GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007
Page 7
"Richard ... it's okay."
That pause, that tone. I won't let this happen, it says.
"Mommy ... is Daddy okay?"
Now that pause, that tone—the feeling I'm no longer in the room with them but somewhere else, someone else. I can't stand it.
"Richard, it's for you anyway,” Laura says, pulling at her fingers as she steps closer to me. “Darren was bringing it to you. Take a look. I bought it today. I, uh ... I thought it might help."
I look at the thing in my hand. It's not a ball, it is a ball, it's not a ball. It's a foam stress-toy the size of a fist, with the words We Love You stencilled on it.
We Love You.
What it feels like is your kidney, the one I found two days after I let you pick up that thing that wasn't a ball. It was shrunken and dried by the sun. Only this thing has a message on it. In a way, I guess, so did yours.
I thank both of them then excuse myself to the bedroom, where I open a drawer under the bed to a cornucopia of squishy foams—a baseball, a hockey puck, a tire, a lobster, an apple, a sheep, a pumpkin, a snowman, a toilet, a globe of the world, two burgers, an onion, several dice, and a blowfish. But no body parts: she knows that much. What she doesn't know is the texture of your kidney after forty-eight hours in the heat. But she tries her best, like the doctors and the get-you-through-the-days they prescribe.
As I close the drawer, I notice Laura standing in the doorway.
"I'm going to Angel's tonight,” she says. “Can you look after Darren?"
"I don't know, can I?"
"Don't you like your gift?"
It ought to be funny. Laura's ducked more bullets since I got back than I ever did in my time over there. It ought to be funny, all right, but it isn't.
I stand and step back from the bed, the drawer. “What time are you leaving?"
"Seven. But I'll cook you both something to eat before I go. Honey, try to see tonight as an opportunity. You haven't spent much time together recently. I'm sure he'd like to. Is chicken all right?"
I've dropped bomb-blasted amputated limbs into air-sealed bags as one might do with a half-eaten drumstick to be saved for later. “No, not chicken,” I say. “It tastes like surgery."
"Then I'll find something else. Spend time with him, Richard. I mean it."
That tone again. I won't let this happen.
Then she is gone.
* * * *
I've left the boy in the living room with the TV on and a comic book to look at. When I hear his screams, I think he's ventured around back of the TV again, like when he was four and opened it up using a screwdriver I'd left lying around. “Want to see how it works,” he said. But it isn't electrocution; he's opened his thumb turning a page of Batman, or Badman as he'll likely call him now. Now he's screaming and running, running, screaming, doing laps around the sofa to outdistance the pain. It won't work, kid. It won't work.
Part of me yearns for the shredded limbs, shattered bones, and cracked chests of the desert. I've massaged fighting men's hearts. I've talked to a private as I helped take his foot. That shit makes for closeness, a oneness I cannot achieve with a crying five-year-old and his fucking paper-cut thumb.
In the bathroom, I disinfect and then Band-Aid the cut, more for his comfort than anything else. Then I lead him back through to the sofa. He sits eyeing the comic on the floor as I select a DVD for him to watch. Bambi. At least there's an amount of truth to the part where his mother gets blown away. Once the boy's settled I slip into the bedroom.
First I close the door. Maybe I should invest in a lock. Then I boot up the computer. Type in the password. Cut off the Start Windows fanfare by killing the speakers. Hearing it is worse somehow. Desert wallpaper appears. No man is a desert—or is it an island? No matter, because I am. Double-click Internet Connection. Click Dial ... dialling ... verifying username and password. Check the door. Check there's no sound. Open a browser window. Type the web address. Check the door. There it is. Right mouse button. Save Target As.... And somewhere in the recesses of the hard disk, hidden in an innocuously named folder, a file appears.
Check the door.
Check the speakers.
Open....
* * * *
Laura returns home to find Darren and me on the sofa watching something—I don't know what—on TV. I can move fast when I need to. Not always fast enough. But then you know that.
Seeing Laura after what I've just seen is what it must have been like as the sun rose over Hiroshima the morning after. She emphasises my ugliness with her Mia Farrowesque face, draws attention to my vulgarity by standing before me thin and curveless in jeans and a flat blouse, though she's sexless to me now because you're with me, always, like a shadow scorched onto a stone step.
Laura shines down on us from behind the sofa, and something in me knows she'll set later than usual tonight. It's those minutes I have been dreading, when the sweating starts and a man's imagination runs free and out of control. Suddenly I want to stay with my son, but she's telling him it's time for bed and there's only four more sleeps until he turns six and I didn't know or I forgot and Daddy's going to read you a bedtime story.... I am? I am, while Mommy slips off to our bedroom and waits for a different kind of story to begin.
Half-asleep, Darren shuffles through to his room like one of the undead. It's uncomfortable to watch. He oozes under the duvet then waits, steeple-fingered, while I clear my throat once, twice.
I read to him, silently praying these short fairy tales and rhymes will send him off to sleep, but they seem to revive him into wakefulness, instead. There's little truth to them, and what there is is hidden behind cute animals and saccharine Happily-Ever-Afters. This is my son, I think. He ought to be prepared for what lies in wait for him. He ought to know. So I close the book; it makes a satisfying whoomp! Then I tell him a tale I believe is closer to the truth of this world.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty did not have a great fall, at least, not yet. Half a dozen men pulled up in a white van with sand in its tires. They stood before him, and poor Humpty was scared, terrified in fact. But he was on top of the wall with nowhere to go. One of the men took something from his pocket and threw it toward the base of the wall. It bounced off and rolled a short distance back. Humpty thought it was a ball, but it wasn't. It was a rolled-up blindfold. “Put it on,” ordered one of the men. Humpty could not see any of their faces, but he could see their eyes, and they were dark. Faced by so many and with nowhere to run, Humpty did as he was told and put on the blindfold. They took Humpty to a secret place with cages and stains on the floor. They led him into a room where a box—black, silent—sat on three legs. He saw these things because his blindfold had slipped just enough for him to see under it with one eye. Then suddenly a red eye appeared on the box and the men lined up behind him. One of them made a speech and although Humpty did not understand what the man said, he wanted him to keep talking. But he finished and then there was a lot of shouting. Humpty sat on the ground and watched the red eye watching him. It watched as they lopped off poor Humpty's head and yolk poured out of him and onto the ground, only the yolk wasn't yellow, it was red, like the eye of the thing that watched, not blinking as—
Laura strides into the bedroom: pink basque, stockings, heels. She's in a flap, it seems, like some irate flamingo. I smile; I can't help it, things are backwards these days. She drags me out of the room, rounds on me in the hall.
"What was that?” she hisses, struggling to keep her voice down.
"What the fuck were you telling our son?"
I'm still smiling; no, I'm grinning. Ear to ear. I can't stop. It masks the fear. I smile a lot and people think I'm crazy. I never used to smile and people, strangers, would come up to me and say, Quit frowning, it might never happen. They thought I was crazy then, too. Oh, and it did happen. It snuck right up and sat its fat fucking ass on me while I wasn't looking. Wasn't looking.
"What's so damn funny?” she asks.
I have no good answer to
give her, and that scares me. And so I keep on smiling, like this is some big joke. And it is, in a way. Some big cosmic joke.
Muffled questions try to reach us through the door.
And then we're in our bedroom and the door is closed but we're not watching mpegs, nor is it what I expected to find in here, and part of me feels relieved that she's mad and not amorous.
"Asshole! Sick asshole! You had no right. No right to do that. He's your son for chrissakes and you're filling his head with nightmares."
My smile is gone.
Laura is shaking in her pink basque.
"Those nightmares?” I say. “They're happening now. Six and a half thousand miles from this city. And they could happen anywhere—here, in our country."—Our bedroom.—"He needs to hear the truth, Laura. Besides, I softened it up a little."
"He's five years old, Richard. Five. He isn't ready to hear that shit.” That tone again. I won't let this happen.
There are licks of sweat appearing all over her, on her forehead, her cheeks, the tips of her nose and chin, the tops of her slender arms ... in the cleft between the small rounds of her pushed-up breasts....
"None of us are ready to hear it,” I say, starting to undress.
"What are you doing?"
"I need to take a shower."
"Now?” she says. “But you already had one when you came home. Counting the two earlier today that makes four."
"So what?” I shrug. “Can't I be clean?"
Laura walks away to tend to Darren.
The water feels like a hundred cold baby-fingers drumming my skin. I soap, cocoon myself in lather. Then, with the showerhead in my hand for a close rinse, I blast the suds and watch them drain away. I'm clean. Decontaminated. The first step from the shower stall will be another fresh start. It's what keeps me coming back again and again and again. But there's always something I miss: that spot behind my balls where the soap tends to collect. And I know I can't step outside the stall until the suds are gone and I am clean. But rinsing down there ... the baby-fingers ... it feels strange, makes a choppy sea of my stomach. And sometimes ... wait, this time, yes, it's happening ... I get a hard-on. And so I start over again—soap, lather, rinse—until I'm clean and you're gone, even if only for an hour or so.
Laura walks into the bathroom just as I step out onto the tiled floor. She spots it nodding to sleep again and says in a flat, humorless voice, “Now's really not the time to have your fun—"
"I didn't...."
She gives me a look. Right.
Then I break the wall mirror with her face.
* * * *
At the hospital, Laura doesn't tell, not even in the face of weighted looks from heavy nurses. They don't like broken mirrors. They can make them very unlucky. I sit in the waiting room with Darren. The doctor who examines Laura tells me she'll need plastics, and even then she'll be left with scars. I glance at Darren sitting on a plastic chair two along from mine. He's ghostly pale and holloweyed. When the doctor leaves, I buy Darren a candy bar and try to start up a conversation. He's unresponsive, taking mouse-bites from a corner to show me his mouth is busy. I slip him the cab fare back to our apartment, though something tells me it is their apartment now, and ask a nurse to sit with him while I slip outside to make a call on my cell. Only I did not take my cell with me.
As I drift through the city's dark and empty streets, suspecting they were made just for me, the wind sighs—disappointed, it seems. Encircled by that single voice with a thousand echoes, it speaks to me, promising your imminent return. You and I, alone again. My stomach knots. And then my feet are a blur beneath me as I run to beat the devil, you, the you I created, or rather destroyed; me, the one who saw a ball that was never a ball and broke a mirror with his wife. But where to go to escape myself? Where to go? At the mall, the mirrors will only shrink away from me. Mistress won't lock the door long enough.
Home is out. I could run myself into the ground, but there has to be an easier way. Steal a car ... throw rocks at apartment windows ... beat on a homeless drunk. Or maybe I should find a hotel room somewhere and lose a couple of days to the mini-bar.
A boy of about fourteen rounds the corner ahead, strutting in my direction as I race in his. Maybe he's the answer, I think, slowing to a fast walk. I'm equally drawn and repulsed by the notion of running straight into this kid and maybe pushing him around a little until he calls the cops. But there's no violence left in me. Besides, what would the cops do? Toss me in a cell for the night. Order me to pay the kid some compensation, and then I'd be back to square one. I suppose I could flash him. Hope he calls the cops then. They like that as much as nurses like wife-beaters. Yeah, that's what to do. Show the kid my cock. That ought to earn me a few gut-punches in a holding cell tonight. What if I rub it against him? Just a little, but enough. What would they do to me then? How far could I take this?
But the boy passes without incident, except to tighten his eyes at me as I step aside at the last moment to avoid collision.
Watching him walk away, I let go of the zipper on my jeans.
For now.
When there's a safe distance between us, I follow him.
For some time, we move through the lamp-lit streets, him, me, boy, shadow, as the wind carries intimations of you and my fast breath fogs my vision.
When the boy turns into a park, where there are very few lamps and every second one is shot out by air-gun pellets or well-aimed rocks, he joins a group of friends, maybe a dozen or more. I duck behind a bush near the entrance, a soccer field's length from their Saturday-night play: boarding, sinking beers, pulling on a joint and then passing it around the circle. Teens are pack animals, of course.
Then maybe this is better.
Next thing, I'm easing down the zipper....
Seesawing my jeans down my legs to my ankles....
Moving out into the open, though it's shadowed here, waddling for the orange spill of the nearest working lamp. And when I reach it, it'll be two fingers in my mouth and blow....
But somebody cries out, though not in pain. He is directing everyone's hazy attention toward something he has spotted. It's not me, the half-naked man shuffling through the shadows toward the light; I see only an assembly of backs turned toward me as they insist, it seems, on ignoring my presence. No, there is a newcomer on the scene. A young boy, much younger than any in the group, eleven at most, strolling through this park at night on a zigzagging path that keeps him as close to the light as possible—though not for his personal safety, but so he can see the words in the book he's holding four inches from his nose.
I have three seconds, longer than a blink but still just three seconds, before the group of boys begins to move toward him as one dark and deadly shoal, and in those three seconds I think to myself, I've never seen anything so foolish and so beautiful—except I have. That morning, when I saw you pick up a ball that wasn't a ball and shake it, trying to hear what was inside.
You're back, I see.
As I stand there, legs weakening fast, breathing in short, tremulous gasps, I see several of the boys’ faces backlit by the glow of their clamshell phones. Aimed and ready. Drifting, but with clear intent, they form a wide circle as they move in closer to the boy, able to cover every face-punch, every rib-kick, every stomp to the head from every angle. As for the boy, he walks on obliviously as words talk and sentences sing and he ... he listens.
Then I'm pulling my jeans back up to my waist....
And I'm closing the zipper. Gritted teeth.
I won't blink this time, kid.
I won't.
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Trial by Christopher S. Cosco
* * * *
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Hunting Season by Rusty Barnes
Late November and no snow.
The Krag has a clip in it, leans
against the barbed wire sunk deep
inside the wood.
—
&n
bsp; Randall sits on the ridge drinking
coffee and wishing, the hapless fuck.
No whitetail should come within miles
but he finds a dumb one.
—
He raises the Krag and dumps coffee
down his Carharted thigh, which
he ignores, and lets the trigger go
as he breathes softly.
—
Randall wants to become
the bullet, the perfect spiral
losing itself as it sails toward flesh
punches and tears
—
into the heart muscle, but he watches
the deer bound once and fall before
the report has sounded. Randall jumps
up and raises his hands
—
in triumphal salute, takes a step forward
and like torn air the canvas pants give
way before the wire; that sharp star
and his flesh become one.
—
Beyond the pale, the deer bleeds dry.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Growth by Caleb Morgan
* * * *
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Max Velocity by Leslie Claire Walker
Fan knew she was fucked when she opened her mouth and nothing came out. Noth. Ing. She put her palm against her belly to search for a kick or a heartbeat through her tee-shirt and the low waistband of her khaki boy shorts, her vision gone soft-focus, not seeing the people in the check out line staring at her.
She was breeding.
How? (In the back seat of Denny Ford's Camaro, that's how.)
Why? (No birth control. It was the law.)
Why her?
Mrs. Huckabee paused her scan of the macaroni and cheese, the conveyer belt running full-tilt, knocking the cans of tomato sauce and tuna against each other at the end. Clink. Whir.