The Porcupine of Truth Read online

  Aisha turns and looks out at the horizon. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think at some point, if you’re going to have a life, you have to start going into the attic.”

  “Wow,” I say, remembering how going up into an attic nearly got us in trouble yesterday. “Just, wow.” But I don’t have any other arguments, so I walk back over to Thomas, who has been watching us from a distance.

  “We’d love to, thanks,” I say.

  “Well, good,” he says. “Nice of you to come up to my attic.”

  I jump a bit. Thomas’s laugh is unexpected and melodic. His face lights up and his mustache twitches like a caterpillar.

  “You need to talk more softly if you don’t want people to hear you,” he says. “Life isn’t a movie.”

  I blush, and Thomas keeps smiling. “You’re kind of funny,” I say, genuinely surprised.

  “Me?” he says, looking all shocked. “I’m just a nice old dude.” He leads us over to the trailer and opens the screen door. We follow him in. “Oh, dearest!” he bellows.

  The door to a room at the far end of the trailer opens, and an old woman with a radiant smile peeks her head out. “There you are!” she says, and then she sees us and says, “And guests!”

  “This, dearest, is the grandson of one Russ Smith!”

  She puts her hand to her chest. “Russ Smith? Oh! Oh my goodness!” The woman scurries over to us, arms out wide. “It is so lovely to meet you! I’m Laurelei.”

  “His name is Carson,” Thomas says. “His friend, who is clearly the second most beautiful person ever to step foot in this home, is Aisha.”

  She clasps Aisha’s hands in hers, and says something like, “My, aren’t you gorgeous.” Then she looks at me. She raises her left hand to my head and instinctively I open my arms to hug her. As I do, she says, “Oh!” and I pull back. In her left hand is a leafy thing that she must have pulled from my hair. I say, “Well, that’s awkward,” but she shakes her head like this happens all the time.

  Then she does hug me, and I am amazed at how much I feel like lingering in the hug of an old lady I don’t know. I feel starstruck, like I’m meeting the trailer park version of Oprah Winfrey, maybe. She’s got to be at least sixty, but something about her is also eighteen, like on the inside. Her face seems to glow.

  What appeared from the outside to be a small trailer is surprisingly wide and long, with low ceilings, maybe eight feet high. Thomas heads into the small kitchenette area and gets busy washing, chopping, and plating fruits and vegetables. Laurelei sits us down on twin couches near the front door and brings us a bowl of trail mix to snack on. She asks us about our trip and tells us what an amazing day she’s had. It consisted of walking through the trailer park and seeing a handful of neighbors. She also interacted with a neighbor’s dog.

  That’s it. And she seems happy. Not like pretending, but actual joy. I kind of want to move in with her. I look at Aisha, and I can tell she feels the same way.

  “What would you like to drink?” Thomas yells from the kitchen.

  “How about some wine?” I ask, half joking, and Aisha frowns at me.

  He laughs. “Nice try.” He brings out a salad bowl for each of us, a medley of raspberries, strawberries, melon chunks, and broccoli on a bed of sprouts, no dressing. We sit on the twin couches and eat with the bowls on our laps.

  “So my grandfather,” I say. “You knew him well?”

  “As well as you can know someone who was in your life for, what, two days? Three?”

  “That’s all? You acted like he was your best friend when I said his name.”

  Thomas laughs again. “Out here, we don’t get tons of visitors. He was memorable. Looked like an older version of you, you know. I coulda guessed if you’d let me. It’s in the cheekbones.”

  I feel my face and then, self-conscious, move my hands away. “I just hope you can help us figure out what happened to him.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what we can say that will help you,” Laurelei says. “We enjoyed his company, but I’m sure we never heard from him after he left us.”

  “Wasn’t it Wyatt Thurber who introduced us?” Thomas asks Laurelei. “The pastor. From Billings, wasn’t it?”

  “John Logan, maybe?” I ask.

  His face lights up again. “I think that’s right! John. It’s been so many years.”

  “He’s my dad’s neighbor.”

  “How is John?”

  “He’s fine,” I say. “But my granddad hasn’t been back to Billings since he visited you. And it’s kind of a big deal, because my dad hasn’t seen or heard from him since either, and now he’s dying, and —”

  “Oh! Poor dear,” Laurelei says, and even though it’s lunch and we’re eating, she actually stands up, comes over behind me, and puts her hands on my shoulders while I sit. She rubs them softly. It’s the weirdest thing ever.

  “It’s fine,” I say, my body rigid. “I hardly know him. He’s a drunk. I mean. My mom and I left when I was three. We’re like … just taking care of him now while he’s —”

  I can’t finish the sentence, and I find myself counting by elevens to 209.

  Laurelei continues to massage my shoulders, and I see that Thomas has stopped eating and is looking at me with very kind eyes.

  “There’s a lot of feelings in there,” he says, pointing at my chest, and I’m like, Whoa, fella. Buy me a drink first. I’m just fine, thanks.

  Then I realize I haven’t been breathing.

  Laurelei goes back to her seat, and I must be two people now, because part of me thinks, Awkward turtle, and the other part thinks, Come back, please. I’m not done being touched.

  “So, um,” I say, trying to get my head back. “Do you have any idea what was going on? Why he left without telling my dad?”

  Thomas and Laurelei look at each other. “Not a whole lot,” he says after a beat. “He was a nice man and we enjoyed him. If I recall, it was a tough time in his journey.”

  Laurelei nods. “Such a sweet man. Like you, Carson.”

  I look down at my food.

  “So, nothing else?” Aisha asks.

  “Sorry,” Thomas says, looking at Laurelei. “I wish we could be more helpful.”

  Our only clue, a dead end. Then I remember the letter my grandfather sent.

  “Wait,” I say. “Yeah. He wrote this letter to Pastor John from here. We have it.” I pull the letter out of my pocket and read it aloud to them.

  Thomas looks up at the ceiling like he’s pondering the whole thing. “What’s the world’s most dangerous grid?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  “Maybe an electrical grid?” he says.

  “It’s expensive too,” I say.

  “Right. Of course. An expensive and dangerous electrical grid, run by a church choir director.” He chuckles. “Doesn’t ring a bell when it comes to Russ. I know it’s been a lot of years ago, but I don’t remember much going on about expensive grids.”

  Laurelei shakes her head. “No. That one doesn’t mean anything to me either. Sorry.”

  “Anything come to mind when I tell you to ‘have faith in the KSREF’?” I quote the letter again.

  Laurelei squints. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh well. And you’re sure you never heard from him again?” I ask.

  Thomas wipes some salad dressing off his chin. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Sorry. Me too,” Laurelei says.

  “Oh well,” I say again.

  Aware that our visit has just become a lunch with nice people we’ll never see again, we move on to other subjects. Thomas talks about how he fell in love with Laurelei in college in Colorado. She wanted to be an artist, and he was into religion. After college, they traveled to third-world countries like Borneo and Uganda, where they built homes for people and taught them how to sanitize their drinking water. In their thirties, they settled in Wyoming, and he became pastor of a church in Thermopolis.

  “I liked it at first,” Thomas say
s, “but then the pressure came.” He looks at Laurelei, and she offers a sad smile.

  “Misguided people,” she says. “Ugliness.”

  The head of the church asked him to speak out against the Equal Rights Amendment in his sermons. Laurelei explains that the ERA was a proposed amendment to the Constitution in the 1970s that would guarantee equal rights for women. It passed in many states, but not enough to make it into the Constitution.

  “I told him to follow his heart,” Laurelei says, and Thomas laughs.

  “You told me that if I said a word against equal rights for women, you’d divorce my ass and move to California.”

  She laughs back. “Tomato, tomahtoe.” He reaches out, and her hand clasps his. They squeeze each other’s hands like they’re doing Morse code. I feel like I’m glimpsing something intimate and sweet, and I wonder what it takes to find a Laurelei.

  Thomas explains that they gave up organized religion years ago in response to the rise of the religious right in the early 1980s. They didn’t care for the politics. He’d met Pastor John at religious conferences, though, and when he received a phone call from him asking for a place for his friend to stay, he was happy to help.

  “So you remember this from, like, over thirty years ago?” Aisha asks.

  Thomas spreads his fingers wide. “I can count on this hand the number of friends we’ve had come stay with us since we’ve settled here. Our life is very simple. We like it that way.”

  “No Facebook?” Aisha says, and Laurelei smiles as a response.

  “We don’t have television and we don’t own a computer,” Thomas says. “One of our friends urged us to start an email account using his computer. We did, but I’m sure we haven’t looked at it in ages, have we, darling?”

  Laurelei shakes her head. I try to imagine not having a TV or a computer. It’s such an unbelievable idea that I involuntarily gasp.

  “My life is so different from yours,” I say, and they all look at me. “I’m from New York. I pass by thousands of people every day on the streets, and on the subway I’m shoved up against strangers all the time, yet nobody ever says hi to anyone else. I text and I email, and I almost never feel like I’m really connected. And you had a full morning,” I say to Laurelei, “because you got to play with a neighbor’s dog. That’s crazy. Crazy good.”

  She gives me the warmest, sweetest smile, and I feel myself falling for these people and their world. I really don’t want to leave.

  “Stay for a few days if ya like,” Thomas says, as if he’s reading my mind, and Aisha and I, without even looking at each other, say yes in unison.

  Laurelei asks if we’re a couple.

  “Gay girl, straight guy. Buds,” Aisha says before I can respond, and Laurelei smiles again, and Thomas says, “Well, it’s settled then. We’re so glad you’ll stay!”

  I quickly call my mom and tell her that we are in Wyoming staying with friends of Aisha’s, and we’ll be back tomorrow. She does her usual thing, which includes passive-aggressive breathing followed by a “Whatever you think, honey.” Instead of it bothering me, I just feel relieved, because right now I don’t want to be part of my broken family. I want to be part of this family, and I wonder if there’s some way I can get the Leffs to adopt me. Us.

  Thomas looks at his watch and says they have meditation class at two. It centers them, he says, and I can’t help but imagine them literally centered in every room, every photo they’re in. It’s now 1:10.

  “We can cancel,” Laurelei says. “Unless — would you like to come?”

  I’ve tried something like meditation only the one time, with the gentle yoga, and it was not the most successful thing. Could I do better now? I want to think that I could do better, but I’m scared that I won’t, and I don’t want to let Thomas and especially Laurelei down.

  Aisha says, “Sure.”

  This is exactly the kind of invitation I’d normally decline, because it’s new and different and maybe a little scary. What if I suck at it? And then I look at Laurelei, smiling expectantly at me, and I drop all that stuff. “Yep,” I say. “Sure. I’m in.”

  BY THE TIME we get to the meditation place, I am calm and even a little excited to try it. I will keep an open mind, I keep repeating as we drive over. I will not make jokes out of every little thing.

  This is immediately challenging, because Thomas and Laurelei did not tell me that we would be meditating in a kids’ classroom in a church. All around us on the walls are colorful posters with Bible sayings on them. One features an electrical socket and a cord plugging into it. It is unclear why, or what the hell that has to do with the accompanying saying: “Since I live, you also will live.” Another has a lightning bolt and reads, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”

  I get the feeling you get when some girl you really like and want to talk to has food stuck in her teeth and you think, Oh no, not her too. I thought Thomas and Laurelei said they gave up religion. Aisha has an alarmed look on her face as well. I tug on her sleeve. “We don’t have to do this.”

  She doesn’t give in to my tug. “I kinda want to try.”

  “We can meditate outside. Or you can, and I’ll just pretend, since it isn’t actually a thing.”

  Aisha walks over to Laurelei, who is helping a woman clear desks out from the middle of the room. “All the religious stuff pretty much makes my head explode,” she says.

  Laurelei finishes moving the desk and puts her hands on Aisha’s shoulders. “This isn’t a Christian meditation. Don’t worry about any of that. It’s simply the room we use because it’s empty at this hour.”

  Aisha nods and says, “I guess I can always leave if y’all start with the Jesus.”

  Laurelei laughs. “Tell you what. We’ll leave too. Okay?”

  Aisha looks back at me, and I shrug. Fine. Whatever.

  Thomas and Laurelei put down their mats and greet the other six or seven meditators warmly. The leader, an old woman with gray hair and a body that looks almost elastic from the way she sits tall while folding her legs in front of her so effortlessly, explains that we will use the next thirty minutes to simply be together, in silence. We are grateful for this time, and we thank our higher power for it.

  At the mention of a higher power, my throat tightens. That sounds like God to me.

  “Praying,” she says, “is talking to God. Meditating is listening.”

  I look over at Aisha. I’m not so sure God is tuned to our church in north-central Wyoming. He may be a little busy with the people in Africa and the Middle East to talk to a bunch of happy old folks and two wayward teens in Thermopolis.

  The leader ends her introduction by saying that we will accept exactly where we are. Sometimes thoughts are hard to put away. If they come, we will welcome them. We will acknowledge them, and then we will let them float away. We don’t need to focus on them. We will allow our minds to be as they are, and we will not judge ourselves harshly.

  The last part almost makes me laugh. Right, starting this very minute, I will stop judging myself harshly. This seems likely.

  I take a deep breath, trying to move past the idea of God and into our harmless little meditation session. Okay, I think. I guess this is fine. I guess it’s cool. I can try this.

  Then the silence begins, and my brain is on fire.

  Okay, thoughts and visions, I say to myself. I welcome you. Howdy.

  Howdy howdy howdy howdy howdy.

  Hello hello hello hello.

  C’mon. Nothing. Think of nothing.

  God! God! God! HELLO THERE, YOUNG CARSON! YOU SHALL KILL YOUR FIRSTBORN SON, OR I SHALL SMITE YOU.

  I shake my head, trying to spin the thoughts out. I toss them onto the floor beside me. I open my eyes and look around. The room is very still. Aisha is very still.

  A rare Billings memory floats by. Watching cartoons with Dad on Sunday mornings. He’d bundle me up in blankets on the floor in front of the television, and he’d lie on the couch, and we’d watch The Mouse and t
he Monster and Space Strikers, plus old-school cartoons like Road Runner. I was warm and whole and happy. Dad made me feel that way.

  My throat catches. Something unwelcome trembles my body, a wave of cold and static and tingle. I close my eyes tighter, shake my head.

  You’re free to go, the voice says.

  No. No. No.

  No.

  Let the thought be?

  Okay. Fine. I’ll let the thought be.

  You’re free to go, says the voice. A male voice.

  We are in the kitchen. They are, anyway. Mom’s head is buried in her hands, and she is making cat noises, it sounds like. Dad is saying words. I am holding a red ball. I stand in the hallway alone. It’s playtime. Dad said he’d come home and we’d play in the backyard, but he’s late. It’s too dark to go out, but I’ve been waiting up. I’ve built a fort in my bedroom out of pillows. I fell asleep under the fort, but then the door slammed and voices shouted and I came out to see, to listen, and Mom is on the kitchen floor and and I am confused.

  “You’re free to go,” Dad says, and to my three-year-old brain, she seems to be meowing.

  I hold the ball between my hands. I try to crush it. I can’t. The harder I push, the harder it pushes back. Mom’s wailing hurts my ears. It makes my chest feel like it’s going to cave in. I want to make it stop. I need to make it stop. Moms are big people. They are not cats. They are not supposed to wail.

  Daddy? Mommy? Did I say those words? I think I did. But no one heard. No one came.

  Then the world ripped in half.

  Her: “I’m taking Carson. We’ll leave in the morning. Is that what you want?”

  Him: “What I want is for you to leave me the fuck alone.”

  Her: “You’re a disgrace. You’re a failure of a man.”

  Him: “Tell me about it.”

  Her: “You’re losing your son.”

  Him: “Bound to happen.”

  My throat feels so tight. I don’t want to think about this. I never goddammit want to think about this why did you make me think of this stop it stop it stop it!