Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Ray didn’t need to pick out a new job today, but continue work with the one he’d begun last Friday. This particular job consisted of bundles of wine-colored leather, one-hundred-sixty-eight square feet in total, out of which he had to cut the pieces for four dozen handbags. The leather ran good sometimes but more often than not was a nightmare—scarred, wrinkled, too soft around the belly of the animal because the leather would stretch. Sometimes it was aggravating enough to make Ray want to quit.

  He’d complain to Joe, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or rear in this case.” Joe would say, “Do what I’d do, Ray—close your eyes and cut it.” But Ray took it too seriously because he was conscientious about his work and didn’t like to make a product he wouldn’t buy himself.

  He activated his machine. He stood on a wooden platform to be better on level with the cutting block. The cutting machine was actually just a press he would swivel over the block and lower onto a die on the cow hide. The die would be stamped through the leather like a cookie cutter through dough. Some jobs required few dies, some many. They were old, a lot of them, and soldered gold where they’d cracked. Dies were numbered with marker and heaped in racks in the cutting room and especially outside the leather room. It had taken Ray weeks to first get used to the many styles, experience or no. Dies belonging to pocketbooks no longer made still cluttered the shelves with brand-new die sets. Ray knew them like the back of his hand by now.

  No one really went out of their way to greet Ray when he came in, unless his eyes met with theirs, because he didn’t go out of his way to greet them. Only Joe, and he overcompensated by acting as if he hadn’t seen Ray for a month. Joe was so friendly to Ray that it made him uncomfortable, so he often found himself avoiding him. He felt a little guilty but thought he was friendly enough to let Joe know that he liked him—it was just that Ray way shy and extremely private. In contrast, the baseball-capped lining cutter Pete joked loudly across the room to the big black handle-cutter, Jake, about how shit-faced he had gotten this weekend. Ray laughed inside at their humor while he set to his work but made no effort to join them.

  Ray was glad to be back to regular cutting after working on sample leather for the company’s designer. He had been cutting colored swatches and stapling them to fabric-covered presentation boards to be displayed at the various showings of their forthcoming fall line. Not so difficult in itself, but he didn’t get along well with the company’s strong-willed (to put it mildly) designer, who seemed to think this was New York and clashed with everyone from the lowliest worker to the president. She was an artist, though, and had a vision to fulfill, and Ray did admire her work and her individuality. Another problem was that the president had been having Ray illustrate their new line, to be printed up on presentation sheets to be given to their salesmen to distribute to potential buyers. A lot of hectic confusion, this scurrying to get the spring show ready. It still wasn’t over but Ray wasn’t making presentation boards anymore and was caught up on his sketches, waiting for the designer to finish her final designs so he could draw them. He had come very close to quitting these past few weeks and felt a secret smug amusement, a satisfaction, that some punk had broken in here and torched that damn box of sample leather scraps.

  Adjusting to work again after the weekend had occupied Ray for the first fifteen minutes or more before he finally noticed the new girl. She was easy to notice then, however, for two reasons. For one, he had seen her before—last week, in here. She had worn a tan suit and flowered shirt, he remembered; the flared legs of her slacks had been too short, and this coupled with her glasses had made him think she was a little on the meek and mild, “nerdy” side. Librarian type. Red hair in a little ponytail. The shop foreman, a black man named Bill, had been touring her around the place, presumably in relation to a job. Ray had felt mildly sorry for her because of her librarian mood but had since forgotten about her. The second reason why she was so noticeable now was that she was young and white. The cutting room was contained in the same room with the larger stitching room, all one open area, and Ray faced the rows of stitchers all day. Not one was a young, white Anglo-Saxon…most were old and white, or old and black, or old and Puerto Rican. Those few young women were Portugese, Puerto Rican or black. Ray couldn’t believe such a meek-looking girl had come back here to work after her initial tour.

  Ray was relieved (for her) to see that she hadn’t deemed it necessary to dress up again. She wore a blue-sleeved baseball jersey tucked into new blue jeans, which were flare legs and still a little too short in the leg.

  She was standing over the head stitcher, Louise, who was demonstrating the use of an ancient-looking sewing machine. When Ray first saw her, she was looking not at Louise’s work but across the spacious room directly at him.

  Ray began to drop his eyes but brought them back up. It was the unabashed way she stared at him that unsettled him. She didn’t glance quickly away as might be expected. She didn’t smile either, or change her expression. She just stared, her mouth a little open, largely expressionless.

  It was somewhat rude, and Ray began to feel as if he’d been in a bad mood, which he hadn’t been. He felt defensive. He felt like one of those stillborn horrors from his medical anomalies book, floating in a bottle. You didn’t just stupidly gawk at someone like this. “Duh,” he thought in his mind, a sound to go along with her ignorant rudeness. And the glower he unintentionally often showed the world was now summoned up consciously. He projected it at her like a weapon, as if in response to a challenge.

  She looked uncertain maybe, but maybe her expression stayed expressionless, and she looked down to what Louise was doing—either because she didn’t want to get caught not paying attention or in response to Ray’s response. Either way, Ray was satisfied and went back to stamping out the fragments of future handbags. He placed his next die down to the left of a stitched incision still clear in the cow’s flesh even after tanning and coloring. You could even see veins in the skins sometimes, and always brands. Someone had found a Swastika brand once and cut it out, hung it up. The brand on this skin was a P inside a circle.

  Ray thought he’d like to purposely put brands in every piece, and an operation incision like this one, and stitch a bag together out of them.

  Funny. The new Halloween line. Sadomasochists would love it.

  He looked up. The girl wasn’t looking at him as he had expected.

  Jake appeared at his side, drifting up like smoke. He was over six feet and built like a bull, and he made Ray nervous because he talked so close to you that you thought he would kiss you. His eyes gleamed dully, ivory whites. He smiled and whispered, “Seen you lookin’ at that new girl.

  She’s got herself some big titties.”

  Ray chuckled and looked at her again. She did—he hadn’t noticed.

  “Oh yeah,” he said.

  Jake’s lips almost brushed Ray’s ear. “Wouldn’t ya like to stick your nose in a red-haired pussy?”

  “I thought you didn’t like doing that stuff.” Jake had told Ray that blacks hated performing cunnilingus. He didn’t know whether to believe him.“I didn’t say I wanted to, I was askin’if you wouldn’t mind doin’it.”

  Jake chuckled.

  “Wouldn’t hurt.” Ray smiled, turning a little red. “Though red isn’t my favorite hair color.”

  “What is? Blond?”

  “Dark. Brown, black. My pubic hair is red—I’m sick of looking at red pubic hair.”

  Jake laughed earnestly at this. “I get it. Maybe she just dyes her hair red, though, ya know? Looks like it.”

  “Who knows.”

  “Your pubic hair is red, huh? You sure?”

  “Last time I checked. All three hairs—totally red.”

  “Three hairs,” Jake laughed. He was still laughing when he walked away. That Ray kid hardly talked but he could be pretty funny when he did.

  Ray smiled to himself, still flushed red and hot in the face from bashfulness at having joked with Jake. He
checked on the girl again but now she was sitting and Louise hovered over her, and she was too engrossed in learning to gawk at him.

  ««—»»

  Despite his strong feelings at the time and her incongruity in this place, Ray forgot the new girl as totally as was possible with her across the room from him. It was easy for him to daydream while he cut, despite the considerations of bad spots in the leather, and this he did—playing songs internally, some days an entire album track-for-track, fantasizing about being a recognized artist or movie director. He would stop his work to jot notes on an idea for a drawing, or on a prop or scene for his latest home video movie. His self-absorption made it pretty easy for him to tune out outside situations.

  First break rang at nine-thirty. People scampered to get outside to the coffee truck. Not Ray. He sat up on his leather table atop the last two skins spread there. Opened his lunch, took out an apple. He remembered the new girl and looked to see her being led to the door by a black woman in her early thirties—Janey. Janey was apparently taking it upon herself to befriend the bespectacled newcomer and introduce her to the lunch truck. Despite his misgivings, Ray congratulated Janey internally for this thoughtfulness.

  Ray felt a restlessness, didn’t like to sit at work. He hopped down and strolled into the adjacent leather room, crunching his apple. He found Joe alone at his battered desk in the corner, staring at the wall before him. It made for a rather sad image, and Ray congratulated himself internally at the way Joe livened up when he saw the young man stroll in. Made him feel good, that his presence could actually make people happy.

  The day droned on. Ray finished his job, boxed the stacked pieces and left the box on the floor with others. A Puerto Rican boy would drag them one by one to the stitchers with a hook. Ray turned in his paperwork and scrap leather to Joe, selected a new job from a variety available (the idea was to always pick the easiest one) and set to work on it. Joe was caught up in the leather room so he began a job himself. Ray listened to Pete yell at Jake about Friday the 13th Part 3, which he had seen on cable this weekend.

  Fuckin’ excellent, he proclaimed. A typical Monday at this place. Rather dark, dreary—numbing. More than anything, Ray felt a great sense of waiting. Waiting for this to end, waiting for something better. Every morning began a new day of waiting, every Monday began a new week of waiting…

  Weeks had passed since Ray’s dream of his parents’ murder, and his confrontation with the dark stranger on the border of his property. It was May. He had waited for spring to come, and here it was. So what was he waiting for now?

  ««—»»

  Noon—lunch. Ray waited for the stampede to recede and then crept downstairs. Someone was propping the door open and outside Ray could see the new girl buying something off the truck. He turned and entered the company downstairs, where the upstairs workers were allowed to go to buy soda or candy from their cafeteria machines. Ray bought a Coke and tramped back upstairs with it so as to eat at his machine.

  He ate and didn’t notice that the girl had not returned to eat at her machine. When he had finished he went to the bathroom to wash his hands, then idled out into the dinky, dreary “cafeteria” at the head of the stairs leading down to the hall and out to the street. Three tables, and two usually remained empty. Ray would quietly sit at one of them or lean by the window to watch the foreman Bill play cards with two other black men, Jake, and the old white cutter when he was in. They played every day, even every break without fail, and kept their scores in a notebook.

  They never invited Ray to play and he didn’t ask.

  Ray strolled in and saw that at one of the two vacant tables the new girl sat eating a grinder. He quickly averted his eyes and continued on to the stairs. Downstairs he bought a candy bar, something he hadn’t intended to do. When he went back upstairs he walked through the break room and on to his machine, where he ate the candy bar.

  He felt a vague empathic embarrassment for the girl’s aloneness in that room.

  ««—»»

  Kelly’s growling woke him up.

  Maybe she had just started, or maybe she’d been doing it a while. It was loud enough to reach from Ray’s studio room to his bedroom through his closed bedroom door. He kept it closed to keep Kelly out and off his bed, and out of habit after living in his aunt’s house with her many mischievous felines. At first Ray just lay there and listened to her, numb, his spirit still dreaming. The bed had its hold on him and was reluctant to let go. The greenish fluorescent desk lamp lit his room; he couldn’t sleep in total darkness. His imagination was a vivid Pandora’s box of masochistic surprises.

  Finally he sobered and swung his legs out of bed—her growling was that persistent. His heart lightened its pace to a stealthy tiptoe in his chest when he remembered the last time Kelly had growled like this, weeks ago, when that figure had stood there regarding him. Ray rose with the Model 19 Smith and Wesson .357 in his right fist. He turned the knob of his door and let the gun lead his way like a guiding flashlight.

  The livingroom was dark, even the neon beer sign out, its loud buzz subdued. The door to Ray’s studio was open, and the growling was louder than ever from in there. Though Ray couldn’t see well, he knew that Kelly was in there with her nose pressed to the screen window. He could hear her snort against it, as she would do. It had been a mild night and he’d left some windows open, just flimsy dirty screens to keep the night out.

  Maybe inspired by a nugget of childhood memory, he was anticipating that in the summer the cool air would breeze in like water and the screens would filter out the impurities, all the bugs that would cling there gazing in at him, perhaps regarding him and his puzzling and self-important human existence. For now, the spring air in his house was cool, fresh, outdoorsy—but this made Ray feel vulnerable stepping out of his cloistered room. As if he had literally stepped outside.

  The partly reassuring Magnum with its six little pieces of mythically reassuring lead pulled him into the livingroom, closer to his studio door.

  Kelly’s growling would ebb and flow, not quite consistent, as if she had some doubts about her motivations for growling. Her growling had diminished to a mere questioning complaint by the time Ray had reached the threshold of his studio, but the moment his slippered foot touched the floor in there her growl surged with fresh inspiration. Ray’s heart jumped and he froze, so startled he wanted to vent his fearful anger by yelling at the dog. But he didn’t utter a sound. He knew that Kelly hadn’t growled at him in the dark; she took his presence for granted, like she’d been expecting him. He heard the screen creak with the pressure from her nose.

  Ray sank now to half his height. Her growling had reached a plateau of angry intensity. Ray strained his ears beyond her noise but couldn’t hear any bushes out there stirring. He had reached Kelly’s side now but kept out of view of whoever or whatever might be outside the window, and he could see the blue light of night illuminating the dog’s face, particularly catching the pony blaze between her eyes, which glistened. What loyalty. She didn’t seem to care if some shotgun blast came ripping through the screen, so long as she alerted her master and kept watch for him. But then, if she could read the headlines maybe she’d be content to stay curled under the kitchen table and let the human take care of himself.

  Her imagination for what horrors might be lurking out there could not even approach her master’s.

  Ray had his hand on her back now, which didn’t distract her from her watch but seemed to lend him some comfort. He was pressed to the wall beside the window, his gun held barrel-vertical inches from the window frame. Still he heard nothing but for distant crickety chirps and tweets—bugs perhaps regarding his supposedly impervious fortress from a distance, planning their summer attack. Some ghost black panther had been stalking out there; fluid in the night breeze, fluid through the bushes, hardly stirring them. Now crouching, tensed and patient; waiting for the moment of vulnerability, the naked throat, mere papery skin covering fragile veins. A stupid little red dog wou
ld be no defense, six little blobs of lead would be no defense. How could you kill a ghost, a demon?

  This all had the abstract, unreal feel of a dream to him.

  He had a quick internal vision of what he would see if he peeked around the corner, out into the night—

  He had seen photos in various exploitative tabloids, which had some of the appeal of his medical anomalies book…pictures of a young woman supposedly possessed by a demon or spirit; he couldn’t remember all the details, except that exorcism had failed and the woman had died. Her tormentor, whether external or created by her own sad mind, had won.

  He couldn’t remember the story, but he remembered those photos. He remembered her face. His brain faithfully projected that face on his inner eyelids when he tried to sleep without a light. That face haunted him…

  She would be out there in the bushes, crazed eyes burning in at him, deep in their sockets, her anorexic face bluish in the night, her hair limp and her features contorted in a grimace. A face of immense fear, like a carnival mirror of his own fear, a fanciful morbid caricature. She would be crouching animal-like, skeletally naked, in the ferns…she was there right now. Waiting for him to look around the corner and meet her mad eyes. Her restless soul attracted to his fear of her, waiting to leap into his eyes and possess him—until he died and passed the terror on to the next in a strange sort of chain letter progression. Never ending.