For graduation weekend, Samuel’s parents decorated the yard with banners and laid out a Mexican taco buffet on the back porch. Uncle Rusty’s job was to set utensils beside the steel pans and arrange the soda so there were always cold cans available to Samuel’s friends.
Grandma Carol and Grandpa Joe had come early to spend time with their grandson. When their car pulled up, Samuel went over and walked them through the yard to where lawn chairs were unfolded.
When he was in elementary school, Samuel had loved seeing his Grandma Carol, but since he’d become a teenager, they had grown apart. She had been tyrannical with her daughter about Samuel playing cards. And he was never, ever to take a drink of liquor while she lived. The family was cursed in that way, she believed, with the sins of past generations just waiting for a door to reenter their lives and take over the present. And she’d hated it when he grew out his hair. A year ago Samuel had gone to her house for supper in ripped jeans. Grandma Carol left him standing at the door to call her daughter and say a vagrant had shown up on her property.
When his grandparents were seated comfortably, Samuel fixed two plates of food from the buffet and carried them over.
But this is your special day, said Grandpa Joe. We should be serving you, graduate.
Grandma Carol poked the refried beans on her plate with a plastic fork. What is this?
Mexican, Grandma.
She handed the plate back to Samuel. I never much liked beans. Ask Alfredia to make me a sandwich when you go in the house.
Excited to start college in the fall, big fella? asked Grandpa. What do you want to study?
Samuel set the uneaten plate of food down on the grass. Engineering maybe. Something where I can use my hands.
Grandpa Joe nudged his wife. She was holding a can of soda and some of it spilled out.
Ain’t I the same way, Carol?
Yes, you are, she said, pressing a napkin into her dress. First the paint factory, then the farm. You always used your hands for ever’thing.
I sure worked hard my whole life, said Grandpa Joe. But there wasn’t a day I didn’t get some joy from it.
Not too many machines back then for farming like there is now, right Grandpa?
Oh, it’s a different world now. A whole different ball game.
Then Grandma Carol reached out her hand. I’m proud of you, Samuel. I might not seem like I am. But that’s just my way. Now tell me, you gonna cut your hair for college?
At dusk, Alfredia made Samuel’s friends line up so she could take pictures. Then everyone drove away in small cars or borrowed trucks with graduation flags and banners flapping from their vehicles. Some of Samuel’s friends had scribbled seniors on the back windows in spray-snow. Others had written misty, the name of a student killed junior year by a drunk driver.
Samuel asked Uncle Rusty to be his passenger for the cruise up and down Main Street, that way he could see and feel the excitement of a graduation for himself. When they were belted into Samuel’s red Ford Mustang waiting to pull out of the driveway, Rusty began to rock back and forth in his seat.
I’m nervous about the cruise, Samuel.
How come?
I never bin in one.
It’s easy, Rusty, you just sit there, and from time to time scream something out the window.
Scream out the window? When?
Just whenever you feel like it.
What though? A word?
Anything you want, Rusty.
Can I curse?
How’s about Coca-Cola?
Ok. Just tell me when.
All over town there were signs and billboards congratulating the senior class. Every business had something colorful hung up in the window. For the dance, the high school teachers had turned the gym into an enchanted underwater kingdom. The students believed the hardest time of their lives had come to an end.
When the cruise was over, Samuel dropped Uncle Rusty back at home. After eating his supper, Salisbury steak, Cajun rice, and creamed corn, he went downstairs and stayed up late arranging his model cars on the floor of his little apartment. When people in the street revved their engines or screamed through the open windows of their vehicles, Rusty would look down and touch one of his cars. Then he would move them all forward an inch or two. It was a cruise for graduates, just like the one he had been in with Samuel, but with free Coca-Cola at the end for all the tiny, invisible people.
By the early hours of the morning it was all over.
Vehicles were back in their driveways. Houses muted by sleepers held steady against the passing night. At school all the lights had been switched off. The classrooms dark and empty but for neat rows of desks and the aroma of polish which hung in the air like childhood suspended. The sparkling underwater kingdom that had made everyone nervous and then confident was now just a place of trampled cups—a school gym hung with old bedsheets that someone had painted and then sprinkled with glitter.
Around three o’clock in the morning, Samuel stumbled in through the basement door and tripped over something in the darkness. There was vomit on his clothes and on his shoes. When the basement light flicked on, Samuel saw Uncle Rusty sitting upright in a wicker chair.
Congratulations graduate!
Jesus, Rusty, you scared the piss out of me. I’m drunk as hell.
You want a Coca-Cola, Samuel?
No I’m going to bed. Don’t tell Mom and Dad you seen me like this.
Okay, Rusty said, getting up and turning his sign over to closed.
A week after graduation, Samuel started work at an auto-parts store. His job was to look things up on an oil and coffee stained keyboard, then give estimates for parts. When there was no one in the shop, he would count the tires and batteries, then place orders from suppliers on the phone.
After a month, he got into the habit of an afternoon smoke break out back near the dumpster. On hot days he would chug down a beer if no one was watching. He kept some cans in his locker and they managed to stay cool from the air conditioning.
One afternoon, just as he was finishing a smoke, Samuel saw something move in the trees. He stubbed out his cigarette and crossed the parking lot quickly.
That you? he said, leaning into the tree line.
Yuh, Sam, it’s me.
But Eddie, you ain’t supposed to leave the shack.
I know it, but I’ve been dreamin’ of somethin’.
What?
Pizza.
You’d risk getting caught for a slice of pizza? I love you man.
I’m lonely out there in the shack, Samuel.
Well you ain’t supposed to come to town. The cops will find you. Just wait a couple more hours until five when I get off.
You want me to go back?
Samuel thought for a moment. My car is open, go lay down in the back seat. Crack the window so you don’t burn up.
But it’s electric.
Jesus, Samuel said, digging for the key in his pocket.
He had not seen Eddie for most of high school. After the assault charge sophomore year, he’d been transferred to a juvenile home in Bardstown, fifty miles away. After that he went to live with his mother in Frenchburg. When she left for California to meet a man she’d known in high school, Eddie stayed there alone, watching television and rehydrating packets of noodles he bought at different gas stations with forged checks.
One afternoon he came home and there was an eviction notice on the door. Eddie ripped it down quickly and tried to get inside, but the locks had been changed. All his stuff was in the house, so he went around the back and bust open his bedroom window.
A neighbor must have been watching, because soon the police came and Eddie had to jump the back fence to get away. A cop shouted at him to stop. But Eddie didn’t even turn around. He crossed the freeway and kept going until he was deep in swampy woodland. There he unzipped his leather jacket and collapsed on a fallen tree, panting and clammy with sweat.
After sleeping in a tractor shed for two nights and filling his pockets from the trash of a sandwich shop, Eddie hitchhiked west to where his best friend lived. His idea was to live in the woods until cold weather came. There was a shack he remembered past the old bmx track, near a river. He figured Samuel could teach him how to survive like his Cherokee ancestors. Then he would go up to Cincinnati where he had a friend from the youth home—or maybe down through Alabama and Florida like his father, on the run from the law.
When Samuel’s shift at the auto-parts store ended he walked to his car. Looked around for a moment, then got in.
I’m takin’ you back to the shack.
What about the pizza? Eddie said. He was stretched flat on the back seat. That’s why I come to town.
I thought you were lonely.
Yeah, that too, Eddie said, sitting up.
Stay down goddamnit. You’re a fugitive.
I am?
Samuel lit a cigarette and passed it back. That’s what you told me.
’Cause I was chased by the police, which means they found out about the checks.
But did they recognize you?
All my stuff was in the house. The landlord prob’ly give’um my name.
Well then, don’t leave the shack. Quit jerkin’ off and set the traps like I showed you.
Eddie shrugged. But rabbits are kinda sweet, Samuel. I feel bad for ’em. I’d rather eat coyote. Can you teach me how to catch a coyote?
You’re the coyote, Eddie, coming here tryin’ to sniff out pizza. You’re supposed to catch your food. What about the fishin’?
I went to the bend where you told me.
Catch anything?
Snappin’ turtle.
Seriously? No catfish?
I reckon I might need some bait for that.
Dumbass, you’re kiddin’ right?
Eddie laughed. I don’t wanna tear open some poor creature’s mouth when I can have pizza. How many cigarettes you got?
Samuel reached into his pocket and gave Eddie his box of Marlboro Reds.
You’re a lost cause, Eddie, at least when it comes to huntin’.
Although Alfredia didn’t know what was going on, Samuel had told his father about Eddie living wild in the shack beyond the old bmx track.
Does he have a gun, Samuel?
No.
Good, don’t give him one. He’ll be alright so long as he don’t have a gun. There’s nothing out there but skeeters and ticks.
Several nights a week, Samuel would park his car at the convenience store on the edge of town, then disappear into the woods. It was a half-hour walk to the shack. He had taught Eddie many things, including how to purify water and which plants he could pick and eat.
Some nights they’d just sit in the dirt and dead leaves, getting drunk on moonshine or whiskey. Beer was no good to them. It was too heavy to haul and they couldn’t drink it fast enough to get a decent buzz.
On a battery-powered stereo, they played Black Sabbath or Skid Row. When they got high, Santana or the Grateful Dead. Poker by firelight with small rocks or bird arrowheads Eddie found on the riverbank while not fishing.
Sometimes Eddie got up and danced in the flickering light of their fire. When Samuel was drunk enough he danced too. There was no one else for miles. Just muttering trees, water silvered by moonlight, animals tucked into envelopes of night.
On one of the last evenings in August, it was so hot their clothes stuck to their bodies. They had been drinking for several hours when Samuel got up and walked through some bushes in the direction of the river. Eddie followed.
The water was low because of the heat. They stripped down to their underwear and stepped over smooth rocks toward the knee-high water. Samuel knew a deep pool where they could lay down so that only their shoulders and faces would show.
Damn that feels good, don’t it? Samuel said as his body sank.
What about snappin’ turtles?
Samuel laughed. You worried about your pecker? I reckon I’m too drunk to give a shit.
Eddie looked back at the riverbank.
What you worried about now?
Just wish I’d brought the bottle.
Oh, hell yeah, Samuel said. A few gulps of bourbon and we’d be all set.
Want me to run back?
Skeeters would eat y’alive, Eddie. Let’s just cool off awhile.
Sure is hot ain’t it?
Samuel closed his eyes. Won’t be too many more days like this.
This time next week you’ll be in college, Samuel.
And you’ll be with your girl in Ohio.
Yeah. Jean.
Wish I could come with you, Eddie.
You can if you want.
Mom and Dad would kill me. They already paid for a semester of tuition and a room in the dorms.
You don’t want to go to Western?
Not really.
Serious?
Four more years of fuckin’ school? No way . . .
Eddie chuckled. You’ll get used to it.
I thought we’d be famous by now, goddamnit, playing poker, or rock and roll. Somethin’ cool, y’know?
But college will be fun. I heard the girls at Western are smokin’ hot.
Smokin’ crack more like.
Well, you’re welcome in Ohio with me and Jean anytime you want.
That’s the problem, Samuel said, moving his body in the water. There’s nothing I want. I hate school, I hate working in town, and I can’t join the service ’cause my eye.
Eddie stirred in the water. Goddamnit, I told you I was sorry.
Samuel laughed and rubbed a wet hand in his friend’s face. I’m just fuckin’ with ya dude.
From where I’m sitting you’ve got it made.
What the hell you talking about?
You can do anything you want. You’ve even got a car, man. You could drive to Mexico if you felt like it, suck down a tequila worm and keep on truckin’.
Maybe I will, said Samuel. Because there’s nothing here I want. Factories are shit. Jobs are shit. People suck. School is boring.
There’s nothin’ you want to do?
Get high and jerk off.
C’mon, I’m trying to help you, Eddie said, almost pleading with his friend. Samuel’s despair seemed to pull on him as though everything between them was shared.
I’m serious. All I wanna do is drink. I live for it.
What about survival shit?
What about it?
You could teach that to people.
Like who?
I don’t know, anybody. Me and Jean for one.
Samuel’s face did not move or show any expression.
See? Eddie said. It’s a good idea. We’ll be your first customers if you don’t mind an IOU.
Thanks buddy.
They sat without moving in the cool water. Night was settling around them.
So what do you want? Samuel asked his friend.
I can’t say.
You don’t know?
I know, but I’m shy about it.
Don’t be an asshole.
Eddie spoke hurriedly, as though there was danger in admitting the things he wanted. First off, I want a job that pays enough for me to get married, have a kid, and then take it to Disney World in Florida. After that I don’t care what happens.
You’re shittin’ me. Disney World?
And I wanna buy a real house, watch TV at night, fuckin’ fix shit, mow the yard, play with my kid, grill, watch sports, go to NASCAR, fuck my wife, get drunk, try and get in touch with my mother, tell her I’m sorry, and play poker with you once a week.
Then, out of nowhere, Eddie started to cry.
I ain’t never had a real home, Samuel.
C’mon Eddie, that’s bullshit. What about the shack?
Eddie jumped up and splashed water in his face. You’re a fuckin’ asshole, you know that?
They darted back to the camp over dry rocks, laughing, then pulled on their clothes. For the next few hours, they guzzled the rest of the liquor and by midnight were passed out as two heaps on the ground.
After one semester at Western, Samuel found he couldn’t go on and officially withdrew from the school. He moved back in with his mother and father, telling them he’d get his old job back at the auto-parts store. But after he’d left for college, someone had found the beer cans piled up in his locker.
Despite having dropped out of school, every Thursday night, Samuel returned to Bowling Green to drink and play cards at Chance’s house in the student village. He kept some overdue library books in the back seat of his red Mustang in case Public Safety stopped to ask why he was on the campus without a valid ID.
His mother thought these weekly trips were a sign he might return, and promised Samuel she’d call his professors and plead with them to give him another chance. He only had to say the word. But the idea of four more years of papers and homework was more than Samuel could bear. Instead he bought an acoustic guitar and a book that taught you how to play using numbers instead of notes. After learning some chords in his room, Samuel would sit out on the back porch with his uncle, brushing at the strings.
Once I get the hang of this, Rusty, I’m gonna write some ballads, then hitch out to Los Angeles and get a band together.
When’s that?
Before I turn twenty. That’s my goal.
But most nights, he just stayed up in his bedroom gulping shots of Jäger and smoking cigarettes with the stereo on. With liquor screaming through his veins, Samuel would stare at himself for hours in the mirror, marveling at how the drunker he got, the straighter his eye seemed to be. He read on an album sleeve that Jimi Hendrix slept in bed with his guitar, so Samuel did the same, but then one night turned over and put his elbow through the back of it.
Without anyone knowing, Samuel’s father put in an application for his son at Ford, filling out the paperwork on his breaks. Alfredia cried when her husband told her and Samuel about what he had done. She had always dreamed her son would work in an office, wear a necktie, and drink coffee out of a machine.
Waiting to be called for an interview at the auto plant in Louisville, Samuel was drinking more than ever in his parents’ basement. In the afternoons, when Uncle Rusty got home from Walmart, they would sit together on the back porch with the sense that life would always go on in the same way.
Samuel rarely left the house but for his Thursday night card game at Western.
Chance was captain of the softball team, so there were always girls at her parties. Everyone drank from plastic cups, listened to Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails, and talked about life in another state, where it was always warm and people were open-minded. Most of Chance’s guests used the playing cards for drinking games, but Samuel was there to gamble.
At first it was just coins, but after months of regular play, people began showing up with small rolls of bills. Samuel liked how drinkers would stand over the table and watch. Lifting bottles of beer to their mouths. Not speaking. It made him feel important to be looked at, long hair falling over his right eye so it was hard to tell straight away there was anything different.
But one night he got too drunk to play and hit a streak of bad luck.
Give it up, Chance said when his money ran out. Go smoke it off on the patio.
The other players waited for Samuel to leave the table, but he didn’t budge. There was a girl at the party he recognized from freshman biology. She had very straight hair, freckles, and a nose that turned up at the end. Samuel had seen her earlier in the hall, laughing into her Dixie cup. Chance said her name was Dorothy Sales. Earlier that night, before sitting down to play cards, Samuel had talked with her for an hour about everything from teachers to their favorite things in the cafeteria. He could speak freely in the dark hall with his face veiled by shadow.
Dorothy was from Lexington, where her mother lived in a big colonial house with a paddock to train horses. She told him about her parents’ vicious divorce and why she was changing her major from accounting to anthropology. She told Samuel to come back to Western, give college another go. Her soft, light voice made anything at all seem possible.
He was drinking Jäger from a bottle but put it down on a counter beside some empty cups when their conversation turned serious. He told her about his best friend. Their summer after high school. She listened and laughed at how Eddie had risked jail for pizza. But in the end, there was never even a warrant out for his arrest. It had all been for nothing. He told Dorothy about how Eddie and Jean were living together now that she was pregnant with his baby.
When Dorothy’s boyfriend arrived with a tray of vodka Jell-O shots in clear plastic cups, Samuel excused himself to play cards. He had known there was someone but hoped he would not come. Dorothy’s boyfriend was on the soccer team and from England. He was skinny but had a muscular body and hair just a bit longer than Samuel’s. He looked like someone Samuel could be friends with, but in his voice was a mocking tone, as though beneath the long hair and cool clothes, he loved only the things he could dominate.
Samuel watched him touch Dorothy as he played poker at the table in Chance’s kitchen. But then the liquor got to his eyes, and even the cards were hard to look at. One suit was the same as another.
When he’d run completely out of money, Samuel pulled out the key to his red Mustang and threw it on the table. Chance grabbed it. Samuel jumped up from his seat with a sudden, uncontrollable rage, and Chance slapped him hard, then immediately laughed. Samuel stood there touching his cheek. People were staring, excited by what had happened.
C’mon asshole, Chance said, being hit by a girl is still better than losing your car.
Samuel could hear people laughing, but their bodies were just a blur of colors. When he tried to speak, the words came out of his mouth in slow motion. Chance took his arm and helped him across the kitchen and into the hall.
Dor’thy, he said. Shewashere. I needtotellhersomething.
Dorothy is with her boyfriend, Samuel, so forget about that. You’re too cool for her anyway.
Whataboutyou?
Chance laughed, and put the car keys back in his pocket. Sleep it off in my room. And don’t do anything stupid like that again . . . please.
Samuel thought he could hear people talking then, behind Chance, saying things about his game, that he had lost everything and couldn’t play cards, and that he shouldn’t be on school grounds because he was a dropout.
Then Dorothy passed them in the hall. Samuel knew because of her perfume. He opened his eyes wide, forcing the muscles to focus. Her boyfriend was behind her. Drunk, his hands traveling greedily over her body like small, hungry animals.
C’mon Samuel, Chance said, opening her bedroom door and bundling him in. Stay here and sober up. And don’t pee on the comforter, use a cup if you have to.
Samuel flopped his head up and down like a cloth doll, but after she’d gone, found that he couldn’t lie down at all. His head was spinning and it took every ounce of his will to keep from throwing up. He held the image of Dorothy in his mind and imagined pulling her boyfriend away by force. He could drive them somewhere far away, like Daytona Beach, or Austin, Texas. He remembered Taylor Radley then, that day in the cafeteria at high school. The things he’d said about his eye and the names he’d called Uncle Rusty.
When he opened his eyes it was night. The music from the party was louder but the room very dark, as though everything around him had been sketched. He wondered how long he had been asleep, and if Dorothy was in the next room and if she needed him. His head hurt and he was dizzy, unable even to sit up. He rolled over and reached for a half-finished bottle of beer. It broke the dryness on his lips, but the sweet, warm bubbles brought the contents of his stomach surging into his mouth.
He sat there over the orange pool, his nose and throat still burning. Then he vomited again, this time with a growl. The door flung open and there was suddenly a crowd. Vomit had pooled on the carpet and dripped off the bed, some had even reached the shelf with Chance’s softball trophies and spiral bound notebooks.
Samuel stood shakily and stumbled toward the door. People parted without speaking. He had to get out and into the cool evening air where he could breathe again. By the time he reached his red Mustang, people were calling him back. He unlocked the door and got in. Then he heard clapping and in the mirror saw Chance running toward him in her striped athletic flip-flops. He slotted the key, turned hard, and rammed the shifter into drive, peeling out of the parking lot full of liquor and rage, determined to exit a world governed by shame and disappointment.
Once out of the city, he lowered the sun visor and took out a ceramic pipe. It was white and orange to resemble a cigarette. Packed inside was a pinch of marijuana. Fumbling with his lighter, he lit the pipe and held the smoke in his lungs for longer than usual.
Through habit he was able to go on for many miles toward the county where he had once been a child. A ghostly moon hung over the car in a sky too bright for stars.
He could barely see the road but followed as best he could a white strip, that from time to time would disappear. He did not know how fast he was going, or if he was even driving in the right direction. His thoughts bobbed, just out of reach. Only the present mattered, the shallow moment where memory had no place or power.
Soon his will to grasp thoughts began draining away. It was just a few lapses at first, then the world he knew—the sound of the engine, Dorothy holding her red cup, the cards he had been dealt, Chance’s hand on his face, the warm beer, the dark road under headlights—all plunged soundlessly into a deep tunnel of sleep.
The Mustang continued for a mile or so, seeming to steer itself, until his hands dropped slowly from the wheel the angle shifted, and the car drove another mile on the wrong side of the highway. When the road bent right, the red car continued straight. Then both tires hit dirt. Then rough grass. Then a sudden drop down an embankment toward a dense patch of trees.
For about forty or fifty yards, with Samuel’s Converse shoe still on the gas pedal, the Mustang rattled violently as tree limbs slashed and tore at the body.
If he had been awake Samuel would have remembered the sound of whipping, then a moment of weightlessness as he slipped down the soft mud of a riverbank and flipped over with a splash, the trunk disappearing into a deep pocket of water.
It was almost dawn when the river caused the car to shift.
The submerged back end, heavy now, was being dragged away from the bank. The creaking of metal and glug of empty spaces filling caused Samuel to open his eyes.
Although he’d hung in his seat belt for hours, swimming in and out of dreams, the terror that seized him upon waking made him shriek and flap his arms. Then he remembered and forced open his door, splashing into the cold river that was now filling the shell of his car. Like an animal awake only to fear, he waded through the cold liquid, then pulled himself onto the bank by grabbing handfuls of reeds. A moment later, the water boiled and the car disappeared into a deep channel.
Samuel gasped for air, still too cold and panicked to feel the cuts on his hands and face.
Around him the world was a deep, dense violet.
Then a terrible thought took hold.
He pulled himself up and squelched through the trees, tearing through bushes and low branches in the direction of the road. With his mind squeezed by fear, Samuel pushed his weak, freezing body up the steep grass slope to the road. Then he stood and let his gaze spill onto the tarmac at the other vehicle he feared was there, jagged and crushed, its occupants all around, torn open in pools of glass and blood.
But all Samuel could see was empty road, trees, and a sky dotted with distant birds.
He went a little ways down the road and was surprised to discover he was wearing only one shoe. A pink, wet sock made him stop and stare until he realized there was blood running down his leg from a deep gash. He was still too cold to feel any pain, and so stumbled back down the slope, following his tire tracks through the shallow woodland. When he got to the river, Samuel lay on his back in the wet mud, breathing hard, his entire body shaking with cold but brimming with a kind of mad joy at what he had not seen on the road, at what he had not done.
He thought of his mother then, imagined her face the moment she realized her son was dead.
He saw his father at the kitchen counter smoking cigarettes, feeling packed down into some chamber of grief, where lived the faces of those he had killed in war.
And Uncle Rusty in his little room, brushing the strings on Samuel’s broken guitar, listening for a music that seemed just one breath away.
When it was time to start walking, Samuel got up and stood at the water’s edge, gazing hard at the black smudge of his tires a few inches below the surface of the river. Samuel had not believed in God since he was little, but at that moment he felt in his body the presence of something, like a thick, unflexed muscle.
Then he looked all around because the trees were moving.
Not a single trunk was still. Everything was moving.
An invisible force was everywhere and made everything touch.