Inner Tube: A Novel by Hob Broun Read Free Book Online

for an hour, like I wasn’t a fit mother.”
    We go past dark cinder hills the texture of macaroons and then the road begins to climb through piñon and juniper. The river runs in slow thin twists beside us and the car fills up with the smell of toluene.
    Parked in the shade, we open a couple of beers. Not many cars here, so it shouldn’t be a mob scene. Heidi’s wearing a green leotard to take the waters in.
    “Like a xylophone,” she says proudly, strumming her ribs.
    The thing I like most about her is the feel of knotted bones.
    She goes ahead of me down the path, carrying her strange necessities—magazines, aspirin, jumprope. Her legs are stalks that move smoothly but without give in landing and the musculature of her back surges like a horde of caterpillars on a wall. I begin to pick up voices and at the edge of the gravel, spoor: yellow foil packaging for a roll of film.
    Heidi picks up speed. “Come on, potato pants.”
    Ground water gathers heat from deep volcanic crust; it percolates down to the hot zone, then rises back up by convection. And that’s about the size of it. Only a few thousand years from start to finish.
    Heidi gets out of her clothes like they were on fire. She does a handstand, a cartwheel, and some of the puckered seniors applaud. We inch down into a natural caldron, lean on one another. Silvery gumball bubbles break the surface of the water and steam disappears in the sunlight. My head tilts back on its own and behind clamped lids it is flat, blank, orange.
    A finger touches me. “A perfect day,” Heidi says. “We’re together on a perfect day.” Then, a minute or two later, “You smell bad eggs?”
    I take her by the chin and turn her, point out the string of mudpots behind us where health addicts dangle themselves in faintly sulfurous ooze.
    “Natural gas.” I whisper it.
    “Yes, professor.”
    My finger curls around hers and we tug gently. Lately she wants more and more from me, I know. Her cautions are falling away. She calls me from her house during dinner, slides her arms around me in the street where her in-laws could be passing. Although the fantasies she harbors are never mentioned, I’m afraid of what they are. I open my eyes.
    Fleetingly I consider explaining myself, warning Heidi not to begin undoing the tangle of husband and kid, but I see it’s impossible, part of the problem. A sort of language barrier: We can only talk of immediacies.
    Her husband’s name is Wade. He works as an attendant at Cherry Ames Memorial Hospital. In a few more months he will be upgraded, allowed to administer injections.
    “This sure is different,” Heidi says, splashing herself. “I never take baths, only showers. Don’t suppose I’ve been in a bath since I was maybe ten years old and still playing with boats.”
    Her daughter’s name is Tasha. She spends a lot of time with the neighbor, a widow with failing eyesight. In another year or so she will start first grade and socialization.
    I think it’s the predictability that’s so difficult to face. Hard to detect much volition out there. Still, we gather by the water hole thirsty for something, wary of predators.
    The picnic area: matched poodles, a man in lederhosen who can’t keep his pipe lit. Heidi jumps rope deftly, clicking her tongue in rhythm. I make a fire, rub mustard into the meat, toss it on the grill. We squat in the grass to eat, one penknife between us, bread slices mushy with juice and fat. Heidi sucks her fingers after every mouthful. I watch her jutting teeth with wonder. More solid bone. Against all this geology she looks immovably elegant. I almost want to take back my thoughts and say, Let’s murder your husband.
    Down by the trash barrels there’s a hunched old ratnose with rubber-tire sandals and his white hair in a ponytail. He’s a harvester, picking out cans and stuffing them into a burlap sack. All business, he comes over to ask if he can have our beer empties. Aluminum scrap’s bringing a nice