Cannonball (37 page)

Rethink, hear? He was writing letters, fractions, on the board under the temple of his unfinished house.

So he bagged the quiz inspired he tells me now by me, and, barely holding a pencil, I wrote down stuff we hadn't had and hearing him demand to know what instantaneous motion was in a dive from point to point of the arc, then instantaneous position from time and a little more time, I grasped only that he had run the two tricks of what he called calculus together and, while the class writes frantically from board to page glad no gravity quiz today, I'm left with some infinite division of my failed full twist and a promise that I could remeasure it or myself, having made it to class really to measure how this high school swim-coach assistant to my dad might measure, move, assist me in what he now at the Competition Hearings called
my
doing. What
I'd
said.

Derived I couldn't take time or have mind to show spilled out from my sister reading with a headache the night before for me some space-time carpentered and planed self-building by a poet's unpretending time.

“You gotta go,” Wick said, one eye on the math Olympics coach talking up front, and it's only after I'm in the elevator, angry Em had left, with according to Wick “ironic” the word the Hippy, like Umo long ago and to be sought out this coming week in Chula V, meant for me—“though that's how we grasp time, and Zach…and—” (everyone stopping for everyone else yet in motion) Wick thanking me for saving
his
life that morning of the canceled test—it got his
house
finished!—Zach?—and I with the smell of my sister's sheets winding along the ventricles of my hopes, soothing my terrible chest—Zach?

I had seen somewhere in my head the Honda's taillight and license plate disappearing out the basement garage ramp, trunk unlocked, which left me in a position not so miserable as in time not now endless but still to be gathered up in thought.

An instinct not to stick around, who were we, staring at someone else's water shadowed by their campfire? Our pathmaking along a different route back into the hidden dark of our chill canyon carries barely with us the evening light surveyed behind along the ridge and time that rushes subtly down around the horizon. A giant paintbrush so-called, ragged and growing up three inches off the dry ravine toward us living off underground relations, weeds—who knew what?—now blooms scarlet under the flashlight, it wasn't supposed to be there. Pathfinding we're as long as it took to find at the bottom our coals distant under their ash beside the stream our undrinkable BLM stream and the taut flank of our two-man tent and inside our half-zipped-together sleeping bags, a sweatshirt, a toothbrush, restless, ungathered, and there over the rampart of this canyon, just one of several canyons, that stranger's fire, the gallon jugs, three waters but what had we to swap for such a steal?—not even an underage beer.

I bear it in me on my hands and knees to the end of the concrete ledge and hear nothing but the river water and wind and trucks on the bridge up behind me and over my shoulder catch sight of four or five watchers on the bridge and so as not to lose my place and the boy, I lie in the shifting depth of water on the concrete ledge, the small of my back balanced on the end, extending my legs, my boots as far as I can and further for the boy to bring his other hand this way, and then I bring my legs together to give him more to get hold of: one hand and now, something in his open mouth and eyes, reading my foot, the other hand letting go of the submerged projection I figure he'd sunk his claw anchor onto, and I feel his weight in my stomach and push with my hands against the raw sides of the ledge to bring us in toward the other ledge, a two-person dive in reverse but almost too slow exchanging what we bring to each other.

A great thing you would do that fell away even as your question in mid-word turned to statement. And it was not you but the black-skinned man from the West on a bench aware of maybe being watched who wrote the last words rendering into Chinese the page of the English-language Directory the great boy, who figures in the plans of the local sports authority, has improperly borrowed because the city and state of the entry on page 153 and “Olympic” and the year numbers and some shadow of bond extended as if you knew the language if you'd find it in you persuaded him that he must have someone who doesn't know him tell what it is in Chinese. The man looks up, a traveler, irritable and taking a chance he can't name, and hands the little translation to the boy who takes it from him almost rudely like news, reads what is there, and reaches into his shoulder bag, so different in scale from him. He peels off layers of tissue from the small porcelain object, a China dog. The man can't accept it. Not a gift, the boy retorts. Made by his father who is not here. In exchange for translation—these Chinese words. It is something great the boy has found to do, this exchange, one thing for another. All right, he'll keep it for him, the man says. The boy laughs. His father made hundreds like it once. But this comes from you, the man replies. They look around them for it is not safe. It is noon, and the Directory is returned to the boy's bag. The two examine each other. The transaction is done. What is it they trust?

 

JOSEPH MCELROY is the author of nine novels, a novella, and a volume of short fiction. A volume of his essays,
Exponential
, has been published in Italy and in expanded form will be forthcoming as an e-book from Dzanc. Three short plays are forthcoming. He received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and D.H. Lawrence Foundations, twice from Ingram Merrill and twice from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at numerous universities. McElroy was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930. He was educated at Williams College and Columbia University.

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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

My thanks to three readers: Matt Bell, Mike Heppner, and Robert Walsh.

“to meet the water,” an excerpt from
Cannonball
in slightly different form, appeared in
J&L Illustrated
#3, ed. Paul Maliszewski, J&L Books, 2012, pp. 245-55.

Brief quotations from
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
(ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Boston: Little Brown, 1960) appear in the body of the narrative—specifically from #488, 712, 754, 986, 1129, 1398, 1428, 1553, 1556, and 1642.

This project is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Copyright © 2013 by Joseph McElroy

Cover design by Steven Seighman
Cover art by G. Davis Cathcart

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