by Blake Butler
The mother went to the freezer and pulled it open and saw the son. The son looked tired, the same way everyone else she’d seen looked tired. Everyone everywhere at every moment as tired as they could be. The mother asked the son what he was doing. Her voice came out much higher than it did most days. The son said something wadded. The son had something in his mouth. The mother asked him to repeat. It came out more off. The son was trying to talk in the same voice as the voice that had called him on his cell phone, but the mother couldn’t know that. The son had abrasions grown in beneath his hair that the mother would never find.
The mother did see, though, how the son now had long brown streaks worked under his eyes—so brown they looked like makeup. She rubbed one with her thumb and made a smudge. The son looked like a tiny warrior, or a linebacker. The son’s eyes were whirling, as had the gulls.
Hey, the son said, staring at her. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.
The mother clasped her grass-green hands.
THE MOST FREQUENTLY PLAYED SONG ON THE SON’S COMPUTER BEFORE THE SON ERASED THE CONTENTS OF THE HARD DRIVE AND BURNED IT AND BURIED THE COMPUTER IN THE WOODS
1. _________ (197136 plays). This song’s title appeared in the son’s iTunes browser as a trail of mangled digits or a blur. The son could not view the details of the track. When the son tried to click the track to play it, iTunes would crash and often so would the computer. He did not know how the song had gotten onto his machine. Sometimes the son was able to mouseover the title when rolling in from certain angles and the album art would appear in the bottom corner of the iTunes browser. The album’s artwork appeared to be the face of a man obscured by several kinds of light, though the son could never see the image long enough to be certain of the features, or the flesh. The song’s play count rose week after week, despite the son never hearing, and continued when the son turned the computer asleep or off. In this way this song covered the son’s whole life, up to a point. Sometimes unplugged, the computer’s encasement would discolor or spin or flake or walk. The son could not bring himself to delete this song.
INCOMING
The next time the father went to get the mail he found the whole box fat with caterpillars. They spilled out as he pulled the lid down. They were curled and brightly hued, some in a webbing. Some had hair as long as half a foot and fat as someone’s finger. Some wore yellow and some wore orange, some wore gold or green and black or silver, messed in spindles, mounds. Some were a color the father could not think of the name of, though somehow it reminded him of a stretch of land for sale somewhere in Nebraska. The father had never been to Nebraska. The critters fell and wiggled on the concrete. There were hundreds of them stuffed inside the mailbox. There was no room for the mail.
The father went to the garage and got a cup and bucket and went back and used the cup to scoop the caterpillars out. He didn’t want to touch them with his fingers—he didn’t like that. Crawling. He didn’t want to kill them either. The father had heard stories of men becoming things in other lives—how when you are reborn you could come as any other. You could come back as a wall. The father imagined his father there in the mailbox now, spackled, wet with wriggling, and his father’s father, and father’s father’s father, on from there. The father imagined all the prior men in his dead family there in the mailbox waiting for him, destined. This was some kind of delivery.
In careful scoops the father took the caterpillars from the mailbox and when he’d filled the bucket up he carried them away. He went off behind the house and through the forest following a wire until he got to some small exact place, in the mud. He dumped the bucket in a pile of colored moss or mold that’d grown up in this location, groggy bloom. The caterpillars (fathers) squirmed and squirted. Many slunk or screamed along the ground. Some submerged headfirst down into the dirt, building tunnels, which the father had never seen a caterpillar do, down and down into the earth. Then silence.
The father went back to the mailbox and filled the bucket up again. He hadn’t thought there’d be enough caterpillars to fill the bucket twice. But the caterpillars filled the second bucket and a third and fourth and once again. He carried each load to the same place, the ground there darkening with every dump, rising up, a structure. By the time the father had carried twelve loads he was very tired and soaked with wetting and not so much interested in preserving the caterpillars anymore. He could hardly blink or breathe. He stopped and stood for some long second staring straight up into the long column of air carried above him, into the barely yellow sky, on pause—his spine inside him, hiding—his head’s blood inside out and upside down.
If the father ever played a Hammond organ, he would find he was naturally a master. Elevator music. Careful evenings. Tone wheels in his heart and in his hands.
Moving again from the mailbox, the father went and uncoiled the garden hose from its spindle set upon the house, its source mouth fed by pipes buried underneath the dirt. The father dragged the hose around the house. With the far end of the tangle he sprayed out the inside of the mailbox, flooding pressure, until it was clean and clear enough to kiss. On the ground below the mailbox the crap from all the gashing caterpillars pillowed and piled over. Their minor bodies gave off what looked like human blood, a little lake and many rivers. The warm ground seemed to sauté the runoff.
Several thousand gallons later—in which a whole day passed, bringing the father full-scale back to the exact second of the day as the second in the day before when he’d stopped realizing where he was—the father stood there for some time in waning sunlight and admired what he’d done. His hands had a slow itch. He craved chili. He scratched his hands together, knuckles in friction, and then he went inside and got online. On a credit card he’d never used before, christening, he ordered ten new magazines that would be delivered to his gorgeous, sparkling, brilliant, bending mailbox once a month.
The magazines were:
1. Penthouse
2. Enormous Women
3. Better Homes & Gardens
4. The Father Life: The Men’s Magazine for Dads
5. [THIS MAGAZINE DOES NOT HAVE A NAME]
6. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
7. Animal Husbandry Enthusiast
8. Teen People
9. TV Guide
10. Guide to TV Guide
ENCOMBING
And yet the next morning, when the father came to the mailbox, he found it once again unclean. A new crop of caterpillars had convened around the post and swathed the unit with a fine tent of thready sheeting. The material was half-translucent so that through and around it the father could see the mass of caterpillars moving in arteries, some still gushing out the thread. The stunted light from overhead caused the bulb to sort of glow around the edges, melting the nest in places, dripping to the ground.
Near the center of the mass the texture became so thick that the father could no longer see the mailbox, nor could he really see the wooden stand that’d held its husk up, though he knew it had to still be in there, didn’t it now, did it not? In this massive clot condition the mailman would not have anywhere to stick the mail, the father knew, not unless it could be wedged up in the larval sheeting, which made even the father’s stomach lurch. The father would not receive any of his new magazines, he realized—he’d not be spending any of the several coming evenings locked in one of the house’s several bathrooms or large closets, studying the glossy pages of young famous men and women and whatever other things the magazines tried to sell—he would not receive that pleasure. He would get older every day.
In the street the father spun around all of a sudden, to recall how the air felt.
The father noticed then how coming up from the box the caterpillars had stretched their cocooning across the yard, a thousand tiny tightroped strings extended off the enmeshed mailbox to the dying tree that masked the front yard—which the father had asked be removed before the house was bought but then forgot—the whole gnarled trunk mostly exposed except for a couple bigger br
anches near the middle where the father had planned to hang a tire swing or something like it for his wife and child to enjoy, though he’d still not had time for that thing either, his days stuffed thick with walking, needing, heat. From the tree the caterpillars had begun to shoot across and comb over the house, their whorls of creamy thread just barely glinting in the waning slivered curtain of old light, as if covert, the thorax drizzle sloshed in long thin strands down through the branches across the long field of air onto the roof, encombing, jeweled with larvae—further fathers—spooling out around the house, reflecting light at certain angles hidden, a warbling quilt, a den.
WHAT WAS BENEATH THE FATHER
The father stood on the front lawn. Above the sun burped up and down. The father did not know he was not moving. Beneath the father there was grass. Beneath the grass there was root and rock and mud. In the mud were several sorts of other minor organisms, convened and still convening. In the mud there was cells from skin that’d been on humans and there was water that had come down through the air. There were things that’d died and fallen off of trees and floated down and decomposed and sunk into the soil to become part of the soil or to become the soil itself—a single curving surface on which any flesh must walk or lay. Further layers under, the dirt turned into rock, slathered in being, crushed with pressure, juiced in spots with gush or tunnel. Certain tunnels went very deep. Certain tunnels ended in doors that led to rooms.
13-DREAM DREAM SEQUENCE
That night the father slept through thirteen dreams. In the first dream he was a priest. In a second dream he was in Judas Priest. In a third dream he betrayed himself. In a fourth dream he ate so much spaghetti he exploded. In a fifth dream he was a beach towel in an unlit closet. In a sixth dream he was a woman who came to the closet and threw up all the spaghetti into the beach towel. In a seventh dream he was all the beaches and all the sand. In an eighth dream he had a cubicle beneath a certain beach where gorgeous women came and forced him to have sex. In a ninth dream he got folded in a remaindered library book and sold on eBay to a woman who binge-ate twice a week. In a tenth dream the father became a series of explosions in a video game his son was playing. In an eleventh dream the father felt very tired, though in this world tired meant obese, though obese meant made of light. In a twelfth dream the father was asleep and could not be woken no matter how long they screamed or what weapons were used. In a thirteenth dream the father woke and found himself above himself and inside his mouth he saw himself and inside that self’s mouth he saw himself and inside that self’s mouth he saw a window, and through the window the father saw another window, and through the window the father saw mountains, fountains, fortunes, beaches, gazebos, grease, disease, and the father found that he was laughing and the father crawled inside himself and turned around.
SEQUEL
The son burned through the channels. The son saw ads for ground beef and cow milk and respirators. He saw men throw balls at one another. He could not find the woman in the hall. He’d forgotten even what she looked like—her shape—though she was always in his mind. In his bedroom in the mirror or in the air above his bed sometimes he felt he could feel her just beside him. He would move around his bedroom with his eyes closed, feeling for her with hands. She was there.
In absence of the hall film, the son became distracted with another. A movie made many years before the son was born. The son had seen this one before—when he was sick a certain channel had played it back-to-back for near a week—every time it seemed most new. The son couldn’t tell what the film was about. There was a family living in a house. There was a father, a mother, and a son. The family all looked tired. Nothing ever really happened. The father drove places and got lost and walked around the house. The mother mostly cleaned and worried. The son would stand and sit and stand. Other scenes showed the family together, going places, though these were rendered in black-and-white, and seemed of a different grade of film from all the others. Yes, this film was different than the other times the son had seen it.
This time there was something wrong inside the picture. The heads of the main actors and actresses were blurred, though they had not been so the other times the son watched the film, he thought. Also, in this version, the family all kept falling down. In scenes where they’d be walking, doing things the son remembered having seen them do in scenes before, suddenly their legs would fail and they would go down, or otherwise the house around them lurched. The characters did not make reference to this happening—they went on with the scene around the blips. Sometimes the camera fell as well. Sometimes there’d be whole rooms of people falling—all of their heads blurred—actors. A scene would take place in a mall, then suddenly all the people walking and shopping and eating fast food would just hit the ground, and then they’d get right back up and keep doing what they were doing. Sometimes the people could briefly be heard talking loud, but in a language that didn’t make sense. The sky over the people would turn purple or turn reflective or begin raining ants or caterpillars out of large holes. No matter what happened no one in the movie acted any different. The son knew the film had not gone this way before. It had not lasted so many hours. The film went on and on.
The son had almost fallen asleep watching the movie before he recognized himself—saw himself right there in the movie, in a window in the background of the screen. His face, unlike the others, was not blurred. In the window the son looked frightened. The son’s hair was flattened, of a bright white. The son could not tell what the window was a part of—the shot was too close up. Several other characters with the blurred faces blocked long sections of the shot. The son felt he recognized certain bodies, the black holes of blurred mouths moving on pale heads.
In the window the son was saying something. The son couldn’t hear him through the glass and other conversation, though he could tell by the son’s lips that the son was repeating the same thing over and over. The son’s lips were cracked and kind of swollen, the same lips the son used each day to eat and drink and speak and sometimes kiss another’s skin. Then the camera moved and the son was no longer in the picture and the blurry heads inside the film went on—scenes and scenes there never-ending, and in some scenes other scenes there played in the background on little screens—and in the background of those scenes, screens too—and in those and those and those, so on.
Upstairs in the son’s closet, the sealed black package rolled over on its side.
SPECIAL FRIEND
The son and the new girl quickly became special friends. They sat together in the lunchroom—no one else came near. That week the school stayed filled with screeching as the school tested the fire systems and the lights. The son could see other people talking but heard all siren. He could somewhat still hear the girl. The blinking shook his eyes. The girl paid for both their lunches. She carried both trays with one hand. The son was so hungry lately. After meals he chewed his fingernails and hair. The girl and the son had a lot in common. They both liked sleeping. They both liked knives. Some days in class the girl would stand up and put her gloved arms out and make a hum and spin around and the teachers never stopped her. Nobody ever said a word. The girl told the son there was something she had to tell him later. Sometimes the girl bought the son gifts. She gave the son a heavy book with empty pages. She gave the son a glass bead to sleep with. She gave the son lots of lengthy, pressured hugs. She said she didn’t want the son to give her anything because she liked giving so much more.
BODY DOUBLE
Sometimes at school the son would come into a classroom and find himself already seated in his assigned chair, his hair combed clean and neatly parted, a blue word sometimes plainly scrawled or stamped across his creaseless, spit-shined head.
VERSION
Sitting upstairs in the closet, where she’d hidden, the mother heard a knocking through the floor—sound that seemed at first to come from on the wood there in the closet, just behind her head. She could not move. She was so thick. The mother, sitting wobbling, felt the
knocking shift along the inseam of the house, all down around its back and belly to the downstairs, to the front door. There the knocking became pounding, became shouting, became bells—a chime the house had held inside it, somehow, since it had been built, a human sound. The low tone of the doorbell made the mother’s body moisten, the stink of grass around her head—the knocking pounding all throughout her, at her heartbeat, twinned together, double time—then, inside the rhythm, she could see again, and she could stand.
At the door, through the thick peephole, the sweating mother saw a man. Not the man she’d hoped to see there, he with such hands, but her husband, balding. Here, the father, at his own door: a lock to which he had the key. The mother breathed to see the father upright, glistening in outdoor light—she could not remember the last time she’d witnessed him outside the house since they moved in.
And yet this father was not the father, the mother saw then, looking longer, her brim shifting—no, not quite. This man clearly had aged less than the current father. His cheeks were tight and eyes were clean. He had another way about him. Kempt clothes, casual. A fine set of clean black driving gloves. The mother saw some kind of promise in his posture, days yet coming, the expectation of a life. For years all the males the mother looked at looked like the father—every single one—though that was in the years when he was thinner and she quicker and them strong.