Forrest Gander - The Trace

THE TRACE a novel

Forrest Gander

A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

Copyright 2014 by Forrest Gander

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

The publisher thanks Michael Friedman and Mark Shapiro for their assistance reading sections of this novel.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published clothbound by New Directions in 2014.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gander, Forrest, 1956

The Trace : a novel / Forrest Gander.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-8112-2371-3 (acid-free paper)

ISBN 978-0-8112-2372-0 (e-book)

I. Title.

PS3557.A47T7 2014

813'.54dc23 2014007234

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

also by Forrest Gander

FICTION

As a Friend

SELECTED POETRY

Core Samples from the World

Deeds of Utmost Kindness

Eiko & Koma

Eye against Eye

Lynchburg

Redstart: An Ecological Poetics (with John Kinsella)

Science & Steepleflower

Torn Awake

SELECTED TRANSLATIONS

Firefly under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho

Fungus Skull Eye Wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso DAquino

The Night, by Jaime Saenz (with Kent Johnson)

Panic Cure: Poems from Spain for the 21st Century

Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America (with Ral Zurita)

Rain of the Future: Poems by Valerie Mejer (with Alexandra Zelman)

Watchword, by Pura Lpez Colom

ESSAYS

A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory & Transcendence

the Trace

for Karin Gander

This isnt a road. They said wed find Tonaya on the other side of the ridge. But weve gone way past that ridge.

Juan Rulfo, Cant You Hear the Dogs?

one

La Esmeralda, Mexico

She knocked on the bathroom door.

Can I come in to shower?

En el trono, he called out. Give me a couple minutes.

He was just reaching for the roll of toilet paper on the floor whensomething happened. A reverberating collision and a seasick feeling at once. Thetoilet quivered under his thighs as the walls rattled and the front door itmust be the front door cracked, splintering as though a tree had crashedthrough it, but there were no trees in the yard. He began to rise from the toiletinto something awful, into a new sound, into the rising decibels of the womanscreaming from the living room. Bent over, still reaching for his pants, he knewthere would not be enough time to pull them up. He was aware of every facet of thebathroom then, as though he had been studying it for escape routes for months. Thecanary-yellow plastic curtain drawn halfway across the tub. The rusted showerheadreleasing its slow, incurable drip. The colorless bath mat with its frayed, dirtyedge folded up. The dingy rattan clothes hamper. The stale towel hanging from a nailin the door. And to his right, above the sink, a red hand towel limp on its clearplastic ring over the soap dish. The sink was set in a water-warped cabinet with alouvred door.

The frenzy in his ears stopped. Her scream was cut off. It had riseninto a hysterical shriek and now vacated itself with a soft humph. Like a chainsawdropped into a swamp. Chairs were falling, or maybe it was the kitchen table thatsomeone smashed into the wall. Another tremor went through the house. No malevoices. No commands, no shouting. All he had heard was a tumult and the hystericalclipped scream. The furniture dragging and feet moving.

He wasnt breathing anymore. He turned to his right, taking a stepand holding his pants. He glanced from the faucet and the toothbrushes blossoming,one orange and one blue, from their dirty glass on the sink, to the flecked mirrorwith the bare ceiling bulb glaring in it and he saw himself. In hyperclarity. Alien,still holding his pants at his knees in one hand. He crouched at the cabinet, let goof his pants, and opened the cabinet door. His hands were trembling so badly theybarely functioned. A vague pandemonium in the house was approaching the bathroomdoor, and the chaos that had been general now focused like a mountainside of stormwater channeling into a narrow arroyo. Supporting himself with his hands on the tilefloor, he plunged his legs into the cabinet, over a stack of toilet rolls, knockingover a bottle of Cloralex and the box of Detergente Roma. The rest of him followedso quickly, it was as though the cabinet had sucked him inward, his knees jammingthemselves up against the sink plumbing, his naked unwiped ass sliding over packetsof rat poison, his upper back scraping the cabinets side panel, his head wedgedbeneath the sink. With his fingers at its lower edge, he pulled closed the cabinetdoor just as the bathroom door banged open.

In slatted half-darkness, he put his left hand down onto the cabinetfloor. It was wet. The Cloralex had spilled, and the fumes were burning his eyes. Heclosed them, aware of several bodies entering the bathroom, saying nothing, creepilysilent. He no longer heard the woman. He didnt feel her breathing in the otherroom. He didnt feel her in the world anymore. Cramped in place with Cloralex,detergent stench, and damp rot in his nose, he froze. Outside the cabinet, he knewhis shit in the toilet was stinking up the bathroom. There might have been a spot ofit on the floor. The men must be staring at the cabinet. Where else was he going tobe.

A set of bootsteps, slow but springy, crossed the threshold into thebathroom. They halted a few feet in front of the sink. Nothing. No sound. Outsidethe house, though, he could hear two trucks, their mufflers cut away, racing downAlameda. Then this last set of boots came forward, stopping inches from the cabinet.He squeezed his eyes and could visualize the man, whoever it was, looking at himselfin the toothpaste-flecked mirror. But he was wrong. The man had squatted. Thecabinet door opened quickly.

He didnt breathe, he didnt move. Although he had been looking atnothing before, now he was aware of the knees and torso of a hunkered man whosejeans rose above the white-rooster stitching of his black boots. He was sure hehadnt even shifted his head, but his eyes must have opened on their own. He waslooking at the strangest thing he would see for the brief remainder of his life.

The man squatting before him had an enraged, flushed expression, and hisface, his whole head, was bobbing in the weirdest way, uncontrollably, like anornament on the hood of a car going over bad road. The head-bobbing mans mouthopened and he hissed something in English, asking something, but it didnt make anysense.

So you a Redskins fan, huh?

two

The Departure

Perturbed by a bird-punctured cicada

clattering in circles on the driveway,

he came into the house feeling ill. Paused

outside the door to the boys room

where propped against the headboard

the woman was falling asleep

improvising a story for the boy

before his nap. Her last smudged words

and then a silence into which the boy asked

What then? What happened then? Standing there

behind the jamb, the intruder

holding his breath. Gone from himself

to let them go on.