Full Throttle

by Joe Hill

  “BIG BUNCHES OF GRASS,” the girl yodeled, “SPROUTED OUT OF HIS ASS!”

  Becky sobbed again, took a third staggering step, almost to second base now, the tall grass not far away, and then another bolt of pain ran her through, and she dropped to her knees.

  “AND HIS BALLS GREW ALL SHAGGY WITH WEEDS!” the girl yelled, voice quivering with laughter.

  Becky gripped the sagging, empty waterskin of her stomach and shut her eyes and lowered her head and waited for relief, and when she felt the tiniest bit better, she opened her eyes

  ↓ ↑

  and Cal was there, in the ashy light of dawn, looking down at her. His own eyes were sharp and avid.

  “Don’t try to move,” he said. “Not for a while. Just rest. I’m here.”

  He was naked from the waist up, kneeling beside her. His scrawny chest was very pale in the dove-colored half-light. His face was sunburned—badly, a blister right on the end of his nose—but aside from that he looked rested and well. No, more than that: He looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  “The baby,” she tried to say, but nothing would come out, just a scraping click, the sound of someone trying to pick a rusty lock with rusty tools.

  “Are you thirsty? Bet you are. Here. Take this. Put it in your mouth.” He pushed a soaked, cold twist of his T-shirt into her mouth. He had saturated it with water and rolled it up into a rope.

  She sucked at it desperately, an infant hungrily nursing.

  “No,” he said, “no more. You’ll make yourself sick.” Taking the wet cotton rope away from her, leaving her gasping like a fish in a pail.

  “Baby,” she whispered.

  Cal grinned at her—his best, zaniest grin. “Isn’t she great? I’ve got her. She’s perfect. Out of the oven and baked just right!”

  He reached to the side and lifted up a bundle wrapped in someone else’s T-shirt. She saw a little snub of bluish nose protruding from the shroud. No, not a shroud. Shrouds were for dead bodies. It was swaddling. She had delivered a child here, out in the high grass, and hadn’t even needed the shelter of a manger.

  Cal, as always, spoke as if he had a direct line to her private thoughts. “Aren’t you the little Mother Mary? Wonder when the wise men will show up! Wonder what gifts they’ll have for us!”

  A freckled, sunburned boy, his eyes set a little far apart, appeared behind Cal. He was bare-chested, too. It was probably his shirt wound around the baby. He bent over, hands on his knees, to look at her swaddled infant.

  “Isn’t she wonderful?” Cal asked, showing the boy.

  “Scrumptious,” the boy said.

  Becky closed her eyes.

  ⟶ ⟵

  She drove in the dusk, the window down, the breeze fanning her hair back from her face. The tall grass bordered both sides of the road, stretched ahead of her as far as she could see. She would be driving through it the rest of her life.

  “‘A girl once hid in tall grass,’” she sang to herself. “‘And ambushed any boy who walked past.’”

  The grass rustled and scratched at the sky.

  ⟵ ⟵

  She opened her eyes for a few moments, later in the morning.

  Her brother was holding a doll’s leg in one hand, filthy from the mud. He stared at her with a bright, stupid fascination while he chewed on it. It was a lifelike thing, chubby and plump-looking, but a little small and also a funny pale blue color, like almost-frozen milk. Cal, you can’t eat plastic, she thought of saying, but it was just too much work.

  The little boy sat behind him, turned in profile, licking something off his palms. Strawberry jelly, it looked like.

  There was a sharp smell in the air, an odor like a freshly opened tin of fish. It made her stomach rumble. But she was too weak to sit up, too weak to say anything, and when she lowered her head against the ground and shut her eyes, she sank straight back into sleep.

  ⟵ ⟵ ⟵

  This time there were no dreams.

  ⟵ ⟵ ⟵ ⟵

  Somewhere a dog barked: roop-roop. A hammer began to fall, one ringing whack after another, calling Becky back to consciousness.

  Her lips were dry and cracked, and she was thirsty once more. Thirsty and hungry. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach a few dozen times.

  “Cal,” she whispered. “Cal.”

  “You need to eat,” he said, and put a string of something cold and salty in her mouth. His fingers had blood on them.

  If she’d been anywhere near in her right mind she might’ve gagged. But it tasted good, a salty-sweet strand of something, with the fatty texture of a sardine. It even smelled a little like a sardine. She sucked at it much as she had sucked at the wet rope of Cal’s shirt.

  Cal hiccupped as she sucked the strand of whatever it was into her mouth, sucked it in like spaghetti and swallowed. It had a bad aftertaste, bitter-sour, but even that was sort of nice. Like the food equivalent of the taste you got after drinking a margarita and licking some of the salt off the rim of your glass. Cal’s hiccup sounded almost like a sob of laughter.

  “Give her another piece,” said the little boy, leaning over Cal’s shoulder.

  Cal gave her another piece. “Yum-yum. Get that li’l baby right down.”

  She swallowed and shut her eyes again.

  ⟵ ⟵ ⟵ ⟵ ⟶

  When she next found herself awake, she was over Cal’s shoulder and she was moving. Her head bobbed, and her stomach heaved with each step.

  She whispered, “Did we eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did we eat?”

  “Something scrumptious.”

  “Cal, what did we eat?”

  He didn’t answer, just pushed aside grass spattered with maroon droplets and walked into a clearing. In the center was a huge black rock. Standing beside it was a little kid.

  There you are, she thought. I chased you all over the neighborhood.

  Only that hadn’t been a rock. You couldn’t chase a rock. It had been a girl.

  A girl. My girl. My responsi—

  “WHAT DID WE EAT?” She began to pound him, but her fists were weak, weak. “OH, GOD! OH, MY JESUS!”

  He set her down and looked at her first with surprise and then amusement. “What do you think we ate?” He looked at the boy, who was grinning and shaking his head, the way you do when someone’s just pulled a really hilarious boner. “Beck . . . honey . . . we just ate some of the grass. Grass and seeds and so on. Cows do it all the time.”

  “‘There was an old farmer from Leeds,’” the boy sang, and put his hands to his mouth to stifle his giggles. His fingers were red.

  “I don’t believe you,” Becky said, but her voice sounded faint. She was looking at the rock. It was incised all over with little dancing figures. And yes, in this early light they did seem to dance. To be moving around in rising spirals, like the stripes on a barber pole.

  “Really, Beck. The baby is . . . is great. Safe. Touch the rock and you’ll see. You’ll understand. Touch the rock and you’ll be—”

  He looked at the boy.

  “Redeemed!” Tobin shouted, and they laughed together.

  Ike and Mike, Becky thought. They laugh alike.

  She walked toward it . . . put her hand out . . . then drew back. What she had eaten hadn’t tasted like grass. It had tasted like sardines. Like the final sweet-salty-bitter swallow of a margarita. And like . . .

  Like me. Like licking sweat from my own armpit. Or . . . or . . .

  She began to shriek. She tried to turn away, but Cal had her by one flailing arm and Tobin by the other. She should have been able to break free from the child at least, but she was still weak. And the rock. It was pulling at her, too.

  “Touch it,” Cal whispered. “You’ll stop being sad. You’ll see the baby is all right. Little Justine. She’s better than all right. She’s elemental. Becky—she flows.”

  “Yeah,” Tobin said. “Touch the rock. You’ll see. You won’t be lost out here anymore. You’ll understand t
he grass then. You’ll be part of it. Like Justine is part of it.”

  They escorted her to the rock. It hummed busily. Happily. From inside there came the most wondrous glow. On the outside, tiny stick-men and stick-women danced with their stick-hands held high. There was music. She thought, All flesh is grass.

  Becky DeMuth hugged the rock.

  ⟶ ⟶ ⟶ ⟶ ⟶

  There were seven of them in an old RV held together by spit, baling wire, and—perhaps—the resin of all the dope that had been smoked inside its rusty walls. Printed on one side, amid a riot of red and orange psychedelia, was the word FURTHUR, in honor of the 1939 International Harvester school bus in which Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters had visited Woodstock during the summer of 1969. Back then all but the two oldest of these latter-day hippies had yet to be born.

  Just lately the twenty-first-century Pranksters had been in Cawker City, paying homage to the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine. Since leaving they had busted mega-amounts of dope, and all of them were hungry.

  It was Twista, the youngest of them, who spotted the Black Rock of the Redeemer, with its soaring white steeple and oh-so-convenient parking lot. “Church picnic!” he shouted from his seat beside Pa Cool, who was driving. Twista bounced up and down, the buckles on his bib overalls jingling. “Church picnic! Church picnic!”

  The others took it up. Pa looked at Ma in the rearview. When she shrugged and nodded, he pulled Furthur into the lot and parked beside a dusty Mazda with New Hampshire license plates.

  The Pranksters (all wearing Ball of Twine souvenir T-shirts and all smelling of superbud) piled out. Pa and Ma, as the eldest, were the captain and first mate of the good ship Furthur, and the other five—MaryKat, Jeepster, Eleanor Rigby, Frankie the Wiz, and Twista—were perfectly willing to follow orders, pulling out the barbecue, the cooler of meat, and—of course—the beer. Jeepster and the Wiz were just setting up the grill when they heard the first faint voice.

  “Help! Help! Somebody help me!”

  “That sounds like a woman,” Eleanor said.

  “Help! Somebody please! I’m lost!”

  “That’s not a woman,” Twista said. “That’s a little kid.”

  “Far out,” MaryKat said. She was cataclysmically stoned, and it was all she could think to say.

  Pa looked at Ma. Ma looked at Pa. They were pushing sixty now and had been together a long time—long enough to have couples’ telepathy.

  “Kid wandered into the grass,” Ma Cool said.

  “Mom heard him yelling and went after him,” Pa Cool said.

  “Maybe too short to see their way back to the road,” Ma said. “And now—”

  “—they’re both lost,” Pa finished.

  “Jeez, that sucks,” Jeepster said. “I got lost once. It was in a mall.”

  “Far out,” MaryKat said.

  “Help! Anybody!” That was the woman.

  “Let’s go get them,” Pa said. “We’ll bring ’em out and feed ’em up.”

  “Good idea,” the Wiz said. “Human kindness, man. Human fuckin’ kindness.”

  Ma Cool hadn’t owned a watch in years but was good at telling time by the sun. She squinted at it now, measuring the distance between the reddening ball and the field of grass, which seemed to stretch to the horizon. I bet all of Kansas looked that way before the people came and spoiled it all, she thought.

  “It is a good idea,” she said. “It’s going on for five-thirty, and I bet they’re really hungry. Who’s going to stay and set up the barbecue?”

  There were no volunteers. Everyone had the munchies, but none of them wanted to miss the mercy mission. In the end, all of them trooped across Route 73 and entered into the tall grass.

  FURTHUR. ⟶ ⟶ ⟶ ⟶

  You Are Released

  GREGG HOLDER IN BUSINESS

  Holder is on his third scotch and playing it cool about the famous woman sitting next to him when all the TVs in the cabin go black and a message in white block text appears on the screens. AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS IN PROGRESS.

  Static hisses from the public-address system. The pilot has a young voice, the voice of an uncertain teenager addressing a crowd at a funeral.

  “Folks, this is Captain Waters. I’ve had a message from our team on the ground, and after thinking it over, it seems proper to share it with you. There’s been an incident at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, and—”

  The PA cuts out. There is a long, suspenseful silence.

  “—I am told,” Waters continues abruptly, “that U.S. Strategic Command is no longer in contact with our forces there or with the regional governor’s office. There are reports from offshore that . . . that there was a flash. Some kind of flash.”

  Holder unconsciously presses himself back into his seat, as if in response to a jolt of turbulence. What the hell does that mean, “there was a flash”? Flash of what? So many things can flash in this world. A girl can flash a bit of leg. A high roller can flash his money. Lightning flashes. Your whole life can flash before your eyes. Can Guam flash? An entire island?

  “Just say if they were nuked, please,” murmurs the famous woman on his left in that well-bred, moneyed, honeyed voice of hers.

  Captain Waters continues, “I’m sorry I don’t know more, and that what I do know is so . . .” His voice trails off again.

  “Appalling?” the famous woman suggests. “Disheartening? Dismaying? Shattering?”

  “Worrisome,” Waters finishes.

  “Fine,” the famous woman says, with a certain dissatisfaction.

  “That’s all I know right now,” Waters says. “We’ll share more information with you as it comes in. At this time we’re cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet, and we’re about halfway through your flight. We should arrive in Boston a little ahead of schedule.”

  There’s a scraping sound and a sharp click, and the monitors start playing films again. About half the people in business class are watching the same superhero movie, Captain America throwing his shield like a steel-edged Frisbee, cutting down grotesques that look like they just crawled out from under the bed.

  A black girl of about nine or ten sits across the aisle from Holder. She looks at her mother and says, in a voice that carries, “Where is Guam, precisely?” Her use of the word “precisely” tickles Holder—it’s so teacherly and unchildlike.

  The girl’s mother says, “I don’t know, sweetie. I think it’s near Hawaii.” She isn’t looking at her daughter. She’s glancing this way and that with a bewildered expression, as if reading an invisible text for instructions. How to discuss a nuclear exchange with your child.

  “It’s closer to Taiwan,” Holder says, leaning across the aisle to address the child.

  “Just south of Korea,” adds the famous woman.

  “I wonder how many people live there,” Holder says.

  The celebrity arches an eyebrow. “You mean as of this moment? Based on the report we just heard, I should think very few.”

  ARNOLD FIDELMAN IN COACH

  The violinist Fidelman has an idea the very pretty, very sick-looking teenage girl sitting next to him is Korean. Every time she slips her headphones off—to speak to a flight attendant or to listen to the recent announcement—he’s heard what sounds like K-pop coming from her Samsung. Fidelman himself was in love with a Korean for several years, a man ten years his junior, who loved comic books and played a brilliant if brittle viol, and who killed himself by stepping in front of a Red Line train. His name was So as in “so it goes” or “so there we are” or “little Miss So-and-So” or “so what do I do now?” So’s breath was sweet, like almond milk, and his eyes were shy, and it embarrassed him to be happy. Fidelman always thought So was happy, right up to the day he leaped like a ballet dancer into the path of a fifty-two-ton engine.

  Fidelman wants to offer the girl comfort and at the same time doesn’t want to intrude on her anxiety. He mentally wrestles with what to say, if anything, and finally nudges her gently. When she pops out her earbuds, he says,
“Do you need something to drink? I’ve got half a can of Coke that I haven’t touched. It isn’t germy—I’ve been drinking from the glass.”

  She shows him a small, frightened smile. “Thank you. My insides are all knotted up.”

  She takes the can and has a swallow.

  “If your stomach is upset, the fizz will help,” he says. “I’ve always said that on my deathbed the last thing I want to taste before I leave this world is a cold Coca-Cola.” Fidelman has said this exact thing to others, many times before, but as soon as it’s out of his mouth, he wishes he could have it back. Under the circumstances it strikes him as a rather infelicitous sentiment.

  “I’ve got family there,” she says.

  “In Guam?”

  “In Korea,” she says, and shows him the nervous smile again. The pilot never said anything about Korea in his announcement, but anyone who’s watched CNN in the last three weeks knows that’s what this is about.

  “Which Korea?” says the big man on the other side of the aisle. “The good one or the bad one?”

  The big man wears an offensively red turtleneck that brings out the color in his honeydew melon of a face. He’s so large he overspills his seat. The woman sitting next to him—a small, black-haired lady with the high-strung intensity of an overbred greyhound—has been crowded close to the window. There’s an enamel American flag pin in the lapel of his suit coat. Fidelman already knows they could never be friends.

  The girl gives the big man a startled glance and smooths her dress over her thighs. “South Korea,” she says, declining to play his game of good versus bad. “My brother just got married in Jeju. I’m on my way back to school.”

  “Where’s school?” Fidelman asks.

  “MIT.”

  “I’m surprised you could get in,” says the big man. “They’ve got to draft a certain number of unqualified inner-city kids to meet their quota. That means a lot less space for people like you.”

  “People like what?” Fidelman asks, enunciating slowly and deliberately. People. Like. What? Nearly fifty years of being gay has taught Fidelman that it is a mistake to let certain statements pass unchallenged.