I follow Walt, the peculiar wayfarer, uphill. After twenty minutes or so, the ground begins to level a bit. Five minutes later, the trees diminish, and I suddenly understand a lot more about the kid’s situation.
In the middle of a circular clearing, a ragged blue tent stands like an emphysema patient; its withering canvas is bent, torn, faded, and ripped. Beside a dead campfire, a cornucopia of pots and pans pours out of an overturned milk crate. Wet T-shirts dangle from bony branches around the edges of the clearing advertising roofing companies, church soccer leagues, and obscure rock bands.
A shallow pit full of feces permeates the clearing from ten yards away. I don’t know whether I’m relieved or terrified by the box of toilet paper next to it.
Never, I think, raising my shirt collar up over my nose. Not in a million years. Literally, one million. I would hold it for a million years.
“It’s my land, New Chicago,” says Walt, disappearing inside his tent.
Putting some distance between the shit pit and myself, I climb atop a boulder the size of a Smart Car. What with my depth perception, it takes a few tries, but I manage eventually. Far below, the occasional flickering headlight is the only sign of human life. It certainly feels isolated up here, like some post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Through the thinning fall trees, I squint my good eye until the headlights blur into luminous stars, cosmic proof of the outside world; it spins and spins, ignorant of more than just this kid’s mountaintop campsite—it’s ignorant of the kid himself. I know this is true, because the Subaru lady didn’t stop for Walt. She stopped for me.
“Ready to swim?”
Walt looks up at me with wide-eyed enthusiasm. He’s shirtless now, holding a flashlight and sporting a pair of cutoff daisy dukes. The Cubs hat and the green Chucks he’s still wearing, as well as that infectious smile that sets my heart aflame. It’s the same smile my dad and I used when we made waffles, only Walt’s is magnified somehow, like I-don’t-know-what . . . the Belgian waffle version or something.
“Here,” he says, offering a wad of denim. “My backup pair.”
Hopping down from the boulder, I take the shorts and hold them out in front of me. They’re a little wide in the waist, and far shorter than any shorts I’ve ever worn.
Walt throws his finger in the air, spins on his heels. “This way to my pool!”
He stomps through the woods, bare-chested, peach-fuzzed, and pale-thighed, laughing his ass off, throwing that index finger in the air, and I have to give it to him—this kid has absolutely nothing in the world to call his own, and look how happy he is. No family? No friends? No home? No sweat. Hey, hey, he’s Walt, and he’s alive, and that’s enough. In light of his situation, my problems suddenly seem brazenly adolescent. Like a spoiled child crossing her arms and demanding some expensive new toy.
I follow him to the other side of the shit pit, where a murky lake awaits. Walt props the flashlight against a rock, then throws his arms open, as if—ta-da!—presenting a vaudeville show. The water is beyond brown. It reminds me of the rusty-shat fluids that poured from my old Greyhound like a hose. Dysenteric concerns aside, I wonder who actually owns this land. If some deadly Amazonian bacterial disease doesn’t get me, a bullet courtesy of the land’s proper owner might.
I open my mouth to say, Sorry, buddy, you’re on your own. Yet somehow, the words that come out are “Gimme a minute.”
I step behind a tree and quickly pull off my hoodie, shoes, socks, and jeans. WT-fucking-F, Malone. This is nuts, and I know that, but for some reason, I can’t stop laughing. I don’t know what it is, but slipping on the hoochie-mama shorts, I almost fall over due to uncontrollable laughter. I step out from behind the tree to find Walt in the middle of the lake, splashing himself in the face, acting like a goofball.
“What happened to your leg?” he asks, suddenly looking very concerned.
“I was in a bus accident,” I say, still giggling. “But I’m okay.”
“The bus had an accident?” he asks, climbing up onto the opposite bank.
“It flipped on the highway. But I’m fine, really. Just a scratch.”
Walt, apparently satisfied, backs up a few paces and throws his finger in the air. “This is how you do it, okay, Mim? Like this, watch.” He charges the lake with the ferocity of a Civil War captain leading his men into combat. But also—and if possible, more so—like a lanky five-year-old who just discovered what his arms and legs are for. It’s awkward, fumbly, and beyond beautiful. A few yards from the water’s edge, he trips over his own feet and rolls haphazardly into the lake. His head pops up out of the water like an apple. “Ha-ha! Did you see that, Mim? That was pretty good, huh? Okay. Your turn.”