Mitch Cullin

by Tideland (epub)

  Pound cake.

  "Don’t spill a drop, you’ll get nothing else."

  Apple juice.

  It wasn’t much. But it was good, as I mentioned. A meager feast. Even after finishing my share, I found myself growing fuller while watching Dell. With the napkin on her lap, she ate directly from the plates -- all that meat, three slices of pound cake, the thermos was her cup.

  But I wasn’t bothered, Classique. I was content.

  I could hear her breathing, a ragged noise, as her jaws bulged. She wouldn’t look at me. And it was like I didn’t exist. As if I was the ghost. She just chewed furiously, a mitten gripping the next chunk of food-and it seemed she was speaking to herself, talking with a mouthful, grunting.

  The shaded lens of her glasses, coupled with the mumbling, made her a pirate in my mind. The Johnsongrass waving in the distance became an ocean. And we were on a deserted island, and this meal was the treasure. "Argh,” I could almost imagine her saying. "Aye! Good booty!”

  I belched, expelling the meat’s smoky flavor, a pleasant aftertaste. Then I stretched in the chaff and let my eyes close.

  Did I fall asleep? I must have. But I awoke to the sound of a quarry boom, noticing that the quilt had vanished. The basket as well. Red ants roamed where the plates had once been, foraging in the grain for leftovers.

  And Dell -- there she was, her housedress flapping in the wind, the hood blowing to one side; she bustled with her load toward unknown terrain, the dense mesquite cluster at the faraway rim of the clearing. So I followed, keeping several yards behind. I was a spy, secret agent Jeliza-Rose, trailing Pirate Food Woman. Her name wasn’t discovered until later.

  I’m invisible, I thought. You can’t see me. I’m the ghost.

  Craggy mesquites sprawled overhead, sheltering a curvy footpath. And I lost sight of Dell, but I heard the happy song she whistled. So I knew she was nearby, further on ahead.

  That song. Lift me up to sweet Jesus, and nail me by His crooked cross. My father sometimes sang that song. Oh what a glorious day, to be hung beside my Lord and saved.

  And I should’ve told you this then, Classique. And this is what I want to tell you now-

  Dell didn’t live in a cave. She wasn’t strangled and drowned in a bog, and the queen mother of all fireflies never existed (had I mentioned that?): the light seen in the trees belonged to her home; even during the day the floodlight shone, yellow and bright, above the front door -- more as a warning, I suspected, than a welcoming.

  Her house was hidden among mesquites, like some decrepit witch’s cottage in a fairy tale. But the yard had been tended; there wasn’t a single weed. The dirt was tidy too, apparently combed with a rake. And tomatoes and squash grew in beds on either side of a gravel walkway, girdled by odd-shaped rocks.

  But, Classique, I saw in the house. And I was careful, tip- toeing along the porch and peeking through an open window -- except it wasn’t that easy. All the windows were covered. The shades were pulled. It was as if sunlight was the enemy. Still, I managed. One shade was askew, crumpled at the bottom, and -- by tilting my head just so -- I could see inside.

  Maybe, I thought, maybe you’re a witch. Or a vampire. Maybe that’s why you need the hood, to keep from melting. That’s why you forgot me in the clearing, you were beginning to dissolve.

  But Dell hadn’t dissolved. She was in the dining room, or the living room. I can’t remember which. And she no longer wore the hood. And her hands were busy with her hair, bunching it behind her head. Then she took hairpins from her mouth and tucked them into the ball of hair, saying, "Kill a rabbit yourself because I’m too busy today. Do you think you’re the only person with things to do? I think not. I really don’t think you believe that. I really don’t."

  I couldn’t see who she was talking to at first. In fact, other than Dell, I saw little else. The room was dimly lit -- impossible to make out -- but she stood near the window, fixing her hair beside a table lamp. And I recall thinking that it seemed like nighttime in there, that somehow her clocks must run funny. At night, I imagined, the shades were up and the house glowed from within. Everything was different.

  "I can’t kill rabbits, Dell, ‘cause I can’t, you know I can’t.”

  She was Dell. I said it to myself. Dell.

  And the person who spoke her name -- a man or a boy? I wasn’t sure. The voice was sluggish and high, almost girlish.

  "You hear me? If I do that to rabbits I feel bad. I don’t do that."

  A man. He sounded stupid. He sounded like my father, when he pretended to be retarded -- when he dragged a leg behind himself on the carpet, chasing me around the apartment. He contorted his lips, asking me, "Jeliza-Rose, are you special too? I a special person, Jeliza-Rose. You love me? You be my friend? I think you’re purtty. I your special friend." I hated when he acted like that. I couldn’t stand his expression, all twisted and silly. Or how his speech changed, how it became slurred and heavy and sputtering. It was creepy.

  "I put food in my tummy already,” Dell was saying. "Am I a maid? Am I a wife? Do I make the sky turn blue? Feed yourself, see. You know how, that’s right. You’re no child, Dickens. I should say not.”

  And then he appeared, holding a red candle under his narrow chin. Dell kept her back to him; his long face hovered at her shoulder, wearing blue-tinted swimming goggles. She’d called him Dickens, and a wide scar parted his bald scalp, as if he had a hairstyle fashioned from flesh.

  "My tummy is empty,” he said. "Didn’t leave me a crumb. Did you hear that? Didn’t even leave me a crumb."

  I felt sorry for him. His voice had quivered. He seemed sad, as if he was about to cry.

  "Your tummy will get dinner,” Dell said. "You’ll have rabbit then, see. But not lunch. No lunch. Right, I’ll fill you at dinner, okay? But Momma needs reading to before I kill for you."

  Then she turned, wandering from the room with him in tow, the candle flickering in the space between them. I remained for a while at the window, listening, but they didn’t reappear. And I couldn’t hear them anymore. The place was quiet. So I left and headed home.

  And that evening at What Rocks, I lied to you, Classique. I told you Dell and Dickens had invited me inside. I said we danced together and played games with cards and sang songs -- and Nutter Butters were served from a silver tray. All lies. Dell hadn’t fixed the radio, and my father didn’t broadcast a message as the three of us held hands (I wouldn’t tell you what the message was, because I said it was secret). Dell never whispered that I was her best friend. She never did. She didn’t walk me home either. I returned by myself.

  But I wasn’t lying about the rabbit-hole. You know that, I suppose. At least I think it was a rabbit-hole, found beneath a mesquite tree, several yards from Dell’s home. I was on the footpath when I spotted it. And the hole was big enough for my head, but I didn’t dare bend over and peer in. Instead I kept a good distance; that way I wouldn’t get sucked through.

  "She’s going to kill you," I told the hole, hoping that if a rabbit was down there it’d hear me. "For dinner she’s going to get you, you better hide. They’re going to eat you."

  Did I tell you that’s what I said, Classique? That evening, as we rested by my father’s boots, did I mention that I warned the rabbit? Probably not. But I'm letting you know now. And I’m sorry I ever showed you that hole. I really am.

  12

  My father kept farting, silent but deadly, filling the entire downstairs of What Rocks. The smell was potent, sulfurous -- so bad that I had to leave the front door open. But I wasn’t worried about the squirrel sneaking in because I knew he’d get a whiff and change his mind. He’d probably pack his squirrel things and head for the hills. And I wouldn’t blame him.

  "Stop cuttin’ muffins! Pooh in the yard because that’s where you do it!”

  I was in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on crackers, making lunch for my father, basking in victory: the army ants had finally been defeated; their bodies smushed along the countertop. They�
��d already dwindled in number-finding less and less to take away-so the decisive battle was easy. And if I hadn’t killed them, the farts would have. It was a massacre of mercy.

  Cuttin’ muffins.

  That’s what my father called farting.

  Or air biscuits.

  "In China,” he told me, "they got a whole different understanding of things -- the louder the burp, the better the meal. And a powerful air biscuit delivered with grace will get you a free dessert. It’s almost an art form there."

  "That’s gross.”

  I didn’t want to live in China.

  And sometimes, when the two of us were eating together, he’d let a fart and then say, "Jeliza-Rose, I can’t believe it. You’re cuttin’ muffins at the dining table. Man, that’s nasty.”

  But it was never me. It was always him. And when I protested, he’d grin and fart again.

  "Stop it!"

  "Jesus christ," he’d say, pretending to be annoyed, "put a plug in it. I’m trying to eat.”

  And the madder I got, the more amused he’d become.

  "Don’t!" I’d scream, verging on tears. "It’s you! You’re doing it!”

  "Whoa, what died in here?"

  He’d wave a hand in front of his nose, laughing.

  But my mother hated his air biscuits. She’d storm from the kitchen and slam the bedroom door. Or she’d throw something at him, like a spoon or the TV remote control. Once, while she ate at the dining table, he ripped a loud one in the living room -- and she hit her fists on the tabletop. She just hit and hit, rattling her fork and frozen dinner and the salt-and-pepper shakers. Then she walked calmly from the room, glaring as she left, not saying a word.

  And licking peanut butter off my finger-knife, I was glad my mother wasn’t at What Rocks that day. She would’ve gone crazy for sure, probably yanking his wig and bonnet, slapping him. Then she’d choke him with his ponytail, or bash his skull until it cracked. So it was good she wasn’t there, otherwise I’d be preparing lunch for her too; I’d rather smell muffins forever than do that.

  "You’re a real stinker," I told my father, "and don’t say it’s me ‘cause it’s you. And you know it."

  His meal waited on the floor -- six crackers with peanut butter, three by the left boot, three by the right boot. But he didn’t look hungry. In fact, he looked stuffed; the tip of his tongue poked between his scarlet lips, his face was bloated, the rouge had faded some on his puffed cheeks.

  "What’re you eating? You’re all big. That’s why you’re farting too. And you’re fat -- your belly is poking."

  I imagined him rising from the chair in the middle of the night -- his boots creaking on the floorboards -- and going outside to a cache of candy bars and Little Debbie Snack Cakes, his favorites.

  "Daddy, you can have crackers tonight," I said, spotting my reflection in his sunglasses. "You don’t have to have them now if you don’t want to. But I made them for you so-”

  I cupped a hand across my mouth, horrified:

  The Bog Man was on the front porch; his footsteps thudded against the slats, briskly. Peeping around the chair, I glimpsed his tall figure darting by the open doorway, heard his footsteps thumping further along the porch, where they stopped abruptly outside the living room window. And then he was gazing in at me -- I almost saw him from the corner of my eyes -- but I couldn’t look.

  Clutching my father’s clammy hand I yelled, "You go away! Go! You go! Leave me alone!”

  His high-pitched voice was muffled behind the panes.

  "Oh no, I’m sorry, no!”

  Dickens. That was his name. It was him.

  "She’s isn’t here anymore, I know that,” he said, alarmed. "I’m going. Don’t be mad, please. I’m wrong again. She’s isn’t here anymore.”

  I glanced sideways, catching sight of him, shirtless and boney. And he was frightened, I could tell.

  He was hugging himself.

  "What do you want?'’

  With the blue goggles pushed up on his forehead, he was nodding at me and my father while stepping from the win- dow. Then he turned and ran, flashing past the doorway, saying, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I thought she was here!" His footsteps pounded the slats, banged the steps, and then crunched quickly through the yard.

  And without thinking I tore after him.

  Jumping the bottom porch step into the yard, I shouted, "Dickens, don’t be scared! Dell is my friend! We ate a picnic too!"

  He was already hurrying toward the cattle trail, glancing back every so often with a spooked expression. He moved like those athletes on TV, those Olympic walkers, the ones my father and I always laughed at -- foot in front of foot, elbows swinging out, head straight. And he couldn’t run very fast because of the flip-flop sandals clomping under his feet.

  "Dickens!”

  Flip-flops and green swimming trunks, skin as white as a saltine, he wasn’t scary at all.

  "I’m Dell’s best friend!"

  When I reached the grazing pasture, he was nowhere to be seen. He’d been right in front of me on the winding trail, but now he was gone. And so I stood where the trail ended, searching the pasture ahead, the bus, the weeds beyond.

  Scotty beamed you up, I thought.

  Then I caught his breathing, all congested and difficult, like his nostrils were filled with snot. He was nearby, crouching in the Johnsongrass. The goggles showed among the sorghum. And I could see his eyes, wide and alert, fixed on me.

  "Come out,” I said, parting the grass. "I see you.”

  Dickens shook. His knees were at his chin, and he stared down at his flip-flops with embarrassment. He smacked his lips but said nothing.

  "I know who you are.”

  His head tilted slightly up.

  "If I run too fast," he said quietly, out of breath, "I faint like a girl."

  He had a small boy’s voice and face, an old man’s body.

  "I’m a girl,” I told him, "and I don’t faint like a girl.”

  "Oh,” he said, "I guess you’re different.”

  "I think so,” I said. "I’m Jeliza-Rose. My daddy wrote a song about me because I’m special."

  The sorghum enclosed us as I squatted before him, bringing my knees under my chin. I was on safari in the jungle. And Dickens was an African scout, an albino. Deeper in the Johnsongrass lurked tigers and lions.

  He closed an eye, touched the goggles on his forehead. "How come you know my name?”

  "That’s ‘cause Dell told me. She’s my best friend."

  "She’s my sister," he said. "You’re the vandal. You’re the What Rocks baby, she said that.”

  "Tell me about it. And I thought she was the ghost, and I thought you were the Bog l/Ian. I thought you were him until I saw you.”

  "No, I’m not that man. I don’t even know what that man is.”

  "He lives in the ground. He’s waiting in Jutland.”

  "Oh. Was that your mom?"

  "My daddy," I said. "He’s sleeping, I guess. That’s all he does."

  "Oh. He’s pretty too.”

  "I know. Me and Classique made him pretty.”

  Dickens’ head wobbled. His eyes were half-closed as he inhaled.

  Then he glanced at me, making a careless pattern in the dirt with his fingers, saying, "The old lady lived there, at What Rocks. That was when I was little. See, the door was open. She could’ve been there too, but I knew she wasn’t but maybe she was. I’m always getting in trouble that way, when I’m wrong.”

  His toenails were yellow. The scar on his bald head was pink like a blister.

  "What happened to your head?”

  "Nothing -- except when I was little they cut inside. Well, I wasn’t that little. But when I was younger they did because I’m epileptic. Couldn’t even mow a lawn. So they cut my brain. Now I have two brains so I’m not epileptic no more, only sometimes."

  "What is it?”

  "Like this-”

  He rolled his eyes into his skull. His body began twitching. His hands rose, trembling
. Then he stopped and rubbed at the scar.

  "See, only sometimes it happens since this.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, "Do you have a pool?”

  "No. Can’t swim. I’ll drown. Can’t splash in pools or drive a car. Can’t bowl either."

  "I don’t swim. In the tub I do. But I don’t drive cars or bowl."

  "Me either. I get a seizure then I sink in the pool like a penny. I get a seizure and the bowling ball smashes my feet. I drived before but that was bad and if I do it now Dell says I get arrested or worse. So I can’t drive to save my life, not even if I’m bloody or my arm’s chopped off.”