Hey, said Thebes. How did you know that was air conditioner fluid?
I tasted it, I said.
Logan looked at me and frowned. That might have seemed like a really good idea at the time, he said, but maybe you should have taken a minute or even possibly two minutes to think about what you were doing.
I told you I wasn’t qualified to be talking about that stuff, I said. Logan smiled and it was like…I don’t know what it was like. A hurricane. Childbirth. Heroin. It rocked my world for a few seconds.
Hey, said Thebes, I read something about miners drinking their own urine in order to—
I read that too, said Logan.
Well, then, said Thebes, you know to mix it with tree bark, right? So the uric acid is killed? If you get stuck in an underground mine that’s what you have to do.
There aren’t any trees down there, genius, said Logan.
Well, Stephen Hawking, said Thebes, experienced miners bring their own bark just in case.
And then an animal jumped in front of our van and we hit its rear end and went skittering off the road, spun around and landed backwards in the ditch, but right side up.
What the fuck just happened? said Logan.
We hit a deer, said Thebes. I think it was a deer. Hattie, you killed it!
Are you serious? said Logan.
Oh my god, said Thebes. I can’t believe we hit a deer. Why didn’t you stop?
I didn’t see it at all, I said. It was just there.
Oh my god, said Thebes.
Holy fuck, said Logan.
Are you guys okay? I said.
They said yeah and then we got out of the van and wandered down the highway a ways to see if the deer was still alive but it was lying in the middle of the road and there was blood everywhere and it looked dead. Its eyes were open. I picked up a small stone from the shoulder and slid it gently across the pavement. It hit the deer but the deer didn’t blink or move. Thebes started to cry, she said she was now impeccably sad, and Logan put his arm around her shoulder.
We have to get him out of the middle of the road, I said.
Thebes said she couldn’t touch him. Why did he do that? she said. I mean, like, why?
They just do, I told her. They don’t get traffic.
Logan and I walked over to the deer and grabbed its hind legs and dragged it to the side of the road. Thebes didn’t want to leave the deer, but I told her I’d call someone from the next gas station, some wildlife officer, and they’d take the deer away. There was blood and clumps of fur on the front bumper of the van and a big dent. Logan tried to get the blood off by throwing water on it from the cooler but it didn’t really work, it just turned streaky. Then when I tried to start the van the ignition fell right out of the steering column and I had to use a screwdriver to get it going. Logan picked up the ignition for a closer look and I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.
Are you okay? I asked him.
Yeah, totally, he said. You?
Well, I’m a little freaked out, I said. We just hit a deer.
Thebes couldn’t stop crying.
Hey, T., said Logan, do you wanna play Hangman? You can start.
They played for a long time and Logan played by all of Thebes’s goofy rules and she finally stopped crying and cheered up and Logan climbed back over into the front seat.
Logan was writing or drawing something. Is that a sketchbook? I asked him.
No, he said. It was a black, hardcover notebook with blank, unlined pages. Some of the pages had sketches on them. It looks exactly like a sketchbook, I said.
Mmm, he said.
It is a sketchbook, said Thebes. He doesn’t want people to know about it though.
You mean like your song lyrics? I asked her.
Shut up! she said, and dropped back.
Logan read something out loud, something his art teacher had written about one of his sketches. Logan, she’d written, this is an assignment tailor-made for your particular strengths…weird but fascinating creatures/shapes…very dreamlike.
On the outside of his notebook he had a bunch of strange drawings and odd numbers. He read those to me too.
380 off the dribble
220 off the dribble
80 2 dribble
80 crossover
200 free throws
Ideaclass="underline" 30 ft., 300 off the dribble, 500 3s, 150 mid-range
Ball handling
Weight, running, jumping
20 wind sprints over 90 minutes
BALL MOVEMENT
Take it to the cup
Fuck the People
Darkleaf
What was that last part? I asked him.
My music, he said.
They say we should wear goggles, said Thebes. The wind is that strong today. She was reading the newspaper. Then she was quiet for a minute. What do you guys think about setting yourself on fire as a means of protest? she asked. Quiet for another minute. We didn’t bother to answer.
Okay, Hattie, she said, you’re a Gemini and that’s an air sign, which means you live more in your head than in your heart and you should try to remember and understand that all of humanity is interconnected and you should also try to be at one with the world and know that if you hurt somebody you’re also hurting yourself.
Got it, I said, although I thought it would be easier to light myself on fire.
I pulled into a gas station and told the guy behind the counter that I’d hit a deer about ten miles back and it was lying dead on the side of the road and asked if he could call someone to have it taken away. He said yeah and asked me if there was any damage to the vehicle and I said yeah, but just a big dent, and the ignition fell out.
The ignition fell out? he said.
Yeah, but I can start it with a screwdriver, I said.
He said well, okay, fine, but if the impact had loosened up the ignition so it fell out then maybe other things would start falling off too, and I said, okay, thanks, we’ll watch out for them, and we left.
So, we’re in a boat, said Logan. This was a dream he had had a few nights ago. And, yeah, he said, we’re just in it floating around in the ocean, and then Grandpa comes up and he’s smiling, this big, huge smile, and, you know, we’re all hauling him into the boat and he says, Man, am I happy to see you guys! He had a moustache, said Logan.
No, he didn’t have a moustache, I said. Logan hadn’t ever actually seen his grandpa.
Well, in my dream he did, he said.
I wanted Logan to keep talking about his dreams and his sketchbook or anything else at all.
Read me this, I said. I handed him his CD case. I wanted to hear his voice so I could remember its exact tone and timbre when I was back in Paris hunting down my boyfriend. So I’d be able to hear Logan saying to me, Jesus, Hat, give it up, man, fuck. But then when he actually did talk it was a question that took me by surprise.
Hey, he said, were you around when Mom first went off the deep end?
No, I said.
No? he said. Well, where were you?
Well, I mean, yeah, I said. I mean, I guess so.
And? he said.
She’d gone out late one evening in February to have a nap under a tree in the field behind the giant Discount Everything store a few blocks from our house. It was so cold our pipes froze that night. It was my job to thaw them out. I had to wrap them up in blankets and then sit on the floor using a hair dryer to blow hot air on them. A barrel fuse blew that night too, and I had to rummage around in the dark with a flashlight.
I remember peering over the fuse box saying, stove, fridge, dryer, stove, fridge, dryer, over and over, trying to figure it out. It was a record cold night, minus fifty-something with a deadly wind chill. Our house was shaking, none of our doors would close, and empty pizza boxes were flying past our windows. It was the kind of night where if you froze to death they’d have had to set up a tent around your body with giant industrial heaters in it, just to be able to peel you off the ground. Even the cool kids were walking backwards down the street to keep the wind from killing them. It was snowing horizontally and the streets all over the city were buckling and collapsing and swallowing up traffic.