Read Online The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews - Free Book Online Page B

stopping somewhere to eat, I said. This is what parents do when they’re stumped, I thought. They feed their children.
    Like what, said Logan, are we gonna graze in a field? I don’t see any restaurants.
    Sandwiches in the cooler, I said. Ham and cheese. There’s fruit.
    Awesome, he said. Budget.
    We’re not gonna eat in restaurants the whole time, I said. I had a wad of cash in my backpack that I hoped would get us through. I pulled into a rest stop next to a shitting chihuahua and two old RVers reading a newspaper at a picnic table.
    We got out and walked around awhile, stretching our bodies, enjoying less proximity to each other, and I smoked a cigarette behind the women’s can until Thebes caught me and told me I was going to get AIDS. There was only one picnic table, so the three of us squeezed in next to the old couple and ate our sandwiches.
    Where are you headed? the man asked.
    Um, Murdo? I said.
    Never heard of it, he said.
    I told him I hadn’t either until yesterday.
    Honey, said the woman, ask your mom for a napkin. She was talking to Thebes, who had mayonnaise and mustard running down her face.
    Logan ignored us all. He had his giant air traffic controller headphones on and his hoodie up and was staring intensely at the chihuahua like he was wondering what the most painful way of killing it might be.
    Is that your natural colour of hair? the man asked Thebes.
    Yo! Dude! It’s purple! What do you think?
    I gave her a nudge under the table and passed her a paper bag to wipe the stuff off her face. She put it over her head and drew a face on it, blind. Big cartoon eyes and a mouth where the nose should be. I told her to go get theFrisbee, and without removing the bag she stumbled and weaved and crashed her way to the van. She finally took the bag off her head and she and I threw the Frisbee around for a while before Logan joined in. He tried to make each of his throws deflect off the van’s windshield and then he decided that we should play Frisbee through the van, with both side doors open and Thebes sitting on the seat in the van. She was entirely down with that and Logan had a blast whipping the Frisbee inches from her face, until he accidentally hit her and her nose bled, she cried, he apologized, said she was stand-up for playing the game, apologized again, and again, she forgave him with a karate kick to the ’nads, which he handled with an off-hand grace, said he deserved it, the old people shook their heads like bobblehead dolls and we all hit the road once again.
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    We kept driving south down the I-29, past the tiny hamlets of Wahpeton and Harkinson and Sisseton. Thebes said we should drive in directions that spelled something, like a giant word carved by us into the American landscape.
    What word did you want to spell? I asked her.
    Min, she said.
    I traced the letters of my sister’s name in my mind and realized there were no curves, so it might even have been possible to write her name in giant, hundred-mile-long letters if the roads had matched up with the lines, but they didn’t. There were rivers and mountain ranges and deserts and gullies that separated M-I-N from posterity on the map.
    By the time the sun had almost set, the kids had dozed off again. Thebes was curled up in a ball in the front now and Logan had stretched out in the back. I could hear the faint bass coming from his headphones and ice cubes sloshing around in the cooler. Giant, endless semis blasted past us and I waved to the drivers every time but they couldn’t see me in the dark. I was looking for a cheap motel with a pool and free breakfast.
    Thebes woke up and asked me what was going on. Help me find a motel, I said.
    Will you give me a dollar?
    Yeah.
    What kind of motel?
    Like in Psycho —have you seen it?
    Yeah, she said.
    Yeah? I said. Really? Aren’t you kind of young?
    Everybody knows Psycho, she said.
    Yeah, but it’s an old movie, I said.
    Logan owns the