Real Life(81)

10





It was an exceptionally hot day in July when Wallace arrived in the Midwest, having spent all of the preceding day cramped on a Greyhound coming up from Alabama. He had been asleep when they left Tennessee under the cloak of darkness, and entered that strange realm where the country suddenly flattens and smooths out into endless plains brooked by ice and jagged mountains. He had never been out of the South before, but had been trying for a long time to leave it; now, having finally done so, he felt only a sense of elation and freedom. Upon getting off the bus, though, he found the air just as heavy as he had left it down south. He had not known what to expect, and the stickiness in the air made him uneasy about his prospects. But that had been yesterday, and today he stood on the edge of the pier, looking around at all the people.

They seemed friendly enough, he thought, like people anywhere. They smiled at him, and he smiled at them. He was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and they were polite as they excused themselves to get around him. Back home, he had stood on the edge of the ocean and marveled at the vast gray tumult of its surf. Here, he could see the horizon and the distant shore of the lake. There were lakes in Alabama, surely, but few of them, and all smaller than this one, which was rimmed with conifers, pine and cedar. Here, the scope of the lake was startling. This was no glorified pond, as he’d thought of lakes before. It made him nervous to stand on the slippery stone steps, uneasy, as if at any moment he might slip down and be swallowed.

He was here for orientation. Or, rather, to meet some of his fellow students. They would begin orientation on Monday. Before that, though, someone had suggested that they all go out to the peninsula, to sit on its silty shores and make a bonfire. He had never been on a peninsula before. He had never been on a boat before. He stood near the yellow-bellied boats, running his hand over them while they rested on their hooks like sleeping animals. They were smooth but tacky, and his fingers stuck on them. The whole area smelled like rust and lake water and something like rotting plants.

There were tall, attractive people with shining skin and tank tops walking all around him, talking to each other as if they belonged to a world beyond his grasp. It reminded him of his favorite story, about the woman who goes to Madrid in order to force the nature of her character to emerge by virtue of not fitting in, only to discover that her ability to blend in with the Spanish renders her efforts futile. He had considered himself a Midwesterner at heart, that being in the South and being gay were incompatible, that no two parts of a person could be more incompatible. But standing there, among the boats, shyly waiting to discover the people to whom he felt he would belong, he sensed the foolishness in that.

They finally appeared, his fated friends, four or five people, coming toward him along the sidewalk. At first they had not seemed like a group at all, but eventually the rhythm of their footfalls told him that they were coming toward him en masse. Two of them were tremendously tall, another was very short, and there was a woman with a skinny man’s arm thrown around her. The skinny man had a silly mustache, but seemed very serious.

“Are you Wallace?” the sandy-haired one asked, sticking out his hand. “Yngve. Pleasure.”

“Pleasure,” Wallace said, smiling because he couldn’t stop himself. These were to be his friends here, the people who looked after him. He had seen them only via the internet, their little portraits and bits of their lives transmitted across Wallace’s uncle’s shaky wireless.

“I’m Lukas, with a k,” the red-haired one said. And then, the tallest one nodded from the back of the group.

“Miller,” he said somewhat morosely. He was very good-looking, but there was something about him that withdrew even as it advanced. Wallace nodded back.

“I’m Emma—and this is Thom, my fiancé,” the girl with the curly hair said. “Happy to meet you finally.”

“Happy to meet you,” Wallace said, as if he could only repeat what other people said. His eyes were wet, he realized with horror. “Oh, god. I’m going to cry.” He laughed and blotted the tears with his hand. “I’ve been very tired lately.”

“I know the feeling,” Emma said, stepping forward to hug him. “You’re with friends now.”

“Hello,” someone called from the other direction, and they all turned. Another boy, tallish and fair, came loping up to them. “I’m Cole, hi.”

“Hello, Cole,” said everyone.

They ended up getting one of the small boats, so it would take several trips to get everyone. Wallace volunteered to go last, both because he was nervous and because he wanted to make it easy on everyone. In the end, it was him and Yngve and Miller, just as the sun was setting. The boat rocked as Miller piloted them out to the tip of the peninsula, where it was sandy and gray and covered with pine needles.

They walked along the shore after tying up the boat, and then scaled an embankment so that they were among the trees. Voices reached out to them in the dark; now and then they saw a flicker of flame as they passed other little gatherings. Yngve was walking very quickly out ahead of them, carrying a satchel with food and other supplies. Wallace and Miller walked apace with each other, quietly, not saying anything.

Wallace glanced up at him—his face was forbidding. Wallace was giddy, almost sick with excitement, to be in this place, among these people—it was the accomplishment of a long-held wish, a dream come true. The trees groaned overhead, swaying. He felt at home among them too; trees had always been his companions.