Talk to Me

by T. C. Boyle

  In the morning, it was all good. Sam had crept out at first light and slipped into bed with them, and if he smelled the sex on them, the vaginal lubricants, the sperm drying on her skin, he didn’t seem to object – he snuggled in between them and went back to sleep, snoring softly and twitching his legs in the old familiar way. Then it was breakfast, fruit, porridge and eggs-over-easy for Sam and Aimee, black coffee and toast for him, after which they took Sam for a jaunt up on the mesa above the trailer court, and all that ape energy found its release in the kind of play that exhausted them all. By afternoon the temperature had risen to the high seventies and after lunch they sat outside in lawn chairs in back of the trailer, drinking gin and tonic, Sam’s favourite, and because no one was around, Aimee let Sam off his lead. Which wasn’t a problem – if he wandered too far, she called out to him and no matter what he was doing (and he was always doing something, digging, probing, beating a stick against the side of the trailer, chucking stones at phantoms), he came back without protest.

  The sun was warm on Guy’s face. The desert air washed over him, clean and astringent. He sipped his gin, watching Sam chase a lizard into the scree at the base of the mesa, and the moment felt right – he felt right for the first time since they’d broken up. ‘You know what’s incredible?’

  She’d been watching Sam too, but now she turned to him, her face softened with the pleasure of the moment. ‘What?’

  ‘How he listens to you – it’s a far cry from how it was back at the ranch when we had to guard the door every time somebody went in or out. Or when he got away and took hold of that woman and wouldn’t let go. Remember that? That was a nightmare, or a potential nightmare, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, but it wasn’t, because nothing happened.’

  ‘Thank God. But really, what’s your secret?’

  ‘It’s called love.’

  ‘Say that with a smile—’

  ‘And the fact that he’s growing up – and he’s not in a cage. And that he knows what a cage is, which makes him want to avoid it at all costs. I explained it to him. I did. And he understands.’

  They both looked up at a sudden sharp percussion, a boom followed by a lithic shatter and scrape, and then the boom again. Sam was dropping a boulder the size of a suitcase on the surface of a long, flat slab of rock, then picking it up and dropping it again.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Hunting, that’s all. Watch.’

  In the next moment, Sam flung the boulder aside, dug his hand under the slab and came up with the limp body of the lizard he’d been chasing. He held it up by the tail, his trophy, then bit it cleanly in two, stuffing the anterior section in his mouth before scrambling across the yard to offer the remainder first to Aimee (‘Oh, Sam, no’) and then him (‘Thanks, but I just ate – and didn’t I ever tell you I’m allergic to lizard?’). Sam held the thing aloft a moment, its rear legs still twitching reflexively, then put it in his mouth, ground his teeth and swallowed.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Sam,’ Aimee said. She shaded her eyes with one hand, rattled the ice in her drink. ‘At least not in front of me.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘He’s only doing what comes natural. And isn’t that the beauty of him – no hang-ups, no shame, just being in the moment, and if the moment tells you to bite a lizard in two right in front of the lady you love, well, why not?’

  ‘Still’ – and she was addressing Sam now – ‘it’s cruel. And unsanitary – DIRTY, Sam. Couldn’t you just catch them and let them go?’

  He was going to say something inane like ‘boys will be boys’, making a joke of it, because that was what it was, a joke, to expect an animal to appreciate the niceties of civilisation no matter the degree of cross-fostering you subjected him to, but then another lizard went scuttling across the yard and Sam shot off after it, so instead he said, ‘How about another drink?’

  Triangulating the empty glasses between his fingertips, he mounted the three steel steps to the trailer and pushed open the door. He was thinking he’d make this second round of drinks stiffer, by way of lowering her defences (he had a proposition to broach, after all) and at the same time mellowing out Sam, so they could have a little peace for wherever the discussion of that proposition was going to take them. The gin – a half-gallon of Gordon’s, and was she really drinking that much, or at least drinking enough to invest in half-gallons? – stood on the gouged Formica counter beside a wedge of lime and a butcher’s knife. Flies decorated the air. There were crusted pans on the two-burner stove, unwashed plates in the sink, a scatter of sponges, scrubbers, balled-up plastic bags and takeout food cartons everywhere. His head grazed the ceiling, which seemed to be made of laminated cardboard – or plastic. He tapped it. Plastic, definitely plastic. The walls were plastic too, fake wood designed to simulate panelling, and everything showed the effects of Sam, the kitchen counter gnawed along the edges, the walls scuffed, panels missing to display the mustard-coloured insulation beneath. This was her nest, hers and Sam’s. He felt like an intruder.

  She made a face when she tasted her drink. ‘It’s too strong,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s just the way you like it, or the way you used to like it.’ He settled back into the chair beside her.

  ‘You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you?’ She looked from him to Sam, who was making use of a broomstick to probe under the slab of rock for another lizard or whatever unlucky creature might be cowering beneath it.

  ‘I am,’ he said, and reached out to run a hand up her leg.

  ‘Good,’ she said, closing her hand over his and leaning into him for a kiss, which was nice, which was beautiful, and he gave himself over to it, the flicker of her tongue, the pressure of her lips, but in the same moment, he couldn’t help feeling that this was as good a time as any to make his pitch because he only had the weekend and as delicious as this was he still had a whole life to live. And for now at least she was in control of it.

  ‘I heard from Moncrief,’ he said.

  He watched her face change. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, pulling away from him. ‘Don’t even say it.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not like that – he doesn’t know where you are, and it wasn’t about you anyway. Or not exactly. It was Azazel. Remember him?’

  ‘Jesus, you gave me a scare – don’t do that, Guy. Please. But yes, of course I remember Azazel, how could I forget him? What, did he die?’

  ‘He hung himself.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He couldn’t take it any more, I guess.’

  ‘That’s not possible, it must be some mistake. He must have gotten tangled up or something…’

  Animals did not commit suicide, that was an axiom. Animals were driven by instinct to survive and reproduce, which, when you came down to it, was the sole purpose of life on this planet, no matter the species. They could suffer trauma and depression, refuse food, die a solitary death, but they couldn’t contemplate non-being, which was beyond the limits of their awareness. Yet Moncrief told him Azazel had planned the whole thing, secreting a length of rope one of the workers had negligently left in reach, then experimenting with knots till he fashioned a noose, looped it around his throat, tied the other end to the steel mesh at the top of the cage and lowered himself down until it tightened and tightened again.

  ‘Not according to Moncrief. Jack Serfis found the body – and he called Donald right away because he wasn’t about to go in that cage until it was 100 per cent certain Azazel wasn’t just playing possum, which in itself would have been a mental feat way beyond what we would have thought he was capable of, and when Donald got there, he wasn’t taking any chances either and darted the body before they entered the cage. Donald felt for a pulse, but there was none. And there was the rope – and the knots.’

  She looked to Sam then. He’d finished probing with the broomstick and was using it now as a weapon, jabbing it over and over again into the gap under the rock. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

>   He shrugged, reached for his drink. ‘I’m just telling you what he told me.’ What he wasn’t telling her, or not yet, was that the loss of his prime breeding male had made recovering Sam all the more critical to him, which was why he’d called, of course, hoping to extract information. The first thing he said, before he even mentioned Azazel, was Have you heard anything yet?

  ‘I still don’t believe it,’ she said.

  He didn’t answer. They sat there in silence, sipping their drinks, watching Sam as if they were watching a home movie. After a moment he said, ‘There was something else too…’

  Whether they ate that night he couldn’t remember. There was more drinking, but it wasn’t celebratory any more – it was defensive drinking, angry drinking. He’d barely got the words out – Iowa, a trailer there or an apartment – when she cut him off. ‘You never give up, do you?’ she said.

  ‘Well, no, of course not – I want to make this happen. For Sam, for us.’ He heard himself talking, forming the words he’d gone over in his head a dozen times already, but they sounded false somehow, as if he were not only trying to convince her, but convince himself too. ‘Believe me, I’ve thought it over till I can’t think any more – this is the best way out for everybody concerned, maybe the only way for Sam.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, and what about Dr Moncrief ? You think he’s just going to forget all about it? He hates me. He’ll never let me get within ten miles of that place—’

  ‘No, no, I’ll fix it up, it’ll be fine, you’ll see – the important thing for him is just to get Sam back. He wants to breed him when he’s of age, of course he does, and if I get the funding, which is like 99 per cent assured at this point, and we can restore some credibility to the field, that’s all to the better as far as he’s concerned. And you can’t go on living like this forever, can you?’

  She straightened up in the chair and lifted her glass as if toasting him. ‘You’re really too much. Don’t you get it? I told you no before and I’m telling you the same thing now – there’s no way Sam’s going back there. That man scares me.’

  ‘He ought to. What if he comes here? What are you going to do then?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘But what if, is what I’m saying?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  There were more drinks. Maybe there was dinner, there must have been, though he had no recollection of it. He kept pleading with her, but she was immovable, hateful, stupid, obstinate. At some point – they were in the kitchen, the windows dark, the bottle empty, both of them shouting and Sam drumming on the table in agitation – he shoved himself away from the counter and before he knew what he was doing, his hand flicked out and he slapped her, hard, just to shut her up, which was wrong, inexcusable, the end of everything, finis, and he knew it in that instant. That was when Sam slammed into him because Sam had made his choice a long time ago, and he’d chosen Aimee. In the aftermath, he found himself on the floor, the wind knocked out of him, bleeding from a cut over his left eye. He couldn’t catch his breath. Sam was screaming. Aimee was shouting, ‘No, Sam, no!’

  For a long moment, he lay there gasping for air, then he pushed himself up, stalked into the bedroom to snatch up his bag – forget the cut, forget the blood – and pushed through the front door and out into the night, cursing over his shoulder, cursing them both. He revved the engine, spun the wheels. And then he was out on the highway, heading south.

  He spent that night at a motel near the airport, and in the morning, before boarding his flight, he got a fistful of quarters from the change machine, went into the phone booth and called Moncrief.

  Moncrief answered on the first ring. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘It’s me, Guy.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I found her,’ he said. ‘I know where she is.’

  NO LEGS

  She slept late. He lay there in bed beside her, playing with her hair, but she said, ‘Sam, no,’ and so he got up and went into the kitchen to eat his CEREAL and sit on the couch and watch TV. There were figures there, in the TV, and they moved and tumbled and rose and fell till he got bored and lifted the TV and set it down on one end in the corner, which seemed to him a better arrangement. Then he got out his paints. She’d locked them in the cabinet under the sink, but the lock was nothing to him and a single jerk of his arm tore it off the door and the handle with it. Then he painted. On the TV, on the wall, on the floor, and whether she was going to like that or not didn’t factor in, though she’d scolded him last time and locked him in the bedroom till he started screaming and she let him out again, which taught him that this place was different, that here he could scream and get what he wanted right away. But what he wanted in the moment was her, so he went in and played with her hair again till she woke up and hugged him, and he signed, WHERE GUY, though he already knew, and she signed, GUY GONE, and then, with her mouth clamped tight, signed, FOR GOOD.

  The sun came in through one window of the trailer and it went away through another and that was a day. Then there was another day and another one after that, time without a clock. He was with her all day every day and at night when she took him in the CAR and went to work and brought him home again and they went to BED. He knew the word HAPPY, a good word, not as concrete or immediate maybe as PIZZA or COKE, but good, very good, and sometimes he signed it spontaneously and she signed it back to him, I’M HAPPY TOO. Guy was gone. The sun came in one window and went out another. She was with him and he was with her.

  And then one day a man was there in the trailer when he woke from his nap. He heard voices, her voice and a man’s voice, and his first thought was that Guy was back because nobody else had ever been in the trailer except Brenda, and Brenda’s voice was a high flutter of wings he could never mistake for anybody else’s. He came through the door expecting Guy, but this wasn’t Guy and that confused him and alarmed him till he felt the adrenal charge start to burn through him, and Aimee said, ‘No, Sam, it’s OK,’ in the voice she used to warn him off.

  ‘So here he is,’ the man said. ‘Sam himself. How about that?’

  He was tall, this man, his head as high as the ceiling, and he had no legs, or no legs anybody could see under the black screen that dropped from his shoulders to the floor, and now he bent at the waist, smiling till his teeth gleamed wet, and said, ‘Sam, it’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ she said. Her eyes communicated the same warning as her voice, which meant that this was an official occasion, an occasion to be responsive, to be CUTE. That was the keyword here, CUTE, he recognised that, and he knew exactly what to do – hold out his hand for a shake.

  The man took his hand in a soft, smooth, featureless grip, gave it a squeeze and dropped it.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, signing simultaneously, ‘this is Father Curran. He’s a friend. I like him very much. Can you tell him something? Can you tell him what you had for breakfast?’

  PANCAKES.

  ‘Right. Pancakes and what else?’

  SAUSAGES.

  She said the word aloud for the man, who wasn’t literate and didn’t understand the shapes he made with arms and fingers and hands.

  ‘Do you like sausages?’ the man asked, still bent at the waist, his eyebrows jumping like bugs. He was not a threat. He was tall, but he was weak, and where were his legs?

  YES.

  ‘And do you know where sausages come from?’

  The question surprised him. Sausage was meat and meat was inside everything that moved. The STORE, he said.

  She translated and the man laughed. She said, ‘He means before that, Sam, before the store?’

  THEY KILL PIGS, he said.

  She said the words aloud. The man laughed again. ‘He’s amazing,’ he said to her. ‘He really is. But tell me, Sam, who kills them, who kills the pigs?’

  The simplest sign, a single finger pointed right at him: YOU.

  ‘Me? I’ve never killed anything in my life.’

  But he just shook his head, shook his he
ad no, because that wasn’t the truth.

  Then it was a treat and then lunch and the man stayed with them, sat at the table and ate FRUIT SALAD and a SANDWICH, with TUNAFISH and BREAD smeared with WHITE PASTE out of a jar in the REFRIGERATOR. The man made faces at her and talked and talked and after a while he said, ‘Really, I don’t see why not. The only question is do we perform the ceremony here or can we bring him to church? It would be more meaningful in church, don’t you think?’

  A CHILD OF THE LIGHT

  She didn’t believe, but at the same time she did. Religion was superstition, was fear, but at least it provided answers, a cosmology, a reason why, which science didn’t, though it had our attention, satellites creeping across the night sky and electrodes pulling images out of our brains and textbooks to explain it all. Since Sam had come into her life, she hadn’t been inside a church, let alone to confession, and when Father Curran came up to the car and introduced himself in the parking lot at Dunkin’ Donuts one windswept afternoon a week after the blow-up with Guy, something clicked inside her. Sam was dozing in the back seat, glutted on carbs and sugar – he was mad for jelly donuts, amazed every time he bit into one and experienced the small miracle of jelly exploding on his palate – and she was bent over her notepad with a cup of coffee and her own donut, writing a letter to her mother, which she tried to do at least once a week to keep in touch, since calling her on the phone just ended in a fight every time because how could she have taken that Fidelity money when it was earmarked for her wedding and a starter home and why wasn’t she working on her degree and how did she expect to earn a living once the money ran out?