The Lonely Polygamist

by Brady Udall

  “We’re not blowing up a cow,” June said. “I don’t use dynamite anymore, anyway. Too expensive. Ammonium nitrate, a blasting cap, and some wet newspaper down the borehole and you get the same result at half the price.”

  “So why don’t we get some of that stuff right now and go find something and blow it up? Just you and me, June. Seriously.”

  June’s forehead got all creased like a teacher’s and he started to explain about how all explosives, even small ones, are not only dangerous but potentially lethal and should only be handled by trained professionals like himself.

  “Wait,” Rusty said. “Remember the fireworks you showed me that first time? You said you’d show me more. You promised.”

  “Well, fireworks, sure,” June said. “That’s different. Fireworks are meant for entertainment purposes, but you still have to be very careful…”

  Rusty pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger, which was what Aunt Beverly did to show she was running out of patience. He said, “Did I tell you my birthday’s coming up? Do you think we could stop talking maybe and go blow up some fireworks in celebration of my birthday?”

  “Wow,” June said. “Your birthday? Yeah. Okay. Let’s go see what we’ve got.”

  They went back to the shop, where June pulled out a ring of keys from his pocket and opened two metal storage lockers. Inside the first were rows of plastic containers marked with boring scientific names like Potassium Nitrate and Ammonium Oxalate and Red Magnesium Flash Powder and in the next one spools of wire and green fuse and bottles of glue and boxes that said Industrial Blasting Caps. Rusty didn’t know what any of this was, really, but he knew it was all meant to start things on fire and blow things up, which made him want to spin around singing happily in the mountains like the blond lady in The Sound of Music.

  On the shelf next to one of the lockers was a row of books with titles like The Do-It-Yourself Gunpowder Cookbook and Surviving Global Slavery and Apocalypse Tomorrow and How to Derail a Train with Common Household Items. Rusty thought if they had books like this at the library, maybe more people would stop by to check something out once in a while. Little paperback books such as Improvised Explosive and Incendiary Devices for the Guerrilla Fighter, which he shoved in the back pocket of his jeans while June wasn’t looking.

  “Let’s see now,” June said, gazing at his collection of explosive materials as if they were his beloved children sleeping peacefully in their cribs. “We could do one of my aerial bombs, but since it’s light outside it’ll be hard to see. So let’s try a little combination setup I’ve been experimenting with. Yeah. We’ll try the two-scale Thunder Flashes, with a bunch of Whistling Chasers, and then a string of big ol’ German Knallkörpers that sound like the end of the world. I think maybe you’ll enjoy it.”

  Rusty bowed his head. “I know I will enjoy it, June. Very, very much.”

  “But first, if you want, real quick, I’ll show you how to make a basic American Cannon Cracker, yeah, an all-time classic. Would you like to see that?”

  “Please,” Rusty said. “Please and thank you.”

  June started filling a cardboard tube with some kind of gunpowder, explaining everything he was doing like the guy in the boring science filmstrips at school. “Now I am mixing the composition, which is mostly potassium chlorate with powdered charcoal…” and even though it was somewhat informative, Rusty wished he would hurry so they could go outside and blow something up.

  While June was off to the other side of the shop searching for safety glasses, saying, “Safety First!” like Mrs. Alcustra, the playground monitor at school, Rusty went over to the storage cabinets, where all the explosives seemed to be crying out in tiny cartoon voices, Take me, take me, please! and so took one small canister labeled Green Magnesium Flash Powder, which he slipped into his front pocket. Because he wanted to be fair and not show favoritism or racist behaviors, he grabbed another marked Red Magnesium Flash Powder. Red and green, like Christmas. And then, what the hey, a couple of blasting caps from the box and a plastic baggie that said Potassium Nitrate and a leftover piece of green fuse, because what if one day in the future he was fighting the Russians or a horde of Killer Bees and needed to build his own American Cracker or German Knock-Popper to ensure the safety of all mankind? Exactly.

  He got back on his stool and sighed contentedly. When June came back, he let Rusty help him, which nobody had ever done before. Rusty’s father, who knew all kinds of things, like how to mix concrete or build entire houses out of nothing but a bunch of wood, had never let him help or shown him anything. But here was some red-bearded weirdo named June letting him glue the cap on the end of the tube and then he was holding Rusty’s wrist steady while Rusty inserted the fuse, June saying, Right there, that’s it, good, just like that, and it made Rusty’s face get all warm having somebody that close to him, telling him how good he was doing, even though June’s beard was kind of tickling his ear and his breath smelled like soup.

  When they were done, June set up the fireworks on a rusted metal plate outside. Before he lit the fuse June said, “In honor of Mr. Lance Richards—”

  “Rusty. Call me Rusty.”

  “Okay, in honor of Rusty Richards’s birthday—How old will you be again?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen? Really?”

  “Seriously, June.”

  “Eleven?”

  “Twelve. I’m going to be twelve.”

  “In honor of Mr. Rusty Richards’s twelfth birthday! Huzzah!”

  “Huzzah!” Rusty cried, even though shouting huzzah seemed the tiniest bit gay.

  Firecrackers started popping and then a few were spinning on the flat metal plate, glowing red and blue and whistling so loud he had to put his hands over his ears, which was good because he was ready for the last firecrackers, big ones, that went Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! and sent up showers of silver sparks that made him cover his head with his arms and fall backward laughing. It was better than Christmas. It was better than the end of the world.

  “You like that? Yeah?” June said. June helped him up off the ground and he felt a little dizzy, grabbing June around the waist for balance, and then kind of gave him a hug, holding on tight, and said, “Thanks, June, you’re the best,” and June patted him on the back, saying, “Okay, how ’bout not so tight there, buddy, okay, yeah, why don’t we let go there, okay, and I’ll go get us a snack.”

  THE GRAND MASTER PLAN

  In Quonset Hut #1 June asked what kind of snack Rusty might like and Rusty said, “Do you have any bananas?”

  June looked around. “I just had some here, I swear,” and turned around again.

  “Kinda had a craving for bananas, that’s all,” Rusty said.

  After a complete search of the kitchen, June came up with some Ritz crackers and cheese and a newly mixed batch of Tang.

  “Do you mind if I ask if your parents know that you’re out here?” June asked. Rusty could tell he was worried about Aunt Beverly. What a sissy! After seeing her that one time he was still probably having nightmares.

  “They don’t care where I am,” Rusty said.

  “Well, here,” June said, and took a cherry bomb from his shirt pocket. “This is for your birthday. But you have to promise to use it in a safe place under adult supervision.”

  “Oh yes!” Rusty said. “Huzzah!” He took the cherry bomb but his pants were full of stolen items so he carefully set it on the counter it front of him. He felt bad for stealing from June, who was possibly, except for Mrs. Tollison at school and Aunt Trish, the least jerky person he’d ever met, and definitely the only person who had ever given him an exploding device for a birthday present. Luckily, the guilty feeling went away fast and he cut eight squares of cheese, carefully stacking them interspersed with nine crackers, and crammed the whole cracker-sandwich in his mouth at once. After he’d washed it down with a refreshing glass of Tang, he said, “That whole bomb shelter thing, is that just for you?”

  “Well, for
now, but I’ve got plans, this is for the future. This is only stage one.”

  “Is stage two to get, like, a girlfriend or a wife or something, I hope? Because seriously, June.”

  June shrugged, cleared his throat, sipped his Tang. “Eventually, yes. But a guy can only do so many things at once.” He gave a little laugh and Rusty joined him and after a few seconds said, “Indeed.”

  Rusty took out his wallet and removed a four-by-six photo, folded twice, of a beautiful smiling woman wearing a festive scarf and holding a pumpkin. He handed it to June. “You want to see what my mom looks like?”

  The woman was not his mom, but some stranger whose picture happened to be in the frame he had bought for his mother as a Christmas present. He’d taken the picture of the pumpkin woman out and put in his own picture, which depicted him at the county pool, wet and squinting into the camera. It was not the greatest picture, he admitted it, he was standing knock-kneed with his suit all bunched up in the crotch and his arms sticking out because he was wearing his water wings—but it was the only picture of himself he could find. When his mother opened it up on Christmas morning, Clinton said, “Ha ha! Look at his engorged nipples!” and everybody laughed, but his mother said she loved it, she would cherish it, and she put it on the nightstand next to her bed, behind the clock radio.

  Looking at the picture of the pumpkin woman now, June said, “She’s, yeah, she’s very nice-looking.”

  She was even better than nice-looking, Rusty thought, she was beautiful, which was why he had kept the picture, because the pumpkin woman reminded him of his mother, who would be beautiful too, if only she had festive scarves to wear and nice clothes, if only she could hang around in pumpkin patches instead of having to change diapers and scrub bathtubs, if only Aunt Nola let her get a word in once in a while and Aunt Beverly didn’t ignore her all the time and then suddenly ask her why she didn’t have any opinions about anything important, if only his father paid her any attention at all.

  “I think you’d like her,” Rusty said. “She has a great personality. Plus she’s American.”

  June tried to hand the picture back but Rusty told him he could keep it. “I have more where that one came from,” he said.

  “So you know how to fix stuff, right?” Rusty said.

  “Like what?” June said, putting the folded picture in his shirt pocket, taking it back out again and placing it carefully on the table.

  “Like, you know, a leaking roof or a broken refrigerator or whatever.”

  “Are you kidding me?” June said, sitting up a little in his chair. “You give me the right tools, I can fix anything, I can build anything, I could build us a spaceship that would take us to Mars. I could build the space station once we got there. It’s all about the money, and having the right tools.”

  “Well,” Rusty said, “you think you could unclog a toilet?”

  17.

  SACRIFICE

  IT WAS NOLA ON THE PHONE, HER VOICE BUFFED TO A HIGH SHINE of satisfaction, to see if Trish had seen Rusty. Nobody had heard from the little son-of-a-bee since he got home from school.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Trish let go a bald-faced lie: “Haven’t seen him since two days ago, I think it was. Piano practice.”

  “Oh, this one’s a goody,” Nola said. “The second time in two weeks he’s gone missing. Ol’ Bev is so irate I could hear her panties wadding up over the phone. She thinks it’s all part of a Big House conspiracy to make her look bad.”

  “People shouldn’t get so worked up,” Trish said. “I bet he’ll be home in the next few minutes.” Which wasn’t merely an idle bit of hoping on her part; Rusty had, in fact, left her house just a few minutes ago. Earlier he had shown up with someone named June Haymaker, who, with nothing more than a bucket filled with water, had unclogged her toilet. June was a shy, sad-eyed young man in his mid-twenties, skinny as a greyhound, who smelled like recently applied aftershave. When Rusty had introduced him by saying, “This is June, which we all know is a girl’s name,” June had blushed so fiercely his ears looked like they might catch fire.

  He’d carefully explained the physics of what he was doing—something having to do with suction and air pressure—and then dumped the bucket into the toilet bowl from shoulder height. The pipes rang inside the wall and the toilet drained with a satisfying sucking noise.

  Faye, who never let herself go over anything, yelped and clapped her hands.

  “Learned this in the army,” June said. “Guns and ammo galore, but you couldn’t find a plunger to save your life.”

  “June used to shoot guns,” Rusty explained, gazing at June with bald admiration. “And blow things up.”

  “Did you kill people?” Faye asked.

  “Oh, not…not too many,” June said, and gave Trish a quick grin.

  “People who kill other people,” Rusty advised Faye sternly, “don’t like to talk about it. It’s, like, bad manners, right, June?”

  “If you say so,” June said. “Though if I’d ever killed somebody, yeah, I’d probably want to brag a little.”

  Before she knew what she was doing, Trish had improvised dinner of leftover pork chops and instant mashed potatoes. It hadn’t even occurred to her to ask if Rusty was expected home—maybe she’d assumed he checked in with Beverly, or maybe she just didn’t care. It was so good to have company—someone to eat her food, to ask her about the messy watercolors she’d painted and framed on the dining room wall, to defeat the silence that had begun to overtake her house like a mold.

  “I don’t think being at Beverly’s is doing that boy any good,” Trish said now. “He belongs at home with his mother.”

  “Where do you think he’s been the first eleven years of his life? In the state pen? With the circus? That boy’s a piece of work and Rose and I have done the best we could. Look, Trishie, I know as well as you do that Beverly’s not going to turn him around. He’s just a couple of inches off center, our boy Rusty. But it’s sure fun for the rest of us to see her try.”

  “And Rose is all right with this?”

  “Rose might not be all that happy about it, but it’s the best thing for her. You know she’s been going downhill lately, it’s worrying is what it is. With Rusty out of the house, daily hostilities—at least here in Big House—are down. A little extra peace and quiet while we watch Beverly bang her head against the wall. Ha! And the beauty of it is that Bev thinks she’s pulling one over on us, going to show the world that she can do a job that we couldn’t manage. Oh what a hoot.”

  Trish hadn’t been off the phone twenty seconds when Beverly called. Unable to go back now, she produced the same lie she had passed off on Nola. She looked up from her place at the table to find Faye in the doorway of her bedroom, condemning her with a chilly stare.

  “I’m giving him ten minutes and I’m calling the police,” Beverly said. “Who knows what he’s up to?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good—” She cut herself off, tried to remove the pleading from her voice. “He probably just lost track of time, out playing somewhere.”

  Beverly let her know what she thought of that observation with a long, reproachful silence—a Beverly specialty.

  “It’s nearly seven o’clock,” she said finally. “Nobody’s seen him since he got home from school. He is being willfully defiant, and if he’s not willing to abide by the rules everybody else does, some harsh measures are in order.”

  In the background Trish could hear voices, the slamming of a door. Beverly said, “Well. Here he is now. And look at that, wearing his brother’s shirt.”

  There was a muffled scratching, which was, Trish assumed, the sound of Beverly’s hand covering the receiver while she ordered Rusty up to bed without his supper. Trish’s chest tightened with a pang of genuine sympathy for the boy. It was not easy to face Beverly’s wrath, and yet he’d risked exactly that on her behalf. Even though she herself now risked being discovered a liar and Rusty sympathizer, she was glad she’d fed him—and hoped he had th
e good sense not to confess where he’d been.

  She sighed. “Well, thank goodness.”

  “We’re going to have to find a new way to fight this.” Beverly’s tone had shifted from exasperated to something harder and more insistent. “This kind of a behavior is a symptom of a bigger disease. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “He’s just a boy,” Trish said, “he’s eleven—”

  “I’m done talking about him, do you understand? Done worrying about him and fighting with him. I’ve got bigger worries. I’m talking about the way we’re falling apart, giving up on each other. We’re not taking responsibility for one another anymore. Things get difficult and we all retreat to our separate corners. Maybe it’s harder for you to see from where you are, but this is a crisis, Patricia. It’s not like I haven’t been talking about this for months now. I believed that bringing you into the family would bring balance to things, but that obviously hasn’t happened.”

  Trish took a breath. It didn’t take Beverly to tell her that she’d failed at her calling of family savior, the one ordained by God to complete the broken circle. What Beverly would never admit was that she had arranged to bring Trish into the family not because her personality was a perfect complement to those of her sister-wives, or because God had led her to them because she was the last piece of the puzzle, the final, binding ingredient. No, what she would never say aloud was that she had brought Trish on as a political ally and nothing more. With Nola and Rose moving out of Old House to pursue their own domestic and spiritual agendas, Beverly had lost her near-universal influence and control. What she needed was simple: someone vulnerable and therefore pliant enough to do her bidding, to stand next to her on every issue. Though Trish did not have a full understanding of this at the beginning, it started to become clear to her when she made the decision to move out of Old House. Not only had she thought she wanted her independence, the commotion had terrified Faye and the odd and unpredictable smells of the house itself had made Trish, three months pregnant with Jack, a swooning, nauseous mess. Beverly was indignant, of course, did everything she could to persuade Trish to stay, and when Trish proved more stubborn than any of them could have predicted, Beverly made sure she ended up in this isolated duplex on the other side of the valley, like some exiled daughter of a Prussian czar.