The Lipless Gods

by Brian Stillman

  Chapter 3

  The old woman's dog barked from the screened in back porch. Mrs. Mason had told Henry not to start mowing before 10 a.m., because of the noise. She told Henry she wanted to be considerate of the neighbors. Just barely south of 7 a.m. and Grimace, the short-limbed sausage shaped pooch filled the air with missives.

  Mowing might not even happen today. Henry had an entire patch of weeds to knock down all by hand. According to Mrs. Mason the patch had been a garden years ago, something Mr. Mason tended. Anytime she mentioned her long perished spouse she whacked her bosom like he'd been put to ground only last week.

  Henry had explained how fast the work would go via weed whacker, but Mrs. Mason didn't want him inside. The imposition would frighten Grimace, and there was the further possibility Grimace might chew through the extension cord and get fried.

  After five minutes of swinging the back up, the so-labeled Lawn Buddy, a metal stick with a horizontal blade resembling lasagna, Henry really wished he'd brought gloves. His mom would've reminded him, but she was somewhere in northern California. Summertime meant fire season. She'd been promoted to a Fire Management Officer with the Forest Service, necessitating the move to Little Creek. It meant come this fire season she might be gone even more than years before. Supposedly he could take care of himself. The weeds were thick, practically tiny trees, Lawn Buddy resistant, and the tension on his palms was going to spring a row of blisters. He could imagine the pain, the blister-fed degree of difficulty, trying to hold a sandwich, trying to make a sandwich.

  "Hey there, Lone Wolf."

  Shocked at the nearness of the voice, Henry swung awry. The Lawn Buddy clipped the toe of his sneakers.

  "Oh no! Are you ok?"

  "I'm fine.” Henry studied his sneakers. No crimson oil well gushed to life. "I didn't hit it that hard."

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

  "It's ok."

  Tiffany Pleshette walked into the weeds, the dried out growth hissing against her. Through her summer shade of sunbaked pink, Tiffany actually looked white, freaked like Henry's tool was now blood soaked.

  She wore her usual garb. The orange tank top and the green shorts - a hacked off pair of green trousers discovered gathering dust at the Pendleton Salvation Army.

  Last fall, when Henry had started school in Little Creek, Tiffany was constantly clad in red and yellow. Sometime in winter, she'd course corrected. It depended on which superhero she was obsessing. She'd burned out on The Flash. For the foreseeable future it was Aquaman, King of the Seas. At least for those two – Barry Allen and Arthur Curry - she didn't need to dye her thatch of hair, naturally blonde, to match that of the idol of the moment. Trying to match the brown with white highlights of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards had slightly poisoned her. Plus, all blue looked all bad on anyone and everyone. Henry thought she should grow her hair out to help draw attention from her slight second chin. She was cute. Pretty, even.

  "Shit. I just wanted to say hi and I nearly cost you your foot."

  Henry stood on his right foot, raising and investigating the left. Just making sure. He shrugged. Tiffany looked towards Mason’s brown-shingled single story house. She tilted her head.

  "That’s Grimace," said Henry.

  "He sounds unhappy."

  Tiffany could interpret dog sound. Her Uncle Norm owned his own little dog, Pluto, but the difference in doggie demeanors fed truth to the fact owners either made or broke their pet. Tiffany could hush Pluto with a look. In fact, she could be standing behind him, and the little dog would feel disdain absent any hiss or cluck or finger snap. Henry sensed the longer he stayed friends with the husky, vociferous girl, more and more he'd begin to act in line with Pluto. Utterly under her control.

  "What are you doing out here?" asked Henry.

  It took a moment for Tiffany to break her concentration upon Grimace's distress call.

  "What's that?"

  "Nothing,” said Henry. “It's early. Early for questions."

  "Yeah. I know." She sighed and shrugged. Post-shrug Henry did his best to ignore the all too obvious bounce. Paul Salerno, his best friend back in Redmond called boobs 'sweater bunnies'. Tiffany sported the mother lode of all sweater bunnies.

  "I got to though,” she said. “I mean I got to run. Remember how I told you that was my goal over the summer? I'm fat. I don't want to be fat, Henry."

  "You're not."

  "Henry."

  "You're not though."

  "Henry." She lifted her right arm above her head and swacked the meat of the bicep underside. "Look at that wiggle. You don't know. I'm like the only Pleshette female you've even seen, and trust me, trust me on this, ok? All of this extra me and still, I'm the skinny one. So. Yeah. I got to get up and do something. Run. Walk. Walk. Run. Something. I don't think they make orange tank tops a size larger, you know."

  Soul bared, Tiffany squinted at the house, the amber colored double panes, the chicken wire fence-line, the maligned roof tiles. Just one of the dozens of malingering Little Creek homes. The nice houses like Henry and his mom lived in were the aberrations.

  "I'm pretty sure Mrs. Mason owes the store some money. I could check. Not sure how much, but my Uncle Norm probably fell in for some sob story of hers." Tiffany's face aged whenever it came to the misfortunes of Pleshette's, now Little Creek's number two-ranked grocery store. Tiffany's Uncle called Auntie’s owners 'those people', refusing to identify the Dobbs clan by proper names.

  Across the road from Mrs. Mason's stood the abandoned railcars. When Tiffany started looking at the house, Henry's attention wandered toward his classmate's considerable bosom, and embarrassed, certain he'd get caught, looked away, over Tiff's suntanned right shoulder.

  A man stood up over in the neighboring field, plain as day, the silhouette with only the horizon as background. Henry thought the man might be looking right at him. Henry squinted. A war vet named Bug Collar spent a good portion of the week working a metal detector over the railcars field, but this wasn't Bug. A stranger.

  Quick as the stranger had risen, he'd wobbled, and collapsed.

  Both teens thought a 911 call was in order, at least until Tiffany found the shoulder holster and the gun.

  "Should you be doing that?"

  Tiffany was sliding the gun out slowly. She'd tugged the man's left arm up out of the way to allow for more operating room.

  "Tiff?"

  "Shush. You're making me nervous, Henry."

  From across Old Woods Road, Grimace continued issuing invective. Henry checked every direction except skyward, certain someone would be witnessing Tiffany's indiscretion. Henry still had the Lawn Buddy clenched in hand. It probably wasn't a bad idea to be armed, just in case the stranger proved aggressive, but he was barely aware he had it in hand.

  Tiff had checked for a heartbeat, a pulse, even put her knuckles up over the man's nose and mouth. He was alive. He'd been hit in the right side of the head. Above the eye line the skin was red and black, torn back here and there, revealing splotches of dried blood. Tiff had patted him down. No keys. A wallet was in the front right pants pocket. Henry’s scalp tingle upped a notch when Tiff didn't return the wallet, instead just left it out, beside her squatting knees.

  She'd peeled back the suit jacket. Nothing on the right, but on the left a magazine was tucked into the inside pocket. A People folded down the middle. Interest in the periodical had vanished at revelation of the holster.

  "It's heavy." Tiffany held the gun by the stock, but held it like it was a sandwich, fingers clamped down tight, palms empty.

  "Don't drop it."

  She nodded, and set the gun down on the ground, the barrel aimed at the gravel slope of Old Woods Road.

  "Should we call 911? Tiff?"

  Henry even had his phone in his hand. He bet he'd fuck up if the stranger woke, lunged at Tiff. Probably swing th
e phone instead of the Lawn Buddy.

  Someone in a state like the stranger, time was of the essence, even more so for Little Creek emergencies. A population on the low end of 250 didn't support a hospital. La Grande was 40 miles away. Pendleton 70. Everyone knew the local horror stories of accidents that took a tragic turn simply due to the middle of nowhere status the town otherwise usually luxuriated in. Years ago, Pleshette's had been The Little Creek Grocery, tripling as a doctor's office and the post office. Those were the boom years, before color TV, Vietnam.

  Tiff leaned closer to the man. She touched his face and peeled back his left eyelids and then the right eyelids.

  "What are you doing?" asked Henry.

  "They aren't bloodshot."

  "What if they were?"

  "I don't know. It wouldn't be good though I bet."

  She let go and leaned back. She looked right, towards town. Her hands nearly held each other. Her left thumb worried her right hand like it was trying to jumpstart it. Back up on her feet her knees were each now dirt capped.

  "Who do you think he is?" asked Tiffany.

  Henry looked down at the man.

  "I don't know."

  "I don't see any car."

  "Right."

  "But he's not from here. Or anywhere around here, that's for sure."

  "Right."

  Tiffany ran to the nearest railcar. They were all the same weather worn grey. For years and years the admonition from the mayor and the sheriff was for kids to stay clear of the railcars. Disagreement over who owned the property stymied the railcars destruction. Bug Collar and his mom had inherited the field, unless you sided with Lester Scoggins and his claim Pa Collar had lost the field in a poker game back in the early '90s.

  Tiffany leaned inside the open doorway and pulled out a small brown box. She overturned it and what looked like a toilet paper roll and broken glass fell to earth, followed by dripping. A lot of dripping. Tiff waggled the box, trying to get it drip free. Walking back towards Henry and the stranger she gave the box a look-over, a nose wrinkling cursory sniff, but she was committed.

  She bent over, plucked up the wallet and the gun and put them in the box, then folded the box flaps down to make a lid.

  “What are you doing?”

  She stood. Clutching the box she smiled at Henry. She pointed at the railcar she’d just investigated. The one with ‘HOPE’ spray-painted across it. The artist had run into trouble. The ‘E’ not quite fully realized. Depending on who was looking at it, it looked a little more like ‘HOPF’ then ‘HOPE’.

  “Hope,” said Tiffany.

  “How would that help Hope?”

  Tiff shrugged. Bit her lower lip.

  "I'll be back."

  She turned and ran, holding the box like it contained cupcakes with so artfully applied frosting she intended to keep the masterpieces intact.

  The gun thwacked against the box. She bounded up off the field and mounted the gravel side slope and once on the asphalt settled into a slightly more forceful trot than what she'd planned for the track this morning.

  The thwack-thwack-thwack grew dim the closer Tiff got to the city park. Finally, Henry couldn't hear it at all. Once she was out of sight he braced for the sudden blast of the gun, jarred and discharged. The blood rushing in his ears subsided just enough he could pick up the sounds of Grimace.

  A Forest Service truck appeared on Old Woods Road, headed south, out of town, the diesel engine gathering force. An arm appeared out the passenger side window, and automatically, Henry returned the wave.

  Pushing the lawn mower somewhere in town, usually a Forest Service truck going by would honk its horn, and the employees would holler at him. The first few times it'd scared him shitless. He got used to it. Henry guessed part of the routine stemmed from people delighting in making noise, and part from wanting to support his mom, their Fire Management Officer, and Henry in the wake of Alec's desertion.

  The stepdad had withstood Little Creek from fall to the tail end of winter. Then, one sunny February day, he just up and left. It wasn't like he’d been a monster. He'd gotten along fine with Henry. Alec had said he was the older brother Henry didn't know he needed. Alec was kind of a boy toy, a solid 3 years Lori's junior. Alec was an artist. Multi-talented. A musician-an actor-a painter-a poet, etc. Small town life was supposed to give him time to dig deep and produce some masterwork. Delivered to Little Creek, mostly he'd produced empty space in bourbon bottles and packs of cigarettes. Last anyone had heard he was in Eugene, working part-time at a coffee shop, prepping a one-man show.

  Henry watched the truck vanish around a curve into the woods. When he looked back, the man in black was sitting up.

  Even without the brown black splotch and the patches of blood on the right side of the face, the man couldn't help but stir some warning sense out of strangers.

  Something ape-like or caveman-like to the bone structure. He didn't appear like he was comfortable using words of more than one syllable, and would much prefer grunting and flailing to forming actual words.

  "Are you ok?" Henry asked the same question a second time. No reply. The man kept looking over his right shoulder at the railcar Tiffany had snagged the dripping box from. The ‘HOPE’ railcar. The man seemed to be measuring the distance from his seated spot to the shade promised inside the railcar.

  "If you want," said Henry, "I can call someone. We really don't have doctors here, but we could get you one."

  A faint engine noise grew louder, somewhat insect-like. Henry guessed it was Norm Pleshette's little red Toyota truck before it came into view. He'd just made out Tiffany behind the driver's wheel when she slowed and aimed the truck off Old Woods Road and onto the field. At the last moment she course corrected and ended up pulled alongside the man in black.

  He'd turned his head and watched the red truck heading for him. Hadn't shown any interest in rolling away. Henry looked at that wounded forehead. Pictured the brain inside resembling a pulverized mound of wet dog food. Barking from inside the truck cab came on hot and heavy. Pluto pressed both his paws against the passenger side window, tongue dangling, excited enough like he could smell dog food. The window was cranked down about half an inch. Pluto arched his muzzle, trying to sniff in the whole wide world through the crack.

  Tiffany left the motor running and got out of the truck, the driver side door open in her wake. She clapped her hands and stopped just in front of the truck front bumper.

  She threw her arms up in a hallelujah gesture.

  "He's up! You're up."

  She smiled at the man in black.

  "You can get in if you want, Mr. Sipe. We need to get you somewhere safe."

  The man didn't say anything. Pluto woofed and woofed.

  "Oh.” Tiffany looked at Sipe, her right eye squinted shut against the windshield glare. "But Pluto's called shotgun, just so you know."