Fat Man and Little Boy

by Mike Meginnis

  Fat Man belches nervously, biting it back so the stench and the sound die in his mouth, becoming a burn in his throat. He wipes tears from his eyes.

  “It’s like fingerprint ink,” says Mr. Rousseau.

  Fat Man weeps openly. He blubbers, “You don’t get it.” Spit running down his chin.

  “There, there,” says Mr. Rousseau. He rubs the fat man’s back in circles. “So we caught you. You had to know it would happen. Crack cops like us.”

  “All those dead girls,” says Mr. Bruce. “You wanted to be caught.”

  Spit bubbles pop as Fat Man speaks, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s not enough.”

  Mr. Bruce says, “Evidence? We’re still building our case. Unless you are willing to turn yourself in. If you feel guilty, as you should. We brought the cuffs. You could try them on. See how you like their fit.”

  “No,” says Fat Man, running at the nose, rubbing his palms in slow, vertical swipes across the tabletop, and then again, and again. “No, no, no. No, oh no. They’re not enough.”

  “You mean you’ll kill more?” says Mr. Rousseau. “We won’t let you.”

  “I mean you need more names. Hundreds of times more names. Thousands of times more. There are scores of hundreds of women you haven’t named, dead women, dead children.”

  “Is this a confession?” says Mr. Rousseau to Mr. Bruce, taking the pencil from his partner’s hand—apparently, to write it down.

  “Exaggeration does you no good,” says Mr. Bruce. “If you want to be arrested, there can be no falsehoods in your acceptance of guilt. The scales of justice require you only take credit for what wrongs you have done with your own black hands—there can be no falsehood. Otherwise the scales will be lies, and the exercise moot. So if you tell me you killed hundreds of thousands, you’d better hope that you can name them all, if you want to be damned properly, and in proportion to your crimes.”

  “Let me write this down,” says Mr. Rousseau, who takes the list of names from Mr. Bruce and lays it face-down on the table so he can use the blank side.

  “What were their names?” says Mr. Bruce.

  “I don’t know their names,” says Fat Man. He wipes his eyes with his shirt, clears what he can from his mouth with his palms, wiping them to make a glistening shellac across the table.

  “They were strangers?” says Mr. Bruce.

  “Perfect strangers. I didn’t know a one. I didn’t see them, even.”

  “You’re not being serious. Give back my pencil, Mr. Rousseau. He’s trying to foul up our investigation. He wants to make it sprawl. He’ll have us busy for years, hunting go-nowhere leads. If he really wanted to be punished, he would give us their names.”

  “Or at least descriptions, if he doesn’t remember the names,” says Mr. Rousseau.

  “Precisely.”

  Fat Man closes his eyes and presses his temples. He thinks what’ll happen to Little Boy if he goes to prison. He thinks also of the guilt his brother shares. He thinks how Little Boy would never come clean on his own. Fat Man will have to take the fall for both of them. He can be the guilty one. Little Boy can be the innocent. In this way they can live as they should, imprisoned and free. They can do both. Little matter if one should be responsible for one half and one for the other. It’s easier that way—to share the guilt, share the prison, is impossible. Better that the heavy one should have to take the heavy load.

  Innocence is the hardest thing. He wouldn’t know where to start.

  “I won’t give myself up,” says Fat Man. “That’s not how it works. You’re still something like police. Connect me to these women in a court of law, you can put me away. Find the others, you can put me away for them too. Keep me locked up for the rest of time. But I won’t do your job. You find the evidence. You get the testimony.”

  “We’ll talk to Matthew now, if you’ll kindly call him to us,” says Mr. Bruce. He takes a bar of chocolate from his pocket, peels the wrapping off one end, lays it down on the table.

  “My nephew doesn’t talk.”

  “You mean you’ve trained him to be afraid of police.”

  “I mean it’s a miracle if anyone gets a full sentence out of him. You can try, though.”

  He goes to the door and shouts for Little Boy. “Matthew,” he calls. “Matthew!”

  They sit together, waiting. He says, “I’d like a little chocolate if you can spare it.”

  Mr. Bruce sneers. He has a piece himself, but does not share.

  LITTLE BOY LISTENS

  Upon Little Boy’s sitting down, Mr. Bruce offers him the chocolate bar. If the missing piece concerns him Little Boy doesn’t say so. He sucks his treat to make it last. The once-police ask him questions. He doesn’t answer most.

  “Matthew, do you know any of these women?” says Mr. Bruce. He reads a long list. Little Boy shakes his head. He really doesn’t. A couple sound familiar. The rest are mysteries to him.

  They describe the murders. How the girls were found. Some with necks snapped like flower stems. Some with guts cut out. Some merely disappeared. They might have run away, concedes the short one, but they fit the pattern: young, pregnant, pretty.

  A feeling like a toothache grows in the center of Little Boy’s brain.

  In a wasteland you can look for food, water, or people. You can wait to die. You can assign the blame for what’s been done, or you can accept it for what it is and survive. The food and the water can wait. The people can’t. They can’t wait to find the food and water. Some are screaming in a makeshift hospital bed. Others have glass in their feet. Ask yourself why you get nothing but hurt and bellyache. It’s best to eat with other people if you have to eat. It’s best to drink alone.

  After the incident in Masumi’s cabin, after vomiting outside, after falling asleep on the grass, Little Boy found a taste for wines and spirits. He sneaks them where he can. They make a feeling like the toothache, or the tooth itself, only numb, a calcium whiteness coating the nerves, a bone-brittle fog. He hid the bottles in the blankets of the bed in his secret cabin, then, under cover of night and moon glow, he moved them to his second secret cabin, in both cases leaving several glasses in the dresser, tipped over on their sides.

  They roll and clink together when he opens the drawers. Then he has a taste. The taste is good. It makes him sleep. The sleep is good, and dreamless, apart from certain vivid flashes.

  Mr. Bruce says, “I know you didn’t mean to do anything you did.”

  This is true. Little Boy didn’t mean it.

  “It was all your uncle’s fault. He’ll be held responsible. All you have to do is help us. Cooperate, and we’ll cooperate with you. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.”

  Fat Man looks at him and nods. Maybe he wants to be turned in. For what, though?

  They ask him how he sleeps at night. Alone? With help? Does his uncle touch him? Does someone hurt him? Has he ever hurt someone? Or something? Maybe they’re asking what he’s done to other people. Maybe they’re asking what other people have done to him. Maybe they don’t recognize a distinction.

  “Sometimes a little boy gets confused. He doesn’t know who his friends are.”

  His hair is getting long. He lets it fall over his eyes. He sucks his teeth, prodding their backs with his tongue. He sometimes wonders if these are baby teeth or grownup teeth, and if the former, will he lose them, and if the latter, can he keep them? He sucks the chocolate.

  The short one is rubbing his shoulders. He purrs into Little Boy’s ear.

  “If you tell us what you know . . . a very wealthy man . . . kind . . . he might adopt you . . . very grateful . . . tutors . . . fencing . . . horseback . . . imagine. All the chocolate you can eat . . . shares in the factory . . . a house like a palace . . . you never know, it never hurts to ask . . . he always wanted a son to call his own . . . only tell us what you’ve seen.”

  Little B
oy shivers.

  “You’ve got to gather your wits, now. Think carefully. Does your uncle ever do suspicious things? Does he disappear for days at a time? Does he bring home unfamiliar garments or bottles? Does he cry suddenly? Does he talk in his sleep?”

  Sometimes Fat Man says things with his eyes closed. It might be sleep. He narrates the apocalypse. “Dogs dragging their bellies,” he says, “over a junkyard.” Bees falling from the air, wings stripped. Boot treads sculpt the sand. Water in strange places—in shoes, in overturned umbrellas, in cars, in bags, in egg cartons, in fish tins, in capitols—frozen, come winter, into eccentric ice cubes.

  “Bodies twisted in half, their shoes going one way, their hats in the other.” No more Jews, no more Japanese, all the blacks dead, white men perhaps an extra winter, warming themselves beneath the piled corpses of their enemies, blood igloos, all congealed, cat fur coats. “A smell you can’t get out.” The ocean swelling. Radio waves turned poison. Cups full with twitching ocular nerves. Piled teeth. “All manner of swarm.” Fumes. Horror.

  “What are you thinking?” asks Mr. Rousseau.

  “What?” says Little Boy. He bites the chocolate bar through. It sticks on his teeth.

  The short one cuffs his ear. Bright, brief stars.

  “You can’t beat a witness,” shouts Fat Man, standing from his chair with some effort, stomping his left hoof.

  “You can discipline a child.” Mr. Bruce slaps the back of Little Boy’s head. “Come on. Tell us what you’ve seen.”

  Little Boy puts his face on the table. “I don’t understand what we’re doing.”

  Mr. Bruce screams, “WE ARE RIGHTING THE GODDAMNED SCALES OF JUSTICE.” He rips the chocolate from Little Boy’s hands—an audible snap as the string of drool connecting his chin to the bar breaks, spattering his cheek.

  Now Rosie bursts through the door. “What in hell is going on here?”

  She says it in English, in Spanish, in French, in Japanese.

  Four languages for inner and outer peace.

  In a barren field you can plant seeds or you can leave things as they are. You can break the silence or keep it. The widow chases the police out of the cabin. They say she can’t do that. She says get off her land. They say it is French land. She says the French sold it. She harps on French surrender. The once-police defend their country. Fat Man makes a farting sound with his mouth and hands. Rosie invokes the image of her husband hanging from a parachute, shot to pieces in a tree. This was for their freedom. Little Boy pretends to be asleep on the table. When everyone is dead you can try to bring them back, you can bury the bodies, or you can step over them.

  Fat Man says he will bodily carry out the intruders and throw them at the wheels of their car. They say they will be back. They will find all the victims. They’ll name them. When all names are all collected they’ll come back, and then he’ll see what justice is. The short one knocks over a mirror. Rosie demands he pay for its replacement. He says he will not pay. She demands he pay for the mirror’s replacement. He pays.

  Little Boy enjoys the silence—the quiet shiftings and huffs of the short one searching for his wallet, lost among the many pockets, the shuffles and puffs as he takes the paper money from its folds.

  “Now go,” says Fat Man.

  Seeing Little Boy is asleep, Rosie lifts him and lays him on the bed. In a minute he will shift and wrap himself in the blankets. His chocolate lips will smear the pillow case, leaving a brown sideways smile.

  “Why are you crying?” says Rosie.

  Little Boy can’t see it without opening his eyes. He can’t hear it either; instead the slow, pacing shuffle of his brother’s shoes on the floor.

  “I hate to see a man cry.”

  Some time later Little Boy hears a kiss.

  “I am not a handsome man,” says Fat Man.

  He says, “I am a fat man.”

  He says, “Your husband was a handsome man.”

  “He was,” says Rosie. “He was very handsome. So I’ve tried that already. It didn’t make me happy.”

  More shifting sounds. None clear. Could be anything.

  “Do you think that I can make you happy?” says Fat Man.

  “No. But I could make you so.”

  Little Boy regulates his breathing.

  “Don’t worry,” says the widow. “I’m barren. I can do whatever I want.”

  There is a whisper. There is a whisper.

  There is a whisper.

  Peace and peace and peace.

  There is a sound that could be a wooden chair shifting beneath the weight of two bodies. All its pieces snapping into the sweetest position of their most perfect strain, their maximum capacity, the tremor of bearing all that can be borne.

  Or it is the sound of a door slowly latching?

  What do you do in a quiet room?

  What can you? Alone.

  The objects are innocent. They can stay that way. The knife did not mean to cut. The gun does not weep. So why should the bomb?

  If you are alone, then no one is hurt. If no one is hurt, you are pure: beautiful and small.

  THE BABIES

  Another summer, after breakfast. Fat Man tickles the newborn baby underneath her chin. She coos and grasps his finger, hers sinking into the fat of his. Fat Man says, “What’s the little beauty’s name?”

  “You don’t remember?” asks the mother, feigning hurt. He begins to apologize. “That’s all right,” she says. “I know we all keep you busy. We’re calling her Rose.”

  “After the widow?”

  The new mother nods.

  The baby is a blonde. Ghostly strands spiral in a crown, shining all around her head, half invisible against it. He smells her head. The sweet baby potato smell. He rubs her little tummy.

  “What a good little tummy,” he says. “What a good little girl. No crying.” He kisses her head.

  “She never cries when you’ve got her,” says the father. “You’ve got a way with the little ones, don’t you?”

  Fat Man lowers his head, shielding his eyes with the wide brim of his hat. “They seem to like me. Who knows why?”

  The father rubs Fat Man’s back without recoiling from the pool of sweat between his shoulder blades. “Don’t be so modest. You’ve made us feel at home this whole year. What’s for dinner tonight?”

  “Swordfish,” says Fat Man, tickling the undersides of the baby’s feet. She kicks and kicks. Her eyes lock with his. Lovely blue. “Ice cream for dessert. American-style sundaes, actually—banana splits, chocolate sauce drizzle, salted peanuts, sprinkles, lots of whipped cream, and a cherry on top. A chocolaty stout is recommended.”

  Now come the former newlyweds, now the hotel elders—patriarch and matriarch—a wailing baby in each of Daddy’s arms: the twins. Their firstborn toddles behind, tugged by a long red ribbon tied around her wrist by doting mother. “Can we borrow John a moment?” asks the panic-stricken patriarch. “They won’t stop.”

  “Of course,” says the first father. Fat Man passes off little Rose and takes the twins, who immediately quiet. Baby Rose looks over her father’s shoulder to watch as Fat Man rocks the babies to peace. He cups their rumps and blows on their bare bellies. They laugh and laugh.

  “Pretty babies,” says Fat Man. “Good little boys. You be good brothers to each other, okay?”

  Now Little Boy comes by. He sets down his cleaning things and asks for a baby. Fat Man gives him one of the twins. Little Boy makes faces at his share of the brothers. They show the babies to each other, holding them beneath their arms, bobbing them up and down. The baby brothers touch their feet. Everyone laughs. But then there are more babies crying. Everyone is having such a rough day! Fat Man laughs and laughs, like a baby. So does Little Boy. They laugh and laugh together. Everyone laughs with them. Someone loads each brother with another baby. The matriarch’s ribbon-b
ound toddler latches on to Fat Man’s knee with her free hand, the other extended as far as possible so she can reach, pulled taut by the red ribbon clutched absently by her mother. Soft, sweet skin presses on the brothers from all directions. Fat Man can’t keep track of all the good little babies.

  Soon Rosie comes upon the happy gathering. “Now what have we here?” She touches John’s back, as the father did, between the shoulder blades, in a pool of damp and stick. “Are my boys being good?”

  “He’s so good with babies,” exclaims the matriarch.

  “Come along John,” says Rosie, very nearly flirtatious. “We’re going to a movie.”

  “I want to come,” says Little Boy.

  The young matriarch says, “You need to stay here and help us with all these babies.”

  Fat Man and the widow leave them in this way: mobbing Little Boy, bringing children peace by proximity. They take the widow’s car. When he is a driver Fat Man keeps his eyes on the road, searching for obstacles, mindful of every possibility, every physical necessity. He drives as if a crash is imminent. As a passenger, he is more laconic, gazing a long way down the road. The widow touches his knee, once, lightly, only a little. He says, without looking away from the rural blur where the land meets the sky, “Do you ever miss your husband?”

  “It’s a damn fool who parachutes into a foreign country when they’ve got machine guns aimed up his rear.”

  “Do you ever miss me?”

  “I haven’t had the chance.”

  The Oriental spirit medium is passed out underneath the tree that’s like a willow. The branches pull away from her as best they can, rising up on end. The effect is that of a large, powerless animal raising its hackles, as much to beg for mercy as to press a threat. The shadow avoids the medium as well, falling against the sun, out in the open, diametrically opposite the direction of every other shadow cast by every other thing. The medium’s legs are splayed within her red, silken robe, which is parted too far up, a sliver of pale skin, smooth and smooth, and the inner silk, a darker shade of red. There are loose threads at the fringes. Her forearm lies across her eyes to shield them from the light. There is a vodka bottle flat on its side, among the roots, empty of all but the dregs. Little Boy takes the bottle. He tilts it in circles, sloshing the liquor.