Marvel and a Wonder

by Joe Meno

  Whistling softly, cooing like a dove, around the side of the oblong building to a half-filled swimming pool—lounge chairs floating haphazardly in its deep end—the horse trailed behind Rick, ambling gaily, Rick stroking its neck, its muzzle, finding a green hose with a red spigot. He twisted it open and let the horse drink greedily from its spray, then, its thirst slaked, it sniffed at a row of mums and pansies that had been planted as border around the pool area. There, in the blue-green light of the half-full pool, stars reflecting in the frothy murk, the horse grazing on scrub, its gray-silver-white form ancient, unasking, Rick watched it like he had been made privy to someone else’s dream.

  * * *

  The boy stood beside his grandfather’s bed trying to wake him, but found he was unable. The old man was lying prone on his stomach, his face buried in a pair of pillows, floral comforter wrapped about his narrow body like a shroud. The boy began to panic, leaning over, listening closely for the old man’s breath, squatting there, staring at the stiff white locks of hair, the narrow ears covered in the same bristly fuzz, the neck long, badly wrinkled eyelids looking like they had been sewn up.

  “Sir,” he muttered, clearing his throat. “Gramps?”

  On the nightstand, in between the two single beds, the CB crackled and chirped. Some trucker from Arkansas by the name of Thunderbolt was spinning a loose one about a speed trap in West Memphis and a female cop—a mama bear in his own parlance—whose big brown eyes and wide hips were well worth the ticket and the lost time.

  “Gramps?” Quentin shook the bed gently, watching the old man’s face. It did not move, did not tighten or twitch in the slightest. “Sir?” The boy sighed, panicking, his palms going moist with sweat. He put his hand on his grandfather’s ribs and gave them a harder shove. “Gramps?”

  It was nearing eight a.m. and the boy had not eaten since sometime the day before. He put his ear close to the old man’s mouth, holding his own breath, listening hard, and there, clicking faintly against the still-glorious white teeth, was the sound of his grandfather’s respiration: insignificant, wheezy, the noise rattling softly there in the back of his throat. Angrily now, the boy shoved his grandfather’s chest, then again, the old, haggard-looking face still drawn up in ghoulish repose.

  “Fuck this,” the boy whispered, and grabbed the old man’s wallet.

  There was a vending machine at the end of the motel hallway with Stick-E-Buns and Pop-Tarts. The boy chose one of each, gobbling them up quick, standing beside the humming ice machine. He paused and thought of his grandfather, deciding to get him a stale-looking package of soda crackers. He leaned over and retrieved the crackers and then walked down the carpeted hallway, trying to listen to the sounds of other guests in their rooms. It was quiet. He thought he heard an electric razor, somewhere else a maid vacuuming. At the end of the motel corridor, a door on the right was ajar, and creeping along slower now, the boy paused, trying to glimpse inside. There was the sharp, snippy bark of a toy-sized dog, then another. Quentin peered around the doorframe to see an elderly woman in a pink Stetson and pink leather vest, white skirt ballooning above her knees, holding a pink Hula-Hoop, and through it—the hoop—one, then two, then three tiny white poodles were leaping. The boy stood there gawking, an unfamiliar smile breaching along his sturdy face, the woman whistling commands to the dogs, each of them yipping and leaping in reply. One, two, three, they leapt through the pink hoop, pink bows tied about their white furry necks.

  Back in the room, the grandfather had not moved, a graying skeleton in a purple flower–patterned grave. The boy sat down on his bed, tearing open the Pop-Tarts, staring at the flickering images on the television set. A game show played on-screen. The boy watched for a few moments before the CB began to buzz again with garbled static.

  “Old Rooster, you got your ears on? Over.”

  The boy turned toward the CB, eyeing it suspiciously.

  “Old Rooster, this is Happy-Happy. You on 17? Over.”

  The old man did not move; the boy sat there, wondering what he ought to do.

  “Old Rooster, got a line on that Texas trailer you were hunting. Over.”

  The boy carefully set down the remains of his pink Pop-Tart and took the mic in his hand, awkwardly holding in the call button. “Hello?”

  “Old Rooster, you the one looking for a pickup with Texas plates, hauling a horse trailer? Over.”

  “Where is it? Over.”

  “Got a twenty on that. Parked in a motel lot. Over.”

  “Where?”

  “Right off 65th Street. Name of the place is the Skyline.”

  “Um. Okay. But . . . um . . . what’s 65th Street? Over.”

  “That’s I-65. Across the state line in Nashville. Still carrying its load. Over.”

  The boy stood, shoving his grandfather hard, forgetting the CB. The old man did not stir, though his breathing was louder now. The boy pulled the comforter back and saw there was a wide splotch on his blue-black shirt, the blood from his wound seeping onto the gray bedsheets and pillows.

  “Gramps? You’re bleeding.”

  He took the old man’s right hand and shook it hard, squeezing the brittle palm, feeling the unfamiliar rigidity of the hand against the soft flesh of his own fingers.

  “Sir.”

  “—”

  “Jim.”

  “—”

  “Jim Falls.” The boy dropped the hand and muttered, “Don’t be dead. Please, Lord Jesus, if you are not just a children’s book, please don’t let him be dead.”

  Slowly the boy reached out a hand and placed it over the old man’s mouth. It was warm. He could feel his grandfather’s breath faint against his palm. The boy pressed his hand down until the grandfather began to shudder.

  One eye, bird-egg blue, finally parted open, the eyelashes like thorns stiffened by sleep.

  “Come on, Grandpa. We got to go. They found her,” the boy murmured, the words as tremulous as the sun pausing there behind the dust-flecked curtains. “Grandpa.”

  “—”

  “They found her.”

  “Hmm?”

  “They found her.”

  _________________

  In the cold, midmorning light—the sunbeams tumbling in dazzling waves across the gravel parking lot, the light itself still shaded by the gathering clouds—he could see that the horse’s left eye was pink and partly swollen. It did not look well, the animal. It had been cooped up in that metal box for far too long and had gotten both dehydrated and antsy, its tail flicking back and forth with a vicious commotion. He gave water to the horse once more and searched for something to feed it from the trash bins along the rear of the building, but found nothing. So he loaded the animal back into the trailer, filled its feeder with more water, swung the door closed, and fastened the bolt. He strode back inside the room, gathering his boots at the door. The girl was smoking, lying on her stomach, one hand chained to the bed, one foot raised up in the air, the toes curled back, the other leg stretched out, watching the television, biting her fingernails distractedly. She looked kittenish, like she was planning something, as she slowly glanced from the soap opera playing on the TV to where Rick was standing, setting sloe eyes on him.

  “I’d like to ask you a question,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “How much is my geegaw paying you?”

  “For what?”

  “For driving me back.”

  “Not nearly enough.”

  “Come on. How much is it?”

  “He ain’t paying me anything. I work for him. It’s part of my job.”

  “Your job? Like those drugs you took off those guys in Arkansas? When they find you, they’re gonna fuck you up.”

  “Do I look worried?”

  “I swear to God, you are one of the stupidest people I know.”

  “Considering some of the folks you know, that takes some doing. I appreciate it. I do.”

  “How much to let me go?”

  “Huh?”

&n
bsp; “How much to turn me loose?”

  “I don’t know. What are you offering?”

  “A thousand.”

  “A thousand? Shucks. I know you got more than that on you.”

  “Fine. Two thousand. All you have to say is I ran off.”

  “Then I’d be the fool, wouldn’t I?”

  “You know that as soon as I get to my grandpa’s house, I’m running away again.”

  “Well, that’s between you and him.”

  “This is totally fucking pointless.”

  “Maybe to you it is. It gives me something to do. I manage to get off the ranch this way.”

  “Why do you have to be a dumbass? Just take the money.”

  “Nah. For one thing, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  The girl huffed, throwing her head forward into her cuffed hands. “I guess you want me to suck your dick then.”

  Rick felt his face go flush. He looked away and then back at her again. “You oughta stop acting like you’re stupid. People are liable to start believing it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Come on. Get dressed. We got some errands to run.”

  “What errands? I’m not running any fucking errands with you.”

  “That horse out there needs to eat. It looks like she hasn’t been fed in a few days. I got that and a couple other things I need to do. Go on now and put some clothes on.”

  “Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Rick closed his eyes for a moment, silently fuming. He grit his teeth, bracing himself, then strode over to where she had piled her trashy-looking clothes. “Put these on. I ain’t got time to waste with you. It’s eight a.m. and it’s still another ten hours back, and I don’t plan on spending another night away from home. Here. Now try and act like you were raised right.”

  “Fuck off,” she said, taking a bite of her fingernail.

  Rick closed his eyes again, then opened them just as quick, looking around for something to smash. There was a gray-green lamp near his knee that he seized, snarling, raising it up over his head, bringing it down hard, slamming it near his feet. The girl screamed, folding her legs up, as the fragments of porcelain and glass shattered across the carpeted floor. He stood there, hulking, shoulders tensed, searching for something else to demolish.

  The girl laughed. “Wow, that was smart. I mean, that was, like, really intelligent.”

  “Put on those clothes before I ring your neck.”

  He slipped the key into the handcuffs and pulled her off the bed. The girl snatched her clothes from the corner of the bedspread and stood, pausing in front of the bathroom door.

  “All you got is muscle,” she said, glaring at him. “Which is why you don’t scare me. Because you ain’t smart. If you were, you’d turn me loose. But all you are is big and dumb.”

  The girl closed the door behind her. Sitting on the corner of the bed, Rick was forced to admit she was probably right. It had always been his trouble—no smarts. He sat there on the bed, waiting a few minutes, then paced around the room a little before knocking on the door. There was no answer. He tried the doorknob and found she had locked it.

  “Goddamnit. I ain’t waiting anymore. Get out here now.”

  “Fuck you. I want my father.”

  “What?”

  “I said I want my father. I ain’t going anywhere with you.”

  He could tell she was crying but he didn’t care. He took a step back, lined his boot up with the doorknob, and gave the silver apparatus a solid kick. The door swung open; the girl was sitting there on the toilet, half-dressed, face folded into her hands, eyes rimmed red. Without a word, he grabbed her by her shoulder, shoved her toward the bed, grabbed the unlocked end of the handcuffs, and slipped the teeth back through the bed frame, snapping them in place. The girl was now weeping loudly, but Rick only turned, grabbed his hat from the bureau, and quickly slammed the motel room door.

  * * *

  Over the hood of the pale-blue pickup, the boy watched the road as the buttes and craggy hills rose on either side, the highway dipping up and down along the treacherous topography, short mountains and rocky caverns nothing like the flat horizon he was accustomed to. He began to worry about landslides. Or stray boulders. Or a puma running out in front of the truck. His grandfather, softly snoring on the bench beside him, looked like a scarecrow. The boy began to fear that if his grandfather continued to sleep much longer he might die right there; that if he gave his grandfather the chance, the worn-out heart and weary lungs would themselves stop working.

  “Sir?”

  “—”

  “Gramps.”

  “Hm.”

  “Are you asleep?”

  “Hm.”

  “I think we’re getting closer now. Only another hour maybe.”

  “—”

  “Does your shoulder feel all right?”

  “—”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “—”

  “Gramps?”

  “Hm.”

  “I think you should try and stay awake.”

  “Shhh.”

  “You should try.”

  “—”

  “Do you want some more soda crackers?” The package lay half-eaten in the corner of the window, silently vibrating. “Do you want some?”

  “No,” the old man whispered, tilting his hat farther over his face.

  “Are you sure?”

  The old man turned one blue eye on the boy. “Do you mean to pester me to death this morning?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, I’d like to close my eyes if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. I only thought . . .” The boy glanced over and saw his grandfather had shifted his weight against the passenger-side door, his white cattleman hat now pulled completely over his eyes. “Gramps?”

  “—”

  “Gramps?”

  “Hm.”

  “Do you ever think about God?”

  “—”

  “Gramps?”

  “—”

  “Do you?”

  “—”

  “Did you ever think maybe God isn’t real?”

  “—”

  “Gramps?”

  “—”

  “Do you ever think about if God’s real or not? That maybe it’s all made up?”

  “—”

  “I do. I think about it all the time. I don’t know. I’d like to know but I don’t. Gramps?”

  “—”

  “I don’t know if He watches over us. Why would He? Wouldn’t He have other things to watch over? Birds and other things?”

  “—”

  “Gramps?”

  “—”

  “Do you ever think like that? Like maybe He’s real but isn’t even watching? Like maybe He forgot about us. Or maybe He’s angry?”

  “—”

  “Because how else . . . ?”

  “—”

  “Because how. How else could things be the way they are?”

  The old man did not answer at first, only lifted his face and stared at the boy for a moment before he tilted his hat back over his eyes. He turned toward the passenger-side window and said in a weak tone: “I’m going to rest some, for a while. Keep an eye on that gas gauge. Remember: it likes to lie.”

  “Yes sir.” The boy glanced down at the fuel needle that ticked back and forth, eyes darting back to the uneven road.

  * * *

  The girl had gotten most of her wrist through the teeth of the handcuff, but the metal bracelet was now caught on the wide ball of her thumb. She leaned over and licked the spot, slipping the ridge of the metal arm back and forth, back and forth, pulling with all of her weight until the joint and knuckle nearly separated, the cartilage and bone and muscle slipping apart, nearly sliding beneath the constricted metal, but it was not enough. She was trying not to cry but then she did. The cable TV was blaring some Technicolor horse opera: Jimmy Stewart was raising a pistol and firing at someo
ne. She bared her teeth and tried once more, yanking as hard as she could, wishing the thumb would just break, but it would not, the metal cuff cutting into the back of her hand, blood raising to the surface in perfect pink dots. She sniffled a little, giving up, as this was her usual way.

  She collapsed back on the bed, thinking of her granddad and what he was going to say when he saw her tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, the scandal in his eyes as he took in the gaunt frame, the bruised arms, the ruthless, desiccated eyes. Hissing, throwing her whole weight into it, she tugged once more, stretching the tendons in her neck until the thumb popped beneath the silver bracelet. Her arm, freed, nearly smacked her own nose as she flew backward onto the bed, breathing hard.

  The first thing to do was run. Then think. No. No. She ought to call somebody first. She needed money and a way out of town. She was too tired to run. She rushed toward the phone, sweeping the receiver up from the desk, and began to dial Brian’s number, then thinking better on it, she hung up and tried her friend Rinna. The line rang and rang, Rinna’s answering machine picking up, the familiar bouncy voice, Rylee screaming into it, but there was no reply. She tried Brian’s number, but there was no answer there either as it was still before noon and she didn’t know if he had made it back to Dallas and hadn’t even expected he would pick up the phone at this time anyway. She tried a guy she used to know named Sal, whom she had slept with twice, for coke, but some scag answered and kept hassling her about who she was, so she hung up.

  She was in deep shit now, seriously deep shit. She thought about calling her granddad but stopped after dialing the first few digits, knowing he would just send that asshole Rick after her wherever she went. So she stood for a while just trying to decide, wondering if maybe she had burned out some important part of her brain with all the different drugs, had soldered shut whatever it is you’re supposed to have up there that helps you make all the right decisions. All she could do was hover with the phone in her ear, listening to the dial tone humming like some mechanical whip-poor-will, the TV erupting with gunfire from the other side of the room. She sat down on the floor, phone in hand, eyes glassy with tears. She thought maybe she should call the bus station and find out how much a ticket to Memphis would cost. She had friends in Memphis, people she could stay with for a while, at least a couple of days.