Snake Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Michael could not speak. The hairs on the back of his neck quite literally stirred.

  Then a second pale face appeared, bobbing in the shadows, and now Michael heard muffled laughter and a sound as of something scraping against a wall—“Joel! Kenny!” he called out. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  The boys fled. There were rapid footsteps in the hall, a sound as of skidding on a loose rug, more muffled laughter, high-pitched and frantic, as if nothing could be more hilarious than Daddy’s wrath; then, as the adults sat staring toward the doorway, there came a sound of mischievous giggling close behind them at the doorway to the kitchen, where Joel (or was it Kenny?) poked his head, and then Kenny (or was it Joel?) poked his head, both boys squatting low so that their heads bobbed unexpectedly close to the floor. What impudence! With identical grins Joel and Kenny demanded in identical piping voices, “Where is he?—Mr. Sears?” and “Where is he?—Mr. Sears!”

  Gina laid her hand against her breast, as if her heart were beating very hard. Her eyelids fluttered. She said, breathless, scolding, “What on earth, you two!—scaring us like that!”

  Michael was on his feet. “That isn’t funny, Joel!—Kenny! You know better!”

  This set the twins off giggling harder. In near-unison they cried, “Where is he?” and “Where is he?”

  Michael advanced upon them even as they ran off, colliding with each other, shrieking and laughing, through the kitchen where they knocked something over (a chair?) and into the rear hall and so up the back stairs, their bare heels pounding on the steps as if they were, not seven-year-old boys, but much older, heavier. The cry “Where is he!” and its echo “Where! is! he!” resounded through the house.

  As if this were a familiar nighttime game, not a singular act of defiance, Michael stood in the hall, hands cupped to his mouth, calling, “Back to bed, you two! C’mon, now! Back to bed!” He dreaded his sister judging him as a father unable to control his sons.

  From upstairs came the sound of jarring footsteps and the mocking cry “Back to bed!” and its echo “Back to bed! to bed! bed!”

  After a brief while there was silence again upstairs. But it was the kind of silence, increasingly familiar in this household, that Michael O’Meara could not trust.

  Gina finished her glass of wine and set it down on the table rather hard. She cut her eyes at Janet, meaning to be amusing, but her voice came out hoarse, cracked, “So!—d’you think you’d like to be a mother?”

  “Oh yes,” Janet said emphatically, “—oh yes.” In that lilting television voice that, candid, direct, sincere, was wholly unconvincing.

  In their bed, at last, after this lengthy, distressing, exhausting day, Michael O’Meara gently kissed his wife’s eyelids, which were damp with tears of hurt and frustration; gently eased the straps of her silk nightgown off her shoulders, so that he could kiss her breasts. Ah, lightly!—reverently! He was careful to hide the sexual desire he felt, knowing that such desire, at this time of night, and in such circumstances, might have been distasteful to Gina; at the very least, it would have embarrassed her.

  Gina’s lovely breasts!—small, very pale, oddly cool, with a delicate tracery of bluish veins, the roseate nipples as seemingly untouched as those of a young girl!—and unbruised, so far as Michael could see by lamplight, betraying no telltale signs of soreness.

  Asleep but not sleeping. Trapped in sleep but not of his own volition. He was struggling to wake yet shrewd, canny in struggle, tensing his body, muscles rigid as in combat, a fight to the death, though the voice came jeering Michael was no more in Vietnam than I was and suddenly he saw, as if a gauze wrapping were removed from his eyes, what was keeping him there, wrestling him down, trying to choke his oxygen supply: the humanoid figure, a misshapen dwarf with a gaping hole in his abdomen, roiling snakes for guts, glaring eyeless sockets and a grinning gash of a mouth.

  And that smell! Sickening!

  A stink as of phenol, or was it chlorine!

  Michael wrestled the hideous dwarf down, hands closing around his throat. Down, down! Leave me alone! Die! At the same time he managed to thrash himself awake, and woke, sweaty, shivering, not knowing for several confused seconds where he was. Beside him, Gina, his beautiful wife, who had been sleeping a deep, stuporous, wine-sodden sleep, murmured, scarcely able to hide her annoyance, “Yes darling, yes, fine—we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  V

  1

  Where was he?—he was in the Free Fire Zone.

  Through the months of that summer, in the Free Fire Zone.

  Sculpting clay. His hands groping, kneading. Gouging fingers. Working in a trance a hazy sweaty trance, they knew better than to interrupt Lee Roy Sears in the Free Fire Zone.

  Even climbing the stairs to the parole office on Twelfth Street, entering H. Sigman’s office, he was in the Free Fire Zone.

  Even at the Putnam Municipal Parking Garage working for chump money doing shitwork by night pushing a giant broom picking up trash by hand he was safe in the Free Fire Zone.

  (First week of September, he’d quit. Tell the assholes go fuck. Take his chances with H. Sigman, who was impressed—the asshole should be impressed!—with Lee Roy Sears’s rich friends and supporters over in Mount Orion.)

  In the Free Fire Zone, Snake Eyes twitched asleep with his eyes open. Poised tight-coiled ready to strike if an enemy came too near.

  Yah but he was safe: wore long-sleeved shirts when he was in Mount Orion, sometimes even at the gym working out with barbells, weights, he figured it’s to his (and Snake Eyes’s) advantage.

  Oily sweat running in rivulets down his face, his body.

  In the Free Fire Zone, that’s okay. He could handle it.

  Not even requiring medication, some days. As the summer wore on.

  Figuring the doctors, the psychiatrists, paid to scare you, what do they know?—shitheads don’t know shit. Don’t know Lee Roy Sears. Nah not him.

  Telling them yah for sure he was taking the Chlonopramane, twice daily, with meals. Told them he was clean—no drugs, no alcohol, not even cigarettes. Swore to H. Sigman regarding him with eyes of utmost sincerity, Lee Roy Sears cleanshaven and softspoken and respectfully dressed in coat, white shirt, tie. Following the printout PROCEDURE FOR PAROLEES, yah for sure, he wasn’t ever going back to prison again.

  One thing was certain, as Lee Roy Sears inwardly vowed: he would never be an addict again. Never heroin, that shit, ever again—heroin’s for losers.

  Okay, he might do a little coke, have a few drinks, in secret. In the Free Fire Zone where it’s safe. (If Valeria Darrell was paying. Rich cunt so eager to pay—wild!)

  In the Free Fire Zone, like in Nam, where you can do anything you want, or need. To anybody, to anything. The power deep within.

  If he’d had it then. If he’d known of it then. Thirty years ago. His foster father beating him with a mop, a filthy wet mop, the other kids standing laughing at Lee Roy Sears peeing his pants and his foster father (no-name: pale puffy face, bulging outraged eyes) the more incensed, slamming pounding poking with the mop handle trying to gouge out Lee Roy Sears’s eye. And everyone laughing.

  If he’d had his power, then.

  Snake Eyes twitching, yearning to spring to life.

  Years ago, before Hunsford, before Nam, when he’d first gone into the army, Lee Roy Sears had had a lean, wiry, muscular body—he hadn’t been one of those freak bodybuilders, still less one of those bleached-hair fags, but he’d looked good, he’d looked tough, musculature is armor, the only way for a man to get respect from other men. (A knife or a gun will get temporary respect, but you’re still a punk once you’re disarmed.) Now, forty years old, he was systematically regaining that body, squeezing the poisoned blood out of his veins drop by drop, the weakness of which he was ashamed.

  In the Free Fire Zone, there is neither weakness nor shame.

  Three workout sessions per week at the squalid little gym near the halfway house in Putnam. Taking it slow. Nothing fanat
ic. Biceps, triceps, quadriceps. Pull-ups, barbell rows, deadlifts, low pulley rows. Squatting. Leg-press. Stretch and squeeze. Shoulder-press rack. Deltoids, pectorals. Dumbbells. Shocking the muscle—galvanizing it into life.

  Into resistance, thus into life.

  In April, just out of Hunsford, Lee Roy Sears had weighed one hundred thirty-two pounds.

  By September, Lee Roy Sears weighed one hundred sixty-three pounds.

  Showing it most in the neck, shoulders, upper arms. Looking taller, too. Proud. His manhood confirmed.

  Snake Eyes had grown, too. Tight-coiled on Lee Roy Sears’s left forearm, his gold-spangled length shimmering with muscle.

  Mostly, Lee Roy Sears refused to discuss his physical regimen. Did not encourage prying questions about his gain in size and weight.

  He was an artist, art was his calling.

  (Shit, but he had to laugh!—the way people were beginning to look at him, wary, guarded, with respect. Like his “students” at the Center—Fiske, Scarf, Bishop—that fatass Bishop in particular—staring at Lee Roy Sears when they thought he wasn’t aware of them. Not daring to ask, though.)

  (And the O’Mearas. He’d gone for supper the other evening, the first time he’d seen them in weeks, they’d been away “at the seashore” as they said, Lee Roy Sears not invited, but, hell, he didn’t blame them, he loved them, the O’Mearas were his closest friends on earth, his family, and the twins were crazy about him if maybe just a little scared of him but Snake Eyes won’t bite you, nah no need to worry he ain’t gonna bite you. And he’d been lifting the twins in play, a little boy in the crook of each arm, and Gina O’Meara had happened to see his shoulder muscles swell, and she’d blinked, and stared, and said in a faint, breathless, wondering voice, a voice he’d never heard in her before, “Why, Lee Roy—what has happened to you?” So he’d mumbled something about “working out”—“lifting weights”—giving a clear sign he didn’t want to pursue the subject, out of modesty. Michael O’Meara was a witness to this exchange but said nothing, respectful as he was of Lee Roy Sears’s privacy.)

  “I stand outside the Caucasian race”—he’d told them, more than once he’d told them, over the years, and now since coming to his new life in New Jersey, but the bitches seemed not to comprehend. Just because Lee Roy Sears looked white didn’t mean he was white.

  Last time he’d said it, one of them—was it Valeria?—or Somerset’s assistant, Jody?—or Janet, the hot-shit TV interviewer?—was it Gina?—had looked at him as if she was about to laugh in his face, then changed her mind quick seeing what was in his face.

  Pressing her hand, glittering rings, polished nails, bones Lee Roy Sears could crush in his fingers in a second, against her throat, murmuring Oh!

  Always, they did so. The bitches. White bitches.

  Gazing into Lee Roy Sears’s Rasputin eyes, their smiles fading.

  Feeling the heat and pulse of Snake Eyes though they could not see him in the living flesh.

  Except: the Darrell cunt the other night, at her place, million-dollar house she’d gotten in a settlement from some chump ex-husband, and Lee Roy Sears was undressing and she saw Snake Eyes good and clear for the first time, high on coke, drunk, yah but seeing Snake Eyes she got sober fast, blood draining out of her middle-aged face leaving the makeup crust exposed, a sickly sallow orangish color like dried puke, and she’s standing flat-footed in her stocking feet not in her fancy high heels so she’s foreshortened, dumpy, and her dyed russet hair synthetic as a wig, staring mesmerized at Snake Eyes there on Lee Roy Sears’s forearm hot and ready to strike—“Oh God, what is that, Lee Roy!—is that a snake!”

  And he’s laughing at her grinning with his teeth holding Snake Eyes out to her, flexing his muscles so Snake Eyes is twitching, and she’s stumbling backward, and he’s following, Jesus he has to laugh seeing the rich cunt’s face, eyes like tiny pinwheels spinning, “Nah, sweetheart, he ain’t gonna bite you. I got something else for you.”

  She’d moaned and wept, hot stinging tears that embarrassed him, makeup smeared all over her face and her lips pale and fleshy drawn back from her teeth, she was saying she loved him, oh God she loved him, never anybody like him, never before in her life running her fingers over Lee Roy Sears’s back where an old scar ran slantwise like a zipper, fifteen inches long, tiny puckers in the skin she’d assumed was a Vietnam wound and he didn’t set her right, fuck it it was nobody’s business that scar from a beating he’d had as a kid of seventeen when a guard at the Youth Detention Center, Watertown, New York, had laid into him with a length of barbed wire.

  Afterward she’d pressed a cloth soaked in cold water against her nose to staunch the bleeding. He hadn’t meant to hit her—had he?

  Nah not him.

  He never meant to hit them, but sometimes it happened.

  How the fuck was he to blame?—sometimes it happened.

  In the Free Fire Zone especially, sometimes it happened.

  Early morning of a wet-glaring day in September, in the fourth month of Lee Roy Sears’s parole, there he was in his studio in the Dumont Center, alone, working in clay, his fingers rapid and supple, grabbing kneading gouging sucking in wet clay, Jesus he’s feeling so good he’s flying high in the Free Fire Zone where none of you fuckers can follow.

  This is the morning following the night he’d quit his job at the Putnam Municipal Parking Garage. Got into a fight with the manager shoving him backward the heel of his hand against the son of a bitch’s chest, hadn’t known Lee Roy Sears was so strong, eh?—so there’s panic in the guy’s eyes, Okay Lee Roy Sears is going to be hearing about this from his parole officer but he’s confident he can handle it, he’s got these rich friends in Mount Orion, he’s got Michael O’Meara a renowned attorney, right now he’s flying high shaping clay as it has never been shaped before in the history of the world, he hasn’t slept since the day before or was it the day before yesterday?—fuck it, who cares.

  In the Free Fire Zone, you don’t need sleep.

  Slapping clay, kneading, gouging—it isn’t one of his male figures emerging but this time a female, a woman, a young girl, yah Lee Roy Sears remembers her, precisely her, flat Asian face and delicate folds of skin at her eyes, she’s still alive inside his hands, lying crooked on her back, legs spread wide, wide so they’re almost broken, a jagged gouged-out hole between her legs, and her head thrown back in agony.

  He hadn’t done it to her, with the bayonet. He hadn’t even seen clearly who had.

  2

  Then it began.

  He would say, afterward, when the nightmare had at last dissipated, and his life as Michael O’Meara was restored to him, that it began on this day: a Friday in mid-October: when his secretary entered his office, interrupting a meeting, to tell him that Mrs. O’Meara was on the line wishing to speak with him—“She says the matter is urgent.”

  Michael politely excused himself, to take the call in another room. His colleagues might have observed that, in even the exigency of the moment, he maintained his composure and betrayed no obvious anxiety.

  An ideal lawyer!—the warmest and most friendly of men, yet, beneath it all, so composed.

  But he picked up the receiver in the adjoining office with trembling fingers, for not within recent memory, since the turbulent days of her pregnancy, had Gina insisted upon interrupting a meeting of Michael’s; she well knew the pressure he was under, and that it was surely to her advantage, as his wife, to distract him as little as possible. The chief legal counsel of Pearce Pharmaceuticals, Inc., could afford few distractions.

  The fleeting prayer came to Michael, Don’t let it be our boys.

  Michael asked Gina what was wrong, and Gina told him, in a flood of words, emotional, agitated, yet querulous too, so that he understood at once that the news could not be devastating. Nor was it domestic, thank God: something about Clyde Somerset calling Gina, with a complaint about Lee Roy Sears.

  Gina was saying breathlessly, “—Clyde is terribly upset, Michael, he want
ed to talk to you personally, you know how he can be sometimes—that patrician air of his that’s really a pose, how it dissolves if it’s challenged!—apparently Lee Roy Sears challenged him this afternoon at the Center, they had quite a quarrel, and Clyde got hold of me demanding to speak to you, asking for your private number there but of course I wouldn’t give it to him. I did say I would call you, though, and I promised him”—here Gina’s voice dropped, as if guiltily, so that, for some seconds, background noises made it difficult for Michael to hear her“—that you would drop by the Center this afternoon, on your way home from—”

  It was absurd for Gina O’Meara to be saying such a thing, for, of course, the Dumont Center would long be closed and darkened for the night by the time Michael returned home from work. Gina knew this, and Michael knew that she knew it, yet he understood her position, for, clearly, she had not wanted to further antagonize Clyde Somerset; nor had she wanted to suggest to Michael that he should interrupt his afternoon, drive to the Center, and then return again to Pearce—an outrageous suggestion, on the face of it. Michael would be obliged to think of this solution himself.

  He said, “Yes, Gina, but what is it?—more of the same, with Mal Bishop?”

  About twelve days before, Mal Bishop had caused a commotion at the Dumont Center, rolling in his mechanized wheelchair into Clyde Somerset’s office to charge his former teacher, Lee Roy Sears, with theft: Bishop had several paintings of his to show Clyde, and masses of charcoal sketches, meant to substantiate his claim that certain of his ideas had been plagiarized by Lee Roy Sears for his clay figures. (Bishop had dropped out of the art-therapy program over the summer. Fiske and Scarf had continued, joined in September by six others.) Clyde had listened courteously to Bishop, a blustering egomaniac, as he thought him, but dismissed his charges as untenable—unprovable. He’d told Michael O’Meara that both the men’s art was pretty hard to take.