Table of Contents
Also by T. Coraghessan Boyle
NOVELS
The Women
Talk Talk
The Inner Circle
Drop City
A Friend of the Earth
Riven Rock
The Tortilla Curtain
The Road to Wellville
East Is East
Worlds End
Budding Prospects
Water Music
SHORT STORIES
Tooth and Claw
The Human Fly
After the Plague
T.C. Boyle Stories
Without a Hero
If the River Was Whiskey
Greasy Lake
Descent of Man
For Gordon and Cheryl Baptiste
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following magazines, in which these stories first appeared: Best Life: Bulletproof ; Harpers: Question 62 and Admiral; The Kenyon Review: Hands On; McSweeneys: Wild Child; The New Yorker:La Conchita, Sin Dolor, The Lie, Thirteen Hundred Rats and Ash Monday; The Paris Review:Balto; Playboy: The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado and Three Quarters of the Way to Hell; and A Public Space: Anacapa.
Balto also appeared in The Best American Stories, 2007, edited by Stephen King (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), and Admiral in The Best American Stories,2008, edited by Salman Rushdie (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
The author would also like to acknowledge Harlan Lanes The Wild Boy ofAveyron and Roger Shattucks The Forbidden Experiment as sources of certain factual details in Wild Child.
In Wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau, Walking
BALTO
There were two kinds of truths, good truths and hurtful ones. That was what her fathers attorney was telling her, and she was listening, doing her best, her face a small glazed crescent of light where the sun glanced off the yellow kitchen wall to illuminate her, but it was hard. Hard because it was a weekday, after school, and this was her free time, her chance to breeze into the 7-Eleven or Instant Message her friends before dinner and homework closed the day down. Hard too because her father was there, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, sipping something out of a mug, not coffee, definitely not coffee. His face was soft, the lines at the corners of his eyes nearly erased in the gentle spill of lighthis crows-feet, and how she loved that word, as if the birds scaly claws had taken hold there like something out of a horror story, Edgar Allan Poe, the Raven, Nevermore, but wasnt a raven different from a crow and why not call them ravens-feet? Or hawks-feet? People could have a hawks nosethey always did in storiesbut they had crows-feet, and that didnt make any sense at all.
Angelle, the attorney saidMr. Apodacaand the sound of her own name startled her, are you listening to me?
She nodded her head. And because that didnt seem enough, she spoke up too. Yes, she said, but her voice sounded strange in her ears, as if somebody else were speaking for her.
Good, he said, good, leaning into the table so that his big moist dogs eyes settled on her with a baleful look. Because this is very important, I dont have to stress that
He waited for her to nod again before going on.
There are two kinds of truths, he repeated, just like lies. There are bad lies, we all know that, lies meant to cheat and deceive, and then there are white lies, little fibs that dont really hurt anybodyhe blew out a soft puff of air, as if he were just stepping into a hot tuband might actually do good. Do you understand what Im saying?
She held herself perfectly still. Of course she understoodhe was treating her like a nine-year-old, like her sister, and she was twelve, almost thirteen, and this was an act of rebellion, to hold herself there, not answering, not nodding, not even blinking her eyes.
Like in this case, he went on, your fathers case, I mean. Youve seen TV, the movies. The judge asks you for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and youll swear to it, everybody doesyour father, me, anybody before the court. He had a mug too, one she recognized from her mothers college daysB.U., it said in thick red letters, Boston Universitybut there was coffee in his, or there had been. Now he just pushed it around the table as if it were a chess piece and he couldnt decide where to play it. All I want you to rememberand your father wants this too, or no, he needs it, needs you to pay attentionis that there are good truths and bad truths, thats all. And your memory only serves to a point; I mean, whos to say what really happened, because everybody has their own version, that woman jogger, the boy on the bikeand the D.A., the district attorney, hes the one who might ask you what happened that day, just him and me, thats all. Dont you worry about anything.
But she was worried, because Mr. Apodaca was there in the first place, with his perfect suit and perfect tie and his doggy eyes, and because her father had been handcuffed along the side of the road and taken to jail and the car had been impounded, which meant nobody could use it, not her father or her mother when she came back from France or Dolores the maid or Allie the au pair. There was all that, but there was something else too, something in her fathers look and the attorneys sugary tones that hardened her: they were talking down to her. Talking down to her as if she had no more sense than her little sister. And she did. She did.
That day, the day of the incidentor accident, hed have to call it an accident nowhed met Marcy for lunch at a restaurant down by the marina where you could sit outside and watch the way the sun struck the masts of the ships as they rocked on the tide and the light shattered and regrouped and shattered again. It was one of his favorite spots in townone of his favorite spots, period. No matter how overburdened he felt, no matter how life beat him down and every task and deadline seemed to swell up out of all proportion so that twenty people couldnt have dealt with it alla team, an armythis place, this table in the far corner of the deck overlooking the jungle of masts, the bleached wooden catwalks, the glowing arc of the harbor and the mountains that framed it, always had a calming effect on him. That and the just-this-side-of-too-cold local chardonnay they served by the glass. He was working on his second when Marcy came up the stairs, swaying over her heels like a model on the run-way, and glided down the length of the deck to join him. She gave him an uncomplicated smile, a smile that lit her eyes and acknowledged everythingthe day, the locale, the sun and the breeze and the clean pounded smell of the ocean and him perched there in the middle of it alland bent to kiss him before easing herself into the chair beside him. That looks nice, she said, referring to the wine dense as struck gold in the glass before him, and held up a finger for the waiter.
And what did they talk about? Little things. Her work, the pair of shoes shed bought and returned and then bought all over again, the movie theyd seen two nights agothe last time theyd been togetherand how she still couldnt believe he liked that ending. Its not that it was cheesy, she said, and here was her wine and should they get a bottle, yeah, sure, a bottle, why not? and it was, but just that I didnt believe it.
Didnt believe whatthat the husband would take her back?
No, she said. Or yes. Its idiotic. But what do you expect from a French movie? They always have these slinky-looking heroines in their thirties
