The Story of Beautiful Girl Read online

  Last stop was a grocer’s. Homan had seen stores like this only from curbs, and being in one put him in a daze. So Sam made the picks: bread and sliced meat and chips and pudding and pop and candy. Then Sam pointed to a rack of magazines. The ones he wanted were up high and had brown paper covering their fronts, and when Homan got them down, he peeked behind the paper. The covers all had pictures of busting-out-of-their-undies ladies. Homan gave Sam a look with one brow raised high. Sam made his face all angelic, and they laughed.

  Then they drove a long time, the sky turning from day to night. Finally Sam gestured down a side road that wound away from the highway, until, far from the nearest house, they stopped and got out. It was chilly, and Homan built a fire and wrapped Sam in blankets. They ate, and it was delicious. Then afterward, an extraordinary thing happened. While they were savoring their dessert, Sam moved his hands up and down with a questioning look and pointed to the pudding. It was the first time Homan saw the gesture, but he knew Sam meant, Show me your sign. Astounded, he made the sign for pudding. Sam nodded, then made his question again: gum, moon, fire. Homan signed and signed and felt something uncurl inside him, like baby shoots rising from the soil.

  He showed Sam tricks he’d worked out at the Snare. After taking the bottlecap from his pop, Homan made it disappear from one hand and appear in the other. He pulled the lace from one of his new shoes and tied a knot with one hand. Then Sam got his own idea—a fancy form of mischief. They took a clear plastic bag that a jacket had come in. They untwisted the wires from the price tags and threaded them through the bottom of the bag. Then they set the bottlecap in a cradle they made of the wires, poured in Sterno, and set it aflame. The plastic bag rose. As they laughed with amazement, it lifted higher and farther, glinting with stars, floating above the land. It was a happy ghost only they could see, an explorer who’d sail on forever.

  Show me your sign, Sam asked once it was out of their sight.

  Homan almost replied with bag or sky. Instead he pointed to Sam and signed a word that, for so very long, he hadn’t let himself think. Friend, he signed. My friend.

  Now, months after they’d launched the ghost, half a day after they’d picked up the girl Thumbers, Homan steered the van into hills toward what he realized was a house.

  Night had fallen. In the outdoor lighting that greeted the four of them, Homan could see vehicles parked on the grass between the driveway and the front walk. The house was long with a flat roof, and all the windows were lit, with people visible in every one. It was not the first party he’d ended up at with Sam, but it was the largest and most remote. They’d driven into mountains to get here, winding past fir trees, looking up at birds with wide wings.

  The girls were giggly and full of life, and as soon as he’d parked, Beaded Circles jumped out of the van. Strawberry followed, then twirled herself around like a dancer. She began running toward the house, then turned. By then, Homan was out, and Beaded Circles—who’d offered far more assistance than the other—was helping him with the ramp. Strawberry pranced back, speaking, as Homan guided Sam down the ramp. When Sam reached the ground, Strawberry curtsied. Then he set his palms on the knobs on his wheels and pushed down the walkway to the house. She came right along, doing a slow, gliding dance beside him.

  Homan turned to Beaded Circles, who was watching her friend and shaking her head. She looked up at him, her face friendly but not flirty, and tipped her head for them to follow.

  The size of the crowd made entering the front door a chore. Homan and Beaded Circles shouldered their way into a room smelling of sweat, cigarettes, brew, cologne, and something like mildew. He could feel a thumping through his feet and knew music must be playing. Bodies in colorful clothes pressed close, dancing and conversing.

  Being one of the tallest individuals in the room, Homan spotted Sam easily, with the crowd having parted so he could wheel through. Strawberry was moving alongside him, and Sam was talking to whomever turned his way, making his hand-tipping motion for wanting a drink. Homan moved through the crunch of food nibblers and brew drinkers, and whenever he looked back, Beaded Circles was following. He was in a group, he thought as the four of them wound through the crowd. He was in a group with a handsome young man and two lovely ladies, and he felt himself smiling. They reached a side room, where they lined up, waiting for amber liquid, Sam asking Homan with a motion of his hands to get his mug from the cloth bag on the back of his chair. Although Homan did not take a cup for himself, no one seemed to mind. They simply acted as if he belonged.

  The house was surely owned by a rich man. It had rust-colored tile floors and animal hides tacked to the walls. Long, poufy sofas sprawled across the big room, which also had a color TV and a record player with huge boxes beside it—the sources, Homan discovered, of the thumping. The kitchen had green counters, a see-through table, and two iceboxes. The hallways led to three bathrooms, each showier than the last, and four bedrooms, one with a bed that wiggled like a flask of water. Homan imagined walking through this house with Beautiful Girl beside him, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist, both of them with wide eyes.

  Then his little group went out to a back porch that overlooked an oval-shaped pool. Immediately, Strawberry ran down to the blue water. A few people were inside, their drinks on the diving board, their feet moving back and forth as they held on to floating toys. Strawberry turned to the porch and swept her arm toward them to come join her. Sam shook his head once, making a quick no, and for a change didn’t have his ladies’ man smile. Strawberry made a pout, but he did not give in. Nor would he meet Homan’s eyes, and as he hastily rolled away, Homan wondered if diving into a pool was why Sam was in that chair.

  He and Beaded Circles followed after Sam, along a terrace that hugged the rear and side of the house. Strawberry ran up, flipping her hair and giggling, and just as Sam got back his smile, they came to a patio with vines growing up a crisscross fence. The vines gave off that mildewy smell Homan had noticed when they’d first come inside. The people on the patio saw Strawberry and waved, and then she and Sam went over.

  Homan felt a touch on his arm. Beaded Circles was looking at him, discomfort in her eyes. She jerked her head toward the house.

  Sam and Strawberry were talking to the others on the patio, and every face was full of pleasure.

  Homan took a seat on a bench to Strawberry’s right. Beaded Circles sat near him, on a wicker chair, looking uncomfortable. Sam was holding court, the other people listening, heads in their hands. He was telling a story. Maybe a story about diving into a pool.

  Homan felt a tap on his arm.

  Strawberry was offering him a cigarette. At the Snare, the big shot smoked cigarettes from a holder. The guard with the dogs chewed tobacco. The skinny guard smoked a pipe. Homan, disgusted to think of being anything like them, waved the cigarette away.

  Then Strawberry did something he hadn’t seen smokers do. She took the cigarette back, inhaled, and passed it to the person on her other side, who did the same. Homan understood, watching, that the cigarette, not the vines, was what gave the patio its odor. So it wasn’t tobacco. But if it were mildew, it wouldn’t be handed from person to person, everyone drawing in, even Sam, his fingers holding it the way he held candy and pens. Only Beaded Circles sent it along without raising it to her lips.

  If Beautiful Girl were here, he wondered, would she want to stay on this patio with these smoking people? Or would she want to do what he’d seen other couples do as they’d moved along the terrace: go off together and sit in the distance, enjoying a party of two? He imagined them out on the grass, making his signs, laughing—and then the realization that he might never again have the opportunity to retreat into their private haven, where life, for all its bitterness, always tasted sweet, hit him as if for the first time, along with that burn in his gut.

  He wanted to ice the burn away. He wanted to get up and run to the edge of the party, just beyond the light, and find her there, waiting for him. He wanted to take her
hand and bring it to his lips, then point up to the stars, their fingers clasped together, as he had at the Snare. But he was inside the light at this party, and she was far, far away. And he was here with people who were not ignoring or mocking or deceiving him, but acting as if he were one of them. If he could not be here with her, he might as well try to belong.

  When the cigarette returned, he took it.

  Ummm. Warm and spicy and much nicer than he’d expected, it blew inside his mouth, down his throat, into his chest, through his belly, down his arms and legs, all the way to his fingers and toes. It felt as if his own breath were lifting him to a private place. It felt as if his own blood were vibrating him with new life.

  Someone took the cigarette from his hands. He closed his eyes and felt as if he were the hot-air balloon, rising into the night. He was no longer a man who was trying to get home. He was a moment with the power of forever. He was a world that wanted no turning. He felt as glittery and vast as the stars.

  He opened his eyes, and they were laughing. Not at him, but at how silly he must look, with so much pleasure on his face. And they were already handing him another. He sat back and inhaled, as deep as he could.

  Mmmm, he thought, not letting the cigarette go. Mmmm. The Tingling.

  Though the next morning, it was Sam who had changed.

  Homan realized this when they dropped off Strawberry and Beaded Circles at another house, this one in a dusty town of small houses. A dog nosed open the screen door and came running across the dirt yard to greet them, and as it licked Strawberry’s face, Homan wondered if they’d stay awhile. But after Sam made a distracted wave through the windshield and Homan and Beaded Circles shared a last look, Sam gestured for them to get moving.

  Homan set his boot on the pedal and drove through the town to the highway. When he looked at Sam, the boy had his eyes fixed ahead. When he offered chocolate from the bag, Sam shook his head. When he saw Ride Thumbers ahead, Sam made a motion that said, Keep going.

  By midday, they were doing something they hadn’t done before. Sam, map on his lap, was directing Homan with purpose.

  Over the next day and a half, Homan drove. At first they were on long roads with nothing except tan-and-brown desert, occasional small towns with trailers for houses, and cities where colored lights glowed like jewels. In days past they would have gone to see the sights. This time they drove on, even when they entered thick woods, wound through mountains of white rock speckled with black, and sped along on a road hugging a cliff, where they saw a lake so far below, it seemed like the bottom of the world. Except for breaking late at night in a campground, they stayed on their course. They had a course. If only Homan knew what it was.

  But he did know, as soon as they’d left Strawberry and Beaded Circles behind, why Sam had changed. The night before, at the party, after the Tingling and some food, they’d all gone into the room with the bed that wiggled to the touch. Strawberry got on the bed, and Sam wanted to be there, too, so Homan helped him from the chair. Beaded Circles set a blanket on the floor, and then she and Homan lay down, their bodies far apart. Finally he was in a rich man’s house, lying beside a woman so close, he could smell night clinging to her skin. He glanced to the bed. Strawberry was on her side, Sam’s arm was on her hip, and she was moving her head as if they were kissing. He turned back to Beaded Circles and felt a charge go through him. Though he did nothing and Beaded Circles did nothing, and he was relieved.

  A little later he woke up, the way he always did with Sam. Sam couldn’t turn himself over, so Homan had gotten used to waking in the middle of the night to roll his friend to the other side. With Beaded Circles asleep, Homan sat up in the dark and looked to the bed.

  Sam was lying down. Strawberry was sitting at the foot of the bed, her back to Sam, throwing her arms in the air, and Homan could see her lips moving. Her face seemed angry or sad, and she kept turning back to Sam, then away. Only when she stood up did Homan realize she was in her underthings. She grabbed her clothes and hurried out of the room.

  Homan pulled himself up and crossed the room to the bed. Sam was on his side, turned away. Good, Homan thought; at least he not on his back. He walked around to see if his friend was awake. Yes, his eyes were open, but he was staring ahead, his cheeks glistening. He made a motion with his hands, only it wasn’t a motion that was speaking to Homan; it was reaching for his own face. But his elbow didn’t bend to do what he needed, so Homan did it for him. He sat on the edge of the bed, pressed his hand to his friend’s cheek, and wiped away the tears.

  He wondered where he and Sam were going now, on their long drive away from Strawberry and Beaded Circles. North, he understood, and then, as they left the road around the cliff and entered a long, flat marsh, west. He drove and drove, trying not to fetch forward in his mind with questions, or back to his waking this morning, when he went up to the dream window with Beautiful Girl. She was tickling a giggling Little One on her stomach, and they never looked up to the glass. Now he kept his own gaze straight so Sam could be alone with his thoughts, and Homan, though he didn’t want to, could be alone with his. At some point Homan saw planes in the air, flying in formation. Later came houses, then towns, each larger than the last. He wished he could ask where they were going. He wished Sam could read all his signs. He wished he truly believed there was a Big Artist in the sky. Then it could tell him why Beautiful Girl hadn’t turned to him, though he’d thumped and thumped on the dream window.

  It was sunny when they reached the bridge to the hilly city.

  It was a double-decker bridge, and they were on the top, and as he drove, he looked out to the sides. Sparkling water spread far and wide, with cargo ships leaving the port behind them and two islands to one side. Was this the sea Beautiful Girl had drawn for him in the picture he’d left in the barn? He looked at Sam, but he was doing what he’d been doing for almost two days: staring out his window, eyebrows tight, mouth in a frown. Homan turned back to the road, longing for Sam’s spirits to lift. They passed through a tunnel, and when they came out the other side, he understood they were crossing the water to reach a city. No, it couldn’t be the sea, not with a city so close by. And it was a city like none he’d ever seen, a city of hills and fog and brightly colored houses running up and down the crests like candy.

  They left the bridge and headed onto crowded streets. Sam pointed right, and Homan drove. Past office buildings, then houses and apartments. Past people of all kinds on the sidewalks: white, brown, Chinese, children, middle-agers, old folks, ladies in short dresses, men in suits, soldiers in uniform. Then, in among the crowd, he saw Beautiful Girl. How was that possible? He slowed down, looking close. Sam gestured for him to keep on, but he had to see. There she was, moving along. He slowed the van and was just about to stop when he realized: This person was too short, her hair too dark—she didn’t look like Beautiful Girl at all. He sped back up, freshly filled with sorrow. They rose up a hill so steep, at the very top he wondered if there could possibly be a bottom. Then they went down, passing right into mist. Homan glanced over at Sam, thinking, You gotta come back to me. You all I got now. Sam tapped his thumb against his armrest.

  Then they pulled onto a street of houses that ran along a steep hill. The houses resembled the most eye-catching houses in Edgeville, the ones where the richest white people lived. Only these were even nicer and painted livelier colors—blue and purple and white. Some had small trees in small front yards. Each had a huge set of stairs rising up from the sidewalk.

  Sam pointed to one house, and Homan stopped in front of it. He turned just in time to see Sam take a deep breath.

  Homan took a breath, too. It would be a chore getting up those steps. For starters, the ramp wouldn’t sit straight with the sidewalk at such a tilt. Also, it didn’t seem right that Homan should go through such a haul for someone who hadn’t been meeting his eyes. But Homan knew how it felt to be swallowed by unhappiness, and how, when it did, you needed someone at your side. The way, after the fever, Blue had be
en at his. The way Homan wanted Sam to come back to him now.

  So he figured out how to set the ramp to reach the sidewalk. Then he helped Sam out, locked the van, and heaved Sam’s chair up from the back. One step. Two. Three.

  They were going to have a devil of a time getting back down, he thought as they rose higher. The steps were making him sweat so hard, he hoped they’d stay there a long time, relaxing, sleeping on nice beds—and looking out at the view. From behind the chair, he could see it, as the land dropped down from where they were: a sheet of silvery water that seemed to have no end. Sailboats floated on the surface. Birds flew above. Was this the sea? He could not know unless he could taste it. But it was beautiful. He shook his head at himself for thinking the word. Then he closed his eyes and remembered her sitting in the office, drawing that picture. There it was: the tower to one side, the sea to the other. Yes. His word was right. Beautiful.

  Finally: the last step.

  Breathless, his skin sticky with sweat, Homan turned Sam around to the door. Sam had a grim look on his face, and Homan suddenly got a bad feeling.

  Sam pointed to the lock, then to Homan’s pocket, where he’d put the keys. Homan removed the key chain, and Sam indicated the one they needed.

  The key fit easily, and he felt the bolt give way. He reached for the knob—but it was already turning. Someone inside knew they were there.

  The door opened.

  A tall man with glasses stood before them. He looked suspicious for a split second, as if he had no idea who’d be unlocking his door. Then his eyes took in Sam, and his face melted with relief. He opened his mouth, and inside the house Homan caught movement. Past the fancy-looking chairs, white rug, and paintings on the walls raced a woman, tears streaming down her cheeks. Both of them looked frightened and angry and delighted all at once—the same mix of moods he now saw on Sam’s face. As the woman rushed to the doorway and threw her arms around Sam, Homan recognized her as one of the women who’d been with Sam at the church.