The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci

by Susan Taylor Chehak

  "Hey Holly!" Will calls out.

  "You're starting early, Will." She moves around the bar and across the coarse boards of the wood floor toward him. A thin steel ring pierces a pucker of flesh above her left eyebrow; the tattoo that bracelets her wrist is of a thorny rose briar. A pink tank top with a pen and ink rendering of the attacking grizzly on its front rides up to show a flash of flat tanned tummy and give a glimpse of another steel ring, this one piercing a fold of skin above her belly button. Baggy boyish brown shorts with big heavy-looking pockets ride low on the hard bones of her hips. Her long legs are thin, tanned and unshaved. Pink rubber flip flops slap at the bottoms of her feet as she walks, and the black polish on her toenails make them look bruised, smashed by hammers.

  "This here is my sister, Holly," Will says. He invites her to sit down, and she slips into the booth next to Meena, giving off a mild scent of incense and oranges and alcohol. Holly lights a cigarette. She shakes the match and peers through smoke at Will first, then at Meena. Whatever she sees in their faces, it seems to tell her that something is wrong and Meena watches the bad feeling of the situation come bruising in from the edges of her awareness.

  "What?" Holly asks.

  Will shakes his head. His hair is blond and thin, silky looking, and Meena is shocked to find herself thinking that it might be nice to touch it. Instead she shifts in the booth and sits on her hands. "Bad news," Will is saying. Holly has taken another drag on her cigarette, and she keeps it in, holds her breath, waits. Her eyes are dark, pinpoints, focused on Will and trying to read him clearly.

  "What?" Holly asks him again, exhaling.

  And Meena starts to blubber then. "I'm so sorry, it was an accident, I didn't know, I didn't mean, he was..."

  Holly's eyes widen.

  "Woody," Will says.

  Holly taps ash on the floor and grimaces at him. Looking at her more closely now Meena can see that her hair is too evenly dark to be natural, it's dry and ashy-looking on its surface, obviously dyed. And she's so thin, her wrists bony, shoulders sharp, her skin is paste pale. A cluster of pimples festers at the corner of her mouth. Her fingernails are chewed and the skin of her hands look chapped. From dishwater, maybe.

  "Stop fucking around, Will, okay?" she says.

  "My fault completely," he replies. He clenches his hands tightly together in a fist, glances at Meena, taps his thumbs against his chin before finally launching into it, the whole stupid story about the dog, and hearing it all over again, even in this abbreviated way, Meena feels a sob begin to gather in her throat. She knows that she is more upset than she should be and making it all worse, here is Will reaching across the table to hold her hand between his own. His mild eyes regard her with concern as he explains how sorry he is, that he'd do anything to take it all back, but some things are out of our control, they happen beyond our understanding and we can only accept what is as the will of a higher power than our own. By now tears have begun to glisten in Holly's eyes, too. She squashes her cigarette out in the glass ashtray and is standing up. Meena scrambles out of the booth and pushes past Holly, heading blindly into the depths of the barroom, through a doorway and into a corridor at the end of which there is a bathroom marked with a grizzly in a skirt.

  She locks the door and then stands at the sink with her hands under the icy water running from the tap until she thinks maybe she can feel an inkling of that chill returning to her again, and only now is she able to go back.

  Meena has it all rehearsed in her mind now, what she's going to say to them and what she is going to do. First, she will apologize, quickly, without bursting into tears again. Then she'll give Will some money, a twenty maybe, a fifty? She'll apologize again. She'll thank Will first, then Holly, for their forgiveness and understanding. Then she'll go back outside into the sunlight again. She'll cross the street. She'll get into the Jetta. And from there she'll go home. This, at least, is her new plan. Her father is dead. She is alone. And this is what is true.

  But when she gets back to the booth she sees that Holly has gone back to work behind the bar again and Will is at the table alone with two glasses of whiskey in front of him.

  "You feeling any better?" he asks.

  Meena doesn't respond. She's digging in her purse for the money that she means to give him.

  "Hey, you know that old dog was sick anyway," Will goes on. "He was just a stray that liked to hang around the pumps. And you probably did him a favor by killing him so quick, the way you did. Saved somebody the trouble of putting a gun to his head, at least."

  At first she doesn't answer. What is there to say? And then, "Thank you." She can see, it's obvious, he's only trying to be kind.

  He smiles, waves a hand in dismissal. "You going to sit down now, or what?"

  She slides into the booth.

  "Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to an old dog like that one, you know," Will is saying. "I can think of plenty of other things might be a lot worse."

  This observation startles Meena. "Like what?" She doesn't mean for this to sound like a challenge to him, because she really does want to get out of here, before she loses all her resolve. But she also wants to hear his answer and to know what exactly he means.

  He shrugs. "Well, illness for example. Cancer. Going crazy. Getting old."

  "But I did kill him, didn't I?"

  Will shrugs again. "Maybe he was already dead," he offers. "Maybe he was never alive." He picks up one glass of whiskey, slides the other over to Meena, and when she withdraws her hand from her purse to take it her fingers are trembling. "Here's to old Woody then," Will says, his voice deep and somber. He's holding his glass up to the light, peering at her through the dark liquid in it. "May that old dog rest in peace." He drinks and slaps the glass back on the table, upside down.

  "So what's your name anyway?" he asks.

  "Libbie," Meena answers, without thinking. The name just spills out of her mouth like a gold coin, lands on the tabletop, spins. The tremble in her hand has grown stronger, and now she can feel as well as see it. Carefully, she sets her own glass down before it spills. She looks up and returns Will's thoughtful gaze, feeling courageous now and careful not to blink. "Elizabeth,

  she explains. "But everyone's always just called me Libbie." She's still holding her purse clutched close to her body, but maybe he hasn't noticed any of this, because his next question seems merely conversational. They seem to have stopped talking about the dog.

  "Where you headed?" he asks.

  Meena shakes her head. She honestly doesn't know what to say to this now. He smiles. Seems to understand, maybe people come through there all the time, not on their way to anyplace, just here for the moment, on vacation maybe, time off to get away.

  "All right, Libbie," he says. "Then where are you from?"

  But she doesn't have an answer for this either. In an effort to avoid the question, she picks up her glass again and takes a sip of the whiskey. She feels it catch in her throat as it burns a path down toward her belly, so that her breath hitches in her chest. Meena doesn't drink much; she isn't used to this. But, she thinks recklessly, what the hell? What is there for her to lose anymore? What is there for her to keep?

  "Lost soul," Will is saying. This seems to please him.

  Meena agrees: it's true. "I guess I am," she says, and raises the glass and tips her chin and, gasping, throws the whole shot back. Will is grinning. He thinks her name is Libbie. And now he is raising his hand and waggling his fingers, to signal Holly to bring them another round.

  The Pilgrim of Prague

  1962

  As Josef Krejci began to age he was not diminished by time, but rather made larger by it, and at the same time he seemed to grow more restless and shifty in his habits, too. When did he sleep? He was up at dawn and out of the house by six-thirty, turning the lights on in the store by seven, taking deliveries, open for another full day of business by eight. Home for lunch at noon, then again at seven for dinner. You hardly ever saw him.

 
; He was keeping the store open until nine at night by that time, in the first of his many doomed and desperate efforts to compete with the bigger brighter Hawkeye Market two miles away, and he promoted Bo Chadima from bag boy to supervisor to manager so that he'd have someone there that he could count on to help out and fill in the extra hours. Then he hired Bo's wife to come to the house every afternoon to do housework and cook. Her name was Belle, although no one except her husband ever called her that; even to Josef Krejci she was always the more formal Mrs. Chadima, never mind that she was at least thirty years his junior. Mrs. Chadima dusted and vacuumed and scoured and swept and made the huge meals that your father devoured with shameless gusto—good Iowa Czech food: sausage and apples and noodles, chops and gravy and potatoes, goulash and dumplings and slaw, steak and tomatoes and creamed cucumbers and biscuits and cottage cheese and buttered corn—while you held back and tried (and failed) to starve yourself to beauty.

  Bo Chadima was Josef Krejci's opposite—small, thin, nervous and dark, he was a marten with glittery eyes and smooth black hair and a long face that every day he shaved raw. His wife was a cheerful, plump, and milky woman who also baked the breads and rolls and kolaches that were sold from the bakery case under the counter at the front of the grocery store. You and Libbie watched and wondered, trying to imagine what must have been the spectacle of Mr. and Mrs. Chadima having sex: Bo like a blade, burying himself in the soft and fragrant dough of Belle's dimpled, receiving flesh. But they didn't have any children and so, Libbie suggested, maybe they didn't even do it at all.

  The rest of the time, when he wasn't eating or working, Josef Krejci walked. He became a pilgrim on the streets of Linwood, a familiar pedestrian figure, a huge ambulatory shadow moving through the snow or across the grass, both hands dug down deep into the pockets of his black wool overcoat or his lightweight cotton duster—depending on the weather, depending on the season—his broad face flushed with exertion below the brim of his dark felt hat.

  He just liked to walk, he said. Said the exercise was good for him, said it tired him out, said it helped him digest, claimed it kept him regular and allowed him to fall asleep at night with hardly any effort at all. He was going to live forever that way, he said.

  Well all right then, let him wander, if that's what he wanted to do. What harm could there be in that? Let Linwood be a maze for him to memorize and explore, you thought, if that's what made him happy, if that was what it was going to take for him to find peace.

  You didn't come up with the plan to follow him, Libbie did.

  It was autumn, late October, a Saturday afternoon, and Mr. Grandon was out working in his yard—he was raking leaves into piles, and he was raking piles down to the street, and then he was setting fires in the gutter. The air was cold and dry and smoke-filled. He leaned on his rake, lit a cigarette, squinted at the flames as if he thought he might find some deeper meaning there. Who knew what he was thinking. The Grandons' yard was long and flat, and cleaning it up was an overwhelming, impossible job that he'd only be able to half-finish before he lost interest, dropped the rake and went into the house to make himself a drink, leaving you and Libbie behind to look after the dying fire. It was legal to burn leaves in the street back then, and on those weekends in the fall the air was filled with the rare smell of smoke—a hint of catastrophe, an inkling of loss.

  Libbie's arms were all sinew and bone, poking out of the sleeves of the torn white T-shirt she wore with her old brown corduroy pants, baggy in the butt and worn thin at the knees. She had her hair pulled back into a pony tail, but it was so fine that it kept slipping out from the rubber band and its wisps blew like cobwebs around her head, snagging in her eyes and her mouth.

  As for you, you were moving slowly, feeling hot and sweaty and itchy. The dust from the dry leaves was making your eyes run and your nose drip, and so you sneezed and sneezed and Libbie had given up saying, "Bless you, Meena," every time.

  You didn't feel like working in the yard anymore. You had never been the outdoor type, not because you were lazy, but you never did seem to get much out of physical activity. Gym class was a torture to you—all that running, jumping, swimming, all that exertion, and for what? To get a ball from one end of a field to the other? You never could see the point. You were the one who was always out of breath. Your feet were too big, your legs were too long, your hands were too small. You were the one who would stumble. You were the one who would drop the catch, bungle the shot, swing too soon, throw too wide, miss by a mile whatever the target was supposed to be.

  And so now instead you had found a way to escape. When no one was looking you ducked down and scrambled in behind the trellis by the house to hide. The dirt was exposed there, damp and cold, and you dug your fingers into it. No one noticed, no one missed you, and this was a relief in one way and a disappointment in another.

  You could get out of gym class if you told Miss Grisselthat you were on your period. You were one of the only girls in the sixth grade class who had that problem already, so soon. The cramps sometimes came so strong that they folded you over yourself, and there were still times, too, when you were careless and forgetful and made mistakes so that dark stains bloomed between your legs or, sometimes, all the way through to the back of your skirt, where everyone could see them. Even Libbie found this disgusting, and honestly, you couldn't argue with her about that.

  You squatted in the cool dirt and somehow that felt just right, as if it was exactly where you belonged, and when you put your face up to the trellis to peer past your fingers through the holes you could see Leo Spivak perched like a big black crow on the lowest branch of the butternut tree in his front yard across the street. He'd been there all morning, watching. He seemed to think that if he didn't move, no one would notice him. He said that he saw everything that way, and you had come to believe him. Ever since Julia Bell's disappearance, Leo had been on the alert.

  But she was long gone. Her uncle had been a suspect at first. Now he was dead somehow, and if he did take her and if he did kill her, he wasn't there anymore to tell how or where or why. For a while, too, there had been reports that she was seen—once in Davenport and again in Cedar Rapids, in the company of a club-foot man wearing a blue seersucker suit, who bought her an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen downtown. When she asked for extra sprinkles he scolded her and she shouted back at him: "You are not my father!" In the end nothing came of that report though, and after a while there was no one left but Leo who still believed that Julia Bell was alive, somewhere, and that she was going to come back to Wellington Heights and her family again, someday.

  It was October, and the butternut tree was almost completely bare of its leaves, which made it that much more difficult for Leo to sit there in its branches without being seen.

  Mrs. Grandon liked to say that Leo Spivak was a walking disaster. She laughed when she said it, but it was a self-conscious laugh, and when she shook her head her hair, which she'd grown longer and then curled up into a perfect flip at the ends, bobbed prettily. She was only half-joking when she talked that way about Leo, and the truth was, he made her uncomfortable. Sure, he was just a kid, but there was still something about him that seemed dangerous anyway. Mr. Grandon claimed that Leo was harmless. Then he qualified that by adding that at least so far the only real damage that Leo had ever done had been to himself.

  Every now and then Mrs. Spivak would come out onto the front porch and call to Leo, but he didn't answer her. It was hard to tell whether she was aware of where he was, until Mr. Spivak stood under the butternut tree and ordered him to come down before he fell and broke his neck. But Leo was not about to budge. He was almost sixteen—too old to be sitting around in trees anymore, his father said. Mrs. Grandon worried about what would happen when Leo Spivak got his license and started to drive.

  The scarecrow in Mrs. Grandon's garden had his eye on this scene, too. He hung by his wrists from a pair of crossed two-by-fours. He was made of black trousers stuffed with old towels and a white shirt th
at was yellowed from the weather and the rain and he wore a green tie and a brown wool sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. In fact, he looked a lot like Mr. Grandon, because these were Mr. Grandon's clothes, but also because Mrs. Grandon had designed him that way, with blue painted eyes and yellow yarn hair sewn onto the top of his burlap bag head.

  Libbie's mother came out onto the porch. She was drying her hands on a towel. Mr. Grandon had fixed himself a drink. He sat on the stoop, lit another cigarette and squinted again, thoughtfully, into its smoke. Libbie grinned at the both her parents, arched back and flopped down hard into the piled leaves, with her arms outspread and her eyes closed. You were a monster crouched and bleeding in the dirt behind the trellis, as the scarecrow gaped stupidly and Leo Spivak, safe and sound and above it all in his tree, looked on.

  It was at that moment that Josef Krejci came out of his house. He pulled the door closed carefully behind him, turned up the collar of his coat, and tugged at his hat, before heading down the walk to the street. He passed through the smoke that rose up from the piles of burning leaves there, and then, without ever looking up, he disappeared and was gone.

  Where did Josef Krejci go? Wandering the neighborhoods without apparent purpose, rambling aimlessly around the labyrinth of Linwood, he walked and walked, from Otis Road north into the country, from Otis Road south into downtown, eastward past the factories and the plants, west beyond the narrow cluttered streets of Oak Hill to the new suburban tracts that had begun to rise up in the fields. Sometimes he headed for the bridge and, under the noses of the saints, he crossed the river and strode straight into Bohemietown, to haunt the old places there. As if maybe he were trying to find some pathway back to that shadowy time long gone, in the olden days before he was married, before you were born, when he was still a young man, when your mother was still alive, when he was courting her and promising to carry her away. Or, was he only lording the present over past, retracing the steps and stages of his own upward movement and telling himself that he was better than all that now, reminding everyone of just how far he'd come, Josef Krejci, from there to here, from that to this?