Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories Read Online Free Page A

end of the earth there would be lots of fishing.
    “First thing we’ll do,” he said, “I’ll take you out to John’s River and we’ll try our luck at steelhead.” He told Arnie about how the fish swam up the creeks to breed, flinging their bodies against the rocks as they hopped from one pool to another. “Like missiles blasted from an underwater sub, I swear,” Jay said. “One after another. Bam bam bam bam bam.”
    This was what he’d said around Tonopah, and all the way west Arnie let himself be teased by the idea of the steelhead. When at last they saw the great beasts standing in the salt marsh, Arnie pictured the fish swimming in between their feet. Tickling, which was why the elk every so often twitched.
    “How many’d you catch?” Arnie had asked then.
    “Catch what?” Jay’s eyes were barely slits. They’d been driving more than twenty hours straight.
    “You know. The steelhead.”
    Arnie’s scalp prickled, his hair still mussed from Jay’s having rubbed it. Now Jay rubbed his own hair, which was black and thick and hung in ringlets on his neck.
    “I never caught any,” he admitted. “I never even been here. You’re seeing it for the first time same as me.”
    At this point the salt marsh grew blurry, from tears that Arnie tried to keep the new guy from seeing. He should have guessed that nothing swam down there between the elks’ legs. The fish were just a gimmick to get him to come along quietly.
    “Aww, Little Man, don’t wig out on me,” the new guy said, when he twisted around and saw Arnie crouched behind the seat. “Don’t worry, everything’ll be great, you’ll see.”
    “If you’ve never been here, how would you know?”
    “I know. I got a cousin who lives out this-away.”

    IN THE MOTEL, as the margin of light grew larger around the drapes, his mother groaned and knitted herself into the new guy’s arms and legs. Eventually she hoisted herself under the sheet to reach for a Styrofoam cup that she’d left on the nightstand.
    “Ugh,” she said, after taking a swallow. “Hello, Washington. I thought your coffee was supposed to be so great.”
    “You bought that last night in Oregon,” the new guy reminded her, as he took the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket. The cup sailed across the room without spilling a drop, though it left a stain on the wall where it ricocheted before it fell.
    She sat up then with the sheet bound across her chest and looked at Arnie.
    “How you like it here so far?”
    “Okay, I guess.”
    She was doodling her hand in the curls at the nape of the new guy’s neck. Then her voice changed, as if an idea had just occurred to her.
    “Hey, Arnie, I bet a smart kid like you could find me a decent cup of coffee in this town.” She fished out a five-dollar bill from her purse that was on the floor beside the bed and made him come around to get it.
    “You know how I want it?”
    “Lots of cream, lots of sugar,” Arnie recited — after all these years, of course he knew.
    Their motel room was on the second floor, with a little balcony out one side. On the other side was the door that led to the outside stairs and the parking lot. Now that he was seeing it with a wider angle than the car windows allowed, Arnie realized that the end of the earth was just a spit of sand paved over to keep the wind from blasting it away. Earlier this morning, when they’d passed the salt marsh full of elk, the sun had glimmered just above the mountains, a bright smudge in the gray. But now the clouds were thicker, letting loose a kind of rain that hovered, weightless. He remembered that his coat was still locked in the car, and his sweatshirt grew heavy as it sopped up moisture from the air.
    The road had ended in this bare place, where the sand scuffed beneath his sneakers and mostly the dozen motels and tacky seashell shops were not yet open for the season. Across from their motel Arnie found the marina, where rocks had been piled into a jetty that