It was a 1911 with a pearl pistol grip.
15
THE BIG CAT
If Colin had known about the big cat, he might not have taken the dirt bike. But as soon as he got out of jail he looked up a rich kid in Olympia who owed him a lot of money. The kid was a politician’s son who wanted to be a redneck. Colin waited with him for two hours at a grocery store. He stared at the kid’s stiff Carhartt pants. His new Georgia boots. The boy’s money never came through. His politician dad was using tough love. The kid started talking in a high-pitched voice. He was coming down and scared—feeling suddenly vulnerable.
Colin said he wouldn’t cut him up so bad if he had something to hold on to. He told him about how nicely the kid would fit into the trunk of his Impala. Colin took the bike and told him he was lucky. He took back roads most of the way to David. He rode down 101 under the speed limit. It was his birthday. He had never in his life owned an Impala.
Colin was tired of the tweakers in the tweaker pads—the track marks, stolen guns, and boredom. He went to the house on Cota Street to look for me. It was empty and stared at him. He couldn’t remember where my apartment was. A troublesome thought reminded him there was something he was supposed to tell me. He scrubbed at the wall in the kitchen. There was a bloodstain there. He picked at the sores on his face. Some kids knocked on the door, and he let them in. He didn’t really remember their names. They had meth and offered him some. As the smoke left his lungs he grew even more confused. He didn’t say a word to the tweakers huddled around the crack pipe in the living room. He grabbed his heavy jacket and walked out the back door. He looked longingly at the porch. He jumped on the dirt bike and bought a case of beer at the corner market.
Colin rode all the way up in the hills above the plywood mill. He followed logging roads until he found one that ended abruptly. He was in a turnaround that only loggers knew the use of. He drank his beer and tried to cut kindling for a fire with his pocketknife. He was shaking. He sliced through his skin. Splinters stuck into his flesh. The wound bled angrily. He wrapped his finger in his handkerchief. The blood soaked through the cotton. He watched the thickets of salal and Scotch broom change shape in the dark. His good-looking face was haggard—saggy bags of dark flesh hung underneath his eyes. Stringy, greasy hair clung to his face. He wouldn’t sleep that night or the next. It would take a lonely eternity for the drugs to leave his system.
A mountain lion smelled the fresh blood of his wound. He heard her screeching as he stared at the sun sinking behind a freshly shorn hill. The big feline was young and starving. The sunset ended quickly—beet juice dripped down the clear-cut hillside. There wasn’t as much territory as there had been in the past. Mountain lions were territorial. They weren’t afraid of people. The sixty-pound cat stalked him loudly. She wanted to know why he had come. She sensed he was weak and foolish. She made low, growling, whoofing noises. Circled him. Screamed like a woman. She would not leave.
Colin threw a burning chunk of wood at her. He was furious and yelled, “Scat!”
But it was no use getting mad at nature. It was too dark to leave. The headlight on the bike was burned-out. He would get lost in the dark woods if he tried to come down the gravel roads on foot. He would spend days surviving off rainwater and blue huckleberries. Even if he remembered the way, it would take him all night and day.
That night he heard strange things in those mountains. He didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. The spirits in the woods were older, angrier, more powerful than the ones on Cota Street. They leered. He was an immigrant who didn’t belong. A glacier loomed. The monoculture of Doug fir judged him silently. The trees stood in a row. Jagged stumps wallowed in hushed misery. The soil was eroding and depleted. It would only get worse. He’d forgotten water. He was smart enough to know he wasn’t as smart as he used to be. His fingertips brushed across his stitched skull. There was a blankness there. He grew frustrated. He’d be lucky to see the morning. His small fire sent out a womblike, red glow. Sparks traveled up toward the black sky and disappeared. The cat was afraid of the flames. He built up his fire and huddled in the glow. His face burned. The flames towered. He wanted Monique to see the fire as she drove to Montana. His mouth was dry. He choked and lit two cigarettes. Shook his head. Got up and paced. Shivered and cried like a baby.
The big cat stalked him all night.
16
WHAT IT USED TO BE
The city cops found Duane overdosed in an alleyway with heroin in his pocket. They chose that opportunity to unleash the slew of charges they’d been saving up. His whole family waited at the courthouse for his turn to plead in front of the judge. His whole family. All those kids lined up on one of the long benches. The benches that used to be church pews—hand-me-downs from the Baptists. Duane’s mom was in her Sunday best. All the girls had braids in their hair. All the boys had short-sleeved, hand-sewn cotton shirts. Everything was ironed and clean. Checkered and corduroyed. Their hair was combed to the side. Duane’s mother had a patient look in her eyes. She was praying. She’d been praying for so long it was a constant companion. It was like breathing. She prayed while cleaning house, cooking dinner, and picking berries. Her lips moved faithfully while tilling soil or planning lessons. At the courthouse her prayers reached a crescendo—her eyes and mouth clenched shut. Her posture tense and worried. Her oldest son slouched in handcuffs. There was no place to leave her children. No lawyer. She’d been trying to save money. She sold her wedding ring and placed the cash devotedly into her jewelry box. She was as lonely as her son had been. No friends. She was far away from courthouses and Cota kids and little girl prostitutes with wild, angry hearts.
The charges followed Duane around for a long time. Nobody wanted to buy or sell to him anymore. He was marked. He couldn’t get financial aid. Colleges didn’t want him. Businesses with benefits wouldn’t hire him. He got back on at his fast-food job. But the court system was vicious and tricky. Once he was in, he was in—for life. His schedule became one hearing after another. Sentencing, biding time, waiting around in courtrooms—the horrible, stuffy, nervousness of those places. Everyone was strained. Everyone was pissed. All the men in suits were tired of dealing with people like him. He was just another face—another number. He got yanked around. Court dates changed at the last minute. It took longer than expected. He had no choice. He waited. His fast-food job became a behind-the-scenes thing. He had to take too much time off work. His boss lost patience. People talked. He got fired.
Duane was seventeen when he started hearing voices. Maybe the pressure finally got to him. Or maybe it was going to happen anyway. Either way, he stopped going to his court dates. He ate nothing but soft, raw vegetables from the food bank. He didn’t make a lot of sense when he talked. He found God, spoke in tongues, went into trances, and quit bathing. He saw things.
He and Kat got evicted. They visited his mama who cried. They got a ride back in from the hills with two hunters who dropped them off downtown near the train tracks. Kat found some kids she knew buying cheap wine at the grocery store. She and Duane followed them home.
Duane filled a coffee cup with gasoline and lit it on fire. He woke the kids sleeping in the cheaply rented building with a spoken premonition. The flames dripped down to the floor. They crawled across the thirty-year-old carpet. Duane rambled and gestured violently. “I know God is real!”
There was a deep blackness to the night. The flames reflected in his eyeballs and metal facial piercings. The Cota kids were excited and laughing. They crawled out of their cocoons of thin blankets and clothing. They rose from their mattresses, stood up from couches, emerged from the floor. None of them had to go to work in the morning. There were no jobs. They laughed because Duane was back. The building they lived in was burning to the ground. The destruction of the old I.W.A. meetinghouse would barely be noticed. The mural of the union seal on the side was now curled and blistered paint. The tweaker neighbors in the Section 8 housing across the street were busy with their own t
asks behind thin, cheap walls. The Cota kids knew they were young and fucked over. Their lives would happen without anyone noticing. They laughed and laughed. Nothing had ever been so funny. They danced in the street and watched the fire blast out windows—send licks of orange-tinted radiance into the sky.
Duane stayed downtown on random couches after that. His brain flew away like a tired bird. He started to jog. He jogged in parks and on hard pavement. He jogged during the day, and he jogged at night. Same old shoes. His hair grew into long, natural curls. A broad, swaying beard sprung from his face. His forehead and eyes peeked out from the shaggy mane. His clothes grew tattered and faded. His body ate itself—the exercise waned his strength. His frame formed even thinner lines. His eyes hollowed, and his bones were wire.
Duane was filled with a useless mixture so volatile it seethed through his pores and into the foggy David night. He proved that the news reporters and tourists and college students and police officers were right. We were just as bad as bad could be. For no reason. His actions were exhaled cigarette smoke being swept into a vent. His life was an empty milk carton rotting—a CD too scratched to play. His heart turned into a discarded coffee cup harboring enamel blistered from flames—smelling strongly of gasoline—so black from the soot left by fire no one could tell what it used to be.
17
A BAD STATE
Something about the way Kat tripped coming up the front steps got to me. Her head flew up in fear at the loss of balance. She grappled for the railing that leaned. She was wide-eyed and saw me watching her through the window. Her face showed a brief glimpse of infuriated loathing. Then a painful effort at control in the evening light. I felt a stab of pity—a deep hopelessness that paralyzed.
I knew Duane must be in a bad state to send Kat to us. She scuttled awkwardly across the front porch. She’d never been to Brady, Joey, and Fitz’s trailer before. She looked around the front porch. Her sharp gaze rested for a moment on the river rocks that lined the dirt pathway—proof of a resident feminine presence. She filed away that piece of information and knocked rapidly on the front door. It was just before dusk on a Sunday. The Douglas fir quietly draped themselves in shadow. The moon had already risen. Soon, stars would blink between the treetops.
Because of how she tripped, I didn’t warn Fitz, who answered her knock and let her inside. Her glance flitted quickly from one body to another: Brady. Annie. Fitz. And the Man from Angel Road. All standing there. Mouths agape. None of us spoke to her. She didn’t make eye contact. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. Up and down. Up and down. Kat glared at my chest last. Her gaze rested there.
She was stooped and bland and gibbon-like. Hunched shoulders. Fine hair. Her eyes were blank yellow dots surrounded by thick lines of black eye makeup. Her juvie tattoos were splattered unevenly on her skin. The lines were irregular—the ink blotchy and fading. Kat was short and compact. Even though she wanted to be swift and nimble. Her feet tripped. But she was still more like predator than prey.
Kat squirmed past Fitz and sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with her legs crossed. She pulled out a shapeless bundle from inside her jacket and carefully unwrapped a heavy pistol. Set it down on the table with both hands. Told us it was for sale. We stared at her. She fingered the metal like a lover. Like her world depended on the steel. Brady knelt down in spite of himself. Took it carefully out of her fidgety fingers. Examined it closely.
“A 1911,” he mumbled in soft awe.
“With a pearl pistol grip,” Kat finished proudly. She almost smiled. Her clean, beige hair was tucked behind her ears—it curved around her chin.
Jimmy James looked at them both in horror.
“I’ll take whatever I can get,” Kat assured Brady.
I knew Brady felt sorry for her. Kat’s story circled my head. Each detail was hard to swallow. I didn’t know her. I knew only the reputation she had gained on Cota Street. I didn’t know if she had been born Caitlin or Kathleen. She was just Kat. Her full name was lost on a birth certificate in a drawer somewhere. A drawer that had been rooted through a thousand times in search of valuables to pawn. The family pictures were mixed up and out of order. The files and documents were dog-eared. She was just Kat. An animal name shortened for the convenience of others. She failed high school, alternative high school, and then beauty school. Kat’s mom loved heroin more than she loved her daughter who was small and pretty and promiscuous. The counselors at the drug rehab center and volunteers from the state college tried to name Kat’s problems. They said words like severe economic and social depravation. And tried to measure her life on graphs. They called hers a world of “rural poverty” and other things. But Kat knew better. She had a knowledge that blotted out all those words: Kat knew she could never be like other people. And that was all that really mattered.
Brady offered her three hundred dollars for the gun. Her eyes grew bright. She agreed without bartering. She watched him carefully as he went to his bedroom without looking at any of us. He closed the door carefully. Came out with cash. Kat thanked him again and again. For some reason there was a moment of peace. Kat picked up the T-shirt that had once held the gun. She coiled it into a tight ball and stuffed it back into the pocket of her leather jacket. She drew a box of bullets from another pocket—shoved them at Brady.
“They go with the gun!” She grinned graciously.
Jimmy James sat down cautiously on the couch next to Brady. He picked up the revolver and held it close to his face. He shook his head. His eyes finally softened in genuine admiration. He took out five bullets one by one and loaded them gently into the chamber. Kat’s eyes watched his fingertips lovingly. She was still grinning eerily.
“That’s a steal,” Jimmy James told Brady. Then he looked up and saw Kat staring at him as if he were a young and hostile Jesus. He shivered. His face grew dark and dangerous. “Sell it as soon as you can,” he advised Brady. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. He couldn’t shake a bad feeling.
Kat waited until everyone was quiet and uncomfortable and waiting for her to leave. She stared at Jimmy James—past his right shoulder at the fake wood paneling of the trailer. I started to wonder if the chicken breasts I put on the grill were burning. Kat sniffed the air as well. But the scent she was searching for was not burnt meat. She wanted to smell the Man from Angel Road. Her attraction was that of an animal: pheromones and curiosity and violent timidity—the adoration of an alley cat.
The thought crossed my mind that cats sometimes kill things just to play with them. They toss mice half alive and squirming into the air—pretend they are still moving—slaughter them over and over.
Kat’s eyes grew foggy and haunted. She’d been thinking about this moment for a long time. She stood, reached into her jacket again, and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook. It was black and well used. She held it out to Jimmy James but he did not take it. The pages flapped sadly in the air. She finally set it on the coffee table and pushed it toward him. He looked down at it warily and asked, “What is it?”
“My notebook,” she answered. “Where I write things.” She was urging him. Begging him. It grew hot in the crowded room of the little trailer. Annie came to stand next to Brady. I felt queasy. “I wanna belong to you,” Kat blurted out. “I’ll do whatever you want.” She stared right at the Man from Angel Road. Fitz turned around to find my gaze. His eyebrows were question marks. I shrugged. Brady’s arms searched for Annie’s waist. Annie took his hands and pushed them against her distended belly.
Jimmy James looked up at Kat fiercely. Incredulous. With raised eyebrows. It was the first time any of us had ever heard her want something for herself.
Annie tried to be nice. She began tentatively, “People don’t belong to other people, Kat.”
I saw the Man from Angel Road sneer. I saw his face crease into a dark look I had never known before. “Why would I own you?” he asked Kat as he scowled. “You’re not worth anything.”
Annie tried. She tried to st
op everything from happening. “Jimmy,” she pleaded. “You stop it! She doesn’t mean it!”
Jimmy James Blood barely waited for Annie to finish. “Yes she does! She does mean it!” He shook his head. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how she makes it harder for you? How people like her make it so hard to get people together, to listen to each other? She’s a puppet of this capitalist system, and I don’t want racists coming to this house anymore! That’s final.” He was tired and more tired. It was all wearing him down. He was as close to desperation as I had ever seen him. Annie was seven months along. He worried about me who worried about Colin. All our names were on a list. The files were in a file cabinet. The uniformed men discussed us like a rat problem. There were red arrows pinned on a map pointed right at us. It was inevitable. Our addresses, license plates, and hangouts were on file.
He stood and towered over Kat. He pointed at her. “You are on drugs all the time. That’s why you’re talking crazy like that. Don’t you be bringing no drugs or crazy ideas into this house. Do you hear me?”
Kat cringed and said nothing.
“You want me to tell you how to live? Is that it?”
Kat wouldn’t look at him. Her face was a pale stone.
“Clean up! Stop prostituting yourself! Walk a straight line. Read a few books. Do it for yourself. Do it for a long, long, time.” He turned his back on her. He let his words cut like shrapnel. He let the silence settle around her like the ghost-dust after a bomb—the powder that comes to rest on all the bodies and broken buildings.
Kat had a swastika tattoo. A bad history. That evening, there was no time for languish or therapy. The clock ticked unmercifully. I looked around at our group. We were frustrated teenagers. Fitz kept looking wide-eyed at me. Jimmy James kept staring at the squirming girl. He finally exploded, “I can’t save you!” He was a storm you just had to let blow over.
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