Previously: “Did you have cows?” she asked, as if proximity to cows constituted the single most fascinating fact of my life … The farm belonged to my dad’s grandfather … My earliest memories are occupied with the faces of the visitors and transient workers who stayed with us … The visitors stopped in 1984, the year my little brother, Max, was born … My parent didn’t go to church … I ask you, then, of these, the parents, the church, or the public school math teacher, who showed the greater kindness? … Haight-Asbury was overwhelmed with humanity … It was in the park that she met my father, who was noticeable, not for the fact that he was bare-ass naked, but because he was wearing a baseball mitt and playing catch and almost hit her in the head when he overthrew his partner … Then: The country got angry, people got killed, we went to the moon, Nixon resigned, Nixon got pardoned, I got born, Reagan got elected, people got AIDS, Contras got aid, and people with televisions enjoyed M.A.S.H and the Huxtables … I spent the most time with Ernest, who lived in the next house over … Paul lived in Guthrie, right in Guthrie … Steve lived on the edge of Logan County where the cows could have taken over in ten minutes if they had any gumption … One summer afternoon, around three-o’clock in the afternoon, Steve and I thought, Hey, let’s shut Pete in the foldout coach … Dipshits.
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
The next time I saw Ana was over drinks on a Friday night. On that night, she was Playful Ana, and Playful Ana had an amazing capacity to forget almost everything Critical Ana said or did. I wondered if I would have to resubmit my report on Millie Boones, but as soon as we sat down she looked at me and said, “Guess what?”
She spoke with a bounce I’d never seen in her. Her face was glowing brighter than the Schlitz globe above the bar behind her. I wasn’t expecting this energy.
“What?”
“Guess.”
“Please just tell me.”
“You suck. You’re not even going to guess?”
I was afraid to guess anything, afraid of Critical Ana appearing at any time, afraid to show that I was afraid. “How old are we? Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I quit my job.”
I leaned forward as if someone had slapped the back of my head. “Holy shit, you quit your job? When did you quit your job? Why did you quit your job?”
She leaned back as if she was the first clever person to ever think of such a thing. “When: I quit today. Why: Because I hated it and everything about it.”
It was true. She did hate her job. Since graduation, she had worked as a teacher at a private school a few miles west of her apartment. I forget the name, something Academy, Achievement Academy, no, that can’t be it; something Academy? It doesn’t matter. It was not her first choice, not by far, but they were looking for a history teacher and they were one bus ride away. There were school openings, public and private, that she liked more, but they would have meant a much longer commute, or (unacceptable) moving further north or further south in the city.
Ana taught history. She knew more names and places and dates than the internet and she could tell a good story. She was a good teacher. She liked teaching, but that school, shit. She had to answer to a priest, for one thing. She hated that. The usual priest stuff. Who was he to talk about sexuality? How could he call himself pro-life if x, y and z? His Hypocritical Highness, she called him. Bishop Boozey Breath. I agreed with her every step of the way, and yet she had a habit of transubstantiating my words and turning them into his. I think that, like, forty percent of the times she yelled at me, she was yelling at HHH. I was the icon through which she addressed the higher power. Because I went to church sometimes.
And then there were the other teachers, including, Miss Bachman, the science teacher who came to school in a wedding dress and set off the fire alarm when she leaned her sleeve too close to a Bunsen burner and had to roll in a smoky heap in front of her students. She was not fired due, almost certainly, to her outspoken opposition to the HPV vaccination, an opposition she managed to weave into most lectures and conversations. Was she worse than Mr. Ryan, the social studies teacher who was unclear about who exactly makes laws in this country and how? Hard to say. Ana sat alone when she ate lunch in the teachers’ lounge.
“This is major. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did your ma say?”
“Haven’t told her yet. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
“Awww, shucks. What is your mom going to say?”
“I don’t know, probably Oh, Dios mio at some point. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that now. C’mon, drink up. I’m buying.”
We ordered a bucket of Miller Light, twelve bottles, on special. Why fuck around? We talked like we hadn’t in months. God, that woman. Her face was a beacon in that dingy bar. She was alive, relaxed, she had, perhaps for the first time in her life, done the irresponsible thing, the spontaneous thing. She had two weeks left and then she could do what- ever the fuck she wanted. And those last two weeks? How were they going to be? Many loose ends to tie up? When I asked her these questions, she mimed sealing an envelope and putting it in a mailbox. “That’s me mailing it in. I could sit there and read People out loud and I’d still be, like, the third or fourth best teacher there.”
It was inconceivable that Ana could mail in anything, even mail. It would not surprise me to learn that she hand-delivered every piece of correspondence she ever composed. When it came to studying, she was a machine, a jackhammer. If a paper needed ten sources, she found twenty. If we got a chapter from a book as a handout, she would get the whole book from the library. If we were assigned a book she had already read, she would read it again, and underline it again, and make new notes in the margins. She was Dean’s List all the time, graduated with a 3.99, her only misstep being an A- in a sculpture class, the result of turning a project in late — late because there was a certain angle that wasn’t quite right, and she just couldn’t bring herself to hand in anything less than quite right. Yet there she was: two weeks from unemployment, in a dive bar with her least impressive friend, up to her elbows in a bucket of cheap beer.
I imagine that the architect of the bucket of beer designed it to be shared by three, four, maybe even five or more people. Two people per bucket was not sustainable under ordinary conditions, but we filled the table with empties and finished that fucking bucket. I had eight of the twelve and did not think I would be able to stand up, let alone leave the bar, and even if I did, odds were high that I would wake up somewhere strange and outside.
Ana suggested shots.
“Ana Ana Ana, look at me Ana. Wecannotdoshots. Wecannotdoshots. Badidea. Lookatme. Ana Ana. No shots.”
“Shut up shut up shut up shut up. Shhhhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. We’re doing shots. Hey! ‘Scuse me! We’d like slots. Slots! Not slots, not slots! Hahaha! Shots! Tequila. Shots. Two of them. Apiece.”
Do you know Ana, America? Pretty good impression, huh? Can’t you just see her sitting there in the bar, happy, drunk, instigating? Her eyes and mouth relaxed, the tension that you thought was maybe holding her face together gone, leaving space for new beauty to fill her cheeks and forehead and across her nose. Can you see her running her hands through her hair, shaking it like she was shaking out her spring wardrobe after a winter that lasted through April? Have you ever seen her mouth open so wide? No, you never have.
“Ana Ana Ana. Listen to me. If … wedoshots … we will die. Don’tlistenher, please. Please don’t bring us shots. Unlessyou wantto kill us. If you wantto kill us, bringusshots.”
“Shut up shut up shut up. Don’tlistentohim, please, he’s being a bitch. Two tequila shots. Please. Apiece. Four shots.”
“Ana Ana —”
“Shut up shut up. Listen. Afterthis we’ll take a cab. To my place. Yes, listen listen listen. This is my party. You can’t say no, you’re not allowed to say no.”
Oh, Ana. I knew that going to her place would mean her falling asleep on my shoulder in the taxi and me asking the driver to wait for me while I helped her up the front steps and through the front door. She would try to sleep in the foyer, so I would have to carry her to her bedroom and lay her in bed and take her shoes off. I would kiss her on her forehead and tell her I was leaving. She would mumble, “No, stay,” but be asleep before I left the room. After a damn pricey ride up to my place, I would lie in bed and try to jerk off, but end up falling asleep with my pants around my knees and my limp dick in the palm of my hand.
The server brought the shots to the table. I had to leave. I stood up, staggered left, staggered right.
“Where the fuck do you thing you’re going?”
“Ana, look —”
“No, sitdown, you’re going home withme.”
“Ana —”
“Listen: Shutup and drink your shots. You’re going home with me and then we’re gonna fuck.”
I shut up and drank my shots.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
At least heading east on 90 was a direction, more than I usually had.
Then Jackson remembers getting high with Paul and the memory makes him sleepy and he drives into a field of soybeans.