Big Picture: Stories

by Percival Everett

  Mitch looked at the road. “I’m not sure about walking out there either way, you know?”

  “It’s one or the other, Mitch. We can’t just stay here.”

  “Shit.”

  Laney went to the fountain and drank more water. “I say we go back to the truck.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and thought for a while, looking at the road. “No cars passed us either way. So they must have gone in the direction of town.”

  Mitch nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right. Okay, let’s get going then.”

  Laney drank more water, drank until she was full. She licked her lips and said, “I suggest you drink some more, too.”

  Mitch did.

  They started walking back in the direction of Laney’s truck. Laney became aware again of the belt in her hand. She considered hiding it under her shirt. If there were a crook or killer and he drove by and saw it, he’d know she’d been to the station. She was also troubled by the fact that technically the belt was stolen. What if the police found them and decided they had something to do with whatever the hell had happened at the station? She carried the belt close to her side and away from the road. The rubber was slimy against her sweating palm.

  A big brown Oldsmobile came toward them on its way to town. Laney waved for the car to stop, but the elderly couple tightened visibly, swerved to the other lane, and kept going at an increased clip. The idea of being blamed for some crime seemed less farfetched as she imagined the old couple finding the blood in the wash room. She walked faster.

  “I don’t like this,” Mitch said, sounding close to tears.

  Laney decided she hated Mitch and she hated herself for being with him, for allowing him to be with her. So, he had ridden a bull. Big deal. Besides, he had been thrown before the gate was fully open. Trying not to think about the present situation, though, she spoke to him, “Mitch, what do you want to do with your life?”

  He was silent for a few seconds. “I don’t know.” Then he smiled. “Drink beer and get lucky.”

  “You know,” she said, “somewhere there’s a twit with half a brain and big tits who would think that’s funny. And between the two of you, you’d have half a brain.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You wish.”

  “Hey, you know, this stuff ain’t my fault.”

  Laney shook her head. He was right; it wasn’t his fault. But that didn’t make him any less despicable and sad, it didn’t make him any less like the string of duds Laney had found herself with in recent years.

  “This is your fucking brother’s fault,” Mitch said.

  “Shut up.”

  “If the little asshole hadn’t run off and gotten drunk, then …”

  “And if your father hadn’t poked your mother,” Laney said and then was sorry she’d said it.

  “That’s the mouth I’m talking about,” Mitch whined.

  “Sorry,” Laney said.

  They walked on another forty or fifty yards.

  “It’s no big deal,” he said. “We just put that belt on and drive to town and tell the cops what we saw. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Okay.” A chill ran through her.

  Mitch reached for her hand.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Laney heard the car coming up behind them, a loud engine in need of a muffler. It came from the direction of town and slowed as it approached. She was afraid to look back, but afraid not to look. If it was the police she didn’t want to appear guilty. She was confused by the fact that she felt guilty. She glanced back and saw a rusty yellow mid-seventies LeMans. A man with long blond hair was driving and a man with a shaved head was trying to lean out of the partially lowered rear window. She saw that Mitch was looking at them, too.

  “Don’t look at them,” Laney muttered.

  Mitch looked forward as they kept walking.

  The car was now beside them, matching their walking speed. Laney looked again.

  “Gotta problem?” the driver asked, leaning out of his window, his free arm hanging down loose, his hand seeming to be mere inches from the pavement.

  “No, no problem,” Mitch said.

  “Why you walking?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah, why you walking?” the bald man in the back seat echoed.

  Laney and Mitch kept walking. “Just walking,” Laney said. She tried to hide the pump belt against her side.

  “Just walking,” said the man in the back seat, laughing. Laney didn’t look, but imagined him bouncing up and down. Bouncing up and down just like her brother did when he was with his rowdy friends. Thinking of her brother in connection with these thugs made her feel bad, then more frightened.

  The car rolled a few yards ahead of them and Laney saw the man sitting beside the driver for the first time. His face was buried in a dirty red beard.

  “You married?” the driver asked.

  Laney stopped and looked right at them. “Just leave us the hell alone.” She remembered the belt and tried to conceal it.

  The men hooted.

  “Yeah, we’re married,” Mitch said.

  “You’re a lucky man,” the driver said. “Where you walking to? Want a ride? We’ll give you a ride.”

  “No, no, thanks,” Mitch said, “our truck is just down the road a ways.”

  “Okay, then.” The LeMans drove on, and the bald man kept looking at them through the back window.

  Laney watched the car disappear down the road and then hit Mitch with the pump belt as hard as she could across his back and shoulder. He ran away some steps.

  “What?”

  “If you had even a piece of a brain, you’d be dangerous,” Laney said.

  “I got rid of them,” he said.

  “Where do you think they’re going? They’re going to my truck.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Laney walked away from the road out across the desert.

  “What are you doing?” Mitch asked.

  “You go on to the truck. Here, take the fucking belt.” She tossed it to him. “And here are the fucking keys.”

  He stopped her with a raised hand before she tossed those, too. “Calm down. Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to town. I’m going to get off this shit highway and walk out there where they can’t see me.” She turned and marched quickly through the sage and over the prickly pears. She was glad to be walking on ground instead of pavement.

  Mitch caught up and walked beside her.

  They walked east and down into a dry river bed, and followed that north. Laney was glad she had drunk so much water. The sun was intense and robbing her of energy. She wanted to keep all of her fluids, but the pressure in her bladder grew worse. She considered that being scared was exacerbating the problem. She walked away from the bed toward a stand of rocks.

  “Where you going?” Mitch asked.

  “I’m going to take a piss, okay?” Laney rounded the rocks and stepped onto a large downward-sloping stone flat, out of sight of Mitch. She pulled down her jeans and underwear and squatted over the rock. She closed her eyes and waited, taking a deep breath, trying to relax. She heard a sound beside her, opened her eyes, and found a stream striking the rock just ahead of her and to her left. Mitch was standing beside her, urinating. Laney shook her head.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “I can’t even pee by myself.”

  Mitch sighed.

  Laney quickly pulled up her clothes before letting out a drop and walked away, fastening her pants. As she stepped from the rock to the ground something caught her eye. A sunning diamondback was only three feet from her. The dull sand color of the snake stung her senses. She hadn’t disturbed it, so there was no rattling, no acknowledgment of her presence, but still it took her breath away. She looked across the rock flat and saw that there were snakes everywhere. She looked back and realized that she had absently wandered into the middle of a nest of basking rattlers. The sight and the thought that she had been in the middle of them
made her shiver for a second.

  “What is it?” Mitch asked, noticing her distress. Then he looked to where she was looking. “God almighty,” he said softly. “Fuck,” he said louder. “Look at all these fuckers!”

  Laney stepped back some more, leaving Mitch alone in the middle of all the rattlers.

  “Look at this shit,” Mitch said.

  Laney looked at Mitch and wanted to laugh. She turned and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Town.”

  “Wait. How did you get over there? How’d you get past these snakes? How’d you do that?”

  Laney answered him without looking back. “I’m used to it.”

  Wash

  Dusk came on and the pinacate bugs were out of their holes, and trudging along the sand wash. Lucien Bradley pushed his toe into the path of one of the large beetles and watched it stand on its head. He glanced up at the shriek of a chat-little and noticed the pink in the sky. Although it didn’t show promise of rain, he walked up to the high ground near his truck to settle in for the night. He remembered how quickly desert floods could occur, how his father would not drive across a dip in the road if there was water standing in its trough. The chill of evening was already upon him, pushing his shoulders tight into his body and his palms flat together. He built a fire, ate a sandwich that he had bought some miles back outside of Las Cruces, and then rolled out his sleeping bag. He warmed his hands before the flame one last time and arranged sticks by the fire before slipping into his sleeping bag. Lying under the moon he noticed a saguaro cactus standing beyond the glow of his fire. He tried to recall the last time he had been able to sleep in the desert. The desert he and his father had shared was not like this one. The high desert was not as severe, not as frightening, constant, relentless. It was harsh only for its lack of water. His father spoke to him, a dead voice in the wind. He told Lucien what a fool he was, a fool to love the low land, a fool to have left school and joined the army, a fool to have no answers, and a fool to expect answers to questions he was foolish enough to ask. “I’m dead now, you fool,” his father said, “and I’ve died to fucking spite you. Giving up life for what?” Lucien put a stick on the fire and said, “Fuck you, too.” And then he felt stupid for talking aloud to his father. The dead made for decent memories, but lousy conversation. Fire was the substance of stuff, he thought, heat and consumption, light and vacuum, the center of power and the edge of approach and all the kinds of philosophical shit his father used to say about it. He was tempted to shove his hand into the flames.

  His mother would be waiting in Taos for him and she wouldn’t tell him to get fucked. She would hug him like he was no fool, cry about his father’s death, and smile over her son’s homecoming. She would ask him to tell her about Honduras and then not listen. He laughed as he thought about the low desert surrounding him, thinking about water, no water. But when the water came it meant death. Mice and snakes and nests and anything else would be swept away by flooding, sudden rivers on a timeless landscape. To drown in a desert, that was the way to die, sinuses replete with sandy water, dead eye to dead eye with rattlers in the flow. Lucien closed his eyes and thanked God or something, anything, that he was out of the army, lost, but out of the army, no smarter, but out of the army.

  The morning came to him along with thoughts of fishing and tying flies. The close work with the feathers, thread, and fur had always relaxed him. He drove the two hours north to Albuquerque and decided not to stop, not to eat. He decided to make his mother happy by arriving at her house famished. Her house—he replayed the words and they sounded right—her house. It was not his home; it hadn’t been for some time. It was a hard thought, but he wondered if he needed his mother. He loved her, but did he need her? A referee was of little use in a ring with one fighter, but had there ever been a fight, or was he kicking himself silly for things he’d never had a chance to say to his father, or worse, had the chance but not the inclination?

  Camel Rock was a landmark because big rocks tend to be landmarks. It was a sign that he was closer to his country, but it was a sad sight, the dromedary outcropping crawling with camera-toting visitors and their oily-fingered offspring, nature’s new erosive element: people who were shaping land just like time and water and wind, but leaving no beauty, just marks. He noted the rock as he rolled by, but kept his eyes forward on the highway with its steady, mesmerizing, reassuring yellow line. Then he was waiting for the view, the view he would get when he was through the mountain pass and looking down on the Taos Valley, where the Rio Grande Gorge snaked through like gossip.

  He reached the vista, stopped his truck, and got out to have a look. It was as he always remembered it, no larger than life, but the biggest life he knew. He was like the space between the walls of the gorge, being from a black father and a white mother. He was not Indian, not Mexican, but he looked like he could be either. The gorge was a vastness that couldn’t be ignored, but really couldn’t be defined. There were some black people in Santa Fe and certainly in Albuquerque, but not in Taos, save for the occasional counterculture, transplanted, California-style would-be artist passing through or settling to work in a gallery or boutique. A thunderhead formed over the hills to the west as he drove through Ranchos de Taos and he counted another five fast-food joints added to the awful strip that threatened to make even this place, so singular in setting, just another clone row of America, another burb of the interstatic. He drove through downtown Taos and its traffic of beat-up pickups and BMWs and rusty ’63 Impalas and Mercedes to El Prado and then down the dirt road that led to his mother’s house.

  Lucien’s mother cried and hugged him and with her small body pulled him into the house. The place looked the same, but it appeared quieter. His mother was a strong woman, a fighter, so the house was still alive, she would never let the house die, but it was quiet. The house was special to Eva, and now it was hers, just hers; her husband was dead but she had her home. Lucien liked the way it felt. He was surprised that he could not feel the presence of his father and more surprised that he wanted to. He knew that if he raised the issue with his mother she would tell him in no uncertain terms that his father was everywhere, breathing in each room, stuck like cobwebs in each corner. So he didn’t mention it.

  “Food, you need food, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I’m starving.”

  “It won’t take a minute.” She was off to the kitchen; her son trailed behind her. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” Turning to see him again, she said, “You look well. Fit. You look fit.”

  “I suppose I am fit. But look at you. You look terrific, Ma. Have you been working out, some aerobics or something? Playing a little basketball?”

  “I walk. I walk everywhere these days. Except to the grocery store. That’s too far away, at least for carrying sacks.”

  Lucien sat at the table and watched his mother gather food from the refrigerator and cupboards and drop pans on the stove with noise that wasn’t noise. “Pancakes, eggs, and sausage. I know it’s lunch time, but that’s what you need.” She hesitated for a moment, twisting her small face. “No eggs. There are eggs in the pancakes. We’ve got to watch our cholesterol.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He watched as she broke eggs into a bowl with flour and milk. “You do look really good, Ma.”

  Without turning to face him, she said, “I feel good. I miss your father, but people die. You live with it.” Then quickly, “Tell me about Honduras.”

  “Nothing to report really. It wasn’t much different from Espanola, to tell the truth. Mostly we just sat around the base.” He recalled the rocking motion of the soldiers he knew, leaning at sills while reading letters from home, rocking back and forth on their heels, just waiting, waiting to go home, waiting to be told to do something, waiting to be told not to wait any longer. “It was pretty boring. A lot of waiting.”

  “Your room is all ready for you. It’s not exactly how you left it.”

  “You mean i
t’s clean.”

  “It’s very clean. And let’s try to keep it that way.” She poured batter onto the skillet.

  Lucien listened to the hiss of the frying cakes as he thought about sleeping in the house. He didn’t want to stay there, didn’t want to shower where his father showered, sit on the same toilet. He realized for the first time that he was afraid of missing the man, afraid of finally facing the loss. Until now it had been convenient to blame his father for his own death, thinking that if he had taken better care, if he had slowed down, if.… “I’m not staying here.”

  Spatula in hand, she turned. “What?”

  “I need to find a place of my own,” was the best he could come up with.

  “Well, I can understand that, but you just got here.”

  “I’m going to find something as soon as I can. Today maybe.” He felt like a kid caught in a stupid lie that was snowballing.

  There were no tears from Eva’s eyes, no sounds of crying. “That’s stupid. And mean.” She turned, examined the pancakes, and tossed one into the garbage.

  She was right. He didn’t want to hurt his mother. “Ma, I’ve been sleeping in a bunk under a fat guy with gas for five months. I need room.”

  “You’ll have the room to yourself.”

  “I know.” He paused. “It was a long drive. Of course I’ll stay here.”

  She stepped to him and touched his face.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He looked about the kitchen. “I’m scared of missing Dad, I guess.”

  She turned to the cooking and he knew that she was crying. His father was certainly dead. His tying room, the small room at the back of the house where he had fashioned his flies for fishing, was neat. All of his tools, his vise, his bobbins, bodkins, and scissors were there, but everything was orderly. The feathers that he used were packed away in clear plastic boxes with mothballs, as were the squares of fur: rabbit, deer, elk, bear, muskrat. Lucien sat at the desk, loosened and tightened the vise, and looked at the hooks sitting in plastic cups, smallest to largest, left to right. So much order would have driven his father crazy. When his father was alive, the desk was a mess. There were pieces of feathers floating and clinging to the sleeves of his sweater, the debris of trimmed deer hair everywhere, snippets of thread and floss and tinsel littering the floor. Now it was all neat, arranged as death must be because it is so simple.