Starve the Vulture

by Jason Carney

Almost as if by intuition, she reaches behind her and grabs the bottle of pills stuck in the cushion. I am in awe. Lake Ray kicks me in the leg and motions at her with his eyes in a panic. My grandmother caresses the cap to the bottle like a toddler. The darkness makes it hard for her to open it. She pauses.

  “You burn something?” she asks.

  “We were smoking out the back door,” Lake Ray responds. “Those are mine, Mrs. Arnold. Dude, open that bottle for your grandma.”

  “Let me get that for you.” I leap to my feet.

  “I got it,” she says, moving the bottle out of my reach. “It smells funny in here, too much smoke. Jason, your grandfather wouldn’t like you smoking in the house. Don’t make me get on you boys.”

  She smiles, stands, and walks over to the back door. She looks out the window of the door, unlocks then opens it. Again, she fumbles with the bottle cap.

  “Let me help,” I say.

  “I can do it. I am blind, not old!” my grandmother snaps. “Jason, you need to lower the glass on the screen, get some fresh air in here.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Arnold,” Lake Ray says.

  She walks into the kitchen, grabs a glass from the cabinet; the door slams shut a little hard for this time of night. We hear my grandfather restless in his bed above our heads, then silence. The water runs out of the sink slowly. My mind is racing.

  That shit will kill my grandma. She is going to trip her balls off. I have to piss. Tell her the truth.

  She is silent in the shadows, as if this is an act she has done countless times in the past. I move to the edge of the kitchen praying for the best possible outcome.

  “Damn thing is pissing me off,” she says, turning toward me, glass of water in hand. “If I didn’t have a headache before, I got one now.”

  She moves over to me, kisses me on the cheek, and heads into the fishbowl glow of the living room.

  “Forget it, too much effort,” she says to Lake Ray as she passes him on her way to the stairs. She tosses the bottle into his lap. “I got some upstairs. Thank you anyway. You boys got school in the morning. Don’t stay up late.”

  “Will do, Grandma.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Arnold.”

  “I am going back to bed. Lake, don’t let him do anything stupid. Y’all keep watching stuff like that and people will think you’re doing drugs or something.”

  BRUISED

  We are reflections,

  retreating from ourselves

  into one another. Anointed

  in a prophecy—

  gratification.

  A communion—

  flesh bought with a dowry

  of symbols. Our eyes widen, burst with sleep.

  We tread water. Rip the surface of the sun. A bone

  sulfur flame emerges from our bellies

  as we come in out of the cold.

  We are born of language.

  Laughter a sound we never utter. We stand

  at the edge of dreams, deciphering the signs

  that are left for us. The world is a glimpse.

  Men are the scar of time’s mistake.

  Sleepwalking through the fog,

  covered in pearls and urine stains.

  CLANK

  1988

  “FUCKING WITCHES! FUCK YOU!” Yardstick yells.

  “Witches!” I scream.

  “Gonna get you tonight!” Cuban adds.

  The car headlights cast shadows from our teenage arms extended into crosses onto the brown jungle of a front yard of the lavender two-story house. A four-foot wall of weeds guards the entrance, where there is no grass, no fertile foundation for this dwelling to be called a home. Only a forest of stickers and twigs, soda cans and discarded chip bags, overgrown shrubs and the vines of knotted plants baked in the summer sun until they crusted on the ground. The house sits right between two manicured and pristine homes on a quiet street with a big curve in a slowly impoverishing suburb. The best years are behind this town and monstrous structures like this prove it. The exterior gives the appearance of vacancy, but in the back are two late-model cars, both hunter green, one a Mercedes the other a Bug. We are convinced witches live here.

  “Fuck you, bitches! Going to shoot you, witches!” Yardstick repeats, smiling at his drunken-ecstasy rhyme.

  He stands on the sidewalk, focused on the front door. Eighteen and muscular, he is reckless and not afraid of anything. When he amplifies this courage with booze and drugs he is damn near unstoppable. He is the kind of man who is not long for this world. I dream of being that brazen. Tonight, he set his mind on having a good time with the crossbow he made in woodshop. The weapon balances in his right hand as an extension of our off-kilter imaginations. We are fucked up a lot.

  “Come out and play, witches!” I yell as I throw my half-full beer can toward a window.

  I rush up a small incline through the brush to the place where I think it landed. The dehydrated lawn snaps like potato chips under my shoes. The sound is as irritating as the itchiness of the weeds against my sweaty legs. Once I find the beer can, I take more precise aim.

  The can thumps against the lavender siding; a large circle of wetness smears across the panels. I throw my arms into the air as if I just won the Super Bowl. I run back down to the street in exaggerated giant steps. I move like an awkward, overgrown child.

  “Whores, scumbags!” the Cuban yells. “I am so fucked up!”

  We are cartoonish tonight. I look over at the Cuban, the oldest of the group, his face covered in sweat. His pupils are two black holes swimming in the darkness. The white T-shirt he wears is matted to his torso while his right arm rubs his chest as if it’s the softest thing he ever touched. His jaw is clenched as his head rolls side to side.

  “Cuban!” I yell, stomping in his direction.

  “Fuck you, witches, I feel good!”

  “Throw something,” I say to him through the chatter of my teeth. “Let’s fuck shit up!”

  He thrusts his arm up into the air and appears to jump, but leaves his feet on the ground. “Fuck it up!”

  “I need an arrow!” Yardstick yells. “Gonna shoot you, witches! Whoa!”

  I laugh. The Cuban laughs. There is only silence and darkness from within the lavender eyesore. From the car, a blond girl, Yardstick’s most recent chick, brings him a handful of arrows. She looks a little scared, but joins in the festivities anyway. Intelligence is not her strong suit, but she is kind, and smoking hot. She’s a white-trash kind of pretty with awesome curves and very low morals.

  “Fuck cunts!” she yells. “We are going to Wizard of Oz your faces!”

  “Tell ’em, baby,” Yardstick says, closing his eyes, trying not to laugh. He almost drops the arrows, but maintains his composure enough to gather them for the blast. He appears anointed with the role, the ecstasy careens through his body like an homage to some screwed-up god of war. “Take these.”

  She reaches out and grabs all but one of the heavy-tip bolts. The brightly colored shafts have a large four-pronged arrowhead at one end, and two-tone feathers at the other. These arrows are made for hunting, just not this kind.

  Yardstick loads the crossbow with ease. “Here it comes, witches!” he yells, right before he takes aims.

  This house is in our crosshairs a lot. We have come to spread the word here three times in the last eight days. We visit with rocks, beer cans, sticks, and obscenities, all hurled from the safety of darkness. In the daylight, we drive by honking and waving. We have never seen the occupants. The witches give us stories for our drinking games, but they are not the only stories we tell, nor is this the only place we use the crossbow.

  Four-way stop signs are our preferred destination. We pull up and wait for another car to approach and stop from a different direction. At that point, the kid in the passenger side of our vehicle leaps out, brandishing the weapon. I am amazed at the speed at which someone ducks when motivated by fear. Most people retreat under the steering column with the appearance of one of us holding the handcrafted
purple-hearted beast. After we fire the projectile at the vehicle, the fascinating part is the amount of time that passes before the chosen ones stick his or her heads back above the dashboard. We stand at intersections for as many as five or seven minutes, waiting to get our rocks off on a stranger’s fear of the unknown. When they come back to the surface, we cheer for them, as if they have been reborn, as if this is a baptism for their personal growth, as if we are the righteous hand of America’s future. We do not think we are causing serious harm.

  Yardstick studied the matter in great depth. The arrows have different-sized tips; the small ones deflect off the windshield with only a small chip to the glass, the largest four-pronged heads will blow through a passenger door (not the glass, the actual metal door) and come halfway out the other side. We save the large ones for car dealerships and expensive houses. To those in our aim, the size of the arrow does not matter. Each one is big enough to kill a man.

  “Give it to them, baby!” the blond girl screams.

  Yardstick pulls the trigger. The releasing of the bolt is noisy, like the metallic clank of an aluminum bat on a garbage dumpster. It’s not quite as loud or scary as a gun, yet still very effective. Yardstick’s aim is right on line, but the arrow ricochets off the iron bars of the door and flies off into a dark corner of the yard. The street is a rattle of sharp sounds, then silent.

  “Mow your fucking lawn, assholes!” Yardstick shouts, grasping for another arrow. “I want my fucking arrow back!”

  The Cuban and I scream and applaud, drowning in the rhythm of the roll, searching for something to throw.

  INEVITABLE

  1988

  I SIGN MY NAME ON THE PIECE OF PAPER. A man in a white nurse’s uniform leads me away from the admittance desk where my mother sits, tan and joyful, with her new boyfriend, looking as if all this is normal. She doesn’t say goodbye. I look at her over my shoulder as the nurse and I amble away from her. She smiles. We turn the corner; I still feel my mother sitting in that room draped on Bob’s arm. I know she can trace my unseen footsteps in her mind as I walk through the back hallways of the hospital’s main building—she was committed here last year.

  That is why I am in this fucking place.

  We pass by another hallway, the nurse motions with his arm, pointing lazily to the art and physical therapy rooms. The sterile shine of wax on the floor reflects the hush lights. A solemn energy pours in from the window at the end of the hall. The corridor has a ghostly glow. The furniture of the offices, the art on the walls, little spurts of carpet, and the expressions on the faces of the employees are framed in neutral colors. The fourth door we pass catches his gaze.

  The nurse, in no real hurry, stops to chat with someone out of my sight line; my mind races, imagining where the exits are located. My whole life is in this small zippered duffel bag resting on my knee: a toothbrush, underwear, socks, shorts, T-shirts, a thesaurus, and folded notebook paper scribbled with poems. I could flee this place and just disappear. I remember the gas station down the street at the corner, got plenty of smokes but no cash.

  Call collect.

  I formulate the conversation with my cousin Craig in my head. His words are always the voice of sweet reason and he would urge me to stay. Besides, he is still asleep, he will not answer.

  I have been down this hall before.

  On a night just under a year ago, I walked down this very corridor, dumbfounded by the selfishness of my mother. “My mom is an inconsistent bitch,” I say out loud.

  We make another turn toward a large double door with glass windows facing another set of identical doors. Beyond them is a courtyard. My time to shine, I imagine pulling an O.J. Simpson as the door opens. I see myself hurdling the benches and bushes along the concrete path of the courtyard, vanishing into the brush and out into this part of North Dallas. I remember Medical City Hospital is just around the corner. The air-conditioned towers would be a great place to hide and wait for a ride.

  We cross the second threshold, stepping into the radiance of the July midmorning sun. The humidity is surreal, a deafening heat. Everything is a sticky blur, as if a bomb of sunshine has exploded in front of us on the sidewalk. We stagger from the blast, pausing to look for a few seconds at our surroundings. The nurse acts like a tour guide, pointing out the dining hall and gymnasium. To the left are two youth and three adult houses.

  “The youth and adults never mix,” he says sternly.

  I think of my former stepdad Steve and his exit from our lives without a goodbye. He is eight years younger than my mom and ten years older than I. When I was thirteen, he was a twenty-three-year-old mix of adult and youth, already married to my mom. The first night they met, they picked me up from the skating rink in his Mustang. We went to the video arcade until they closed at two in the morning, then the drive-through at McDonald’s. He was just another one of the men my mom met at a bar, but that first night he took time to impress me and not seduce my mom.

  Two months later, after he moved into the apartment with us, that all changed. I always looked at him as more of a big brother—a brother who banged my mom, as loud as he could, and every chance he got. He tried to build a bond with me but we never sustained a connection. He wanted children and I did not count.

  Last year, the day after my mom was committed here, I called to tell him my car broke down. He asked where it was and I told him. Since I was still his stepson, he helped me get it home and fix it. When I walked home from school the next day, I found my car stereo and a note on the dining room table. The car was his. We have not spoken since.

  Just another man my mom met at bar and fucked.

  “AU-1,” the nurse says as we approach two metal doors with a keypad entry to the right. Lost in my resentments, I have forgotten about making a break for it. I turn to look back at the courtyard. The sun is still blinding, even behind a squint. In the two hundred feet we walked, my shirt has melted to my body.

  After my mother got out of here, she moved to Florida, no longer feeling saddled with raising a boy, her life finally lived for her own ends.

  She sure seemed happy.

  So the past year, I walked as if amid the aftermath of an earthquake. I was not sure how to find myself in the rubble of my mother’s life and the half-built temples of my own. At this moment, I am convinced that her relentless pursuit of everything but motherhood is to blame for my shortcomings. While all the kids I went to school with prepare for college, I still do not have my diploma. Instead, I prepare to walk across the stage of a loony bin.

  “Here we go,” says the nurse, then he pauses.

  The door opens. A slingshot of cool air pelts my sternum. I move forward, drawn into the confines of a refreshing darkness.

  FUCKING CRAZY PEOPLE

  1988

  I SCAN MY SURROUNDINGS OF CLOSED BEDROOM DOORS. When I arrived on unit, they told me to expect a quiet day. I am the only one awake and there are just three others. The nurses’ station is within earshot of my half-opened door. I hear them talking about a disorganized nurse who leaves discarded snack wrappers and crumbs all over the counters. The nurses sound like old women playing cards at the Sunday church potluck. They giggle with frowns.

  I sit on my bed and stare into a prefabricated jungle of hunter-green lounge chairs and love seat–sized sofas. The community area is walled with foliage of real trees in big green planters surrounded by lush fake bushes of varied sizes. These separate the living area, the smokers’ table, and the ping-pong table at the far back of the L-shaped room. Conversation pits of four chairs and a coffee table are scattered throughout with giant growths of underbrush trapped below the high canopy of the jungle trees. It almost seems real except for the absence of tropical birds. An enclosed courtyard allows natural sunlight to flood the walls. The warm beams full of dust flakes pour into my room. I watch tiny particles fall over the bed and off its side, slowly sliding to the surface of the floor. The hours of silence watching the shadows crawl and listening to the swirl from the air-conditio
ning vents across the landscape of the loony bin takes its toll on me.

  What the fuck am I doing here?

  Bored beyond measure, I have no desire to leave the safety of my room. The urge to run is futile. I am stuck here for two weeks. Eighteen years old and tired of my life, I have no home, no direction to run, and no plan for the future. I have been running my whole life. My legs are heavy from tireless sprints trying to keep up with my mother and her instability, with my father whenever he finds it convenient, and into any perversion that allows me to fill the knot of my guts with pleasure: dope, sex, destruction. The ramshackle love of my parents’ marriage taught me how to tamp emotions down, holding on for unavoidable explosions. I accept the conclusion that living with my crazy mother has made me crazy.

  Every half hour someone sticks their head in the room to ask if I am all right.

  Dumb people ask the stupidest questions.

  I no longer have the ability to lock my own door.

  This place sucks.

  I perceive Green Oaks to be a haven for people who drool on themselves.

  Maybe they will give me some Valium and let me pass the time in bed.

  The idea of mingling with crazies turns my stomach. I can barely stand to be around my mother for ten or twenty minutes, let alone a psych ward full of insane mothers. This pushes me over the edge.

  The other bed in my room is empty. I remember the crazed and fucked-up folks my mom was housed with, their eyes never really connecting to you, except out of desperation to seem normal. An arm’s-length hello is all I am willing to give them.

  I do not want to share this room with a douche bag. Some happily married father of three who leads a secret life—sucking dick in the porn stores. Worse than a faggot; he is a liar to himself, his wife, and most importantly his kids. Probably fucks them too. Faggots and pedophiles never cure.