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One of the dogs barked halfheartedly, to say that somebody was coming, but it was somebody they knew. They had not come over to bother her when she got out-they were used to her now. They went ru
It was a boy, or young man, riding a bicycle. He swerved towards the van and Ji
She said, “Hello-are you delivering something?”
He laughed, springing off the bike and dropping it to the ground, all in one motion.
“I live here,” he said. “I’m just getting home from work.”
She thought that she should explain who she was, tell him how she came to be here and for how long. But all this was too difficult. Hanging on to the van like this, she must look like somebody who had just come out of a wreck.
“Yeah, I live here,” he said. “But I work in a restaurant in town. I work at Sammy’s.”
A waiter. The bright white shirt and black pants were waiter’s clothes. And he had a waiter’s air of patience and alertness.
“I’m Ji
“Okay, I know,” he said. “You’re who Helen’s going to work for. Where’s Helen?”
“In the house.”
“Didn’t nobody ask you in, then?”
He was about Helen’s age, she thought. Seventeen or eighteen. Slim and graceful and cocky, with an ingenuous enthusiasm that would probably not get him as far as he hoped. She had seen a few like that who ended up as Young Offenders.
He seemed to understand things, though. He seemed to understand that she was exhausted and in some kind of muddle.
“June in there too?” he said. “June’s my mom.”
His hair was colored like June’s, gold streaks over dark. He wore it rather long, and parted in the middle, flopping off to either side.
“Matt too?” he said.
“And my husband. Yes.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “They asked me. I said I’d rather wait out here.”
Neal used sometimes to bring home a couple of his Yo-yos, to be supervised doing lawn work or painting or basic carpentry. He thought it was good for them, to be accepted into somebody’s home. Ji
“So how long have you been waiting?”
“I don’t know,” Ji
“Is that right?” he said. “I don’t either. I don’t hardly ever meet another person that doesn’t wear a watch. Did you never wear one?
She said, “No. Never.”
“Me neither. Never ever. I just never wanted to. I don’t know why. Never ever wanted to. Like, I always just seemed to know what time it was anyway. Within a couple minutes. Five minutes the most. And I know where all the clocks are, too. I’m riding in to work, and I think I’ll check, you know, just be sure what time it is really. And I know the first place I can see the courthouse clock in between the buildings. Always not more than three/four minutes out. Sometimes one of the diners asks me, do you know the time, and I just tell them. They don’t even notice I’m not wearing a watch. I go and check as soon as I can, clock in the kitchen. But I never once had to go in there and tell them any different.”
“I’ve been able to do that too, once in a while,” Ji
“Yeah, you really do.”
“So what time do you think it is now?”
He laughed. He looked at the sky.
“Getting close to eight. Six/seven minutes to eight? I got an advantage, though. I know when I got off of work and then I went to get some cigarettes at the 7-Eleven and then I talked to some guys a couple of minutes and then I hiked home. You don’t live in town, do you?”
Ji
“So where do you live?”
She told him.
“You getting tired? You want to go home? You want me to go in and tell your husband you want to go home?”
“No. Don’t do that,” she said.
“Okay. Okay. I won’t. June’s probably telling their fortunes in there anyway. She can read hands.”
“Can she?”
“Sure. She goes in the restaurant a couple of times a week. Tea too. Tea leaves.”
He picked up his bike and wheeled it out of the way of the van. Then he looked in through the driver’s window.
“Left the keys in,” he said. “So-you want me to drive you home or what? I can put my bike in the back. Your husband can get Matt to drive him and Helen when they get ready. Or if it don’t look like Matt can, June can. June’s my mom but Matt’s not my dad. You don’t drive, do you?”
“No,” said Ji
“No. I didn’t think so. Okay then? You want me to? Okay?”
“This is just a road I know. It’ll get you there as soon as the highway.”
They had not driven past the subdivision. In fact they had headed the other way, taking a road that seemed to circle the gravel pit. At least they were going west now, towards the brightest part of the sky. Ricky-that was what he’d told her his name was-had not yet turned the car lights on.
“No danger meeting anybody,” he said. “I don’t think I ever met a single car on this road, ever. See-not so many people even know this road is here.”
“And if I was to turn the lights on,” he said, “then the sky would go dark and everything would go dark and you wouldn’t be able to see where you were. We just give it a little while more, then when it gets we can see the stars, that’s when we turn the lights on.”
The sky was like very faintly colored red or yellow or green or blue glass, depending on which part of it you looked at.
“That okay with you?”
“Yes,” said Ji
The bushes and trees would turn black, once the lights were on. There would just be black clumps along the road and the black mass of trees crowding in behind them, instead of, as now, the individual still identifiable spruce and cedar and feathery tamarack and the jewelweed with its flowers like winking bits of fire. It seemed close enough to touch, and they were going slowly. She put her hand out.
Not quite. But close. The road seemed hardly wider than the car.
She thought she saw the gleam of a full ditch ahead.
“Is there water down there?” she said.
“Down there?” said Ricky. “Down there and everywhere. There’s water to both sides of us and lots of places water underneath us. Want to see?”
He slowed the van. He stopped. “Look down your side,” he said. “Open the door and look down.”
When she did that she saw that they were on a bridge. A little bridge no more than ten feet long, of crossway-laid planks. No railings. And motionless water underneath it.
“Bridges all along here,” he said. “And where it’s not bridges it’s culverts. ‘Cause it’s always flowing back and forth under the road. Or just laying there and not flowing anyplace.”
“How deep?” she said.
“Not deep. Not this time of year. Not till we get to the big pond-it’s deeper. And then in spring it’s all over the road, you can’t drive here, it’s deep then. This road goes flat for miles and miles, and it goes straight from one end to the other. There isn’t even any roads that cuts across it. This is the only road I know of through the Borneo Swamp.”
“Borneo Swamp?” Ji
“That’s what it’s supposed to be called.”
“There is an island called Borneo,” she said. “It’s halfway round the world.”
“I don’t know about that. All I ever heard of was just the Borneo Swamp.”
There was a strip of dark grass now, growing down the middle of the road.