by K J Steele
“Hi, Vic. How’s it going?”
“Pretty good, I guess, how about you?”
“Yup, not too bad. Working lots, but I guess that’s good.”
“You should bring your boots in, Sam. It’s freezing out tonight.”
“Oh, no. They’re okay out there. They’re really muddy.”
“You sure?” she asked again, noticing the mud hadn’t stopped anyone else from clomping on in.
“Ya, I don’t want to make a—” he started as JJ’s voice thundered through and ordered him to quit yakking with the women and sit down so they could play cards.
“Hey, Petey. It was good of your mama to let you come out to play, must have been a good boy this week, hey?” Bobby boomed.
“Was ya a good boy, Petey? Did she let you have all your allowance to lose this time?” John Jr. added, not wanting to be outdone.
Peter flushed flamingo pink, an embarrassed smile jumping on and off his face as he attempted to defend himself.
“Ahh . . . get lost you guys, I don’t get no allowance.”
“No shit, really?” Bobby shot back with mock seriousness. “What does she do? Pay you for your services?”
A howl of laughter and then John Jr. struck. “No wonder you never have any money!”
Harsh laughter pounded the walls of the trailer, Peter’s voice twice as loud and twice as shrill in the desperate attempt to prove himself part of the joke rather than the butt of it. The party had begun. Victoria quickly removed the dishes into the sink and wiped the table. Bobby and Peter had already started sucking their beers while John Jr. slowly filled his glass with a poison that could have come straight from his own heart. As the cards and insults were dealt around the table, she removed herself to the relative safety of the living room, pulled the rocker away from the wall and, her back against them, sat down facing the window. Some Saturday evenings she would read or knit, but mostly she just kept the light off and rocked, staring out into the blackness that surrounded the trailer, semi-aware of volley after volley of insulting innuendoes.
Tonight, however, she would busy herself with the task at hand. She reached down beside the chair and pulled up a floppy white plastic bag, dumped its contents onto her lap and began to sort through it. The pastel balls yielded softly to the light pressure of her hand as she stroked them, each one reveling in her pleasure like lazy cats. Eventually she settled on the gentle yellow one and put the rest away. Soon she was enveloped by the soothing click, click, click of her knitting needles as they chatted their way through another baby sweater. It was the eighth one she would give to Diana, each one made and delivered with meticulous care. The first one she’d made was actually for herself, although that too was a secret that remained buried deep in her heart. But as time had worn onward, it had become clear that the only use the little sweater would ever get would be wrapping other peoples’ precious little bundles. As it became obvious that they would never produce a legacy of themselves, Bobby had become adamant that it was because of her failure and not his own. He had no reason to believe that that she knew of, no tests had ever been done. Gradually it became common knowledge throughout the valley that Victoria was barren, and before long it had crystallized into a fact.
She stopped her knitting and wiped her eyes, dismayed to find them spilling hot tears, alarmed at the prospect of being seen—the perfect target—by JJ or Petey. Once she’d made the mistake of trying to defend herself after John Jr. had taken a shot at her with one of his one-liner backhands. Instantly she’d found herself drawn into their carnage, verbally pummeled and beaten until she’d fled into the bedroom in tears, Bobby’s approving laughter chasing her as she ran. She could not risk them seeing her tears, a magnet that would draw them to her pain like vultures to carrion.
Her hands tenderly smoothed the partially formed sweater that nestled in her lap. It would have been the perfect sweater for her baby, she thought morosely. A partially formed sweater for a partially formed baby. Again, the tears started, and she stifled them. It wasn’t that she’d wanted the baby, certainly not at the time, anyway. Considered it something evil, cancerous, a tumor living inside her eating at her like a parasite. But after it was gone, destroyed, she had often wondered about it. Sometimes she’d even envisioned it, a little person she could create and carve to perfection in the studio of her mind. After the third month had passed with no sign of deliverance, she’d been almost immobilized by fear and disappointment and hatred. Her dance career was over; teenage mothers did not receive auditions. It was as simple as that.
And her father, once he found out, would have put her out on the street like a stray dog. Let her stay there until the rightful owner came along or some poor sap felt pity for her and took her in. Not willing to be claimed by the rightful owner and detesting even the thought of being held hostage by some over-sanctified well-doer’s pity, she chose a rushed wedding to Bobby, hoping he would never be the wiser about why their child appeared so soon before the expected date. She suspected over the years many of Hinckly’s healthy premature babies had arrived under similar circumstances. She could have saved herself the maneuvering, however; nature had its own plans. The pregnancy had signaled the end of everything for her that she held dear. And so, when she was wrenched from her sleep late one night by vicious, heathen cramps that forced her to suffocate her cries into her pillow, it was a sense of joy not sadness that filled her.
And as she’d watched the gnarled, twisted mass of bloody tissue swirl around in the bloodstained bowl, she was elated. She’d watched with tingling excitement as the crimson water had spun around and around until finally the toilet opened its greedy throat and with one swallow and a rushing gurgle devoured the whole mess. Instantly, clear water had rushed in and calmly denied any memory of the death that had just passed there. Her prayers had been answered. She’d been set free. But the answer had come too late and, now married to Bobby, freedom was more elusive than it had ever been.
She’d never seen any reason to tell him. The miscarriage saved her the profound indiscretion of joyously informing him she was pregnant with his child. But when, later on, he’d made such a point of blaming her for their inability to conceive, going so far as to allude that he and not Diana’s husband had really fathered Diana’s first child, she would have loved to throw the truth in his face. Would have loved to remind him of what the doctor had said regarding his childhood bout with the mumps and possible low sperm count as a result of it. But she knew it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Bobby believed what he chose to believe, and the truth rarely stood in his way.
The now drunken voices in the next room rose upward and outward, riding along the ceiling until they consumed every inch of the trailer.
“Oh yeah, shit. I knows who ya means. That broad with the—” An adolescent gesture earned Bobby an ovation of laughter. “Forget it, you peckerhead. Even Bassman would have a better chance at her slot than you.”
“Bull-shit! That’s a bunch of bull, Bobby. She ain’t gonna let scum like that touch her. I could have her if I wanted to.”
“Yeah, so what’s the problem? Go get the bitch then, Petey. Come on, we’ll even give you a ride to town.”
“Yeah, well. Well, at least I’d know what to do with her if ya did. You wouldn’t even know, Bobby, wouldn’t know what to do even if he got the chance, would he, JJ? He wouldn’t even know, would he?” Peter hurried to get this out before somebody took him down with another jab, anxious to set John Jr. on the attack.
“Hell no, Petey, I don’t believe he would. Been a long bloody time since Bobby’s seen a set of knockers like that. Come to think of it, I heard he didn’t know what to do with the last ones he got his hands on!”
A confusion of pompous laughter joined the scraping of chairs and tables and bodies as Bobby made a lopsided lunge across the table to grab John Jr. The sobering smash of a glass meeting an undignified death cut them short for a half thought before they resumed their braying.
“Hey! Hey, Vic! We
need ya in here. Stupid here dumped my drink.”
She put down her knitting and sighed. Wished she could just walk out the door. Disappear into the night. Wondered what Elliot would think if she appeared on his porch seeking refuge from this war zone of twisted mentalities. But she couldn’t do that. And even if she could, in reality they’d only shared a brief, mild flirtation. Probably no different than he’d have done with half the girls in town. Hardly a gesture that warranted throwing herself wholeheartedly at his feet; although for her the flirtation had been far from mild, and her heart had already chosen where it would be thrown.
“Hey!”
She rose from the rocker, walked into the kitchen avoiding eye contact, and surveyed the damage. Shards of glass littered the floor like geometrical chunks of ice; yellow liquid drooled its way down the paneled wall into a swampy pool on the kitchen floor. Gathering some paper towels, she began to mop up, being careful not to pierce her fingers as she swept up a soggy handful and dropped it into the garbage pail. She moved with precision and care, yet the inevitable happened, so she leapt up to the sink and ran water over her finger as the wound spouted a tiny red river.
“Here. Might as well empty this while you’re at it,” John Jr. mumbled as he thrust an overflowing ashtray onto the counter, sending stinking cigarette butts skidding into the sink and onto the floor. She watched as the stubby projectiles hit the water then bobbed amongst the dirty dishes.
“Hey, look out!” She turned just as Peter flicked his cigarette past her, off the window and into the sink, where it snarled an angry cat hiss, then drowned.
“Bobby! Hey you dumb dickhead, put some music on will ya?”
“I gotta take a leak. Vic!” He motioned her to the stereo with a toss of his head as he crashed down the hall and into the washroom, yelling back at her. “Put on some Meat Loaf, will ya?”
Under John Jr.’s orders, Petey went into the living room as soon as she’d put the tape in and cranked up the volume, their voices rising to keep afloat of the intolerable levels of a screaming rendition of “Bat Out of Hell.”
Trying to ignore the carnival behind her, Victoria stood at the sink and began picking the cigarette butts out of the water. She turned on the tap and attempted to wash the ashes and grime and filth from her soft white hands, but it seemed suddenly impossible to her that they could ever come clean and, driven by desperation, she grabbed the potato scrubber from the haze of slimy water and started frantically scrubbing the skin from her hands.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” Bobby’s paralyzed speech dragged out like a record set one speed too slow. “Quit wasting the friggin’ water.”
Victoria crumpled under his yell as if she’d been struck, dropped the potato scrubber and twisted shut the faucet. Appalled, she stood in the madness of noise and looked down at the destruction she’d caused to her own hands . . . by her own hands.
“I’m hungry. You guys hungry? Samson, ya big bugger, ya wanna sandwich or something?”
Victoria turned toward the table hiding her angry, raw hands behind her back. She watched as Sam cast her an apologetic look, his lips moving slightly, but his soft voice unable to find its way over the pollution of noise. Raised on the reservation by his grandmother, he had a heritage of extremely mixed origin and, as if to accentuate this, he’d been born with one brown eye and one blue. Sometimes their eyes would find each other and an understanding would pass between them, an understanding that, no matter how much he felt for her, how much he loved her, he could never desecrate his friend’s marriage. She smiled at him now and he smiled back, quickly returning his attention to his cards. She felt safer with Sam in the trailer. Although he would cross no boundaries for his own pleasure, she also knew nothing could withhold him from protecting her if the verbal abuse were ever to take a physical form.
Opening the refrigerator, she allowed her hands to tarry in its soothing coolness before she pulled out the roast and began slicing it for sandwiches. She slapped mayonnaise across slices of bread, crisscrossed it with mustard and piled on the slabs of beef. To one sandwich, she added an extra slice of meat and sprinkled it liberally with salt and pepper. The other three she sprinkled liberally with ashes. Handing the plates around the table, she became uncomfortably aware of Peter, perched precariously on the edge of his chair, ogling her, prickly sweat shining across his half-bald head. This wasn’t uncommon behavior for him. As the effects of the alcohol dulled his inhibitions, his leering always became more pronounced, his hand sometimes brushing purposely across her derriere when she happened by. But tonight he seemed distracted by something other than his perverted mind.
“Hey, Vic, what’d ya do to your hair?”
“Nothing much,” she answered, hoping to brush him off. Hoping someone would launch in over the top of her, ignore her like they usually did.
“Ya, you did. I can see it,” he chided like a grade six boy teasing the girls at recess. “Come on, what’d ya do? You dyed it, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
She wished they were in sixth grade again; she’d have no problem settling this score. She’d been tall for her age, and strong. One taunt from a half-size troublemaker like him and she’d have leveled him out across the playground with one punch. But childhood had privileges not taken with one into adulthood, and she could feel behind his hostility a latent desire to cause her real pain.
“Hey, Bobby. Bobby! Over here, numb-nuts, I’m talking to you. You ever noticed your wife’s changing color on you, huh? Changing color on him, hey JJ? Starting to go kookie like her ole auntie did, hey?” He elbowed John Jr. coherent, his laugh rat-a-tat-tat like a machine gun as he pointed out his discovery.
A wave of loathing washed over her as all eyes climbed over her hair, inspecting the red highlights that had been merged with the browns and golds.
Bobby sat lopsided, a look of puzzled confusion adorning his sloppy face. “Hey! Whadda hell ya do to yer hair?”
Fear rammed her, smashed her breath from her. She realized too late she was trapped, the wolves circling into position to devastate their wounded prey. A cellophane-thin smile touched Peter’s face then fled as he pressed forward to start the attack. Her eyes sought out Sam’s, his holding an apology as he sat mute, immovable as the torrent of sarcasm grew around them and above them and over them.
“Hey, JJ. Can you believe that? Dip-shit doesn’t even know if he’s sleeping with a redhead or a brunette, he don’t even know, JJ!”
“Yep, probably could have just as easy chucked the dog in with ya, ya dumb bugger. Hell! Probably did chuck the friggin’ dog in with ya!”
Replying with an oafish, heavy swing, Bobby responded with all the wittiness he could muster.
“Well, shit then, mister . . . that woulda bin one lucky damn potlicker of a dog, I tell ya!”
A belt of laughter sprung up, hit the roof and it was over. Thankful none of them had taken notice of her raw, reddened hands, she cleared the empties off the table, stacked them in the sink and limped back to the sanctuary of the living room. She looked down at the yellow bundle lying beside her chair but didn’t pick it up. Leaving the lamp off she sat down, stared into the nothingness and listened to their lies. Year after year they told the same old stories. Eventually they’d become so stretched and warped and twisted that she could no longer trace them back to the morsels of truth that had inspired them in the first place.
Now, as the stories grew thin, the talk turned to politics, as it always did as the evening wore on into the early dawn. Bobby, being a few drinks ahead started the ranting.
“That damn what’s-his-name, should just shoot that lying bugger. Guy, he ain’t got no chance of making a decent living with those bloody idiots running the country.” He reached for his beer, knocked it over sideways, recovered it and continued on. “Know what I’d do? I’d fire all ;dem useless milksops and prissy faggots. Sure as hell, I’d knock some of their soft heads rolling. Bloody kid could run this here country better!”
“Kid could
run it? Hell, Bobby, I’d even let Petey have a whack at it.”
“I could do it, JJ, sure as hell I could. How’s bloody hard kin it be, anyhow? Not hard, jus gotta know what the hell yer doing.”
It was nights like this, when she sat vacantly rocking in the dark waiting for the time to pass, that Auntie May’s distorted advice would sometimes find its way back to her. She’d sift through it, searching for the nuggets of truth she’d occasionally find there. When she’d been no more than five or six years old, her aunt had told her about the masks, the knowledge terrifying her sleepless. Animals didn’t wear masks, Auntie May had patiently explained, didn’t need to because animals don’t lie. You look in their eyes and they’ll tell you their souls. But people, well that was another matter. Some were well and good, but lots were evil as the devil and just as cunning. And it was hard to tell them apart because of the masks. Frantic, Victoria had appealed to her aunt to tell her how she could tell who wore the masks, and she’d been told that although it wasn’t easy, it could be done.
“You smell them, Victoria. Smell ‘em a mile away. Stink like the old outhouse behind the barn. Even worse, the real bad ’uns. But you got to know how to smell for ‘em. Not just anyone can tell the bad ‘uns ‘cause most folks never learnt to smell for ‘em when they were kids, and once you’re an adult it’s too late ‘cause your mind’s too filled up. But you watch and I’ll teach ya.”