But Travis isn’t here, and he isn’t coming back. I have to do this mission alone. I might not survive. I am not afraid. A milk jug and a pie pan float by in the river. I’m hungry. I eat the hunger. I can see planks of blue sky above me, between the ties. My feet are hot. The sweat stings my scraped toes. I take off the black shoe. I need to think. I need my Mario Bros. I lie back on the concrete. I feel the vibration almost immediately. My whole spine tingles. It’s the train. I can feel it coming my way. Crawling along my backbone. I will not move. I know this. We decide not to move, no matter what happens.
The drugstore is just down the street. You haven’t been out of the house in god knows how long. God knows. Fucker. You can’t see over the stubby mountains, the sumac, the crumbling rock-faces. You don’t recognize anything. And you’ve seen it all before. You’ve never been able to see over the mountains. Why should it be different now? God knows. Fucker. Sometimes, a thick July sky will blur everything, turn it all gray, and you can pretend there is a horizon to look out at. Sometimes snow clouds will roll over Scald Mountain and blanket your whole world. You’ve felt like a prisoner all your life. You never knew how to say so. Your daddy would’ve laughed at you. By the time you joined the Army and got some distance, your vision was already, and permanently, shortsighted.
You come out of your house, and Scald Mountain shoves you back against the door. The paper mill stinks. The drugstore is just down the street. Just past the post office. You cut through the alley. The ragweed and Queen Anne’s lace blooming. The alley ends at Joy Plaque & Trophy. You know the asshole neighbor isn’t at work, but you keep your head down and hurry past anyway. You ought to talk to the boy about what happened today. You won’t. The boy is your son. Sometimes you know this.
You thought maybe you could walk all the way to the drugstore, go right up to the pharmacist and get your prescription filled. Now you’re not sure. People are looking at you, at your uniform. You know the post office is always busy. Always people coming and going, looking official, or important, or at least focused. You know there’s always a line at the pharmacist’s window. Old people with their oxygen bottles and diapers wanting to talk and talk and talk, and get their free blood-pressure checkups; other people so fat and pasty (angry tattoos sprawling across their ham-sized calves) you can’t tell how old they are, what sex they are, driving their motorized scooters up and down the narrow aisles.
There is no way you can walk through all that, or wait through all that. Not even with Big Bertha at your side. You decide to call the prescription in. You have fifty cents. You know there is a phone booth outside Joy Books, on Penn Street. First it was The Joy BookNook. Then it was Joy Book & Video. Then it was Joy Adult Shoppe. (You remember all this, but you can’t remember the last time you ate.) Now the roof is caving in, and there are knee-high weeds along the rear wall.
It’s an actual phone booth, with a door, hinged in the middle, that hangs and squeaks when you force it shut. There is graffiti on every surface, bottles and cans and wrappers on the floor. A bunch of idiotic Jesus tracts, each more faded than the next. You try to imagine the fool who keeps refreshing the supply. You have no imagination.
You pick up the telephone, hear a dial tone, feel genuine relief. You dig the quarters out of your pocket. Look at your palm. Your sweaty palm. Fuck. Is that a 4 or a 9? You have no choice but to pick a number and dial. You hear the ringing at the other end. You only have fifty cents.
“Thank you for calling Joy Drugs.”
You almost speak. You almost shout. But then you realize the voice is recorded. It’s telling you to do things. To wait, to listen. To push specific numbers to get specific results. The words are moving too fast. You can’t figure out what to do. What do you push if you want to talk to the pharmacist with the tits and the mole?
It’s hot in the phone booth. The air is stagnant. There is a wasp nest up in the corner. The wasps stand at attention like perfect soldiers. The recorded voice stops. The courthouse bell fills the moment of silence. The wasps twitch and shuffle on their nest.
“May I help you?” a voice on the phone asks. You hear impatience in the tone. What should you do? You do the only thing you can think of.
“There’s a bomb!” you say. “You’ve got ten minutes!” you say.
Then you hang up. You’re dizzy, and your breath refuses to satisfy your lungs. There is no bomb. You’ve done this before, but you can’t remember when. You turn to open the phone booth door. The door will not open. You are a fatass blob. Your flesh fills the booth. You pull and pull at the sticky handle, but the door is jammed in its track. It’s hot. You can’t breathe. You hear a siren in the distance. You hear a train whistle. You bring Bertha up, try to swing her, but there is no room. Her titanium head bounces off the safety glass. You feel a wasp land on your golf hat, another on your forearm. You can’t tell if it stings you. You kick at the bottom of the door. Trash swirls at your feet. You keep kicking.
≠
I lie with my back on the concrete pillar. It feels like the whole world is vibrating. Is it the Rapture? Is it the boy? Is it the train? We don’t mean to, but we decide it’s the train. The closer the train gets, the more I feel it. I am drawing the train’s power into my body. Through my skin, into my bones. I am growing stronger and stronger. Diesel fuel pumps through my veins. I could bite the steel rails in half. I could lift the rails from their ties and hold them up as the locomotive charges over my head. Our head. We could lift our powerful head between the ties and stop the oncoming train with the muscles of my neck alone. I dig my nails into the concrete. Everything shakes and trembles. This must be what the earthquake will feel like. The earthquake that ends the world. I hear a rattle and clacking. I look to see my Game Boy. It vibrated off my chest. It’s vibrating across the top of the pylon. It’s about to fall into the muddy river. I leap. Quick as lightning, I come to the rescue.
∀
The rest of the day goes wherever it is that days go, without any more, or any less, divine intervention. Abigail may or may not have spent it in the toilet stall, with the pubic hairs and the graffiti, by turns praying, reading rereading the Rapture tracts. She cannot remember.
No? She denied the Lord. Her own word grows thick and bitter in Abby’s mouth. It burns a hole in her consciousness, and that hole fills up with guilt. She denied the Lord. She is a bad witness. She is a bad employee. She is a bad wife. She is a bad mother. Is she a bad mother? Is she a bad witness? Is she a bad employee? She is a bad wife. She is a bad mother. She is a bad witness. She is bad. Is she? She is.
Is it too late?
It’s not too late.
She’s got a plan. Abigail Augenbaugh has her own plan.
She’ll stop by the store on the way home. She’ll get some pizza bites, and big bottle of real Coke. She’ll make a nice dinner. They’ll have some good family time. They’ll turn on Froggy 99, the classic rock station. Even better, she’ll call up that Carole Onkst woman, that guidance counselor. She’ll invite her over for pizza bites. They’ll talk. Really talk. They’ll figure stuff out. Then, when Carole Onkst, the guidance counselor, leaves, and the boy, their son, Willie, is tucked into bed, Abby will do that thing Darnell mentioned. Whatever happens tomorrow, the next day, or the next, will be OK.
And you kick and you stomp, and you whack the glass with Bertha, and the wasps orbit your head, inside and out, and you are about to die. Then you hear a voice.
“Hey?”
Is it a real voice? A human voice?
“You all right in there?”
You are struck by the absurdity of the question, but can’t respond. It’s a dude in a suit. He pushes at the center of the phone booth, and it opens. He steps back. You and the wasps escape. There’s a stain on his tie. A green pen in his pocket. You see him look at your uniform. You raise Big Bertha high. The dude in the suit scrambles away, trips on a parking space curb, falls on his ass. That’s when you see his sneakers.
“Hey, man,” the dude says. He’s got
his hands up. You feel a little sick because you like the fear you see in his eyes.
“I’m just trying to help, brother. Can I, do you—”
You hurry away, leave him there on his ass. You see a crowd gathered in front of Joy Drug. Crowds make you anxious. Then you remember the bomb threat. This is your crowd. For just a second, you are the master of these fools. Then you can’t remember why you made the bomb threat.
You look at the people, clumped together or standing alone, some nervous as ants, some giggling stupidly. You look and see that every single eye of every person—every asshole man, every stupid woman, every filthy kid—all the eyes there stare right at you. Shoot you full of judgmental holes. You blink. You look again. Now you see that every pitiful human in sight is blind, all their eyeballs either plucked or thick with cataracts, either black pits or moon-white nickels. Then you remember the pharmacist. You look for her. She’s standing alone by the Joy Drug sign at the front edge of the lot. A bank of fancy grasses surrounds the sign, the green blades, the yellow and red blades, rising up and spilling over at different heights behind her. Standing there like that, in her pure-white pharmacist’s smock, she looks like a fucking angel. Why is she there? Why are they all gathered outside Joy Drug?
Then you remember the bomb threat. You tighten your grip on Bertha, take a deep breath, and veer off the sidewalk. They look at you, at your uniform. You haven’t always been this way. Confused. Afraid of most things. Pissed off at the rest. You weren’t like this before you went over there. You did it for them, the bastards. All of them. And none of them care. You did it for him. You did it for her. You did it for the greedy assholes who look down on the town from Scald Mountain Country Club. You did it for the faggy professors at the community college. You did it for the chunky son of a bitch selling hotdogs and spouting left-wing nonsense in front of the courthouse. You did it for the anorexic with the store-bought tan, the bleached hair, the fake boobs as big as the heads of the two dirty kids she drags by the hand across the parking lot, cursing and making threats. “We’re going to Walmart!” she says.
You did it for her, the pharmacist.
It’s hard to breathe. Sweat drips in your eyes. There is a golf ball stuck in your throat. But you force yourself through the throng. They part. They’re afraid of you. In awe. You’re a hero. A war hero. You make your way to the sign, the heavenly vision among the grasses. You bring Big Bertha to your side. She watches you approach. You need the pills. You want her attention. You’ll accept her fear. The fearmonger holds the power. You walk right up to her. You’ve got things to say. Important things. You know she’ll understand. She eases back closer to the grass. Maybe you stepped too close. You don’t know. You take a step too. Closer.
It’s just you and her. You open your mouth to speak. The golf ball falls out and rolls to a stop by her beautiful white shoes. You open your mouth again, and a cartoon thought bubble rises into the space over your heads. It’s just the two of you. The war hero and his angel. You fill that space with all the important things you want to say. You tell her you tried. For a whole month, you went to their fucked-up meetings, sat in their fucked-up folding chairs, washed over by their fucked-up florescent lights, with all the other fuck-ups.
You tell her you admire people who can pretend it all away. You admire the ones who can lock into something, an idea, a hobby even, and hang on, pretending so hard it’s the be-all end-all that they forget they’re pretending. You don’t tell her how much you admire the ones who can just check out and leave it all behind.
You tell her how sometimes, when you’re in the basement on the couch, the whole world feels like it’s a desert, it’s all Iraq. Sand right outside your window. Sand in the yard. Sand up over the mountains and beyond. It’s cool and damp in the basement. You tape around the windows and door. You know with the slightest crack, the sand will spill in, fill your basement, your sanctuary, and drown you.
You tell her about those rare rare moments when things make sense. When you realize that everybody you see, and everybody you don’t see, has a whole life, whole histories, whole futures, and they’re all different from yours. This makes you fear them. All of them. You confess to her that you don’t understand how the world could be at once so vast and empty and suffocatingly cramped.
You tell her they caught your boy naked in the neighbors’ house this morning. But what could you do about it? The boy is yours, but beyond ownership, there’s nothing. What do you have to give the boy? What can you offer besides your rage? You tell her you have a wife. You think you do, anyway. You haven’t seen her for months. Haven’t fucked her in years. It’s not that you don’t want to, you say. You worry for a moment that the word fucked may offend her. You decide she understands that it was the only word you could use.
You tell her you take the pills like you’re supposed to. You tell her the pills make you fat and constipated and impotent. Unable to sleep or eat. You tell her.
“Excuse me!” the voice says.
“Hey!” the same voice says.
You blink. Shake your head.
It’s her, the pharmacist. “Can you back up, please?” she says.
You look down. You reach into your pockets, pull the pill bottles out, offer them to her. She doesn’t respond. You see her nametag, pinned over her heart. Her fine little tit. You read the word Joy, but her name is blocked by a strand of hair. You reach out to move it.
“Hey!” she says.
You have more to say, too, but the lot fills with police cars and a fire truck so red it throbs. All the sirens wail, obliterating your words. Then you remember the bomb threat. The flashing lights ricochet inside your skull. Afraid of seizure, you close your eyes. You back away from the pharmacist. You turn. You see the sidewalk. You run. They’re chasing you, even if they’re not.
∀
Abigail Augenbaugh clocks out. Abigail Augenbaugh digs through her purse, digs deep between and under the seats for change. Digs for quarters, dimes, pennies, wherewithal. Abigail comes up with three dollars and seventeen cents. It’ll have to do.
≠
It’s loud.
I look up through the railroad ties. I see three long bars of sky. I hear the train. I feel the train. Everything shakes. I get to my knees. I take a breath. I squat. I don’t know how close the train is. I feel it in all of my body. I am brave. I am invincible. I stand up between the ties. My head pokes up just above the track. I see the train. The engine is at the bridge. Maybe I could outrun it. I look down. The water around the concrete pylon seems electric. I could jump in the river. I can’t swim. I could breathe in the water. I am The Amazing Gilled Man. I could dive to the bottom of the river and swim all the way to the ocean. I could rally all the sea creatures to my side, and we could stop the world from ending.
I can’t swim. How close is the train? I can stop the train with my power ray. The power ray shoots from my eyes. I can destroy any target with my power ray. I can see through buildings and walls and clothes with my power ray. I can stop things. Trains, even. I take a breath. I stand. The face of the locomotive rears up. It blocks the sun. The wheels chew up everything else in sight. The air horn rips the world apart. I am deaf. I drop back to the top of the concrete. I curl up and close my eyes. Everything shudders. I can’t tell where my body ends and the concrete begins.
You run. Even though you can’t breathe, you run. You hold Bertha out in front, like a rifle. There may be footsteps behind you, or it may be your heartbeat. You run, and your flabby gut slaps back and forth. You almost touched her. You called in a bomb threat. You didn’t get your pills. You run toward your house. You see the neighbor kids on the sidewalk. Colored chalk is everywhere. They hear you first, your boots slamming against the cement, your wheezing breath loud and raucous. You run in a straight line. You will not be swayed. You see her, their mother. You’d like to bend her over. Bend over, you’d say. No apologies. But what then? She scoops them up, drags them to the stoop. You’d like to bend her over. But you don’t
stop. You don’t even look. You run past, run up your own steps, through the door, through the house, into the kitchen. You slip. Your boot comes down on the linoleum and scoots right out from under you. You hit the floor hard. Maybe your head hits the table leg. Maybe you’re bleeding. There is something sticky and orange all over the floor. It clings to your beige uniform. You remember smashing the bottle of Metamucil. You decide it’s not so bad, lying there on the kitchen floor. You hear the traffic outside, the world is in motion, but inside your house it’s peaceful. Those must be your legs, but from where you lie, from how you see, the drab tans of your pants could be mountains. The dirty floor a dry lakebed. You watch a thin trickle of blood make its way across the linoleum, mixing a little with the powdery medicine. It might be yours.
≠
I am not dead. I did not die. I will not die. I am a magnet. I draw the power of the railroad into my body as it passes above me. I can see the thick axles. Sparks and sticky hydraulic fluid rains down on me. I open my mouth. I yell. The train eats my scream. No matter how loud I yell, the train is louder. I did not die. I am Loco-Moto. I stand up and become the train. I charge through town, destroying everything. No.
But the shadow passes. I look up, see sunlight. The train has passed. My ears ring. The train is still passing in my head. My body shakes from inside out. I look for my Game Boy. It’s in my hand. My fingers cramp. I wait a minute, then climb up between the ties. Somebody at a loading dock is pointing at me. I see his mouth move, but I only hear the train. I could run him down, plow right through him, smash him to smithereens. I don’t.
I run back behind the golf course. I see the boys. The boys play golf in the afternoons. Sometimes they hang around the pond to smoke and cuss. And beat people up. The boys are trouble. I let them live. For now. We decide it. Me and the boy. I run faster. I take the long way, past the dumpster. I run up the alley. I see the chair behind Main Moon, where the old man sat. He’s gone. There’s a plate on the chair. Most of an eggroll is on the plate, lying in a swirled pool of orange and yellow sauce. I run past. I stop. My stomach stops me. I am Stealth. No one can see me circle back and snatch the eggroll. I run. I cross the street so that I can see the neighbors’ house. I hide under some yellow bushes, eating the eggroll, and watch until the stupid mother takes her stupid kids inside.
Joy, PA Page 7