The Hummingbirds

by Ross McMeekin

  Blah, blah, blah yes he had taken that one loss with that romantic comedy a few years back, and yes, he should have known better. The audience for adolescent romantic comedies had easily the lowest IQ of all moviegoers, so was it his fault for assuming he could be smart enough to be dumb enough to please the offspring of dunces?

  He was his only competition, and anyone with an IQ above romcom knew that trying to defeat yourself was self-defeating. If the question driving one’s creative life was Can I summon enough energy to care about making this a success? then a larger failure was already occurring.

  So yes, it was shameful to admit, but a few years back that larger failure had led him to ask the natural questions regarding existence. He’d visited a famous spiritualist and flipped tarot cards and watched a sunset or two and come to the conclusion that the natural course of his life would be to turn to politics. Nowhere were the stakes higher. Just thinking about lofty, centuries-old words like gubernatorial summoned a fearful taste of copper to the back of his tongue.

  But there’d been so much waiting. Long red lights and short yellow lights but no fucking green. Nowhere but in politics was the powerbase so cautious, nepotistic, bureaucratic, myopic, -ic, -ic, -ic. So here he was, in the plebe Ezra Fog’s living room, drinking shitty beer and watching reruns while waiting for a chance to do something significant enough to get the blood flowing to areas other than his organs for continuation of life and his bowels for daily constitutionals.

  A test. A rite of passage. Just like the old days, before everything went south, those times as a youngster when he’d failed at some sort of knucklehead prank, or been caught skipping school, and his father would pick up the .22 and count to ten, and by the time he was halfway up the hill to the forest, little plugs would be thumping into the soil behind his shoes. If you survived the night, you could consider yourself forgiven.

  The television froze and morphed for a moment, then unfroze and once again the seconds wound down in the fourth quarter of the game, a quarter that he remembered perfectly—his curse—as being peppered with time-outs. He took another sip of beer but was interrupted by a crunching sound out of the side window, which he’d left open. He flipped off the television and laid there in the dark, pawing the pistol back and forth, the metal warm and damp from his hands.

  A key jiggled against the lock, once, twice, and again. He figured the kid must be drunk.

  The door opened and a shadow entered. It stumbled around, keys jangling, and didn’t even bother turning on the lights. Ezra. Grant realized he hadn’t thought much about him, specifically. He’d more been mulling over what Sybil’s affair would mean for his marriage and future in the movie business and politics. But now with Ezra here in the flesh, he felt anger—not much, just a prick—but anger, nonetheless. And not because Ezra had fucked Sybil—the picture of them in his mind caused no more disdain than a stage test with poor cinematography—but what the affair represented: disrespect.

  Anyone in an affair with a touchy-feely like Sybil knew that few fucks were more vigorous than those that involved a bit of deception. Sybil cared about Grant enough to hate him, so that abundance of anger and angst was surely poured into the exchange with Ezra, the adulteress hollering subtext through the romp: See? My husband has no right to take me for granted. He must be crazy for treating me this way when I can be this . . . damn . . . good. It had to have been epic. Hadn’t he put Sybil through all those years of crap?

  One of the things Grant appreciated most about Sybil was her gift for suffering. She enjoyed it. She was a natural. Her empathy and overactive conscience made it nearly impossible for her to resist entertaining pain when it presented itself, which was why they’d worked so well together for so long.

  But for her to disrespect him? No. Hell no. Especially not when she’d done so with this failure of a man now stumbling around in the dark in front of him.

  Grant cleared his throat.

  Ezra froze next the couch. “Who’s there?”

  There was fuzz in the words; yes, Ezra was drunk. “Mr. Fog, good to see you. Hope you are well, etcetera, etcetera. I’m back and ready to collect some pictures of my wife in the midst of lewd behavior with unsatisfying men.”

  Ezra flipped on the lights.

  From his horizontal position on the couch Grant leveled his pistol at Ezra’s crotch. Ezra’s face was flush with sweat, blotchy. It occurred to Grant that on a less attractive person, Ezra’s look might have been awful, but on him it looked somewhat tragic, borderline sophisticated. If he ever showed up strung out at any of the coffee shops near the studios, he’d likely land a part or two, or at least work as a high-paid male escort.

  Grant switched the gun to his other hand and sighted up the spot from Ezra’s crotch to a place just above his heart. “I’m kidding, of course, about our little deal. But I do wish that you’d taken me up on my offer instead of, well, using it as inspiration. Anyhow, I nodded off twice before you finally returned. For a moment, I wondered if we’d lost you.”

  Ezra looked around, clearly unable to discern what Grant meant by we.

  “Oh, Sybil isn’t here, but she told me to tell you that she appreciated your services.”

  Ezra glanced at the gun.

  “Oh no, she’s fine, kiddo,” said Grant. “Sleeping soundly. And not in the metaphorical sense. No cement shoes. I mean she’s asleep up in our room. Perhaps snoring like a wildebeest if she’s on her back—but you probably know all about that.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Grant watched as the bones in Ezra’s jaw pressed the skin out from his cheeks like little knuckles. The expression was a little exaggerated, but not bad. At the very least soap opera material.

  “What do you want?” Ezra asked.

  Grant felt more anger. Lovely. He’d been expecting a bleating calf, cowering before the butcher. He took a deep breath and crossed his legs. The longer one paused after a direct, emotional question, the more insecurity and doubt had a chance to enter the accused’s mind. “Oh, before I forget. I wanted to tell you: while up in Vancouver I did a little research on hummingbird behavior. I discovered that they are incredibly territorial. I found pictures of male hummingbirds with wings broken, beaks. Vicious creatures, really.” Hudson grunted as he swung his feet around to the floor. “You look terrible. Hangover?”

  Ezra said nothing.

  “Ah, still pleasantly drunk. Anyhow, we’ll have more time to chat in the car. Your car.” Hudson flipped his pistol in the direction of the door.

  Ezra paused and again looked at the gun. Grant noticed his hands flexing. “Where are we going?”

  Grant racked the slide of the pistol, chambering a round.

  Ezra stared him down before walking out the door. Grant followed in silence. Oh dear, the nubile gardener reeked of tequila. It was amazing what you could tell about people from what they allowed themselves to smell like. Every deodorant had its connotations, every perfume its social class, but no one paid close enough attention. In this techno-America, the leading roles were the eyes and the ears, and the rest of the senses served as extras.

  He took a deep sniff. Yes, tequila, and bottom shelf at that. You could trust a tequila drinker. Everyone was false in their own way, but tequila drinkers were like rum drinkers: the only people they meant to harm were themselves. Not like whiskey and bourbon drinkers, who all had something to prove. But gin drinkers? Masters of artifice, never to be trusted. He loved the smell of juniper.

  The gravel on the side of the pool house crunched beneath their feet. It made sense that Sybil would go for a tequila drinker. She probably worshipped the tastes of this workingman. A boy with calloused hands! Was dumpster diving, for someone in Sybil’s place, not the ultimate in condescension? To screw the cabana boy? People called Grant arrogant, but then again, people tended to stay—at all costs—in the exact same social class in which they were raised. Grant considered one of his biggest advantages to be this: having spent decades on both ends of the socioeconomic spec
trum, he never assumed someone’s class gave them any inferiority or superiority, blind ignorance or esoteric intelligence.

  Whittled down, the truth was this: The rich and the poor viewed each other with awe and terror and anger and pity and jealousy and disdain. They foisted on each other every yearning that a human could feel. They imagined in each other a god: unknowable, cloaked in mystery. In short, both the rich and poor thought they were different, when in fact, they were the same.

  Ezra was still a man, no matter how feeble, and deserved to be treated as such. Revenge, when personal, could be a show of respect.

  They stopped at Ezra’s sedan.

  “Tinted windows,” said Grant. “Convenient. Get in front. Let’s pretend this is a rideshare service. Meanwhile, I’ll stay in the back with the gun. Got any bottled water?”

  “Fuck off.” Ezra clicked the electronic lock opening the doors.

  “Oh, and before you get in, please lend me your phone.”

  Ezra tossed it onto the back seat and they both climbed in. Ezra’s sedan smelled like clipped grass. There were a handful of empty coffee cups lying on the seat and in the footwells alongside stray jumper cables missing their case.

  “Where are we going?” Ezra asked.

  “The beach! I don’t care what route you take. Just don’t get pulled over. If you do, well, then we’ll get creative. I’ll let you ponder what that might entail.”

  Hudson could see in the rearview mirror that Ezra’s eyes had narrowed.

  “Ooh, that glare. Icy. Well, I’ve never been a big fan of them either . . . unintended consequences, I mean.” Hudson rubbed his palms together and rolled down the window a tad. It was getting muggy inside, probably from Ezra sweating out the cheap tequila. “You’re fit to drive, right?”

  Ezra opened his mouth to speak.

  “Just kidding. Of course you are.” He tapped the nozzle of the pistol against the side of Ezra’s head. “Firearms sober a person up far better than black coffee.” Grant leaned back into the seat. “Now calm down. I’m not going to shoot you just yet.”

  The car backed out of the driveway. Grant for a moment felt like a little kid. How long since he’d been in the rear seat, except for the limos studio heads rented for red carpet events? Was it with his father, that bourbon drinker, that soft shell of a man who worked at a canning factory and stank of cod? Who proved his worth by bruising walls, doors, bumpers, bank accounts, and most of all, flesh, if not that of his peers, then that of his wife and son?

  Grant could remember it like yesterday, the back of his parent’s car, dry summer dust making him cough, passing a stretch of sandy beach built by a small river emptying into an inlet, where a twenty-odd foot sailboat, navy blue with a battered ash hull, was resting on its side, beached.

  Yes. Like yesterday. They were on the way to meet his destiny at the courthouse. At this time, he still went by his given name: Frederick Chance.

  The elder Grant Hudson—his namesake—came to town in a late-sixties Buick model that their streets had never seen, talking about plans for a highway junction and, after that, a shipping port that would service every town on the tip of the northeastern coastline. He was a developer. He had detailed sketches of the building plans. He used words like infrastructure and knew the yearly catch numbers and projections better than the cannery managers themselves did. He had certified letters from a senator. He was a first-rate con artist, so of course he wanted substantial investments up front. And he wanted the brunette with the high cheekbones and soft eyes: Frederick Chance’s mother.

  Frederick didn’t know why he and his father were on their way to see Grant Hudson, except for the fact that his mother had not been home the night before. Apparently, she needed to think something through, but not to worry—his father had relayed this information a dozen times the night before as both of them sat by the fireplace, tobacco smoke hanging in the air, dogs digging through soil in their sleep.

  As Ezra drove, the memory continued in Grant’s mind. He and his father passed the beach and continued west up the hill, past clusters of houses to city hall, which was really just another building on the block of storefronts. But with the help of the elder Grant Hudson, it soon promised to have white Roman pillars and an enormous clock tower with a bell that would announce the hours with such force that fisherman miles offshore would have no need for timepieces.

  Frederick’s father parked on the other side of the street from the brown building. “Stay here,” he said, and got out.

  “But—”

  His father slammed the door in response, and Frederick stayed put. He knew better than to disagree. Arguing and disobedience were the same thing in his family, and both typically ended in violence. He had scars and bruises to prove it. Too many to count. He’d brag about them to his friends at school whenever they’d compare injuries. Once, his father had cold-cocked him with a milk bottle and he’d felt dizzy for over a week. It was frustrating, because there was no way to prove to his friends that the injury had actually happened.

  But as Frederick Chance watched his father pull his newsboy cap low and shove his hands into the front pockets of his trousers and walk, hunched over, across the street, something occurred to him that never had before. That walk: there was something about it, something that was there the whole time but needed the gravity of this moment to reveal. His father always walked as though it was freezing outside. His father walked as though bracing for a blow.

  Across the street, waiting, was Hudson. He wore a gray, double-breasted suit, remarkable for its color. It wasn’t the dark gray of a raincloud, like the one suit all of the men in town owned, if they owned any at all. Hudson’s was the light gray of a cresting wave. Had any man in town worn it, he would have been mocked until someone got drunk enough to challenge him to a fight. Traveling salesmen always dressed down when visiting—denim and flannel—to better connect with the townspeople. But Grant Hudson seemed to have no desire to pretend he wasn’t better than everyone else.

  As Frederick Chance watched, he knew he should scoff, as surely his father would, as would everyone else he knew. But he couldn’t. There was something different about this man. Something bold and audacious and demanding of respect. He came in as a lord, with a white Detroit stallion. A man who knew that these people weren’t looking for someone like them. They weren’t even looking for someone to emulate. They were looking for someone they could never be.

  Frederick’s father stopped at the steps of city hall and began talking to Grant Hudson. By their body language, it was clearly more than a simple greeting. Where was his mother? What did this rich guy have to do with them? Hudson gestured to his magnificent car parked alongside the building. His father, hands still in his pockets, kicked at the curb, as if trying to dislodge something. He took off his cap and scratched his scalp. He folded the brim in his hands. He coughed into his fist. Every move betrayed weakness.

  Then Frederick’s father nodded, turned around, and walked back to the car. He opened the door but wouldn’t meet his son’s eyes. “Go talk to him.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Go.” He couldn’t read his father at the time, but what he saw in his memory was the most precise look of human shame he would ever see.

  Frederick got out of the car and stopped.

  “Go!” His father shoved him out into the road. Hudson loomed, arms crossed, light gray fedora shading a scowl.

  Frederick walked up, the whole way conscious of his hands and what to do with them. He stopped short. Grant Hudson would scarcely look at him.

  “You can come with us,” Hudson said, as much to the other side of the street as he did to Frederick. Finally, he looked straight at him. His eyes were piercing. “I’d rather you stayed here, but I promised your mother, and I keep my promises.”

  “I—”

  “She’s in the car. Go speak to her and make your decision. Don’t let anyone make it for you.”

  As he walked up to Hudson’s car, his hands tingled. Insi
de sat his mother, in a hat he’d never seen before, one of those adorned with flowers and beads and a brim askew like that boat on the shore. She smiled, and her lip trembled, and he understood.

  Years later, when he thought about it, he guessed that she’d been on the edge for a long time. Trapped with a man who didn’t feel trapped. A man she respected but could not understand. A man who punished her and their child rather than face his own demons. She’d married the mystery of him, only to find the mystery was simply desire sucked dry by regret and hopelessness. So, there she sat, in the magnificent car of Grant Hudson.

  “What’s going on?” Frederick asked.

  She paused, and put her finger to her nose for a moment. “I am leaving your father. Mr. Hudson has agreed that you can come with us.”

  Agreed. Not hoped. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’d be okay with you coming along,” she said, and then glanced past him. Frederick turned and saw Grant Hudson watching from the street.

  Something inside him burst. He felt an anger he’d never felt before. He didn’t have words for it yet, but he understood. This deal had already been made. The choice was his, but in reality, he was a risk she hoped she wouldn’t have to take.

  Frederick stifled his tears.

  His mother looked straight ahead. “He’s waiting on your decision.”

  So cold. So very cold. Later, he understood—all too well—but God did he hate her in that moment. He felt like spitting in her face through the window of that pretentious car. Instead, he turned on his heels and ran past Hudson, straight to his father, and buried his face into his trousers. He felt a hand on his forehead for a moment, and then nothing. He squatted on the ground and cried. Finally, he caught his breath. When he turned around, Grant Hudson’s car—and his mother—were gone.