Flesh and Bone

by William Alton

  “This is nothing,” she says. “I’ve been here before.”

  I don’t know what that means, but as long as she’s with me, I’m safe. She’ll show the way out, the way home. She’ll make everything okay. So I hold tight and she looks at me with her blue eyes.

  “Don’t let go,” she says. “If you let go, the whole thing will come crashing down.”

  When She Goes Out

  IT SNOWS. IT doesn’t stick, but it snows. Big, fat flakes falling in the wind. I watch it from the living room window. Mom comes in from the dining room.

  “I have a date tonight,” she says.

  “It’s snowing.”

  “I have a date with Bobby tonight,” she says.

  I’ve only met Bobby once. He drives a semi and stops at the restaurant to see Mom. He orders steaks and rice, asparagus and beer. He sleeps in the semi.

  “You should see it,” Mom says. “It’s huge. It has a double bed.”

  I don’t want to think about how Mom knows about Bobby’s double bed.

  “I was going to make gumbo,” Mom says.

  “Gumbo?”

  “Bobby’s coming for dinner,” she says. “Then we’re going to a movie.”

  “Have you fucked him?”

  “Bobby?” she asks.

  “Have you fucked him?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, “if that’s any of your business.”

  “I assume you’ve fucked him,” I say.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” I say.

  She stares at me and says nothing.

  “You’re a grown woman,” I say.

  “Fine,” she says.

  “No details.”

  She leaves then. She makes coffee. I stand in the living room and watch the symphony of the weather. It’s not dancing music. It’s music to sit back and absorb. I watch the music and I wonder, does Mom know that she’s lonely. I wonder what kind of hole she’s trying to fill.

  It’s a Secret

  PINES AND CEDARS stand straight as soldiers. Ferns ripple in the shadows. We sit on the creek bank, smoking cigarettes, drinking beers, watching the water sing over the stones.

  “Are we faggots?” I ask.

  Harold’s face turns white, then red. His hands shake.

  “I’m not a faggot,” he says.

  “It’s a secret, though,” I say. “Right?”

  “No one can know,” he says.

  Some sins are unforgivable. I’m lost in this moment. He runs his fingers along my jaw. He kisses me.

  “Do you love me?” he asks.

  I don’t know what to say. Words like love and hate mean nothing.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I love you,” he says.

  “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I know,” he says.

  He kisses me, his breath smelling of beer and cigarettes. His lips are wet and thin and sloppy. I touch his face, his hard white whiskers, the soft skin brown and wrinkled. I don’t know what he wants from me, but it’s nice knowing someone loves me, knowing someone thinks I’m sexy and beautiful.

  At the End

  GRANDPA DIES IN the morning. Pearly light leaves no shadows in the dining room. We all sit at the table eating eggs and hash browns, biscuits and sausage gravy. Grandpa’s face is gray and sweaty even in the cool morning air. He flexes his left hand like he’s trying to work out a cramp. He picks at his food, eating nothing, sipping his black coffee. We all know Grandpa’s not feeling well. He doesn’t talk much anyway, but when he’s sick he goes completely silent.

  After a bit, Grandpa gives up even pretending to eat. He pushes the plate back and goes to the bathroom. I finish my breakfast and go to my room for my book bag. I don’t want to go school today. I’m tired. I want to go back to bed, but there will be no more sleep today.

  Grandpa never makes it out of the bathroom. He dies with his face in the toilet, puking. We have to break through the door. It’s too late. There’s nothing we can do. We lay him out on the floor and Grandma kisses his pale, blue lips. She sits next to him, holding his hand and crying. No hysterics, no screams, just tired, silent tears, quiet weeping. Mom leans against the door frame and lights a cigarette.

  “Call someone,” she says.

  I call the ambulance and stand in the kitchen watching Mom stare down at the floor, stare down at nothing, there but not there. Smoke rises through the cracks in her face. Her lips are thin and pale. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know where she’s gone, but I know that I don’t want to follow her.

  Someday

  “HAVE YOU EVER been in love?” Bekah asks.

  “I guess.”

  She stares at me. I look down, keep my face close to my chest.

  “Not counting your mom,” she says.

  “I know.”

  We walk in the park. Oaks and maples and elms and chestnuts rise over us, gnarled and bent. The sun is a smoldering orb.

  “I’ve been in love,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “Everyone needs to be loved.”

  Young mothers stand guard over the children playing on the swings, climbing the jungle gym. They pay no attention to us.

  “I want kids,” she says.

  “Kids?”

  “Someday,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “Right now I’m too young,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “But I think about it,” she says. “I think about it and I sometimes think that maybe now would be the right time.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I have to get through college first,” she says. “I have plans. The kids will come. Later, when I’m old enough.”

  I watch the grass twinkle in the wet sunlight. Mud pushes through it. The sidewalks are the color of ash. I light a cigarette and she makes a face.

  “What do you want to do?” she asks.

  “Me?”

  “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  She shakes her head.

  “No dreams?” she asks.

  “None.”

  “You have to want something,” she says. “Everyone wants something.”

  “Not me,” I say, but that’s not true. I want to feel something. I want something to fill me up when I’m empty and right now, I’m always empty.

  “I want you to have hopes,” she says. “Dreams. Aspirations.”

  “Someday,” I say. “Someday something will come to me.”

  She nods once and kisses me.

  “Here’s to someday,” she says.

  “Someday.”

  Biology

  I’M STONED. I smoke a little in the morning and a little at lunch and now I sit in biology and try to keep my eyes open. Mr. Neff stands at the blackboard and makes lists and species and drawings of plants. Outside, rain tries to turn to snow. Behind me, Tanya squeezes her pregnant belly into a desk. Everyone knows about Tanya. She’s been pregnant for eight months. She’s gotten huge. Between classes, she trudges through the hallway and people step aside. She never says anything and no one says anything to her. No one knows who the father is and Tanya refuses to name him.

  We sit in Biology and watch Mr. Neff write and draw and listen to him talk about the world like it’s a puzzle to be put together. The walls of the room bend a little and dance and I want to lie down, but I can’t lie down. I have things to do and no energy to do them. I sit in class and the people all seem to stare at me. I don’t know what to do. I need to pee, but I’m afraid to move. I’m afraid to raise my hand and ask for permission.

  Ten more minutes, I tell myself. Ten more minutes and class will end and I’ll sneak out to Ed’s car and I’ll sleep the rest of the day. Ten more minutes and I’ll get away from everyone staring at me, away from Mr. Neff’s droning voice.

  Tanya gasps. It’s a small gasp, more wind than voice. She gasps and no one notices, but the
n she gasps again. She’s sitting there, gasping and she folds herself over the desk.

  “Mr. Neff,” she says. “I need to go to the office.”

  “Class is almost over,” he says.

  “My water broke,” she says. “I need to go.”

  Mr. Neff stands there for a second. He’s frozen and his mouth works.

  “I have to go,” Tanya says.

  “I’ll walk you down.”

  They leave. Everyone starts talking. Noise rises up and fills the room. The sun comes out for a second and drops light through the window. I go out and stand in the hall and watch Mr. Neff walking Tanya down to the office. I’m stoned and none of it means anything. A baby is being born. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but soon there’ll be a baby and no one cares. It’s not their baby. It’s Tanya’s child and no one knows who the father is.

  I stand in the hall and watch them walk into the office. I stand there and watch the walls flex and dance. I really need to lie down. I really need to go away. There’s a baby coming and all I can think about is a nap. I guess it’s something that the baby decided to come during Biology. I guess Tanya knew more about the subject than any of us.

  Reading Poems

  FLIES THUMP THE window, struggling to get through to the first warm day of the year. Sunlight pours past the thin clouds and there is no wind. Out in the fields, farmers spray their crops and people walk without coats.

  “Do you want to read my poems?” Bekah asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Maybe you can tell me how to make them more clear.”

  I read the poems and I shudder at the raw images, the words’ sexual rhythm.

  “These are just stories,” I say.

  “Vignettes.”

  “Do you write about everyone you know?”

  “Mostly.”

  “What if your parents find out about us?”

  “They won’t,” she says. “I don’t think they’d care.”

  “They’d care,” I say. “They’d kill me.”

  “No one’s going to kill you.”

  She takes her poems back and folds them into her pack.

  “You don’t like them,” she says.

  “No. I mean, I don’t know.”

  Her eyes are wide in her face. I light a cigarette. She frowns and bats at the smoke, like she can wave it away. The thing about smoke is that it’s still there even when it’s gone. It hangs around for a long time after the fire’s gone out.

  “Someday,” she says. “Someday, I’m going to publish a book.”

  “Would that make you happy?” I ask.

  “It’ll help.”

  Stumbling Toward Morning

  BLUE LIGHT FLICKERS in the living room. The television is a mere murmur in the night. Mom’s working. Grandma’s sleeping. I sit on the couch and smoke cigarettes. I sit and stare at the colors spilling from the screen, drinking the last of Grandpa’s beer. I can’t sleep. I’m out of dope and I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to sit. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to move. Night presses down on me, a thick, dark and heavy.

  Sometimes, there are cars on the road outside. I can hear them passing, taking people from here to there. A strange weight lies down on me. My skin feels too tight. My eyes water. My stomach burns and bunches. If I were to die tonight, if I were to die right now, it would be hours before anyone noticed. Their lives would go on as usual until they came home, into the living room and found my stiff, cold body.

  Does Mom think about that when we’re apart? Do Ed and Richie and Lloyd ever wonder what it would be like to be dead? After I’ve died, people might weep, people might think of me from time to time, but after the first shock, they’d continue to live. They’d fall in love and drink. They’d smoke their pot and drink their beer and they’d maybe tell stories about me and the memories would fade. I’d be just a collection of words and eventually even they’d fade and I’d be nothing more than the boy who’d once walked the roads and went to school. I’d be the boy who once wanted to be loved so much, but didn’t know how.

  I sit and drink and my eyes close. I slump into the couch and time passes without a thought. I’m still there right before dawn, when Mom comes home. She stands in the door still wearing her coat, still holding her purse.

  “What’re you doing?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I think I need to go to bed.”

  “No shit.”

  And that’s it. Mom stares at me and I rise slowly, gracelessly.

  “Do you love me?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  My bed is a mess of twisted sheets and blankets spilled on the floor. The room is cold and the sun is rising into the windows. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. I’ll live until I die and then for a while I’ll be a memory, after that I’ll be nothing and only nothing lasts forever.

  New Boy

  MIDDAY AND THE sun’s out and we leave our coats in our lockers. We all stand in the first warm day of the year and smoke. A new boy joins us. His name is Zephyr. Black hair and a black beard. His skin’s golden and his eyes green. He smokes Virginia Slims and stands outside the group. He doesn’t belong with us, not yet, maybe never. Muscles bunch and stretch in his arms and his face is a perfect puzzle of cheek and jaw, nose and brow. He is, in plain words, fucking gorgeous.

  “You can smoke with us,” Mina says.

  “I don’t want to intrude.” His voice is deep and thick with some kind of accent.

  “Where you from?” Ed asks.

  “Tennessee.”

  He joins us and we talk about the day, the classes we’ve had and the trouble we’ve gotten into. The new boy listens and says nothing. I can’t help but stare at him. I’ve never felt this way before. The perfect blend of desire and fear.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Zephyr.”

  We all introduce ourselves. We talk about what we’re going to do with our summer. School will be out in just over a month, then we’ll have eight weeks to do nothing. Some of us are going to work. Some of us are going to smoke too much and watch television. Mina’s going home to Finland. We’ll all miss her, but not as much as Renee will. Renee and Mina are like sisters.

  “I’m looking for a job,” Zephyr says.

  “Some of the farms are still hiring pickers,” Richie says.

  “I’ll look into it.”

  The sun slides behind a cloud and Zephyr looks to the sky. I want to kiss the long muscles stretched out there. The thought of running my hand over that chest sends a shiver through me. I feel sick suddenly. I’m really turning into a queer. I thought Harold was the only one. I thought that what we did was just between us. It was just sex. Harold thinks he loves me, but I know better. Sex is sex. Love has nothing to do with it. But here I am, falling in love with Zephyr and we’ve only just met. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to handle this? I close my eyes, but even there, I see his pretty, pretty face. Nothing chases it away, not even when the bell rings and we all break up and go to our afternoon classes.

  Some Lessons

  NO ONE’S HOME, only Bekah and me. Johnny Cash spills from the radio. Bekah’s tits ride high on her ribs. The top of her head moves over the bowl of my hips. I try to concentrate on the sucking sensation of her mouth on my dick. One of her hands cups my balls. She strokes them and squeezes them and they tighten. My gut is electric and empty.

  “Jesus.”

  She takes one finger and traces the line from my scrotum to my ass and back again. Wild joy and wonder flood my spine. Bekah’s mouth is soft and wet and warm. Soon it’ll be over. Soon I’ll shoot and Bekah will swallow me and we’ll lie together in her room.

  “What’re you thinking about?” she asks.

  She smells of soap and hay and a little of the ho
rses she rides after school and on weekends.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There are things I want to do with Bekah that I’ve never talked about. I have desires and wants that are too disgusting to think about. Her naked body is pale and warm. Her hair is blond and wild and loose around her face.

  “Do you like doing that?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Sucking dick.”

  “I like it.”

  “Does it do anything for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She kisses me.

  “You ask too many questions,” she says.

  I guess I do. I want to know things. I worry about doing things right and I want no one to worry about pleasing me unless they’re pleasing themselves too.

  Date Night

  I FIND THE edge of town where the river runs and the wetlands stretch out to the fields given over to sheep and cattle. Sometimes the river rises and the animals climb to higher ground near the highway. Today, they’re spread out over the pasture like chess pieces moving randomly over a board in the unpredictable search for grass.

  Ed and I sit on the edge of the road waiting for her father to come pick us up. I met Ed at the club downtown and she’s here to take me to dinner. This is the first real date I’ve ever had, but her car dropped its transmission and now we sit here waiting for her dad.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say.

  “You’re awfully nice,” she says.

  I look out at the mountains just now fading into the twilight. The trees are turning to a solid black mass. I don’t know how nice I am, but it doesn’t make sense for me to get too riled over a car breaking down.

  “Is it too far for you to walk home?” she asks.

  “A little.”

  “We could call your mom,” she says.

  “She’s working.”

  “What about your grandparents?”