Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  He ran inside to get his pistol, but he couldn’t remember where he had put it. Thousands of images flashed on the back of his eyelids like they always did when he couldn’t remember where he put something. He tried shuffling through the images and throwing out the ones he didn’t need, but his brain couldn’t evict them. He grabbed his head, squeezed, and started over. The images flashed up again, but he couldn’t figure out which ones were important and which ones weren’t. He shook his head and tried again, but again he couldn’t sort out the images because the images were not the images he needed to sort through in order to find his gun. On the back of his lids he saw: Gradle screaming, Ceif laughing, lilies, Ceif’s cane, notes with mean writing, the Piggly Wiggly pay phone, Gradle crying, Ceif grabbing at her, Ceif’s Bible, lilies, Ceif’s cane, notes with mean writing, the Piggly Wiggly pay phone. The pictures kept repeating, and he couldn’t shuffle them out. He grabbed his head again and squeezed and squeezed until all of the images blurred and his world went black.

  “Delvis, are you okay?” he heard Gradle’s voice, pure and sweet, reaching down for him.

  He couldn’t pry his eyes open, but his mouth seemed to work just fine. “Are you safe?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m right here.”

  “That boy didn’t come take you away did he?”

  “No,” she said. He felt her padded hand cradle the back of his neck and lift it off the floor. “I’m right here, Delvis. I’m right here with you.”

  Delvis’s eyes busted through the bricks weighing them down. Gradle was kneeling beside him, looking down at his face with a troubled look on hers. She petted the rain and sweat out his hair.

  “You must have fainted,” she said. “Probably from the heat.”

  He propped himself on his elbows. “Where’d you come from?” he asked.

  “I’ve been here the whole time,” she said.

  “When I got done under the house, I came back and didn’t see you on the porch. I was afraid that boy snatched you up from right under my nose.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Delvis,” she said. “I’ll always be with you. Even when I’m not here.”

  His brows pinched. In his mind, he tried to understand what Gradle said. How could she always be with him if she wasn’t always there? For her to always be with him, she had to be here, here so he could smell her, see her, touch her, talk to her. He tried to solve Gradle’s puzzle in his mind, but it kept getting more confused. The pieces didn’t fit clean in their cutout spaces. He knew she wasn’t trying to trick him because she was his real true friend. His eyes stung and clouded with tears. He didn’t understand and didn’t trust that his mind could ever grasp what Gradle was telling him. They always said he was special. They always said they didn’t have the type of classes in school that could work with a brain like his. Delvis always thought he was too smart for the classes, but maybe, just maybe, he was too dumb.

  Delvis couldn’t sleep. He felt as if the same electricity making the stars sparkle and the porch light shine ran all throughout his veins. He could even hear his skin buzzing like locusts in the trees. It was a quarter past two in the morning, Gradle was asleep, and he had just finished busting the guts out of the last padlock he had found at the dump. He picked the guts out of the lock with a pair of tweezers and replaced them with some spare guts for which he had keys. He had stored the spares away in a shoebox between an old car alternator and a sack of women’s hosiery, knowing one day they would be of use.

  He lined the padlocks up in a straight row and tested their keys twice. Satisfied they worked, he hid the eleven keys in one of the hanging flower baskets on the porch, pushed down in the dirt where his coral geraniums grew. It was a hiding place nobody would suspect. In the star-punched night, he fastened metal hinges on all four of his windows, but instead of using them as hinges he used them as locks. He spread them flat across the window’s cracks and locked them down with screws. After all four windows were properly secured, he unrolled the rusted barbed-wire fence and wrapped it around the porch railings. He weaved the wire through all of the empty spaces between the porch steps and the front door, and when he was done it was safe and tight, something even a starving fox couldn’t wiggle his way through. From the barbed wire, he made a special door at the porch entrance and clamped it locked with seven of the salvaged padlocks whose keys germinated in the hanging basket’s dirt.

  Quietly, and careful not to wake Gradle, he opened the front door and walked inside his shack. Gradle was almost safe, but not quite. He installed four deadbolts around the front door, one at the top, two on the right, and one on the left, gently clicking each locked before he started on the next. He pushed on the door. It wouldn’t budge. She was almost safe, but not one hundred percent.

  The sun would soon rise, and he had one last task to do before he could say for sure she was protected. He grabbed the pile of chain from the floor and stood over the bed. She was hard asleep. Her mouth was open and singing pretty whistling, nighttime songs. She was full of beauty, full of last week’s word of the day S-E-R-E-N-E. He didn’t know how he would do it without waking her up, and he knew if she did wake in the middle of it, she wouldn’t let him finish what he needed to do. He was stronger and could hold her down if he had to, but he didn’t want to scare her because she was his real true friend. He wouldn’t ever, never do nothing to hurt her. Maybe if she woke up he could explain it to her in plain, simple terms.

  He threaded the chain under and around her wrist and strung it through the headboard and down around the bedpost, locking it with a padlock. He did the other wrist the same, then moved down to the foot of the bed where he wrapped the chain around both of her ankles. She stirred, but she did not wake, just stopped her pretty whistling and singing for a minute. He waited for her to start up singing again, and when she did, he moved swiftly, finishing the job one padlock at a time.

  He knelt beside her bed. He wanted so badly to pet her, but instead he whispered in her ear, “You’ll always be with me.”

  And he hoped in her dreams she would find a way to understand.

  LEONARD SAT BEHIND the Chrysler’s wheel, stalking the Fireside’s truck lot like a creep. He hadn’t slept for two days, and his eyes felt blistered and full of sand. The night was slow. There were no cars parked at the motel and only two rigs in the lot, and the only things that had moved in the past three hours were the cockroaches and the sphere of moths fluttering near the polelamp’s head, dazzled and confused by its bright neon light.

  His head nodded and whipped back. He downed the last sleeve of Goody’s headache powder, rubbed his eyes into focus, and squeezed his fist around Gradle’s gold-cross earring to help keep him awake. He’d found it on the floor after their fight and had been holding onto it ever since. She had been gone for three days, and he’d been gone for two. He’d driven miles looking for her. He’d driven the town of Janesboro’s grid so many times it made him sick to the point he had to pull over and vomit up an empty stomach. He’d driven up and down the four highways leading out of town with his eyes trained for a certain shade of green, and early last night he had come here, wondering if she had run back. He’d looked in the windows of all fifty-two rooms, banged on the doors, and checked if she was lounging by the dried-up pool.

  He put the Goody’s sleeve to his mouth, tapped its end, and remembered it was all gone. He opened his fist and traced the cross of Gradle’s earring with the tip of his finger. Where in the hell had she gone? That little girl who used to walk around in his loafers, who used to wear his undertanks as nightgowns to sleep. He squeezed his fist around her earring, and at the corner of his eye he saw a girl climb down from the cab of a black Peterbuilt.

  He ran from the Chrysler, leaving the door wide open, and into the lot toward the girl who struck a match and brought it to a cigarette.

  “Gradle?” he whispered. He kept running until he realized it wasn’t her.

  Loretta the lot lizard shoved a wad of money in her bra and startled when she saw Leonar
d standing in front of her.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. She took a pull off her cigarette. “You scared the shit out of me. What’re you doing out here?” she asked with her dark silvery smile. “You got the urge?” She hiked her breasts in her bra and strutted up to him. “I always wondered what you’d be like,” she said, twirling her finger in the sweaty hair of his chest. “I bet you’ve got a lot of experience.”

  He slapped her hand away. “Have you seen Gradle?”

  “Not since y’all high-tailed it out of here. Duck’s let the place go to shit,” she said, dabbing her neck with perfume. “Gradle’s finally done run off from you. That sad girl, I always wondered what took her so long. Good for her,” she said with a slack laugh that made him want to punch the silver teeth out of her head.

  “If you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.”

  “She ain’t comin’ back here.” Loretta tightened the strap of her high-heeled shoe and took another drag from her cigarette. “Why in the hell would anybody wanna come back here?”

  Leonard walked across the lot, cranked the Chrysler’s engine, and drove back to the old Spivey house, fisting Gradle’s earring the entire way. He wheeled into the drive, put the car in park, and idled there, staring at the attic window in a daze. The pane was closed, its glass dark. He waited for Annalee’s mirage to appear, but in his gut he knew not a single soul was home.

  He cut off the engine, walked through the moonflower bloom, and turned the front doorknob. The door sighed open. His footsteps echoed throughout the hollow house as he walked down the hall. He went into Gradle’s room to check if she was there, but her room felt more abandoned now than it had when they first came.

  He walked into the hall, flipped on its light, and stared up at the attic’s entrance. He grabbed the poker from the fireplace and tapped it against the flap.

  “Annalee!” he yelled. He couldn’t say for sure if she was up there.

  He reached for the string and yanked it down. A chest fell through the flap and splintered into kindling on the floor. Bricks and boxes came divebombing after and exploded into dust. He couldn’t say for sure if she had ever been up there.

  He trotted the ladder, shoved a teetering box from the ledge, and knocked the iron sewing machine over on its side. The air was hot and stunk of death. He threw open the window to keep the vomit from rising up. Morning was on its way in, blue-white and delicate.

  “Annalee?” he whispered, searching the room. “Annalee!” he yelled. He found her through the blur, on the fainting couch completely entombed in spiderwebs. He slid in moonflower ooze as he rushed to her side. She was still, and he started to imagine the worst.

  He shredded the webs to get at her, afraid at what he may find. He ripped the webs draped in her mouth, and as he did, she drew in a breath so strong it pulled him down.

  “There is a place people go when they die,” she whispered, as she rose up out of her webbed cocoon. “But I am not dead yet. And I need to tell you why.”

  Leonard had to cover his eyes she was so bright. But suddenly her light dimmed and she grew mute, like a waterpainting faded from the sun.

  He scratched his eyes, hoping they were just tired from no sleep, but when he put her in focus again, she was not clear.

  “I know where Gradle is,” she said.

  He pulled her into his chest. “Tell me,” he said, and he closed his sandy, blistered eyes.

  Gradle woke to something tickling the inside of her thigh. A black snake ribboned down her leg. She screamed, but she couldn’t move to slap it away, which left her confused if the snake was real or if she was still stuck in a dream. The snake thumped on the floor, writhed a bit, and slithered away into the wall, between a hubcap and a decapitated babydoll’s head.

  She tried to sit up, but her body was anchored to the bed by what appeared to be more snakes coiled around her ankles and wrists. She jerked and wormed, and when she heard the melody of metal she realized she was anchored down by the chains Delvis took from the county dump.

  “Delvis!” she screamed. Her ears cocked, but she heard nothing but muted songs of morning birds and the snake disturbing the junk as it slithered deep within the walls.

  She thrashed again, only to be jerked back by unbending chains. She looked around for help, and her eyes fell on a letter from Delvis suspended in the atmosphere above the bed. It hung from the ceiling, stuck to a strip of fly tape, and twirled slow in the hot suffocating air.

  Dear GRaDle,

  ThAt OUTLAW boY doNe comE up HERe aND left aNOthER THREAT. He FIgureD oUT how TO geT tHRouGH . . .

  The letter twirled and turned its back, but she couldn’t reach up to grab it, so she blew air from her mouth to make it face forward again.

  mY BOObie traPS I SET out For Him. ThAt boY’s SPECIAL. AiNt NoboDY iN the uNIVerse BeeN Able to StEP aROuNd ONe of MY 100% gARauNteed-tO-Be-CAUGHT BooBiE trAPs I iNveNted for THE Viet-DamN war.

  The letter turned again. Gradle blew steady streams of air and kept the letter forward until she read it whole.

  HE left A NoTE. It SAID: Go TO thE PIggLY WIggLY toDAY aT 10:00 A.M. sHaRP to disCUss coordiNATES foR our Duel. GRaDle BIRd IS miNe TO claiM. I will AT LASt HAVe her Back iN MY arms.

  HE WROTte a P.S. aNd put it iN ALL CAPS. “DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BRING GRaDle WITH YOU. YOU WILL PUT HER IN SERIOUS DANGER!”

  I’M sorry I hAd chaiN YOU up. I doNT WANT to make YOU MAD. I’M a plaiN persoN aNd doNT KNOw how to PUT it iN the RIGHt Words.

  YoUrs Truly,

  A REAL trUe FrIENd

  D-5 Delvis MiLes The LoNe SiNger

  Gradle’s eyes began to burn. She twisted and jerked, trying to find slack in the chains, but they had nothing to give. Panic set in.

  “Grandpa!” she screamed out, hoping he could somehow hear, hoping he could somehow help.

  LEONARD’S KNUCKLES STRETCHED tight and white as he gripped the wheel and barreled the Chrysler down the dirt road. Rocks clanked against the tirewalls, and rows of tobacco sped by in bands of psychedelic green. He gripped the wheel tighter, felt sweat and the gold cross of Gradle’s earring jab his calloused palms.

  Annalee sat beside him in the passenger’s seat, turning vague and cloud-like. He wanted to grab onto her, to stop her from fading any further, but he was too scared he’d reach out and find nothing to hold.

  The tobacco thinned and turned to woods. The shade smelled of honeysuckle and cooled the black leather seats.

  “Turn right at the mailbox,” Annalee said, pointing at a slanted mailbox that was rusty and padlocked shut.

  He should have known Gradle would come here, but how on earth would he have ever found this place, how on earth would anyone know it existed? He drove slow past the mailbox and stared at the writing on its side. He’d seen this writing before. He’d seen it in the letters this man had written to Gradle, and it hadn’t struck him until now, that he had seen this writing on the portrait Annalee guarded so closely to her heart. Not only did Gradle have a connection with this man but so did Annalee.

  He looked over at Annalee, and what little he could see of her, he could still tell she faced forward down the wild overgrown drive.

  When he saw the shack, the hair on his arms rose. Junk scattered the yard with both chaos and order. The windows were boarded, and the only sign something wild didn’t live inside were the baskets of coral geraniums hanging from the porch.

  He put the Chrysler in park and killed the engine.

  “Gradle!” he yelled, as he ran toward the shack.

  He raced up the porch steps and ran into a barricade of barbed wire. “Gradle!” he yelled again. All he heard in response was the squeak of a Coke can whirligig starting up in the breeze.

  He tugged at the barbed wire and thought he heard Gradle whimper. He put her gold-cross earring in his pants pocket and gripped the barbed wire with both hands. He yanked and thrashed and squeezed his way through the barricade. With his bloody hand, he turned the doorknob, but it wouldn’t come fr
ee of its seal. Locks bolted the door shut from the outside like a set of metal teeth. He pulled and pushed against the door, but it would not give. His eyes searched the junked-up porch for an object to help bust open a window and found the handle of an axe sticking out of a box filled with railroad ties and rusted circular saws. He sliced into the first lock, jolted by the hit of steel on steel. He moved to a boarded up window and hacked away at it, gouging into the wooden flesh. He tore away the boards, busted out the glass, and climbed through.

  Inside it was dark. The clutter and chaos confused him. He felt dizzy, as if he wasn’t in this world. He didn’t know which way to go, which aisle of junk to take, until he heard her whimpering again.

  He stumbled toward the sound and found her chained to a bed, her wrists and ankles raw and bleeding.

  “Grandpa.” Tears coated her face like wet glass, and the blue in her eyes shook with fright.

  The shack’s door flew open. A sword of sunlight blinded Leonard. He raised his hands over his eyes, and when he lowered them, they revealed a tall silhouette of a man standing in the doorway with a cowboy hat on his head.

  “Freeze and put your hands up, mister,” the man said. He leaped forward, bowed his legs into a straddle, and drew a pistol from his holster.

  Leonard turned back and looked at Gradle and the chains that held her captive. His stomach grew sick, and his vision darkened into a screen of bursting black dots.

  “Are your ears broke?” the man said, pointing the gun at Leonard. His gold rings rattled against the pistol’s handle. “I said freeze and put your hands up, mister!”

  Leonard shook the dizziness and sweat from his head. He grounded his feet and choked the axe.