by Owen Egerton
He was halfway down before he realized he was falling. Quick thoughts of hidden branches and broken necks flashed by, and then he smacked into the water. All the air rushed from his lungs like foam from a shaken beer can. He climbed up through the green water. The surface was just an inch away. No. More water. Just there, just a little farther. Finally air. Milton coughed and sucked. Above him on the bridge he could hear yelling and crashing.
Milton whipped the wet hair from his eyes and paddled in place. He was twenty feet from the south shore, two hundred feet from the north shore. Rica was to the north.
I can’t do this. I have weak arms. It’s medical. My drowning won’t help her. I should go back south and try the cops again. Swimming north is suicide.
While these thoughts ricocheted around Milton’s head, his body started swimming north with fast, clumsy strokes.
It was going to
A NUTRIA SQUEALED and lunged for Rica’s leg. With a sharp kick, Rica sent it flying from the front counter of Mundi House. It landed on the floor among the dozen other wet rodents. On the counter beside Rica, little Carl clung to Jeppy like a lost monkey. Jeppy was weeping into Carl’s shoulder and whispering “It’ll be okay, Mama’s here. Mama’s here.” The folksinger and the writer had also squeezed onto the counter, knocking the register and tip jar to the ground. An oversize, off-white nutria pulled itself up a column a foot away from the counter, whipping its pink tail behind it. Rica scanned the room for a weapon. There, next to her foot, was her soup ladle. The nutria was nearly chest level with Rica. It stared at her and hissed. Slowly Rica bent her knees, keeping her eyes on the rat. She reached down without looking and found the ladle. With a sudden swing she smashed the ladle against the nutria’s skull. It fell to the floor with a thud.
“That one wasn’t attacking,” Jeppy said.
“It was going to,” the writer said.
“Only strike if they strike first,” Jeppy cried.
“Jesus, Jeppy,” Rica said.
Fingers of God
HALFWAY ACROSS LADY Bird Lake, Milton decided his body should have listened to his head. But by now, forward was as far from shore as backward, so he swam on, sucking in mouthfuls of mossy water and gasping for air. He had a stitch in his side, as if someone were wringing out his spleen. His head echoed his pounding heart, and his legs floated behind him like lumps of cooked ham. But he still swam forward. He focused only on the next stroke, the next arm lift, stroke, breath, stroke, breath, mouthful of lake water, stroke, breath. He peeked up to see how far the shore was. Not much closer. Stroke, breath, stroke, breath. Over his splashing and sputtering he heard a new noise. A hiss. Milton looked up, and floating before him, its dark-gray nose just above the water, was a blackeyed nutria. Milton jerked back, pushing a spray of water at the thing. The nutria lurched forward and clamped its teeth into the web of Milton’s hand. Milton gasped in pain and pulled his hand back, but the nutria held on, short, wet breaths puffing from the sides of its thin, gray lips. With his free hand Milton slapped at the nutria, but it only bit down harder. Milton was trying to yell for help when something under the water snapped onto his crotch. Milton opened his mouth, but no screams were left.
He sank under, his open mouth filling with water. He reached down, grabbed a handful of fur, and yanked the thing off his crotch. It gave way, wriggled free of his grasp, and latched on to his thigh. The pain was pink against the green shadows and bubbles. It was getting darker the deeper he sank, darker and colder. His throat squeezed. He thrashed, but it only seemed to push him farther down. The green was changing. The shadows swarmed before him. Different shadows, slower and more graceful. There was pulling and a struggle, his hand was free. So was his thigh. But his strength was gone. Nothing left. No muscles. He sank deeper and deeper till the shadows blended into the dark. He thought of Rica. He thought of the baby. He thought of his father in gym shorts and a headband. He thought of the chocolate bar wrappers on his bedroom floor the morning after Halloween. He thought of purple. How dark purple can be. Darker than black. Black was easy. Black was void. Purple was black with personality. The baby would love purple. She’d collect purple pieces of plastic and purple stones and build purple labyrinths in the front yard. His feet hit the bottom. Was he that far down? The ground pushed up against his feet. Pressure pushed up under his armpits as if the fingers of God were cradling him, lifting him. The green grew lighter and lighter.
He dreamingly glanced to his left. There under his arm, paddling four thick legs, was the walnut head and serving-bowl body of a turtle. It craned its head toward Milton and, Milton could swear, nodded. Milton looked to his right. Another turtle labored under that arm. He looked down and found a turtle under each foot. He looked up and saw the blurry white shine of the surface. The sight slapped Milton awake. He reached, crawled, pushed his way upward, his head swelling and his lungs squeezing. He exploded past the surface and into the air. Milton sucked in a violent reverse scream, his head filling with colors and sparks.
In front of him a green-brown head popped above the water, an island of shell appearing behind it. Three others surfaced around Milton, a snatch of gray fur still stuck in one of the turtle’s sharp jaws. The turtle immediately in front of Milton opened its mouth so widely Milton could see its black tongue. “Take her with you,” it said, and all four turtles sank away.
For a moment Milton floated, his body and thoughts bobbing. He was only fifteen feet from the shore now. He paddled the last stretch and crawled onto the north shore of the lake. Sirens and screams filled the air. And another sound. A chorus of cawing. Milton rolled onto his back. Above him flocks of black, crow-like grackles darted though the sky. Each flock moved as one, zigzagging through the air, landing for seconds on a tree, a power line, a rooftop, and then flurrying into the sky again. They weren’t alone in flying. A trail of black emerged from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. Bats, thousands of them, were pouring out. The bats didn’t usually hunt till dark. It wasn’t even noon yet. As Milton watched, a patch of grackles collided with the train of bats. They fought in midair. An inky-black puddle of twisted wings and claws, screaming caws, falling into the lake.
Milton pulled himself to his feet and ran east toward Mundi House.
Chewed
“IN THE SOUP!” Jeppy cried. “Rica, it’s in your soup!”
“Fuck the soup!” the folksinger said. “Fuck the fucking soup.”
The floor of the coffee shop was now carpeted with nutria. They chewed on the legs of chairs, tore through books and magazines, gnawed on the wires.
“Calm, everyone,” Rica said. She double-fisted her ladle like a bat above her shoulder. “We are going to be fine. Stay calm.”
One nutria with a wire clenched in its teeth screeched and shook violently. Sparks flew. The lights flickered off. Even with the shreds of daylight coming through the windows, Mundi House was dark. And the smell of singed fur rose to fill the room.
Roll in the dust
MILTON SPRINTED THROUGH downtown. The roads were jammed with unmoving cars. Drivers pounded on their horns, setting off the alarms of the parked cars lining the curb. Milton passed an older man perched on top of a mailbox, screaming at the people around him that there was no more room. A woman in a bright-pink dress twirled around and around, swinging her purse like a mace. People were crawling up the embankment of I-35, waving at unstopping cars. A policeman stood on top of a squad car taking slow aim with his pistol and picking off nutria one by one.
“Roll in the dust, mad men!” Milton yelled as he ran. “The time to be slaughtered has come.”
Moldy soccer balls
LIKE VIKINGS OVERWHELMING a walled city, four nutria scaled the counter at once. Rica took aim at one and slammed down her ladle, but the thing inched out of the way and the ladle clanged against the countertop. Another nutria jumped and bit Rica’s wrist, a line of blood spraying out. At the sight of blood Jeppy burst into a panicked wail. Rica dropped the ladle and swung her arm and the nutria against th
e wall. The thing let go and dropped back to the floor. More were reaching the countertop, using the distraction of the first wave. One latched onto the writer’s sandaled foot. He yelped and stomped. Four more rushed him while his balance was off and he fell from the counter, landing on his back on the hardwood floor. Rica reached a hand out to the man who was now wriggling under the bites of a dozen gray bodies.
The door flew open. Rica looked up to see Milton, silhouetted against the midmorning sun. With fierce kicks Milton made his way through the nutria. Gray bodies flew across the room like moldy soccer balls. Milton reached the writer and yanked nutria after nutria off of him, pitching each removed rodent against the back wall. The writer’s face was streaked with blood and a rip of red stretched along his left arm. Milton helped him stand, and he scrambled back up to the counter.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Milton yelled.
To his knees
“TAKE THE BABY, Milton!”
Milton stepped to the counter. Rica pulled Carl from Jeppy’s arms and shoved him forward to him. Milton took hold of the boy and turned to the door.
“No. Please, no,” Jeppy cried, and jumped from the counter. She landed on Milton’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist. Milton wavered for a moment, but then started waddling toward the door. The toddler squirmed in his hands and Jeppy’s arms tightened around his neck.
He was five feet from the door with both mother and child when he heard a scurrying above him. He looked up just as a nutria fell from a rafter and landed on his face. Carl screeched, Jeppy buried her face into Milton’s back and squeezed her arms even tighter. Milton could see nothing but the pink underbelly of the nutria. His mouth was filled with skin and nutria sweat. He pushed out a muffled yell.
Rica was yelling, but Milton couldn’t make out the words over Carl’s screaming. His throat twitched under Jeppy’s arms. He faltered, fell back a step, and then forward onto his knees. Jeppy was only inches from the floor, but still she clung to Milton’s back. Milton, still blind, lifted Carl as high as he could. He shook his head back and forth, and with the help of a few well-aimed kicks from Carl, the nutria fell from his face.
On a stool, just in front of him, was the largest nutria he had seen yet. It stared at Milton with red eyes. Milton stared back. It bared its yellow teeth and cocked its head to one side. “Stop struggling,” it seemed to be saying. “You belong to us now.”
Milton tried to tell the nutria to fuck off, but his neck was squeezed shut. He could see the nutria’s claws, see its muscles tense. Milton knew, somehow, that it would aim those claws for his eyes. It wanted him blind. Its throat made a sick gargle and it leaped. In midair, inches from Milton’s face, something solid and brown flew in and smacked into the nutria’s head. The coffee cup shattered on the floor beside the nutria’s unmoving body. Milton glanced up at Rica, who was rearming herself with a new mug.
Outside, tires skidded to a halt. Through the open door, Milton could see Roy jumping from his Microbus. Jeppy dropped to her feet, grabbed Carl, kicked the new nutria corpse, and ran for the bus. Roy reached Milton and pulled him to his feet. Together they battled back to the counter, Rica helping their cause with ceramic projectiles.
When the path was clear enough, Roy and the folksinger carried the writer out to the Microbus. Rica and Milton quickly followed. The bus’s wheels spun in the gravel parking lot, caught, and jerked the bus out onto the road and toward south Austin.
A simple arrow
BECKY AND CLICK were friends. She called Click Patches. Click didn’t mind. Becky and Patches were friends.
Even in the short hour before school that morning, they had played a lifetime of games. Patches with the cat. Patches drinking hot cocoa. Patches going down the slide. Can a crab wear makeup? Yes, a crab can. Can a crab balance on the handlebars of a bicycle? No, a crab cannot.
Becky’s mama told her that Patches would not be able to join her at school. Becky said she agreed that school was no place for a hermit crab and she would not even think of bringing Patches with her. Becky lied.
Becky kept Patches close the whole morning. Reading time, nap time, math time. Patches was hidden in her dress pocket, scratching a little hello every few minutes. Finally during art time, Becky pulled Patches out and placed him on her easel. As Becky painted, Patches scratched at the canvas. Patches was the best crab ever.
Patches turned to Becky and wiggled his antennae. Becky nodded. She picked up a new brush, dipped it in the thickest, reddest paint, and marked a simple arrow on Patches’s shell. The arrow pointed forward, from the back of the shell toward the opening.
“Will you visit?”
“ . . . ”
“Oh. That is a weally long way. Can I visit?”
“ . . . ”
“I’ll wemeba. I pwomise.”
Becky gently picked up Patches and carried him to the glass door leading to the playground. She kissed him on the shell, careful to avoid the paint, and placed him down just outside the door.
“Good-bye,” she said.
Click crawled away in the direction of the arrow.
What a rat bastard
BEING A SAINT, Hayden concluded, wasn’t easy. Jim slept next to him, and Hayden felt he could just as easily hate him as love him. Or easier still, harbor no feelings at all. But saints loved others more than themselves and Hayden loved himself so very much.
Saint Rick wouldn’t cringe at Jim’s mucus-laden snores, wouldn’t begrudge that the previously untouched ashtray was now tainted with ash and stubs, wouldn’t mind if a drop of drool stretched from Jim’s open mouth down to the leather seat. But Hayden wasn’t Saint Rick.
He had received three voice messages that morning. One from the Blythe Police Department asking him to drop by and answer some questions. A second one from his mother, who had left a long tirade including the statement, “We saw this coming . . . except for the leg part.” And finally, a message from his agent, Ted: “Hayden Brock, you fuckup, fucking fuckup. You are fucked now.” That was all he said. Cryptic, Hayden thought.
To make matters worse, a dirty green eighteen-wheeler was now tailgating Hayden. Twice already this same truck had passed, moved into Hayden’s lane, and slowed down. Twice Hayden had retaken the lead. Now the truck was on his bumper. Hayden thought about pushing on the gas and making some serious distance from the truck, but considering his current relationship with the authorities, speeding seemed unwise. Now the truck was passing him again. It swerved just inches in front of the Lexus.
“That truck cut me off,” Hayden said out loud.
“What a rat bastard,” Jim Edwards said, and then opened his eyes.
The truck rattled in front of them. A bumper sticker on the left side read HOW’S MY DRIVING? and listed a phone number.
“That’s it. I’m calling,” Hayden said, picking up the phone and dialing the number. “Hello? Yes, I’d like to report some poor driving.”
“Really?” said the voice on the phone.
“Yes, really. One of your truckers is out here on Interstate 10 driving like a jackass.” Hayden looked over at Jim. Jim gave him a thumbs-up.
“Jackass, huh?” the voice said. “What does the truck look like?”
“Kind of beat-up. Green.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Swerving back and forth. Shit! He just slammed on his brakes. I almost plowed him.”
“What do you think he’ll do next?”
“Next? I don’t know.” Hayden rolled his eyes at Jim. Jim nodded reassuringly.
“You think he might stop the truck and stomp your ass? You think he’ll do that?” the voice said. “I mean, you are reporting him.”
“He doesn’t know—” The truck was slowing.
“And you in your pretty Lexus. I think he should stomp your tax-dodging ass,” the voice said. “In fact, I’m going eat your throat and shit in your glove box.”
“Bad,” was all Hayden had time to say. Red brake lights flashed in front
of them. Hayden dropped the phone, swerved into the next lane, and slammed on the accelerator. He was close to passing when the truck jerked to the side and clipped the Lexus, sending the car spinning off the side of the road.
“What the hell is happening?” Jim yelled.
Hayden’s face was now the color of Jim Edwards’s ash pile. The engine of the Lexus was no longer running. The truck pulled off the road in front of the car, and a large, dark man stepped out. His arms, his neck, his face were all hair. In his hand he held something gray and rigid.
“Is that an armadillo?” Jim asked. “It is. It’s an armadillo with a beer bottle. I’ve seen those at the truck stops. How ’bout that.”
The trucker gripped the armadillo by the tail. He slammed it onto Hayden’s hood; the beer bottle held in the claws shattered.
“Get out, motherfucker. I want you to meet somebody,” the trucker said, moving to the driver’s-side window and tapping on the glass with the armadillo snout.
“Don’t get out, Hay.”
“No shit, Jim.”
Jim Edwards opened the door and clambered out, using his hands to help lift his legs.
“Jim, what are you doing?”
Jim was reaching into his bag in the backseat, stopping once to scratch his beard.
“Okay, old man, you first,” the trucker said, making his way around the car. He lifted the armadillo over his head. Jim Edwards turned and aimed a polished silver pistol at the trucker’s face. The trucker froze.