Carol. Mary. Mathers. Laughing without hesitating, fucking without even noticing, fucking while laughing and hesitating. I slapped the dash and roared to stop the thoughts. Headlights lit my contorted face. I would rub her hair on the contours of her face and her voice would come out of her in the sound I’m used to hearing.
I made the seatbelt cradle my head. We cut through darkness. I thought of her fuzzy rump, her fishy smell issuing up.
At some stop, Darron came back to the car with a stick. “For you to bite on when you can’t no longer bear it.”
“Her heart and legs open every day, Darron,” I said.
“Well that sounds nice.”
“Her panties like little dove skins,” I said.
“Sounds fancy,” he replied.
“We were livin’ in a poem. How come I didn’t see the rhymes?”
[..................]
“Her face in the morning!” I said to his silence.
Silence still.
I bit the stick and it cracked in half.
“Aw fuck!” I said.
An ant crawled up my cheek and I smacked it dead.
We got a motel. (“If we ain’t got no bus to chase, hell.”)
Darron took a bath.
The hand of pain tossed me fetal-posed on the bed, making a plume of mixed skin cells burst off it.
Darron and The Haircutter drove the freeway listening to soft country radio. It was the hardest thing Darron had ever done straining not to sing along with those songs. He wrung the steering wheel and strained so hard his left eye snapped off its chords and went lazy. He let out a sexual-sounding sigh.
H.C. lifted his head to say, “Darron, do you know what I just realized? When Carol and I get back to normal, I’m gonna get her lowered from the ceiling of Carnegie Hall during some show. Like the featured guest gets lowered from the ceiling, spinning around? Dudn’t that sound pretty?”
“Yeah that sounds real nice,” Darron said, and H.C. said, “I know she’d like that,” and cradled his head in the Golf’s seatbelt again.
Darron furrowed his brows at his brother and pursed his lips. He looked at the road, then at The Haircutter, then at the road, then at The Haircutter, then realized that with his new eye he could look at both in tandem. He got used to it, then whispered with his face pointed at the glove compartment, “It sounds like y’all are a good couple and this can just be somethin’ you clear up.”
At some rest stop I went to the john and there was a cigarette floating in there like Carol. I shat all over it. When I got back in the car, Darron tossed something at me—a pickle in a plastic sleeve. He said, “I always remember you like these.”
I said, “Aw fuck, Darron, thanks. I can put it in my backpack for a nice treat in the woods.”
He said, “Good! And I was thinkin’—we should give our disguises to Mom.”
I noticed it was as if I were in a good mood.
I said, “That’s a nice idea. I can see her in the dress I wore and the jewelry that you wore.”
“Yeah. Mom looks like a badger in sweats. I think she’ll like it. Maybe she could re-introduce usin’ makeup. That purple you wore on your shadows looked good.”
We passed the sign that says Wyoming Welcomes You.
Darron said, “You got a tent?”
“Yeah.”
I noticed that the sky was grey to match my mind.
Ten minutes later, I said, “It ain’t a Coleman’s, but.”
Darron let a little time pass to pretend it was nice to let a long time pass, and said, “How much they charge you for it?”
“They gave it to me for $16.99 at Kmart, but—”
Darron whistled.
“Ach, clearance,” I said.
Then Carol came flapping to perch on my lips wanting to peck down my throat in search of my heart.
I dug in my backpack and got out the pickle and ate it in four bites. I drank the juice from the plastic sleeve, then I burped and the sleeve creased away from me.
Darron didn’t say anything.
The traffic said, “Shhhhhhhh.”
When we got into Ten Sleep we went to the bus station and asked if Carol was coming. The woman behind the logbook bobbled her head in the throws of some disease as she turned the pages and opened and closed her mouth adhesively. Her tee had a howling wolf on it to mock me with a skin-colored cigarette snap case in the breast pocket. She was proud to not say anything while she worked, and was even prouder to finally say, “You’d’ve had to check in New York, not here.”
I said, “Take me back to the woods!”
Darron said, “Let’s get you back to the woods. Carol’s prolly been in there the whole time this lady’s been turnin’ the pages knowin’ she cain’t even give us an answer.”
“I ain’t had my coffee yet,” she said.
We tried to leave in a huff, but there was a Boston Baked Beans machine so we stopped to each get a dimeful.
I sat in the little blue car as my little brother drove me through the Bighorn Mountains.
“I hope I find her,” I said.
When we got to Carol’s drop spot, I only had him drive a mile past it.
“What if I don’t find her?” I said like a loser, and caught sight of myself in the side-view mirror as I was saying it.
Are you The Haircutter, or is The Haircutter you? I heard from the shadowy halls of my being.
“I am The Haircutter,” I answered.
“Huh?” Darron said.
“Is that all you are?” the halls asked back.
“I don’t get the question,” I said.
“Oh I was just like huh? cause you said something,” Darron said.
“Nevermind,” the halls stubbed out their cigs and walked away.
“No don’t go!” I said.
“I have to, don’t I?” Darron said.
Then it was like: hush, howler—hunt.
The little blue car receded into the hazy distance. I hoisted my backpack up on my back. I roared, “CAROOOOOL!!” No birds flew out from the trees and my words didn’t echo. They sounded like they were roared at a brick wall right in front of me. I got out my bear mace to hold in my hand and took off running.
Day 1
The sunny Wyo wind took the calls in every direction within a single “Carol,” pointing my hair whichever way to go with. The shimmering floor of the woods made me dizzy. I had to step over streams, then up on chunks of rock, then pause to figure out where to step next so I wouldn’t walk into either a spider web or a bunch of sticks hanging from a tree. It was all about figuring out where to step next. I hated it.
I did Carol calls until I sounded like an old man. I swatted at bugs and bushery. Indian Paintbrush splattered a bloody God sneeze. God shat pellets of all shapes and sizes through the bowel systems of animals of all shapes and sizes, then absorbed it all into the earth and grew trees out of it, as if to comment on some artistic idea he’d had in mind since fourth grade—Yeah, we get it—hope you’re enjoying your stage, rich boy. He pissed waterways and whistled the other way while we had no other choice but to drink from them. It was all one big show that I wouldn’t have bought a ticket to if Ronald McDonald himself had coaxed me. (“Then why doesn’t he shut up and let us go camping and enjoy it?”) Just after God shits through my bowel system and grows a tree from it for you to camp under.
I unrolled my sleeping bag, liking the factory-fresh smells. I got out a sack of burgers and ate two standing outside. Lightning bugs blinked at different depths to match the stars—white and gold. A mosquito bit my face, so I washed the burgers down with a few swigs of Coke, then took the sack to a nearby tree and reluctantly left it there like the survival book said. I set my bear mace by the zip opening of my tent next to my Coke and settled in, not bothering to change clothes. A let’s-get-this-over-with kind of thing. I laid listening to nocturnal animals activate their bodies and creep around the woods, racketing between gusts of ancient wind—all that. I’ve just never been one for natur
e, or for anything else for that matter. The wind rocked the trees, making them creek like witches trying to get me to wiz myself. (“Ach—just don’t break and fall on me.”) It was hot, so I removed my clothes and got back into the sleeping bag naked. I waited like a piece of snail meat to fall asleep.
Day 2
I looked around for bears and didn’t see any, so I dismantled my tent and got it into my backpack along with my sack of burgers which had gone untouched-by-bears throughout the night. I got my toilet paper roll and dug a hole in the earth. I squatted for a dump, the morning air shooing my balls up into my stomach fat. I refilled the hole when I was done—nighty-night Poo and Paper. I got out the map and logbook I’d been writing my tracks in like the survival book said. I used my compass to find Northwest, and made some notes using the pencil I’d been keeping behind my ear and liked having there very much. I thought about cooking rice but it was ninety degrees out—let’s just get this over with. I ate some jerky and started on Carol calls, finding a stick that I could use as a walking stick while I called like some commercial.
The Haircutter used his size XL lungs to massage the Bighorn Mountains with Carol calls on the fifth day of Hush, Howler—Hunt. He didn’t once think about trying to find her using only his heart. He thought little of the wolf he had dropped off those months ago in the same woods, but when he did think of it, he shouted out for it too in a howl. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that thing again,” he said aloud. He thought of his bear mace as a gun. He felt protected and impatient. Though, he sometimes stopped to cry, abjectly feeling like he’d never see Carol again. Once, by a stream, while his long backpack laid on the bank like a desultory turd, he closed his eyes and reached out to touch her. His fingers explored her face, then felt the length of her neck and pulled her close to him. Their hearts fused together and the stream babbled in applause. A coyote yipped nearby and they didn’t even flinch.
The ever-present smell of sagebrush bragged about how stylish it was. I saw a sly fox and some sly deer. (“Hi, yeah, I get it. I see you.”) The sun shown through the trees, casting skeletal shadows. My shorts bunched between my thighs, casting my thoughts towards Gold Bond. Wild flowers made a liquid scent of the heat—I drew it in through my nostrils and coughed. (“Ach—get out of my nose.”) I stopped before a spider web and watched the wind bend it melodramatically. I got out a burger to eat while I watched the spider hold on. I said, “Go Sally, go,” in my head, and said, “Shut up!” out loud.
Of all the sounds in the woods, the sound that wouldn’t shut up most was the sound of my thoughts.
“You’re disgusting.”
“But only when someone’s looking.”
“How come you’re so homely looking?”
“Ezekiel Bradscrafty wrote To Eat His Own: The Man Who Ate His Fingers in 1978.”
“What dipping sauces did he use?”
I roared, “I’m thinking so hard!”
“Just call me Mindstein.”
It was the most annoying day of my life being out in that peace and quiet.
“I’m looking forward to the Zen.” Yeah, so’s my grandma right before she dies.
At dusk, the sky looked tie-dyed and plant life held their colors till they turned to judgmental figures in the night. Mosquitoes fuzzed the air around the poor Haircutter who sat on a stump letting his mistrust in Carol take root.
I looked at the black water in front of me and thought about drinking it, drowning. I looked up at the black velvet sky and wished on a pearl of white light for Carol.
To see what the instruction booklet was talking about, I removed the “star flap” from my tent after I hitched it. I felt funny as I was reaching up to unhook it, and I realized it was because I’d lost some weight. I stuck my finger between my belt and stomach and it fit.
I got back in the tent and told my backpack, “I lost some weight.” It continued on with just being a brown backpack—being stiff and not being obliged to respond. I flipped onto my back, not being obliged to grunt while doing it.
The sky was stuffed with stars. They blinked, as if to watch me. They winked, as if to tell me I was right—I had lost weight. They were the lights that lit the length of New York avenues, that flitted up and down dancing jewel-handed women, that were flashbulbs going off at me, that were droplets of spit shot from the millionaire mouth of one Leslie Christmas. I saw Carol’s sternum pearl as the North Star and wished I’d had the sense to swallow it. I started to cry. Here’s H.C. in a tent that would no doubt whip against his dense silhouette if the stakes uprooted. Here’s the tree creaking above him, living its life, not giving a dead leaf about his heartache. Here’s him crying. Here’s him searching—Ooh!—excited as a kid remembering where candy is hidden—here’s the spot on the sleeping bag where Carol blew her nose, and he his! He holds it at a distance, “Well look at you!” Smiling so hard he coughs. Brings the crusted corner in for a hug tight to his neck crook. Then says to himself, “That’s damned weird and you know it.” Honks a clot into the spot and rubs it in. “Quit bein’ a pussy,” he says a tone deeper to equal his father’s voice. He settles in and shuts his eyes and rapid thoughts bat through the skies of his mind like rabid bats on drugs with their tiny pricks out.
Day 3
On that summer’s day three, I rolled my sleeping bag scroll-like to shove it up the yellow-suited cowboy’s metal spinning ass. The mental vision of Carol’s face flashed like a guiding light, like a beating heart. I found a stream and shat in it pleasantly, peasantly, instead of a hole. “Talk about a food log,” I thought as I watched it float away and get caught in an eddy. I used the water pills to get a drink of water and gagged the whole time I was drinking. And when I was done, I thought, “While you were gagging, did you hear a distant John?” Moths flitted lowly and sporadically rose to my height.
“Ach—get out of my face,” I said.
And when I’d said that, wasn’t there a distant John?
Branches bobbed in a breeze.
“John!”
“Here we go!” I screamed.
I hoisted my backpack and roared, “CAROL!”
I ran Northwest in the mudded hiking boots we’d paid $89.95 for my pair for and $64.95 for her pair for.
“Carol!” I skidded to a stop on the edge of a burnt forest. Worms wiggled below me in suspense.
“JOHN!”
I saw her blond body hopping mirage-like through the blackened trees like the Black Chicken Salad from Applebee’s.
“Carol!”
“… JOHN!”
Yes, please.
I ran.
“JOHN!”
I ran.
“CAROL!”
Hungary.
She was less than a skyscraper’s length away from me. I was on the ground floor, ascending, and she was on the twentieth, coming down.
“John!”
“Girly!”
Boots kicking up ash, making it hard to see. I was on the tenth floor and she was on the thirteenth.
“We did it!” were the last words.
The sexual swoop in the stomach that accompanies a drop from an amusement park’s seagull-dotted skies accompanied as The Haircutter’s body dropped to China and a gong faintly rang.
They fell into a sinkhole fourteen feet deep. Lumps of ash landed on them in splashes like ink. The mouth of the hole was muffled by a burnt, uprooted tree and a boulder balanced on its branches precariously. A ribbon of sunlight dangled down to H.C. like, “Here kitty-cat.” He opened his eyes and they were upside down in their sockets. He lifted a hairy hand to play Bat The Ribbon as his eyes untwirled in spirals. The Goblin of Pain perched invisibly on Carol’s protruding sternum and drew long groans out of her lungs—they made a hi sound.
Carol and I lay potentially paralyzed in the poses we landed in. A thought came at me on a pogo stick from a chink of light in my unconsciousness—it was this: this is something. I didn’t know what exactly, but I knew I’d read it in a book somewhere. Bravery or Survival Story wer
e words that came to mind, but they seemed too good for me. I opened my eyes to see if there were tweedle birds around my head but there were none. Just a black diamond mist in a stripe of sun. There was a half-disintegrated tree facing down on me to watch how I was going to get us out, and a big boulder was balanced on its branches.
“Carol?” Soot came out of my mouth like a mummy.
Carol’s goth-noir hair was covering her face—I reached over but couldn’t reach her.
I realized that I had somehow gotten the map and logbook out of my backpack to find where we were. I had gotten out my cell and was dialing Darron.
“Listen here, you hold your breath so you can listen good. We need to make sure you get these instructions in case we get disconnected,” I said. “We’re somewhere stuck in a sinkhole.” I said, “It’s about five hundred feet north of the yellow blaze trail heading west off the parking lot near Kara’s Lake,’bout four miles into the trail, got it? It’s a patch of burnt forest, okay?” I said, “Get your car and get some friends and come up and look for us. We’ve got an uprooted tree stickin’ into the hole and there’s a boulder on it. Everything’s burnt—I’m breathin’ in soot.” I said, “I’m gonna shoot a flare in exactly one hour, at one o’clock, so get out here and be lookin’. Don’t worry about the pic—just find us.”
“What?” Darron said.
And then the line went dead.
Just to see what it felt like, I rolled over and treated the ground like a pillow, and I fell asleep.
Half an hour later, Carol was sitting up slumped against the raw wall of the hole.
“Wake up!” she said.
I woke up and stood on my backpack and tried to reach the charred branches of the tree.
“When’s he coming?” Carol said.
“I don’t know if he is,” I said.
“We’re gonna be on the news,” said Carol.
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