Arkansas

by John Brandon

  Bright laughed. “What are the cones for?” He held his palms up. “I’m with Frog. I’ve been ordered to intervene.”

  Bright told Kyle and Swin what they were carrying, where they’d left from and when, and that they had a map of each state in the glove box. He explained that they had little choice about their immediate futures. They would work under Bright, at a park. Frog had cut a new loop of clients and Bright would run these deals. He’d known Frog for years, he told them, since he’d stopped one of his trucks lost in the park.

  “Try not to look like deer in headlights,” he told Kyle and Swin. “Look angry or bored or something.”

  Bright, Kyle, and Swin left the flatbed and the gun with someone in Austin and headed north toward the park in Bright’s Bronco.

  “I about blew you away,” Kyle said.

  Bright raised an eyebrow. “You trying to convince someone?”

  “No, I hate guns. I’m saying it’s not smart to fuck around with somebody you don’t know.”

  Bright leaned around, looking at both boys in turn. “You’re Kyle Ribb and you never killed a man. You’re Swin Ruiz and you never killed a man. You’re dependable, you’re a project.”

  The air rushed thinly over Bright, who, guiding the Bronco up the highway with a thumb, felt a looming ease. He wouldn’t have to do park labor. He’d hardly have to take trips anymore. He had a couple of charges who would long for his wisdom, who would pretend to ignore him but later, alone, would parse his words and file them away, shuffle and study them in bed at night. They could have family dinners. They could drink whiskey.

  Bright’s foot slipped off the pedal, causing the Bronco to rock. He felt Kyle looking over at him, but kept his eyes on the road ahead. The bones. He hadn’t thought of the bones in a long time. The first time he left the house, Kyle and Swin would go poking around. They’d pick through the attic. But Bright couldn’t get rid of the bones; he couldn’t do that.

  On his way south all those years ago, he’d stopped in a bad part of Raleigh, looking for a man who wanted the remainder of his Manchester speed—$1,100 worth. Bright had the drugs in a thin vinegar bottle which he’d shoved down the back of his jeans, under his draping purple shirt. The bottle made striding difficult, and Bright tried to turn his discomfort into style, a down gait, the bottle wedging and wedging. He ambled the block twice. The address, along with the fish shop to which it corresponded, did not exist. Bright knew he should get right to his car and continue toward the sun. He pressed a long blink and then a black dude wearing sandals and a cutoff shirt was coming straight at him. The dude had slats shaved in his eyebrows, a slant for a mouth. Bright slipped his knife from his pocket and opened it behind his leg, never losing his hangdog look. The black dude’s strut ceased and the slant mouth was about to open. Dude could’ve been after a light, or Bright’s uptown shirt, or he knew about the speed. Bright wasn’t that concerned. The first stab fell into the chest too high and got caught up on the collarbone. The eyes went soft and there were those teeth. The knife went under the ribs three times. Bright cleaned the blade on the dude’s khakis. The windows of the buildings were empty. Bright wanted someone to scream at him so he would flee. He stepped away from the body without looking down at it, then hurried around a corner to his car and slid the vinegar bottle under the seat. He couldn’t help feeling he could do what he pleased. This neighborhood wasn’t curious about him and would spit him out in a good direction no matter what road he took. He pulled up to the body, which had detached from its sandals and looked like a black and pink joke. The bloodstains were fast around each wound, as if the guy had been near-dead already, decaying, wanting Bright to finish him off. Bright knew he should get lost, should put distance between himself and this brand-new corpse, but he wanted it. He couldn’t help himself. He felt greedy. He was not afraid of death, was not creeped by limp, flopping limbs or the exaggerated weight of a human body with no soul to lighten it. It took a full minute to get the body in the Dodge. Bright wasn’t worried; he owned this body. Moments ago it had had ideas and rhythm and now it was Bright’s possession.

  The next night, a ways north of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Bright had driven over acres of leaning grass to the edge of a swamp. He wasn’t sure what to do with the body in his trunk. He made camp and took a look around. There was nothing wrong with the swamp; he could’ve submerged the body in a few feet of stagnant water and rolled a log or two on top of it. He didn’t, though. He wasn’t ready to part with it. He built a fire and sat against a tree, his mind gone with hunger and fatigue and the strange feelings he had for his kill. He kept going over it in his mind, picking out new details from that Raleigh street. He carried more wood to the fire. More wood. Twigs and vines and whatever he could find. He didn’t stop until the flames almost reached the sagging branches above. He took a few slugs from a bottle of brandy in his backseat, then heaved the body from the trunk, stood it up against himself, danced it over to the fire, and flopped it on, face up, feet hung safely out on the dirt. He imagined that when the flames touched it, the body would awaken. It would jump off the fire and say, “Whoa, now. You one crazy motherfucker.” Its shirt went up in smoke while its pants burned onto its legs. The skin wasn’t skin after a while. Liquid bubbled out of its eyes. The hair made a different-colored flame, and Bright could smell it over the other smells. He kicked the feet into the bottom of the fire, bending the knees backward. Bright paced around and around the body, knowing he should be worried about the pungent clouds he was sending up through the brush. The feeling from Raleigh hadn’t dissipated. No one would come near. No one was interested in Bright. He sat down against his tree. He wouldn’t need more wood. Bright did not sleep, but he wasn’t sure he was awake, either. He was aware that the torso had fallen apart, had dripped onto the coals like pork fat and sizzled. He was aware that the smell had gotten terrible and then subsided, the fire shrinking and regaining its quaint campfire aroma. Later, when the flames had no lick left, when they were a pulsing blue lining along the floor of the fire pit, when Bright had grown stiff against his tree, he got up and examined what was left. There were bones of all sizes, some with gunk baked onto them, some brittle enough to break when Bright poked them. Bright fetched a flashlight and, when it didn’t help much, realized the sun was coming up. He had no idea why he’d burned the body, why he’d slept outside—not slept, really—rather than dumping the guy and finding a motel. And he still didn’t want to leave. What was wrong with him? When he’d taken the life out of that body, had he fallen in love with it? He went back to the fire. He couldn’t stop himself. He extracted the big bones, the cleanest ones—the thigh bones, upper-arm bones—and set them away from the fire to cool. He would wrap them up and stash them under his backseat, sandpaper them smooth whenever he got where he was going. The bones would make him formidable as he waded through these shady states at the bottom of the map. He stoked the coals and the other bones around and got more flame to spring up. He ripped the carpety lining from his trunk and burned it. Burned the sneakers he’d been wearing and his purple shirt.

  For years now the bones had sat in Bright’s attic, buried in a corner in a lamp box labeled x-MAS STUFF. Maybe the bones would be good to have around. Maybe these kids didn’t know who they were dealing with and would give Bright a lot of guff. Maybe he’d show them the box in the attic first thing when they reached the house. No. No, best to let it wait. Best if they stumbled onto the bones themselves.

  He turned to the boys and informed them they would have nine-to-five covers as park peons—maintaining the grounds, directing lost SUVs.

  “We get paid for that, too?” Swin asked.

  “The checks come to me and I burn them. Your names are Robert Suarez and Ed Mollar. I got you licenses and park IDs.”

  “We have to take out the garbage and shit?”

  “Sure you do.”

  “I don’t do well with a boss,” Kyle said.

  Swin leaned up between the seats. “I never had one.”


  “Everyone has a boss,” Bright said. “Frog probably has a boss.”

  “So you met Frog?”

  “I spoke to a man on the phone that I believe was Frog.”

  “What led you to believe that?” asked Swin.

  “He said ‘This is Frog’ before he started talking.”

  Bright’s house had once been a school for woodworking. It had a huge main area and three yellow, bare bedrooms. Swin and Kyle wouldn’t be staying with Bright. They would have matching trailers on the other side of the park. They would each keep two bags under their beds, one for their clothes and one for what-have-you. For their cars, which would be sold, each would get five thousand dollars.

  In the big room of Bright’s house was a white TV, a cabinet stocked with plastic bottles of bourbon, and scattered tables loaded with books about nature. Bright chose a bottle and fetched three short glasses. He filled one and handed it to Swin, who set it down on a book of essays about the boilerplate rhino.

  “I don’t really drink,” Swin said.

  “You don’t, huh? You’re a strange one, aren’t you, Swin? You fancy yourself a genius?”

  “Genius is a bit much. I could’ve been an intellectual, though.”

  “Intellectuals are white and they don’t work out.”

  “They jog,” said Swin.

  “When you first meet someone and he offers you a drink, you damn well drink it.”

  “Not trying to be a dick.”

  “I have a feeling that’s your line,” said Bright. “Mine is, ‘May you dream of offered tits.’ I say that once in a while.”

  Swin picked up his glass and brought it to his face. “Nope. I can’t.”

  Bright handed each of them a key, a map of the park, a handbook for state employees, and a pamphlet on national wildlife reserves. “You two go cuddle up with these. And may you dream of offered tits.”

  Kyle’s trailer reminded him of a bad motel room, with its crooked AC unit and fake wood paneling. He was comfortable in it. He felt as if the trailer had been built especially for him and had sat empty a number of years. Its low, bug-trap windows were perfect, as was its indoor/outdoor carpeting and musty odor. Kyle felt concealed, like the trailer was a cave that blended into a mountainside.

  Kyle wouldn’t have to drive to Little Rock because he owned no personal effects that couldn’t be replaced at a drugstore. In his wallet he carried two pictures of his mother, but he had refused to take any of her things with him when she’d died. And he’d never had a use for yearbooks or trophies—in fact, no use for school or sports.

  Kyle’s mother had raised him in a duplex. She’d been a receptionist on the social-funding floor of the county building. She kept her eyes and ears open and mastered the welfare systems to the tune of a half-dozen small checks each month. She’d always been there to see Kyle off and welcome him home. She made sure he always had sneakers to wear and meatloaf to eat. During Kyle’s adolescence, she did not pressure him to get good grades or hang around with his classmates. She loved porches and had one added to the duplex at considerable cost even though she didn’t own the place. She put up a swing and set out potted cacti.

  Kyle was seventeen when his mother was electrocuted in the basement of the duplex and put into a coma. She’d been attempting to put floodlights on the old lady’s side of the house, throwing breaker after breaker in the rusty, cobwebbed, gunked-up fuse box, trying to get power to the back corner of the building. At least this was the old lady’s best account of it. She’d found Kyle’s mother lying on the basement floor, her legs in a damp spot. The old lady’s power had been out for an hour before she remembered that Kyle’s mother was doing something electrical that day. Kyle got no phone call at school, just the old lady waiting on his porch, saying she’d told his mother not to fiddle with that box, telling him how to get to the hospital, telling him his mother would be okay in a couple days. Kyle called a cab. He took $50 from his mother’s emergency stash. He put a stack of her photography books in a satchel. He stood in the basement a few minutes, staring at the spot where she’d fallen. There was nothing else to look at—a bare bulb, a washer and dryer, a tiny window.

  Kyle’s mother had good insurance and was set up in a cozy room with cable television. Kyle often left her bedside to take meandering walks through the downtrodden streets surrounding the hospital. These neighborhoods were not dangerous. These men—tethered to crumbling stoops, sharing cigarettes until they couldn’t be pinched—had given up to the point where they wouldn’t get off their asses and steal. Kyle despised them, and fought back urges to tell them so. His mother held on for five weeks. Besides Kyle there were three witnesses to her burial, two secretaries from the social funding office and a backhoe operator.

  Rhoda, one of the secretaries, was going to take Kyle in until he could find a job and a place. She drove him to the cemetery. She enjoyed the drama, enjoyed being put upon. She had on a new pantsuit and a sparkly chain hung from her glasses. One thing she couldn’t tolerate, she liked to say, was closed-mindedness. Rhoda often got irate about little things, like the way people chose their fruit or the way they waved people on in traffic. She lived in a good part of Lofton, in a villa on a man-made canal. Her villa was decorated with a safari theme. Kyle knew he wouldn’t stay with her long. He’d thought of everything that would be left in the duplex when he skipped town—his mother’s clothes and shoes and jewelry and makeup. Books. Soup and crackers and peanut butter. Vases and cookie jars. Pictures. Plants. Christmas ornaments.

  Kyle remembered the funeral, if he’d call it that, in flashes. He didn’t cry. His head felt like it weighed fifty pounds and was going to snap off of his neck. The backhoe operator was flirting with Kate, the other secretary, who held a container of olives in case anybody got hungry. Kate kept humming, kept smirking at the backhoe operator. Rhoda had her manly hand on the back of Kyle’s neck, making his head even heavier. She kept saying his name to no one in particular. Kyle was speechless. Fast clouds rushed shadows over him. The backhoe operator had a huge gut. He said when you worked overtime it didn’t build your check up; it cut it. He said he was allergic to olives and gum.

  The chores at the park were not usually taxing, but they were very boring. Kyle and Swin took turns sitting in the booth, wearing brown shirts with embroidered badges, collecting day-use fees of three dollars per car and handing out maps and pamphlets. The garbage cans on the grounds would’ve taken weeks to get full, but had to be emptied daily because of the critters. Kyle did some raking and weed-whacking and Swin put out birdseed. Bright opened the gate in the morning and Kyle was responsible for locking it at night. Swin went for jogs along the park boundary to get out of his trailer, and this gave him occasion to run off a teenager or two, kids sneaking a can of beer or letting off bottle rockets. One day a kid in a tweed blazer was wandering around with a fishing net, nowhere near the pond. Swin yelled at him and the kid looked at Swin like he was a Martian and began holding forth about nude beaches. He’d been on a family vacation somewhere and had come back disillusioned. He described the world as a prude masquerade.

  “I’m on something,” the kid explained. “Something my brother brought back.”

  Swin drove Bright’s Bronco to Little Rock and packed up his dumbbells, protein powders, elastic training cords, wrist and ankle weights, and all his fat gold herringbones and ropy bracelets. He was grateful to escape Little Rock. Swin’s building was surrounded by puny trees, fences, and sleepless dudes who carried knives. It was a lonely place. He was glad to have a new face, Kyle, and even to have a boss.

  Swin went to the closet and reached up to the highest shelf. There was a paperweight in the shape of a hamburger, a finger painting of the moon, and a miniature saddle that fit in his palm—items he’d received from his sisters when he left for college. He wished he had something from his oldest sister, but he would see them all soon enough, somehow. To him, a day without women was a tedious, droning march. He was a sucker for his sisters and he knew it. They co
uld double his strength or cripple him. And they needed Swin. A young girl’s life was a minefield; she needed someone—someone she could trust, not some strict, pale interloper—to nudge her this way and that as she strolled through that minefield. Swin had to make sure his sisters didn’t turn against one another. He had to make sure they didn’t get taken in by romantic notions about suicide. He had to keep them from getting beached on the rocks of intellectual shallowness. Eating disorders. Self-mutilation. Swin had to make sure one of his sisters didn’t get pregnant from some guy in a dickhead ska band with white teeth and expensive boots who tells her about the big city and says his band might open for Green Day.

  Swin approached the window-mounted air conditioner, raised his leg, then kicked the thing until it dislodged and fell two stories to the concrete below. The insulated crunch and after-tinkle lightened his heart.

  The sun was high by the time Swin neared the park. He slipped off his shirt in order to catch the rays coming in the window. The blues station played a scratchy tune about a guy who had everyone in his goddamn business. At Bright’s house, Kyle sat on the porch with a mug.

  “You look like those guys on the do-it-yourself show,” Swin said.

  “Do what yourself?”

  “You know, grout.”

  “What’d you go get?”

  “Valuables.”

  “Like CDs?”

  “And other stuff. Too bad it’s summer; you could wear a nice turtleneck sweater.”

  Kyle stretched his legs and set down his mug. “You got quite an interest in my appearance.” The coffee cup read THIS IS MY GOOD MOOD. “You’re giving me that good-natured ribbing, right?”