Free Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle Page B

muscular shoulders like wings. I thought about the girls Clay and I ran with in Virginia, girls who seemed to hold the answer to a question we hadn’t yet learned to ask. Clay was the one they liked, though we were as near identical as two people could be. The only difference was that he had half an inch on me, a birthmark on his right shoulder, and a heart so big all the girls thought he was in love with them. He’d take them all out driving, that nightmare summer he was killed in the accident, the summer we turned sixteen. The age this girl must be, the age I last felt whole.
    I saw her again, late, past midnight. The rides shut down, the games closing up, most people gone home, I walked out into the field, far out to where I could turn and see the midway lights from a distance. Already thinking about packing up the truck, slamming the tailgate shut on everything I own. At night I like to do this, imagine the field once we’ve left it: the deer coming out of the woods, noses working over crumpled napkins, the foxes creeping out onto the trampled paths, sawdust scattering in the wind. It’s usually a comfort, knowing the field will recover without a trace of us, just days after we’re gone. But there’s a danger to picturing a place without you in it. After a while you can start to feel like nothing at all.
    When I walked back up towards Camper City, I went past the grandstand again, empty now. By the bleachers, I happened to notice a teddy bear. It was bright orange, a prize off a game, glowing a little in the dirt. It reminded me of something, and I almost bent to pick it up, but then I heard them. A scuffling like animals, a hollow sound as she banged against the bleachers. When I peered into the darkness it took a few seconds to make sense of it. She had changed out of her pink dress and into a pair of jean shorts, which were down around her knees. But she was still wearing her sash, crooked now, flapping like she was unraveling. He was behind her, hands in her hair, yanking her head back a little with each thrust, his big white T-shirt billowing. I stood there and watched the whole thing, nothing but a pair of eyes. It was over fast. When he let go she didn’tmove, just stayed there hanging on the support strut of the bleachers, then slowly bent down and picked up the bear and tenderly brushed off the dirt.
    I stepped into the shadow of a ticket booth as he turned and zipped his fly. I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized the shirt immediately. It was one of Dub’s— THE HUNTER’S NIGHTMARE —a deer riding an ATV with a rifle strapped across its shoulders, a dead man in camo tied to the back.
    Five months on the road and already I’ve seen too much. Too much to feel any shred of hope for the long-gone world. I feel the burden of it all clattering behind me, slowing me down, like cans tied on for a honeymoon. Sometimes I wonder why it hasn’t all burned up or broken down already. Sometimes it makes me want to lie down right where I am and just let the grass grow over me.
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    The sky, by two, is yellow and angry. A wash of worried murmurs moves through the crowd. Mothers peer up at the bloated clouds, clutching raincoats, old men mutter and tell their wives they’re ready to go home. Little kids run shrieking down the path, oblivious. I sell a chipped butter crock to a blue-haired, heavy-faced woman with white plastic shopping bags strung along her arms like buoys. “What’ll you all do if it rains?” she asks, swinging her head towards the midway, bags rustling. She widens her eyes in concern, as if she can think of no more terrible a fate.
    I look up, ready to be done with these people, put Thunderbird in the rearview as I tear off down the road. “Same thing as you,” I say, snapping the money box closed. “Get wet.”
    It is only a legend, the Thunderbird. A myth the settlers stole from the Indians to scare little boys out of