The Bewildered Read online

  THE BEWILDERED

  a novel by Peter Rock

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-912-8

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  British Isles

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  Originally published by:

  MacAdam/Cage Publishing

  155 Sansome Street, Suite 550

  San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.macadamcage.com

  Copyright © 2005 by Peter Rock

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Rock, Peter, 1967—

  The bewildered : a novel / by Peter Rock.

  p.cm.

  ISBN 1-59692-112-9 (alk. paper)

  1. Children—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Portland (Or.)—Fiction. 4. Underground areas—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3568.O327B49 2005

  813’.54—dc22

  2004030828

  Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith: e-book by GSHolmes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Deep gratitude to Ella Vining, the champion; love to all Vinings (especially Motoko, for expertise in Japanese) and Rocks. Thanks to Kate Nitze, David Poindexter and everyone at MacAdam/Cage. A debt to Ira Silverberg. Susan Choi, Stacey D’Erasmo and Whitney Otto are generous friends and sharp readers. Thanks once more to Kate Nitze, sharpness itself.

  for Ella

  They created in a single night

  a new situation and now it appeared

  to bewilder them.

  For the moment, their bewilderment was

  their only etiquette.

  —Yukio Mishima

  The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

  ONE

  1.

  NATALIE LIKED TO WALK IN THIS RAIN. It tasted metallic to her, just a mist drifting down before six in the morning. The train tracks were slippery underfoot, the greasy wooden rails, and I-5 only fifty feet to her left, trucks rattling north to Seattle and beyond. Across the dark river, across the Burnside Bridge, a neon sign was visible—a leaping stag, the words Made in Oregon.

  She walked with purpose, and fast, like a man with things to do. People often asked her if she was going somewhere; she had no patience for that question. She was straight adrenaline. She was electric, up all night.

  The bridge spanned back toward her, toward the Towne Storage building with its dirty red brick and rows of dark windows, its black water tank pressed into the sky, its paintings of lions’ heads, looking down. Lions were famously brave, and they lived together, in prides. She herself was alone, and proud, and brave.

  Above, ahead, the Burnside Bridge crossed I-5, and 84 forked east, all the overpasses looping and swooping around each other, the colored cars blurring as they slipped past, the tiny round heads of people within, looking out.

  These people could see Natalie, standing here, dressed like a man in her Dickies and work boots. She didn’t know why she still wore her long, dark blond hair; she’d braided it twice, twisted it up under a baseball cap. She wore knee socks, like always, but the people above couldn’t tell that. To them, she probably looked more like a boy than a man, her body wound tight as she walked, her ears pierced but without earrings; she couldn’t always stand metal on her body—the back of her watch had burned a patch on her wrist, so she threw it away. Now she never knew what time it was; she guessed by the sun, when it was visible, which wasn’t often. She could carry a watch in her pocket, perhaps, if there were room. Her right front pocket held a plastic barrette shaped like Daisy Duck, the keys to her truck, trailer and the storage locker, a chili recipe she’d never use, a Leatherman multipurpose tool, a shrill whistle in case of trouble. A pencil stub. A battery. Her other pockets held photographs of her girls.

  The people in the cars might believe she was a girl or man or boy or woman, but they had no idea, they could have no clue what Natalie was up to, out this morning in the rain.

  Scrub bushes and chain-link fences were the best places, the natural habitat. She looked past scraps of clothing, torn plastic and then, here, Holy Crow!, homed in on torn paper—the dull shine of a photograph, the color of skin, a promise. She kicked gravel, going after the scrap as if someone else might snatch it first. The paper was nicely worn, stiffened and damp in her fingers. It was not one of hers, and there was some excitement in that, a pleasure, a sentimental glimmer. The woman’s face was torn in two; still she smiled. It was a piece of a Fred Meyer catalog, from the department store, depicting modest and high-waisted lingerie, a support bra that must weigh five pounds. The half-faced woman was someone’s wife, some proud middle manager in Beaverton saying he was married to a model. Her body looked soft and inviting, her dark hair perfectly curled and clean. The disembodied hand of another woman reached toward this woman’s bare shoulder; the two women had been having one of those underwear parties catalog people enjoyed, and then this friend had been torn away, perhaps more desired.

  Natalie dropped the scrap, replaced it, left it behind for someone else to discover. Standing, she walked away, satisfied. There were only her footsteps and the sandpaper sound of her stiff denim jacket, her arms swinging as she turned right, away from the tracks and the interstate and the river. The smell of garbage seeped from dumpsters, laced with the exhaust in the air, sifting through the misty rain. Three blocks away on MLK, traffic lights turned green, tiny winking eyes.

  She had three of her girls with her, all from 1976, all folded in the pockets of her jacket. Yes, these ladies were over forty years old now, but she preferred them as they were, in 1976, wishing America Happy Birthday. She could still find the old magazines, in antique stores—some of the shop owners even held them out for her, the Bicentennial issues, in clear plastic covers, pages smelling of mold. They were often well preserved, but she roughed them up slightly before bringing them out. Sometimes she ripped her girls a little, and imagined the excited dissatisfaction of finding only the legs, the ass, the high heels. A faded face here, a breast there, a bare foot with a chain anklet, an ear, an expression of pain or pleasure, torn in two. That’s how she had found them, and she knew some believed pornography was boring because it was artificial, yet the feelings she remembered were natural, too sharp and unexpected to be false.

  Natalie did not slow her pace. Closer to the Burnside Bridge, closer to the shadows beneath it, past loading docks with their metal doors pulled down, red and blue squares against the lighter concrete. Abandoned streetcar tracks lined the asphalt; she stepped over them. A wheelchair was parked halfway under one dock, and someone slept on an old mattress under there, the dirty soles of his bare feet showing. She passed quietly, so as not to disturb him.

  The lions overhead looked a little more like bears, high on the Towne Storage building. Natalie walked with, she carried Miss November, Patti McGuire, who stands in a fantasy Midwestern diner with all her dress’s buttons undone, leaning against the jukebox, her unbelievable supple flesh all there for you, her stare a challenge. Patti loves CB radios; she exudes heat. And rubbing against her, paper to paper, is peroxided Miss May, in high snakeskin boots, one zipper already slipping, her bare ass pressing against the cold metal coin dispenser of a pinball machine, her nipples another set of startled eyes. And Deborah Borkman, Miss July, wearing knee-high striped socks and nothing else as she sets up a tent. Her body is dark and taut and thin, her hair blown back; her hands hold a thick rope that mysteriously hangs from above, as if she might climb straight to Heaven, where she belongs. Bathrooms, game rooms and barns—these girls have bodies, they want to show them off, and there often seems to be a rope nearby. Looping, stre
tched taut, or in the background; incidental, yet a continual possibility; coiled, as if holding electricity.

  Natalie eased a hand into the pocket, felt the pages, the photographs, the girls. All this was like setting a trapline, with bait that could be blown away, burned up, lost. Only she was not trying to catch anything, anyone—was she? She was only trying to stay connected to a thrill, to cast one forward, to provide for someone what she’d once had.

  A few deliveries were already being made. It was fruit mostly, down here. She approached a row of parked semi-trailers, Pacific Coast Fruit Company painted on their sides. Here, she slowed; she bent down. She reached into her jacket pocket and unfolded part of a centerfold, glimpsed only the red and black wool blanket, the canvas tent, and recognized it. The air smelled sweet, of rotten, fermenting fruit. She folded the already stiff paper, wedged it under the thick, black rubber of a tire, where the flash of skin would catch in the corner of someone’s eye, reel them in.

  Natalie stepped into the shadow, out of the rain, the blackened underside of the Burnside Bridge above her. Beneath the echoing roar of the traffic, she heard a strange sound. A solid, whirring hiss. It came, and it went. She paused, and cocked her ear. It was on her right, where a low wall stretched, its concrete spray-painted with hundreds of white skulls, solid, as if piled atop one another. And then the sound returned, swooped closer.

  Suddenly, a head, a young girl’s head slid along the top of the wall, her pale face intent, her long hair pulled back; the girl stared straight ahead, fiercely anticipating and yet calm, her head sliding from right to left, then gone, the sound fading.

  Startled, Natalie stepped closer to the wall. She stretched and looked over: the girl was on a skateboard, rolling across smooth curves of concrete, carving up the walls, hands out, knees and elbows flexing, her wake almost visible in the morning shadows. The girl shot back up the steep slope of the near wall; the rails of the board slid along the top edge and she was gone again, her face hovering there for a split second between forward and backward, transfixed and looking into the next move, her bright eyes not even seeing Natalie.

  Above, on the bridge’s dark stanchions, a sign said no alcohol was allowed at the skatepark. No camping, no vandalism, no abusive behavior. OVER ALL, BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR. While the sign said no graffiti, there were the skulls and, across where the tall wall rose—a hundred feet distant, where the bridge angled down—there were red and yellow flames, the silhouettes of the damned. A hooded Grim Reaper loomed in the foreground, his scythe twenty feet long.

  The girl skated toward Natalie, then dropped into a tight, sunken, perfectly round bowl—its mouth twenty feet across—and circled quickly inside it, her feet as high as her head, her body parallel to the bottom; her face stared up, expressionless, her ponytail straight out, rigid, like the hand of a clock inside that round white space.

  Natalie leaned in, wanting to be closer. Up near the Reaper, near the broken concrete atop the wall, she saw a space under the bridge, a path leading to it. A space where a person might stand and look down, and have a better view. The low walls at the corners had chain-link fence along the top, bent back here and there. She walked around, past dark scrawls where graffiti had been painted over, past more skulls, past the word FEAR in tall white letters. She scrabbled up the loose dirt and gravel, the broken-down concrete, and stood with her head near the bridge’s blackened underside.

  The exhaust fumes were stronger, mixed with the ashes of campfires long gone out, and the traffic’s rattle and roar muted the sound of the girl’s wheels below. The gray of the concrete was smooth, as if burnished, the color of an elephant’s hide. The girl now balanced on one leg, pushed hard with the other for more speed, her shoe slapping. She wore headphones over her ears, and torn jeans, black sneakers, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, her body angular and small and never still, perfectly balanced, knees bending to pump the board higher up the wall and then gliding there, almost weightless. Natalie wanted to call out, to applaud, but she didn’t want to interrupt, to break the concentration, the reverie. She forced her hands into her pockets and listened to the wheels, the rasp of the board’s wooden tail against concrete.

  The girl rose up the near wall, planted a hand down low and, wheels screeching, the board took her feet and legs up above her in a smooth arc, returning beneath her, beautiful.

  Natalie heard a footstep behind her, then, a dragged scuffing sound, a low voice closer than it should be.

  “Dope?” a young man asked. “Coke? Tweak?” His face was hooded, hands in the pockets of his huge jeans.

  She shook her head, turned away, waved him off.

  “I saw you earlier,” he said. “I followed you, a little. No offense. You’re looking for something—I can tell.”

  “I’m very busy,” she said, her whispered voice strange to her. She turned to face him, and didn’t want to look away from the girl. “Do you know her?”

  “I’m just asking,” he said. “Alls I’m saying is—”

  “I have a knife,” she said. “Do you want me to scream?”

  “Jesus. What is your problem?” He backed off, just blinking his eyes at her. Then he turned the corner and climbed out of view.

  The cars above had grown louder, heading into rush hour, and now there was no sound of the skateboard’s wheels, no sign of the girl. Below, the concrete stretched gray, empty. Natalie looked to the right, across an abandoned parking lot. Three crows hopped along—black wings half out, tormenting each other, feathers shiny as if wet, lacquered. She hurried back down the slope, breathing hard, feet sliding in the scree, back around the walls of the skatepark.

  The girl stood near the semi-trailers, faced away, not moving. Reading something she held in her hands, turning over the ragged page. The headphones were still on; Natalie crept closer, the sound of her footsteps covered. She tried to regain her breath, to slow down. She got within five feet, almost close enough to reach out and touch the girl’s shoulder.

  The girl spun and simultaneously shoved the paper into her pocket, pulled the headphones from her ears, around her neck, and twisted her face into a warning scowl.

  “Hey,” Natalie said. “Easy.”

  She noticed that she was a head taller than the girl, and that the girl’s part was purposefully crooked, like a sharp lightning bolt in her dirty blond hair. Her thick eyebrows were almost grown together. Her face was so white, her lips pale and chapped. Her blue eyes didn’t blink. She bent down and picked up her skateboard with one hand; in the other, she held a black case, long and narrow.

  “What’s in there?” Natalie said.

  “My flute.” The girl’s voice was surprisingly husky.

  “What were you reading, there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure can skate. I watched.”

  The girl shrugged. There were illegible ballpoint scribbles, blue, on the rubber toes of her shoes. The bottom of her skateboard faced Natalie—the wheels were deep orange, the metal of the trucks ground down. Deep scratches marked the flames of the paint job; the word BEWILDERED had been written there with a marker.

  “What’s that mean?” Natalie said, pointing.

  “I don’t know. My friend did it.”

  “Are you safe, down here alone, so early?”

  “Whatever,” the girl said.

  Natalie smiled as the silence settled between them. She knew it was partially that the girl was intrigued by her, but mostly that she didn’t want to show fear. She wouldn’t run, not right away. The smell of overripe fruit hung thick in the air.

  “What were you listening to?” Natalie said.

  “Japanese.”

  “What?”

  “Language tapes,” the girl said. “To learn to speak it.” The cuffs of her white shirt had holes cut in them, her thumbs hooked there, pulling the sleeves taut. Her body was a boy’s body, almost; it was just beginning to stray, to betray itself, to become what it would be. It was caught in a delicious balance.

  “I tho
ught I saw you reading something,” Natalie said. “Before.”

  Again, the girl shrugged.

  “I thought I saw you looking at Deborah Borkman.”

  “Who?”

  “She won her first beauty contest, a neighborhood affair, when she was nine. She likes to climb trees, and gardening.”

  The girl listened, confused, recognizing the lines from the magazine page.

  “If it’s yours,” she said, reaching for her pocket, “you can have it.”

  “No,” Natalie said. “No, no. It’s not like that. You can keep her.”

  “What?”

  “Debbie Borkman.” Natalie reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out another photograph, from the same pictorial; Miss July stood outdoors in a washtub, taking great pleasure from her bath, inviting onlookers to do the same. With her stub of pencil, Natalie wrote her own phone number—copying it from another slip of paper—across Deborah’s lovely stomach. She handed the page across to the girl.

  “So what?” the girl said, putting it in her pocket.

  “There’s some things I need help with,” Natalie said. She half-surprised herself with this gesture, these words; they were not premeditated. “Could you help me?” she said. “There would be pay, of course.”

  The girl dropped her skateboard down on its wheels, one foot atop the black grip tape. She unhooked her thumb, stretched her arm, checked the watch on her wrist.

  “Could my friends do it, too?” she said.

  “Call me,” Natalie said. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “School.” The girl pointed down the street, kicked her board around. “Dozo yoroshiku,” she said, and began to roll away.

  “All right, then,” Natalie called after her. “I’ll see you soon.”