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© Stephanie Chan
Stephanie Chan
When Lachlan was younger, he lived next to a textile factory. Every day its smokestacks sent white billows into the sky, and as he walked to school, they crossed the sun in segments, their shadows crawling along the sidewalk like great tailless lizards. Back then, he was convinced that factory was the origin of clouds.
Between sixth and seventh grade, his father moved them out to Enid, Oklahoma, home of the H. H. Champlin Mansion, the Roustabouts, and the Tulsa Scottish Games. A couple of hours away was the great panhandle of the Heartland of America, and a couple of hours more was Cavanal Hill, a thousand feet shy of a mountain, but still stretching ambitiously nineteen hundred and ninety-nine feet above oil wells, cotton fields, and many winding glittering backbones called OK-51 or US Route 177 or I-235. During the day it was hot and dry. At night, the horizon rumbled and whistled softly with the sound of distant electrical storms. When they arrived at their new house, it hailed. It was the fifth season, the time when the wind was most restless and the sky turned bottle green for weeks.
“We used to joke about building an ark,” said Janey. She was their next door neighbor. She introduced herself as Janey Lloyd Cleveland. She was eleven.
“What does that mean?” Lachlan asked.
“Can’t you figure it out?” Janey said. “You got your spring, summer, autumn, winter. And you got now. Tornados. Blood and thunder.”
“‘Thud and blunder,’” Lachlan said, remembering a fourth grade history teacher who had been peculiarly fond of John Thomas Codman’s Brook Farm.
Janey smiled, showing all her teeth.
She watched them finish moving furniture and invited Lachlan over to play Nabuko Generals and Conquerors. Her house had rust-brown shingles and sand-colored siding. The walls inside were either sherbet yellow or birch bark white. Her parents were at work (synthetic motor oil, gradeschoolers) and she had lemonade (Minute Maid, pink). She reached on her tiptoes for the top cabinet glasses, and spilled a little on the counter as she poured their drinks. She carried them to the living room and put them on coasters. There, she took out a recycled assorted biscuits tin and showed him a folded-up paper playing map, a rubberbanded stack of cards, and a pair of dice.
“How do you play?” Lachlan asked.
Janey shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“There aren’t any tokens,” he said.
“You don’t use tokens,” she said.
“What if we take them from Monopoly?” he said.
“Do you want to play or not?” she said. She squinched up her eyes at him.
“Fine,” he said.
They shuffled the cards and discovered an uneven number, a problem which Janey solved by pursing her lips and judiciously plucking Montezuma from the deck. They dealt the rest of the cards and sat quietly until Janey said, “My favorite is Ashurbanipal. Do you have him?”
“Yeah,” Lachlan said.
“Who do you want for him?” Janey asked.
“Well,” Lachlan said. “Genghis Khan.”
Janey snorted. “You can have him. I don’t see him doing anything constructive for Nineveh.”
The sky turned pink and bruised. They tried playing go fish and blackjack, but somehow the Ming dynasty general Yong Lo and the solemn face of Patton didn’t lend themselves to Caribbean stud poker. Janey propped them up together in a flimsy card lean-to. The doorbell chimed. She went to answer it, then called,
“It’s your mom.”
His mother was standing under the redbud trees, her arms folded at her waist. She smiled crookedly at Lachlan when he came to the door.
“Wondered where you’d gone,” his mother said. “You missed dinner.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“That’s alright.” She looked at Janey. “Would you like to come over?”
Janey stuck her hands in her pockets and looked at her feet. She shook her head.
Lachlan’s mother patted him on the arm, her hand fluttering, and went to wait for him outside. It was an anxious gesture; she always seemed to have a case of nerves around other kids his age. He gave Janey his cards. She scowled a little.
“They’re flipped every which way and wrong-side up,” Janey said.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Tomorrow, you wanna see something cool?” she asked.
“Does it have to do with Attila the Hun?” he asked.
Janey cocked her head to the side. “How about ten fifteen?”
The sun had set, and the lights of outlying cities and highways mottled the empty horizon like a rolling speckled tide. His mother put her arm around his shoulders as they walked home, then let it drop. Lachlan looked back to see if Janey was still there, but her windows were all dark. The front door of their new house opened noisily.
“Where’s Dad?” he asked.
She rustled around in some plastic bags. “Unpacking.”
Supper was grocery-market garlic herb chicken, mashed potatoes mixed with canned corn, and green bean casserole. Once they were finished, he carried their plastic plates to the trashbag hanging from the pantry handle. He put the leftovers in the refrigerator, which was bare and clean, though the lamp was broken.
“Your friend seems fun,” she said.
“She’s okay,” he said.
“I think you’ll like it here,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
She cracked a window, her nails clicking against the sill. The dry smell of summer drifted in: kindling grass, watermelon rind, something metallic that might have been rain or an out-of-tune car.
“Is it okay if I go out tomorrow?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Sure.”
He waited for her to say something else, but she just took out a cigarette and rolled it absently between her fingers. She wouldn’t look at him. The way she talked reminded him of someone in the middle of an unfamiliar sentence with no idea how they got there. He said good night and went upstairs, the unfamiliar floorboards creaking under his feet. The other bedroom door was closed; his father must have already gone to bed. He washed up, changed and, when he couldn’t find his toothbrush, rinsed his mouth with some tap water. It tasted the way rusted pennies might, tinny and bitter.
His room was small with a slanted ceiling that made him think of a pencil box. He picked his way through debris to sit down next to the inflatable mattress in one corner. He switched on the pump and drowsed at the scattered cardboard packing boxes. They took up too much space, pushed too near. The pump hummed and chattered beside him like a live thing. He was imagining building a cage for it out of the boxes, and feeding it mashed potato casserole with a long spoon, and throwing it a glinting copper Frisbee, when his mother shook him gently.
“Your friend’s outside,” she said. She squeezed him in a hug. He could smell cigarette smoke in her hair, the woodchip and syrupy sour scent hanging about her like a loose fold of fabric. She must have had a lot last night.
“Have fun,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “See you later.”
She didn’t reply.
Janey was wearing denim shorts and a thin yellow shirt, her short auburn hair pulled back in an untidy ponytail. When he came out onto the lawn, she put her hands in her pockets and let her elbows hang loosely at her sides.
“You’re going to wish for sneakers,” she said.
“Where are we going?” Lachlan asked.
The ground was orange-brown dirt and scratchy grass. Though it wasn’t yet noon, it simmered beneath their feet. Lachlan could feel the heat through the soles of his sandals; it throbbed with his steps and gradually seemed to match his pulse beat for beat. They climbed small hills before finally reaching a low shady valley, flanked by steep slopes on either side. Janey stopped and squatted. The back of her neck was bright with perspiration. He sat down next to her. The ground here was still untouched by sun. It felt wet and grainy against his legs.
“How far did we walk?” he asked.
“Not that far,” Janey said. “I guess like two or some miles or something.”
He stood and squinted back at the path they cut. The land stretched out as green and brown pointillism, the trees shimmering against the sky.
“Looks like more,” he said. “I can’t see our houses.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. She knelt down in the dirt and started sifting through it with her hands.
“What are you doing?”
She dragged her arm across her forehead. “What time is it?”
“Don’t have a watch,” he said.
She looked upwards and pinched her mouth tightly. “Can’t be too far from noon.”
Lachlan sat down again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” Janey said. She chewed on her lower lip and got up, pacing back and forth and kicking the dirt. “I know it’s here.”
“Fossils?” Lachlan asked.
“No,” she said.
“Oil?”
She gave him a look. He was feeling too slack and lazy from fatigue to be much bothered by it. He nearly dozed off, when Janey exclaimed and stooped to sweep at the ground once more.
“You found it?” he asked, still unsure what she was looking for.
“Yeah,” she said. She sat down across from him and crossed her arms over her stomach, looking at the sky again. “Now we just have to wait.”
He pushed himself into a more upright position. The grass itched his back through his t-shirt; he propped his elbows on his knees and looked at the ground curiously. He wondered what it could be that she had been searching for. He hoped it wasn’t something related to Hammurabi.
“Shh,” Janey said. “Here it comes.”
The sun started emerging from one hill, its light tangling in the thick leaves of the elms and birch trees. It hung there for several long minutes, then the first glimmer escaped, and then another. They crept down into the valley, and suddenly burst into brilliant flecks of shimmering color in all directions. Lachlan lifted his hand and watched the colors swim across his palm. He looked at Janey. She pointed at the ground.
Baked into the dirt were many glittering patches of crushed glass, clear unmuddled bits of green, indigo, sepia, burgundy. It was like looking on the remnants of ten thousand ruined marble games, all glinting and winking and throwing about transparent limpid colors.
“Cool?” said Janey.
“Yeah,” Lachlan said. “Sure.”
The narrow valley roiled with the dappled light and midday heat. Occasionally the light would be extinguished under the gathering of green-gray clouds. When the colors didn’t flash back to life, Janey looked up at the sky. She got up and brushed herself off.
Halfway back, it began to rain. The ground steamed and the musky smell of grit and raw green undergrowth rose up in a haze. When Lachlan got home, he sat down at the dining table. Someone had left a sandwich and a can of soda, and he picked at it briefly before going upstairs and changing. Outside, the sky rumbled with discontent. Blood and thunder, Janey had said; he thought it might more likely be cats and dogs.
It was late afternoon when he finished unpacking. A dull heat had crept under his skin, and he hoped he wasn’t sunburned. Down the hall, someone was watching the six o’clock news. He knocked on the door, and opened it, though no one answered. His father was sitting against the wall, the television remote in his hand. He didn’t look up when Lachlan entered. He had his reading glasses on.
“Hi,” Lachlan said.
His father changed the channel. A commercial flickered on for barbecue sauce. The colors on the unlit bedroom walls reminded Lachlan of the glass and sun. The boxes were mostly unpacked, save for a half open suitcase full of clothes and some toiletries. He went into the adjoining bathroom and looked around the dimness, touched the faucets and picked up a tube of toothpaste. He came back out and asked,
“Where are Mom’s things?”
His father glanced up at him, then switched the television off. Its screen fizzed. The room had already taken on the flat dimensionless quality of dusk. Lachlan wished he knew where to turn on the light.
“You know,” his father said. “Your mother and I have always had problems.”
Lachlan thought of dark windows and Bolivar and the liberation of Venezuela. His father turned to face him and Lachlan touched the wall. He felt the light switch against his fingers. He stepped away.
“I just remembered,” he said. “I told my friend that I’d go over for dinner.”
He could make out his father’s ears and his hair and the particularly bright glint of his glasses. His shoulders were hunched and unmoving, as though they were waiting for the quick fall of something heavy and cold. Lachlan left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. The floorboards groaned as he walked downstairs.
It was still raining, but the setting sun was out from the clouds and the street was a slippery stretch of pale gold. He rang Janey’s doorbell and put his hands in his pockets. They were soggy, but he couldn’t think of what else to do with them.
“What are you doing here?” Janey asked when she answered the door.
Lachlan shrugged. He followed her to the living room. The television was tuned to some local news channel. Janey sat down on the floor in front of it, crossing her legs Indian-style.
“There’s gonna be a tornado tonight,” she said. “An F1. I hope it’s a rope.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s like this long skinny thing,” she said. “Like someone spitting water down.”
“I thought that was a waterspout,” he said.
She gave him a disdainful look. “Not literally.”
She patted the floor next to her, and he joined her. He tried to pay attention, but he could feel himself half-dozing. He had a split-second dream of being a window-washer. He climbed the sheer sides of a great building made of steel and crushed glass toward a patch of sky abandoned by the sun. He imagined he could feel his mother putting her arm around his shoulders under an explosion of redbud blossoms, but it was just Janey, whose eyes and teeth were too white in the darkness.
“Get up,” Janey said.
He straightened and looked around. The television was muted. Something was making a crackling sound, like walking through dry brush.
“Come on,” Janey said. “I wanna show you something.”
“Where are your parents?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
It was nighttime, but the sky was dull green, the horizon smoky and purple. It had stopped raining. They walked for a long time. The back of his throat stung. They passed a sign that said Black Mesa on it, and several infinite minutes or maybe hours later, a short obelisk appeared ahead.
“The monument,” Janey said. She was whispering for some reason.
“Where is this?” Lachlan asked.
She pulled out a flashlight from her jacket pocket and shone it on the monument. The compass directions were finely chiseled around the top. Below, the letters were worn away. There was a black mailbox on the ground.
“People come all over and leave letters,” Janey said.
“Why?” he asked.
“It’s just something people do,” Janey said.
She swiveled the flashlight around. The beam of light was choked off not many feet before them. She turned it off and the world plunged into green-tinged planes and violet shadows. She took off her jacket and lay down, using it as a pillow. He sat beside her and linked his arms around his legs. His clothes were still wet in some corners, and they stuck to the undersides of his arms and the jut of his shoulder blades. They sat silently. Janey shifted a little and said,
“I lied. My dad doesn’t work with motor oil. I came up with that when I watched a special on the Fischer-Tropsch process.”
She drawled out ‘Fischer-Tropsch’ as though she’d been practicing it.
“What’s he do?” Lachlan asked.
“I don’t know,” Janey said. “He died when I was eight.”
He didn’t say anything. He heard her take a sharp breath. The exhale must have been soft and secret, though, since he didn’t hear her sigh. She was very quiet.
“I saw your mom leaving,” she said.
He lay down beside her, resting his head on his arms. The stars were frenetic tonight, flickering and quivering, as though whipped about by the storm. They were not very bright. There were surprisingly few, here in this flat state with low trees. He closed his eyes, but couldn’t seem to fall asleep. He opened them again. Next to him, Janey’s eyes were fixed upwards. The tornado whistled softly in the distance, but it wouldn’t be coming for them yet. Above them, the sky was cloudless.
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