Fernweh

By Matt Lang

This is a sad story about love and longing in America.

This is a funny story about stumbling across America.

This is a falling down barn.

This is what happens in between innings.

This is a picture of America hanging crooked on the wall.

 

Fernweh is the story of Jackson Hoffman, the p

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clawfoot Press
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9780997108002

Matt Lang

Matt Lang was born in Olean, New York and lived there for one year before moving with his family up and over the hill, across the border, to Rixford, Pennsylvania, into the house in which his mother grew up. He went to college in Erie, Pennsylvania, and lived there for two years in an almost constant state of misery. Had he stayed, he would have written one indispensable piece of American fiction before freezing to death surrounded by empty bottles in the abandoned house in which he would have been squatting. But he left. He transferred to the College of Wooster and was happy there. He met the most important people in his life, including Emily Hendel, now his wife. Now he lives in a large house on the Southwest Side with his wife, daughter, and others, including some of those same important people from Wooster. He's written American fiction, including Fernweh, McKean County and Other Stories, and The Giraffe's Mustache: A Storybook You Can Color, the indispensability of which are debatable, but his house is well heated, if, at times, drafty.

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Fernweh

Matt Lang

68009.png clawfoot press

Copyright © 2015 Matt Lang

Copyright © 2015 Clawfoot Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced commerically

without permission of the publisher.

Distributed to the trade in the United States by

Ingram Spark

Library of Congress Catalog Number:

isbn

: 978-0-9971080-0-2

First Printing

Manufactured in the United States

To Gail Cummings, who warned me to

avoid the pit of complacency.

I didn’t, but twenty-some years later,

I’m finally crawling out.

At some point in mid-2010, young Samuel Weber and his mom Shawna Bowman sat at a dinner table and told the assembled about a string of mysterious phone calls Samuel had been getting from a caller asking for Millie Boones. This led to much speculation (and even a fake Facebook account), and, eventually, to this book.

fernweh

fernweh (fern-way) n.

1. An ache for distant places

2. Being homesick for anywhere but home

My name is Jackson Hoffman. I think it’s July 8, 2014, but I guess it could be the ninth. I’m standing in a bathroom in Erie, Pennsylvania. I’m looking in the mirror. I don’t like what I see.

I drove here from Chicago with Ana, but now I don’t know where Ana is.

America, have you ever driven east out of Chicago along Interstate 90, across northern Indiana and northern Ohio? By the time you leave Chicago, you’ve had your fill of rust and crumble. Once in Indiana, you pass through East Chicago, Hammond, and Gary. If you leave the expressway and enter one of these cities and touch one of the smokestacks or gentlemen’s clubs or crumbling warehouses, or set foot on one of the post-apocalyptic streets and walk down it like a lone survivor, there’s a chance the sorrow will be overwhelming and you’ll want to find a burned-out house and pry the plywood from the windows and crawl inside and sink into a final despair. If you are steadfast, and you make it to the other side of Gary, you’ll find yourself in a live action Hannah-Barbara cartoon, the same background scrolling past again and again and again: cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees, cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees.

The movement I see is a shadow, or some trick of the light bouncing off the mirror or flickering off the shower curtain, and that presence I feel next to me is the wind coming in through the window. The voice I hear is just an old tape in my head, and it sounds so real because I got my ass kicked, or, more accurately, I got my head kicked. Repeatedly. At least I think that’s what happened. The last thing I remember is getting kicked. But that was on the porch, wasn’t it?

This is not so different than most of my life, having conversations in my head. I’m usually not bleeding out, I’m usually in front of the television, or on the bus, or meandering along a side street, but I’m in my head, remembering and ruminating in unhelpful ways about what has been and what never will be. Sometimes I’m talking to my mom, or sometimes my brother, sometimes an old teacher, but sometimes my audience isn’t specific, or, rather, not a specific person; sometimes I’m talking to America the way the TV gets to talk to America, or the radio. When I talk to America, I picture a man in a suit on a cable news station. America is twenty-four hour news, nice suits, predictable haircuts, and lots of makeup. America is also blood and tears and cracked ribs on the floor of a bathroom. America is talking to itself.

I’ve pissed myself, America, and I wish I hadn’t done that. As soon as I can stand, I’ll look for new pants, until then, let me try to sort this all out. There was a phone call, a boy, I was on a road trip with Ana, and now I’m beat to hell, I don’t know about the boy, and Ana is gone.

Iwas living in Logan Square, on Kedzie, in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store. Gangsters had given way to hipsters, while a few old Norwegian ladies still went to the Lutheran church on the square; when taco places called Gloria’s or Margarita’s were turning into cafés called GREAT , or NEAT , or some class of interjection. I was cooking my breakfast on a Saturday morning when the phone rang and a number I didn’t recognize flashed on the screen.

There is a divide in our society, America, one of many. On one side are people who grew up with regular, landline phones, sans caller-ID, and in their formative years they developed the habit of answering the phone whenever it rang. On the other side are people who grew up with at least caller ID, if not cell phones, they got used to screening all their calls, and answering only if they knew what they were getting into. I grew up on the former side. Those on the latter side would probably have never found themselves in the mess I’m in now, at least not in the same way.

Hello.

Grandma Millie?

Who?

Grandma Millie?

The voice sounded like he was twelve. I think you have the wrong number, I said.

I’m trying to reach Millie Boones?

There’s nobody here by that name.

Oh, um, okay.

Bye.

Bye.

I hung up the phone, and went back to the egg. The egg stuck to the pan a bit, and the yolk broke as I moved it to the plate. A yellow pool spread around the white. I mopped that up with a piece of toast, finished the egg, drank my coffee, and washed the dishes because if I left them sitting on the counter, there would be roaches, guaranteed.

Out on the sidewalk, it was sunny—nice high-in-the-sky-clear-blue-June-day sunny. My plan: get new shoes, my first new pair in two years, and then have lunch with Ana Riviera. Ana made power lines hum when she walked underneath them, and there was always a chance that we would plug into each other and jump start all the cars parked out on the street. Or we might totally short out, and the cars would stay stuck, up on cinder blocks, with weeds growing in the engine, to borrow an image from my Oklahoma home.

I never knew for sure.

One block later, on my way to the Blue Line, even though I was sweating, I turned around and went back to get a jacket.

There are two pieces of advice that I give to friends and family when they visit Chicago for the first time: give yourself at least an hour to get where you’re going, and take a jacket. My first summer there, I was watching a game at Wrigley and it was hot for the first pitch. My cup of beer was sweating and I thought it was a good idea to take my shirt off, be one of those guys.

Bottom of the fourth, Sammy Sosa up, the winds blows through the stadium, and the temperature drops, no shit, like twenty-five degrees. Now, I’m a skinny dude, skin and bones, it almost knocked me right over. I watched the rest of the game with my arms pulled inside my shirt and the tops of my ears tucked under my hat.

I scrunched the jacket like a football; I slung it over my shoulder; I bunched it up small and held it in my hand. When I got to the Blue Line, I tied it around my waist, which freed my hands, but made me feel like a child, which was not how I wanted to feel on my way to have lunch with Ana, who would be all woman, dressed just right, with everything in place, and nothing unnecessary in her hands.

I got the shoes, classic Chucks. I sat on a bench on the sidewalk outside the store and put them on. I wanted Ana to be impressed in some way. I hoped she’d at least notice and like me a little more. She was not really that shallow, but I was that insecure. I left my old shoes on the bench and returned to the train. I stepped off the train at 18th Street and walked east to Nuevo Leon. My phone rang again. I answered without looking.

Hello.

Hello, is Grandma Millie there?

No, I’m sorry, this is still the wrong number.

I walked across Ashland and made a mental note to always check to see who’s calling before answering.

Look, I’m sorry, but this is my cell phone. I’ve had this number for four years. I don’t know your Grandma. This isn’t her number.

I’ve tried so many numbers.

Maybe you should check with your mom?

Silence. Then a sigh. Then he hung up.

While waiting for the incomparable Ana Riviera, I drank three Sols and ate tortilla chips set on repeat — eat the basket, get a refill, eat the basket, get a refill. After three beers, I was a bit tipsy when Ana arrived, which made the light swim around her even more than usual as she walked towards me.

Hello, my name is Ana Riviera. I was born in Mexico City but my family moved to Geneva when I was five. At the age of twelve I traveled to Johannesburg to attend an exclusive international school where I studied diplomacy and learned to speak my fourth and fifth languages. When I was nineteen I moved to Chile and planned the redevelopment of central Santiago. Now I am working on my Masters in Economics at the University of Chicago because I have six weeks to kill and what the fuck else am I going to do? Here is a copy of my collection of short stories. Would you like me to sign it?

Ana Riviera is that kind of name.

The real Ana was born at home, in her mama’s bathtub, helped into the world by the wife of her mother’s cousin, her father’s mother, and the woman who lived next door. The woman who lived next door ran the show. Ana couldn’t remember her name, because Ana has a terrible memory — if she saw a picture, she’d remember — and because the woman died a few weeks later, Ana being the last of many children born on her watch.

So Ana was born, raised, and, until a few days ago, lived on the same block in Pilsen, a bio that, while it lacks the redevelopment of any national capitals, still kicks a certain kind of ass.

I stood to give her a kiss on the cheek, a greeting that shows sophistication and control and confidence and, in our case, holds the memory of intimate moments and, in the case of the kiss I wanted to give, the reminder that I was a man worthy — more than worthy! — of more such moments in the future, possibly the near future, possibly that very afternoon. But I kicked the table leg when I stood up and spilled water on my cell phone.

I grabbed the phone and shook the water off.

Shit, sorry. Did I get you?

Ana flinched as the drops flew.

You nearly got me. I see you’re already smashed.

Ana reached toward me, gave me a hug, kissed me on the cheek.

"Smashed. But I have had three whole beers."

Damn. You better sit down then, you’re in no condition to stand.

Yeah, but it’s Sol, so it’s good for me. No chemicals.

She jutted her chin toward the empty bottles and finished off our little inside joke with a passable impression of black man in his sixties, More natural and shit.

Once upon an afternoon, I was in the liquor store buying a six-pack of Corona that I planned to drink while watching zombie movies. Seeing me make my purchase, a local drunk named Belmont — because he slept under the overpass, up there on Belmont. Know where I’m saying? — tilted his chin toward me and my cervezas and asked, Hey, you like beer?

I slid my wallet in my back pocket and answered Belmont’s question.

Apparently.

You ever drink Sol?

No, I don’t know Sol.

Sol’s good. No hangover. That stuff, pointing again with his chin at my beer, has a bunch of chemicals and shit, I guess. Sol is, I don’t know, more natural and shit. I never get no hangover from it.

Okay, thanks for the advice.

Sure no problem, buddy. Hey, can I ask you a question?

What’s up?

You gonna drink all those beers?

You know, I think I actually am.

We’d hit the ground running — there’d be no stupid, Hey, how’s it going, or anything like that. This joke would lead to more jokes would lead to stories would lead to more stories and soon she would be dazzled and would remember that I’m real fucking charming and skilled at cunnilingus and she’d insist we go to her place and stay there for three or four days. That was my hope, at least. That was always my hope.

We sat down, and the server came and took our order. More beer for me, a beer for her, a bean burrito for me, two tacos for her. She must have slept in, or at least showered late, because her hair was still wet, which made it even shinier and darker than usual. She scooted her chair in closer and apologized for being late and she smelled clean and it’s a wonderful kind of intimacy to smell someone who’s gone fresh from the shower to you.

It’s been one of those mornings, she said.

I know those mornings. I just call them mornings.

But look at you, you got here first, and you had to come miles, so you must have been up and at ‘em today.

As much as I ever am. I got new shoes, too.

Look at you! Can I see?

I held my foot out, feeling a bit like a fifth-grade boy, worrying that Ana saw me as a fifth- grade boy. I tried to speak of manly things.

So, how’s it going?

Damn it. Exactly the phrase I wanted to avoid. Ana hates general-

speak like How’s it going? I don’t know how it’s going because I don’t know what it is? It could be anything. What do you want to know, Jackson? Are you asking about my day, my life, my work? How’s it going? That’s like saying, Tell me stuff, which, if you want me to tell you stuff, just say Ana, tell me stuff.

She must have been tired because she didn’t argue against my line of inquiry.

It’s okay. Just tired today. How’s it going with you?

For her to ask that question, man, she must have been wiped out.

Yeah, okay. Same as it ever was.

Not the same. You got new shoes.

She nodded toward my feet. There was sincerity in her voice. Most of our conversations were one smart-ass quip after another, so I wasn’t sure how to handle sincerity. I answered with self-deprecation.

Life above the liquor store will never be the same.

Sincerity gave way to impatience. "You could always move. You don’t have to live above a liquor store."

She was right, America, I didn’t have to live above a liquor store, just like Belmont didn’t have to live under the overpass. It’s not the same, I realize, but my point, America, is Belmont found the best spot that worked for him given his circumstances, and I found the best spot that worked for me given my circumstances. I was working in a grocery store, paying for my own health insurance, paying off student loans, getting no money from my parents, because I never got any money from my parents, because my parents never had any money to give, hence the student loans. I could move to a cheaper place, farther from work, farther from the train, but then I’d need a car, which I couldn’t afford, or I’d spend hours per week on the bus, and when I’d complain about that, Ana would point out that I don’t have to live so far away from work, lots of people have to ride the bus, they don’t have a choice. I’m aware, I’m so aware so many people have such miserable lives and people spend all day and all night riding busses to and