I drove to Liberty Park, just south of downtown, and within minutes, Henry had his kite out and was urging LeBron James into the air.
“He’s done this before,” I said in surprise.
“Not in forever. I can’t remember the last time, actually,” Millie replied. “Is he doing it?”
“Listen,” I said. “Can you hear it?” I listened with her, straining for a sound that would connect her to the visual. Then the kite dipped, caught the wind again, and lifted, making a soft, wop wop in the air, like laundry on a clothes line, flapping in the breeze.
“I hear it!”
“That’s Henry’s kite. He’s a natural.”
“Will you help me get mine in the air? I could take off running, but that might be dangerous. I don’t want to run head first into the pond. There is a pond, isn’t there?”
“Just run away from the sound of the ducks.”
Before long I had our kites airborne, and LeBron James, Elmo, and Millie’s bright pink triangle were dipping and darting, enlivening the pale afternoon sky.
“Give it some slack, Millie!” I hollered as her kite veered downward, tethered too close to the ground. “Let it fly!”
Millie squealed, panicked, but immediately followed my instructions, and her kite corrected itself, catching a draft and soaring higher.
“I can feel it climbing!” she shouted, ebullient. Henry wasn’t the only one who was a natural. He was running back and forth, the kite streaming behind him, his hair falling in his eyes, his cheeks ruddy in the tepid February sunshine.
“If you could go anywhere, just holding onto the tail of that kite, where would it be?” I asked Millie, my eyes on the sky, thinking about the places I’d been. “Or is traveling kind of a scary thought?”
“No. It’s not scary. Just unrealistic. There are lots of places I’d like to go even though I wouldn’t be able to see them. I could still press my hands against the walls and soak them in. Buildings soak up history, you know. Rocks do too. Anything that’s been around a while.” Amelie paused as if waiting for me to snicker or argue. But my best friend can see dead people. I have no doubt that there is a lot we don’t understand. And I can accept that. It’s easier than trying to figure it all out.
“It’s true!” Millie added, even though I hadn’t argued at all. “My mom took me and Henry to the Alamo in San Antonio when I was thirteen. Apparently there are signs all around the Alamo that say ‘Don’t touch the building,’ and it’s cordoned off by rope so you can’t do anything but look. Which is pretty unfair if you ask me. I look with my hands! So my mom got special permission. She was always finding a way to help me experience as much as I could, even if it meant finding someone to let us break the rules. I stood right next to the Alamo and laid my hands and face on the walls and just listened.”
“And what did you hear?” I asked.
“I didn’t hear anything. But I felt something. It’s hard to describe. But it felt like a vibration, almost. The way your legs feel when you’re waiting for a train to go by. That sensation . . . you know what I mean?”
“I know exactly,” I said.
“Whenever we traveled, my mom would make sure we stayed in hotels that had some history. In San Antonio, there’s a hotel called the Fairmount. Built in 1906. We walked in that place and I felt like I was on the Titanic. I felt my way all over that hotel. Remember how you said that the world was more beautiful, once upon a time?”
“Yeah.” I’d felt stupid when I said it, but now I was glad I had.
“It’s so true. There’s still original furniture in the Fairmount, and the whole place just feels . . . ripe.” She laughed at her word choice. “Ripe is the only word that fits. Like it’s bursting at the seams with history and time and energy. There’s so much beneath the surface, but no one can see it. Not just me. No one. And because no one else can see it either, it makes me feel privileged that at least I can feel it.”
“I know that hotel. They relocated it in 1985. Actually picked the hotel up and moved it down the street. My grandma was one of those rich old ladies who was big on preserving the historical sites. A lot of the wealthy families are. She was on the committee to save it. That was before I was born, but there was a big gala at the Fairmount to mark its one hundred year anniversary that we all attended. It’s a cool place.”
“I loved it.” Millie sighed. “Where else have you been?”
“I’ve been all over the world. I’ve seen more in twenty-six years than most people see in a lifetime. A lot more.”
“Did your parents take you?” she asked.
“No.”
She waited for me to elaborate, and I weighed what I should share. It wasn’t a happy story. But I realized, much to my astonishment, that I wanted to tell her.
“I had never thought about traveling. It wasn’t even my dream. I didn’t really have any dreams. At eighteen, I was a lost, rich kid with no idea who I was or how to navigate the rest of my life.”
Millie didn’t respond. Considering she couldn’t give a guy eye-contact, she was the best listener I’d ever met. She reminded me a little of Moses, the way she just soaked it all in and didn’t miss anything. The difference was, Moses didn’t hang on my every word. Millie did. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t want her hanging on the wrong ones, hanging her hopes on something I hadn’t meant, and holding me accountable for everything that came out of my mouth. I spoke the truth with a layer of bullshit thrown in for entertainment value. It was the Texas in me, part of the charm. But I couldn’t be that way with Millie. I had to say what I meant, always. I didn’t know how I knew it to be true. But it was. And I felt the responsibility in my gut.
“When I was sixteen, my sister, Molly, disappeared. She was kind of a party-girl. Same as I was. We were wild. But we were close. And we always looked out for each other. She was a couple years older than I was, but I was the man, you know? She up and disappeared on the Fourth of July and we didn’t know what happened to her. Not for two years. And I blamed myself. I looked for her, but I couldn’t find her. So I drowned my frustration with alcohol. Dad kept a well-stocked bar in the house, and I helped myself often. But by the time I was eighteen years old, the alcohol couldn’t touch the itch beneath my skin or the restlessness in my blood. I’d lost my sister and I was strangely jealous that she couldn’t be found.” I considered how far to go, and ended up leaving a bunch of stuff out, not because I was ashamed, but because it was just too damn heavy for kite flying.
“And then I met Moses. Moses had nothing, but Moses knew everything. He painted away his pain. That was how he coped. And he let me hang around. He let me in. He helped me see. Neither of us had anywhere to go. But I had money. My parents were relieved to see me leave. They were tired. Grief-stricken. And they handed me a credit card and washed their hands of me.”
“And you just went to Europe?” Her voice awe-struck.
“We went everywhere. We were barely legal. Kids, really. But he could paint. I could bullshit my way out of almost anything, so he painted his way across the world and I made sure people bought his stuff instead of throwing us in jail for vandalism. He wanted to see all the famous art. The Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, the architecture, the Wall of China. That was his dream. So that’s what we did. And when I couldn’t talk us out of trouble, we fought our way out of trouble. That was my goal, see. I wanted to get in a fist fight with someone from every country. I got my ass kicked by a big Swede. He now works at my gym, and I make it my mission to kick his ass every day.”
Millie’s laughter pealed out like a song, and I examined my words to make sure I’d told the truth at every turn. Satisfied that my account had been spot-on, I relaxed and laughed with her.
“Axel?” She ventured a guess as to the Swede’s identity.
“Axel,” I confirmed. “I met Andy in Ireland and Paulo in Brazil. When I opened the gym I tracked them all down and asked them to come work with me.”
“So you collected people and Moses
collected art?”
“Something like that.”
“How long did you travel?”
“We kept traveling until we found ourselves.”
“What does that mean?”
“Moses told me once that you can’t escape yourself. You can run, hide, or die. But wherever you go, there you’ll be. I was pretty empty for a long time. It took a while to figure out what fills me up.”
“I understand that. Darkness is very empty. And I’m always alone in the dark.”
Without thinking, I reached over and took her free hand, the gesture so instinctual that I was holding her hand before I realized what I was doing. I forgot about Elmo, about kite tails and excess string. And she must have too. For a minute we were wrapped up in past places and painful memories. She gripped my hand, but didn’t continue speaking, obviously waiting for me to finish my story.
“We kicked around for more than five years. Just moving from one place to the next. We ended up here a few years ago and it finally felt like it was time to stay put. This was where we started our journey. And this is where it ended.”
“And you found yourself?”
“I’m always looking. But there just isn’t that much to me. I’m kind of a shallow fella.”
She giggled, and I slid my hand from hers, worried that I’d given the wrong impression. She let me go easily, but something flickered across her pretty face, and I wondered if I was being completely honest after all.
Henry came bellowing across the grass, trying to warn me, but it was too late. Millie must have felt the lack of tension in her string because she squeaked and tried to recover, pulling away from me, winding and unwinding, hoping to get lucky and save the situation.
“Mayday!” Henry yelled. Seconds later the kites fell in a tangled pile to the earth.
My inattention to the task at hand caught up with me, and the little red monster above our heads got tangled up in Millie’s tail and attacked from the air, swan diving downward, taking the pink kite down with him. I’d gotten too close, I’d gotten careless, and it cost us both.
(End of Cassette)
Moses
“WE WERE IN Ireland. Dublin,” I said, when Millie made no move to change cassettes. “Tag can sniff out a fight. It’s his secret power.” That and his ability to get laid. I kept the last bit to myself. She wouldn’t appreciate that ability, though I had a feeling Millie knew exactly who Tag was, warts and all. But maybe because she wasn’t distracted by the way other women looked at him, she seemed to be able to really see Tag, and it was interesting to me that she insisted on calling him by his given name instead of the name he used to charm his way through life.
“But this time it was an actual boxing match between two fighters that Tag had heard of and wanted to see fight. Andy Gorman and Tommy Boyle. Tag had actually had a run-in with Andy, believe it or not, when I painted a portrait for Andy’s mother. Andy’s father had passed away the year before, and his mom was pretty desperate to make a connection. Andy thought I was a charlatan—that’s what he called me—and he ran us off. Tag got mouthy in my defense, as usual, and Andy broke his nose. So when Tag told me he wanted to see this match, I wasn’t very excited about the idea.
“Andy won, though. And he won big. He knocked Boyle out in the first round. Apparently people weren’t very happy about that. Andy was supposed to win, but he was supposed to draw it out, keep it close. He owed some people some money. And when he didn’t do as he was told, they cornered him in an alley behind the venue and beat him up. Guess who went running right into the middle of the fight?”
Millie smiled, but it wobbled on the edges.
“He just had a nose for it. Someone was fighting, and Tag was always getting in the thick of it. Tag went running in there as if Andy were his best friend and not the guy who broke his nose a couple of weeks before. We had to leave Ireland. That’s how stupid it was. That’s how dangerous the people were that Tag had pissed off. But Tag doesn’t think about stuff like that. It isn’t important to him. He just saw five against one and went in, fists flying. He and Andy Gorman were fighting back to back, and I had to wade in there too. I was afraid Tag was going to get himself killed.
“Long story short? Andy Gorman and every other guy in that gym owes Tag. Everyone is loyal to him, but it’s only because he was loyal first, because he stuck his neck out for them. Not because they asked, but because they needed help. It kind of became Tag’s purpose. I saw him change, saw him decide to live, to fight, to embrace life. I watched him find himself.”
“And now he’s lost again,” Millie whispered.
“Something happened,” I argued.
“He’s saying goodbye, Moses. It feels like he’s writing his memoirs or something.”
Millie was right. It felt like a suicide note.
I FOUND SOMEONE to work at the bar part-time, and I started training Vince to manage. I still kept an eye out for Morg, but maybe he’d found a better situation. He baffled me. But it was his choice. I sent his check to the address I had on file and kept juggling. I trained for my fight four or five hours a day and was at the bar almost every night. And I kept walking Millie home.
She never wanted to drive. Neither did I. The nights were cold, but not too cold, and I looked forward to having her grab my arm, walk by my side, and talk to me. I made her laugh, and she made me laugh. She impressed me, and I didn’t have to try and impress her.
I liked her so much.
It was a weird sensation, genuinely liking a girl that much and not trying to get in her pants. I know that’s crude, but there’s a reason men are wired the way we are. There’s a reason women are put together the way they are. It’s just biology. Basic biology. But I wasn’t trying to sleep with Millie. I had no designs on Millie. I just liked her. And I pushed the rest of it away. I firmly ignored biology for the first time in my life.
I was relaxed with her. And I found myself continually telling her things that I didn’t comfortably share with anyone. One night, I pulled on a vest to walk her home instead of my jacket, and my white dress sleeves were rolled to my elbows, which was how I always tended bar. For the very first time, my forearms were bare to the touch for the walk home, and when Millie wrapped her hand around my arm she felt my scar.
What’s this, David?” Her fingertips traced the long puckered line on my right forearm that extended from my wrist to my elbow.
“There was a time when I didn’t want to live very bad,” I confessed easily. “It was a long time ago. I love myself now. Don’t worry.” I meant for her to laugh, but she didn’t.
“You cut yourself?” Her voice sounded sad. Not accusing. Just sad.
“Yeah. I did.”
“Was it hard?”
Her question surprised me. Most people asked why. They didn’t ask if hurting yourself was hard.
“Living was harder,” I said.
She didn’t fill the silence with words, and I found myself needing to explain. Not impress. Just explain.
“The first time I tried to kill myself, I held a gun to my head and counted backwards from seventeen; one count for every year of my life. My mother walked in when I reached five. The guns were locked away and the combination on the safe changed. So I resorted to a pocket-knife. It was sharp and shiny. Clean. And I wasn’t afraid. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid at all.”
Her fingers traced the line as we walked, smoothing, as if she could rub the scar away. So I told her the rest.
“But fate intervened again, and they found me before it was too late. They kept finding me, saving me. But I couldn’t save my sister, see. And I felt helpless. Helpless and hopeless. After a week in the hospital I was transferred to a psych ward. My mother cried, my dad was stone-faced. They’d lost one child, and there I was, trying to take myself away too. They told me I was selfish. And I was. But I didn’t know how to be any different. They gave me everything and everything was never enough. And that is terrifying. Emptiness is terrifying.”
> “That’s where you met Moses.” She remembered the conversation in the park.
“Yep. You’ll have to meet him sometime. His wife Georgia too. They are my favorite people in the whole world.”
“I’d like that.”
“They have horses. Georgia actually works with kids kind of like Henry. Equine therapy, she calls it. Henry would probably eat it up.” I found myself warming to the idea. Henry made everything easier. Henry made it okay to spend time with Millie beyond walking her home. He was a perfect buffer between biology and friendship.
Before I knew it, I’d set a date and I was bringing Millie to meet my best friend. And Henry too. Can’t forget Henry.
MOSES AND GEORGIA had leveled his grandmother’s old house and in its shoes built a sprawling, two-story with a huge wrap around porch and a private side entrance so Moses could paint and conduct his business without exposing his family or his clients to one another. It held no resemblance to the sad, little house with a tragic past that I’d first seen eighteen months before when Moses and I rolled into town looking for answers and trailing ghosts. Lots of ghosts. It hadn’t taken me long before I’d figured out I didn’t want to stay in Levan. It hadn’t taken Moses long to decide he wasn’t leaving. I wouldn’t have stayed if I were him. I would have taken Georgia and found a place to start over. But sometimes history can be magnetic, and Moses and Georgia, their story, their history, was there in that town.
And Moses wasn’t the only one who had a business to maintain. Georgia broke and trained horses and was an equine therapist, using her animals to connect with children and adults in a way that helped their bodies and their spirits. The land she’d grown up on butted up to Moses’s grandmother’s land, the land she’d left him, and I supposed it made a lot of sense to make it work. Moses always told me you can’t escape yourself. I guess I just felt protective of my friend. I wanted him to be safe and happy and accepted, and I worried that the people in that small, Utah town had already written him off. But what did I know? My friend was happy. So I kept my fears to myself.