As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth Read online

  “How old is your grandfather?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Ry. “Seventy, something like that.”

  “Is he pretty healthy?” asked Del.

  “He plays tennis,” said Ry. “He skis. And water-skis.”

  “How about mentally?” asked Del. “Do you think he would ever wander off? Is he like Carl?”

  “No,” said Ry. “He’s not like that. He’s still all there. He’s probably the smartest person in our family.”

  So, if he wasn’t answering the phone, or returning Ry’s calls, why wasn’t he? It had to be something just weird and simple. As weird and as simple as how just saying the words “our family” made Ry wonder if he still had one. Where was everyone?

  He was glad there was Del. Otherwise, he might be living under that bridge in New Pêche. In a cardboard box.

  “You can imagine fifty million things,” said Del, as if he had heard Ry’s thoughts. “But only one thing happened. And most of the time, it’s just a mix-up, not something bad. So you might as well not worry. Just go find out.”

  “I don’t think I can help wondering,” said Ry.

  “That’s why we’re going there,” said Del.

  The waitress arrived with their food. It looked great. Like food for the gods.

  “I didn’t order a pickle,” Del said to the waitress.

  “Oh, we always put a pickle on,” she said pleasantly.

  “I don’t like pickles,” said Del. “I really don’t even want it on the same plate as my food.”

  “Jeez,” said Ry. “It’s just a pickle. Here, I’ll take it.”

  The waitress lifted her eyebrows and moved on.

  “I can still smell it,” said Del. “I really dislike the smell of vinegar.” He said “vinegar” the same way he had said “shoddy.” The same way you might say “cannibal.” Ry thought he was overreacting a little.

  Still, there was a stack of clean plates on a counter nearby, so he went and got one and brought it back. He transferred Del’s sandwich and fries to the clean plate, saying, “My hands are clean. I just washed them.” He set the used plate on the counter. Sitting back down, he said, “What about my pickle? Will it ruin your lunch if I have a pickle?”

  “I don’t know why you would want to,” Del said. “But it’s your life.”

  Ry ate both pickle spears. They were tart and crisp and succulent. The soft white bread was homemade. The bacon melted and crunched in his mouth. The tomato was ripe and tasty. The lettuce was just lettuce, but it did what it was supposed to do; it was green. The milkshake, chocolate, was cold and thick, yet not completely impossible to suck up through the straw. And there were fries. Fresh, warm, tender-crisp, and salty.

  Ry was suffused with a sense of well-being.

  Del said, “Let’s just drive straight through.”

  “What?” said Ry. Because he had been immersed in eating. By the time he finished saying it, he knew what Del had said; it had registered. Del opened the road atlas he had brought in with him. He flipped back and forth between pages marked with forefingers and thumbs. He had pulled out reading glasses, and they slipped down his beakish nose, making him appear older. Almost old. Or maybe that was because his cap was off, and with his head tilted down his scalp shone from beneath thinning hair.

  “Might as well,” he said. “See how far we can get, anyway. I think we can make it by morning. Then you can yell at your grandfather for not answering the phone.”

  He looked up at Ry. His grin was impish. Now he seemed younger again.

  “Wasn’t there stuff you wanted to do on the way?” asked Ry. “Errands?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait,” said Del. “I can do it on my way back. Let’s just go.”

  So they headed out across the rest of North Dakota. There was a lot of that left.

  Not to mention all that Minnesota.

  Not to mention all that Wisconsin.

  DOGS

  ROAD TALK

  With lightning flashing in the distance, Ry said how he wanted to go home but that it wasn’t exactly like home, just a house with their stuff in it.

  “The dogs will make it feel better,” he said. “And my grandfather. Assuming he’s there.”

  After riding along for another half hour, he said, “I have my learner’s permit. I could help drive if you want. I think.”

  For a while, their conversation was instructional. Del telling Ry what to do. For a while, Ry forgot about his predicament. He was absorbed in operating the Willys. It was a little different than a Focus wagon, though he had already started to learn how to drive with a stick. This stick came out of the dashboard. It was called Three on a Tree.

  Del didn’t like the kind of steering where you only had to turn the steering wheel a little, so he had changed the gear ratio and exchanged the original steering wheel for one from some other old kind of car. It was huge. It was like steering a ship down the road. The road itself was straight. Once he got used to the driving, Ry’s mind was able to meander around other topics at the same time.

  “So, do you really have errands between Montana and Wisconsin?” he asked Del. Because looking around, he couldn’t think what anyone would do here. No offense to North Dakota, but it was pretty subtle so far. There were a lot of green fields, with ponds and waterfowl, sometimes a bright yellow field. There were wide-open spaces and a lonely kind of green monotonous peacefulness that he knew his mother would really get off on. If she could go for a hike with the dogs, and if she could find a good cup of coffee. But he was still young and preferred some stimulation. Other human beings, for example. Other young human beings. Maybe groups of them, though even one or two would be a start.

  “Not errands, exactly,” said Del. “Just people I like to visit when I can.”

  “Where do they live?” asked Ry.

  “I have a couple of friends in St. Paul,” said Del. “And a friend down in San Juan that I might drop in on.”

  “San Juan?” said Ry. “In Puerto Rico? I wouldn’t call that ‘on the way.’”

  “Just depends on how you look at it,” said Del. “Once you leave home, anything can be on the way.”

  He told Ry about how, a long time ago, after he got out of the army, he decided to go around the world. He hitchhiked a lot, and washed dishes. Bought or found old bicycles, fixed them up, rode them around, and then left them behind for someone else. He bought a car once. An army surplus ambulance. In Australia. And then he decided to drive around the perimeter. Of Australia.

  Del was not a talkative guy. Ry had to keep saying, “And then what happened?” and “Where did you go after that?”

  “How did you decide where to go next?” asked Ry. “Did you have a sort of a plan?”

  “My plan was to go from east to west,” said Del. “But we would hear about someplace that sounded interesting, and we would go there.”

  “So you weren’t by yourself?” asked Ry.

  “Sometimes I was,” said Del. “But you meet people.”

  Somewhere in the Australia part of the story, Del and Ry traded back and Del was driving again. It turned into a bedtime story in India, while some guy was trying to sell fake emeralds to Del and a friend he had met up with. Ry woke up in his sleeping bag in the back of the Jeep. He didn’t remember how he had gotten there.

  The vibration of the truck bed, the muffled rumble of the engine, the feel of the road bumping beneath told him they were still moving. Through the night. Somewhere in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Getting closer to the mystery he was trying to think of as home.

  Del was talking, up in the front. As if he were talking to someone. And it came to Ry that this had happened before. He remembered, then, half waking on Del’s couch, peering through barely parted eyelids as Del argued with himself, and how unsettled it made him feel. He tried to pay attention now, because he wasn’t quite as tired this time. It was hard to hear. Rain pelted the roof, and the wipers were working.

  “I’ve never been there,” he heard D
el say. “But I’ve heard it’s pretty.”

  Maybe he was just talking to stay awake.

  “Do you do much rafting?” Del asked.

  Ry waited to hear how he would answer himself. Then was startled to hear a different voice, right behind his head, saying, “Oh, yeah, now and then.”

  “I’m more into biking,” the voice said. It was a different person. Del must have picked up a hitchhiker. Ry lay still, listening. He hoped the guy wasn’t going to stay with them for the whole trip, like the ones Del picked up in Australia. He wanted to ride in the front. Although, theoretically, Ry’s part in the trip was supposed to be done by morning anyway.

  I guess it doesn’t really matter, he said to himself as his eyes closed. He rose almost to consciousness again when he felt the brakes grabbing hold, heard the door open, the hitchhiker saying, “Thanks,” Del saying, “Good luck.” The door banged shut, then they were moving again. The rain was still pelting.

  “It’s not just a pickle,” Del said into the rainy night. “It’s the principle. I didn’t order a pickle. I didn’t want a pickle. So why do they bring me a pickle?”

  Half an hour later, he added, “I shouldn’t have to list all the things I don’t want them to bring me.”

  Ry didn’t hear him. He was dreaming about climbing the face of a cliff wearing flip-flops. Sometimes the flip-flops changed into Pumas. Or waterlogged hiking boots. When he had almost reached the top, he lost his footing (and his hand-ing) and went falling through the air. The funny thing was, he fell slowly. He could see everything on the cliffside with clarity. It all seemed very beautiful: A bird watching him from its hollow. A stubborn flower growing out of a minute fissure. The rock itself, in layers of changing color.

  He couldn’t grab onto anything, but he didn’t seem to be worried. He was pretty sure his dad was waiting at the bottom with the car.

  “Was it fun?” his dad would say, looking up from his magazine.

  “In a way,” Ry would answer. “I mean, it wasn’t life threatening.”

  Everything was still, except for the light, peaceful snoring. The snoring emanated from the sleeping lump of Del, curling away into a question mark. Ry sat up and pushed the sleeping bag from his sweaty legs. It was already warm in their sauna, and stuffy. He pushed the flowered curtains apart a few inches and looked outside to see where they were.

  He saw a parking lot. Empty, except for them, so it was still early. Beyond the parking lot was a small wasteland, and then what looked like a dealership for manufactured homes. Remnants of clouds hung low, but offered no clues about what location they overhung.

  Trying to be quiet, Ry crawled over into the front seat and let himself out. As muggy as it was, the air felt fresher than it had inside. It felt a lot fresher than he felt himself. Just checking on that, he took a whiff. Holy crap. To put it politely.

  The parking lot had an abandoned aspect. Weeds grew up verdantly through ruptures in the asphalt, where frost heaves had lifted it then let it collapse. Broken glass, gravel, and litter lay undisturbed on the rolling, buckled surface. A fallen light pole rested diagonally over the weathered paint lines marking out parking spots.

  In the middle of it all was a shopping plaza. Or at least that’s what it had been, once. It looked as if it might be a dead plaza now. Not completely dead—a couple of storefronts seemed to be toughing it out. There were lights on in the Laundromat, and the Something-or-other Diner. Ry squinted. It was the Good Deal Diner.

  A small flock of cars huddled up close to it. Ry watched another car come in off the road, cross the parking lot, and join the flock. The car doors opened wide, people spilled out, the car doors banged shut, the people milled over and inside. Their chatter reached Ry as a cheerful murmur. He turned and looked the other way and up and down the road to see what else there was. Traffic was light. It was one of those roads at the edge of a town where fast food places and quick-lubes and discount furniture stores sprout up in the margins of the farm fields. A homey old farmhouse nestled in a clump of trees a ways back, pretending it was still in the countryside. Across the road was a Home Depot. It could be anywhere. Meaning, so could they.

  Del was still snoring. He had driven most of the night. Ry decided to go to the diner and use the restroom and get some breakfast. He rolled down the window for ventilation, then gently clinked the door shut.

  He tried to wash up a little in the restroom. He could only go so far; there was just one sink and people kept coming in and out. The bruise on his brow was fading nicely, going yellow like a leaf in autumn, but not beautiful like that. The swelling was way down, the shape of his eye opening was almost normal. He checked his wallet, went out into the restaurant, and sat on a stool at the counter.

  Breakfast and lunch menus were up on the wall, on black signs with white plastic letters and numbers that could be moved around by pushing them into horizontal grooves. Everything sounded great. Ry glanced at the breakfasts of his nearby fellow diners to see what looked good. It all looked good.

  He ordered waffles. And an omelet. And sausage. As he waited, he let his thoughts wander. His gaze wandered, too, bouncing here and there. It bounced on a sticky circle on the counter where the syrup dispenser had been and stuck there for a few seconds. Followed the fly that also got stuck there, then licked his way free, like shoveling snow from around the tires of a car, and flew off in that drunk-driver fly way.

  He half-listened to a loud conversation in a booth behind him about someone named Bob, who was a bum. Or not. There were two opinions. The people had that Wisconsin way of talking: “Baahhb” for “Bob,” “waahh-ter” for “water.”

  He looked up at the lunch part of the menu on the wall. It listed everything you would expect. At the bottom, in quotation marks, the sign said, BEST BURGERS IN WAUPATONEKA. His eyes reached “Waupatoneka” and stopped dead in their tracks. Then looked out the window. Nothing looked familiar. But, then—

  The waitress brought his food. She had noticed the funny-looking car out in the parking lot when she came in to work. She had seen Ry crawl out of it. She even happened to be looking out the window when he sniffed his armpit, and smiled to herself. She was aware of the amount of time he spent in the little restroom, and could tell by the wetness of Ry’s hair around his face that he had been doing a little cleaning up. He was cute, even with the nasty-looking bruise on his eyebrow. He looked temporarily scruffy, but you could tell by his manner that he was a nice kid.

  “Are you from around here?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” said Ry. “I live here.” He was going to add, “I think,” but that would have required explaining. It was way too long a story to tell to a waitress bringing you breakfast. Though she seemed kind, and he wouldn’t have minded.

  She was unconvinced anyway. Reflexively, they both looked out the window at the Willys. Or where it had been. It wasn’t there now. The waitress looked back at Ry. His face had changed.

  The parking lot was empty everywhere Ry could see, except for the cars parked right out front. So, what was happening; did Del just leave? Wake up and drive away? Here’s your town; you’re on your own.

  It seemed weird that he would go without saying good-bye, without saying anything at all. Although Ry himself had done that. He had crawled out of the Jeep and left without a word while Del was sleeping. But he thought Del would be sleeping for a long time. Del had driven all night.

  So here he was in Waupatoneka, on his own. Okay. It wasn’t a part of Waupatoneka he had seen before, that he could recall, but it couldn’t be too far from his house. The town wasn’t that huge.

  He turned back to his breakfast and wondered why he had ordered so much food. He cut off a corner of waffle and dipped it in syrup. As he chewed, he looked back outside as if the Willys might magically reappear. It didn’t. Even after chewing, the bit of waffle didn’t want to go down his throat.

  A man’s form materialized outside the diner door, opened the door, and came inside. At first his face was neutral as he scanned t
hrough the faces in the booths, at the tables, and the counter. When Del’s eyes found Ry, they lightened and he seemed relieved, and Ry felt foolish for freaking out. But what else should he have thought?

  “I thought you might be in here,” said Del, sitting down on the next stool, looking up at the menu, nodding yes when the waitress said, “Coffee?”

  DOGS

  KIND OF WEIRD

  Finding Ry’s house wasn’t hard once they made their way from the scraggly it-could-be-anywhere zone to the old downtown. Ry knew his way from there. He had walked it a few times; a few lefts and a right and there it was.

  His grandpa’s car was parked in the driveway. Warm relief flowed through Ry. Quick on its heels came a colder, clammier wave of apprehension. He tried to shrug it off, but he couldn’t, not quite.

  The front door was locked, and so was the back. That was weird. Ry tried both doors, then rapped on them. He peered through the windows, but he couldn’t see anything. Or hear anything. No footsteps, no TV, no barking dogs.

  Then he noticed that the back door to the garage was open. Not only unlocked, but open. Ajar. Just an inch or two. He stepped inside and paused for an instant while his eyes adjusted. There was the food and the water bowls for the dogs, alongside a giant open bag of dry chow.

  Ry reached for the doorknob on the door that led from the garage into the kitchen. This one was unlocked. Lucky. He stepped up into the house. Del came in behind him. They both felt the insides of their noses curl up and shrivel somewhat.

  The smell turned out to be coming from the coffee pot. The little orange light was on. Ry flicked off the switch and lifted the glass carafe from the warming plate. A thick, tarry substance in the final stages of coffee death was enameled to the bottom. The aroma was no longer of anything you would want to put inside your body. Ry turned and showed Del the pot.