, Homan tried to teach Sam something, too. He set another candy bar on his lap. Then he pursed his fingers together like a beak, touched them to his mouth, made a chewing motion, and smacked his lips—his sign for candy. Sam looked curiously, so Homan did it again, pointing to the candy. Slowly, Sam’s face awakened. Homan moved his hand in a way that suggested Sam might try it. But Sam could get only so far before he shook his head.

The highway deposited them onto a main street. They cruised for a few blocks until Sam pointed to a parking space and Homan pulled the van in. They were in front of a serious-looking building with stone steps. It wasn’t a house—thank goodness. What was it?

Sam gestured toward the stone steps. Of course: He needed help getting inside, and Homan could give it, having gotten Man-Like-a-Tree up steps many times. Homan set up the portable ramp and wheeled Sam down. Then, with Sam turning himself backward, Homan hauled him up the steps and inside the big glass door.

They entered a large, cool room with a stone floor, high ceiling, and countertops at chest level. Though Homan had never been in one before, he knew they were in a bank.

They crossed the floor to a counter where a lady looked at Homan, and Homan nodded down to Sam. She leaned over, and he talked up to her. Then Sam gestured for Homan to get something from the purse chained to his belt. That’s where he kept the
van key, and now Homan removed a wallet and slim book and gave the lady both. She handed back a paper Sam signed—the pen, like the candy, between thumb and forefinger—and gave him an envelope of money.

Things were getting interesting.

Their next stop was a five-and-dime. Aisles sprawled tall before them like corn in a field, only instead of vegetation, there were sheets and dishes and aprons and detergent and anything you could need, packaged and folded, price tags dangling. They moved through, Sam pointing with his stick, Homan placing goods in a cart: Sterno, canteens, a pot, plates, a camping knife, a flashlight, lighters, egg-carton foam for Sam, a sleeping bag for Homan, blankets, pillows. So today wasn’t their final day together. Homan almost clapped his hands in applause.

Next was a used-clothing store. There they tried on shirts and jackets and shoes and pants, positioning themselves before a mirror, each commenting with his expression whether the selection flattered the wearer. Sam fancied leather jackets, T-shirts with long-haired guitarists, pajama bottoms with elastic waists. Homan, who’d never had his pick of clothes, couldn’t make up his mind, so he let Sam decide: a green-and-red-checked suit with a yellow button-up shirt. They also saw a cooler and an old lounge chair, and Sam nodded to get them, too.

Last stop was a grocer’s. Homan had seen stores like this only from curbs, and being in one put him in a daze. So Sam made the picks: bread and sliced meat and chips and pudding and pop and candy. Then Sam pointed to a rack of magazines. The ones he wanted were up high and had brown paper covering their fronts, and when Homan got them down, he peeked behind the paper. The covers all had pictures of busting-out-of-their-undies ladies. Homan gave Sam a look with one brow raised high. Sam made his face all angelic, and they laughed.

Then they drove a long time, the sky turning from day to night. Finally Sam gestured down a side road that wound away from the highway, until, far from the nearest house, they stopped and got out. It was chilly, and Homan built a fire and wrapped Sam in blankets. They ate, and it was delicious. Then afterward, an extraordinary thing happened. While they were savoring their dessert, Sam moved his hands up and down with a questioning look and pointed to the pudding. It was the first time Homan saw the gesture, but he knew Sam meant,
Show me your sign
. Astounded, he made the sign for pudding. Sam nodded, then made his question again:
gum, moon, fire
. Homan signed and signed and felt something uncurl inside him, like baby shoots rising from the soil.

He showed Sam tricks he’d worked out at the Snare. After taking the bottlecap from his pop, Homan made it disappear from one hand and appear in the other. He pulled the lace from one of his new shoes and tied a knot with one hand. Then Sam got his own idea—a fancy form of mischief. They took a clear plastic bag that a jacket had come in. They untwisted the wires from the price tags and threaded them through the bottom of the bag. Then they set the bottlecap in a cradle they made of the wires, poured in Sterno, and set it aflame. The plastic bag rose. As they laughed with amazement, it lifted higher and farther, glinting with stars, floating above the land. It was a happy ghost only they could see, an explorer who’d sail on forever.

Show me your sign,
Sam asked once it was out of their sight.

Homan almost replied with
bag
or
sky
. Instead he pointed to Sam and signed a word that, for so very long, he hadn’t let himself think.
Friend,
he signed
. My friend.

Now, months after they’d launched the ghost, half a day after they’d picked up the girl Thumbers, Homan steered the van into hills toward what he realized was a house.

Night had fallen. In the outdoor lighting that greeted the four of them, Homan could see vehicles parked on the grass between the driveway and the front walk. The house was long with a flat roof, and all the windows were lit, with people visible in every one. It was not the first party he’d ended up at with Sam, but it was the largest and most remote. They’d driven into mountains to get here, winding past fir trees, looking up at birds with wide wings.

The girls were giggly and full of life, and as soon as he’d parked, Beaded Circles jumped out of the van. Strawberry followed, then twirled herself around like a dancer. She began running toward the house, then turned. By then, Homan was out, and Beaded Circles—who’d offered far more assistance than the other—was helping him with the ramp. Strawberry pranced back, speaking, as Homan guided Sam down the ramp. When Sam reached the ground, Strawberry curtsied. Then he set his palms on the knobs on his wheels and pushed down the walkway to the house. She came right along, doing a slow, gliding dance beside him.

Homan turned to Beaded Circles, who was watching her friend and shaking her head. She looked up at him, her face friendly but not flirty, and tipped her head for them to follow.

The size of the crowd made entering the front door a chore. Homan and Beaded Circles shouldered their way into a room smelling of sweat, cigarettes, brew, cologne, and something like mildew. He could feel a thumping through his feet and knew music must be playing. Bodies in colorful clothes pressed close, dancing and conversing.

Being one of the tallest individuals in the room, Homan spotted Sam easily, with the crowd having parted so he could wheel through. Strawberry was moving alongside him, and Sam was talking to whomever turned his way, making his hand-tipping motion for wanting a drink. Homan moved through the crunch
of food nibblers and brew drinkers, and whenever he looked back, Beaded Circles was following. He was in a group, he thought as the four of them wound through the crowd. He was in a group with a handsome young man and two lovely ladies, and he felt himself smiling. They reached a side room, where they lined up, waiting for amber liquid, Sam asking Homan with a motion of his hands to get his mug from the cloth bag on the back of his chair. Although Homan did not take a cup for himself, no one seemed to mind. They simply acted as if he belonged.

The house was surely owned by a rich man. It had rust-colored tile floors and animal hides tacked to the walls. Long, poufy sofas sprawled across the big room, which also had a color TV and a record player with huge boxes beside it—the sources, Homan discovered, of the thumping. The kitchen had green counters, a see-through table, and two iceboxes. The hallways led to three bathrooms, each showier than the last, and four bedrooms, one with a bed that wiggled like a flask of water. Homan imagined walking through this house with Beautiful Girl beside him, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist, both of them with wide eyes.

Then his little group went out to a back porch that overlooked an oval-shaped pool. Immediately, Strawberry ran down to the blue water. A few people were inside, their drinks on the diving board, their feet moving back and forth as they held on to floating toys. Strawberry turned to the porch and swept her arm toward them to come join her. Sam shook his head once, making a quick no, and for a change didn’t have his ladies’ man smile. Strawberry made a pout, but he did not give in. Nor would he meet Homan’s eyes, and as he hastily rolled away, Homan wondered if diving into a pool was why Sam was in that chair.

He and Beaded Circles followed after Sam, along a terrace that hugged the rear and side of the house. Strawberry ran
up, flipping her hair and giggling, and just as Sam got back his smile, they came to a patio with vines growing up a crisscross fence. The vines gave off that mildewy smell Homan had noticed when they’d first come inside. The people on the patio saw Strawberry and waved, and then she and Sam went over.

Homan felt a touch on his arm. Beaded Circles was looking at him, discomfort in her eyes. She jerked her head toward the house.

Sam and Strawberry were talking to the others on the patio, and every face was full of pleasure.

Homan took a seat on a bench to Strawberry’s right. Beaded Circles sat near him, on a wicker chair, looking uncomfortable. Sam was holding court, the other people listening, heads in their hands. He was telling a story. Maybe a story about diving into a pool.

Homan felt a tap on his arm.

Strawberry was offering him a cigarette. At the Snare, the big shot smoked cigarettes from a holder. The guard with the dogs chewed tobacco. The skinny guard smoked a pipe. Homan, disgusted to think of being anything like them, waved the cigarette away.

Then Strawberry did something he hadn’t seen smokers do. She took the cigarette back, inhaled, and passed it to the person on her other side, who did the same. Homan understood, watching, that the cigarette, not the vines, was what gave the patio its odor. So it wasn’t tobacco. But if it were mildew, it wouldn’t be handed from person to person, everyone drawing in, even Sam, his fingers holding it the way he held candy and pens. Only Beaded Circles sent it along without raising it to her lips.

If Beautiful Girl were here, he wondered, would she want to stay on this patio with these smoking people? Or would she want to do what he’d seen other couples do as they’d moved along the terrace: go off together and sit in the distance, enjoying a party of two? He imagined them out on the grass, making his signs,
laughing—and then the realization that he might never again have the opportunity to retreat into their private haven, where life, for all its bitterness, always tasted sweet, hit him as if for the first time, along with that burn in his gut.

He wanted to ice the burn away. He wanted to get up and run to the edge of the party, just beyond the light, and find her there, waiting for him. He wanted to take her hand and bring it to his lips, then point up to the stars, their fingers clasped together, as he had at the Snare. But he was inside the light at this party, and she was far, far away. And he was here with people who were not ignoring or mocking or deceiving him, but acting as if he were one of them. If he could not be here with her, he might as well try to belong.

When the cigarette returned, he took it.

Ummm.
Warm and spicy and much nicer than he’d expected, it blew inside his mouth, down his throat, into his chest, through his belly, down his arms and legs, all the way to his fingers and toes. It felt as if his own breath were lifting him to a private place. It felt as if his own blood were vibrating him with new life.

Someone took the cigarette from his hands. He closed his eyes and felt as if he were the hot-air balloon, rising into the night. He was no longer a man who was trying to get home. He was a moment with the power of forever. He was a world that wanted no turning. He felt as glittery and vast as the stars.

He opened his eyes, and they were laughing. Not at him, but at how silly he must look, with so much pleasure on his face. And they were already handing him another. He sat back and inhaled, as deep as he could.

Mmmm,
he thought, not letting the cigarette go.
Mmmm. The Tingling.

Though the next morning, it was Sam who had changed.

Homan realized this when they dropped off Strawberry and
Beaded Circles at another house, this one in a dusty town of small houses. A dog nosed open the screen door and came running across the dirt yard to greet them, and as it licked Strawberry’s face, Homan wondered if they’d stay awhile. But after Sam made a distracted wave through the windshield and Homan and Beaded Circles shared a last look, Sam gestured for them to get moving.

Homan set his boot on the pedal and drove through the town to the highway. When he looked at Sam, the boy had his eyes fixed ahead. When he offered chocolate from the bag, Sam shook his head. When he saw Ride Thumbers ahead, Sam made a motion that said,
Keep going
.