by Joel Arnold
Down at the Griffin house, the snow is piled thick, and the six bundles have been hauled away. There is no trace of trick-or-treaters in their driveway or on their lawn. One of their cars sits on the curb cocooned in white.
School is called off due to the storm.
Darren is still not home.
Finally, our phone rings. Jill Bryant’s name appears on the caller ID, but there’s a long pause during which she only breathes.
“I’m sorry,” she finally says, “but we had to do it.”
My fingers grow numb on the phone. “What are you telling me?”
“I want a peaceful, quiet neighborhood to raise my daughter,” she says, her voice trembling. “That’s all.” She hangs up.
I run out onto our driveway and call and call my son’s name until my voice grows hoarse and useless.
Spring is a long time coming.
A Healthy Glow
It’s a hard life here on the farm. Harsh winters. Summers hot and dry as ash. Crop failures. Disease. Sven drinks too much. Gets a bit too loose with the tongue and fists. I have the marks to prove it, and I know for a fact there are marks on my brain from some of the names he calls me. But I’ve got my babies. Thank God I’ve got my babies. Whenever things get me down, I just look at my belly, see and feel the little kicks and wiggles, and know that life ain’t so bad.
I’m working on number eleven now. You’d never guess Sven was so potent from the looks of him. But I’d guess he’d say the same about me. Calls me Fertile Myrtle. Calls me worse things, too. But it’s gotten easier and easier to tune him out. He’s just a bunch of white noise, like a fan on low, it’s blades whirling in endless circles just to move a little air from here to there.
I don’t let him touch me when I’m with child. Least not in a biblical way. He still touches me in other ways. The back of his hand. The heel of his boot. He leaves bruises most of the time, but I tell him, “You stay away from the baby.”
“What you care about that for?” he asks. “What you care if the baby gets a little taste?” And he smirks, like he’s daring me to say something more. Usually I hold my tongue, and the times I can’t, I turn enough so that the bruises land on my sides and back. But he doesn’t hit as hard when I’m with child. And that’s a good thing.
There are nights he comes to bed after drinking in the barn, drinking that terrible moonshine whiskey Matt Hemple makes, and lays his head on my stomach. He likes to feel the baby kick against the side of his face. I stroke the back of his head. It’s the only time he lets me touch him without hitting back. I almost love him then.
Almost.
And sometimes he comes up with names for the baby. Silly, desperate names, like he’s grasping, trying to get a hold of I don’t know what.
“How do you like Criminy?” he asks.
“What kind of a name is Criminy?”
“It’s a good name.” He stands there a moment, his eyes blank and bloodshot. Then he goes back to the barn. Tends to his tractor or his cows. Like he woke a moment from a dream, and then the dream grabs back hold of him.
Number eleven.
What shall I name him? Or her? With the others, I started out with bible names: Matthew, Luke, Mary, Ezekial. Then I went with Presidents and their wives: George, Ronald, Nancy, Jackie. And the last two, Johnny C. and Reba, I named after my two favorite singers.
I think if this one’s a boy, I’ll name him Jesus. Not Hay-Seuss, like a goddamn Mexican, but Jee-sus. As in the Son of God. As in crucified, died and gone to Heaven.
Sven’ll think I’m blaspheming, but I’ll just tell him to go to hell. And then I’ll ask him, “Don’t you want your son to be named after the Son of God?” He’ll hit me. I’m sure of that. He’ll punch me a good one in the face.
But not in the belly. Never in the belly these last weeks with child. It’s the one power I have over him. The one thing I have that he doesn’t.
He’s got his tractors, his crops, his barn, his booze, his fists, his tough talk.
But I’ve got the womb.
And goddamn, if there’s nothing he wants worse than this child…
This baby in me — I feel it kicking now. Mostly at night when I’m lying in bed and Sven’s snoring next to me. I feel it moving around, like it’s dancing to the beat of my heart.
When I put my hand on my belly, it calms me. Makes me forget for a moment the aches and pains, the bruises and welts. The scars that have been there since our first days of marriage.
“Enjoy yourself in there, Jesus,” I whisper. I feel like it’s going to be another boy this time. Been right with most of them. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”
I turn and look at Sven’s face just above the covers. Sometimes when he’s asleep like this, or passed out on the living room couch, I think he looks like a little boy, and I feel sorry for him, sorry for the bastard he’s become. And I reach out and run my hand gently over his cheek, feeling the wrinkles and the tough old skin of his, oily and bristled. I feel sorry for him and wonder where the child in him has gone and run off to.
I’m due any day now. My belly’s as big as an apple basket. This is my favorite time. Now. When I know the child inside me is fully formed. A whole little being squirming inside of me. When I look in the mirror past the bruises and the tiredness, I look radiant. I smile, and the smile is genuine. Sven doesn’t dare touch me now. Not these last few days. He stays away mostly, knowing how easily his rage gets the better of him. He only comes around when it’s supper time, sits at the table, eats the food I’ve cooked, and only talks to me after dabbing the grease from the corner of his lips.
“Please,” he says. “Let’s work things out.”
But it’s always too little, too late. He knows it, but the want in him is so great. It sobers him up these few days where at least he has to try.
“Please.”
I sit there. Look at him from across the table. The smile on my face is genuine, and my skin shines with that healthy glow. I don’t say a thing. Soon he pushes away from the table. Walks with his head down out to the barn. He’ll spend these last couple nights sleeping in the hayloft.
It’s the only time I have any power over him. And I know after this one is born, the beatings will come harder than ever. And after a few months he’ll take me again. Night after night. Take me in that angry way of his until I’m pregnant with number twelve.
Now, sweet Jesus, I think tomorrow is your day, the first day you’ll see this big, bright world. I put the pills in your daddy’s moonshine, so he’ll sleep all of tomorrow. Enjoy this last night in my womb. Enjoy the warmth of my blood, the beat of my heart. Because tomorrow you’ll meet your other brothers and sisters, out behind the barn.
I’m resting today. I need a good night’s sleep. It’s tough giving birth by yourself. It’s even tougher digging deep into the earth looking for the bones of your children. Tougher yet to pile the dirt on your newest one as he cries his first cries.
Down there with his brothers and sisters.
It’s the one time of the year I feel any power over Sven, but the glow I feel inside will last another week at least, even after Sven wakes from the drugs, beats me with his leathery old fists and asks me, “Why? Why? Why?”
The Nurturer
When the Grim Reaper came for John Pepper, instead of a scythe, she carried a cell phone. It took a moment for John to realize what was happening, but he rose from the ground and saw his earthly body on the kitchen floor. Blood trickled from his nose and his eyes stared lifelessly from their sockets. What happened? He’d been scooping chocolate ice cream, and now…
The scoop laid at his feet, a circle of melted chocolate filling in the crevices between the floorboards. He stared at his body lying there, trying to comprehend what was happening, until movement beneath the Reaper’s cloak distracted him. The black fabric billowed and swayed as if agitated by an invisible wind. The Reaper’s skeletal hand gathered the dark fabric about her throat and clutched it tightly.
How
did he know it was female? There were no signs, no telltale features, yet something about the figure made him certain.
Her arm creaked as she extended the cell phone to John. He looked at it as if it might be poisonous.
The Reaper pushed it closer. “Listen,” she said. Her voice was sonorous, like the dying vibrations of a large, thick bell.
John reached for it and froze. It wasn’t a real cell phone. It was a toy. A Barbie phone.
Deirdre’s phone.
He’d rather it was something poisonous, something sharp and deadly. Not something this painful. Why this? Why Deirdre’s phone?
“Listen,” the Reaper insisted.
Deirdre was only four when a car driven by a drunken teenager ran her down. It happened two years ago, but John still could not sleep at night until his quota of tears had found their way to his pillow.
He placed the phone to his ear.
Again, the Reaper gathered her cloak about her. The fabric bulged, rippled, as if something moved beneath it.
“Daddy?” Deirdre’s voice was muffled. It sounded far away.
John’s jaw trembled. Words caught in his throat like chunks of wet coal.
“Daddy?” There was desperation in her voice. A glimmer of hope, perhaps?
John whispered, “I miss you, honey. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Can you play with me?”
John looked up, trying to read the expression on the face of the cloaked figure, but there was only the dull talcum of skull deep in the shadow of her hood. “Is this real?” he asked, watching her closely.
The Reaper slowly nodded.
Again, he heard Deirdre’s voice over the toy phone. “Daddy? Are you there?”
“What do I tell her?” he whispered.
The Reaper looked down so that all John saw of her was cloak and shadow. But she spoke, a hitch in her voice, the sonorous tone turning to a sad rasp. “Tell her yes,” she said.
John looked at the Reaper, heard his daughter’s voice in his ear over the phone. “Daddy, please — are you there?” she pleaded. “Please, Daddy. Play with me.”
He shut his eyes tightly, translucent tears streaming down transparent cheeks. “Yes,” he whispered into the phone. “Yes, Deirdre. Daddy’s gonna play with you.”
The Reaper reached for the phone and pried it from John’s tight grip. He looked at her questioningly. She signaled him to follow.
Was she taking him to her?
There was a mewling sound, a dry rasping. The Reaper’s cloak moved. John saw a flash of bone as she turned away. She tightened her grip on her cloak. John followed as the world around him turned to dusk. He took one last look at his earthly body before it was swallowed by the growing shadows.
The Reaper sighed. Her body quivered beneath her cloak. John felt a mounting excitement about seeing his daughter again, but he asked the Reaper, “Are you cold?”
The Reaper paused. She slowly turned. She shook her head and loosened her grip. She looked down at herself as her cloak fell open. “I’m not cold,” she rasped. “But he is.”
A small skeleton gripped her ribcage, his mandible making sucking motions at the place her breast would be. The baby stopped sucking for a moment and started to cry, its tiny bones rattling with cold. The Reaper quickly closed her cloak and the crying soon stopped. She turned away.
“Come,” the Reaper said. “Your daughter is waiting.”
Jam Session
I’ve been a sound engineer in this business for over thirty-five years. Worked with some of the best bluesmen and rock n’ rollers to ever set foot in this city. I heard something special in the Blues Blasters. A real passion. I knew they had it in them to make it big if they wanted to.
Really big.
But for some, passion is just this side of mania.
The Blues Blasters were a local favorite, a bar band that had a gig almost every weekend for the last three years. They played blues and rock covers, slipping in a few of their own songs every now and then.
There were four of them. Billy Ray was on vocals and lead guitar. He first picked up a guitar at the age of five and had his first paying gig by the age of twelve. Colin Glassman played bass, Nick Healey played keyboards, and Smokin’ Jon Blith played drums. He could rip a beat out of his kit faster than a bullet through a dead man’s back.
I’d done sound for them on previous gigs, so I knew what they were after. An in-your-face plugged into your brain sound. I should have gone with that. Stuck with it for the whole demo. But instead, I thought I’d surprise Billy Ray with something that in hindsight should have best been kept under lock and key.
One of Billy Ray’s heroes was the legendary bluesman, Niles Ordonez. Mr. Ordonez had grown up in Keel River, a small hamlet fifteen miles to the south. Although in and out of jail for petty theft and assault as a teenager, he became a magician on the slide guitar. He gave it emotion, made it cry, breathed life into the steel strings and bled from them a sound that haunts me to this day. A freak fire during a recording session thirty-some years ago ended his life. His whole band died with him.
If it wasn’t for the glass separating the recording booth from the musicians, I’d be dead, too. I was there. The only witness.
It’s one thing I don’t like to talk about, one of those instances almost impossible to speak of, because once the words start forming in your mouth, you realize just how crazy they sound. But I’ll try this one time, because it might put what happened later into perspective.
As if perspective is even a possibility.
The fire started in one of the amps. This was back when they used vacuum tubes. There was a pop, then an explosion, and the entire band — who had just been playing one of their favorite songs — became engulfed in flames.
It happened so quickly. Bottles of whiskey and beer popped like party favors, screams seared through the microphone feeds, blue and orange flames danced everywhere, pounding against the sound booth glass like a hellish fist.
I didn’t know what to do. The glass began to crack under the heat, but my eyes were drawn to Niles Ordonez. His hair was on fire, his clothes engulfed in flames. Yet, he walked right up to the recording booth window. He pressed his face to the glass, his teeth, his tongue moving behind fire-blackened lips. He was trying to tell me something.
And I could hear him. The bass of his voice steady and solid, penetrating through the cries of his band mates, cutting through the explosions and unending feedback.
“Did you get that one?” he asked. “Did you get that one, Sonny?”
The glass broke.
Flames shot in, pummeling my face, my chest, my hands. I dropped to the floor, my hair and clothing on fire, and rolled around like an upended turtle on the linoleum. The smoke clawed at my throat. It felt like I’d swallowed burning sand. Just as a calm settled over me, a deadly calm of acceptance to my fate, a hand grabbed me and dragged me out of the recording booth. I felt the slap of a canvas jacket on my body smothering the flames.
I’ve seen pictures of the recording studio taken after the charred bodies were removed. What were once amplifiers, guitars and drums, were now twisted metal and melted black humps all fused into a hellish landscape. I was lucky to be alive.
I had nightmares for months afterward. Watching the band members burn one by one as the music continued to pulse in my head. A figure stood next to me in the shadows, watching, applauding, smiling with a set of teeth that reflected the flames leaping off the musicians. Every time he turned his smile on me, I woke up sweating and gasping for breath.
One thing aside from myself also survived that fire.
The mixing board in the sound booth remained intact. A little smoke damage, sure, but it still functioned. I can’t explain why. I guess it’s like when a tornado strikes, leaving a path of destruction, yet not touching that one house right in the middle of it all, even the leaves on the tree out front still intact, as if the house was blessed. Protected.
I guess the mixing board was like tha
t. Protected.
Not blessed.
“I’ve got a surprise for you guys.”
“Yeah?”
I led the Blues Blasters back to the recording booth. They crowded in the doorway. I pulled a white sheet off of a large object at the back. It was the old mixing board, the edges slightly blackened by the old fire.
I’d kept it in my basement all those years, never thinking it would see the light of day again, but sometimes the cosmos all comes together in a neat little loop, and things long forgotten come up and say hello.
“Wow,” Billy Ray said, fingering it tenderly. “Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded, unable to keep from smiling. Believe it or not, it still hurts to smile, the scars from that long ago fire stretching painfully across my face. But that day, I didn’t mind. That day it was a good pain.
“Niles Ordonez. Used on his last recording session. The only thing to survive the fire.”
“Wow,” Billy Ray said again, shaking his head.
The rest of the band took turns touching it, examining it, like it was some beautifully wrought tombstone and they were paying their respects.
“I thought we could use it for ‘Niles Big Sigh’. Give it an old vinyl feel. A crackle and pop feel. What do you think? A little tribute to Niles?”
‘Niles Big Sigh’ was one of their favorite tunes, an all out instrumental full of soul wrenching guitar riffs. A tribute to Niles Ordonez
The rest of the band nodded. They liked the idea.
We got down to business, recording tracks for some of the other songs on their tape. We decided to record Niles Big Sigh at the end, when they were really warmed up and ready to jam.
The day was a long one, and the band sat down for a short break before the last song.
I remember it clearly. Everyone beaming, cracking open fresh beers, shooting the shit, easy laughter. One big happy family. I’d like to remember it that way, keep that image in my mind above all the others. But I can’t.