"Stop it!"
They heard the loud creaking of a mattress reacting to weight.
Missy Elle screeched and then giggled. Something hit the wall. Reagan shivered.
"Tell me about the one with the big breasts,” he said.
"They all had big breasts,” Nixon snapped. He was thinking about the Indian and the ranger.
"No, the one with breasts like coconuts. And they jiggled when she laughed at you."
Nixon pushed himself from the wall and retreated to the opposite side of the room. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes in the darkness. “Do you remember the Indian and the ranger?"
Reagan was silent. Nixon could only see half of his face, but could tell he was pouting.
"Yes,” he said eventually.
"Which one died?"
"It's the Indian."
"He doesn't die!” Nixon said, a little loudly. He cut his voice to a harsh whisper. “He killed the ranger. The bullet goes right through the ranger's heart."
"No. I remember. Momma took me out on the porch because we had to get that milk from the cactuses.” Reagan flipped over on his back, escaping into shadow. “And there they were. And then you came behind me. And the Indian fired one gunshot but he couldn't work the gun and the ranger fired it and it hit the Indian in the brain."
"Was it sunny?"
"I don't know. How'm I supposed to know?"
It didn't matter if Nixon's eyes were opened or closed, he was perfectly blind in the growing dark of the bedroom, and all he could hear was Reagan's breathing. He extended one of his hands and gripped the top of Reagan's head.
"You're a good brother,” he said softly.
In the next room, the bed moaned as if begging for something. Missy Elle was singing terribly, most of it in French.
Nixon took Reagan by the shoulders, bent forward, and kissed him on the lips. It was wet. Reagan was unprepared. He wiped his mouth on his pajama shirt and began breathing louder.
"When should we run away?” Nixon asked.
"Tomorrow,” Reagan said. He swallowed heavily. “So now can you tell me about the woman with the big breasts?"
Nixon licked his teeth and told Reagan about the woman with the big breasts, about how when she laughed they jiggled in her bra like two fat coconuts.
* * * *
Momma Laurent searched for an exit onto the highway for thirty minutes, speeding the truck through Provo as though it were a shuttle preparing for liftoff. No one was behind them. She got onto the highway and passed their motel.
"Our stuff.... “Nixon whispered.
"No time for stuff,” Momma Laurent grunted. She smoked a cigarette without removing it from her mouth. “We don't need our stuff."
Reagan was making whinnying noises. Nixon checked routinely out the back window to see if cops would appear from inside of barns or out of meadows, like they did in movies. The road was empty except for the perturbed grumble of the truck, which sounded strangely like a father late for work.
"You sons of bitches are murderers,” she said. She was crying silently, but as profusely as Reagan. “I'd put you both on the electric chair if you weren't—what is it? Nine and almost seven."
She turned a hard right and the truck skidded into a valley. She proceeded over stones and roots, flicking her cigarette, murmuring.
"You like killing? How'd you two like to be cremated on the side of a mountain? Both of you. You're murderers of the third degree. Shouldn't of taken you two away from the big shootout. Shoulda let you get right in the middle of it. BAM!” She smiled. “Fucking Indian sends it right through you."
Nixon could feel a floor falling out from underneath him. He could feel walls folding. A house he had been sitting in was being taken apart.
"If you had it your way, half the world would fall off a mountain. You know what you said when you were born? I don't want Momma Laurent to be happy. I don't want her to ever be happy. That's what you said."
"I just wanted to leave!” Nixon said. “I was hungry. I just wanted you to pull out and leave!"
A jackrabbit dashed out in front of them and Momma Laurent sped over it. She didn't look back at Nixon or Reagan.
They drove straight up to a wall of rock, the nose of the pickup coming within inches of a limestone outcropping. Momma Laurent idled the engine and leaned back in her seat. There was a heaving noise and then a small hiss as she folded her tongue over her cigarette and swallowed it. One thousand feet of mountain loomed directly over them; above the cliff's edge was a tumorous moon like a hardened piece of tallow. Momma Laurent began to sob musically, her voice following an unseen set of crescendos and decrescendos. Nixon edged toward the front seat and put two fingers on the nape of her neck. He pulled at the thin, buzzed hairs preceding her curly hairline. Slowly, he raised his hand, began massaging her scalp.
"It'll be all right,” he said.
"I know,” Momma Laurent breathed. “Maybe I love you."
Nixon was momentarily disgusted, but he kept rubbing Momma Laurent and telling her everything would be all right because there was nothing else to do.
* * * *
In Nixon's dream, he named the Indian Honcho and the ranger McCormick. In this version, he was Honcho and McCormick was firing at him. There was one straight bullet in the air (this was the one that was supposed to take McCormick's life, but never did), followed by six sharp sister-bullets, all of them aimed at Nixon. The last one caught him, somehow penetrating his rib cage from beneath. He woke up startled.
"Arizona,” Reagan said when he saw Nixon was awake. He was holding a flashlight by its string, shining it directly into Nixon's eyes.
"We're in Arizona?"
"She drove all night. I haven't been asleep."
"I was killed in my dream,” Nixon said.
Reagan cocked his head. He had blue bags under his eyes. “But as long as you don't die in real life,” he said.
They stopped only to go to the bathroom, eat at drive-thrus, and nap. They came into Houston at one twenty-five in the morning. Reagan had fallen hard asleep for ten hours somewhere outside of Scottsdale. Nixon rubbed his top two ribs, wincing in pain at the lead he imagined had lodged itself in his chest. He could feel a film of something on his face. He poked Reagan with the flashlight.
"Houston."
Momma Laurent did not get out of the truck, even after Nixon and Reagan found the spare key under the stone. She did not come in the house until the next morning, her knees weak, her face wild. Nixon could hear her walking around downstairs, straightening pillows, removing pictures from the mantle. She was making the noises of a stranger.
* * * *
Mr. Maltan began coming over to the house daily. Mr. Maltan was a friend from the University of Texas, tall, with a coffee-stirrer mustache and gelled and parted hair. He always wore loafers and long, pressed pants, even if the pants weren't meant to be pressed. On his first visit, he wore pressed jeans.
"I'm so sorry,” he said to Nixon and Reagan.
"For what?” Nixon asked.
"The death,” said Mr. Maltan.
"It's not your fault,” Reagan said. “It's mine."
Nixon looked down.
"Accept my condolences,” Mr. Maltan tried, grabbing each by the shoulder.
Nixon pulled his arm away. “Momma Laurent's upstairs."
Momma Laurent came down the steps, a bucket in one hand, a plunger in the other.
"Nick!"
"So nice to see you.” Mr. Maltan rose, the twang in his voice changing with his posture. “I'm sorry."
"Oh, well.” She set the bucket and plunger down. “Flood upstairs. Plumbing's out."
Mr. Maltan nodded. “I see."
"I'm sorry about this, really."
"I came to pay my respects to Elle. Is everything going smoothly?"
"Could be better."
"You have an eye patch."
"An accident in the garden.” Momma Laurent splayed her fingers, trying not to touch anything with soiled ha
nds. “Everything is running smoothly. I worry about the boys, though. Elle was their North Star."
* * * *
Mr. Maltan stayed longer and longer into the night after each visit. He moved around the house like a ghost, positioning himself at the kitchen table at the earliest hour of the morning with the previous day's paper. If anyone was hungry or thirsty in the middle of the night, they'd meet the piebald specter of Mr. Maltan, still working on a mug of coffee to stay awake. When Nixon asked Mr. Maltan why he stayed up so late, he responded that Momma Laurent was vulnerable as a result of “the event."
Then he would not leave at all. After being shot by McCormick, Nixon would awaken at night to hear Mr. Maltan speaking to Momma Laurent pleadingly from the room where she and Missy Elle used to sleep. Momma Laurent's responses were always muffled by the comforter. Sometimes she giggled. Everything seemed a sorry attempt at something, the shell of an original impulse. Nixon did not sleep well on such nights.
* * * *
The funeral was on a weekday. Instead of taking the school bus home, Nixon and Reagan took the adults’ bus to the stop near the funeral home. Reagan was dragging his bad foot, complaining that everything hurt. Everything hurt in Nixon's body, too. When they got there, Momma Laurent had positioned herself in a white armchair with Mr. Maltan beside her.
Two hours into the service, Mr. Maltan craved nicotine. Nixon felt himself being pulled outside by the collar.
"Momma Laurent told me everything,” Mr. Maltan said, producing a lighter from his jacket pocket.
"Told you everything about what?"
"Oh, God. You know."
In one of the windows of the funeral home, a neon crucifix glared soda-orange, the outline of Christ blinking on and off as dictated by the electrical current. Mr. Maltan looked briefly at the crucifix, then at Nixon.
"I think Reagan's too young to hear what I'm going to tell you. You think you can handle it?"
Nixon nodded.
"I love your Momma Laurent. But we all know it's not going to work out. We know that, of course."
Mr. Maltan interrupted himself to smile dully at Nixon.
"Now, Nixon, there's a story my wet nurse used to tell me before my mamma came home. It was about the Gods of Houston. She had big old bugger eyes like you've never seen, and the longest teeth and the fattest lips. She was a fuckin’ cow, but that's aside the point. Whenever I used to sneak a rib from the fridge or hit the dog or break a glass in the bathroom sink, Wet Nurse would come in, her eyes wide"—he bared his teeth and widened his eyes for emphasis—” and say, ‘You know, Nicky, that there's gods that live here. And they punish bad boys. They're called the Gods of Houston.’”
Nixon nodded. He looked at Reagan's silhouette in the window. He had fallen asleep on a comforter just inside the parlor, Momma Laurent rubbing his head.
"Nixon, look at me. So the Gods of Houston do to you whatever bad you've done to the world. So you steal a rib from the fridge, those furious gods, they steal a rib from you. You break a glass, they break one of your marbles. Wet Nurse had me scared for months, and I never did anything bad. She told me you could see the Gods at night, that they have crooked arms like trees and button-tight eyes and wild hair, looks like roots. And they have legs up to their necks and no body. I saw them every night, Nixon, and goddammit if they don't really exist."
He blew smoke in Nixon's face. “They tell you, don't they, boy? What goes around comes around."
* * * *
That evening, Nixon watched Mr. Maltan undress in the guest bedroom. First he removed his tie, then his collar, then his shirt and cummerbund. The process was pious, as though he were trying not to offend someone. Almost completely naked, he stared at himself in the mirror and took a swig from a small gray flask, his neck muscles swelling when he gulped.
* * * *
Reagan was lying on Nixon's bed when Nixon found him. Next to him was a pair of scissors and a pile of construction paper. He had been trying to make a book.
"What I did over the summer,” Reagan said. His face was white. “The teacher is like one of the ladies you saw naked. She has huge breasts. They move when she talks. They moved a lot when she gave me the assignment."
"They bounce?"
Reagan nodded. “And she has hair kind of like the shingles on our roof. It's black-gray. She's real young, though."
Reagan sat up. Nixon could feel Reagan's pulse skipping in his foot.
"I'm going to write about Missy Elle for the book."
"Is your teacher going to like it?"
Reagan shook his head. He looked carefully at a picture he'd drawn of a box-shaped woman bleeding on the side of a mountain. “I used a lot of orange for this. We don't have red."
"Red runs down fast when you like racecars,” Nixon observed.
"You only draw blue ones.” Reagan inhaled slowly. “I draw all the red ones."
Momma Laurent turned out their overhead light, saying nothing. The door in the next room closed softly, and something began gushing with the suggestion of a shower. In the dark, Nixon could hear everything. Mr. Maltan had taken a box of cereal from the downstairs cabinet. One of the two microwaves hummed, the more sonorous one.
"Reagan?"
"Yep?"
"Promise me you won't let something bad get you?"
Reagan wheeze-laughed and tossed his construction paper in Nixon's face. “Don't be a dick,” he said. He'd learned the word earlier that day.
"I'm not a dick."
"You're a dick.” Reagan laughed again.
* * * *
Mr. Maltan was not at breakfast in the morning. Momma Laurent made eggs and coffee from a powder mix. She set pictures of Missy Elle in the oven to be burned. As she preheated it, she explained that the process was almost like a cremation.
"He fell through the window last night,” she said suddenly. “Fell right through the first-story window."
Nixon left his seat to look out at Mr. Maltan, who was asleep on the lawn. His robe was torn from the rosebushes and he was lying in the shape of a Y, one of his arms bent behind his head. Momma Laurent took the ashes of the pictures, opened a plastic bag, and sifted them inside.
"You want to know what happened? The bastard came right at me in the middle of the night. Just got out of the shower and came at me. I stood in front of the window and stepped to the side. Everything broken but that damn whiskey bottle of his. You boys will know what it's like when you get ladies. Shit, you'll wish you never grew facial hair."
Nixon went out on the lawn in his bare feet and kneeled next to Mr. Maltan, who blinked through a swollen eye at him. He tried to rise and fell backwards.
"You wanna hand me my shoe, boy? She threw it in the driveway."
Nixon got the loafer, but didn't hand it to Mr. Maltan. The curtains still waved through the window where he'd taken his fall. Mr. Maltan took another swig of whiskey and gripped an open cut on his lip.
Reagan appeared in the front doorway, clutching a bathrobe around what there was of his waist.
Without thinking about it, with Reagan watching, Nixon raised Mr. Maltan's loafer and brought it down across his chin so hard the crack made Momma Laurent turn and drop her buttering knife. It continued to echo, growing in volume and multiplying into distant cousins of the original sound. Mr. Maltan blinked tears from his eyes and touched his chin. He coughed out two molars.
"Are you trying to kill me?” he asked.
Nixon looked at the shoe and then at the sky, which was cloudless. He nodded.
Mr. Maltan smiled. He was bleeding from the mouth. Reagan bolted onto the front lawn, his bathrobe ballooning over his frame.
"Well, I guess that's that.” Mr. Maltan said.
He stood up, sidestepped once and tripped over a rock lodged in the pavement of the driveway, fell, rose again, fiddled with the misaligned joint in his arm, and stumbled off. They watched him until he was past the last house on the block.
Nixon handed the shoe to Reagan, who took it, his teeth
still working over a wayward piece of yolk. Nixon had thought Reagan would be smiling, but he looked oddly like his sleeping baby picture, tightening his lips as he watched Mr. Maltan go. Nixon stood up and cartwheeled and kicked off his shoes. He spat into the air and watched it land. He had no way of knowing that Reagan would one day stand on a cliff near Provo, Utah, spread his arms wide, and feed himself to the Gods of Houston.
[Back to Table of Contents]
A Doorbell by Kenneth L Clark
Nobody ask me the color of forgetting—
what paste unsticks from the sepia mind
which knows what's good and does so,
and does the same with the bad.
—
No one remember to check the invisible pens
of regret for ink—we prefer the Oregon winds
to record their own in & out, up & down
and over the rebar. Let the clouds come
—
down to remind Robert & Liz they were
lucky to be at her father's funeral
in Kennewick where she found time
for Stephen after drinks & the wake.
—
Because some of these stones took care
to straighten their aim into her kitchen
past the ghosts of glassware & iron pots
for a brass doorbell Steve gave them
—
four years before Robert built her
a house and filled the cul-de-sac
with the daily ache of beds, bricks
and flowerbeds, now a barefoot rubble
—
where leaves battle with dust balls
GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007 Page 18