33 Snowfish

by Adam Rapp

  Her arms was reached over her head and her legs was all stretched and spread out like she was trying to make a snow angel.

  We taped the newspapers back to the window but the van was still snowing. It was coming through the cracks now, and where there weren’t no cracks it was just coming anyways.

  My frostbite hand was aching like crazy. Sometimes it burnt and sometimes it ached. I could see how the side of it was turning kinda black.

  Boobie put the TV between us on the floor and I let the baby chew on my thumb. He didn’t cry the whole time. It’s funny how babies only cry when they’re hungry or they gotta shit. A plane could crash or someone could die and it don’t mean nothing to them. They just stare off with them little blue eyes, wondering when them bananas and milk is coming.

  I stared at them squiggles Curl spray-painted for a long time and it made me sleepy. You could see the frost moving over them like a shadow creeping.

  Boobie ate his crying all night. You could barely hear it. He ate his crying till there wasn’t no more to eat.

  I fell asleep doing a thirty-three.

  When we woke up the wind was sneaking through the cracks and the van was snowing worst. It got so cold that that frost climbing over the walls started turning white.

  We put the baby in the TV and headed for the Skylark. That walk felt like one of the longest walks of my life. The snow was slippery and I fell down on my frostbite hand about skeighty-eight times.

  My ears was full of snow and my eyes was full of snow and my Pro Flyers was so wet it was like I was walking in a river.

  Once we reached the Skylark everything was cool cuz Boobie started the engine and the windshield wipers were going and after a few minutes the heat kicked in and we was warm.

  Through the windshield that snow just kept coming. You couldn’t see shit. Not no trees. Not no Crow Wing River. Just all that snow blowing sideways. It was like that shit was sliding. Like it was avalanching from off the top of a mountain.

  After a while you could tell that being warm wasn’t going to change nothing. It was like there was a new kind of coldness inside you. It wasn’t no coldness that had to do with the weather. It was the kind of coldness that lives under the world, in a big black cave, with a bunch of bats and lost bones and shit.

  We couldn’t just start driving again with Curl back there in the van. We couldn’t just get lost in that highway hiss again. Driving just didn’t seem right without Curl.

  For a minute, the snow stopped falling sideways. You could barely see the Crow Wing River and how it was all frozen over like a little mirror. Boobie stared at it for a long time and his eyes was all big and sad and scared-looking.

  I asked him what we was gonna do with Curl, but he didn’t have no answer, so I just let the baby chew on my thumb and waited for him to do something.

  But Boobie’s black eyes just kept turning blacker.

  After a while the snow started sliding sideways again. It wasn’t like this snow was just coming from the clouds and the sky. It was like the snow was coming from the trees and the ground and the Crow Wing River, too. It was like the snow was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

  Then Boobie undid my pocket and pulled out my gat, and he looked at it for a minute all small and wack in his hand and the wipers was moving faster on the windshield and I was all quiet and scared cuz I didn’t know what Boobie was gonna do, and the baby started crying cuz he shitted his diaper again and you could smell it and that seam in his forehead looked like a little muscle muscling between his eyes, and then Boobie took my good hand and put it over his hand and put my gat up to his chest with my hand over his hand which was over my gat and it was happening so fast it was like it wasn’t even happening and I could feel his heart pounding through his chest thuddump and through my gat thuddump and through his hand thuddump and through my hand thuddump and it was beating so strong it was like you could taste it beating in your mouth so I closed my eyes and then Boobie squeezed the trigger but nothing happened cuz of the snow and then he tried it again and I felt like I was falling and there wasn’t no sound but the windshield wipers.

  When I opened my eyes Boobie wasn’t in the driver’s seat no more. He wasn’t next to me and he wasn’t in the back seat neither, and then I looked up and through the windshield I could see him walking backwards through the dead trees.

  I looked in the back seat again cuz I couldn’t hear the baby but the TV was still there and the baby was in it and his arms was swimming out and you could see the windshield wipers slashing through his little blue eyes and I gave him my frostbite hand and he took it and put it in his mouth and I tried singing that “Hushabye Mountain” song to him but I couldn’t get the words right cuz my teeth was chattering.

  Then I looked out through the windshield again and Boobie kept walking backwards, smaller and smaller, and the snow was thick and white and sideways but you could still see how his hair was lifting off his shoulders. He raised his hand up like he was trying to say good-bye and even though he was far away now I put my good hand up and tried to touch him through the glass.

  And I called out to him, too. I used the voice in my throat and the voice in my heart and the voice in my guts and that psychic voice in my mind, but Boobie couldn’t hear me.

  And I called out again and again and again till his hand fell and he started to fade, floating back and back and back, disappearing through the snowing trees.

  After the Skylark ran out of gas, I took the TV and walked back to the van.

  I kept thinking that if I dropped the TV the baby would fly off and disappear in all of that snow, so I stepped as careful as I could, one, two, three. I knew my Pro Flyers was all wack and worn down and smooth on the bottoms. I had to keep my frostbite hand over the baby’s face so he wouldn’t choke on no snow.

  When we got back, the van was still snowing and the newspapers was flipping around and the frost was even whiter on the walls. It was so thick you could draw pictures in it with your finger.

  For some reason I kept telling the baby not to be scared. I was like, “Don’t be scared, baby. Don’t be no little bitch. Ain’t nothing gonna happen. Don’t be scared.” But the baby didn’t seem scared at all. He was just staring up at me with them strange blue eyes and chewing on my frostbite hand with them little teeth that was starting to press through his gums.

  Every time I looked at Curl I swear I thought I could see that heartbeat still going in her eye. I went over to her like four times and started shaking her, going, “Curl, Curl, wake up you dumb hooker!” But then I’d put my finger on her eye and feel that cold. And it wasn’t cold like when a body gets cold. It was cold like when a car gets cold.

  For a long time I just sat in the driver’s seat with the baby and watched the snow. Just when you thought it would slow down, a bunch of it would start falling.

  Every once in a while I’d see Curl through the windshield mirror. Her skin was so white it looked like glass. It was like she wasn’t never no person. It was more like she was something that got made in a factory, like she was all stretched and blown and polished clean.

  That little fish was still trapped in her cheek and her one froggy eye was staring out at them squiggles she spray-painted on the wall.

  I put the TV down and walked over to Curl. I tried to pull her lid down but it was frozen so I took her one hand from over her head and put it over her eye.

  When I flattened her hand you could feel how her fingers was all froze up like some dead sticks, and then that old wrinkled birthday card that she carried around fell out and it was all crumpled and small like Curl was trying to squeeze some life out of it. You could see her mom’s writing and how her pen quit and how she had to get another one, cuz the colors of the ink changed.

  I used the last diaper and changed the baby and fed him his last cup of bananas and his last box of milk. And I had to smash that box of milk and press it up against the wall of the van cuz it was frozen.

  I took Curl’s socks o
ff and put them over the baby’s hands. Then we got under the curtains and made a huddle. I used the curtain from the window, too. I put the baby under my puffy red coat cuz it was warmer that way. We stayed like that for a long time and just watched the night flying across the windows.

  I hear scratching at the front door. I got the baby curled up next to me so we can make a huddle and use the heat from each other’s blood to keep warm.

  We’ve been here like this all night and my stomach feels all small and shriveled, like there ain’t nothing inside it but a old rusty penny.

  So much snow has blown through the windows it’s like we ain’t even in the van. It’s more like we’re under one of them old trees outside.

  Me and the baby is making a good huddle, though. Our breath is still smoking, which is good cuz that means our blood is hot enough to make us live.

  At first I think the scratching is that big black turkey Curl kept talking about, like it’s rubbing up against the door with one of its long, skinny turkey toes.

  For some reason I look over at Curl again. I ain’t been looking at her as much cuz for some reason it just makes me hungrier. I think it’s cuz of the way her arms is all stretched out and skinny and how naked she is and how her little titties is all swollen and pointy like they never growed right. It’s like her bones got longer since she died. Like God and Jesus and the devil himself pulled everything they could get out of them.

  And even though she’s dead I’m like, “Hey, Curl, that turkey’s here. Should I let him in?”

  Her skin is even whiter and her hands are turning kinda blue and there’s frost on her eyelashes. She looks like some little wack granny.

  I go, “Should I give that turkey your heart, Curl?” and I say all that shit out loud, too, like them homeless, bummy suckers from Renfro Park get when they start talking to the bushes.

  Then I hear Curl’s voice go, Open the door, Custis. I ain’t afraid of no big black turkey. Not no more.

  So I get out from under the curtains. It’s so cold it’s like I’m walking in a giant refrigerator. I put the baby under Curl’s sunflower dress and then there’s a knock at the door, but it ain’t no scratching this time, and it don’t sound like no turkey toe.

  It’s the kind of knocking that knuckles make.

  And there it is again, going tat-tat-tat.

  And now I’m walking toward the door all slow, and I can feel the baby’s heart beating on my chest like a toy with a motor in it, and I step over the stop sign table and I step past the driver’s seat and I reach my frostbite hand out toward the lever for the door and then there’s that knocking again, tat-tat-tat, and I can see my frostbite hand shaking and I can see the veins in it curling like little blue snakes and I can see the black crawling on my fingers, and then I feel that metal lever in my hand and it’s so cold it’s like I can taste it in my teeth, and I pull it and the door creaks open and a bunch of snow flies in my face and just for a second I think if it ain’t that big black turkey with the umbrella wings coming for Curl’s heart then maybe it’s Boobie, but when I open my eyes it ain’t the big black turkey and it ain’t Boobie neither. It’s that old creaky nigger who made me clean his yard and he’s standing on top of the snow like a giant and he’s wearing this big old raincoat and he’s wearing tennis rackets on his feet, and behind him that blue light from the moon makes him look blacker than a house that gets burnt down and he’s just staring at me with his white eyes, and he’s leaning on a long knobby stick, going, “Oh, my gracious light. Oh, my gracious light. . . .”

  The old nigger’s name is Seldom and he’s been living on the Itty Bitty Farm for forty-some years, so he says. In the backyard there’s a old burnt-looking forest. And them trees look superblack cuz of how white the snow is.

  Sometimes you can see animals running between the trees, like rabbits and foxes and these little things that look like smashed cats.

  Seldom moves around the house real slow and he’s got to crouch low so he don’t hit his head in the doorways. He says a hump started growing in his back cuz of crouching all them years, but he says he’d rather have a hump in his back from crouching than standing up straight and not having no house.

  He’s gotta stop a lot and hold his side, too, cuz he says he got kicked by a mule when he worked on his pops’s farm in North Carolina when he was a kid. And even though his back got busted he says he fought in like forty-seven wars and shit. He said most of them wars didn’t have nothing to do with no army or no other country or nothing like that. He said most of them wars was about his property and how the highway people was trying to run him off of it so they could build a two-lane road right through his living room.

  Seldom always rubs his shins, too, and he says a lot of shit I don’t understand like, “Good Godfrey,” and “Watch your buttons,” and wack stuff like that. I think he’s like skeighty-eight years old or some shit but he won’t tell me his age cuz I won’t tell him my name.

  Bob Motley says if you tell a nigger your name that he’ll steal it and use it if he gets busted by the pigs, and he says that if that happens you’ll be the one stuck making license plates in the penitentiary.

  So at first Seldom called me Mr. Nowhere, but now he calls me Jimster and he calls the baby Little Jimster and I call him Seldom but I still don’t know how old his lopsided ass is. But that’s cool with me. The last thing I need is for him to get busted fucking a dog or some shit and then give the pigs my name. Bob Motley says that all niggers fuck dogs and sheep and that their dicks got hooks on the end.

  Me and the baby sleep under the kitchen table cuz that bed in the extra room is so big I kept waking up feeling like I was falling off a cliff and shit. And there ain’t nothing else in there but this old creaky baby crib that’s got a bunch of old coats stacked in it. Seldom wanted to put the baby in it, but I was like, “You ain’t puttin’ him in that old skanky thing!”

  So now Seldom lets us sleep under the kitchen table. The floor’s old and sometimes you wake up with splinters in your hands, but it ain’t too wack. It’s better than looking at that old spooky baby crib, that’s for sure.

  Me and the baby was gonna try sleeping in the chicken coop cuz it had a good corner to sleepstand in, but Deuce — that wack little chicken I tried to steal — kept staring at me with its doll’s eye, and Seldom kept laughing and telling me Deuce would just peck a bunch of holes in my clothes and that I wouldn’t never got no sleep no ways.

  It’s easier for me to sleep under shit anyways.

  Seldom gave us some blankets that smell like the fireplace and he gave us a couple of old skanky pillows, so it ain’t really wack at all. And the tablecloth hangs down kinda low so it stays dark. The baby just sleeps in the TV cuz he’s used to it. Every time Seldom tries taking him out and putting him on the floor he starts crying.

  I like counting all the lines in wood on the bottom of the table. Curl used to say you can tell how old trees is by counting them lines.

  When we first got here Seldom made me a big plate of mashed potatoes and gravy and I swallowed it so fast I almost got a migration headache. I kept giving my plate back and he just laughed and heaped on more. I had so much food in my mouth I could hardly breathe. My stomach got so full you could almost hear it stretching.

  Seldom gave the baby some smashed pinto beans cuz he said he needed protein, and I showed him how to feed him with the back of your thumb. At first I wasn’t so sure about that long, bony, nigger thumb going into the baby’s mouth, but I guess the way Seldom kept smiling and laughing made it seem cool.

  When I was finished with them mashed potatoes Seldom asked me to put my dishes in the sink and I did and then we took a big metal garbage can out back and started a fire to melt the snow and make the ground soft. He kept rolling the can around and before you knew it you could see the grass. It was all brown and hard-looking. Bob Motley would’ve been surprised, seeing a old creaky nigger being smart like that.

  Then Seldom went inside and came back out holding two sho
vels and he handed me the smaller one and we starting digging this deep hole, like so deep you could disappear in it and shit. And we was all slipping and trying to not-slip, and my frostbite hand kept catching cramps, and some of that dirt didn’t get softened by the fire and it was hard to go deeper and we had to keep at it with our shovels, but we did it.

  You could hear Seldom breathing them long, slow nigger breaths and you could smell how old he was cuz his breath smelled like leather shoes and dirt, and he had to stop a bunch of times to hold his side and rub his shins and go, “Good Godfrey,” and “This durn old back,” and shit.

  I had to stop a couple of times to check on the baby. Once I had to change his diaper and give him some warm milk. Seldom showed me how to throw some milk in a pan and light the stove so I didn’t have to ask him to help me every time the baby started crying.

  Whenever we stopped digging we sort of stared at them flames sawing in the garbage can, and it was like the flames got inside of us, like they warmed up some vitamins in our bones and gave us energy to finish making the hole.

  At the end we was all wet and folded over, but we eventually got it dug.

  Then Seldom pulled out this big jug of water and we drank it down, and it tasted sweet like it had sugar in it and all you could hear was our breath slowing down, and after we rested for a few minutes, he gave me a pair of tennis rackets and strapped them to my Pro Flyers and we walked back to the van through the snow with this big burlap sack.

  The sky was all gray and wack-looking and it was hard walking on top of all that snow, but I started to get the hang of it. It was like we was walking to the North Pole and shit.

  When we got to the van Curl was all white and blue and glassy-looking. That little fish even looked glassy on her cheek.

  We had to push her arms down and they was real stiff. And they wasn’t just stiff the way clothes get stiff when you leave them on the laundry line. Them arms was stiff the way a table is stiff.