stood like sentinels protecting the store against invasion. Barry had already taken in the hot dog stand. Mai must have melted in front of those windows reflecting heat like a solar cooker. Another grievance she could hold against Barry, who’d insisted the free food would be a big draw, as if people couldn’t wait to get a jump on eating their fill of Fourth of July hot dogs. The giant flag, which never came down because it required six to fold it, snapped overhead, the only sound in the empty parking lot. Inside, the display lights were off; only security lamps illuminated the shelves. Shit. He wasn’t that late. The door resisted his pull. They’d probably locked up against stragglers while they finished in back.
He cut the power to the bald eagle and the air dancer. The eagle began to sag and Elastic Man immediately collapsed. Isaac ripped loose the Velcro skirt attaching the nylon sleeve to the blower and removed Elastic Man’s telescoping support pole. By the time he’d finished breaking down the dancer, the eagle lay on its side. Isaac walked the air pockets flat so he could fold the bird. The dolly for moving the displays was still inside. He pounded the heavy glass with both fists. No response. He went around to the receiving door and tried the buzzer. Nothing. Barry’s red Silverado wasn’t in its usual parking place. The possibility of murder-suicide simmered in the store some days, the only question being which spouse would be which. But dead men didn’t drive and neither did Mai. More likely, they were unwilling to witness further the travesty of America’s Big Blowout Birthday Event. What did they expect him to do with the doors locked—abandon his responsibility? Where was the respect? People always looked through him, walked past him, talked over his head as if he were ignorant. They assumed the worst. Barry, at least, should know better. He depended on Isaac morning and night, took him along to customers’ houses. He trusted him on the farm property and put his approval in writing. Isaac had fulfilled their deal to the letter and the day! And now Barry had blown him off without even a note. No Sorry, Isaac. Had an emergency. Back soon. No Key’s under the sandbag—have a Happy Fourth! He heard Mai saying to Barry—Nobody going to buy. Just leave in parking lot. Melt. Kids take. Who care?
Nobody cares. They didn’t need him. His agreement with Barry would unravel the second he moved his camp. Mai wanted his job for one of her nephews. She would attack and Barry would fold. Like the innocent horse in the river, Isaac was about to be drowned by his master’s folly. The six-foot-tall birthday cake mocked him. Happy, the second layer said. Isaac was not happy but then it was not his birthday. He unsheathed Jake’s knife and tried to slash off the top of the candles. They simply flattened and bounced back up. He braced the cake with his foot and free hand and thrust into its Happy middle, releasing a fart of vulcanized air. He slit the elephant’s trunk. It slumped to its knees and blubbered until Isaac unplugged the blower. Stabbing Uncle Sam seemed semi-treasonous, so he attacked the rocket he rode. With a sigh, they expired as one.
Isaac awakened to the sit-sit-sit of lawn sprinklers. Probing for an uncompressed inch of cardboard between his elbow and the river cobble, he remembered where he was, near the entrance to an office park under a low umbrella of yews that provided its only park-like touch. He was totally fucked now. Barry had only gone for takeout and left Mai locked in the store so she wouldn’t have to deal with Isaac. From behind the dumpster, he’d heard them fight over the carnage outside. They started by blaming each other, but eventually they would figure out it was him. For the first time in months he could sleep in. Nobody in the office park was coming to work on Independence Day.
Isaac didn’t require Wesley’s bike trailer to move his camp after all. His Coleman stove and cooler were missing, along with the tarp; clothes from his duffel scattered in bushes and hung from branches; the slashed tent, crumpled on bent poles, was spray-painted NØHØBØZ; tent stakes were stabbed through the yoga mat. He found his sleeping bag sopping in the ditch. He apologized for dragging Wesley out here.
“Come back to the island with us,” Wesley said. “We don’t let this shit happen down there.”
What Wesley meant was that he didn’t let it happen. Wesley stood a shade above six feet, one-quarter of which seemed to be his close-cropped head, a skull as wide as a cinderblock with a jaw that seemed to predate civilization. His face had fleshed out and his arms lacked their old definition but his bulk still promised the capacity to do serious damage. It was well known on the river that in the military Wesley had acquired serious survival skills that went far beyond what berries to eat in the wilderness. Isaac regarded him as a peacekeeper, someone like the president who you’d trust to murder on your behalf.
But having Wesley on the island didn’t guarantee peace on the river. The banks curdled with defeated tribes declaring war on each other—hard partiers, domestic disturbers, raving anchorites, angst bearers, mental-case poets. Loud was how they fought, expressed ecstasy and pain, showed strength, attracted witnesses, alerted allies, cleared space. Volume was an unarmed man’s weapon, a lone woman’s bodyguard, a weakling’s last hope.
Isaac figured he might last there a week.
The group waiting for the Day Center to open looked the same to Isaac as every weekday. Men and women cupping cigarettes and clutching sacks of laundry. People locking their bikes and chaining their dogs. The bleary-eyed and red-faced ready for a breakfast of sugar and powdered creamer laced with weak coffee. Women seeking a safe place to sit out the morning. The jobless who needed a routine as badly as a paycheck.
Inside or out, waiting was the main activity at the Day Center. Waiting for a washing machine or a shower. Waiting for the phone or to sign in for a storage bin. Waiting for the mail to arrive or for somebody to finish with the newspaper. Waiting for the crapper—that was the worst. And when the Day Center closed at noon you went off to wait somewhere else—the soup kitchen, the park, the library or the bus stop. If you didn’t like waiting, you could walk—the two reasons Americans bought cars as soon as they could.
Isaac waited outside Sylvia’s office. Sylvia Tell was the Day Center director. Toward all her fallen guests she was skeptical and stern but ultimately forgiving, the way Isaac hoped God would turn out to be. When it was his turn, she gave him the look. Everybody knew it—one-third smile, one-third sour, one-third oh, come on now.
“I haven’t seen you here for a while,” she said. Her eyebrow stayed suspended and she folded her arms, turning the statement into a question. It was a trick of hers, like shining a bright light into your eyes. You were supposed to say something to make it go away.
“I lost my job and my camp over the Fourth,” he said.
“Check over at Outreach.”
“I’m looking for a place, not a case worker.”
“Well, forget anywhere on the river. It’s not like it was. The Point’s gone. Las Colonias is next and they’ll keep on going. You can’t drift along any more. You have to make a plan, and I don’t mean one of them Isaac Samson connect-the-dot-fate-of-the-universe plans. I mean for your own life. You’ve got to listen to others sometimes.”
“I hear others plenty.” That was a big part of the problem.
Sylvia did not care to hear from her guests about the system, bad chemistry, misfortune, poor upbringing or a lousy economy. She listened to a loving and all-knowing God. That made her world simple and the solution to other people’s problems plain. She didn’t have to deal with a flypaper brain, everything sticking where it landed. She heard a Bible verse and made it mean what she wanted. When Isaac walked down the street, he might hear a stop sign, Ronald Reagan and a stranger’s dog speaking at once. How was he supposed to make plans when he knew that radio station was still plugged into his head? The world already thought he was a loser. How many failed plans before he proved worthless to himself?
Sylvia was speaking to him about being grateful for each day he was given.
