Preview Two: What Peace Means to Us

I learned of the deer one morning when Noah left before I did.

It was my stomach, the old problems; sometimes I can’t get off the toilet. By the time it was over I was running late and my son was gone. It was the first time I had unsupervised access to his room: The door was closed. I stood in the hallway making myself later. Would he have a way of telling if I went inside? Even if he did I could just say I was picking up his laundry.

Walking in all toes and tight muscles. A crow squawked outside the window.

His laptop was closed, was the computer locked? Probably; my son was very private--is very private. I could smell his hair and dirty clothes but his bed was made. In my head Iggy Pop was singing about bright stars in a hollow sky. He sang two verses to me as I stared at my son’s laptop. My boy is smart, he probably knew how to make it so if I even opened his laptop he would know.

My son would know that I had violated any trust he had in me and we would be back to that moment when I saw him in the transit station.

Cue defeated Dad grabbing son’s dirty clothes. Most were in a tidy pile but there was a pair of socks under his desk. His suitcase was down there, too--what if he hid stuff in there?

Another crow joined the first one; they were having some sort of bird argument.

That green plaid suitcase was judging me. It had been judging me for years, it had watched Cheyenne and I having sex. Has any man ever hated a suitcase so much?

Are you really going to snoop on Noah? What did he do to deserve this?

I saw Gerald dancing awkwardly as Iggy Pop “la la la’d”--I had to look in that suitcase. The next step was making a mental note of exactly where it was before sliding it from under the desk. It smelled musty like there were spores in the green plaid fabric and the outside felt like skin. I put the suitcase on its side and opened it; there was nothing in there but the smell of clothes and a spiral ring notebook. The dark green cardboard still had firm corners like it had just been bought. When I kept notebooks there was always a pen was stuck in the wires--

Not Noah; another trait he hadn’t picked up from me.

I realized that I had never seen Noah write with a pencil or a pen, he was always on his phone or his laptop or the pad he used for schoolwork. Could he even write? I knew a lot of kids--even smart ones--didn’t have the ability.

Opening the notebook I saw that there was only one paragraph written in it:

I was thinking about the first time I saw a deer.

Not in a video or a picture--in real life.

That’s a wild animal not a pet; that’s what I thought.

It came right up because I had been checking out a knot in a tree.

I looked over at it and it looked back at me.

Hearing a crack behind me I waved my arms.

The deer ran off and there was trouble for me.

The Passenger gave way to Baker Street. Noah had bad handwriting, barely legible. Block letters, all caps--

Standing there, making myself even more later; trying to make sense of what my kid had written. I could ask my son but he would have been pissed off that I had gone in his suitcase.

No, he would be worse than pissed off.

Ask his mother? Yeah, I knew how that would go.

Cue defeated dad putting the notebook back in the suitcase and sliding suitcase back under the desk.

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