by Rich Horton
“Cross me on this, you’ll regret it,” he says.
“Get thee behind me,” says Giff.
So, a little tense.
My phone rings. Ms. Durrell again. She’s got a small vocal outraged group coming at four to eat her alive. Where the hell am I? Those dioxin books? Had something to do with a donkey, “Donkey Dioxin, Who Got the Job Done”? Or it was possibly an ape or possum or some such shit? She remembers a scene at the end with some grateful villagers, where the ape/possum/donkey/whatever gave the kids a ride, and also the thing came with a CD?
“Go,” Rimney says. “Elliot and I will work this out.”
By the time I get the books out of Storage and over to Environmental it’s after five.
I clock out, race home through our wincing little town. Some drunks outside the Twit are heaving slushballs up at the laughing neon Twit. Blockbuster has a new program of identifying all videos as either Artsy or Regular. Two beautiful girls in heels struggle down to the banks of the Ottowattamie, holding each other up. Why are they going down there? It’s dusk and that part of the river’s just mud and an old barge.
I wish I could ask them but I don’t have time. When I’m late Mom and Dad race around shouting, “Where? Where? Where?” It always ends in this bitter mutual crying. It’s just one of their things. Like when it rains, they go up to the ceiling and lie there facing up. Like when feeling affectionate, they run full speed toward each other and pass through, moaning/laughing.
The night of the Latvians I was out with Cleo from Vehicles. We went parking, watched some visiting Warthogs practice their night-firing. Things heated up. She had a room on the side of a house, wobbly wooden stairs leading up. Did I call, say I’d be late, say I might not be back at all? No, I did not. Next morning I came home, found the house taped off. For the body locations, the cops didn’t use chalk. There was just a piece of loose-leaf on the stairs labelled “Deceased Female” and one on the kitchen floor labelled “Deceased Male.”
I tell myself, If I’d been home, I’d be dead, too. The Latvians had guns. They came in quick, on crack, so whacked out they forgot to even steal anything.
Still. Mom’s sciatica was acting up. She’d just had two teeth pulled. At the end, on the steps, on her back, she kept calling my name, as in, Where is he? Did they get him too? Next day, on the landing, I found the little cotton swab the dentist had left in her mouth.
So if they want me home right after work I’m home right after work.
* * * *
They’re standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the old ballbearing plant. All my childhood, discarded imperfect ball bearings rolled down the hill into our yard. When the plant closed, a lathe came sliding down, like a foot a day, until it hit an oak.
“Snowing like a mother,” Dad says.
“Pretty, but we can’t go out,” says Mom.
“Too old, I guess,” Dad says sadly.
“Or something,” says Mom.
I set three places. They spend the whole dinner, as usual, trying to pick up their forks. Afterward they crowd under the floor lamp, the best part of their night. When they stand in direct heat, it doesn’t make them warmer, just makes them vividly remember their childhoods.
“Smell of melted caramel,” Mom says.
“The way I felt first time I seen a Dodger uniform in color,” says Dad.
Dad asks me to turn up the dimmer. I do, and the info starts coming too fast for grammar.
“Working with beets purple hands Mother finds that funny,” says Mom.
“Noting my boner against ticking car, Mr. Klemm gives look of you-are-rubbing-your-boner, mixed sense of shame/pride, rained so hard flooded gutters, rat wound up in the dog bowl,” says Dad.
They step out of the light, shake it off.
“He’s always talking about boners,” says Mom.
“Having a boner is a great privilege,” says Dad.
“You had your share,” says Mom.
“I should say so,” says Dad. “And will continue to, I hope, until the day I die.”
Having said “die,” Dad blinks. Whenever we see a murder on TV, they cover their eyes. Whenever a car backfires, I have to coax them out from under the couch. Once a bird died on the sill and they spent the entire day in the pantry.
“Until the day you die,” Mom says, as if trying to figure out what the words mean.
Before they can ask any questions, I go outside and shovel.
From all over town comes the sound of snowplows, the scraping plus the beeping they do when reversing. The moon’s up, full, with halo. My phone rings in my parka pocket.
“We have a situation,” Rimney says. “Can you step outside?”
“I am outside,” I say.
“Oh, there you are,” he says.
The special van’s coming slowly up the street.
“New plan,” he says, still on the phone, parking now. “What’s done is done. We can save the Dirksen or lose it. Minimize the damage or maximize.”
He gets out, leads me around to the sliding door.
You didn’t, I think. You did not dig those poor guys up again. Does he think Historical is stupid? Does he think Historical, getting a report of mummies, finding only a recently filled hole, is going to think, Oh, Giff, very funny, you crack us up?
“Not the mummies,” I say.
“I wish,” he says, and throws open the door.
Lying there is Giff, fingers clenched like he’s trying to cling to a ledge, poor pink glasses hanging off one ear.
I take a step back, trip on the curb, sit in a drift.
“We took a walk, things got out of hand,” he says. “Shit, shit, shit. I tried to reason with him, but he started giving me all his Christian crap. Something snapped, honestly. It just got away from me. You’ve probably had that happen?”
“You killed him?” I say.
“An unfortunate thing transpired, after which he died, yes,” Rimney says.
Thrown in there with Giff is a big rock, partly wrapped in bloody paper towels.
I ask did he call the police. He says if he planned on calling the police, would he have thrown Giff in back of the freaking van? He says we’ve got to think pragmatic. He did it, he fucked up, he knows that. He’ll be paying for it the rest of his life, but no way is Val paying for it. If he goes to jail, what happens to Val? A state home? No, no, no, he says. Dead is dead, he can’t change that. Why kill Val as well?
“What do we do with this guy?” he says. “Think, think.”
“We?” I say. “You.”
“Oh God, oh shit,” he says. “I can’t believe I killed somebody. Me, I did it. Jesus, wow. O.K. O.K.”
Snow’s blowing in over Giff, melting on his glasses, clumping up between his pants and bare leg.
“You know Val, you like Val, right?” Rimney says.
I do like Val. I remember her at Mom and Dad’s funeral, in her wheelchair. She had Rimney lift one of her hands to my arm, did this sad little pat pat pat.
“Because here’s the thing,” Rimney says. “Dirksen-wise? You’re all set. I submitted my rec. It’s in the system. Right? Why not take it? Prosper, get a little something for yourself, find a wife, make some babies. The world’s shit on you enough, right? You did not do this, I did. I shouldn’t have come here. How about pretend I didn’t?”
I stand up, start to do a Moral Benefit Eval, then think, No, no way, do not even think about doing that stupid shit now.
The bandage on Giff’s underchin flips up, showing his shaving scar.
“Because who was he?” says Rimney. “Who was he really? Was he worth a Val? Was he even a person? He, to me, was just a dumb-idea factory. That’s it.”
Poor Giff, I think. Poor Giff’s wife, poor Giff’s baby.
Poor Val.
Poor everybody.
“Don’t fuck me on this,” Rimney says. “Are you going to fuck me on this? You are, aren’t you? Fine. Fine, then.”
He turns away, slams the van door sh
ut, emits this weird little throat-sound, like he can’t live with what he’s done and would like to end it all, only can’t, because ending it all would make him even more of a shit.
“I feel I’m in a nightmare,” he says.
Then he crashes the Giff-rock into my head. I can’t believe it. Down I go. He swung so hard he’s sitting down too. For a second we both sit there, like playing cards or something. I push off against his face, crawl across the yard, get inside, bolt the door.
“I don’t like that,” says Dad, all frantic. “I did not like seeing that.”
“People should not,” Mom says. “That is not a proper way.”
When terrified, they do this thing where they flicker from Point A to Point B with no interim movement. Mom’s in the foyer, then in the kitchen, then at the top of the stairs.
“You better get to the hospital,” Dad says.
“Take this poor kid with you,” Mom says.
“He just suddenly showed up,” Dad says.
Somebody’s on the couch. It takes me a second to recognize him.
Giff.
Or something like Giff: fish-pale, naked, bloody dent in his head, squinting, holding his glasses in one hand.
“Whoa,” he says. “Is this ever not how I expected it would be like.”
“What what would be like?” says Dad.
“Death and all?” he says.
Dad flickers on and off: smiling in his chair, running in place, kneeling near the magazine rack.
“You ain’t dead, pal, you’re just naked,” says Dad.
“Naked, plus somebody blammed you in the head,” says Mom.
“Do they not know?” Giff says.
I give him a look, like, Please don’t. We’re just enjoying a little extra time. I’m listening to their childhood stories, playing records from their courtship days, staring at them when they’re not looking, telling them how good they were with me and Jean, how safe we always felt.
“Don’t you love them?” Giff says.
I remember them outside the funeral home the day we buried Jean, Mom holding Dad up, Dad trying to sit on a hydrant, wearing his lapel button, his lapel photo-button of little smiling Jean.
“Then better tell them,” Giff says. “Before it’s too late. Because watch.”
He stands, kind of shaky, hobbles over, breathes in my face.
Turns out when the recently dead breathe in your face they show you the future.
I see Mom and Dad trapped here forever, reënacting their deaths night after night, more agitated every year, finally to the point of insanity, until, in their insanity, all they can do is rip continually at each other’s flesh, like angry birds, for all eternity.
I tell them.
“Very funny,” says Mom.
“Cut it out,” Dad says.
“We’re a little sad sometimes,” says Mom. “But we definitely ain’t dead.”
“Are we?” Dad says.
Then they get quiet.
“Holy crap,” Dad says.
Suddenly they seem to be hearing something from far away.
“Jeez, that’s better,” Dad says.
“Feels super,” Mom says.
“Like you had a terrible crick and then it went away,” Dad says.
“Like your dirty dress you had on for the big party all of a sudden got clean,” says Mom.
They smile, step through the wall, vanish in two little sudden blurps of light.
Giff’s pale and bent, glowing/shimmering, taller than in life, a weird breeze in his hair that seems to be coming from many directions at once.
“There is a glory, but not like how I thought,” he says. “I had it all wrong. Mostly wrong. Like my mind was this little basket, big flood pouring in, but all I got was this hint of greater water?”
“You were always a nice person,” I say.
“No, I was not,” he says. “Forced my little mini-views down everybody’s throat. Pinched my wife! And now it’s so sad. Because know what he did? Rimney? Typed her a note, like it was from me, saying I was leaving, due to I didn’t love her, due to that Kyle thing. But that is so not true! I loved her all through that. But now, rest of her life, she’s going to be thinking that of me, that I left her and the baby, when we were just getting over that pinching thing.”
His eyes fill with tears and his hair stops blowing and he crushes his pink glasses in his hand.
“Go see her,” I say. “Tell her the truth.”
“Can’t,” he says. “You just get one.”
“One what?” I say.
“Visitation or whatever?” he says.
I think, So why’d you come here?
He just smiles, kind of sad.
Then the front window implodes and Rimney climbs through with a tire iron.
“It’s going to happen now,” Giff says.
And it does. It takes two swings. It doesn’t hurt, really, but it’s scary, because it’s happening to me, me, me, me, the good boy in school, the boy who felt lilacs were his special flower, the boy who, when poor Jean was going, used to sneak off to cry in the closet.
As I go, there’s an explosion of what I can only call truth/energy flood. I can’t exactly convey it, because you’re still in that living/limited state, so lucky/unlucky, capable of smelling rain, rubbing palm against palm, having some new recently met someone suddenly brighten upon seeing you.
Rimney staggers to the door, unbolts it, stands looking out.
I pass through him and see that even now all his thoughts are of Val, desperate loving frightened thoughts of how best to keep her safe.
Giff and I cross the yard hand in hand, although like fifteen feet apart. Where are we going? I have no idea. But we’re going there fast, so fast we’re basically skimming along Trowman Street, getting simultaneously bigger/lighter, and then we’re flying, over Kmart/Costco Plaza, over the width of Wand Lake, over the entire hilly area north of town.
Below us now is Giff’s house: snow on the roof, all the lights on, pond behind it, moon in the pond.
Giff says/thinks, Will you?
And I say/think, I will.
She’s at the table doing bills, red-eyed, the note at her feet, on the floor. She sees me and drops her pen. Am I naked, am I pale, is my hair blowing? Yes and yes and yes. I put one bare foot on the note.
A lie, I say. Elliot’s dead, sends his love. Rimney did it. Rimney. Say it.
Rimney, she says.
That’s all the chance I get. The thing that keeps us flying sucks me out of the house. But as I go I see her face.
Rejoining Giff on high I show him her face. He is glad, and now can go.
We both can go.
We go.
Snow passes through us, gulls pass through us. Tens of towns, hundreds of towns stream by below, and we hear their prayers, grievances, their million signals of loss. Secret doubts shoot up like tracers, we sample them as we fly through: a woman with a too-big nose, a man who hasn’t closed a sale in months, a kid who’s worn the same stained shirt three days straight, two sisters worried about a third who keeps saying she wants to die. All this time we grow in size, in love, the distinction between Giff and me diminishing, and my last thought before we join something I can only describe as Nothing-Is-Excluded is, Giff, Giff, please explain, what made you come back for me?
He doesn’t have to speak, I just know, his math emanating from inside me now: Not coming back, he would only have saved himself. Coming back, he saved Mom, Dad, me. Going to see Cyndi, I saved him.
And, in this way, more were freed.
That is why I came back. I was wrong in life, limited, shrank everything down to my size, and yet, in the end, there was something light-craving within me, which sent me back, and saved me.
FIVE WAYS JANE AUSTEN NEVER DIED, by Samantha Henderson
(1)
“Fly! It’s beautiful, Fly!”
Captain Frank Austen smiled at his sister, for she was beaming at him and paid the little statue in her hand no m
ind at all.
“You might look at it at least, Jane,” he teased. “It cost me a pretty penny in the Shanghai marketplace.”
“Oh—of course—yes…” She looked at the intricately carved figure and smiled. It was a year and more since Frank had sailed to the South Seas, and his white teeth in his sunburned face were strange and wonderful to her.
But what a monstrosity he brought her! She laughed with amused horror and turned it over in her palm.
It was carved from a jet-black stone that seemed to swallow the light from the wide, sunny window, leaving nothing but a void in a convoluted knot of tentacles. It was cold, colder than stone should be in a woman’s warm hand, and it gave her a strange feeling, like the memory of a toothache or the lingering weakness of a fever.
“What a dreadful creature, Fly,” she laughed, holding the statuette closer to her face. “Is that what an octopus looks like?”
“A little, although I understand it’s supposed to be some heathen god. Villainous fellow it was who sold it to me, darker than a Chinaman. A trader from an island to the South, I imagine. Gave my steward the vapors, at any rate. He’s from the West Indies, a superstitious boy, and he said that the thing was cursed and would bring bad luck to the owner. I had to hide it away in my trunk in the end, and tell him I’d thrown it in the sea. You’re not afraid, are you, Jane?” He grinned down at her.
“Never, Fly! Although Cassandra will make me cover it over before she’ll sleep in the same room.”
And Cassandra did, and Jane swathed the statue with her pelisse, for she would have her brother’s gift near her, although she was afraid of it, a little, almost a pleasurable thrill of fear, like the moment after a nearby lightning strike. And so that first night, and the second, and the third, when she had sunk into the little death of sleep, the long, smoky whips of darkness coiled from underneath the carving’s shroud, spiraled across the room to where Jane lay, insinuated themselves gently up her nostrils and down her throat, and began their work.
(2)
I buck out of the timestream, recover, and bend over, retching air. That’s why you don’t eat for twenty-four hours before you make a jump, and a purge or two’s not a bad idea, either. I learned that the hard way.