Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  Blood was everywhere. It smeared across the dashboard, fingerprinted the windows, and seeped through the seams of Ceif’s grip as he tried to dam up the holes in his arm. Sonny Joe ripped off his shirt and threw it at Ceif. Ceif wrapped the shirt around his arm, closed his eyes, and pressed his head hard against the window.

  Gradle turned around and stared through the cab at the crazy man who was on his knees, weeping over his dog. She crawled over Ceif’s lap, pulled the door handle up, and paused for a second at the running road before she jumped from the truck. She rolled to a stop and felt the sky’s imposing darkness pressing down upon her.

  She brushed off her dress and picked up Delvis’s mailbox that was banged up and laying on its side. She wiped the mud and liquor off with her hands and studied the address on the box’s side. The writing was imperfect and crooked, yet there was something code-like and artistic hidden in the cursive manner in which only some of the letters were written.

  Carefully, she situated the mailbox back on its base and walked up the drive until she could see Delvis again. He was still on his knees weeping. The sky broke, and large drops of rain fell from its blanket of grey. Delvis lifted his dog in his arms, rose from his knees, and carried it inside his shack.

  For a long time thereafter Gradle stood in the storm, wondering if there could be any forgiveness for what she had done.

  Inside his shack, Delvis Miles laid Rain on his twin-size bed, put a match to an oil lamp, and with a pair of tweezers he dove for in a dumpster two months back, plucked the bullet from the dog’s side and put it on the table next to the bed. The wind outside picked up and rattled the loose boards of his house.

  He worked fast, pulling spiderwebs down from the ceiling and packing them in his dog’s bleeding wound. He collected webs from the window casings, deer antlers, secondhand candelabras, and the cross made of Popsicle sticks nailed above his bed, and when there were no more cobwebs to collect, he packed what was left of the brown sugar in the hole of Rain’s gut. Damn outlaws. Trying to make his life a living hell. Why them boys kept coming around his place, trying to burn down his house with fire-poppers was a big question mark in his head. Did they know who they were messing with? Everybody else around here left him alone, and they ought to know his house was stronger than the Fort Knox because he had built it himself and made sure of it. Maybe they didn’t have no manners. Maybe they were trying to capture him for that bounty them crooks put on him several years back, or maybe they came by here today, trying to impress that pretty young girl they brung. He had to admit he tried to impress her, too. The minute he put his eyes on her, he pulled out his most dynamic kung-fu moves, the ones he had copyrighted in the Library of Congress up in Washington, D.C.

  Rain whimpered and brought him back to the matter at hand. He knelt by the bed, rubbed him from head to tail, and bandaged his side with two strips of duct tape. He hugged his dog’s head and pressed his lips against his hot, dried-out nose. It wouldn’t be much longer before his breath went out.

  A tear started in the corner of Rain’s eye, rolled over his snout, and warmed up Delvis’s fingers. Delvis remembered the day he found him beaten up and whining because some outlaw had left him in the bottom of the county dumpster to die. He didn’t know why people wanted to throw life away like that. Them people belonged in jail. He remembered standing on the rim of the dumpster and looking down on him that day and how he learned right there and then that the dog had the magical capacity to cry. Because of that trait, Delvis named him Rain.

  The first time he tried to lift Rain out of the trash, he was so wild and scared he tore into his flesh. But that didn’t matter because Delvis Miles will accept any and all challenges. He tried and tried again because he knew he was the only one in his right mind who could save that dog from starving to death. It took him an entire week, four jars of Jif peanut butter, and the sacrifice of a couple of rain-damaged catcher’s mitts, but eventually he gained Rain’s trust. He took him home, set his broken legs, and kept the maggots in his wounds until they managed to clean them out real good.

  Rain was his treasure, and although the dog despised every other human being he ever encountered, he adored his master and displayed his affections by fleaing Delvis’s neck and dragging up dead animals, mainly deer, when he heard the rumble of hunger in Delvis’s belly. They ran together. They hunted together, slept and dreamed together, and when they swam in the creeks, Rain would clamp onto Delvis’s arm and lead him to shallow water when he detected he had gone too deep. Rain was his protector, his bodyguard, his one and only real true friend.

  “I’m sorry, Rain,” he said. “But I couldn’t let you kill that boy.” Tears puddled in Delvis’s eyes, and Rain cried along with him. “I tried aimin’ where you wouldn’t die. But I’m only ninety-seven percent accurate on target each and every time. I reckon I messed up and hit you in the three-percent range.”

  He rose from the bed and stared at the bloody bullet on his bedside table. He picked it up and put it in his mouth to clean the blood off. The wind was coming in stronger and little slices of it blew through the cracks and cooled off his neck. He lifted his shirt, and with his switchblade, he slit his side, underneath the rib, in the same spot he had shot Rain. He pulled the bullet out of his mouth, clamped his jaw, and lodged it inside the slit.

  “Forgive me,” he said as blood seeped through his fingers.

  He tore a strip of duct tape off with his teeth and patched up his side. He crawled in the bed, lay next to Rain, and stroked his cheek to the music of his Coke can whirligig spinning in the wind outside.

  Rain pawed as close to Delvis as he could and licked the tears from his best friend’s eyes until he had nothing left to lick with. Delvis felt the heat vanish from Rain’s body, and when it was all gone, he stared at the ceiling and couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever see that pretty girl again.

  Gradle followed the Chevy’s tracks down the dirt road, through the tobacco, past the dump, and turned on the highway where she ran along the roadside into the mouth of a purple and violent storm. Wind bent the pines, and their needles fell to the ground and stabbed her path like pitchforks. A car sped by blowing its horn and flashing its lights, but she didn’t heed its warning. Whatever wreckage the storm had in store for her, she deserved all of its punishment.

  A vibration in the atmosphere raised the hair on her arms. It grew stronger, louder, and soon the sound of Sonny’s Joe’s tailpipe alarmed her ears like the sudden flutter of doves.

  He crossed the Chevy over into the oncoming lane and pulled the truck in close. “Get in,” he said.

  She bundled her dress high above her knees and picked up her pace.

  “Come on, Gradle Bird,” he said. “Don’t be hard-headed.” His fingers called her his way.

  “I’m not getting in your truck you asshole! Both of you are assholes!” she yelled.

  “There’s a bad storm coming,” he said, nodding in the direction of her path.

  She slowed and stared ahead at the circling mass of sky and saw what the speeding car had warned her of touch down in a distant tobacco field.

  Sonny Joe reached through the window, looped his pinkie finger around hers, and reeled her back. “I ain’t leaving until you get in,” he said. His eyes dared her and the oncoming car that topped the hill.

  She grabbed hold of his hand. There was something about his recklessness that made her feel safe. He opened his door, grabbed her waist, and lifted her across his lap next to Ceif, who was slouched against the window with his eyes closed. The side of his lip rose, acknowledging her.

  Sonny Joe slammed the brakes and whipped the truck around. The tires smoked and squealed as they tried to catch hold. The oncoming car blew its horn. He shifted down a gear, the truck shot forward, and he sped down the highway, avoiding a crash and the twister sidewinding like a snake behind their backs.

  “We made him shoot his dog,” she said. The corners of her eyes grew hot with tears. “Why did we do that?”

&
nbsp; Sonny Joe pressed play on his jam-box and turned the music up loud.

  “We should go apologize,” she said.

  Ceif rolled his head in her direction. His face was pale but the purple under his eyes was getting darker, as if all of the color he was losing from his face was collecting there. “Your purity is astounding,” he whispered, closing his eyes back shut, and rolling his head back against the window.

  Sonny Joe made a turn down a dirt road and parked the truck in the woods. He laid Ceif’s Bible on Ceif’s lap and lifted him from the seat.

  He nodded Gradle out of the truck, and they ran through the woods until they came upon a cemetery of an old abandoned A-frame church with its windows and door busted out.

  She followed Sonny Joe through the cemetery with green crumbling tombstones that were all slanted back as if blown by a persistent wind. He led her into the church’s dark and fish-smelling sanctuary the boys had made their home. Crosses were carved in two of the wooden pews where they slept, as if they needed extra help in warding off evil spirits. A can opener and two cans of Van Camps Pork and Beans sat on another pew. The other pews were empty except the one in the middle that shelved jar after jar of colorful fighting fish.

  She walked down the right aisle and stood before the only unbroken window in the place, a stained glass window of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet. He was on his knees and bowing in humble servitude in front of his dedicated flock.

  “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet,” Ceif whispered, as he limped past her and toward the altar with Sonny Joe’s help.

  Ceif knelt at the altar, and Sonny Joe unwrapped the blood-soaked tank top from Ceif’s arm. He doused Ceif’s wound with Southern Comfort and heated a foldout knife with fire from his lighter. Ceif bowed his head until it touched the altar, and he began to pray in tongues. Sonny Joe placed the blade on Ceif’s arm. It seared his skin and made his tongue scream and cry out its prayers. Sonny Joe palmed Ceif’s head, parted his hair, and pressed his lips upon his crown, quelling the screams. Their devotion to each other was beautiful, like worship. It made her feel like she shouldn’t be there, like she shouldn’t watch, like she didn’t belong.

  She walked down the aisle to find her own altar, her own peace for the torment she felt inside. She climbed the pulpit steps and drew back a purple velvet curtain. Behind it was a small baptism pool of black water that reflected the ceiling’s broken stained glass window where bats she scared up were rushing through. She entered the water, stirred up its shadows and its sweet smell of rot. She fell on her back. Her dress went abloom and scared a water snake through her long, splayed fingers.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered.

  She begged the dark heavens traveling past. She begged them to get rid of her transgression, to do whatever it took to grant her refuge from the guilt of knowing she was the reason Delvis Miles killed his dog. There was a moment of brief relent, and a shaft of sunlight beamed through the window high above the pool. It made her body bright and made the raindrops shimmer like gemstones as they passed through the colorful and cracked stained glass. But soon the dark heavens came rushing back and shut out the light.

  She didn’t know how long it would take to be washed from her guilt, but she would beg until she filled up with water and sunk. When she swallowed that first drink of water, her mind went to Grandpa, and she began to thrash and kick. She snatched the photograph of Grandpa and Veela from her bra and cradled it in her hands as she carried it to the side of the pool. She blew her breath on them, trying to bring them back to life. A bit of her mother’s green dress was missing, but Grandpa wasn’t damaged at all. His half-dimpled smile was still there.

  She rose from the pool, her dress glued to her bones, and found Sonny Joe shirtless sitting in a window, smoking a cigarette and watching the storm.

  “I need to go back,” she said. “My grandpa is probably worried.”

  Sonny Joe placed his finger to his lips, hushing her to protect the distant, delicate whispering of Ceif’s mysterious altar prayers. His eyes were swollen, and there were tears and red in them that made his irises greener. She expected he might have been the type to hide his tears, but instead, he was the type to flaunt them.

  The sound of Ceif’s prayers came to an end, and Sonny Joe took a drag from his cigarette.

  “Did you have fun?” he asked, as poems of pale blue smoke ribboned up from his sideways smile.

  Leonard sat in the dark in a rat-chewed chair staring at the TV and eating SpaghettiOs out of the can. On the screen, George “The Animal” Steele gnawed the padding out of the turnbuckle and rolled his green lizard tongue while “Macho Man” Randy Savage twirled around in his dark sunglasses and shimmering gold sequined cape.

  A sound like someone tapping on the glass of the back door traveled up the hall. He stopped chewing the SpaghettiOs, turned the TV down, and cocked his ear. He turned still and silent. Ever since he’d come inside, the house had been making a lot of noise. He wondered if it was rats in the attic or Gradle coming home. He rose from the chair, grabbed his shotgun, and stared down the long dark hall at the backdoor’s knob, halfway expecting it to turn.

  He rattled his head, trying to shake off what could have been his imagination or the result of him being fried to the bone earlier today by a few hundred volts of electricity. He’d been on edge ever since he let Gradle go off with those two boys, which he shouldn’t have allowed in the first place. But at the time, electricity was still boiling his blood, and he wasn’t in his right mind. In fact, he was still addled by it, didn’t feel quite right, felt like he was walking around with charge. Or maybe, he just might be a bit scared.

  He walked back to the living room where the TV was caught in a spasm of scrolling horizontal lines. A shock traveled up his finger when he adjusted the antennae’s tinfoil and gem clip rig.

  “Damn it,” he said, touched the tinfoil again, and got shocked again. He slapped the TV’s ear, and Randy Savage appeared clear as day, sailing through the air well on his way to a body slam.

  He sat in the chair, rested the gun across his lap, and turned the TV back up. He chewed the SpaghettiOs he’d squirrelled away in his mouth and washed them down with a glass of rainwater he’d collected from the electrical storm that had violently rolled through. It had been a bad storm, but he’d worked through the whole thing, scraping paint from three sides of the house until he had a stinging blister the size of Jupiter’s red spot on the inside of his thumb.

  He took another bite of SpaghettiOs but his hand was shaking so bad the spoon missed his mouth, and little Os in red sauce dove off his spoon and swam in the wiry hair of his chest. He ate the Os off his chest while he watched George “The Animal Steele” waving his arms up and down like an ape.

  He heard another sound, like a knock, and couldn’t tell if it had come from overhead or from the backdoor again. He bolted up, knocked the can of SpaghettiOs over, and sent the spoon sliding across the floor. He gripped the gun and left Randy Savage flexing his chest and George dining on the ring ropes and turnbuckle foam.

  “Who’s there?” he yelled down the hall, as he pointed his gun into the dark.

  He flipped a switch on the wall, and a light came on in the attic. Light pushed through the flap’s seams and lit up the hall good enough for him to see. He crept down the hall, but no matter how careful and lightfooted he was, his loafers produced loud echoes that could be heard all throughout the house, even over the snarling and grunting George and the rowdy crowd egging him on. He toed off his shoes and continued down the hall, barefooted.

  When he reached the back door, he flipped the porch light’s switch, but no light came of it. He dropped his gun by his side, walked out on the porch, and crunched shards of broken light bulb under his feet. He picked a piece of glass out of his heel and surveyed the yard, looking out for Gradle, missing her, worrying, and wondering how much longer it would be before she came home. He sat in a rocker, rest
ed the gun across his lap, and rocked while he watched twilight vanish.

  A loud thud, like thunder, rattled the house and shook a piece of broken glass free from the windowpane. Leonard jumped to his feet, swung the porch door open, and readied his gun. His finger rested inside the trigger’s curve, and he took aim at the attic’s flickering light.

  He walked toward the attic flap, and the whole way there he felt as if something was at his back, but he was too chicken to turn around. He stopped under the attic flap, and the light stabilized. The hair on his arms rose at the sound of feet sliding on sand. His hand fisted the flap’s string and yanked it down. The ladder unfolded, and he ran up the rungs.

  The attic smelled of sweetness and rot, and everything in it sparkled with dust. Moonflower carcasses littered the floor, and the new spawn bloomed with white abandon. Hawk moths darted through the air like tiny tornadoes, hundreds wormed out of pupas on the ground, while others swung trapped in webs, struggling to flee the rushing spiders. The attic was a hatchery of life and death, and it was all so damn frightening and beautiful he couldn’t swear if any of it was real.

  A shadow came and left the wall. He cocked his gun and shot at a rat scurrying across the floor. His ears rang, and among the ringing and echo of gunfire he heard laughter. He wiped the sweat from his mustache and shook his head, but the laughter grew louder and placed him back to the time when he and Annalee were young.

  The attic light flickered. Leonard closed his eyes and counted out loud to twenty. He opened his eyes and shouted, “Ready or not, here I come!”

  He heard the patter of feet race to the far corner near the slouching, vine-covered box labeled CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS. It was the place he remembered her hiding the summer they were seven. He ripped through the spiderwebs and vines, broke open the box, and threw every ornament through the air until the box was empty.

  He stumbled to the walnut hope chest, unhooked its latch, and threw the moth-nibbled quilts on the ground. He remembered finding her here the summer when they were eight. He remembered opening the chest back then and how she smiled at him before she gasped for air, as if smiling at him was more critical to her survival than her breath.