The Riddle

Jason Escareno

My dad asks the same questions, over and again: Who gets his girlfriend pregnant at age sixteen? Who drops out of high school at seventeen? Who goes to jail at eighteen? Like it’s the riddle of the sphinx. 

I cannot miss another day of school. I have close to seven hundred tardies and three hundred absences. It’s May, hot already, a heat wave. I walk to school each day, half a mile. There are others who also walk. I get lost in the migration. 

    I’m determined to walk to my girlfriend’s house. It’s five miles. What I do is walk down to Figge Road. All the way to the end of that road, down to the Muskegon River. 

    When I get there, Buster’s bathing in the river. Buster is a sex offender my parents warn me about. He has a luxurious beard and revolving eyes. His beard glistens with river water. He floats on his back in the river, pale gut exposed. 

    I also see turtles. They sun themselves on wooden pilings of the burned-out bridge where my dad and I once caught a turtle, when we were fishing.

    I have seen century-old black and white photos of this river filled to the brim with logs. In this exact spot, lumberjacks worked to prevent logjams. They stood atop log piles resembling bowls of shredded wheat. I’ve seen these photos but can’t imagine it.

    Buster’s full of vim and vigor. He asks me where my sister is at. Buster has gotten my sister and her friends drunk before. 

    Buster’s clothes are piled on the riverbank, beside a sunfish taking its first and last gulps of air. It’s the kind of fish my dad would toss back. 

    Buster convinces me to join him. How royal the clouds are, when I’m on my back in the river! I mock them with my white belly.

    We keep our heads above water. Buster points out a hawk, circling. 

    After I leave Buster, I pass the old oil derricks and the gas tank farm. The condemned sanitarium looks down from the ridge like I’m the crazy one. 

    I’m trying to notice everything: the retention ponds, full and still, the wood ducks and mallards at rest. A great crane takes flight over the river. One deer, a doe, crunches sawgrass. 

    Once I reach the train tracks and trestles I’m out of the woods, so to speak.

I walk on the side of the Moses J Jones Parkway. A dozen obnoxious motorcycles rumble past. Sounds roar from the deep throat of their engines. They don’t even stop for the train, they go under the crossing’s arm. The rest of the traffic stops for the train, but not them. 

    I walk past the tank factory, and the obstacle course where they test drive the tanks. Where my grandpa worked for thirty years building Sherman tanks for World War II. My grandpa sent all five of his sons to war while he built their tanks.

    Across from the tank factory is the junkyard where my dad takes me to get spare parts for his beloved Toronado. Next to the junkyard is Pat’s Roadhouse, a motorcycle bar. One bike leans outside, an italicized letter.

    I stop in Pat’s. My girlfriend’s aunt is the bartender. I help her move some heavy boxes and she gives me a reward. 

    “Pick your poison,” she gestures to the bottles behind her. 

    O true apothecary! The array resembles the inside of a medicine chest. I opt for a bottle with flames. Cinnamon schnapps. She pours me a shot. 

    Beside me at the bar is a man with flames tattooed on his bald head, clothed in leather.

    “Would’ve been better to let her carry those boxes,” he nods. “A man’s more likely to drop them. A woman’s center of gravity’s lower.”

    I ask for a cigarette, and he gives me a Salem. Like my dad’s, mentholated. 

    “What school do you go to?” He says he went to Reeths-Puffer too, knows my brother. 

    “Your bother used to carry a bible around school everywhere he went. I admired that.” 

    My brother still loves church. 

    “I’m wearing my brother’s clothes,” I say. “My dad is the manager of the grocery store up the road.” 

    After I say this, I realize I’ve lied.

    “He has a beautiful red-headed girl, six months old,” the aunt tells the biker. She means me, my daughter.

     “I can’t believe that,” the biker says.

     “Believe it.” I set my glass down. 

     “Do you have a car? A job?” 

     “No.” 

     “That’s not right,” he says. 

     “Leave him alone,” My girlfriend’s aunt wipes the bar down. “He’s doing what he can.” 

     “That’s not enough,” the biker’s eyes follow her down the bar. “Does your brother know about this?” To me.

     “Of course.”

      That’s when I tell the biker that I’ve had enough with his people, that is, bikers. 

     “Why are they so damn loud?”

     He gives me an anecdote to explain that motorcycles have to be loud so that cars know to look out for them.

     “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.” I bring up the bikes that went under the arm at the railroad crossing. 

     On my way out, there’s a poster advertising the band “Suffocating Mothers,” and they’re playing Friday night. I wondered if the mothers are being suffocated or if they’re doing the suffocating.

I continue down the access highway to the Church of God, the church my brother built. The one my girlfriend’s family attends, where my daughter was baptized. Where my girlfriend used to go to school, until they expelled her for getting pregnant. There was a pregnant girl in the school before my girlfriend, whom they allowed to stay. But not my girlfriend. She now attends a public school on the other side of the city.

     They can’t kick us out of church, since my girlfriend’s grandmother plays the piano. 

     The parents here told their kids to avoid my girlfriend and me. They should be more understanding. They know our history. People used to get married at sixteen, back when people had to boil down a lifetime into thirty, forty years. 

     Some people at this church are what I would call “too saved,” and they let you know it.

I sneak into the sanctuary, in the new section they’re building. It’s the size of a Walmart. The most followed man in the world deserves his own Walmart. No one is here–the school’s down in the basement—and I wonder, Why do pastors get six days of rest while God gets only one? I climb some scaffolding up to the rafters and rest. I smoke a cigarette, my dad’s, and I see that it is good. I mark my territory, carve “666” into one of the rafters. What’s wrong with me? 

     As I’m walking out, the pastor’s daughter notices. 

     “What are you doing? No one’s allowed in here yet.”

     She takes my hand and walks me out. Her little hand is ice and mine is fire. Robert Frost wrote a poem about our hands. For one second, she’s my girlfriend. I think I’m supposed to kiss her, but I don’t. 

     I walk by the pastor’s mansion with the two stone lions, past the perfectly manicured lawn and garden. I knock over a statue of Psyche. 

Now I’m on Getty. Getty Street has a huge wave where the road goes down to Ryerson Creek and then back up. 

     I pass the house my grandfather built. He ordered this house from a Sears catalog. He lived here most of his working life, but once he retired, he left this house. He came from the fields, and when he retired, he went back to the fields. He retired and bought a farm.

     Now my three teenage cousins live here. They raise themselves. Their parents both died from cancer. I don’t stop because I barely know them. 

     I keep walking, past the greenhouse with a hole in the window–there is always at least one window with a hole in it. “Glads and Jonquils For Sale,” a sign. Bees murmur.  

     I walk against traffic. There is no sidewalk but the never-ending approaching autos move toward the center line when they see me. I see potholes being patched by a work crew, but these potholes will never heal. I smell the hot asphalt. 

     There’s a half-eaten tire in Ryerson Creek, being eaten by the creek. Tiger lilies bloom with both their feet planted right in its waters. A grocery cart from my dad’s store lies on its side, playing dead. I pick up the cart with plans to take it to my dad’s store and push it up the hill. 

I’m in my dad’s store on Apple Avenue, giving this grocery cart a second chance. I guess I should stop calling it dad’s store since he was fired a few years ago, after thirty years. He now works at another store. My dad found another grocery store to save him. 

     Inside, no one recognizes me except the electric eye that opens the door. I don’t recognize anyone. My theory is that a grocery store replaces itself every few years, like a human skeleton. I keep waiting to hear my dad’s famous laugh. This grocery store is still confident even without him. How is that? 

     I used to mow the grass outside the store, and my sister got to be in one of its television commercials. My sister is beautiful, that’s why she was in a commercial. After the commercial, old timers would ask her if she’d launched any ships lately. That commercial launched some shopping carts for sure. My sister wanted to cut the grass and I wanted to be in the commercial, but we both got the opposite of what we wanted. 

     I seek out the fertile crescent, the produce section. Put ripe produce on the bottom of my cart, then wheel over to the bakery and add pillowy breads. Last, all the heavy groceries go in, smashing the breads and rolls, the fruits and vegetables. I fill my cart to the brim. 

     My cart overflows now with expensive meat, imported deli cuts, and exotic seafood. I poke holes in the meat packages that won’t fit in my cart.  I always take things too far.

     Then, I walk out. 

     I’m nonchalant, even have the gall to whistle past a cashier.

     “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she calls to me. 

I walk past a gun shop raffling an AR-15, according to the sign. The funeral home with its giant clock is across the street. My cousins could have easily walked to their parent’s funerals. 

     I cross the road when I’m not supposed to because the sidewalk is on the other side. That’s when I stop traffic. What I do without meaning to is stop a funeral procession. A train of cars with black flags on their hood has to stop for me. Death stops for me, and Emily Dickinson. 

     These cars are on their way to Mona View Cemetery. The funeral procession must pass the strip clubs on their way to the cemetery. Doubtless they will lose a few cars to the clubs. 

     The sidewalk’s stained with mulberries. Black boys with victorious faces bounce orange basketballs, the boys themselves bouncing. 

     I arrive at my girlfriend’s house across Laketon Avenue. She lives down a dirt road in the middle of a hundred machine shops. Her front yard is not cared for, it’s filled with dandelions and crabgrass.

     I bark at the humungous golden retriever chained outside, who barks at me and makes dust. 

     I walk right in. I don’t need to knock. I don’t need to ask if anyone’s home. My girlfriend’s mom is home. My baby daughter is sleeping. 

    “Don’t wake her up,” my girlfriend’s mom says.

     But I wake her up. 

     I hold my baby daughter. I can’t put her down. 

     My girlfriend is still in school. It’s about noon. She arrives a short time later with her younger sister and brother, and her dad. Dad has a library of Reader’s Digest condensed books under his arm. I can’t forgive him for this: a failed pastor, now failed reader. He works at the foundry by Saint Francis de Sales church, but he’s been injured. He may not ever go back to work, so why does he need condensed books? When my daughter gets older, I am going to tell her to stay away from condensed books. 

    My girlfriend’s siblings are nothing like mine. Her brother goes to church only when asked, and her sister only watches commercials, could never be in one. 

We go for a walk to the park, the three of us. Me, my girlfriend, and my daughter. We push our daughter in her baby stroller to Reese Playfield. 

    My girlfriend kisses me. It’s the best kissing of my life. She kisses me like she’s reviving me, like she’s Cupid. Like we’re mythological lovers. It’s as much as I can stand to be kissed and to kiss her. There’s nothing more Christian than kissing her. Nothing more Christian than falling in love with the first girl you touch. And making babies with the first girl you touch. Earth has to have people, so we’re making people. In fact, we can’t procreate fast enough. 

    My girlfriend and I grab each other roughly when no one’s looking. I put my arms around her waist like I’m putting my arms around her life. 

    Kids crowd around us to see my beautiful daughter. I go down a slide with my daughter on my lap. 

    We lay on a blanket on the grass. My daughter grabs clumsy fistfuls of green grass. My daughter can’t stand the sun.

    It’s a full-blown summer’s day. The most beautiful aspect of today is its silliness, the childish clouds. 

    My daughter’s dazzled face takes my breath way. She sees everything.

    Kids play baseball. Kids swing and miss. We cheer for both sides. We cheer for the ball and the bat. 

    People squeeze pleasure out of this park like a fruit. 

    My girlfriend and my daughter fall asleep. My daughter falls asleep like a flower.

    I’m sunburnt from the river. 

    I think of all the poems I have to teach my daughter. About all the flowers I have to teach her. About what things she has to teach me.

    My daughter wakes herself up laughing. 

    This is enough. This is all I want.

    We almost leave the stroller at the park. 

    “Aren’t you forgetting something?” a woman shouts after us. 

My girlfriend’s dad drives me home at nine o’clock. He lets my girlfriend and I sit in the backseat, and he sits alone in front. His head goes up like a spy balloon. He’s watching us in the rearview mirror.

    We have awkward small talk about all the drugs he used to do but survived, grace of God and all. 

    My mom is distraught when I get home. She knows this means I’ve failed high school and will have to go to summer school. I won’t get the brief fame of having the superintendent mispronounce my last name at commencement.

    “Are you just going to go through life and do whatever you want? What about what I want? When do I get what I want?”

    I tried to remain calm as a martyr but I’m ashamed. It’s time to explain myself, but I can’t. It’s time to answer all her questions. But I can’t answer her. I don’t know the answers.

I try hard in summer school. I always take things too far. I get accused of cheating, no one accused me of studying. I’m smart, no one knows how smart I am. I know I can do anything. There are so many things I can do, if I want to do them. What do I want to do? 

At my graduation party, my daughter steals the show. She makes my dad laugh, almost a guffaw. My dad is showing off his granddaughter, but my daughter is most enamored with my mom. My mom has a way with babies. 

    People are jealous of me having such a beautiful daughter. I don’t deserve this, they say.

    My dad removes his pinky ring and gives it to me. I’ve hated that pinky ring all my life. Now it’s mine. He gives me his pinky ring for my graduation. Says it’s real gold. 

My daughter’s one year birthday is today. We’ve had her ears pierced, two studs in each ear. She also has two bows in her hair. I can’t take my eyes off her.

    Her birthday is two days after His birthday, but we celebrate them on the same day. 

    My girlfriend’s uncle from Indiana comes.  He doesn’t even believe in Jesus, but he comes. My girlfriend’s uncle is so rich he forgets how well off he is. He gives my daughter a smart gift: a US savings bond. It’s a gift from a wise man. When it matures in thirty years, what will the world look like?

I enroll in community college, but it doesn’t work out. My grandpa gives me a car, and I get my first speeding ticket, have my first accident. I back my car into a telephone pole. My dad gets me a job where I’m reprimanded for punching in late and calling in sick. 

    I still live with my parents. Things are stable, but I need to find a way to take care of my girlfriend and our daughter. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I have to figure this out. There is something seriously wrong with this story. I know there is something terribly wrong. With my story. The last person I told it to said, “Oh dear, I’m afraid there is something wrong with your story.” I have to figure it out. But what if I can’t? 

I still have my dad’s ring. I don’t wear it, of course. I keep it in a drawer in my desk. Sometimes when no one else is around I put it on, say my dad’s riddle out loud. I even try on his laugh. See how ridiculous I am? See how ridiculous it would be to be my father?

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