Four Roads: a Novel

Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 6-2007 Four Roads: A Novel Kelly Daniels Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Daniels, Kelly, "Four Roads: A Novel" (2007). Dissertations. 847. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/847 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FOUR ROADS: A NOVEL by Kelly Daniels A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Advisor: Stuart Dybek, M.F.A. Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan June 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3265914 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3265914 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help: Jon Adams, Maggie Andersen, Stuart Dybek, Robert Eversz, Jaimy Gordon, Richard Katrovas, and Naeem Murr. Kelly Daniels ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................ FOUR ROADS.................................................................. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 An old city bus, painted a clownish turquoise on top with dull orange fenders, sped west on the transcontinental highway a hundred miles out of Guatemala City. It was a rocky land, covered in dun scrub, high desert rising toward the low, gray sky. In the distance stood a range of mountains whose peaks disappeared into storm clouds that flickered with silent lightening. A white man drove the bus, middle-aged with bristly pale hair and a rum-burnt face. If anyone were watching—no one was—the lizards woven into his shirt would appear to crawl about his body, pushed by the wind that rushed through the glass-less windows. His assistant, a dark man of thirty or forty, marked by a dime-sized tattoo of a pentagram on his left cheek, rested against the pole behind the driver’s seat. He closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to drift into sleep. When he opened them he stared without emotion at the road. His tee shirt rode high, exposing a crescent of his protruding belly. Solemn-faced Maya took up most of the seats and overflowed into the aisle. The women woretipica, the brilliant swaths prized by tourists, and the men dressed in charity trousers and shirts. Children Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 sprawled over laps and infants dozed in slings tied around their mothers’ shoulders. A few Ladinos sat here and there, men and women of lighter complexion than the Maya and dressed like bank tellers. Dazed by travel, no one spoke or moved except to jostle with the bumps in the road. A gringo sat near the back of the bus, a square-jawed man in his late twenties, with a sparse reddish beard and faint acne scars on his cheeks. Hair whipping his face and neck, he looked out the window at the brush and dirt rushing by, not so different from the high desert California landscape where he grew up. A vague worry nagged him, interrupting the distraction of being alone and farther from home than ever before. He’d left abruptly, an animal reaction to the news of his father’s capture and incarceration. The shock still hadn’t worn off, and now he questioned the initial impulse that got him here. Just then a wave of motion and whispers washed through the bus, cutting off this line of thought. Some controversy ahead in the road. The driver pressed on the horn, two long wails, and the gringo stuck his head out the window to see. A hundred yards away, a wild-haired, shirtless man stood in the center of the lane, waving his arms as if calling attention to a hidden calamity, calling attention, the gringo thought, to the calamity that he’d made of his life. The man looked familiar, could have been any number of desperate souls wandering the cities of America, looking for handouts and whatever else they sought. Though sun and filth had turned his skin brown, his fair complexion showed under his arms, and the passenger wondered how a white man had come to such a situation so far from home. The driver leaned on the horn again but didn’t slow. The vagabond stopped Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. waving, and dropped his arms. He wore pants cut off at the knees and sandals. His hair settled like a rusty cloud on his shoulders. He closed his eyes like one at peace. Everyone on the bus tensed their muscles, trying to prepare for the experience of crushing a human being into pulp and shards. But at the last moment the vagabond dove and rolled across the shoulder, popped to his feet with surprising grace. His hair trembled in the bus’ wind, and his bared teeth illuminated his face with hilarious madness. He fumbled with his shorts and wagged his penis at the retreating passengers. The gringo passenger watched the man grow small, pull up his shorts and resume his journey, step by step down the center of the road. He wondered what the man had gained from this display, some proof that he existed, coming so near to death, shocking a busload of citizens with his otherwise insignificant sex. He watched the vagabond disappear into the heat waves blurring the horizon, and then he turned to face the approaching range, with its dark mantle of clouds flashing like the silent, distant warfare shown on television. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 June Marilyn Gold, the Peace Corps volunteer, stood before her class of young Quiche in the tight space of a classroom that had once been a storage shed. “The Moon is a lady,” she said, “and the Sun is a man.” The kids sat in an arc, twenty-one serious little scholars. They loved the sky stories, and Marilyn was beginning to struggle to invent new versions. “Every day he follows her across the sky and every night she runs away.” “Will he catch her?” Marilyn’s favorite student, Laura, asked in Spanish. An outsider, Laura walked from some tiny dirt village to attend class. She chewed her fingernail with worry, an awkward girl of seven who might or might not grow into her gawky limbs, her large toothy mouth, the big, flattened nose. Marilyn empathized. She herself had grown up too tall and homely, until her first year in college, when she Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 suddenly became pretty. Years later, she hadn’t gotten used to the glances of men, and most times still felt ugly. “Yes,” Marilyn answered in English. “After sinking behind the mountains, he dresses in black, and little by little he catches her at night, lies over her bit by bit, covering more of her each night until he’s all the way on top and we can’t see her at all on those darkest nights. When he finishes with her, he slides off, just as slowly.” The kids regarded this information in silence. Marilyn had no idea where she’d come up with this particular angle, except that if you concoct enough versions of any story, sex eventually enters into it. She amused herself briefly by imagining how this brand of pedagogy would go over back in her hometown of Media, Pennsylvania. She asked if there were any questions, and Laura raised her hand and asked what Marilyn’s last name, Gold, meant. Funny it had taken them this long. They’d certainly inquired about every other aspect of her life imaginable. Marilyn translated and the children seemed impressed. “Comoelpelo ,” Laura said. “In English please.” Laura covered her mouth with her hand. “Like. Your. Hair.” Her other hand joined the first and hid her face entirely. Speaking English tended to affect the girls that way, as if the act were somehow scandalous. “Interesting connection,” Marilyn said, and it was. She’d always thought of her hair as yellow in the summer, brown the rest of the year. Now she raised her arms. “Everybody up.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To get the blood flowing, and as a break from thinking, she led the students through toe-touching, knee bends, rising on their toes. Then, falling back on one of the familiar, even stale, classroom activities, she initiated sharing time.

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