by Claudia Dey
“Noble Debra Marie.”
“Noble.”
“If you were a man, that’s what we’d call you, Debra Marie.”
“Noble.”
“Your nickname would be Noble.”
“Yeah, Noble.”
“Noble.”
* * *
“HE NEEDS ME.” Traps tells this to Debra Marie over the telephone. Quickly, not wanting to tie up the line. I can see Debra Marie on the other end. Her plain hair arrangements, her purposeful body. She would iron her indoor tracksuit but never put it on. “He has only the one truck. Unlike us. The single vehicle.” Traps adjusts himself and looks for cigarettes. “You have your own truck. Unlike the Fontaine mother, you have your own truck. And it’s fully loaded.” Then he pauses to listen and says, “Okay, okay, almost fully loaded,” and he lights a cigarette, one of my mother’s cigarettes. “She’ll be back. Nowhere to go.” And he glances for The Heavy, to share this small encouragement, but The Heavy has left the room. “Pony was the last to see her.”
And then Traps turns his eyes on me, and lets them go soft and pleading on my mouth. My supple, athletic mouth. I can see him working out the timeline in his head. Two nights until Saturday night. Two nights until I walk the side of the north highway in my button-down and pencil skirt with my perfect waistline-to-ass ratio. A 0.8.
THE SECRET OF PONY DARLENE FONTAINE
THREE MONTHS AGO. Nighttime. When the men of the territory were going to and then leaving Drink-Mart, clusters of them smelling medicinal and exhaling turbines of smoke, clapping each other hard on the shoulder, on the back, a half hug here and there, then dispersing into their trucks to one-eye it home and fall asleep on their wives in their nightdresses, I walked the shoulder of the highway in my white button-down and black pencil skirt. I had a plan. This was step one. I carried a clipboard and waved down the trucks, knowing only one of them would come to a full stop. All of the passing territory men called out, “Pony.” They rolled down their windows. “Pony Darlene Fontaine.” Reaching out with a lotioned hand, I introduced myself as The Complaint Department and asked the men the question I was desperate to be asked, “What is troubling you?” Then I gave them my card with my toll-free number, 1-800-OH-MY-GOD, should they wish to discuss their troubles further.
The men laughed. No one complains here. That is not the territory’s way. Complaint is a form of self-degradation. Hardship is a matter of perception. The men quoted the Leader. The men were missing teeth. They were missing fingers. They were missing testicles. They had slipped disks. They ate the tendons of animals. The organs of animals. They carved them up and gave thanks. Thank you for your meat. They delivered their babies. Their babies became teenagers. Men hunting women. Women hunting men. Men hunting animals. That is how it goes here, Pony Darlene, the men called out, and tearing up the gravel, sped home.
“My only complaint,” Traps said to me, too loud, bit of a slur, throwing on his emergency brake and unlocking his doors, “is that you won’t blow me in the back of my truck.” And, step two, I blew him while he said my name over and over, and when he was done I directed him to his fuel shed, where, step three, he took off his heavy necklace of keys, while looking at me under his security camera. The look was exaltation and the Saturday night sky was dark. However grainy, Traps would watch the video of me waiting for my payment, step four, one full jerry can of his gasoline—one hundred miles of transport—again and again, pausing it at certain moments, when he could really see my face.
* * *
I HEAR TRAPS opening and closing our kitchen cupboards. He is looking for the alcohol and concluding his call home to Debra Marie. “We did a tour through the territory. The Heavy doesn’t want to do a door-to-door. Not just yet. Says it’s a family matter. A private matter.”
Tonight, Traps will drink himself to sleep on our beige couch. Too much, too little. He still finds this hard to gauge. He will be standing, talking, drinking, taking, killing, talking, drinking, standing. And then unconscious. Debra Marie loves crime shows. Murder shows. Shows where the plot rests on violence. I wonder when she will stop dragging Traps’s faithless body to comfort. When there will be a trail of blood in his wake. An antler plunged through his heart. “Besides, it’s Delivery Day tomorrow, and no territory woman in her right mind would miss Delivery Day.” He agrees with himself: “No territory woman would miss Delivery Day.”
My father is lying in the half-built room on a hooded chair, and because of the tarp, and the work light he has set up in there, we are both a bright blue. Is she missing? I want to ask him. You can tell me. I can handle it. I can’t handle it. “You need to get some rest,” I say instead to my father, and I unlace and pull off his boots, tug at the cuffs of his jeans. I was with him when he bought the jeans. “Not too tight?” The Heavy said to the salesmen, who nodded with their arms crossed, which was a confusing set of messages. “Denim is a tight and captivating weave,” the salesmen said. The Heavy bought them in a moment of hope. Hope makes you buy clothes that don’t fit you. A brawl to pull off, the jeans hold my father’s shape and appear to be standing, a former fighter turning soft.
“I love that perfume,” he says.
Three things he does not say: Where are you going? When will you be back? Won’t you be cold?
My father, who never raises his voice. Never goes to Drink-Mart. Does not listen to music. Does not watch television. He fears he will miss something real, he explains. Life is about paying attention, Pony.
Traps watches me closely as I lace up my boots and throw on my camouflage outerwear. Camo on camo. I open the front door. On the back of my outerwear are the words I was coloring in earlier with Neon Dean’s impermanent marker, when my mother came down the stairs in her indoor tracksuit, a stale cigarette in one hand and her truck keys in the other. Fifteen years of blank tape running out and clicking off. The asteroidal event. The impact event.
CAN’T TOUCH THIS
THE NORTH HIGHWAY is silver with ice, and Lana is riding behind me. This is our usual formation. Tonight, we’re just trying to stay upright. The road is slick. The shoulder better. At least there’s some traction. In the distance, we can see the bonfire, sparks shooting up into the low black sky. Of note: This is exactly what I see before I faint. Same panorama. I listen to protest rallies and sporting events (also in the devotional section). I love the sound of a crowd. I put the tapes into my cassette recorder, and I feel surrounded. I pump my fist in the air and nearly wipe out. Lana lets out a howl behind me.
When I arrived at Lana’s bungalow, she was at her bedroom window. She had teased her hair and was holding a crowbar in her hands, vigorously working the bottom of her window frame. I knew she would be sweating. She was a sweater in the first degree. Nerves or yearning.
Two years ago, Lana’s mother died. Caution. Steep drop. Lifeguard off duty. The women of the territory decided the cause was inconsolability. Soon after her mother’s death, Lana’s father married a girl just a few years older than Lana. This is how it goes in the territory. In the rare instance a woman dies, it is expected her husband will remarry. Children need a mother. If a man dies, his widow remains a widow. Children need a mother, and they still have one. Lana’s mother’s portrait is wrapped in a black bedsheet and stored in their toolshed. Lana’s stepmother’s name is Denise. Her portrait hangs above their mantel. In it, she wears a very tight sweater and Vaseline on her eyelashes, and a smile that seems to say, I am pretty sure I am being paid for sex with food, shelter, and beauty products. Her name necklace, given to her by an ex-boyfriend, says DENIS.
Lana’s mother’s color scheme was violet. Now, Lana’s bungalow is red, and her stepmother sits sidesaddle on the shag carpet in their living room, watching television and eating from a large bowl. She is pregnant, and most nights, Lana’s father stands in their driveway with his truck running, staring into his high beams until his eyes sting. When Lana sc
reamed at her father, “Admit it, there’s a stranger in the house, and she’s evil! Admit it, Denis is pregnant with another man’s baby!” Lana’s father put a lock on her bedroom door and painted her window shut.
I watch Lana fall to the ground and walk unevenly to her ten-speed. Her father has rigged their front yard with motion-detector lights. Lana’s father reminds me how completely I have slipped from The Heavy’s view. Maybe it’s the camo on camo, I joke to myself. A joke is a disguise. Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people? Someone said this once. Paint my window shut. Worry about me. I want my father, The Heavy Fontaine, to paint my window shut. I want my father to worry about me. I want my mother to come home.
“You are totally talking to yourself,” Lana says and looks back at her bungalow, bungalow 2. “Teen prison break. Seriously. I might have just broken my wrist. Is everything all right? You look like Cherie Currie. Only after a fight. And before a hunt. With longer hair. And more height. And less fame.”
“Thank you.”
“And maybe poorer and more isolated.”
“Let’s roll.”
“Psyched.”
Lana has tied a strip of leather around her neck. She is wearing a snowmobile suit and her steel-toe, steel-shank boots. She has belted the snowmobile suit and cut off the arms. She has her wool socks pulled up above her knees. “It’s the closest I can get to lingerie,” she says. On the back of her armless suit she has written HIGH HOPES. She digs her heels into the ground. It’s frozen. Even The Heavy couldn’t muscle through it. Winter in the Death Man’s shed. “Damn-o that camo. I can barely see you. Don’t get shot!” Lana says. Then a tremble to her lower lip. “Seriously. Killing you would kill me.” She laughs. “1-800-OH-MY-GOD.”
* * *
I DID NOT NAME the complainant (as much as she tried to get it out of me), but I did tell Lana about The Complaint Department. One July night, in the founders’ bus. Two pink pills, three blue ones. This was soon after I secured my first jerry can of gasoline. Nineteen more to go.
“It’s not like kissing on television,” I said.
“Duh,” Lana said.
“Not even close.”
“Okay.”
“You have to really relax your mouth. See? More. That’s better. That’s good. Your mouth goes a lot farther back than you think it does. Remember when we took our emotional measurements? We thought I would have the broader shoulders, but you did? The actual measurement of your mouth will astound you. Blowing will free you from the emotional measurement of your mouth.”
“Exciting.”
“And could have a domino effect on your other body parts.”
“Bonus.”
“Despite the name, there’s no blowing.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t blow on it.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t blow on the dick.”
“I won’t. I mean, when the dick shows, I won’t blow on it.”
“By the end, it will not be unlike the headbang.”
“All right.”
“You’ll feel it in your neck in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“If you need a break, you just tuck the dick under your hair and up behind your ear. Rub it against your jawline. You are in charge. This is an exchange and you are in charge of the exchange.”
“I am in charge.”
“Regardless of depth, pacing, and tongue placement, this is the most important part. You are in charge.”
“I am in charge.”
“Don’t worry.”
“You know that’s hard for me,” Lana said.
And then stoned, so stoned, Pony Ali, Le Pony Ali of the Superior Existence, I said, “This might be my one natural talent.”
“You are so lucky, Pony.”
The small voice. The large darkness. It opened up between us. And I was suddenly no longer stoned. I was so unstoned. So unlucky. Pony of the Inferior Existence.
Of course that July night I had been thinking about the scene I left at home. It was Free Day. The day after my mother totaled the truck. My mother, a fresh cut above her left eyebrow where she hit the windshield, almost invisible under her black bedcovers, our dog the only one allowed in there with her, and one floor below, my father building a room, which, let’s admit, is not for my mother but for him. His alternate jeans and his outerwear folded in a neat stack on the ground. While other territory men drag razors across their scalps and weep into black towels, my father wets his hair and combs it off his face with his fingers. He leans over our kitchen garbage and trims his beard. He is the only man in the territory with hair, and this is because of his scars, because before Debra Marie and Traps, my father’s tragedy was what the territory called its worst tragedy. And right now, my father is sleeping on a hooded chair. A chair he built for my mother after she said—and we could see she had been crying—“If only this chair had a hood.” A chair to keep her coming downstairs. To keep her sitting with us. Our people are a sitting people. When the women of the territory aren’t drawing blood at the Banquet Hall, they are sitting across from each other and starting with “You good?”
My father called it the Easiest Chair. Not the easier chair. Not the less difficult chair. But the Easiest Chair. My father, The Heavy. My father, the heaviest.
The sun was rising, and with it, I could read the graffiti on the ceiling of the founders’ bus, and it was all about love, which seems to be all about addition, about surplus.
person + person
person + person
person + person
Where were the minus signs?
* * *
THE PIT PARTY. The boys have set what they can on fire, and the girls are sitting in a loose circle, leaning on headstones, leaning on each other, flames as high as their bungalows. Perfect circles are for other people, people who don’t have the dead in their way. Lana and I add our bicycles to the pile. I hand Lana her three pills. “Ready?”
“Amped.”
I put mine on my tongue. Yellow, pink, blue. We swallow them together.
“Sit on my face, Pony Darlene!” one boy yells. He pronounces face like fay-uhssss. He has small bleeds on his jaw from shaving. He jogs around the bonfire holding a can of butane in the air. He has drawings up and down his bare arms. Fangs, knives and tires, guitars, bikinis and telephones, the Death Man, an IV drip, and words cap-lettered—BLOOD, JUSTICE, LADIESMAN. He pounds his chest and says, “What do we have left to burn?” He pronounces burn like bee-yurnnnn. The pills kick in.
Neon Pony.
Welcome.
Bienvenue.
“I’m the Secret Service!” yells another boy. He is looking at the girls and needing the girls to look back at him. They won’t. The girls, who have all had sex encounters, have their names on their necklaces. They glint by the fire. Their hair falls far down their backs and is picked up by the black wind. It takes on a new form with every gust. Touch it. Touch me. I am the softest thing going. “Nature wants girls and kills boys,” one girl says. She is wearing an eye patch, and I know it’s because she needs it. “I tried to make alcohol from potatoes,” one skinny boy says, “and my father duct-taped me to a chair for two days.” The other boys hold themselves and laugh, “Two days!” And the skinny boy laughs though I can see he is sore, and was after love.
The girls pass a bottle, drinking through a straw to quicken the effect. The ones who did their bloodwork this morning are seeing spots. They fall back and take in the sky. “This sky is so dull! Do something, sky! Do a meteor shower or something! Feel me up! Make it summer!” The girls grin until they show their gums. They untuck their shirts and knot them under their breasts. They fold the waistbands of their pants down so the edges of their hipbones come up. My hipbon
es. You like them? They’re new. Softness bracketed by hardness. Copyrighting this look, the girls think, copyrighting this whole look, my best look, and when the girls sit up, “Head rush,” they stare down at the ground to settle it. Their blood multiplies itself, racing to occupy the spaces that need occupying. They train their eyes on the incline, the one Supes might walk over any minute. Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. Someone said this once.
One night, almost two years ago, Lana and I snuck into her father’s truck. We wanted to steal his cigarettes, his small change. Whatever we could find. He had just married Denis. “She brought a belt to the marriage,” Lana said. “Seriously. She showed up with a belt. That was it. A belt.” We wanted to steal her father’s truck.
“I can drive,” I said.
“Not well enough,” Lana said.
Like every matte black truck in the territory, Lana’s father’s had a CB. We dialed through the frequencies, getting mostly static. “Come in, come in,” I said. We were both in our nightdresses, had badly crimped hair and whatever press-on nails we could press on. “Come in, come in.” And then a girl’s voice came through, “I read you.” Lana grabbed the microphone. “Go ahead,” the girl said. “I’m pregnant,” Lana said, lying. My mouth dropped open. “I need help,” Lana said, not lying. The girl began her instruction. It was Pallas. Before she got together with Neon Dean. Before she got tanned and cruel, and tried to pierce her tongue. After her fourteenth birthday. When she got pregnant with the Delivery Man’s baby.
“Okay, girl. Listen close. You have to starve yourself, but make it look like you are suddenly eating like that woman on that show. The one who can’t leave her house except by a crane. Then, hard as this is, you have to wear baggier clothes. Like a widow. Never let anyone see you naked. You can use duct tape and girdles to pretty convincing effect. Ask Rochelle. Or Lorraine. Or even Tristan. Tina had skills with the whole weight-lifter belt, shrink-wrap thing, and Tiffany with those junior-size pants. You can only stop a pregnancy from happening on night soaps. Or, and this is a last fucking resort, you do the Mother Trick. You break down and tell your mom, and when she is done hitting your pretty face, she gets her owl feathers and her foam and hides them under her bed, and starts stuffing herself to the appropriate measurements. Inches versus time. Watch your inches. Watch your time. Parallel baby. And she suffers with it. The nausea lays her right out. No one can touch her. No one can see her. And when you start to feel the hellishness coming on, you wait as long as you can, and then your mom drives you out to the forest with some cough syrup or whatever you can get your hands on at Drugs and More Drugs. We all know the forest is for the babies. It grows for the babies. To have them, to hide them if you have to. And you get that thing out of your body and against hers. Make sure your father doesn’t figure it out. Make sure he doesn’t catch on. Seriously. That’s on your mom. And you. Fathers hate to be tricked. Remember Stephanie. But seriously, if you can pull this off, you will make both your parents so happy. Your mom will seem young to your dad, and your dad will seem young to our men. You handed your youth over to them. They should be giving thanks inside. But seriously, you have to be ready. Something can happen between you and the baby. You just have to commit to the motions. Make a list of the motions. You can’t get lost. You have to know what to do next. Have the baby. Hand over the baby.”
