by Blake Butler
They uncovered liquid cupped in gutters and strained it through his shirt and drank.
The girl’s skin turned soft and pasty. It snowed off her back in flakes. Randall stayed thankful they didn’t have a mirror.
They came upon the coast.
Even there standing on the bleached sand, Randall stood and sucked his tongue. He couldn’t imagine they’d made it that far. He hadn’t seen the beach since he went once as a child, afraid to step on the sand for fear of the clam holes, that they’d come up and rip into his feet.
Now they found the water missing. Where once there’d been multitudes half-naked, bathing, sunbathing, the shore was swarmed with dragonflies. Their blue bodies hovered, buzzing, looking for further things that’d died: they’d already stripped the meat off of the beached trout, the scales of salmon husked off, glinting light.
The sand cracked beneath their feet. The shore sat scummed over and pile-driven down, pale combs of foam dried at the farthest point where water’d lapped. Cracked shells of land-stuck jellies and uncased conch flesh sat overcooking, dried out, picked apart. Whole gulls with their skulls pecked in and post-ravaged by sand mites and worms.
The sun had drunk the ocean.
The sun more rapt than ever overhead.
Randall’s eyes could not keep their focus as the girl picked ahead among the wreckage. She fished sand dollars out of murk pools. She giggled, gaffed, hummed la-la-la. Tucked in the half-smashed ruins of some sand palace, she found a transistor buried up to its antennae. She dug it out and cleaned the speaker. She wiped the corroded batteries and licked the dials white, straightened the wires with her teeth. Soon she had the half-ruined thing alive, burping static broken by occasional squeals of incoming sound.
She skittered between the stations, searching to match the song set in her head. Randall didn’t have the heart to tell her it was useless, that nothing clear would come through now—how all those cryptic wavelengths once transmitting now were just more radiation. It made her happy just the same.
With nowhere else to go and under such stench, they continued on along the seabed. They walked out where before the water had been, the stretch of crunching sand endless for miles. Randall shuddered as they passed close to where once the tides would have lapped over their heads—for years in sleep he’d found himself stranded in such black; the miles and miles of unknown depth culling him under, full of grime.
They saw the dead all fuzzed and sunning. Whole fish schools. A swollen porpoise. Schools of jellyfish beat to vaseline. The seaweed knotted in fat brown scalps and punched with rash.
In small landlocked pockets they found tiny lidless fish clustered in barnacles and eaten through by mites.
Further out, there came another kind of wreckage: moored boats and ocean liners, rotting and picked apart by weather. Men’s skins lifted from their bodies. The whitewashed limbs of enormous swimming things held encrusted in the matted sand.
They continued in a short trench out into the heart of where the wet had been.
The phantom waves seemed to lap at Randall’s head. He breathed air that once would have been liquid. He kept looking back behind him, waiting to see the sea come back, enfolding. The brine filling his nostrils. The water wrapped around his face.
The girl messed with the transmitter’s signals near him, squelching. Certain frequencies ached his teeth, CHPCHRRAKRAK. The bulbs and wires screamed. Randall imagined those same signals invisible in the air around him, licking up against his skin, the same way they’d ruined his son: the errored flood of digits soldered to nothing, wormed into the flesh of the baby’s head; how the head’s molecules had formed clusters in reaction, spreading out, a blooming fist.
As they got further from the shore ground, the sand began to level out. The refuse became more sparse or deeper buried. The ground made one long blur in all directions, its one bland color stretched. The sun stayed put, enchanting. Randall stared into it, forcing his eyes against the blink. He let the light wash his vision hazy. In seconds he couldn’t see where he was going; he let his stumbling lead them further, the heat washing in boggled machination behind his face. He chewed just slightly on his ached tongue, imagined steak. He could hear the girl veering around him, lit by the cracked transistor’s bleep. She was to his left, then right; behind then way on; then somehow overhead. He felt overheated. He felt multi-pronged and run through. He continued on regardless, warbling. He blew a saliva bubble and it popped softly on his lips.
When he could see, he saw a house—ranch-style, dull orange, three-bed two-and-a-half-bath, there in the stomach of the land.
Randall looked, and looked again. It was not apparent from the condition of the house that it had been underwater. The flat sheen of the old paint shone in the new light. He and the girl stood there before it, blinking. The large-paned windows glared and gleamed.
The speaker between them went ABEEEEEEZE.
There was a welcome mat and a tall chimney that stretched so far into the sky Randall couldn’t tell at all where it ended and where something else began. Several plastic children’s toys were left scattered in the sand yard. There was a swing set and a bench. There was a two-door garage inside which two twin black vehicles sat silent.
Randall touched the vinyl siding and found it warm and flat, undisappearing. He crossed the sand yard up the short stoop to the front door. There was a texture to the stair steps, razed in a pattern that crossed his eyes. He climbed the steps and rang the bell. The toning chimed inside the house, one long whole note that resounded, then was over. Nothing moved. No eye appeared inside the spyglass. No footsteps. Randall knocked three times with all his knuckles. He tried the knob and found it locked. The doorframe would not give.
Around the house through a side window, Randall looked into a living room. There was a white leather sofa and a recliner arranged around a large TV. The TV was on and through the screen glass showed a cartoon dog and cartoon cat. The dog hit the cat with a piece of driftwood and the cat laughed.
There was no one in the room.
Randall tried the window but it would not stutter. The pane swayed and shimmied with his fist. Overhead the sun still stung and stared.
Randall stepped back from the house. The roof had the same pattern as the stairwell, a mess of lines of scattered depth. He walked back to where the girl stood. He stood looking on inside the light. Static rattled from the transistor, nuzzled tight against her torso. He gave her a look and she shut it off. She turned around toward the house.
Randall watched as she walked toward it in the same slow path as his, up the strange steps to touch the door with both her hands, though this time the knob turned; the door opened on to the inside.
The girl looked back at Randall and closed her eyes.
The air between them wavered.
Inside, the house was cool and clean and smelled of cedar. The hardwood floors reflected their faces in the grain. They called out up the stairwell and into the adjoining rooms, peering around corners to no response, no motion. The home’s air hung around them, parting.
In the short hall Randall’s shoulders brushed both sides.
Upstairs they found a child’s room, painted pink and draped with lace—a canopy bed piled with pillows and stuffed toys, a loom. The bed was dressed in patchwork in the same way as the girl’s clothes. There were no fingerprints, no dust, no locks.
On the nightstand beside the bed there was a small picture in a frame. In it, a young man stood beside a tree with both hands behind his back.
The girl lifted the frame and stroked the glass grain with her thumb.
“My father,” she said. “He looks young.”
She propped the photo back on the stand to face the bed.
Across the hall they found a larger bedroom with a large oak-framed mattress and a roll-top desk stacked with new paper. The longer wall was made of bookshelves, husky spines packed end to end. Some of the books were filled with blather, math, rune symbols. The clothes inside the walk-in
closet fit Randall close enough. He changed out of his sandy jean suit into blue fur pajamas and stood in the mirror trying to recognize his face.
Above the bed was an enormous painting of an ocean, slung with froth, mostly opaque.
Back downstairs, in the kitchen, they found the pantry fully stocked; the fridge overflowing with clean light. They ate peanut butter and corned beef. They ate avocado and pineapple spears, drank cold filtered water from a pitcher. As they ate, their skins began to loosen, the texture of their tanned skin and going smooth. They carried plates into the living room and ate in front of the TV where now the cartoon dog and cat were smiling and on fire. The sofas were large and comfortable and smooth. There was enough room for both of them to sit sprawled out on their own seat and sink their skins into the cushions. They watched the TV, droning. There were no news clips and no commercials.
In sleep, their warm brains drifted, slow pulses still and steady.
Randall slept with his mouth open, drooling, seeing his son was made of light, full and stitched and spotless.
The girl nuzzled a pillow and rolled over upside down and hummed.
While they lay, the house made short clicking sounds around them, slight settlings, shifts of air.
Randall woke later to the touch of something crawling in his hair. He sat up quick, with fists clenched. The girl lay across from him with the transistor. In her sleep she’d turned it on. The signal came in clearly, broadcasting the same soft-sunned song he could not place—throbbing and monotone and wordless. It sang out from the tiny, salvaged speaker from everywhere at once.
Randall blinked, his body sponging. He tried to think of where he’d been. He muttered something old beneath his breath.
The girl opened her eyes.
She smiled and watched him, her sleep still glazed and changing. She pointed past him to the window, between the thick green curtains parted wide.
Through the glass into the sand yard, Randall saw the rain there coming down—liquid rain. Plain water poured in droves. It sluiced against the paneled glass so thick he couldn’t see a foot beyond. He moved to the frame and pressed his face against it, saw where below the lip the runoff had already gathered several feet. It lapped at the bottom panes, compiling upward, beaded droplets cascading down the glass.
Inside, the song continued, drawing upward, its long calm chords vibrating the air, his hair, the house.
INK
Hard to decipher in its squall—the long squirts of liquid in stretched blue pyramids descending on the yard. Soon the windows streaked so thick you could no longer trace your name. The house was full of drip: the chimney glutted; the ceiling leaking; the sinks overflowed a new pool on the carpet. What books could have been written with this excess. What squid would hide from light. Out on the back porch the level rose to lap the welcome mat. You couldn’t see into the street. Everything clogged and burped and sopping. The surface reflected whatever peered into it. Overhead some sound like choking: gooed helicopters, gummy birds. The seas were heavy somewhere. I scratched my cheek and half-expected the unctuous gleam to come pouring out of me. Instead: my blood, several shades of brown. I slept what hours I could manage. I waited to wake up to something clean. In the nights, when the dripping swung low, we climbed onto the roof to try to see the city: a blubbered dot hung from the sky, a runny, rotten, murdered thing—a billion voices buried beneath, all saying the same thing over and over, smothered out.
TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD
This is the yard where the dogs would sit by the half-wrecked shed and sweat. Dad often tied them so tight they couldn’t crane their necks. Their backs flea-bit and wrecked with mange and xylophonic ribs. Moxie, Skipper, Moonbeam. Remember their howling in the hot nights when the ambulances screamed by. Remember the scummy flex of their brown backs, the lather of their sweat in suds. The year I snuck them each a sliver of my birthday cake, age 13—fudge batter, banana frosting. You should have seen those dumb dogs’ eyes.
This is the driveway, cracked with gravel from the groaning of the earth. These are my initials scraped into the wet cement for which my father blacked my eye. His Corvette sat for years there dripping, no amount of wrench or sweat bringing it back to life, until finally one day the wind lifted it straight off into the air. Remember how on brown August days mom would come out and spread a towel and tan in her underwear where all could see. Her name carved in a stall of the middle school’s boy’s bathroom—another box now undersea.
Imagine these houses taking on water. The cold flutter of family lungs.
This is an electric chain-link fence.
This is a picture window with no picture.
This is my parents’ bedroom where when they slept he’d lock the knob. The drywall damp between us not thick enough to keep a quiet. How dad would shower her in shouting. How mom would cough clods up in rip. Remember emphysema. Remember how quick the disease spread. Remember the nights I woke with nightmare and went to crawl in bed between them, finding only a door that wouldn’t budge, a cold metal bauble in my hand.
Here’s my room with the bunk beds I’ve slept in since I was seven, long after my feet hung off the end. Here’s a picture of my first girlfriend, whom I never got a chance to nuzzle. This is my videotape collection. This is a butterfly knife. A conch. This is the toe nail I lost after kicking the side of the house in anger. This is a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card in near-mint condition, just one corner burped with glitch.
This is a drawing of me on the top of a mountain waving hello or goodbye.
Imagine my innards flush with water. Imagine endless rain.
This is the chimney, where once a year we’d catch a bird. You could hear it singing through the whole house, in the attic, in my sleep. Chirrup chirrup. Dad would get so mad he’d stand in the hearth with a broom. He’d shriek and curse and stir up dust. If he couldn’t scare the bird free, he’d start a fire. The smoke curling up its beak lines. Within an hour, the chirrup ceased. I guess the bodies stayed stuck up there somewhere, lost in charcoal smudge.
Imagine how when the water rose high enough to cover the whole house. How you could see the tip of the chimney on the lip—an eye.
This is the cul-de-sac where I once socked my neighbor for saying my parents were going to die. Bobby had a stye over his right eye from not sleeping—bright yellow, oozing, swollen so big he couldn’t blink. He said he’d read the Bible and there was still time for absolution.
Remember how his was the first body I saw floating bloated on the rain, a school of malformed fan fish nipping at his back.
Remember how you never know it’s coming until it’s there and then it’s there.
Imagine how they swam until their arms ached, their lungs heavy in their chest.
This is a ruined veranda.
This is where I sometimes liked to hide.
This is the mouth of the sewer. Vortex of lost balls. Remember how on hot days you could see the heat rise in wavy lines. How on that first day, after six hours of torrential downpour, the manhole overflowed and bubbled, and the water spread out from around it, washing sludge and shit into the street.
This is a makeshift graveyard where we all buried our pets. No one could say who’d started, but you could count a hundred markers: cats, dogs, ferrets, snakes, hamsters, goldfish, lizards. The dirt was soft and loamy, fat with earthworms, ripe, alive. In April the flowers grew here first. Remember when Moxie died—followed by both Moonbeam and Skipper within hours, each living off the other, connected in the pulse—my father carried them one over each shoulder. He made me watch while he struck ground, heaving. The emphysema had him too. My mother began to recite a benediction and he told her to shut her mouth.
This is blacktop concrete, great for skinning knees.
This is a children’s playground.
Imagine secondary drowning where inhaled salt water foams up in the lungs.
This is a spacious 4 bed 2.5 bath colonial with formal dining area, fireplace, walkout basement,
in-ground sprinklers and a kidney bean shaped pool.
This is the Anderton’s, the Banks’s, the Barrett’s, the Butler’s, the Carlyle’s, the Canter’s, the Crumps’, the Davidson’s, the Dumbleton’s, the Fulton’s, the Grant’s, the Griggs’s, the Guzman’s, the Kranz’s, the Lott’s, the Peavey’s, the Peery’s, the Pendleton’s, the Ray’s, the Rutledge’s, the Smith’s, the Stutzman’s, the Weidinger’s, the Woods’s, the Worth’s.
Imagine shallow water blackout, heart attack, thermal shock, and stroke. The skies alive in color. No light, no sting, no sound.
This is street number 713, abandoned since I was eight. Murmur of murder. Phantom life. The paint was green and chipping. The grass had grown up around the hedges, the trees leafless all year round. Sometimes in the evenings you’d see a light come on upstairs. Remember the summer some kid’s cousin went in during night. How he didn’t come back out for hours, and later they found he’d fallen through the stairwell and snapped his back. Remember the way I sat up all hours as a preteen already balding, staring through my bedroom window at the house with one eye and then the other.
This is the last square of the sidewalk.
This is telephone wire.
This is mud.