Jess Simms

I had one of those solid too-real dreams last night, the kind I only have when I’m wasted. It was of the three of us, me and Chris and Iggy. We floated down a river on a raft, some Huck Finn shit made of logs. Trees spun by on the bank, leaves like green smoke. A man in a seed cap passed us on a jet-ski. The murky water churned in his wake and nipped my skin like so many teeth. He was shouting about lions.

There’s lions in the woods, he said, You best use utmost caution.

Those are the words he used. Utmost caution. Chris shouted back, his voice like a backmasked record: we’re on the river, man. Lions ain’t no nevermind to us.

Reality envelops me, sense by sense. The mesquite smell of old campfire. The ping of my sneaker against an empty beer can. The dew frosting the grass, the hairs of my forearms. Chris is passed out face down, jean jacket balled up for a pillow. Iggy is asleep sitting up against the car. It feels too cold for August, too early to be awake. The radio’s still on from last night, some shitty rock-pop song that makes me eager for the better music we’ll hear at tonight’s concert. It’s got a festival line up, the Foo Fighters, the Black Keys, fucking Bob Dylan. Our plan was to stay in a real campsite near the venue except none of us thought to bring a tent. We’ve got sleeping bags, camping chairs, a bundle of firewood, six lighters, a boombox, five mason jars of moonshine, a quarter of Iggy’s dank California weed, a carton of Pall Malls, a box of Black’n’Milds, two packs of hotdogs, relish, hot pepper rings, three kinds of mustard, sixty-four cans of Miller High Life, an eight ball, a beer bong, a weed bong, and a Tupperware of Chris’s girlfriend’s homemade potato salad. But no tent. Apparently the management found that suspicious.

So we drove back down the interstate, defeated, until Iggy spotted a rutted service road under a billboard for the Big Easy Casino, just over the West Virginia border. At its end we found a little wooden shack with working outlets by the front door. Iggy said we should be cool here. He said he used places like this all the time when he hitched in high school, that no one cared as long as you didn’t steal shit. Iggy’s parents live in Pittsburgh, but no one suggested we stay with them. They’re not the kind of parents you drop in on.

The music fades into a news report. Top story: the owner of a private zoo in Jefferson County was found mauled in his house. Some of his animals were on the loose—a couple wolves, a chimpanzee, a giraffe. I don’t know how you lose a giraffe in Ohio.

There’s no mention of lions.

The radio segues into a McDonald’s ad and it’s the lingering moonshine or the power of suggestion, but I need an Egg McMuffin. I shake Iggy. He slides sideways down the car door and wakes when his head hits the dirt. In the post-dawn his eyes have a moldy look, green-blue, vaguely toxic.
I say, “I want McDonald’s.”

Iggy sits up, turns his head, finds a half-full jar of moonshine. He lifts it with both hands. His throat bobs. He coughs and wipes his sleeve across his lips. He says, “There’s one close.”

“Where are we?”

“Near Mount Pleasant,” Iggy answers. “In Ohio.” He pats at his thighs and the pockets of his hoodie, finds his cigarettes, a pink Bic. His hands are shaking bad so he tosses me the pack and I pull out a smoke for each of us, light both and pass him one. He takes a long drag, closes his eyes. He asks, “Should we take Chris?”

I think about lions. About the zoo escape and my friend from high school, who hit a coyote with her car in the Columbus suburbs. How there’s always more wild around us than we realize. I say, “We’d better.”

But Chris won’t wake up, not for shaking or yelling or a solid kick to the ribs from Iggy. I rub some moonshine on his lips. He twitches and mutters in sleepy tongues but his eyes stay shut. The first time this happened we got worried, almost took him to the hospital. Anymore more of his mornings start this way than not. I look up at Iggy and he tilts his head, lifts his eyebrows like a shrug. “We could leave a note,” he says, and that’s good enough for me. I can’t find any paper so I scrawl Getting breakfast back soon – J on Chris’ palm in Sharpie while Iggy tosses a hoodie over his back and fishes the car keys from his pocket. I walk around to the passenger door.

Iggy says, “Of course you’d make me fucking drive.” His glare is halfway between pissed and in love. Right where I like to keep him.

The radio plays an old Tom Petty song. Iggy lights another cigarette and hangs it out the window. My phone vibrates in my pocket. My dad calling. I let it go to voicemail. The DJs take the air, say, “We’ve got an update on that zoo escape.”

*

Iggy turns up the volume. The DJ says, “Turns out the animals didn’t escape—the owner let them out. The animals, in return, mauled him to death.”

“Can you maul something not to death?”

“Point being, this guy’s a lock for a Darwin award this year.”

Iggy mutters, “Sick. You hearing this?”

“I heard it this morning,” I say.

The DJs shift to a comedy sketch. Iggy circles through the dial: A country station, NPR, talk radio, static-fuzzed pop, then it’s back to the beginning. I stare out the window but it’s the same basic shit that’s on every interstate: stunted oaks and pines, billboards for Applebee’s and BP and Holiday Inn and finally a giant Big Mac, the familiar golden arches, the words Next Exit.

Iggy asks, “Who was that call from?”

“What call?”

“Don’t try that shit.” His eyes maintain glazed attention on the road ahead, like he’s looking through the highway. He taps his index finger on the steering wheel.

I say, “My dad.”

“You should call him back.”

“Like you’re my fucking dad.” And like Iggy has reason to give anyone advice. Iggy, whose parents are so out of the picture he doesn’t even know their street address. Who gets a birthday card every year from his mother, sent by her secretary, which is obvious because she flipped the dates and sends it on January 4th instead of April 1st, every year. The secretary has the audacity to sign it With Love.
Iggy says, “At least he cares enough to call.”

“Then he could treat me like a fucking adult.” Except my voice is a three-year-old pre-tantrum. I roll down my window, light up another smoke. Iggy follows suit. The way he takes his next hit is smug, like he won some contest.

I ask, “Think they have french fries for breakfast?”

“They’ve got hashbrowns,” he answers, changing lanes to make our exit.

*

Mount Pleasant has a convenience store—closed—and a Motel Six. The rest of the town is made of brick. Red brick storefronts lining the main street, a tan brick schoolhouse between perfectly square brick houses. Even the fucking McDonald’s is brick, painted a sterile white. It’s the kind of McDonald’s with a front patio instead of a playplace. Some teenagers cling to the chain-link fence of the basketball court across the street, t-shirts slung over their shoulders like towels. They’re staring at the restaurant. Flashing red-and-blue lights spin over their faces.

We turn into the parking lot and there’s two cop cars, a fire truck, an ambulance with its back doors open. A woman sits on the bumper, one hand pressed to her temple while a paramedic wraps her other arm in gauze. It seems like the whole population of Mount Pleasant is clustered on the blacktop, gawking at the patio. I check the cupholders for paraphernalia while Iggy circles for a spot.

“Heart attack?” Iggy suggests.

“All this for a fucking heart attack?”

He shrugs. “It’s a small town.” But the way he says it, he knows it’s bullshit. We stand at the crowd’s edge beside a cop who’s questioning a McDonald’s employee in a dark blue polo, dirty blonde ponytail laced through her cap. The whole crowd’s staring at something I’m too short to see, everyone except one guy leaning against a lightpole with his arms crossed and a toothpick in his teeth. He’s staring at us from under the brim of his seed cap. The cardboard sign above his head tells me I can spice things up! with a Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I feel like an extra in an episode of Law and Order.

The cop asks the employee, “Did the parents see the animal?”

Iggy perches on his tip-toes. Whatever he sees makes his left eyebrow twitch.

The employee answers, “They told her to stop. She screamed ‘Doggie!’ and rushed for it.” She lifts her hat and wipes beneath the band, even though it’s still too cool out for sweating. Her face is a blanched kind of pre-puking color. She asks the cop, “Where’d it come from?”

Iggy lowers from his tip-toes, shaking his head. I’ve seen his eyes glazed like that before. It means he really needs a drink. He turns to the cop and asks, “Is the restaurant still open?”
The cop’s stare is cold. He gestures to the woman with the sickly face. “This here’s the manager. You’ll have to ask her.”

But there’s no need to ask. She twists her mouth and spits. She’s got buck teeth that show when she scowls, oversized ears folded down by her hat. The whole effect is of a pissed-off rabbit.

“There’s a Burger King down the street,” the cop says. He slides his hand down the manager’s back and leads her away from us like we’re something dangerous.

We’re the center of attention, now, overexposed in the crowd’s sudden hush. The man in the seed cap shakes his head and moves away. I look at the negative space he leaves, the clear view around the lightpole to the patio beyond: a metal table flipped onto its side, its red umbrella bent up against the fence; sticky brown stain of spilled pop, a trail of drops where the cup rolled toward the brick wall; a broken hashbrown and a sprawl of parfait and a gray-brown muzzle with blood-stained teeth. Not a dog, I realize. A wolf. It’s missing one eye and half its skull. Even dead it has an air of menace. Beyond it, a little human head with pigtails. I think she was wearing pink but that could just be bloodstains because everything is pink and red, brown at the edges. Her right arm’s slanted across her body like she tried to hold her guts in. But she failed; they’re dragged out over the concrete, red-gray intestines in a pile, one strand still stuck between the wolf’s teeth. A half-eaten Egg McMuffin leans against her entrails like it was set there as a garnish.

Iggy says, “You wanna do that?”

“What?”

“Burger King.”

I turn and regard the unwelcoming eyes. The woman on the ambulance bumper is sobbing. Nearby paramedics discuss testing for rabies. I tell Iggy, “Let’s go.”

*

At Burger King’s drive-thru speaker we get a feast’s worth of Croissan’wiches and Cini-minis, a flimsy tray of coffees. We pass a minivan merging onto the highway. A hound’s streamlined muzzle pokes through the open window, tongue lolling to catch the breeze. Iggy flattens his palm against my thigh and squeezes.

“I’m sure Chris is fine,” he says, but I’d never said he wasn’t.

The sun’s full in the sky by the time we pull up beside the cold firepit. Chris is awake. He’s got the hoodie Iggy left him tied over his shoulders like a cape. He traces our arrival with glassy eyes. When Iggy kills the motor the radio continues outside, Duran Duran accompanied by a cacophony of birds.
Iggy asks, “Did anything happen while we were gone?”

Chris lifts and lowers his big shoulders. “I got high,” he says.

Iggy scowls. “That’s for all of us,” he says. “For the concert.” The wind pushes his hair into his open mouth. He rakes a hand across his face to clear it.

“Just a bit, man. Just maintenance.” Chris’s voice is pitched to defense mode, because he knows I know—and Iggy knows—just how much Chris calls maintenance. Iggy purposefully avoids looking at our stash, instead tosses the Burger King bag to Chris, who tries to catch it but moves too slow. The bag thumps to the ground between his sneakers.

Iggy says, “Breakfast.”

Chris gropes inside, paws the sandwiches.

Iggy says, “We should go.”

Chris nods vague acknowledgement. Iggy bustles around our impromptu campsite picking up empty cigarette packs and moonshine bottles. The charred leftover hot dogs he leaves for some animal. Iggy unplugs the boombox and in the silence there’s the crinkle of Chris rummaging through the bag, until the silence hits his ears and he stops, too. Then there’s only white noise. Hum of traffic from the interstate. Shrill screech of songbirds. Iggy tucks the boombox beneath his arm. “We should go,” he says again.

“What’s the rush?”

“It’s not safe here. Family in Mount Pleasant got attacked by a wolf.”

“Bullshit.”

“Probably from that fucking zoo. Shit’s all over the news. You should’ve heard it.”
Chris says, “I ain’t heard shit.”

“Iggy’s not lying,” I say, and Chris turns his head like something dead underwater, looks at me with half-opened eyes. I tell him, “I saw it.”

Because Iggy might make this shit up, but not me. I’m a solid source. Chris stands with his hand still inside the breakfast bag and slides into the backseat. I take shotgun. Iggy gets behind the wheel without even a snarky comment, which says something about where Iggy is, mentally. He’s never too put out for snark.

Chris asks, “You saw a wolf attack?”

Iggy flicks his eyes toward the rearview mirror. He puts the car in gear.

I say, “Just the body.”

We rock down the service road, swaying with the ruts like it’s a rough sea and we’re the shoddy raft braving it.

Chris asks, “Was it gross?”

Iggy says, “It was a kid.”

It’s not the answer to his question but it makes Chris quiet. I pull out a joint once we’ve merged into traffic. I’m passing it to Iggy when my pocket starts to vibrate. My dad again; I don’t have to look. He just wants to know that I’m okay but I’m not ready to tell him that yet.

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