The blood usurps. A coup d’état of your psyche. You keep humping that ass, but your dick is shrunken and useless. You keep humping because you have to. She likes it. She’s making noises. She likes it. You can tell. Except they don’t sound like her. Whose voice is that? Somebody is talking. Talking to you? To her? Some asshole is in the room, watching. Watching as you fuck your wife. You’ll kill the fucker. Get out of my fucking house, you say. Except that you can’t see anybody. Hey, you say. Shut the fuck up, you say, trying to locate the voice. He keeps talking about Jesus. Then you realize she’d turned the radio on. While you were inside her. You start slamming into her crotch harder and harder. You don’t need a cock. You’ll split her wide open with your whole body. Every time you slam into her she grunts, the bed groans and squeaks and sags. Then the bed frame breaks. One leg snaps, the whole shebang tilts. The other legs follow suit. You both drop with a thud. Something else breaks. Ribs maybe. That voice on the radio babbles through it all. Yammering on and on about Jesus, about Judgment.
“Goddamn you!” you say. You grab the radio from the nightstand, yank the cord from the receptacle. It sparks. You can still hear his voice. “Goddamn you!” you say and raise the radio high, ready to smash it down.
“Burns,” she says.
“Daddy,” another voice says. “Daddy.”
≠
I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything.
The enemy is attacking. Inside and out. They come from all sides. They’ve taken Daddy. They have mind control. And Mama. And Mama. I have to be strong. I have to prepare myself. It’s just me now. At the end of the world. The dead ride their giant Slinkys up out of Hell. It’s just me now. I have to prepare. I slam the door. I go under my bed. My hideout. My lair is bulletproof. Bombproof. Whatever they use, I’ll resist. Weapons. I need weapons. It’s dark. They’ve taken the moon. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see his nakedness. I didn’t see her nakedness. I didn’t see the raised fist. I am Super Boy. See my uniform? They’re coming. I am fearless. I am not scared. I am not shaking. I am not crying. I didn’t see anything.
∀
Breath comes at a price for Abigail Augenbaugh. Each time she inhales, pain knifes a hot path up her spine and around her cranium. The breaths have to be shallow, or she’ll surely faint. Enough oxygen filters in, but just. Broken rib. Ribs, maybe. When the bed gave way. When she crashed to the floor with Burns on top of her, Abby felt something surrender in her chest. Heard the crack.
Breath always comes at a price. She was prepared to die. When he raised the radio over her head, she expected it. Expected his heavy arms to come smashing down into her skull. She’d follow that voice in the radio right on up to Heaven.
But Burns didn’t hit her. He smashed the radio against the wall. It shattered, went silent. Burns struggled to his feet. Abigail heard him on the stairs. The descent seemed to take hours.
Burns is her husband. She’s seen him before. He didn’t kill her. Abigail isn’t brave enough to admit that death may have been preferable. She acquiesces to the easier path, the ancient illogic. The Lord has a different plan. Except that, without the wise and comforting voice of the preacher, how will she know what to do next? How will she know what the Lord wants from her?
Burns took her lifeline. Her compass. Left her with the calendar, the clock tower’s unreliable tolling, and broken ribs. Banished her to the few remaining days that stretch out, vast, unmappable, desolate, with no compass, no warden.
The world is quiet. The eggy sulfur stink from the paper mill permeates the dark. Abigail turns over, pulls the stretched panties up and tries to sit, but the pressure on her ribcage is excruciating. She rolls back onto her stomach, pushes to her hands and knees. Stands, eventually. Burns is her husband. She is his wife. Everything hurts, down there. Abigail limps into the bathroom, holds the sink for balance with one hand, cleans herself as best she can with the other. Across the narrow way, she sees a light go off in the DeFonzie house.
Abigail stands, wobbly, unsure, in the hallway. The boy, Willie, their son, he saw things. He bore witness. She is his mother. Judgment Day is nigh. She has to do something. Abby musters the little maternal courage she has, braces against the wall and finds the way to his door. Finds him, in the foul-smelling room, smaller than she remembered, exhausted by the burden of the night’s spectacle, curled up and asleep in his ill-fitting Superman pajamas.
The boy sleeps with his mouth open. His pillow is damp and crusted from crying. Abigail watches his eyeballs twitch and roll behind the lids. Abigail knows what he dreams. Abigail will never know what he dreams. She wishes she were braver. Brave enough to take the pillow, with its Hulk Hogan cover, and press it down over the boy’s face. That’s what a good mother would do. A good mother wouldn’t leave her son to the merciless demons of the Apocalypse. But Abigail Augenbaugh would never be that good mother. She knows it. The very thought of the act makes her heart pound, her stomach heave.
She reaches to touch her son’s face. Stops. Tries again. Can’t. Abigail, desperate, has no recourse but prayer. A tool she’s yet to master. It may be too late. Nevertheless, she offers him up to the merciful God. Abby gets to her knees, grimacing at the pain. She folds her hands together, puts her elbows on the edge of the bed. The broken rib hurts so bad, she weeps. But she accepts that pain. Feels good about it. Like she’s doing her part. When she settles into the suffering, when it is time to open her mouth, Abigail’s prayer stalls. What is she asking for? The boy’s salvation? The boy’s quick execution? Her own release? Abigail wracks her brain. What should she say? Abby wishes she could hear the man on the radio. She grows desperate. Light-headed. Casting about in her compromised memory, she begins to babble. But the words she speaks do not fly Heavenward. It is as if she can see them fall. As if she can see the words, the syllables she utters, roll off her tongue like ball bearings, clatter across the floor, down the stairs, into the street, into the gutter.
“Our Father,” she says.
“Oh Holy God,” she says.
“Lord and Savior,” she says.
≠
I sleep for a thousand years. My body is frozen in liquid nitrogen. Fueled and made strong by the people I serve. I am the Savior. All await my triumphant return. I have no memory, and I have no fear. When I wake I will decimate my enemies. I sleep for a thousand years, but they come at me in the dark. They roll down out of the graves. They float up from the ground into the fiery sky. Dead people flying all around. I hear crying. Weeping and wailing. I hear them call my name. They need a superhero. They need me. I command the New Heaven and the New Earth. I sleep for a thousand years. The boy. The boy will wake me. When I wake, the world will tremble at our coming.
∀
Abigail prays with all her might. Or tries to. Abigail, whipped and beaten by her past (both distant and near), mauled by her future (moment by moment), can do little more than blubber and babble. A haphazard glossarist. She cries out to God. She calls out the boy’s name.
“O Lord,”
“O Willie,”
“O Lord,”
“O Willie.”
≠
They call my name. The dead and the living. They want to worship me. They want to kill me. The dead are tricky. Evil. They have mind control. They have Mama. Mama is dead. I saw them kill Mama with Daddy’s arm. Daddy is dead. I am frozen. I will not wake for a thousand years. They can’t trick me. I’m too strong. Too powerful. They use Mama to trick me. They use her voice. Willie, they make her say. Willie. Willie. I cover my ears. I squeeze my eyes tight.
Willie, she says. Willie. And it seems so real that I wake up. I have to wake up. And when I wake up I am in my bed, and she’s kneeling beside me.
“You’re dead,” I say. “You can’t trick us.”
“No honey,” she says. “I’m not dead. I’m right here.”
“I saw him kill you,” I say. “I saw them kill you. You can’t trick me. You’re dead.”
�
�Nobody killed me, Willie. Me and Daddy were just—, nobody killed me.”
“No!” I say. I pull away. I am strong. I am brave. I press myself into the wall. I become the wall. I can strike without warning.
“Willie,” she says. It sounds so real. I blink. I blink away all the other dead bodies in the room. I blink, and try to make her go away. She’s still there. It’s night. I can see through the window. There are no fires burning outside. No weeping or moaning. Just her, reaching toward me.
“No,” I say. I will not give in. I will not crack. I will not cry.
“Willie.”
“No,” I say. I will not cry. I will not cry.
“Willie.”
“Don’t go,” I say.
She doesn’t speak.
“Don’t go to Heaven without me,” I say. I am crying. They have me. They have my mind. I can’t help myself. I fall into the evil one’s arms.
“I heard the man on the radio,” I say. “Don’t go to Heaven. Please, Mama! Please don’t go to Heaven! Please! Please! Please stay with me, Mama.”
She’s not talking. I can hear breath whistling in her chest. She’s crying too. Tears drip on my neck. But she’s not talking.
“I’ll pray again, Mama. I’ll beseech the Lord, just like you told me. I don’t want the world to end. I don’t want to be here when the earthquakes—”
“It’s,” she says. “It’s not my decision, it’s the Lord’s.”
I pull back. I have to see her eyes. To see if they have her eyes too.
“Can I go with you?”
I beg and beg. I promise to be good in Heaven. I promise everything.
“Please take me to Heaven with you, Mama. I’m scared, Mama.”
“OK,” she says. Finally. But I’m looking right at her. I know she’s lying. I know she’ll go to Heaven and leave me behind.
“I’m scared, Mama.”
“Everything is OK, Willie,” she hisses softly. “It’ll all be over soon.”
DAY 3
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
This is how many times we stab her.
∀
What remained of the battering night passed without further incident. The triumvirate of casualties, father, mother, and son, hunker alone in their respective foxholes and await daylight.
Abigail Augenbaugh wakes first, if she ever slept. The sun is just clawing its way up over Scald Mountain. Thick fog pools in the valleys, snags in the branches of the hickory, the walnut, and the buckeye trees. There is beauty there, to be seen. But the beauty is occluded by ugly pain. Merely breathing is endeavor enough. Abigail limps to the bathroom. She cannot lift her right arm. She tends to her ablutions as best she can, without looking in the mirror, dons her Slinky smock, and descends the stairs haltingly. She leaves the busted radio scattered on the bedroom floor.
Abigail leans against the kitchen counter, unseeing, clinging—without intention—to the few remaining moments of the organic grace that accompanies all trauma. That finite bubble of timelessness in which the body tries to take care of itself, free of the mind’s nonsense. Soon enough she’ll have to reconcile the ravaged household, her bruised groin and raw sex, betrayal’s grimy veneer, the fractured bone, the rancid taste of deceit in her mouth.
Every breath hurts. Abigail thinks maybe she ought to eat something, but she’s nauseated from the pain. She gags, and the retching seizure of her diaphragm hurts so badly Abigail nearly passes out. She thinks, maybe, she ought to go to the hospital. But in just a couple days Jesus will come, and she’ll get a glorious new spiritual body. The man on the radio promises it. She just has to hold on a little longer.
The night’s events begin to prick pinholes into her awareness. Memories of what happened, meteors of sensory detail, flash across Abby’s brainpan. Slowly, at first, then in torrents. Her son. Her husband. Her savior. Her self.
It’s a school day, and Willie is still up in his room. What’s left to learn, she wonders, in these last few days? Let the boy sleep, or whatever it is he’s doing. She needs to get out of the house. She needs to fill her day, to do her part. Abigail knows, without being able to articulate it, that misery and discomfort can be displaced. Squeezed out. What she lacks, though, is discernment. So, like most, Abby usually just swaps one sorrow for another. She sees the crumpled edge of a Rapture tract peeking from beneath the garbage can lid. She retrieves them all and tucks the whole damp stack under her useless arm. She closes the front door and hopes to leave the whole mess behind.
It’s early. Too early for the mailman. But Abigail worries about being ambushed by the DeFonzies before she reaches the Celebrity. And hobbled as she is, can only move so fast. Each step brings a grimace, a throaty grunt. In the narrow passage between their houses she pauses, rests, gathering crumbs of strength. It’s early, but Abigail hears movement in her neighbors’ home. It’s Tina DeFonzie. Laughing. Burns used to say (before he went into the basement) that the woman belonged on the Animal Channel, with that laugh.
This morning, as the day makes its incremental claim on Joy, the laugh, the laughter, confuses Abigail Augenbaugh, more than anything else. She locks the Chevy in her sight and tries to hurry down the skinny cracked sidewalk.
“Hey,” she hears someone call. Abby doesn’t look. She wants to quicken her pace. Can’t. By the time she reaches the car, Abby is in agony. She weeps quietly, fumbles with the key. Drops it. Stoops to pick it up. Cries out. She hears the DeFonzies’ back door open. Hears, again, the call. “Hey?”
It’s Tina. Abigail can tell.
Abby sits heavily, bumping her ribcage against the steering wheel, cries out again, uncontrollably. Abigail pushes through the pain to slam the car door. She locks it, then braves a look. Tina DeFonzie, halfway across her yard, in a short white bathrobe held barely closed at her chest, approaches. She is naked beneath. Tan.
“Hey.”
Tina DeFonzie leans her face close to the glass. Abigail struggles with the seat belt. Struggles with the agony.
“Are you—” the woman says.
“Can I—” the woman says.
“You’ve got to—” the woman says.
Abigail looks straight ahead. But she waits. Listening. What? Abigail wants the true completion of any of those half-spoken sentences. What? Abigail has her own answers, but is unable to offer them up. Abigail can only sit and wait. What?
Tina DeFonzie puts her fingertip on the window. Abigail cannot look—the broken rib, the shame, the confusion, rendering the pane of glass between them too vast to transgress. What? The reach to turn the key in the ignition is almost too excruciating to bear. Abigail Augenbaugh takes up that cross of pain and drives it down the road.
≠
I open my eyes. No. I open one eye. The other is welded shut. Maybe they plucked it out. I am not afraid. I will conquer all with a single mighty eye. I peed again. In the bed, again. They took my eye. I’ll piss in the empty socket. I’ll piss on them. I can do what I want. No. Not plucked. Not welded, not stitched shut. Just crusted over. I remember crying. I remember my dead mama. She told me lies. She stroked my head. Daddy is dead in the basement. I know it. I have to be strong. I have to go see for myself. I will avenge his death. I will avenge her death, even against her body. Where is my Game Boy? I need to think. To plot. I stink. My smell is a weapon. No. I go to the bathroom, open the spigots. No hot water. I fill the tub with cold water. I climb in. I sit down. I shiver. I am so cold it hurts. I go inside the hurt. I go down down down to the bottom of the tub. I stay there forever.
∀
“Ma’am.” Abigail Augenbaugh hears the call. There is more wheeze and grunt than celestial fanfare. But she hears the call nonetheless.
“Ma’am.” The swirl of light and dark, the wracking waves of pain. Abigail just knows her soul, her spirit is about to leave its body be
hind.
“Ma’am,” the voice says again. And Abby can’t not hear the incessant rapping on the window. She opens her eyes.
Abigail sits in the Celebrity. At a traffic light. At an intersection with churches on three of its four corners (the fourth, a parking lot that the churches fight over from time to time).
“License and registration, ma’am.” A policeman stands close, peering in at her. “Open the window, ma’am. Open it slowly.”
It’s like TV, Abigail thinks. Like one of those reality shows, or something about mistaken identity. Maybe she’ll get shot, or handcuffed. The policeman sees her struggle to open the glove box, hears her groan in pain.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asks.
The moment is a gift—the second of the morning—to be accepted or rejected.
She looks at the policeman. He’s younger than she. She sees herself, or at least the person he sees, reflected in his aviator glasses.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asks, with more authority.
Is she? Abigail grapples with the question. Is she all right?
These moments (of potential) crop up often enough in every life, but are difficult to see except through hindsight. Abigail Augenbaugh could answer him. She could open her mouth and say it all, out loud. And in doing so would change, to one degree or another, everything that followed. She almost knows this. She strains against everything that shackles her to a bleak, mute, blind past. Struggles frantically but briefly for a different kind of answer.
“Cramps,” she mumbles, through clenched teeth. A lie tinged with both rare genius and utter embarrassment.
The officer leans into the car, looks at the Rapture tracts on the seat. He chastises her for something. She’s not sure what. “Third-graders cross this street,” he says. “Second-graders.”
He gives her a form to sign. He says it’s just a warning. It does not mean that she is a complete failure as a mother. As a wife. He tells her to go home.
Joy, PA Page 12