by Rio Youers
“Yeah. Well, it’s like this. I’m you. But not you. And we’re both bad. Just made wrong, you know? And I was given a choice to clean it up. Or get cleaned up. And I’m not always sure I chose right, but here I am. Scooting around in odd corners, cleaning up the mess that is me. Us.”
He tries a smile but knows it doesn’t look like a smile. The cat is in the room now, behind the tattooed one, dark as an oil slick against that red, red carpet. Maybe it slipped under the door like a newspaper. Maybe it came in through the light socket. He’s not sure, because he’d seen it do both.
The tattooed man is bothered by what he said, but lets his shame turn to anger.
“Suppose I clean you up? How would you like that?”
“Well. That is the best thing to do with a bar of soap.”
The tattooed man knits his brow together and looks at the bar of soap which is now in his hand instead of the gun he had stripped. While he does that, his smaller self pulls the actual gun out of his coat pocket and points it at the man standing over him, squeezes the trigger three times with three harsh bangs. The light-framed gun leaps painfully in his hand. A picture falls off the wall behind the big man and he crumples like a cut-string puppet, falling so his leg is twisted behind him.
“The FUCK!” the tattooed man says, bewildered by pain and also by the impossibility of what just happened. He jerks his head but can’t stand because one bullet wrecked his spine. Another lanced his heart and one lung. The third blew his keys and change out of his pocket. “The fuck,” he says, weaker, but it turns into a bloody cough. He throws his arm up twice, and twice it falls back in his wet, dark lap. The smaller man fishes in the dying one’s pocket, pulls out his wallet, takes the seventy dollars out. He tosses the wallet down on the other man’s ruined chest, almost says ‘sorry.’ Despite himself, he stares at the dying man’s features, so like his own, thinks in a flash about his own nose, his ears, his eyes burned in the retort of a crematorium or embalmed in a casket. Feels nothing about that except the oddness of it.
The cat nips his ankle and he comes back to himself.
Through the ringing in his ears the man hears someone yelling in the next room and, for a moment, he is worried.
Fuck, he thinks. I shot someone through the wall!
The cat faces the door, growling as if to say hurry. The man springs up and opens the door for it, for himself, and they run. A guy from another room runs after him, yelling “Stop! You stop!” but when the man points the revolver at him, he turns around ducking under his arms as if caught in a sudden rain. The man re-pockets the gun and swings the Mercury’s door open. The cat bounds in, and he starts the motor.
Did he shoot someone in the neighboring room, or were they just scared?
The radio is playing a song he doesn’t know. He wheels the big car out of the parking lot, drives fast, but not crazy, drives 173 to the interstate as he hears sirens, sees the far-off blue ghost-lights in the distance. He takes the ramp in such a way that the sirens stop altogether, and he’s near blinded by light.
It’s daytime now. Morning. Where? South of Atlanta, he thinks, because there are so many lanes and they drive fast here. They drive like if they hit you, you will die and they will live because they are from there and strong and you are from somewhere else and weak. He thinks he knows what kind of thread they’re in, checks the radio. The music playing, which is different in every cluster, confirms his guess.
He merges with trucks and hits seventy, seventy-five, eighty, still breathing hard.
“Did we shoot someone? In the next room?”
The cat purrs. He knows that isn’t an answer. Knows there won’t be one. Knows that they’ll just keep working. Collateral damage is acceptable.
To whom?
He sees the blue and red sign advertising I-75 south.
“You want to stop?” he says. “We haven’t for a while.”
The cat ignores him.
“You do, don’t you?”
He bends to grab for a battered Rand McNally Atlas, one of six different versions he’s got on the passenger side floor, folds the big pages of Georgia in his lap. He swerves a little and a truck blatts its horn at him. He adjusts, bends his head to the page again, looks for blue ink dots he inked in himself. Finds one not too far away.
Half an hour later, the small man with the bald spot pulls into a park in Hampton, Georgia. A green, shady park with lots of trees and a sweet breeze flowing among the limbs and branches of those trees. He carries the cat in his arms from the car to the playground area and sets it on a swing.
Pushes it, gently, then a little less so.
The cat loves it.
It swings pretty high.
Leans into each push like a small child would.
DEW UPON THE WING
RACHEL AUTUMN DEERING
Stage One—Denial and Isolation
I watched my wife walk away, carrying everything that was ever important to her in an overnight bag. She looked good. I couldn’t remember the last time she had put so much effort into her appearance—her hair, seemingly weightless, falling around her once-kind face in dark curls and spilling over pale, freckled shoulders. Shoulders that had recently taken to bear some secret burden I was never meant to know. I could have pried the details from her, and that’s just what it would have been, prying, but I didn’t bother. She hated being questioned about even the smallest thing. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I stopped myself, recalling the last time I tried to show her any kind of tenderness and how she shrank away from me without realizing what she had done. Her withdrawal was so subconscious, so natural to her. The rejection hurt, but I didn’t mention it. She pulled the front door closed as she stepped beyond the threshold and the smell of honey and vanilla sweetened the air she left behind.
“Ma has cancer,” I whispered to the abandoned space. “Stage four.”
I heard the car start and back out of the driveway. She always tapped the horn twice when she left for work in the mornings—her way of telling me to have a good day and that she loved me. Not this time. All I could hear was my heart beating an unnatural rhythm in my sinuses, teased by her fading scent.
She was gone but the house was still full of her. The bright orange curtains which had somehow made the sun even more blinding still hung in the windows. Throw pillows adorned with the curved silhouettes of wine glasses and quotes about love were still clustered on a sofa that was too large for our living room. The color yellow. It was everywhere. They were all things I would have hated on my own, but I had grown to cherish them because they were what she wanted. They were her. She was orange and yellow and curves and love. She was sunshine and life, and she was too big for my heart.
I decided I would burn the house before I got on the road.
***
I have always preferred the solitude of a late night drive, so I lit out when it felt like all the eyes in the world but mine had shut. On the lonely highway, I can watch the yellow slashes that divide the lanes whipping by and I am absorbed by the hypnotic magic of something so consistent. I step on the gas, demanding more speed, and the engine growls, seeming eager to oblige. The steering wheel responds to the slightest touch, never questioning my direction. For a while, I am one with the road and the car is nothing more than an extension of my will.
Ma used to like to guilt me about making these long trips after dark, back when I was still welcome to come see her, but I wasn’t about to hang around and wait for sunrise with the ghost of Karen haunting every corner of Traverse City. Not like daylight would matter anyway. I wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. I passed the green metal sign that marked the edge of the city limits and I watched in the rearview mirror as the lights of the town faded and the buildings shrank down to nothing more than a speck in the murk.
Dark clouds crowded the moon and fat drops of summer rain swarmed the air, making a mess of the world beyond my windshield. The storm might be able to save the house from the fire, if it kept pouring like it was. And if I had actual
ly been able to start the fire. Standing on the front porch, I was paralyzed by the idea of so much change. I imagined the flames climbing the steps and swallowing the bed Karen and I had shared, erasing us. The thought of it made me retch and I felt the acid sting of disappointment rise up from my stomach. I knew I couldn’t do it. The house was stronger than me. We had fed it with the power of all our many years of memories together and it dominated me. I looked down and saw a message spelled out on either side of my foot—We come Home. I lifted my sneaker and saw the L beneath it. I decided I would burn the house later, if I got around to it.
I left my heart folded into thirds on the kitchen table, next to an uneaten plate of food that was meant to be my last supper. It said everything I wanted to say to Karen before she left. The words that might have saved us if they hadn’t been caught just beneath the hard, stinging lump in my throat. She might find it, if she ever came back. I went to the garage and dug out an old wooden sign that read ‘Gone Fishing’ and nailed it to the front door. It felt permanent and I thought of the crucifixion of Jesus and finally let myself cry. Betrayal hurt, even when you could see it coming.
Stage Two—Anger
The Gentleman was waiting for me in a nowhere town off route 23, somewhere south of Flint. It was coming up on 2:00 AM and the lullaby of road noise had me drifting over the lines. Wake up, sissy. The motherly direction swirled in my head, clear as a bell. You might ought to stop somewhere for a minute and get yourself a cup of coffee. I did as I was told.
I eased off the road and into a gravel lot with a well-lit filling station advertising twenty-four hour service. My car crawled up next to pump four and I cut the engine. He was there, the Gentleman I mean, under a neon Marlboro sign, leaning against the icebox in his too-tight jeans, scuffed boots, Allman Brothers t-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. I watched him in my periphery as I slid the nozzle into the fuel tank and began to pump. He swiped at some dirt under his fingernails with a pocket knife and wiped the blade across his jeans before snapping it closed. He slipped the knife into his front pocket and checked his work.
I finished topping up the tank and started across the parking lot for the station. The Gentleman didn’t speak as I approached, just nodded and cleared his throat. The night air was chill, and the dew had started to fall, and I could see that beads of it had settled on his clothes, glowing with reflected neon light. I wondered how long he must have been standing there.
I took my time pouring a cup of coffee and made small talk with the clerk at the checkout. How’s your night going and See a lot of weirdos working this late in the middle of nowhere? I hoped she might mention the Gentleman outside and assure me that he was some harmless local or a co-worker on a break. She didn’t speak a word of him. I hoped too that the chatter would fill enough time that he might be gone when I came out of the store. He wasn’t. He was still leaning there against the ice chest, like he belonged nowhere else.
I did my best to ignore him as I passed, but I could feel his eyes on me, dissecting me. He knew he had my attention.
“In a hurry?” His voice was bourbon and ginger beer, pouring from the near-lipless slit of his mouth. Obscenely casual. I knew it was a stranger’s voice, or it should have been, but I couldn’t swear it was so. It seemed somehow more familiar than my own. I turned and gave him a look as if to say you’re wasting your time. He slid the aviators down the ridge of his nose and I could see that his eyes weren’t much more pronounced than his mouth. They were drawn thin and dark and too close together, sitting just above his aquiline beak. They seemed to catch the light of some ember that wasn’t apparently there, and it reflected out at me from the deep sockets set beneath his heavy brow.
“I’m not into men, so you can lay off it,” I said in a flat tone. The last thing I wanted was to stir any excitement between us that he might mistake as interest.
“Me either. Can’t say I blame you.” He laughed. I didn’t.
I’d heard that line, or some variation of it, a million times. It was his way of continuing to flirt, trying to somehow relate to me, even after I had shot him in the balls. You have to admire the tenacity, my aunt June always told me. She was an old school dyke with a sense of humor about that sort of thing. Everyone said I took after her more than I did my own parents, and they blamed her for making me gay, but I was never able to break out of my hard-ass ways when it came to men like she had.
“What do you want? A couple of bucks? A ride someplace? A blowjob? What can I do for you, man?”
“I just wanted to know if you were in a hurry. That’s it.” He repositioned his sunglasses and crossed his arms. “You like to read into things, don’t you? Your girlfriend must have some patience.”
I was biting my nails. A nervous habit I had developed as a kid to keep my mouth busy when I wanted to say something mean. I couldn’t help it. Karen wasn’t here to defend herself and I could let fly every horrible thing I had ever wanted to say about her —things I wanted to believe and would want other people to believe—and nobody could speak a word to the contrary, but somehow it didn’t feel right. “Yeah. She used to.” I removed the bleeding fingertip from my mouth and spat a nail into the dusty gravel at my feet.
“Past tense, huh?” he said. “Makes sense.”
“What the hell—” My throat was dry, and I choked on what remained of my protest.
“You look like shit.” He pointed a finger in my face. “The bags under your eyes. Them all bloodshot. You been crying. Miserable. If that’s how she makes you feel, you might just be better off without her, that’s all I’m saying.”
A slow ringing began to build in my ears, as if every part of me wanted to drown out the Gentleman’s truths. “Get fucked,” I said, defeated. I hadn’t considered just how much and how hard I had been crying since I left the house, but if it was obvious enough for a stranger to point out in low-light, Christ I must have looked a horror and a half to the checkout clerk, painted by the fluorescent glow inside the store.
“You’re in some mood, huh? And hey, I been trying to get fucked all night,” he said. “The only pussy I’ve met out here was a couple of stray cats and a sad-sack lesbian. Them cats wasn’t yours, was they?”
“I don’t have time for this shit.” I turned and started for my car.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to lighten the mood, huh? You look like you could use a laugh.”
“Motherfucker. No.” I stopped but did not turn to face him. “My wife left me today and my goddamn mother is dying of cancer while I’m here, standing in some bumfuck parking lot, letting . . . whoever the fuck you are . . . chat me up. I don’t need a laugh, I need to leave.”
“I’m the Gentleman,” he said, sounding like he actually meant it.
“The Gentle—seriously, man, go fuck yourself.” I reached my car and threw open the driver side door, turning to give him one final look. One last glare at this cocky prick of a man who was now far too privy to the dirty details of my bullshit life.
“If you could get her back, would you? I could help with that sort of thing, you know?”
I slammed the car door and cranked the engine.
“Think about it,” he shouted and waved goodbye.
The ‘68 Charger roared to life and I mashed the gas pedal to the floor a few times, sending the tach needle into the red and making more than a little racket. I pulled the console shifter into drive and stomped the gas, cutting the wheel and spinning up a cloud of gravel dust, hoping to choke some of the smugness out of the Gentleman and put a little grit in his smile.
Stage Three—Bargaining
I crossed over into Ohio with the Gentleman’s question burrowing deeper into my brain. If you could get her back, would you? I wasn’t sure. If Karen did come back, she could just as easily leave me again. Would it even be worth it? To feel that helpless ache splitting my heart into pieces as I watched her leave a second time. Could I put myself through that kind of pain, or would I finally lose my shit for good?
&n
bsp; Then again, there was a chance she wouldn’t leave. If I had been more present in our relationship, she might not have abandoned what we had in the first place. If I had listened more closely to her stories—all of them, not just some. If I had responded with some kind of genuine interest instead of a distracted grunt. If I could have taken my head out of my work long enough to give her just a few minutes of my time, I might not be in this shit situation. Ma would still be sick, sure, but Karen would be here next to me. I’d still be moping down the road to Kentucky to watch my ma die, but I wouldn’t be doing it alone. I’d have a hand to hold onto. I’d have something to keep me grounded, some way to connect myself to the real world and let me know there was a life to come back to when the sadness had passed.
Would I get her back if I could? Yeah, probably I would. I would fight for Karen if I knew I stood a chance of making the sort of future together we had dreamed up during our courting days. I could make her happy, I was confident enough about that. I had for many years. All I needed to do was be less of an asshole. Make my heart a big enough place for her to live.
I puffed up my cheeks and let out an annoyed gust of breath. I don’t even know why I would entertain the notion. Karen wasn’t coming back. She was too proud for that. Still, the thought gnawed at me like a dog on a rawhide. What had once been my ma’s voice swimming through my head with sweet Southern doses of practical advice was now replaced with the Gentleman’s hypothetical nonsense. I could help with that sort of thing, you know? Like hell he could.
For more miles than I cared to count, the only luster that broke through the inky gloom of the pre-dawn was my headlights. There were no street lamps overhead and no real glow of the moon or stars to speak of on this particular stretch of road. The thick canvas of oak and birch climbed high on either side of me and choked out heaven. A little way ahead, the asphalt raised slightly to a set of railroad tracks. Any other time I had driven this road, the thought of touching the brakes wouldn’t have entered my mind, preferring instead to sail over the ridge at full speed and catch a little air. Now, though—and for the first time I could recall—the shafts of light from my high beams clashed with the flashing red crossing lights that warned of a coming train, accompanied by a knell that split the usual still of the hour.