Mark Williams: PARAÍSO • Cleaver Magazine

Mark Williams
PARAÍSO

Henry Hoover is in his bedroom, mastering the G-chord on his Martin acoustic, when his father walks in and brings up Science Camp. With Henry’s sophomore year of high school behind him and all of summer ahead, he couldn’t care less about Science Camp. “You need to expand your horizon, young man,” says Henry’s dad, giving the Martin a thump.

Henry thinks there is no horizon to expand. It’s filled with coal dust and shit. We’re toast. He almost says something about his father’s horizon (he’s an orthodontist) but instead asks, “If I go to Science Camp, will you buy me an electric guitar?”

“What’s wrong with the guitar you have? It was good enough for me.”

Here it comes, thinks Henry.

For about the hundredth time, Henry hears how his father paid his way through dental school by playing in a bluegrass band throughout southern Illinois and western Kentucky. “Do you know why I named the band Midnight Oil?” asks Ronald. Henry calls his father Ronald. It’s his name.

And for about the hundredth time, in a disinterested monotone Henry has perfected, he says, “Because that’s what you were burning.”

“You bet I was.”

But though his G-chord still needs work, Henry has mastered Ronald. “Kevin and I want to start a band, like you did.”

Kevin Kallbrier is Henry’s best friend. Kevin has twelve fingers. His parents’ religion didn’t allow them to cut off the extra two when Kevin was born.

“What kind of band?” asks Ronald.

“A band that plays my songs.”

“Since when are you a songwriter?”

“Since when I get an electric guitar.”

The next day, Ronald takes Henry to Pawnstop and buys a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Minuteman amp. That night, Henry is in his room, screaming, “The sky is black. The earth is scorched. Expand my horizon, girl, before it goes dark” (in G), when Ronald drops his phone on the bedspread. Henry puts down his guitar, brushes a purple forelock from his eyes, and sees a list of Science Camp classes on the screen: Marine Biology, Nanotechnology, Projective Geometry . . .

Great, thinks Henry. But there, just below Stalagmite? Stalactite? is String Theory.

Henry knows there is a theory to music, some kind of math or something. And he could use some help. “This one,” he says, pointing with his thumb pick.

“That should expand your horizon, all right,” says Ronald.

Science Camp is being held at The Surf & Turf. Or at least that’s how Henry thinks of it. Two years ago, the surf consisted of a pool full of kids and fish sticks at the snack bar. The turf consisted of a miniature golf course and burgers. Ronald paid one hundred dollars a month so Henry could backflip and putt-putt.

It was there that Henry felt his first breast (his only breast) when Kevin Kallbreier pushed Sophie Beardsely beneath the high dive as Henry flipped and descended. When Henry hit the water, his right hand went down her top. In return, Sophie gave Henry’s balls a painful squeeze and said, “We’re even, Hoover.”

With the construction of a nearby public pool, a private school purchased the club and turned the pool into tennis courts, the miniature golf course into an archery range, and the clubhouse into classrooms.

The day after persuading Kevin to enroll in String Theory with him, Henry and Kevin are walking to class. It’s hot. Too hot for Henry to carry a Fender and a Minuteman. But not too hot for a Martin. Kevin is carrying drumsticks. He hopes to buy drums soon. So far, Henry and Kevin are the only members of their band, Scorched Earth.

Nearing the school, Henry asks, “Why’d you bring drumsticks to class? It’s about strings, not drums.”

“I can back you on a school desk or trash can,” Kevin says with a stick-twirl. (As far as stick-twirls go, Kevin’s extra fingers are a bonus.) But as Scorched Earth passes the tennis courts—site of Henry’s hand-plunge—he thinks not of Kevin’s fingers but his own. It felt like a water balloon, only with water on both sides, thinks Henry. Fingers tingling.

As they enter the classroom, Henry and Kevin are greeted with a hearty “Greetings, multiverse travelers!” by an old smiling dude with a gray ponytail, satellite-dish ears, and weird eyes. One looks one way. The other looks the other. Multiverse Travelers? thinks Henry. Cool name. They must be late to class.

“No, sir, we’re Scorched Earth,” says Henry as Kevin performs a dual stick-twirl.

“Welcome, Scorched Earth,” says the old dude. “Prepare to be transported.”

Turning toward the seated students, Henry sees he won’t be the first to transport. For there, flanked by Pam Peters and school geek, Troy Short, sits Sophie Beardsley—as if brought here by Henry’s breast-thoughts.

“I see you brought your strings,” says the old dude as Henry takes a seat behind Sophie. “Good man.”

Why wouldn’t I? thinks Henry, though other than his guitar and Kevin’s drumsticks, he sees no other instruments in class.

“My name is Felix Capshaw,” says the old dude, pointing to his name on the whiteboard. “In this universe, I’m a retired physics professor from SIU. Pluck us a string, Pythagoras,” he says with one eye on Henry and the other on the Martin.

Pythagoras? thinks Henry. “Which string?” he asks, pulling his Martin from its case.

“Give us a low E.”

Henry plucks his E.

“What do you hear?”

“My E.”

“Pluck again and listen closer.”

Henry plucks.

“What do you hear? Anyone.”

“Vibrations,” says Troy Short.

“Correcto!” says Professor Capshaw before launching into some bafflegab about real-Pythagorus, who plucked a string and discovered it vibrated in ratios. And now scientists think everything inside the atom is nothing but vibrations on little strings, and these vibrations are the music of the spheres. Or did he say years? wonders Henry. Because time can be bent so we might be sitting in this classroom while also traveling to a black hole, through a wormhole, and out the other side. Or maybe we’re in another universe already and also traveling through this one. It’s confusing.

By the time Professor Capshaw wraps up, Henry is fairly sure he won’t be learning any new chords. But with his eyes on the monarch butterfly tattooed on Sophie Beardsley’s right ankle, it occurs to him that maybe in another universe he and Sophie are getting it off. On a bed of dry pine needles in Shawnee National Forest, say.

“And tomorrow we’ll discuss how to make a black hole,” says Professor Capshaw. “Safe travels.”

Turning in her seat toward Henry, Sophie says, “You thought this class was about music, didn’t you, Hoover?”

“No,” says Henry.

“Bullshit. See you tomorrow.”

She spoke to me!

That night, over a dinner of spaghetti and clam sauce, Ronald asks Henry how class went.

“Okay.”

“What did you learn, honey?” asks Sheila. Henry thinks of his mother as Sheila. He’s never known why. Her real name is Alice.

“I learned that another me might be somewhere else.”

“How is that?” asks Sheila. “Pass the Pinot, Ronald.”

Jiggling a noodle on his fork, Henry says, “Because we’re all made of strings, and their vibrations can send us to another universe.”

“You seem to be there most of the time,” says Ronald as Henry flicks the noodle to Whizbang, the Hoovers’ toothless Yorkie.

“Now, Ronald,” says Sheila. “We agreed to be less judgmental. Please, Ronald, the Pinot!”

Just before midnight, Henry texts Kevin Kallbrier, Dog park in ten? After receiving a 👍 from Kevin, Henry opens his bedroom window, crawls down the porch roof, grabs an oak branch, and drops to the ground.

“I’ve been thinking,” Henry tells Kevin at the dog park, the halfway point between their houses, “We could be someplace else right now and not even know it.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know. A Cardinal game.”

“At midnight?”

“In another universe, it might be daytime. Or maybe Scorched Earth is onstage at Full Terror Assault. It can go on all night.”

“We don’t have a lead guitarist or a singer. Or drums.”

“Or maybe we’re screwing around in my uncle and aunt’s living room,” says Henry, pointing past the poop can to his Uncle Duncan and Aunt Darlene’s house, kitty-corner to the dog park.

“What are we doing there?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

Uncle Dunc grew up in the same house he lives in now, in Arcadian Acres—named for the kind of well water that went to all the houses. Many years later, it was discovered that the water had been polluted by Ivory Laundry & Dry Cleaning. After Uncle Dunc’s parents croaked, he moved back into his childhood home with Aunt Darlene, Sheila’s older sister. It was then that the dry-cleaned water that Uncle Dunc drank as a kid kicked in and messed up his grown-up mind. Uncle Dunc hears voices.

One night at Henry’s house, Uncle Dunc told Henry that Ricky Gervais didn’t believe in either religion or security systems. “He told me so,” Uncle Dunc had said. “And he said I shouldn’t either.” Plus, Uncle Dunc said it was scary enough hearing voices without also hearing alarms every time he forgot to punch in a code he could never remember. “And who’s going to find a front door key in a backyard birdhouse anyway?” Uncle Dunc had asked.

Henry, that’s who.

“What’s his name?” whispers Kevin as a large, one-eared orange cat brushes against his legs in Uncle Dunc and Aunt Darlene’s foyer.

“Robinson Crusoe,” says Henry. “They found him at an interstate rest stop.”

Looking down a dark hallway, Kevin asks, “What’s that gurgling?”

Henry had heard Aunt Darlene complain about Uncle Dunc’s snoring. And he’d heard her complain about the noise the machine Uncle Dunc wears to keep him from snoring. “I’m surprised you don’t hear it at your house,” Aunt Darlene had told Sheila. “It’s loud enough to wake his dead parents.”

“His snoring or his machine?” asked Sheila.

“Both. We sleep in separate rooms with both doors shut,” said Aunt Darlene.

Stepping from the foyer into the living room, Henry tells Kevin, “It’s coming from a machine that helps my uncle breathe.”

“It must be shit to grow old,” says Kevin, gathering Robinson Crusoe in his arms.

“We’ll probably never know. Unless we move to Mars before Earth ends.”

Henry’s been in Uncle Dunc and Aunt Darlene’s living room a thousand times. His parents usually sit on the couch, over there. In Henry’s mind, he sees them now. And across the room stands Uncle Dunc. Other than at meals, Henry has never seen his uncle sit down. Ronald says it’s because of the drugs Uncle Dunc takes because of the water that polluted his mind. Usually, Uncle Dunc paces while everyone else sits. Like now. And when Henry was young, Uncle Dunc used to pick him up by his ears. Like now. It hurt. It hurts, thinks Henry, giving his ears a rub as Uncle Dunc hoists young Henry up in front of the fireplace. What did the old dude say? Time bends?

Turning from the fireplace, Henry imagines his imaginary parents scooting over on the couch to make room for Kevin and Robinson Crusoe. Robinson is in Kevin’s lap. Kevin is using one of his extra fingers to scratch behind Robinson’s only ear. Henry’s parents are staring at Kevin and Robinson as if they’d rather not be sitting next to a boy with twelve fingers and a cat with one ear. When they turn toward Henry, they look pissed. They’re like, What are you doing here, young man?

“Everybody’s got to be somewhere,” says Henry.

“Very funny!” says Ronald—loud enough to frighten Robinson from Kevin’s lap and send him running down the hallway toward the gurgles.

Imaginary my ass, thinks Henry.

“Who were you talking to?” asks Kevin.

“Let’s get out of here.”

In class the next day, Professor Capshaw explains how scientists made a black hole out of 8,000 rubidium atoms and a laser beam. “You mean we don’t have to go into space to find one?” says Kevin.

“We’ve gone boldly where no man has gone before—in a laboratory,” says the professor. “Yes, Miss Beardsley.”

“I hope we make a better world than the one our parents stuck us with.”

Going boldly, Henry says, “Yeah.”

“You kids have good reason to be worried,” says the professor. “But we’re getting off the point.”

“What other point is there?” asks Troy Short.

“Totally,” says Sophie. “We’re even afraid to have kids. Aren’t we, Pam?”

“Totally.”

But instead of addressing the point, the professor talks about how some guy in a wheelchair thought he might be able to understand God’s mind if he, the guy, could come up with an equation that solved everything. An equation no longer than a thumb. But then the wheelchair guy died, and scientists are still trying to come up with the answer.

“As long as whose thumb?” asks Kevin.

“Very funny!” says the professor, whose words transport Henry to last night.

Upon return to the dog park, Henry had said to Kevin, “I’m telling you, my uncle and my parents were in the room with us. I heard Ronald talk.”

“You were just remembering stuff, that’s all,” said Kevin.

“You saw how freaked Robinson was. He heard Ronald too.”

“This string shit’s got you freaked. Later, Dude,” said Kevin, skirting the poop can and heading for home.

Now, as Professor Capshaw drones on about dark matter, Henry wishes he’d never heard of string theory. He’s okay with living in one place, even with the shit shape it’s in—guns, floods, fires, Republicans. And he has Scorched Earth to look forward to. Doesn’t he? As if to punctuate his thoughts, a loud explosion outside the classroom sends all five students beneath their desks. “Well done,” says the professor. “But it was just a backfire by the sound of it. Dual exhaust backfire, I’d say. Have an out-of-this-world weekend, earthlings.”

Dual Exhaust Backfire, considers Henry. But he still prefers Scorched Earth. Then, strange as last night was, it’s nothing compared to what happens next. Still crouched beneath his desk, Henry sees a monarch butterfly walking toward him. “What’s up, Hoover?” says Sophie Beardsley, bending down to Henry’s level.

Aside from the pool that day, Henry has never been this close to Sophie. Her eyes are the color of my Fender, he thinks. Mystic Seafoam. She smells like mouthwash and roses. In the monotone he uses on his father, Henry says, “Oh, hi, Sophie,” as if she finds him huddled beneath a desk every day.

“I see you didn’t bring your guitar,” says Sophie. “Why not?”

“The professor only asked me to bring it the first day.”

“Bullshit.”

But now the strange thing to top all strange things happens. As Henry crawls out from beneath his desk and stands, Sophie asks, “Would you want to do something with me sometime?”

“Uh, sure. Like what?”

“Like talk about this stuff. Maybe at the pool tomorrow.”

“Which pool?”

“The pool.”

“Oh, yeah.”

In his room that night, instead of practicing his C-chord (he’s got the G down), Henry spends the evening cutting off his blue jeans to an appropriate poolside date length, adding strategic slashes so that, wearing no underwear, hints of thigh and butt cheek might show through.

“Goodnight, honey,” says Sheila from the hallway. “Oh, and I found a nice, bullet-proof backpack for you to wear when school starts.”

“And you’re always safe at home with Pete and me,” says Ronald. Pete is Ronald’s Glock 19. It’s like Pete’s a part of the fam.

“Thank you,” says Henry.

Sitting on towels at the pool the next day—with Sophie looking pretty fine in a yellow two-piece—they share their recent stories, in Henry’s case, time-traveling in Uncle Dunc and Aunt Darlene’s living room; in Sophie’s case, crash landing a twin-engine Lockheed Electra on her way to Howland Island.

“I was sunning myself like this, only in my backyard and without you, when all of a sudden, I looked up and the sky was an ocean, and I was flying over it. I’d never even heard of the pilot, but I know that’s who I was. I looked her up. She’s famous.”

“When I saw Uncle Dunc pull me up by my ears, they hurt all over again,” says Henry, wishing he’d been someone famous too. Kurt Cobain? “I think it really happened, sort of.”

“I think so too. For me, I mean. And you. I know, let’s close our eyes and see if we can go somewhere now,” says Sophie. “Where do you want to go?”

“A bed of dry pine needles in Shawnee National Forest.”

“You’re weird. But okay, lie on your back and hold my hand.”

Fucking A, thinks Henry.

With his eyes shut and the sun beating down, Henry sees Sophie and him walking hand-in-hand down a tree-lined trail, she in her yellow two-piece, he in his ratty jean cut-offs. A little more butt cheek than he’d intended.

Walking down the leafy path, on lookout for the needle bed, Henry’s glad he signed up for String Theory after all. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be with Sophie now—either at the pool or in the forest. He wouldn’t be holding her hand anywhere, and he wouldn’t be seeing a gazillion monarch butterflies up ahead in the forest. They’re flying in the shape of a word.

“Do you see what I see?” asks Henry.

“A gazillion,” says Sophie. “They’re beautiful. Everything is. The sky is so blue. The trees are so leafy. What are the butterflies spelling?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s Spanish. Monarchs live in Mexico most of the time, don’t they? I bet they don’t speak English.”

“Look, over there,” says Sophie. “Honeybees! Lots!”

It’s like there are two hims and two Sophies. One pair by the pool and one pair in the forest. For sure, the poolside world is fucked. Try telling dads like his to drive Leafs or give up their guns. And like everything else, aren’t monarchs pretty much history? But look at all of them here. Plus, bees. Henry wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t polar bears and white rhinos somewhere.

Maybe here everything is okay. Maybe laundries don’t dump poison in the ground and uncles don’t snore or hear voices. No guns, no fires, no batshit crazy politicians. We can have all the kids we want, thinks Henry, giving Sophie’s hand a squeeze.

“It seems so perfect,” says Sophie. “Do you think we can come whenever we want? Stay as long as we want?”

Here, my mother’s name is Sheila, thinks Henry. Whizbang has all of his teeth. Robinson Crusoe has two ears, and Kevin Kallbreier only has ten fingers. Here, there’s no need for bullet-proof backpacks, and our band’s name is God’s Mind.

“Sure,” says Henry, “why not?”

Mark Williams’s fiction has appeared in The Baffler, Eclectica, The First Line, and the anthologies American Fiction, The Boom Project, and Running Wild Novella Anthology, Volume 4, as well as other journals and collections. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. Kelsay Books published his manuscript of poems, Carrying On, in July 2022. In this universe, he lives in Evansville, Indiana.