Shaking, I saw them shake with me, to mimic and tease me; when I lifted a hand to wipe tears from my eyes, they did, too. Everything that I did, they did, in a nightmare dance of follow-the-leader. Tear for tear, they matched me and made me cry harder; they wouldn't show mercy and leave me alone.
Mirror facing mirror had summoned that putrid throng, brought them from nowhere to beat me down shrieking and clawing the skin from my face. I had done it myself, led them in here, and now they glared threateningly out at me.
I cried and cried and cried, and all the Lisas joined me. I was trapped, surrounded by a wall of Lisas--Lisas like wads of mashed food in the mirror, grotesque Lisas stretching out for lonely miles.
The Lisas stood there for a long time, crying together. They wept, she wept, I wept.
In the kitchen, the milk boiled over.
*****
The Day After They Rounded Up Everyone Who Could Love Unconditionally
I drink orange juice straight from the carton. Like heat spreading out from a swallow of wine, the memories of what happened yesterday flow through me. So many surprises.
Like the fact that so few people were taken. Not much disruption at all.
A lot less painful than expected, like getting a shot from the doctor. So much anticipation, so little payoff.
And the ease of it all. Slow and graceful and gentle. Excuse me, sir, would you come with us please? Sheepish looks and shrugs, not surprised at all to be found out but maybe they'd been hoping to stay under the radar. May I just grab my purse and jacket? No, you won't be needing them, ma'am.
Have a white carnation, ma'am.
Awkward waves to the rest of the office. Meaningful glances among the spared ones. We'll talk about her later over coffee. Who gets her stapler?
That was the most surprising thing about yesterday. No one really acted surprised…not that so-and-so was taken, or such-and-such was spared. Not that it took three or four guardsmen in such a high state of alert to lead out the package at gunpoint.
Not a surprise that I was still free, either.
I eat a chocolate doughnut she was saving for later and turn on the stereo. Flop on the sofa and watch TV with the sound down. I don't have to go to the office today, none of us do.
Today's a holiday.
We're each supposed to have a personal bon voyage. Say goodbye to the ones who've gone. I burn mementos in the garden, lighting clothes and photos with fireplace matches. I smoke as much weed as I want, lighting cigarettes off pages from her diary.
I catch myself daydreaming about her.
It happens at tonight's rally at the stadium. Thousands of balloons fall from nets, and everyone screams with joy, drowning out an underdressed popstar's overamplified howling.
Girls in yellow slickers twirl tomato-red parasols on the field. Cannons shower us with candy and confetti. We give each other temporary tattoos and crazy haircuts. Free champagne and baskets of kittens for everyone. Cats are the symbol of the new age.
The leader waves both arms as he runs onto the stage. I dare you to tell me you don't feel like a million bucks! That's what he says, and the crowd goes wild. Welcome to the level emotional playing field!
Love was the problem all along.
That's when I daydream about her.
The touch of a forefinger running down between my shoulder blades, pressing a vertical line along my spine. Then cutting straight across. Drawing a letter on my back, felt but not seen, our special silent code.
The letter "L" for "love."
I imagine both hands sliding under my arms and over my chest and down. Tugging me back, and I close my eyes as her body forms against me. The heat of her like summer sunshine.
Her warm breath on my left ear. A little garlic on her breath.
The leader says it loud and clear.
No more fooling ourselves.
She presses her forehead to the base of my skull and nips at the back of my neck. I imagine this.
And then
No more games.
And then she is gone from my daydream. I try to recreate her later like this, but I can't. All I get are disconnected bits, like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles scattered on a kitchen table. It eats at me.
It's like someone told me don't think of an elephant, and she's an elephant.
Six months later, I get a postcard. The picture on the front is of a pink sand beach with foamy white waves under sapphire sky. A place right off the lid of a box of salt water taffy. So perfect, I think at first it's a painting, not a photo.
The postcard has no writing on it. No postmark, either, though the card comes in the mail. No information whatsoever.
But it smells like her.
Like cinnamon and sweet gardenia.
It's only then that it finally occurs to me, and I sag against the wall. One question ripples into sight like a skywriter's banner, words resolving as the distance recedes around them. All along, we thought we were getting rid of them.
What if they weren't the ones who were gotten rid of?
*****
The Walking Bomb
When the bomb was filled with explosive PBX paste, Rev. David Halloran turned the valve that cut off the flow of paste from the hose. With a black-gloved hand, he scooped the excess gray paste from the bomb's central cavity and deposited it carefully in the big cardboard box on the tray beside him.
Standing on the gantry across from him, Judy Krulwicki did the same, disengaging the hose poised above her own bomb and dumping the excess paste in a box. Her movements, like his, were smooth but slow. Her hands were well practiced at the work, but it never paid to hurry.
Making bombs was a dangerous business.
If one of the 2,000-pound bombs suspended nose-down in the giant rack between them went off, David and Judy would be killed instantly. So would everyone else in the building and every building nearby.
It was just another day at the bomb factory.
"Will you be at the covered dish supper tonight?" said David as he capped the tail end of the bomb he'd just filled.
"Absotutely," said Judy. "I'm bringing my taco casserole."
David carefully screwed on the cap and latched it down. "Why don't you just bring it over to the house? I'll take it to the supper for you."
Judy laughed. "It'd never make it to the supper," she said.
"In my stomach, it would," said David.
"You big silly," said Judy. A huge grin tugged at her pudgy features, tucking in dimples and puffing up
candy-apple cheeks.
David laughed as he wiped his paste-covered hands on his white coveralls. They were already filthy with gray and black smudges from the rest of the day's work. They were always filthy, just like everyone's at the plant.
At David and Judy's signal, Moe Dupree rolled up in the forklift and carefully slipped the tongues of the fork under the cart holding the bomb rack. Locking the fork in place, he slowly backed up the lift, pulling the cart of bombs along with him.
David watched the bombs go. These days, he figured, they would end up falling out of U.S. planes over the Middle East or Southwest Asia. Eighteen years ago, when he had started at the plant, he hadn't necessarily known that every bomb he worked on would be dropped on somebody. Anymore, there wasn't really any doubt.
Those bombs would blow someone or something to smithereens.
"By the way, Reverend," said Judy from the other side of the gantry. "Thanks again for going to see my mother in the hospital. It meant so much to her."
"She's quite a woman," said David. Lifting the white cap from his curly black hair, he swiped the back of a hand across his sweaty forehead. "How's she doing today?"
Judy winced. "Not so well. Good days and bad days, you know?"
"She's got a lot of people praying for her," said David. "Keep the faith."
"I will," said Judy, nodding. "Thank you, Reverend. Having you here to talk to is a real blessing."
David shook his head. "You're the blessing, Judy."
And it was true. As long as he could do a little of God's work each day by helping Judy or any of his
co-workers, he could feel that his day had been a good one. That he was doing more than making bombs.
And that was what kept him going. Not the knowledge that he was helping to defend his country. Not the satisfaction of doing the same work that his father and grandfather had done. Not the money he was bringing home to supplement his meager earnings as a pastor.
What kept David going was doing God's work among people he loved. People who put their lives on the line every day on the job.
That was what he told himself.
*****
That night, after the covered dish supper at his church, Clover Texas First Baptist, David had the first taste of his run of bad luck.
It was the craziest thing. Thinking back later, he had a hard time believing it had happened.
He knew for a fact that his buddy, Fox Brazos, hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that evening. It was true that Fox was a recovering alcoholic, but he hadn't been out of David's sight at the supper. For an hour and a half after the supper, in fact, the two of them had talked out in the picnic shelter, and Fox hadn't even sipped a soda the whole time.
"See ya at work," Fox said finally in his slow drawl. He punched David in the bicep and turned, kicking across the gravel parking lot in his cowboy boots.
"Not if I see you first," David shouted after him.
Then, Fox got into his big Ford pickup, started the engine, rolled out of the parking lot...
And promptly drove the pickup smack into a telephone pole across the road.
David sprinted over and found Fox unconscious, head against the steering wheel. Racing back to the parking lot, David grabbed the cell phone out of his own Ford Explorer and called 911.
While he waited at Fox's truck for the rescue crew to arrive, he wondered what in the world had just happened. Fox had bashed up plenty of vehicles in his drinking days, but he hadn't had a mishap since he'd dried out.
Later, in the hospital, David asked him what had caused his truck to launch into the pole like that. Fox laughed, a look of puzzlement on his bruised face, and shrugged.
"I wish I knew," he said. "It just took off."
Unfortunately, it wasn't the last time something like this happened when David was around.
*****
Only 500 pounds worth of a 2,000-pound bomb are actual explosive. The other 1,500 pounds are all casing and electronics.
That was why the bombshell, even with no PBX explosive inside, could have crushed Judy Krulwicki when it fell.
Two days after Fox's accident, Judy and David were working in the finishing room at the plant. Billy Webb was running the big crane, lifting bomb casings off a rack, where they were lined up on their sides. Judy and David were part of the crew standing the casings on end, guiding them with grappling cables into a vertical position in another rack.
No one on the crew was talking or screwing around when the accident happened. Everyone knew that one slip could bring down a 1,500-pound casing on somebody's head with killing force.
As for the man running the crane, no one had a doubt about his skill or steady nerves. Billy Webb had run that crane for twenty years without a twitch.
But the casing came down just the same.
It was suspended from the arm of the crane, and the team on the floor had guided the shell to about a forty-five degree angle. Then, all of a sudden, the crane jerked the shell up fast and yanked it to one side. Three people lost hold of their guide cables, including Judy...who ended up directly underneath the shell when it suddenly dipped out of its sling.
If it hadn't been for Maxine Lombard, Judy would have been flattened. At the last possible instant, Maxine tackled Judy, throwing her out of the way just as the shell casing plunged to the floor. It hit with a loud clang and rolled, but fortunately went in the opposite direction from Maxine and Judy. While the rest of the team chased the shell to stop its roll, David rushed over to the two on the floor.
"Are you guys all right?" he said breathlessly, crouching down beside them.
Maxine nodded. "Close call," she said, raising her eyebrows.
"I'm okay," said Judy, watching as the others stopped the rolling shell across the finishing room floor. "I was lucky."
"God's watching out for you," said David.
Judy took his hand and squeezed it hard. He felt her trembling and put his other hand on her shoulder.
"We haven't had an accident at the plant since '85," said Maxine, brushing at the platinum bangs curling out from under the front of her white cap. "All hell's going to break loose."
"It already did, if you ask me," said Judy, squeezing David's hand until it hurt.
*****
That night, on the big back porch of Fox's house, David lit a cigarette for the first time in three years. Judy's close call at the plant had shaken him up, especially coming so soon after Fox's crash.
He was worried that a pattern was developing. A familiar pattern.
Fox, the big bad cowboy with the hundred-acre ranch and the drinking problem, was knitting a horse blanket. The knitting thing was what he did instead of drinking, believe it or not. He took a lot of ribbing for it, but he didn't care as long as it kept him off the sauce.
"She came this close, Fox," said David, and then he sucked deep on the cigarette. "Thank God for Maxine."
Fox's knitting needles clacked. "Heard they shut down the finishing room."
David drew in another lungful of smoke. It tasted heavenly, even after three years without a puff. "As soon as that shell stopped rolling, they closed it down," he said. "Safety inspectors all over the place. Everyone had to give a statement."
Fox leaned forward and spit a glob of chewing tobacco over the porch rail. "What about Billy Webb? How's he takin' it?"
"Hard," said David. "He claims it wasn't his fault, though."
"I believe him," said Fox, clacking the needles. "He's the best there is. Nerves of steel. I was with him when that live shell almost dropped two years ago. He's the real deal, all right." Like David and seventy-five percent of the population of Clover, Texas and its environs, Fox worked at the ammunition plant out in Horseshoe. He'd been there a lot longer than David, too, and had even worked with David's dad.
And he'd been inside the plant during the blow that had killed David's dad, back in 1979. He was one of the eight guys who'd been working in the place that night...and the only one who'd survived by being in the break room when the tub of PBX ignited. It was one of the reasons he and David were such good friends.
As long as Fox was around, David felt like he had a little bit of his father there with him.
"I don't know," said David, staring at the glowing red tip of the cigarette. "First you, then Judy. Bad luck these past few days."
Fox snorted. "Nothin' but bad equipment givin' up the ghost," he said. "Jammed accelerator on the pickup, but that ain't a surprise. I should've put that truck out of its misery years ago. As for the crane, you know how tight things were at the plant till 9-11. Business is up, but upgrades are way behind. They'll run a machine till it falls apart, which this one obviously did."
David drew another lungful and blew it out his nose. "It feels like before," he said. "I'm wondering what's next."
Fox sighed. He'd had a front row seat for the "before" that David was talking about. For the worst time in David's life other than when he was fourteen and his dad blew up. "Next is nothin'," Fox said firmly. "This ain't before. It's isolated incidents."
David sucked the cigarette down to the filter and chucked it into the dustbowl that Fox called a yard. "What if it is like before?"
"Listen," said Fox, putting down the knitting needles and staring David in the face. "You're a man of God, right? You believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, right?"
"Sure I do," said David, reaching for the pack of cigarettes in the vest pocket of his shirt...then pulling his hand away, a habit from the
smokeless years.
"It's a powerful spirit," said Fox. "It's the only thing keepin' me off the firewater right this very minute. So you gotta believe that Holy Spirit ain't gonna desert you."
"Like it did before," said David.
"Works in mysterious ways, right?" said Fox. "These things that happened are just mysterious ways. Nothin' to do with you."
David went for the cigarette pack after all. "I wish I could believe that."
Fox spit another wad of chew over the rail. "Nobody got killed, right? Sounds to me like you oughtta stop worryin'."
"I know," said David, drawing out a cigarette and lifting the bug candle from the table beside him to light it. "I'm just being paranoid."
Fox picked up his knitting and started clacking needles again. "Listen to your Uncle Fox," he said. "Lighten the heck up."
David nodded and inhaled. The second cigarette tasted even better than the first, which was really saying something.
*****
When three days passed without an incident, David started to think that Fox was right. Maybe they had only been unrelated events after all.
6 Short Stories Page 6