Hick

by Andrea Portes

  Maybe that’s what happens when somebody gets inside you. Maybe a part of them never goes out again. A part of them stays there, embedding itself inside you till you can read their thoughts, memorize each and every one of their fears and what drives them where and when, even over the red rocks of Utah into the piney woods.

  “Look, kid, he’s just got a few screws loose, see. He fucked my head and I ran off and now he thinks it’s your turn.”

  She puts her hands on her forehead and breathes out a sigh, something like guilt and being worn out, something like wanting to take back time.

  “He’s got plans for you. He’s gonna try to turn you into jelly. But not on my watch. Not on my fucking watch.”

  Something crunches the gravel outside and we both freeze, staring into each other’s eyes, trying to hatch a makeshift plan in the silence. Clinging to the wall, Glenda creeps towards the threat, staring sideways out the window, like a gangster in a black-and-white movie. She turns to me, motioning for me to get down.

  I mouth to her across the room, confessing, “I got a .45.”

  She makes a face, not getting it.

  “I got a .45. Smith and Wesson.” I exaggerate the last part, making a gun with my hand, pointing my finger and cocking my thumb.

  She gets it.

  She gestures, palms out, eyes wide. “Well, where the fuck is it?”

  And for a moment, just a little moment in time, I got this feeling like we’re back at Custer’s Last Stand, pulling a heist, partners in crime, she and I, like two lone stars on the run, and that we’re gonna make it. That, together, she and I can grab hands and fly off up above the treetops.

  Glenda peeps out the window, cautious, checking this side and that.

  “Kay.” Still in a whisper. “No sign of the truck. it’s okay.”

  “Why you whispering, then?”

  “Huh?” Still in a whisper. Then she pipes up, pointed, “Cute, kid, real cute.”

  She starts making a tornado in the room again, rifling through and around and up and under the mattress, the dresser, the pillows, throwing the green plaid chair on its side, tearing the upholstery and peering in.

  “How the fuck you got a gun and not tell me?”

  “it’s not a gun. it’s a .45 and I thought you’d dump me.”

  “Well, where is it?”

  “I dunno. In my bag, I guess.”

  “What bag?”

  “That nice bag I had.”

  She rummages around the floor, finds the bag, turns it inside out.

  Nothing.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  I look back at the Paris painting and strike gold in my head. That was not there when I woke up yesterday. I would’ve clocked that, first thing. What would a Libertarian who kills his own no-name chickens be doing with a tiny housewife painting of that arch in Paris with wet fashion plates taking a Sunday stroll?

  Glenda sees my look and follows my train of thought, two steps behind me but catching up. She hurtles herself towards the painting, tears it off the wall, breaks it in two pieces on the side of the bed and there it is.

  The money.

  It comes down like a Thanksgiving parade with floats and Glenda starts to jump up and down, up and down, grabbing the money, stuffing it into her bag, grabbing, stuffing, grabbing, stuffing, laughing and saying, “Luli, you’re a smart little fuck. You really are. You really are. Truly, truly.”

  She and I are the heroes of this moment. This is the moment when everybody can breathe a sigh of relief because she and I are partners in crime and we did it together and nobody better stand in our way because we are invincible like Bonnie and no Clyde. And this is the part of the day that you can clip on the wall and march to the state fair and ride on the carousel and grab the brass ring with. This is the part of the day that your grandkids save up for and gather round, jumping up and down like little rabbits, saying, Tell it again, tell it again.

  Except that the door slams open and there stands Eddie with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and my .45 in the other.

  THIRTY–FOUR

  Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  He scratches the back of this neck with the barrel of the .45, casual, like he just took a class on how to be James Dean.

  The one thing we have going for us is that he’s drunk. However, insofar as that means he may have crossed the threshold from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, this could work against us.

  I give him a three-in-ten shot.

  I’m betting on drink number six.

  I should’ve never brought that fucking .45. I should’ve never brought that fucking .45. I should’ve never brought that fucking Smith and Wesson .45.

  If I’d known it would end up pointed at Glenda in the piney woods of Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat, I would’ve just chucked it back in the drawer and that’d be that.

  “You gonna take her, too? That the idea?”

  Oh, boy, is he leaning. This may be drink number seven, I’m not sure.

  “That the plan here, Glenda? Take off yourself and then leave me with nothing?”

  Could be drink seven. Could be. Could be drink eight.

  “Boy, seems like you sure love taking things from me, now, don’t it?”

  But now it’s like Glenda’s turned into some kind of knight in shining armor, ready for the fall of the sparrow. She stands there, defiant, like she was expecting it.

  “Goddamnit, Glenda.”

  There’s something in the room bigger than all of us. I don’t know if it’s the .45, or the stillness, or the look on Eddie’s face, but there is something looming, passing overhead, like God himself is looking down, watching and waiting, to see if this one goes to him.

  Then the lamp gets thrown by Eddie off the table and the table gets off to its side and Glenda just stands there still like every moment of every hour of every day was leading up to this one moment, here, where she knew, somehow or other, she’d end up facing down the barrel of a .45 with Eddie Kreezer at the other end.

  “I ain’t leaving empty-handed.”

  Then he starts laughing. I mean it. This must be drink number nine cause he starts laughing like this is the best joke ever and high-pitched and he’s waving the gun to and fro and laughing again and now he’s just laughing at the way he’s laughing and he leans up and aims at Glenda and sighs and says with a smile, “it’s not even loaded. See?”

  And then it happens. Just like that. It happens as if it was meant to happen and it’s happened a hundred times before and a hundred times after, on and on, in a circle back and a circle forwards to infinity.

  Pop. You’d never think it would sound like that.

  Glenda falls to the ground.

  You could pick that moment up, hold it up above you and inspect it like a fishbowl, except that it’s smack-bang in front of you, this moment here, this moment that ends with Glenda spread across the floor in a pool of red growing, staring up, gurgling, going, going . . ..

  And now, in the middle of this stretched-out moment, instead of standing and waiting and being shocked or high-tailing it out, instead of any of that, in the middle of this Silly-Putty moment, Eddie buckles in two pieces.

  The bottle of whiskey goes crash on the floor.

  it’s like some Twilight Zone payback where, by shooting her, he accidentally shoots himself and now he’s paying the price, crumpled up, bent, beside her, blithering like a little boy, sobbing, cradling her head and whispering, “Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.” He lets the gun fall beside him, stroking her hair back and placing a kiss, gentle, on her forehead.

  “Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.”

  I peek over the edge of the bed and see Glenda looking up at him, deep into the back of his skull, sucking air.

  Going, going . . .

  And then another shot.

  Pop. Like a tire backfiring. Like popcorn.

  Eddie goes from leaning forward, bent, to falling back, startled. Now he’s got a red spot, too. Now he’s got a red spot of his own,
just like hers, and it’s growing on the front of his shirt and he’s clutching his belly, looking down at his hand, bright red, clutching his belly and looking back at Glenda. You should see his face. He can’t believe it. He can’t believe it and neither can I and you might as well just drop a spaceship out front cause this moment can’t be happening, no way, no how.

  Glenda drops the gun.

  Going, going . . .

  She lets out a little smile, faint, like she’s already halfway to purgatory and looking back at this world like a distant memory of a place where nothing works out and dreams turn into sawdust. She can’t wait to see the next place. she’s banking on giving the next place a whirl.

  And then I see him, standing in the doorway, frozen, like a figure in a glass globe with the snow swirling around him and the world turned upside down but he’s the one thing staying put.

  Beau.

  Glenda makes a last stand with a low groan.

  Then, with shaky fingers and arms that can barely move, she reaches out from purgatory, like trying to grab his throat or his chest or his heart or maybe just a piece of him. And damn but he reaches for her, too. It doesn’t last long. In fact, it goes by so quick that I can imagine myself, ten years from now, wondering if it happened at all or if it was just some blip in my imagination, some unbelievable piece of a puzzle, too impossible or weird or klutzy to have actually took place, these two, with bright-red hands, trying to grab the very last word before careening straight to hell or heaven or maybe just nothing how about that.

  Gone.

  Say good-bye to the Silly-Putty moment. it’s over and done with now but you still can’t believe it. You can look at it later and try to make it go different but might as well shout at the stars, might as well start a fight with the moon.

  The floor is made of blood and whiskey and two bodies you can’t look at.

  Silence.

  “Well . . . I reckon they were in love.”

  Beau says it, letting out a sigh. He sets himself down, takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.

  “I got to Lovelock. I got to Lovelock before I turned back. I shoulda turned back sooner. I shoulda doubled back at Battle Mountain. I don’t know why I didn’t just turn back then . . . I just . . . I got to Lovelock.”

  I stay put.

  We stay like that for a long time.

  Beau stares down at the red-soaked denim and starts to speak.

  “They used to run tests downstate. Used to drop bombs and see what’d happen. My mom, the schoolteacher, taught second grade. She used to go watch, bring the whole class, behind a plate-glass window. She said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Like heaven. Man-made heaven in the sky. She had me and that was fine. Nothing wrong. Nothing really wrong there. Maybe I was big, but . . . that’s not really wrong per se. But then she had a baby girl.”

  At this he starts to smile, but there’s something else in it, something salty or bittersweet, like the sound of something that never happened.

  “She was born with her heart outside her body. You could reach out and grab it if you wanted.”

  The air outside is still. The floor smells like copper.

  “Sometimes, sometimes I wonder if maybe that should be an option for starters. You could go through your days with your heart outside your body. Live like that.”

  Somewhere outside, the wind billows up through the trees. I lay back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling, thinking about man-made heaven in the sky, thinking about Glenda floating up in a bubble and how blood is brighter than bricks.

  THIRTY–FIVE

  Seems like I’ve spent my entire life poised somewhere between boredom and anxiety, staring out the window somewhere, in a quiet panic, listening to the wind and waiting for the other shoe to drop. What I didn’t know, what I know now, is that once it does, once the silence is broken by the thud of the black boot finally hitting the floor, there’s a kind of peace to it, a snap of relief, like the jolt out of bed before falling asleep.

  it’s the tension of not knowing that gives fear free rein to run rampant and make up stories and make it worse and then even worse, spinning tales of failure and no hope and why even try. It lets it take over until fear is all there is and all there will ever be cause that’s what you’re used to. Just fear fear fear.

  But once you know what it is you’ve been hiding from, what it is that’s been keeping you up at night, you almost want to laugh out loud that you spent your whole life dreading it. You might as well be scared of the stars.

  And even here, with two dull red stripes leading their way across the floor, outside the doorway, in a cabin bathed with blood and whiskey, in the piney woods, I know it’s not as bad, it never was as bad, as it was in my head, fearing it.

  Beau sits next to me on the bed. The wind blows down from the north, the sky turning orange and the moon hanging its head over the trees, turning the day in. He sighs and picks me up like a sack of potatoes, throwing me over his back, walking out the door, down the stairs, across the gravel, and not looking back, not even bothering to close the door behind us.

  He’s three times my size, a different species, hauling me over his back to God knows where with the cabin growing smaller behind and the late afternoon in front, turning the forest red and gold.

  THIRTY–SIX

  Two acres down the path Beau’s dog, Karl, comes flopping up to meet us. He’s a big dog, heavier than me, with two or three teeth left, the kind of sharp German dog that’s smarter than most Yankees. I’m grateful for him, sick of silence. Used to be a silence meant something wrong, but not to Beau. To him it’s like air, plain and simple, something you breathe in and breathe out, better listen to. it’s the words that cause all the trouble.

  There’s a clearing up the path and the sound of running water. Beau sets me down by the side of the creek.

  “Wait here.”

  He stalks off, pointing at Karl to stay behind. Karl sits up straight, keeping guard. He looks at me, expectant. This is a dog that could rip your throat out or kill a goat, but he’s on duty now, following orders. He looks around and decides to make a perimeter around the creek, marking out a circle, scaring off a bird.

  Beau comes back with a bar of soap, a washcloth, a towel and an old-fashioned dress. He lays them on a log next to the creek and heads back up the path.

  Something in me starts to panic. I cannot start again. I cannot start all over again, with Glenda floated up in the forest and Eddie face down in the floor.

  “You coming back?”

  He’s nearly out of the clearing and in the brush when he turns around.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said are you coming back?”

  “Well, you don’t expect me to just stand here and watch, do you?”

  I hadn’t realized that I’d reached a point where normal expectations seemed strange and distant, like French to an American.

  “I guess not.”

  “Just holler out when you’re done, I’ll be right over here.”

  I dip my toe into the creekbed and look around. it’s sludgy between my toes but the water is see-through crisp, and before I know it I’m halfway in, washing off the day and the night before that and the night before that. It isn’t until I get to the part between my legs that my hand starts to shake. I forgot about that part. I put the lid on it somewhere outside of Devil’s Slide and now, here, halfway up in the glistening water with the leaves turning red, it’s starting to unscrew.

  I don’t notice when my hands shaking turns into my whole body trembling, just as I don’t notice when my feet give way beneath me and there’s a splash and Karl barking and the water comes up around me and now I’m underneath. Now I’m underneath and maybe this is where I was supposed to be all along, with the current coming up around me and the twigs and Glenda beckoning me from the slippery rocks.

  The green blue water lays itself out in sharp prisms, slices off the sun, cutting triangles this way and that, turning the creek into crystals, mak
ing heaven out of slippery rocks, below the churning of what you never want to talk about or think about again.

  If I could stay down deep under the slithery prism rocks, I could stop time from turning and make believe I’d never been. If I could stay down deep, beneath the lost sage tumbling, I could bury that night by the side of the road. If I could stay down deep, I could drift off underneath the rapids and no one would ever know about what happened between my legs with the red coming out and getting two black eyes and a Hot Stuff necklace.

  If I could tear my skin off and send it down the river, along with my bones and my blood and my that-night story most of all, I would throw myself in pieces over the rocks and the pebbles and the moss down past Elko through Paradise Valley and the Colorado River beyond. I would tumble over, downwards, in bits and pieces past the muddy waters of the Rio Grande and into the Gulf of Mexico. I would hide myself in the silt at the bottom of the ocean and pull the sand above me like a blanket and tuck myself in deep beneath the clear blue sea until the world stopped turning.

  Through the glass water prisms come two giant hands and now I’m up, out of the water, onto the bank. The hands lay me down next to the creekbed while I stare, sputtering, shaking out the picture of myself by the side of the road, with my legs spread open and Eddie above me, on top of me, inside me.

  And now I get to see myself from the other side of the creek. I get to stand on the other side of the creek and see myself like a rag doll on the bank. I get to watch myself through the junipers on screen.

  I get to see the movie on the other side of the bank, no sound, just the wet rag-doll sopping, some kind of shaky toy getting jiggled this way and that, one arm, then the other, by the giant with the dog, arranging, rearranging, trying to fix. He dries her off and puts her in an old-style dress, delicate, delicate, trying to look away, trying to be discreet. He picks her up, careful, and brings her to his chest. He cradles the rag doll in front of him and walks, in silence, through the forest and into the woods, towards a kerosene lamp in a distant window.