Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

“Maybe you weren’t playing, but I was.” Dana flopped back against her seat. To the figurine in her hand, she said, “See that, Luke? We just got ten free points.”

  “Watch your mouth, Bobby,” Mom said, but he could tell she was trying not to smile.

  Bobby threw a baleful look over his shoulder at his sister. “Didn’t count.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Knock it off, guys. It’s too early.” Mom turned the station wagon off the highway onto River Road—which was at least two miles from the river and named by someone stupid, Bobby thought—and took them into one of Belleville’s older neighborhoods. The houses in this part of town were small and had been built in the thirties and forties, bungalows that all looked the same except for cosmetic differences. Pecan trees spread their boughs across the roads, making a golden tunnel for the car to pass through, and multitudes of squirrels darted to and fro with reckless abandon through the tiny sun-dappled yards. Each house had a deep front porch spanning its width, massive painted concrete slabs resting on brick piers and decorated with potted plants and wicker furniture. American flags sprouted from the tapered square columns supporting the porch roof on a number of houses; Veterans Day was in two days.

  Finally, the station wagon came to a stop at the curb in front of a white clapboard house with black shutters and a dark green porch slab. A wooden glider on chains hung from hooks in the ceiling, and on it sat Bobby’s cousin Tanner, a chunky sandy-haired boy of thirteen. A spray of freckles decorated his nose and cheeks, giving him the appearance of a much younger boy, but Bobby knew all too well his looks belied the teenager lurking in his skin. He thought his cousin was a butthole, though he’d never tell the larger boy that. He valued his life too much.

  Tanner was hunched over, intently thumbing a pocket football game that was all but swallowed by his meaty hands, its faint electronic chirps like faraway birds. Great. Tanner looked up when the car door thunked shut, his gray eyes void of emotion and intellect. Bobby raised a hand, then let it drop when the older boy turned his attention back to the game without acknowledging him.

  It was going to be a long day.

  The front door opened and Aunt Cindy emerged from the house, untying the apron around her waist. She draped it over one shoulder and put her hands on her hips, watching the three of them come up the sidewalk with a broad grin on her face. Bobby never understood how a lunk like Tanner could have come from such a pretty, delicate woman. Maybe he was adopted.

  “How do?” Aunt Cindy called. Then, from the corner of her mouth, “Tanner, put that thing away and say hello to your cousins.”

  Tanner flipped a switch on the front of the game and it went silent. He set it on the glider beside him, then mumbled something—Bobby wasn’t quite sure it was hello—and regarded them sullenly as they approached the porch. Aunt Cindy pulled Bobby and Dana into her arms briefly, and Bobby caught the faintest whiff of her perfume. He tried not to think about the soft swell of her breast pressing against the side of his head, because that was gross. Mostly.

  Aunt Cindy took Mom by the arm and led her into the house, talking so fast she sounded like an auctioneer. The two women had been best friends since they met on a double blind date at Auburn in 1961. Uncle Roger, Dad’s fraternal twin, had originally been set up with Mom, and Dad with Aunt Cindy. It became evident very quickly to all four of them that the Cupid wannabe had done a terrible job of matchmaking, and by the end of the night the two sophomore couples had switched dates. The rest, Mom had said when she told Bobby the story, is history. Crazy enough to be an episode of Love, American Style, but true.

  Uncle Roger had been the second-string quarterback then, a walking slab of muscle who had gone soft after he graduated. Now he was borderline fat and always looked angry because his face was so red. He sold insurance, using old pictures of himself in his Auburn football uniform in his advertisements because folks still remembered him from his glory days. The ads didn’t seem right to Bobby, sort of like lying, but no one else seemed to mind. Football made people stupid, he knew.

  Dad, on the other hand, had been a hippie-dippy back in the day. That’s what Grandma Rose—Mom’s mom—called him. Bobby wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but he thought it involved long hair and LSD. Grandma Rose didn’t hold Dad in high regard, that was for sure. Bobby was just thankful that if his dad had been doing LSD it was a good thing he hadn’t jumped off a rooftop, like the kid in the film Mrs. Callaway had shown them in Health class. The guy had been on a bad trip, the narrator said, and thought he could fly. He had climbed a ladder in the gymnasium of his school and gone through the hatch onto the roof, where he promptly leaped to his death because the drugs made him think he had grown wings. Bobby remembered the tinny whine of his scream as he fell, made choppy by the ratcheting clack of the projector, and the way he laid in the parking lot with his leg crooked off to one side to show how dead he was. Drugs were for dummies, that was for sure, and since his dad worked as an engineer for NASA Bobby thought the chances were pretty good he wasn’t a dummy. Maybe Grandma Rose was wrong about him being a hippie-dippy. Maybe he was just kind of dorky. That would certainly explain Dana.

  The screen door clapped shut behind the chattering women, leaving the three children alone on the porch.

  “Hi, Tanner,” Dana said brightly. She still had the Luke Skywalker figurine, Bobby saw, holding it by one arm and letting poor Luke dangle like a monkey from a vine. From somewhere in one of the trees near the road a squirrel scolded them, its strident voice reminding Bobby of the guinea pigs in the pet department at the G. C. Murphy store.

  “Hi.” Tanner sounded about as happy having them there as Bobby felt being there.

  “Want to play Star Wars?” She held Luke out as an offering.

  Yeah, Tanner. You could be Chewbacca.

  “Not really.” Tanner glanced down at the game beside him. “We could play football, but only two can play at a time.”

  “Football’s no fun,” Dana replied, saving Bobby the mockery sure to come if Tanner found out he didn’t like the game. Nothing sounded more boring to him than tapping buttons and watching tiny red blips of light do the herky-jerky on the display. He’d seen the game at school several times since it came out last year, and just didn’t understand the attraction. Judging by the excitement among the other boys when someone pulled one out, he sometimes thought maybe the problem was with him and not the toy.

  “What about truth or dare?” Tanner said, cutting his sullen gray eyes up toward the little girl. With one hand, he absently swiped his lank bangs to one side. “All three of us.”

  There was something not very nice about the way Tanner was looking at his sister, Bobby thought. It gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “How about cops and robbers?”

  Tanner’s dead gaze shifted over to him and for a moment Bobby thought he was about to be called a fag. Well, it has been almost two minutes since we got here.

  “Sure, if we were her age,” the larger boy said. “Why don’t I just go dig Candyland out of the attic and we can play that, while we’re at it?”

  “Candyland sounds like fun,” Dana said, brightly.

  “He was joking,” Bobby told her. He didn’t like the way Tanner’s eyes had gone flat and dark, the way the sky sometimes did right before a thunderstorm. Instinct told him he needed to tread carefully here, lest he find himself on the receiving end of something worse than a putdown.

  “I think Mama saved my old rattle somewhere,” Tanner said, his mouth drawing into a thin line. “Maybe you’d like it better, Baby Bobby?”

  Something was bugging the older boy, but what?

  “Just a suggestion, man,” he said, giving his cousin an easy smile. A calming smile, he hoped. “We can do something else if you want to. How about we take turns playing your football game? We could have a tourna—”

  “Ick, boy stuff,” Dana said. “Luke and I are going to play inside.” She spun and flounced through the screen door,
letting it bang shut behind her.

  This was what he was missing Jayna the Wonder Twin for.

  Tanner glowered at the street and didn’t speak. Bobby thought about following his sister, but knew how that would end. Mom would take one look at him and send him marching back out here to hang out with Captain Poutypants. That would only make things worse. Right now, the situation might be salvageable.

  “There anything like a U-Totem around here?” he asked. He didn’t remember passing any convenience stores on the way from Decatur, but they had been on the highway and that was too far to walk anyway. Belleville proper—what there was of it—was nearby, he thought. The only thing he remembered about the town was the strip of dusty old antique stores his parents dragged him through once a year or so. Surely there was a place they could go. He had a fresh five dollar bill in his wallet—his allowance for the next two weeks—and a simple peace offering was a cheap way to try and put the older boy in a better mood. If it saved him the pain of an Indian burn or titty twister, it would be money well spent.

  “There’s Crossen’s, over that way,” Tanner gestured toward a tree-covered hill in the distance. His lip curled into a sneer. “You need to get some gas?”

  Bobby ignored the—poor, in his opinion—attempt at sarcasm and said, “Is it close enough to walk to?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Not so far if you go on the railroad tracks. A mile, maybe a little more. Why?”

  “Want to go get a candy bar? My treat.”

  Tanner stood up so fast the glider kicked back and the pocket football game slid off the front edge. Bobby leaped forward and caught the game in one outstretched hand. He held it out to his cousin who, wonder of wonders, actually smiled at him.

  “Nice catch,” Tanner said, and clapped him on the shoulder.

  Crisis averted. Probably just saved myself some pain later. “Thanks.”

  “Let me tell my mom we’re going for a walk. She’d lose her shit if she knew we were going for candy, because I had pancakes for breakfast.”

  The profanity made Bobby’s ears burn. Was God listening in right now? Brother Peavey at church said God was always listening, but that didn’t make a lick of sense because that whole omnipotence thing he preached about seemed to be just about impossible. How could God understand so many things at once, even from people who didn’t speak English? That was just as crazy as Santa Claus keeping up with all the boys and girls around the world. Baloney, in other words. It seemed much more likely that God only tuned in when you were saying your prayers at bedtime.

  Or at least that’s what he hoped, for his cousin’s sake.

  No bolt of lightning struck Tanner down. He simply tugged the screen door open and called out, “Me and Bobby are going walking, Mama!”

  Aunt Cindy replied with her approval, and Bobby’s mother added, “Back by noon, Bobby. We have errands to run.”

  Bobby pressed the button on the side of his watch and the LED display blazed 9:03 at him in bright red digits. Three hours was plenty of time for them to walk to the store and back, as long as Tanner wasn’t messing with him about how far it was. Mom hadn’t mentioned any errands earlier. He wondered if that was Mom-speak for go out for lunch. She usually took him and Dana to McDonald’s or Burger King or—if she was in an especially good mood—Penn’s Hamburgers downtown when she dragged them out on Saturday morning. If that was her way of assuaging her guilt, Bobby was all for it, particularly if it meant a greasy burger from Penn’s slathered in mustard and onions (all the way, they called it) and an Orange Crush.

  Tanner took three long strides across the porch and jumped over one of the hydrangeas flanking it to land in the browning grass, which seemed to offend the squirrel that had been scolding them earlier. It chattered angrily down at them from a safe height, bushy tail twitching. Bobby descended the concrete steps to the walkway. He knew better than to try and mimic his cousin; he didn’t want to end up in the emergency room with a broken ankle.

  The day was perfect for being outside, Bobby thought. Sunny, with a clear blue sky, and warm enough that a jacket wasn’t necessary. A light breeze rustled the leaves and carried the faint chemical scent of the defoliant farmers had sprayed on their cotton earlier in the month. Patches of weak sunlight shimmered and appeared to dance on the ground as the leaves moved. All in all, his favorite time of year, even though it meant he had to go to school.

  At the sidewalk the boys headed in the direction Tanner had pointed. Two doors down, a stoop-shouldered man sat on the front porch in a straining wicker chair, a cigarette in one hand and a Schlitz in the other. He needed a shave, and his graying hair had been swept back and plastered to his head with something shiny, like the doo-wop kids Bobby had seen in Grease. He wore a white undershirt tucked into a pair of khakis, yellow stains decorating each armpit. He watched them through hooded eyes that reminded Bobby of a lizard’s.

  “You mind if my friend Joey comes with us?” Tanner asked in a low voice. “He’s cool.”

  “Nah.” What else could he say?

  Tanner raised a hand as they approached the house. “Hi, Mr. Garraty. Is Joey around?”

  The man took a drag off his cigarette, then dropped it to the concrete and ground it out under his heel without speaking. He reached around and banged his fist on the window behind him. “Joey! Get your ass out here! You got comp’ny.”

  A few seconds later the front door opened and a tall, broad-shouldered boy with dark hair shot out onto the porch with the speed of someone who knew it was in his best interest to be quick. Pimples dotted his cheeks, and his unruly hair stuck up in clumps like weeds. The t-shirt clinging to his sturdy frame featured an iron-on decal of a wild-eyed Gene Simmons in full KISS makeup, blood drooling from his mouth in a thin stream. The boy wore a pair of cutoffs so frayed around the bottom they were beginning to look fringed. When he saw Tanner and Bobby, he grinned and bounded down the porch steps.

  Bobby was a little taken aback by the shirt. He knew all about KISS, thanks to Brother Peavey. They were the Knights in Satan’s Service, which was just a nice way of saying they were devil worshipers. He wondered if Joey knew the truth about the band. Probably not. Who would wear a shirt like that if they knew what it really stood for? But... he had to admit old Gene looked pretty cool spitting blood like that, even though it was just more proof that he was hellbound.

  “Want to walk down to Crossen’s with us?” Tanner asked.

  The boy turned to his father. “Can I?”

  “Be back in time for dinner. Your mama’s makin’ cubed steak.” The man set his beer on the porch and leaned to one side so he could pull his wallet from his back pocket. A tarnished piece of chain tethered the worn leather to his threadbare khakis. He unfolded the wallet and withdrew a limp dollar bill, which he held out to his son. “Bring me back a pack of Camels and my damn change. You tell Milt Crossen they’re for me and he can call if he doesn’t believe you.”

  “Yessir.” Joey took the money and tucked it into his pocket, then trotted down the steps to where Tanner and Bobby waited. He gave Bobby an apprising look and said, “Who are you?”

  “This is my cousin Bobby,” Tanner said. “He’s from Decatur. His dad and my dad are brothers.”

  “I hope you’re smarter than this guy,” Joey said, amiably enough, and stuck out his hand. “Joey Garraty.”

  Bobby took it, and the two shook. “Bobby Frank.”

  When the boys were out of earshot of Mr. Garraty, Joey turned to Tanner and said, “So how bad was it?”

  “Got the belt. Five licks.”

  “Jesus.” Joey tipped his head Bobby’s way. “You tell him?”

  Bobby was glad Tanner was in the middle, to absorb the excess electricity from the bolt of lightning surely hurtling toward Joey for using the Lord’s name in vain.

  “Didn’t get around to it.”

  “We went nigger-knocking last night, and this idgit managed to get himself caught,” Joey told Bobby, hooking his thumb at Tanner. “We got up on the por
ch and rang the doorbell, and instead of running around the corner of the house like a normal person, dipshit here ran straight out across the front yard and got seen.”

  Tanner shrugged. “I didn’t think they were going to answer the door so fast. They’re old.”

  “And they have a son in college, who just happened to be home for a visit.” Joey brayed laughter. “Jesus, what a sight it must have been to see your fat ass high-stepping it across the yard in the porch light.”

  A grin spread across Bobby’s face. God must not be paying attention right now, either. Besides, it was a funny image. The boys had reached the corner and now turned left on the crossroad. In the distance, the road humped up and a yellow sign marked a railroad crossing. They left the protection of the trees and the sun shone down on them like the eye of some magnificent beast. It felt good on Bobby’s back.

  Joey continued. “The son didn’t even pause, just shot out the door like an arrow after him. Not even two minutes later, here he comes back, only now he’s dragging Tanner along by one arm. How’d he get you?”

  Tanner chuckled. “I could tell he was gaining on me, so I ran into Mrs. Abernathy’s backyard and ducked under her chestnut tree.”

  “Good spot. Thing’s practically as thick as a shrub.”

  “Not good enough. He reached right in and caught me by the ankle.”

  Joey howled. “He plucked a fruit out of a nut tree!”

  Bobby began to laugh. It was hard not to, imagining Tanner dragged out of his hiding place by one foot. Only one thing could really make it funnier. “Did you cry?”

  “What? Fuck no, I didn’t cry!”

  The word sucked the laugh right out of Bobby. He knew what it meant, of course... and he knew the kind of people who used words like that. Heatherns. Brother Peavey could wax poetic on the subject of heatherns, and how they went out drinking and carousing at all hours, fornicating and cussing and not going to church. Not going to heaven either, according to the Good Book and Brother Peavey. The man had been spreading the Word since before Bobby was born; he knew what he was talking about.