by Lisa Hannett
“Why are you even here,” Tub asks, not snooty. Not insulting. Genuinely curious. The JV star shrugs, 250 lbs of steroid-swelled muscles and nonchalance. “Momma’s outside,” he begins. “She made me come.”
Acutely aware of the jiggle in his every movement, Tub cautiously waves the boy over. “What’s she think you done?”
At home, the QB finally admits, there’s a hole clear through the wall between the bathroom and his bunk, no bigger than a pencil’s eraser-end. He didn’t drill the thing--it was already there when they moved in, ages ago--but Momma found it the other day. Now she’s accusing him of being a Peeping Tom. Of being a pervert.
“I don’t do motivations,” Tub says. “Only consequences. If she’s wrong, you might as well go.”
Clement shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Ain’t no arguing with Momma, Tub. She’ll know if I ain’t been cleaned.”
“If you say so.” No Mama watches her son that close, he thinks. No way could she distinguish between shiners Clement got on the field, and ones he guilted onto himself. “Might as well get it over with, then.”
Ideally, the boy would lie flat beside him on the hideaway, stare up at the stucco, and try not to blink as Tub licked the tarnish off his eyes. Ideally. But it’s been years since he could bend over. Best he can do is grip Clement’s broad face with pudgy hands, thumb his lids open, tell him to hold still.
“Sorry,” Tub says before taking a deep breath, holding it. Knowing it feels so much worse, this unwanted closeness, when fetid air comes wafting out of an unbrushed mouth. Cautiously, his tongue flicks across lashes and eyeballs, lapping up the sight of Clement’s cousin’s full breasts. His mother squeezing into a lacy bra and underpants. His older sister in the bath shaving long, marathon-runner’s legs. Over and over, he sees the dark curves, the circles, the clefts of every woman sharing Clement’s house.
The young perv is trimmer than ever when he leaves.
Tub’s going to need another ‘X’ in the size of his shirt.
The screen door doesn’t quite shut before it swings open again.
“Mind if I have a word?” Clement’s old lady asks, coming right in. Hot pink from the silk threads wound through her cornrows, to the fitted tracksuit, to the three-inch daggers she calls nails. She looks much younger than the quarterback gives her credit for, Tub thinks. Much lovelier with all her clothes on.
She doesn’t offer anything but her worries, but Tub lets it slide. He simply asks her to zip her velour jacket all the way up, then to lean in as if for a kiss. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says, closing his eyes as she talks. Her voice is sweeter than any cake, her forehead radiating cocoa butter and humiliation--not at being spied on. At having to be here, with him. Having to ask ...
Precise as a cat, Tub laps the furrows in her brow, easing them smooth.
What was her boy’s reaction, Clement’s momma silently asks, when he seen her starkers like that? Was there a minute--a second, even--when he didn’t think she was completely gross?
* * *
Tub prefers folk’s disgust. The scowls, the fake retching, the barely concealed judgment. How could he let himself get so bad? Ain’t he got no shame? He’s earned this unhealthy insulation. This blubbery armour. He deserves it.
Better them than the ones who think he’s blessed, a big fat Buddha puffed with luck from toes to earlobes. Without asking permission, a few of Tub’s regulars rub his belly while he feeds on their woes, though it makes his skin crawl, his nuts shrivel. It’s all over faster if he says nothing, if he just lets them do what they got to do. He never tells them to stop.
He wishes they would.
He isn’t after flattery. Admiration. Intimacy.
He’d much rather repulse them. If he’s huge as a boulder, Tub thinks, he’ll be insurmountable. Way too big for anyone to climb.
* * *
Mama doesn’t really visit him, not anymore, and never that way. Ever since that first time, when he was a boy, skinny in soaked swim trunks, her conscience, Tub thinks, has been clear. Now she pops in to take out his trash, drop off the day’s groceries, plug in a new air-freshener. Chit-chatting away the whole time. Wendy got promoted at the Buy ’n’ Save. No doubt she’ll make Head Cashier soon. She gets Tub’s canes and Zimmer frame positioned at the end of the foldaway. Did ya catch that cliffhanger on Survivor last night? Wasn’t that a doozy. She kicks the bed’s metal legs out so the mattress buckles, tipping into a sort of slide to help Tub teeter forward. Fighting inertia, she uses whatever she can to get him to his feet. We had an appointment at Doc’s this morning. Always saying we when talking about Gene. She’s done it so long now, Tub doesn’t think it’s on purpose anymore.
Sometimes, he can’t help himself. He waits for her to elaborate, and when she doesn’t he grunts himself upright, stands there sweating and heaving, hands propped on bowed sticks, and asks: And?
More and more, Mama just shakes her head. Shrugs. What can you do.
Tub sighs. Says nothing as she hoses him off.
Lately, Mama mostly leads folks to his door, often clutching a lemon-scented dust rag, giving the impression his callers have caught her mid-clean. As if to say, Ain’t nothing a good bit of elbow grease won’t scrub away. As if to say, Ain’t no mess in my house.
“Cup of coffee?” she always offers, knowing how drained folk feel after offloading. Tub has a bunch of plastic-wrapped humbugs in an ashtray by the door; it’s one of those antique glass jobs on a brass stand, ugly but functional. A housewarming gift, Mama had called it, but Tub knew she’d pinched it from Gene. One of many failed attempts to get him to quit smoking. After their sessions are done, his visitors pluck a candy or two from the bowl, a bit of sugar to sweeten the experience, then head up to Mama’s for the caffeine that’ll buzz them on down the homeward road. To let them feel normal before they get there.
“That’d be right nice,” says a frosted blonde lady Tub’s never met before. She’s in high-waisted slacks, a frilly sleeveless blouse. Beige hairband, beige ballet flats, beige expression. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
“See you in a few, then.”
The latch clicks shut behind her.
Boredom is better than excitement, Tub thinks. Better plain than eye-catching.
Lies are the hardest guilts for Tub to choke down. Many folk carry them like tumours in their throats, hot clusters of pain at the base of their necks that make it hard to talk straight, hard to swallow. The way this oatmeal lady paws at her necklace, fiddling with the tiny cross in the dip between her collarbones, Tub knows that’s her deceit zone, too. Is it a lie if no-one finds out? As she unbuttons her shirt, peeling it halfway open, so many falsehoods spill out--ruffle after ruffle of palpitating untruths, smears black as the universe’s furthest corners--Tub shudders at the stink of them. Backseats in strangers’ cars, lots of them, behind the gas station, vinyl slick with sweat and cum, scorching in summer. Dumpsters in town alleys, fumblings on rusted metal, rubber undertones, fryer-oil. Antiseptic, hand-sanitizer. Geranium shampoo. Gardenia body lotion overpowered by the husband’s cheap cologne. SpaghettiOs microwaving for the kids’ dinner.
Tub can’t throw up. Not during, not afterwards. If he does, she’ll only come back, angry instead of abashed, frustrated at having all this rancid lard returned. She’ll come back, not demanding a refund but a redo. She won’t stop coming until he gags. Until he does it right.
“Take a candy on your way out,” Tub says when it’s over. Too tired, almost, to speak.
* * *
Every so often, Tub dreams of Wendy when she was young. When she thought riding a banana-seat bike was fun instead of retro. When she sold lemonade to stuffed toys instead of manning a cash register for five bucks an hour. When she was still his little sister instead of his nursemaid.
Every so often, he dreams there’s still room enough for her to snuggle beside him on the couch. That they can sit instead of recline. She brings ten-cent comics from the corner store, pulp novels from the book-m
obile, Sci-Fi movies already more than twenty years old. She brings bottles of milk, sometimes chocolate. She brings silly stories and songs she has to practise for choir. She brings her own happiness; she brims with it, she has loads to share. A daily peck on the lips is more than enough to see him through until morning, but Tub scrubs his mouth hard the second she leaves, sends the goodness back. He won’t never deprive her of it, not ever.
Every so often, Tub remembers compliments whispered across his pillow. Sneaking into his room in the moondark, the words are laced with strong rye, aimed at his ears alone. How lean he is. How svelte. How firm.
How perfectly beautiful.
Always, Tub wants to roll over, away, to snatch back his lost goodness, but can’t.
Sometimes he thinks he never could.
* * *
Exhausted, he doesn’t hear the dog bark outside. Doesn’t hear the door squeal. Doesn’t hear the step-shuffle-step of moccasined feet on linoleum. Doesn’t hear the floorboards creaking underneath. What wakes him, instead, is a tangible shift in the air. A sense--elusive but undeniable--of being stared at. A musk and smoke presence hovering close. Too close.
The hydraulic hiss of artificial breath whooshing in through ridged plastic tubes. Shushing out. A glottal stop in between, the airflow obstructed, thick with phlegm and the promise of death.
Whoosh. Stop.
Shush. Stop.
Whoosh.
Stop.
Gummed with sleep, Tub’s eyelids snap open. Immediately, the noise registers, a constant reminder of his childhood. Hollow inhalations, ever-present. The man’s dark force still powerful after all these years.
With his back to the door, lying as much on his side as he ever gets, Tub stiffens. Too late to pretend he’s still asleep. His breathing, like Gene’s, gives him away.
“I can’t take this no more,” the old man whispers. Tar rattles in his lungs, louder than the CPAP’s motor. The machine quietly thunks, placed on the floor. Gene’s joints pop as he straightens, wheezing.
In Tub’s mind, the see-saw teeters. The past is worse than the present. Totters. The present is worse than the future.
“Look at me, Toby.” More plea than demand. “I feel--”
They never want forgiveness, Tub thinks, rolling over. Only to forget.
“I feel rotten.”
It doesn’t matter if Tub believes him or not. What matters is he’s here now. A heavy soul begging to be lightened.
Lifting his gaze no higher than the pleats in Gene’s slacks, Tub opens his mouth. He shoves his hand in, steadily, right up to the knuckles. Jamming fat fingers deep, he pushes until his throat spasms--then stops, swallows noisily. Old habits, he thinks, slurping pale dribble as Gene shuffles closer. Die hard.
“I feel so damn rotten.”
Jaw wide, Tub pushes until he pukes.
Sugared Heat
They’s building the bonfire in a field on the forest’s southern fringe, a two minute trudge from camp. They’s piling fuel high--if there’s one thing they got in abundance ’round these parts, it’s wood--close enough to the tree-line to make a point, far enough not to set the whole woodland ablaze.
Huffing and cursing, cousins Bren and Gerta, skirts hitched high, roll fat logs with crooked feet, their arms too stunted for lifting. Cousin Willem’s reach is longer’n both twins combined, but his legs is useless stumps that flop below the hip; he’s parked on a wheeled crate next to the kindling, baling fagots. Soon as Wil’s knotted the twine, a herd of young ’uns runs the parcels over to a large stone-ringed pit, tosses ’em in, darts back for more. On a trail off to the right, Clint and six or seven other cousins is approaching, each hauling bigger, thrashing bundles across the dry grass. Dark boys, the lot of ’em, fit-bodied from working the slaughterhouse--but, far as Mert can tell, somewhat lacking inside the noggin.
“Vicious fucks,” he whispers, watching the butcher-boys sneer and drag broken dryads behind ’em. When the ladies trip or fall, tangled in the ropes binding their branches, the cousins turn ’round and stomp on ’em with glee. Soon the trail is littered with busted twigs and leaves. Streams of glistening sap.
Pastor says these tough fellas ain’t never used the good sense God gave ’em, Mert thinks, but who’s he to judge? No doubt Kaintuck’s holyman is off in the icebox, drowning his disgust with cold gin, leaving Mert’s own ma to take charge of the burning.
Not that she’s unsuited for the task, mind. Dirra’s wider than she is tall, but every round inch of her is plumped with know-how. To be seen, she has to climb atop one of the benches planted ’round the fire pit--but even hidden in green shadows a hundred yards away, Mert can hear her short, sharp commands.
“We oughter go,” he whispers, cuddled up to a trembling sugar maple. Gently he tugs at her straight waist. “C’mon, Sammie.”
Around ’em the forest shivers. Birch, alder, oak, slender beech--all manner of gorgeous dryads copsed together, all crowned autumn red, all reaching for the sky. All open-mawed, gaping. All shaking like his own sweet gal.
Mert rubs a scaly palm against the maple’s rough bark, then scratches the back of his blistered hand. It takes all his willpower not to chafe the sores on his forearms against her coarse trunk. There’s no time to peel off overalls and flannel, nor grind cracked, weeping skin against the incredible balm of the dryad’s syrup. Later, Mert promises hisself, when Sammie’s safe.
When no-one else can harm her.
“C’mon, darlin. Let’s git.”
Sammie’s gnarled locks twist in the wind, leaves flailing. Grackles and nuthatches chatter in her auburn canopy; the birds hop and flap, snipping ’copter-keys with their beaks. Mert presses close, wriggles. Looking way up, gazing on the dryad’s mottled features, he catches a falling seed in the eye. Vision blurred, he thinks for one crazy second that his gal is dead. That her slack face--so hollow now, so skinny--her blank stare, her immovable trunk, means she’s fixed to this spot. That she’s up and lost her soul, traded it for permanent roots.
* * *
It was the boars and goats what led Mert’s kin to the dryads.
With those tusks and that pungent meat, them hairy pigs was a good supplement to Kaintuck trade. Them beady-eyed buggers made a person work for their hides, mind. Faster than the nannies folk raised for milk and wool, and they was daredevils in the scrub to boot. Snouts down, hoofs trotting, they led gun-toting hunters on a wild chase through the trees. Even with rifles primed, Bren and Gerta was lanky enough to slink through the hogs’ narrow tunnels; legless Wil was low and right quick, powering through the undergrowth on his wheel-board, spear rigged and ready. Wielding pistol and lasso, Mert hisself had a go--though he was much happier crawling directionless through the scritch-scratchy bush than he was killing. Still, him and the cousins bagged a fair amount of bacon before Dirra ever joined the party, and showed folk what true bounty was in them woods.
All summer, hogs nosed truffles and mushrooms ’round the base of poplars, hornbeams and hazels--but Mert’s ma raised everyone’s sights, lifted it from the scrub ’round fleet dryad ankles, focused instead on the rich moss of their clefts. While folk craned their necks, awestruck at the timber-gals’ beauty--their firm curves and placid whorls, their impenetrable calm --Dirra squinted, taking stock. Acres and acres spread green ’round ’em. Near and far, saplings sprang up fierce, regardless of season. Never mind how quick some folk were with an axe.
“These chicks is damn fertile, ain’t they?” she said.
The others grunted and nodded, reaching to pat dryad thighs and papery rumps. But with sacks full of warm hog, their attention again drooped to the path, and turned campwards.
Next day, in no mood for shearing, a randy buck bolted from Dirra’s goat pen. It skittered between tents, dodging cook-fires and guywires, clip-clopping across the wide field, long gone fallow, and into the woods.
Mert’s ma belted him into fetching the dirt bikes; soon the two of ’em was revving through the gloom after their best cash
mere, worried he’d be gored by oinkers. As they churned grooves through the brush, pigs squealed away from their tyres. Crows screeched blue murder overhead while boughs creaked and thwapped up a storm of leaves. Dryads never was fond of the hunt: the flying knives and zinging bullets, the engines fuming, the dogs pissing on territory what ain’t theirs to claim.
Turns out, though, the gals was fond of dairy.
Sure enough, upon riding into a clearing Mert and Dirra found their rascal goat rutting hisself empty on a sweet little pine yearling. The dryad was splayed on the grass, calm as a pail of water while the buck had its way on her. From the looks of things, she were lulled senseless by the stench of nanny-milk on its coat, the gentle tickle of its pointed beard.
Before winter had full-melted into spring, the young pine creaked and moaned her way out of the drowsy woods. Gait thrown off-kilter, due to the lopsided bulge at her middle, she shuffled a path through the snow, into the circle of trailers and tents. Stinking of panic, the dryad lumbered up to Dirra--who were busy fixing porridge over the communal hearth--and squatted.
As she pleated her limbs, needles showered from the gal’s lofty head. Squirrels clung to her quaking shoulders, but she paid ’em no mind. The owl-hole of her mouth sucked in air, expelled gusts of feathered breath. Grunting like a spooked hog, she bore down once, hard, conjuring up an almighty crack.
“Give her some room,” Dirra said needlessly. Folk were none too keen on approaching the pine madly swishing her nethers, scraping the distended gash, flicking sap. All stood, unblinking, or sat well back.
A minute later, a steaming wet bundle plopped on cold earth.