This is the Part Where You Laugh (18 page)

My mom played Bob Dylan CDs—only Bob Dylan CDs—the whole time we lived in the motels. She knew all of the words. She had every album, plus 13 live albums, the
Biograph
collection, and two of his greatest-hits tapes.

One time she said to me, “ ‘Like a Rolling Stone' is called the greatest song of all time, but what about ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown'? What about ‘Shelter from the Storm'? What about ‘To Ramona' or ‘One Too Many Mornings'?”

I liked all of those songs. All of them were good to me. But sad. I said, “Isn't ‘Hollis Brown' that one song where he kills his whole family?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but you understand where he's coming from, you know?”

She leaned down and started
Biograph
's third disc on the portable CD player that she kept on the nightstand by the bed. Each time we moved, the CD player and her disks were the first items she put in her oversize Walmart bag. Sometimes—when we were in a hurry—those were the only items we moved.

When I wake up, it's evening, and my back's stiffer than it was before I fell asleep. Shooting hoops probably wasn't the best idea.

I roll to my knees, get to a sitting position slowly, drink some water. With my good arm, I reach and feel my ribs with my fingertips. I can just touch the spot where they're cracked, and pushing on them sends little pulses of pain into my shoulder and neck.

I feel bad about how I talked to Natalie. I tear a blank page out of the back of one of the novels Creature left for me and write a note:

Natalie –

I'm sorry about earlier. It's nice of you to do something for the homeless and I shouldn't have acted like that. I don't know why I did.

Sorry,

Travis

I walk the lake trail through the blackberries, then around the north end to her house. Go up to her front door and knock.

A man opens the door. He's about 40 years old, curly haired, clean-shaven, wearing slacks and a white button-down shirt. He's holding an iPad. He says, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I'm Travis. I know Natalie. Is she here?”

“No. She went out with some kids from school.” The man looks down at his iPad and types something.

That doesn't make any sense. Natalie hasn't been to school yet. I say, “Some kids from school?”

“Soccer teammates.” He doesn't look up from his iPad. He says, “They left maybe an hour ago.”

He's staring at that screen, and I look at the top of his head. His hair is starting to gray and thin out. This has to be her stepdad, the one who waited to see her coming out of the shower naked. I get an impulse to punch him. With his head down, he wouldn't see it coming and I could probably knock him out with one shot.

He looks up. Says, “Do you need me to tell her something?”

I hold the note out. “Can I leave this for her?”

“Sure.” He takes it.

“Thanks,” I say. Turn and leave.

I'm asleep when Natalie comes to my tent and shakes it. “Hey, you.”

“Yeah?”

She unzips the door. Crawls in. Pulls my sleeping bag open and slides in against me. Kisses me, her mouth like a distillery. I was sleepy before that, but now I'm awake.

We kiss for a while—she kisses like she's drinking me. It feels so good but she smells like wood alcohol. I say, “How much did you drink tonight?”

“A little bit.” She giggles. She gets up on her knees and takes off her shirt. Puts my hands on her breasts, over the top of her bra. She straddles me. The insides of her thighs are hot.

She kisses my neck. Says, “Too bad I'm such a fucked-up girl.”

“You're not fucked up.”

Her hair brushes across my face. She kisses the other side of my neck. “I am. I'm fucked up in the head.” She breathes into my ear.

We're kissing again, and her whole body is on top of me, rubbing against me. She feels incredible in my sleeping bag like this. But I don't like to think of her as fucked up in the head.

I pull back. “What about the other day? What about when you stopped us at your house?”

She puts a finger to my lips. “Shhhh.” She giggles again. Sits up. Dances a little to music that isn't playing. Then she bends down, puts her mouth next to my ear, and says, “Don't you wanna fuck me?”

I do. I want to. But that's also what Maggie used to say when I was with her in her bedroom and she wouldn't lock the door, and I don't like that memory, how it makes me feel sort of off balance, like after you get off a spinning ride at the county fair.

I say, “Maybe we should just chill a little bit.”

Natalie sits up again, and this time she doesn't dance. The face she makes is like watching people go away. She starts to cry. No sound, just tears.

“Hey,” I say, “it's okay. It really is.”

“No, I'm just so…” She wipes her eyes with her hands. “I'm just…”

“Really, Natalie, it's okay. Come here.”

She wipes her eyes again, leans her head down, and rests it against my shoulder. She says, “This just…I don't even know.”

I hold her there, and she stays, her head on my shoulder, my arms around her. She breathes deep, in and out. Settles her body against me.

I'm wide awake, her long legs on either side of me, her breasts against my chest, all of her skin against my skin in that sleeping bag. I'm awake, staring at the ceiling of the tent.

She falls asleep like that, breathing against my neck, pressed into me. Asleep and breathing deep. I hold her amid the smells of liquor and shampoo and sweat.

In the morning, my ribs hurt. I shift to get more comfortable. Feel Natalie on top of me, my left arm asleep underneath her. I scooch some more, trying to find a position where my ribs don't hurt, but Natalie's heavy on top of me.

She moves her head and groans. Mumbles, “Shit.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I'm okay. I might've gotten hit by a train, though.”

“You might've had a little bit to drink last night.”

She rolls off of me, lying on her back, breathing deep, her chest rising and falling in her bright orange bra. She says, “I don't feel so good.”

I watch her breathing. The sun's risen, and the tent is already warm.

Natalie says, “Did we…”

“Did we what?”

“You know.” She turns toward me. Pinches the bridge of her nose. “Did we?”

“No,” I say. “We didn't. You were kind of sad last night.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, Travis. I was a mess.”

“It's okay.”

“No, it really isn't. I'm sorry I was like that, that I came here like that.” Natalie rubs her eyes with her fingertips. “I was really upset, and I went out with those girls, and I acted like an idiot. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. Really.”

“No. It's not,” she says. “I don't want to be like that anymore. That's what I meant a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be the party girl. I don't want to drink and all that. And, you know…other stuff.” She shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“It's wasn't all bad,” I say. “I like having you here now. I like that you slept in my tent, and you look really good in that bra.”

“You're sweet.” Natalie smiles, her eyes closed. She's still pinching the bridge of her nose. “I'd kiss you right now if my mouth didn't taste like a sewer system. I need some toothpaste and a 7UP. And in a minute, I'm gonna go home to die.”

Creature says, “The guidebook's almost done. It's good, man. Just the way I want it. I wrote this essay today called ‘How to Save a Sad Princess from a Russian Marriage: Seduction 101.' It might end up being the opening to the book.”

“Do you practice your seduction techniques on Jill?”

“Shut up,” Creature says. “You know how that went. And I'm trying to quit that. I am. But she seduces me.” He pretends to be Catholic and makes the sign of the cross. Kisses his fingertips after.

“So,” I say, “in this metaphor, in this intro to your guidebook, are you the Russian princess, then?”

Creature tilts his head back and laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe I am.”

I think of the last Russian princess pages he left for me.

Princess Irina Alexandrovna, I hear you were a shy and tongue-tied girl with deep blue eyes and dark hair. Nicknamed Baby Rina. Treated like a baby. But I don't want you to be a baby, or shy, anymore. Others will hold you like a baby, 120 pounds in their arms, but I'll take the bottle from their hands and shatter it against the wall.

You married a man who dressed in women's clothing, who—people say—scandalized society. So I know that you are daring. What would you not be willing to do? I've studied you. Asked that question. Studied you some more. And I know now that you wouldn't kill Rasputin, that you said no, that you are not a murderer. But what will you do with me? That is the real question.

On Saturday afternoons, I won't let you be Baby Rina. You'll be a woman. We'll fumble with each other's clothing while we dial the tsarina on the phone, laughing as we go back and forth, the phone on speaker, both of us trying to talk normally, but giggling to ourselves, and the tsarina saying over and over, “What's going on over there? What's so funny?” I'll cover your mouth with my hand and you'll bite my fingers hard enough to make me grit my teeth and wince.

I've seen the way you stare into the camera, turned sideways, a vast necklace like a map of guilt hanging past your chest, pulling you down. But you don't need to feel guilty about anything we do together. You'll be Rina, my Rina, and sometimes we'll push aside the blankie and pacifier and lie in your bed together, still, on our backs, holding hands, staring at the mobiles spinning above our heads like the planets in their motions around the sun.

We get on the bus by the Chevron Jackson station. Take two middle seats. Creature turns to me. “You ever wonder about your dad?”

“My dad? You know I never really knew him. I guess he was one of the guys at the motel, but I don't know which one.”

Creature spits on the floor of the bus. “I didn't know my dad either. But do you wonder sometimes?”

I do, but I don't like to admit it. For me, admitting it is somehow letting him win. So I say, “No, not too much.”

“But a little bit?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Me too. A little.”

I say, “We shouldn't waste our time thinking about them.”

“So fuck them?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Motherfuckers never loved us.”

“That's right.” Creature smiles. “I got that song right here.” He plugs in his earbuds and hands one to me.

I like watching basketball, but pickup is annoying if I can't play. It makes me feel twitchy, like a meth-head. I get too involved. I see every opportunity I can't exploit, people making the same mistakes over and over.

In the second game, the other team gives up a dunk to Creature on three straight possessions, all three on the same backdoor cut. On the third dunk, Creature does a couple of pull-ups on the rim afterward. Yells, “Feels good up here. I guess the city built me a pull-up bar.”

The gangbanger from Portland arrives after that. He warms up across the court, dribbling left and right, crossing through his legs, taking a few shots. I watch the snap of his wrist, how he drops two fingers on his release, arm straight, and I realize that he must've played somewhere real, not just on project courts. He's played a lot of basketball in his lifetime. He's been coached.

He comes over and stands next to a few guys I've never seen before. I realize that they all came together, maybe rolled down from Portland. Maybe they all played on the same junior college team or something. Three of them are wearing Trail Blazers jerseys, and I laugh to myself when I see that one is a Rudy Fernandez jersey because Fernandez couldn't guard a chair and had no mental game. He earned millions on a spot-up three because he was tall.

The game in front of us ends and Creature goes to get a drink of water. I walk over there. “You're in the flow, man.”

“Hoping to dominate all night, baby. 10 more dunks.” He winks at me. Picks up his ball and dribbles a crossover with his left shin, back to his right hand. Then he pinches his throwback jersey and pops it. “Old-school Rip City. Rasheed Wallace.”

I smile. Creature dribbles out onto the court and I yell, “Ball don't lie.”

The score hits 5-0 fast, four of the baskets to Creature. The gangbanger's guarding him, but there's no point. Creature's fired up, trash-talking, hits two floaters, a reverse layin, and a baseline fade from the right side. As he jogs back up the court, he yells, “Ball don't lie, baby.”

The guys on the sideline start chanting, “Creat! Creat! Creat! Creat!”

The gangbanger doesn't have any look on his face. He doesn't seem bothered, and I should notice that something's off but I don't. I'm not paying good enough attention. I'm right there, but I don't see what's about to happen.

Creature inbounds the ball on the opposite sideline and makes a cut up-court around the gangbanger, but the gangbanger holds him up on a pick. Creature trips as he goes by. The gangbanger catches him. Creature pushes forward and trips again, the gangbanger still holding him, Creature's mouth open.

Creature falls down, the wind knocked out of him. He doesn't scream. He doesn't make any sound. We're all watching him doubled over on the ground and a guy near me says, “Hold the ball. Let him get his breath back.”

“Yeah, sorry, man.”

The game stops. All of us on the sideline take a few steps forward.

“Creature?”

I don't see the gangbanger leave. Later, one of the players on Creature's team tells the police that the gangbanger walked underneath the far basket and kept on walking, over the dirt mound to the gap where the railroad tracks run through the park. The guys who came with the gangbanger went the other way and no one saw where they went either. If they all came together, they must've parked far away because no one saw them get in a car. No one saw much of anything. They all wore Trail Blazers jerseys, and that's what people saw. No one noticed any faces. No one knew any names. And by the time we realized what that guy did to Creature, they were gone.

Creature stays down. The point guard in the game, a kid from Willamette High School named Ray, he walks over and says, “You all right, Creat?”

Creature rolls onto his side, and that's when we all see the blood. Ray says, “Oh shit, man.”

Another player yells, “Call 911.”

Creature is on his side, holding his stomach with two hands. He says, “He got me three times.”

I crouch over him. “What?”

“Three times.”

Ray's next to me. Looks at Creature, then me. “I think that bitch stabbed him up.”

I can hear someone on a phone behind me. I say, “You're gonna be okay, Creat. The ambulance will be here soon.”

Creature's breathing quick little breaths in and out, holding his stomach. He closes his eyes.

“Stay awake, Creat. They'll be here real soon, man. You're gonna be all right.”

Ray takes off his Iverson jersey, rolls it up, and puts it under Creature's head. Another player says, “We should probably put pressure on his stomach, huh?”

Someone gets a sweatshirt from the sideline and brings it over. Hands it to me. But I don't know what to do. I'm sort of panicking. The court feels like it's spinning and I'm off balance. I just hold that sweatshirt in my hands and stare at the blood.

Ray takes the sweatshirt from me. Pushes Creature's hands aside. Says, “Let me press here, Creat.” He presses the sweatshirt against Creature's stomach, where the bleeding's coming from.

Creature groans.

“You're okay,” Ray says. “We've got you, man.”

It doesn't take long for the ambulance to get there because we're near the Delta Highway. The ambulance drives over the curb, down the grass, and onto the court. Paramedics jump out. The first one says, “What do we have?”

I say, “He got stabbed in the stomach.”

The paramedic slides in next to Ray. “Thanks,” he says, and takes the sweatshirt off. The other paramedic crouches down and cuts Creature's jersey up the front with his scissors. They take out gauze pads and start wiping. “Let's see…”

Two of the wounds look like thin lines, like the knife went straight in. The third is more jagged, turns at the bottom, a rip sideways, then the flesh torn back.

Ray says, “What the…”

“Relax,” the paramedic says. “We're fine here. Everything's just fine.” And to the other paramedic, “Do you have that Demerol shot?”

“Yes.” The second paramedic lays Creature's arm down flat on the cement, puts a rubber strip around his bicep, bringing up the veins in the forearm. He says to Creature, “I'm going to give you something that will help with the pain.” Then he pulls out a syringe and pops the cap off the needle. Guides it in with two fingers on his left hand. Pushes on the stopper and checks the level.

Creature doesn't say anything. His eyes are closed and he's breathing shallow.

Two police cars drive down the grass behind the far rim. Three officers and a K-9 hop out of the cars.

I look at Creature. The second paramedic is wrapping his abdomen. New gauze on the wounds. “Okay, let's go,” he says.

They're quick. The one who did the pain shot jogs to get the injury board and then he's back and they roll Creature onto his side, then onto the board. “Do you two want to help us lift him and get him on the gurney?”

Ray and I nod.

“Okay, then. One, two, three, lift.” We lift Creature, walk him over, and set the board on the gurney. The paramedic says, “Now let's slide this in.”

We do, and the paramedics hit the gurney against the back of the ambulance. It folds and slides in. The first paramedic gets in with Creature and the second paramedic puts his hands on the double doors. He says, “Are either of you family?”

“No.”

“Would you like to meet us at the hospital, then?”

“Okay,” I say.

“We'll be at RiverBend in 15 minutes. He's probably going into surgery immediately. Can you notify the family?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We've got to go.” He closes the doors and jogs to the driver's door and gets in. Starts the ambulance, flicks on the siren, and drives off.

“Damn,” Ray says.

“I know.”

He says, “Do you have a car?”

“No. Creature and I took the bus.”

“You want a ride?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

I'm sort of freaking out in my head, and I want to go, want to get to the hospital quick, but we aren't allowed to leave right away. The police officers call us over and we have to give statements, describe what we saw, try to describe the gangbanger and his friends. The police officer we're talking to is short and has a mustache, lifts a lot of weights, and I remember him right away. We're not that far from the motels where I used to live, and he had the night beat back then. I remember how he'd put his hands on his hips and smile at people, and I'd watch him sometimes and wonder what he was thinking. And I remember the time he arrested my mom and I hid in the bushes with the apartment key so he wouldn't arrest me too.

While he's talking to Ray, I'm thinking about how I spent three days alone in the apartment after that, eating Ritz crackers and dry ramen, sprinkling the flavor packs over the noodles, waiting for my mom to come back. I never went outside because I didn't know what would happen, and then she did come back after three days, and the first thing she said was “Pack. We've gotta be out of here in 15 minutes, before the manager comes down looking for rent.”

I'm thinking about all of that, and the police officer puts his hands on his hips and licks his mustache and he says to me, “Hey. Focus, kid. Are you high?”

“What?”

“We need your help here to figure out what's going on, so focus up. Got it?”

I nod.

“Okay. Can you describe the assailant for me? Did he have any tattoos we might be able to use as personal identification? Did he have any significant scars?”

I try to describe the gangbanger. Try to remember tattoos, but I didn't pay attention to that. I say, “I know he played ball somewhere. His defense is mediocre but he's solid on offense. Actually, he's better than solid. He's good. And I'd say he's six-foot-zero. Maybe an inch shorter than Creature?”

“Creature?” The police officer stops writing on his little pad. Looks up.

“Malik. The guy who stabbed him was an inch shorter than Malik. And he couldn't guard him.”