He’s talking to them, he’s looking at them, he’s looking into their eyes, but they’re not looking at him. They’re looking at the rope, at the bike, at the sky, anywhere but into his face. “Hey! Hel-lo?” he yells, but they seem not to hear. He’s never seen their faces like this.
They tie the rope end to the bike, pull everything so tight the bike feels like an extra leg. Now they tilt the whole thing over and lower him slowly—he notices the care they take—to the ground. He’s looking up at them now. He’s resting on his left ear. He sees the world sideways. He’s speechless. He’s run out not only of words but of thoughts. He squints in the blinding sun. He’s lost his cap. LaJo fetches it, replaces it carefully on his head, pulls the brim down good and low, shading his eyes.
They stand above him. He has this weird feeling that he’s in a picture looking out at them. He feels a question coming, but it’s Dusty who speaks: “Sorry, Amigo.” The strange look is gone from Dusty’s face now. He seems a little scared, a little sad.
“I told you we shouldna done it,” says LaJo.
“Done what?” says Jack, which is not precisely the word he wants. “Why?”
“It’s just for now,” says Dusty finally, looking nowhere but deep into his eyes. “We’ll stay here with you the whole time, Amigo. Don’t worry. We’ll sleep with you the whole night. Some kinda trick’s going on. We’ll figure it out. Soon as you’re back to yourself—bam—we let you go.”
JACK
IS KEEPING HIS EYES SHUT. He doesn’t even want to see these nincompoops. He hears LaJo say, “Take his hankie off.”
And Dusty say, “What for?”
“Just do it.”
He feels Dusty’s hands untying the hankie from behind his neck. Now he’s too curious; he has to peek. Sideways, he sees LaJo’s hands fold the hankie. He feels one hand gently lift his head while the other does something. When he lays his head back down, the folded hankie is between himself and the ground. It feels better. A little. The shadow of his face spills into the dust.
He recloses his eyes, hears Dusty: “Not good enough.” Hears Dusty mount his bike and ride off. He opens his eyes. LaJo is sitting five feet away, elbows propped on knees, staring at him.
“Let me go,” he says.
LaJo puts on his downmouth, shakes his head.
“Why not?”
Shrug.
“You already said you shouldna done it. So undo it. Untie me.”
“No can do.”
“LJ. Amigo.”
LaJo winces.
“Amigo. Amigo. Amigo.”
LaJo gets up, walks off.
“Wait! Don’t go. You can’t leave me.”
LaJo stops, speaks to the Mountains. “I ain’t leaving you. Don’t worry.”
He knows this is true. Whatever crazy thing is going on, they will never leave him here alone. And thinks: Bad luck, to be stuck with LaJo. Dusty can be talked into anything.
“LaJo.”
“Huh?”
“What’s this about? Why are you doing this?”
LaJo’s shoulders go up, down.
“Don’t shrug at me, man. Tell me.”
LaJo turns, looks down at him. He can tell LaJo hates seeing him this way, hog-tied, helpless, his old best pal.
“Tell me.”
“Ask Dusty.”
“I’m asking you. You’re ticking me off now, man. I got rights. You can’t do this to me and not tell me why. Tell me or let me go—now.”
LaJo shrugs. “Simple. We keep you here, you can’t go nowhere.”
They know but they don’t know. They don’t understand. Heck, neither do I.
“You think I’m going somewhere.”
“Yeah.”
“OK, so where do you geniuses think I’m going?”
Shrug. “Away.”
Away. The answer he himself would have given. But where? “Away where?” he says, and sees how crazy this is becoming: he’s so starved for answers he’s trying to get them from LaJo.
Of course LaJo’s answer is a shrug.
“So you’re just gonna keep me here?” says Jack.
“For now.”
“Now.”
“Yeah.”
“And what comes after now?”
LaJo looks at him, looks away. He’s too bewildered to even shrug.
Jack ponders. A question comes. He’s afraid to ask it. But does: “LJ … what if I do go … away? What’re you afraid of? What do you think’s gonna happen then?”
He’s never seen LaJo flustered like this before. LaJo looks like he’s just kicked over a rock and out comes crawling this word he’s never seen before: “Then? … Then? …”
Jack feels pity, almost smiles, thinks: It’s in The Story, LJ. It’s called tomorrow.
Back to square one. “LaJo. Let me go.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Can’t.”
“Why?”
“Dusty.”
“Dusty?”
“Dusty said.”
“Since when do you do what Dusty says?”
“Since now.”
This is the true—and scary—measure of LaJo’s desperation: he’s taking orders from Dusty.
“So when are you gonna let me go? When Boss Dusty says?”
LaJo’s stare burns through his shirt to his bare stomach. “When you’re back to yourself.”
The Kid was not himself.
Jack knows that, despite his Amigos’ fears and gallant efforts, the current cannot be stopped. All day long Jack—not just his tattoo but Jack’s whole self, bit by bit—has been disappearing into The Story. He can’t imagine how things will happen from this moment on, but happen they will. The Story cannot be untold.
And yet … his fingernails rake the motherdust of Hokey Pokey … he is still here, it is still what it has always been: today.
“So I’m going away, huh?”
LaJo shrugs. “Not if we can help it.”
How he loves these guys.
He doesn’t want to do it, but he has to. He’s become The Story. “LaJo. Look at me.”
LaJo sends him one glance and turns his back. But not before Jack caught the terror in LaJo’s eyes. Confused as he is, he senses what Jack is going to say. He thinks words cannot penetrate a turned back. But they can, and Jack cannot stop them. He’s not quoting now, he’s saying: “I am going away.”
He waits for a reaction, but the shoulders are unmoved. He speaks now with great gentleness. “So … LaJo … c’mon. Give it up. Let me go. It’s time.”
Now he sees LaJo’s shoulders stiffen. And now LaJo is charging, screaming: “Shut up! Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” LaJo stomps around behind him and kicks him in the butt. “You’re gonna be OK! We’re all gonna be OK! We’re gonna wake up and do our Tarzan yells and ride our bikes and chase the herd and mess around and everything’s gonna be the way it’s s’pose to be! So shut up or I swear I’m gonna gag ya!”
If he wasn’t so shell-shocked, Jack might break out laughing. And he’s thinking about laughing anyway when he sees Dusty heading this way in the distant heatshimmer. Except now he sees it’s not just Dusty biking this way. Another black dot appears on the horizon. Someone is following Dusty.
AMIGOS, GIRL
IT’S THE GIRL.
Dumb Dusty of course doesn’t even know he’s being followed. He pulls up with a catcher’s mitt in one hand, beaming. “Your pillow, Amigo!” He removes the hankie and slips the mitt beneath Jack’s left ear. “Presto! You’ll sleep like a baby.”
He’s right, it feels great, but Jack is not about to admit it. “Where’d you get it?” he says.
“I borrowed it.” All proud of himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll give it back.”
It strikes Jack that they keep saying Don’t worry. It strikes him that for the second time today Dusty has become a thief for him. It strikes him that, despite his ridiculous predicament, he might say thank you. But he doesn’t. He says, ??
?Maybe you should borrow something from her.”
Dusty, slow as always, frowns in confusion. And practically electrifies when he hears the voice behind him: “What are you doing to him?”
LaJo chuckles.
“They’re holding me hostage,” says Jack.
The girl smirks. “Do tell.” She turns to LaJo. “Why?”
LaJo nods at Dusty. “Ask him.”
She doesn’t bother to ask again. Obviously she doesn’t care why. She’s just delighted to see him this way. She parks the yellow bike, once his Scramjet. She kneels before him. She checks the ropes, mutters to herself, “No joke.” The more she looks, the wider her grin gets. He hears tiny giggles. He has the impression this is the happiest moment of her life. She presses his nose with her fingertip, peeps: “Boop!”
And now she’s going through his pockets. She pulls out the yellow ribbon. “Did you really think you could steal this from me?” She sneers out the next word: “A-meee-go?” She turns her back on him so he can watch her tie the ribbon to her hair, repony the tail.
He figures she’s about to go, but she surprises him. She plops her butt in the dust and stares at him, her delight endless. Finally she looks up at Dusty. “So—why?”
Unlike Jack and LaJo, Dusty sometimes actually speaks to girls in a normal voice, but this girl has him practically peeing his pants. Dusty looks to LaJo, but LaJo offers only a scowl. “It’s hard to explain,” he croaks. His chin is quivering.
The girl sneers, “You’re not gonna cry on me, are ya?”
He lashes out: “Cry? Waddaya mean cry? I don’t cry.”
“So what’re you afraid of? Why did you do this to your A-meee-go?”
Dusty squeaks, “I ain’t afraida nothin. It’s hard to explain, that’s all.”
For a while everybody just blinks at each other. There’s no sound, not even the tootle of Hippodrome, which is too far away. Then, out of nowhere, LaJo speaks: “The Story.”
The girl stares. “Huh?”
“The Story. You know The Story, don’t you?”
The girl stands. “Yeah, I know The Story. So what’s that got to do with the price of beans?”
LaJo glances at Jack. “It’s happening to him.”
It’s paining Jack’s neck to keep the girl’s face in view, but he wants to see it now more than ever. Her face is a story. Now that he thinks of it, he’s always noticed that about her. It’s like she doesn’t even have to speak. If you want to know what she’s thinking or what she’s about to say, just read her face. It’s there.
And what he sees now is that she’s thinking about The Story. She’s hearing it again in her walnut shell. She’s paging through it, episode by episode, and so is he. The time The Kid rode his tricycle down Gorilla Hill and hit a rock and went flying over the handlebars. The time The Kid threw a stone at a groundhog and knocked it out and held it in his lap and cried until the groundhog came to. The time the kids of Hokey Pokey tricked him out to Thousand Puddles and torture-tickled and mudded him into a statue so he wouldn’t go away.
He thinks: At least they didn’t take me out to Thousand Puddles.
She looks at him, grins, touches him with her sneaker toe. “At least they didn’t turn you to dried mud.” She smirks. “So what’re you saying? The Kid’s come back?”
“It’s no joke!” Dusty cries.
LaJo faces the Plains, speaks as if to the tumbleweed: “One day when he woke up …”
The girl stares at LaJo, follows his gaze across the Plains, finds the rest of the words among the purple sage, whispers: “… the tattoo was gone.” She kneels before Jack. With great delicacy she takes the hem of his shirt between thumb and fingertip and slowly lifts it. What she sees makes her gasp. She releases the shirt. She falls back. The shadow of the brown bird races between them.
JUBILEE
GETS UP, DAZED. Walks. Walks. The open range yawns.
They cannot take their eyes from her.
They watch her walk in the sun, in the dust. The figure of her becomes smaller with each step. They see her stop. Stop and stand still: girl, tumbleweed, Great Plains, Mountains. She does not move and she does not move. What does she see? What does she hear? They see something, on the ground in front of her, a little something. A prairie dog. It has come up from its hole in the dust. It seems to be standing on its hind legs, facing her, not running. Perhaps it is unafraid because she is so still. Or perhaps there is something about her. As they watch the two of them in the distance, they begin to believe that the girl and the prairie dog are not just facing each other in silence. They begin to believe that one or perhaps both of them are speaking.
AMIGOS
NO ONE HAS SPOKEN since the girl walked off, until now. Suddenly Dusty won’t shut up. “What’re we—crazy? Look! She left her bike here—your bike, Jackaroo—and we ain’t even doin nothin about it. We’re a disgrace.” He kicks dust over the tires.
“So if it’s Jack’s,” says LaJo, “why are you kicking dirt all over it?”
Dusty’s hand goes to his mouth. “Oops.” He rushes to the bike, brushes off dirt with his hand. “Well, she ain’t getting it back. That dumb chick’s messin with the wrong dudes.” He wrenches off the pink handlegrips, flings them in the direction of the departed girl. “Mucho mistako, chico! Don’t mess with the Amigos!”
“Put ’em back,” says Jack, loving Dusty for fighting the unfightable.
Dusty turns, points. “No way, Jack.” He rips tufts of white fuzz from the seat cover. “We’re gonna paint him, Jack. Just like he was. Black and silver.” He takes one smart step back. He salutes. “Scramjet rules!”
“It’s hers now,” says Jack. He’s feeling weary, tired of talking about the same thing, tired of being in the same place. He needs to move.
Dusty turns on him. “Don’t say that! The bike is yours and you ain’t goin nowhere.”
Jack lays his head on the mitt, closes his eyes. Soon he hears LaJo, the smirk in his voice: “You’re grass now, Dustman. Here comes the lawn mower.”
JACK
EYES THE GIRL’S RETURN. He feels a fillip of fear for Dusty, for he knows how ornery this girl can be. But she merely glances at the desecrated bike and keeps coming, straight to him. She kneels. She tilts her head to align her eyes with his. She stares. She says, “You really going away?”
He nods against the mitt, smells the sweet leather, the scent of his life.
“Is that why the tattoo is gone?”
“I guess so.”
“When did it happen?”
“Today. All day.”
“When are you going?
“Tonight … I think.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. It’s like”—he stares up into her eyes—“I’m on a bike I can’t steer, can’t stop.”
“So …,” she says, “where to?”
He hangs full-weight from her eyes. “Beats me.”
Somewhere in the space between them their eyes meet and something happens. He doesn’t know what it is. He only knows it’s never happened before and it’s not a bad thing.
She doesn’t speak. She reaches out. Someone yips, “Hey—” but that’s all. She unties him from the bike. She tosses the rope over her shoulder. It lands at LaJo’s feet. She stands. He stands. He rubs his wrists, flexes his legs, straightens his cap.
She turns and goes to the bike. She makes no attempt to retrieve the pink handlegrips. She walks the bike away. He rights his borrowed nag and follows. No one speaks.
POCKETS
THEIR FOOTFALLS are the only sounds upon the land. Shadows spill from sage and tumbleweed.
“You can have your bike back,” she says.
“It’s yours now,” he says.
“I didn’t steal it.”
“I know.”
“Really.”
“I know.”
“I thought about it a million times.”
He grins. “I know.”
“I came close once.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I found it parked by the sliding board. I was going to take it, but I chickened out. But I did do something.”
“What?”
“I spit on the seat. Probably the biggest slobber-bomb I ever dropped. It was so big some of it even spilled over. Remember?”
He nods, remembering. “Yeah. Shoulda known that was you.”
She grins, looks at him. “What did you think? Were you mad?”
He grins. “Not at first.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t see it.” He looks at her. “Then I sat in it.”
They howl.
“I hated you,” she says.
“You hated all boys,” he says.
“Yeah. But I hated you the most.”
He feels chesty, as if a general has just pinned a medal on him. But also a little sad. “I hated you too.”
They walk on, out of Great Plains, into Hippodrome’s tootle range. War rages ahead of them. Tank trikes. Pinecone grenades. Pow! Pow! Pow! Golden guns spout red streamers of caps, burp the sweet burn of powpowder.
Jack wades in. Jubilee starts to follow, now stays, sensing this is his. A grenade bounces off Jack’s head. He picks it up, tosses it over his shoulder. Everyone falls dead. Standing tall amid the carnage, Jack reaches into his pocket, says, “OK, who wants something?”
Bodies spring up, surround him.
“What, Jack, what?”
He pulls out his prize marble, his master mib. He won it as a Gappergum and has been winning with it ever since. He holds it up between two fingers, but even in the full light of the sun the murky blue-gray swirl obscures the center, a mystery he has been sorely tempted to solve by cracking the mib but could never bring himself to do. He is content to believe he holds in his hand, encapsulated, the very birth moment of the universe.
A dozen tongues wag, two dozen hands reach. “Me, Jack, me!”
He plunks the marble into the nearest hand. The kid flies off shrieking.