“Why?” I ask, taking a stalk of weed from her and chewing on it.
“Clyde, you killed our dogs.”
“I know.”
“So we can’t just go walking around out there.”
“Because of the monsters.”
“Yeah. And because our people abandoned us.”
“You really think they abandoned you guys? Don’t you think the monsters got ‘em?”
“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. We’d been safe so far. Plus, they had dogs.”
“Maybe your dog-theory is bullshit,” I say, spitting some of the weed’s bitterness into the grey dirt.
“Watch your mouth.”
“You didn’t ask permission, you know.”
Joyce tosses her weed down, leans, places her elbows on her knees, slips her hands together. “Permission for what?”
“To stay,” I tell her, eying her chewed-up weed on the ground.
Joyce picks up a plastic bottle, tosses it in the general direction of the nearest trash mountain.
“To stay?” she says after a few beats.
“Yeah. To stay in my Kingdom.” I make eye-contact now.
Joyce guffaws, wipes sweat from her brow. “OK, King Clyde. Do we have your permission?”
“You do.”
“Wonderful.”
“And I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, now that you’re my people.”
Joyce stares me in the eyes a moment then looks past me at Sam and Terrance keeping the fire going, even during the day. She leans back in her chair and sighs.
21
A few days later, I’m clomping back to the campsite, my big rubber boots going smack-smack-smack against the hard dirt. I’m coming back from a visit with Momma at The Memory Palace. Momma asked when was the last time I visited my lady friend and I told her that Joyce isn’t my lady friend and besides, I live with her now. In a wispy, wavering voice, Momma shouted, “No! That bitch isn’t your lady friend. Momma’s your only lady friend. Do you understand that, Clyde?” And I hemmed and hawed and said, “But, ma!” and Momma continued to protest until I finally said, “OK, ma. Geez. You’re my only lady friend,” and she said “fine” and then explained she was only trying to make jest about my dead tree-bride in The Used Car Lot. I told her that I’d been so busy lately with my new family that I hadn’t even thought of going to The Used Car Lot and Momma, boy, she got furious. “Your new family? Your new family? You don’t get to have a new family! You’re trash! You don’t get anything! Nothing, you hear me! Not a goddamned thing! Me and your pa were all you had and all you’ll ever have! Besides, I already told you what to do with them. I told you!” And I said I understood but I was only saying that to appease Momma, but Momma wouldn’t let it go until I said, “Yes, Momma. They aren’t my new family. You only get one family. And my family’s dead. And, yes, Momma, I’m trash. And yes, Momma, I’ll skin them alive and hang them over the wall as a warning to all others that dare invade my Kingdom under the pretense of being my friends or my family,” and Momma was pleased. I sat over her grave, in front of her grave marker, and she pulled me down to the dirt and made me kiss it. Papa told Momma not to “coddle the boy,” but Momma told me to brush her hair so I took her hair out from my pocket, found a brush in the trash, and gingerly brushed the tassel of hair. Momma hummed and told me I was a “good boy” and I said, “But I’m a man now, Momma. You made me a man,” but Momma just kept humming and calling me a “good boy.”
Now I’m back at camp, hauling my rolled up tent under my arm. Terrance is busy building his own shanty while Joyce lounges in a chair outside of hers, whittling a block of wood. Sam’s off trying to find us an edible rodent, and, failing that, some Protein Beans.
A light breeze shuffles Joyce’s hair, which she pushes from her forehead when she looks up at me, the corners of her lips curving. “So you’re staying?” she asks.
“Yep,” I say, dropping my tent and tent poles next to her fort.
“We’re going to be neighbors, are we?” she asks, reaching down for a canister of boiled water and taking a deep swallow from that.
“I like the view from right here,” I say.
Joyce snorts and says, “Well, OK, kid.” She stands, goes into her shanty and I see her rifling through her satchel. She walks out holding a full bottle of golden liquid. “I guess this calls for a celebration.”
“Where’n hell’d you get that?” Terrance shouts from his half-built fort, squinting his eyes at Joyce.
“Been holding onto it for a special occasion,” Joyce tells him and Terrance yips and hoots and yeehaws and skips over to us, rubbing his hands together, licking his lips.
“Well, shit, Joyce, open ‘er up,” he orders, his eyes not leaving the gilt bottle.
“After dinner,” Joyce says, walking back into her shanty and replacing the bottle in her duffle. Terrance smacks me hard on the back and yeehaws once more.
“I coulda had a kid like you,” Joyce says.
We’re sitting around the fire, Joyce and me up against her duffle, Sam and Terrance on the other side of the fire, leaning back on their elbows, yelping up into the bellies of clouds backlit by the moon. I have my life vest off and my big old rubber boots kicked off, comfortable as could be.
“How old are ya anyway?”
“I’m fourteen,” I tell her. “A man’s age.”
Through the quavering fire, Terrance guffaws. I grab his eyes with mine then I grab Joyce’s knee and she doesn’t knock my hand away. Her head’s a heavy weight on a neck of rubber.
“I coulda had a kid like you,” Joyce says again and hands me the bottle of whiskey. I take a greedy swallow since both Joyce and Terrance set rules about how much the “under-aged” should be allowed to drink. I laughed at them earlier, reminded Terrance who outmanned who not too long ago, and he just sneered and said, “Kids get a quarter of what the grownups do.” Joyce agreed, telling me that too much booze will stunt my growth. Besides, they said, a whole bottle is like a thimble-full to a guy like Sam and he needed his fair share. Sam turned red at that and said, “No, it’s OK.”
Squeezing Joyce’s thigh, I ask, “Why diddnya have a kid like me? Huh?” and Joyce scoots down, resting her heavy head against the satchel. I take my hand from her thigh and gingerly play with the hair falling in front of her face.
Her eyes roll up to me, like bubbles in a well. “Because I had a girl. I had a girl. And you’re a boy. Just a little boy.”
Terrance whistles through his teeth, “Hey, Joyce! You’re not listening! The little feller there said he’s a big ol’ man!” and he laughs at his joke, nudges Sam who obliges him with a throat-full of chuckles.
Joyce slaps a hand against my chest, rubs my heart. “He’s just a little boy. A scared little boy. Just a little boy.”
I grab her hand and hold it. “I’m a man, Joyce. My Momma made me one.”
“But I had a girl,” she says, her hand slipping away from mine like a pulled tooth.
Sam sits up, jabs a stick into the fire, and it pops. He’s roasting Protein Beans, the only party food we had available tonight.
Terrance sits up quickly, holds his knees close to him, and stares across at Joyce who’s looking up into the moon-clouds. He looks strange, his face full of shadow and light through that fire and that thin, patchy beard of his.
Nobody says anything for a while, so I finally ask, “Where is she now, Joyce? Where’s your little girl?”
“Gone,” Joyce says, her voice wavering and disappearing on the breeze, much like Momma’s.
“Gone where?” I touch the hair on the top of her head.
“Just… gone,” she says, sighing and taking the bottle back from me. There’s about a quarter of gold left in it and half of that disappears down her dusty grey throat. That has Terrance up on his feet and taking the bottle away from her. She gives no resistance. He holds it up against the fire.
“Shit, Joyce,” he says and swallows half of what’s left. Holding it over the
fire toward Sam, Sam waves a thick-fingered hand at him then returns to being lost in the dance of the flames. “Shit,” Terrance says again, and swallows nearly the rest of the liquor. He hands me the bottle and sits against the satchel on the other side of Joyce. I consider swallowing his backwash and bashing this bottle over his head real good for taking a seat next to us, but I decide against it. Now’s not the time for braining anyone. The booze, and Joyce’s head now resting on my shoulder, have mellowed me. Her sour breath streaming across the hollow of my neck has soothed me. I place my hand back on her thigh and she places her hand atop mine.
“You’re a good boy, Clyde,” she says, gripping my hand. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
“I’m a good boy,” I tell her.
“Grace…” Joyce says.
“Grace?” I ask.
“Joyce, you haddalot to drink tonight, dear. Joyce,” Terrance says, “you should maybe hit the hay. Joyce?”
But Joyce’s eyes are looking up at me. “Grace… was her name.”
“That’s a nice name,” I tell Joyce and she squeezes my hand again. “Did she… die?”
“She’s just gone. Gone,” Joyce says, drifting off, her voice like the crackling of the fire.
“Look, mutt, her girl… well, she just wandered off one day. A while back, I dunno. Maybe a couple a years or something.”
“She was just a baby. Only twelve years old. She’d be… your age now,” Joyce says, reaching up, running fingers across my face. “She had smooth skin… like yours.”
“I’ve just been shaving lately,” I lie, my face burning up.
“Yeah, sure, mutt, and I was once ten feet tall,” Terrance chides.
“You should shut up,” I snap, yelling across Joyce. “You’re the one that should be shaving! You can’t even grow a real beard! You look like a diseased rat!”
Terrance reaches over to smack me, open-handed, but Joyce snatches his wrist in midair and stops him.
“You leave my boy alone,” she tells him through gritted teeth, throwing his hand back at him.
Stunned, Terrance stares at her for a second, then shuffles up from the dark earth and backs away from us. He looks at me and Joyce, then Sam, then he throws his hands up in the air and yells, “Fuck it!” and wanders over to his shanty, pushes aside the blanket that hangs as a door, and disappears behind it.
Having not drunk the last of it, I hand the bottle with a sliver of gold left in it to Joyce. She smiles up at me, takes the bottle, and pats my knee, then throws the gold sliver down her grey throat. Holding the empty bottle before her, as if inspecting her thoroughness, she then tosses it over her shoulder where it lands with a couple thuds, not breaking on impact.
“Huh,” she says, seeming disappointed.
“Huh,” Sam says through the fire and smiles. Joyce smiles back.
“You’re a good boy, too, Sam,” Joyce says and Sam says, “Good boy, too,” and smiles but his smile quickly melts as his attention returns to the flames. He yawns and stares at it for a while as I play with Joyce’s hair and place my hand on her knee or her thigh. She leans into me more and more and Sam’s yawns grow more frequent until he’s rolling away from us, like the ocean before a tidal wave, and snoring.
Joyce slips her hand under my shirt, rubs my chest, plays with the few hairs that have grown there.
“Blue dress,” she says, dreamily, her head against my shoulder.
“Huh?” I say.
“Grace had this beautiful… this really pretty blue dress. She took such good care of it, always washing it every chance she got. She would even heat up old irons in the fire to keep the wrinkles outta it. I found it… well me and… Kenneth found it… inna town about a hundred miles or something from here,” Joyce says, running out of breath with the words. “We gave it to her. She loved it… so much… because it came from the both of us.”
“Is Kenneth Grace’s dad?” I ask, petting her head.
“Mmm…” is her only answer.
“What’s the name of the town?” I ask.
“Grace.”
“But what’s the name of the town that’s a hundred miles from here?”
“Hmm? Oh, it’s… it’s uh… hmm… blue dress,” she says, her bare hand against the skin over my bare heart. “Blue dress… with pretty yellow flowers. A blue dress with pretty yellow flowers all over it.”
I stiffen.
“Clyde, your heart’s racing a mile a minute,” she says, her voice like dying firewood.
“What color hair did Grace have, Joyce?”
“Blue. Blue with yellow flowers.”
“But what color was her hair?”
“Kenneth has this… this kind of flaming red-orange mane. It was… it was beautiful. I can’t believe he left us.”
“Red hair, huh?” I say, grabbing her hand that rests over my heart.
“Like straw under a burning sunset.” She tilts her face back, her lips angling toward mine.
Just as I kiss Joyce with the lips that sucked at her daughter’s marrow, my soul becomes innocent and forgiven of all sins, of all trespasses, of all grievances.
Then Joyce is pushing away from me, rolling like a sack of rocks, and giggling. She stands and wipes at her mouth. “Oh boy,” she says.
“Joyce,” I say, reaching up, hoping she’ll take my hand and walk me back to her shanty like Momma used to walk me to her tent.
Hand over her mouth, glossy eyes wide, again she says, “Oh boy,” and turns, nearly falling over.
“Joyce!” I say, getting up and walking over to her to help her get steady.
She turns to me, looks down upon me, and holds my face in her hands, smooshes my cheeks, and kisses me on the forehead.
“I’m glad you’re here, son,” she says, her voice wavering, falling apart on the air. Then she’s turning, walking away. I follow close behind, ready to follow her to the ends of the planet, or into her shanty, whichever comes first. But, instead, she veers off to the right and I stop behind and watch her stumble, stop, collect herself, and then walk right into Terrance’s shanty.
“Evening, darlin’,” I hear that little rat-fucker say.
“Take your damn clothes off already,” Joyce orders.
I plug my ears and turn away from the insulting sound of their moans. Turned, I see Sam slumbering peacefully, his back to the fire. Sam, who isn’t bothered by anything. Sam who is also a “good boy.” Sam, who I suddenly want to hurt the most.
I didn’t hurt Sam, don’t worry, you big baby. Instead, I went into an angry sleep where I dreamt this: Sam’s giving me a piggyback ride throughout my Kingdom as I excitedly point out its famous tourist attractions such as The Library and The Used Car Lot. Then, from one of my big rubber boots, I unsheathe the bowie knife these fucking Out-of-Towners stole from me and I cut open Sam’s spine, and his blood is black, just like the hearts of all intruders. Then I spread his flesh and slip into his body like a costume. I do this so fast Sam doesn’t even have time to cry out or stumble. From there I run and run until I come across a house, like the ones I’ve seen in magazines. A single-story white house with green trim and a chimney. It’s night and the windows are orange with warmth. Puffs of white escape the chimney into a star-filled sky. In the glass of one of the windows, I see my reflection: enormous, pale, bald, open-mouthed. I’d nearly forgotten I was Sam. Suddenly I’m inside the house and Terrance is feeding the fire with nudey cards instead of wood. Joyce is in the kitchen stirring a big steamy pot of something. “Hello, I’m home,” I hear a big dumb voice say and realize it’s mine, because I’m Sam. Joyce turns and beams and says, “So you are!” and Terrance, who I now notice is wearing a cardigan sweater like those in Sears catalogs, turns and says, “Welcome back!” and I lumber into the living room, drop the giant club I apparently have been carrying, and say, “Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad.” I sink into the couch, near the fire, and Terrance sits next to me, pats my knee. His beard is full and not patchy. Grabbing a handful of my enormous pecker, Terranc
e says, “Now, son. You know perfectly where, and where not, to put this.” Then he’s patting my knee again and winking. Joyce plunks down on the other side of me and also pats my knee. “Monster babies,” she says, tying her long hair into a ponytail. They both lean into my enormous shoulders, bookending me, and I put my arms around them and say, “I’ve missed you so much, mom and dad,” in my big, dumb, slow voice and I’m suddenly crying. I’m crying big, fat, dumb, guttural sobs. Terrance pats me on the back, says, “There, there,” and mom whips out a handkerchief and wipes my tears away. I’m mollified and the tears subside and the fire feels good in this house. I turn to mom and dad and say, while nodding, “We’re Playing House,” and they nod back. But Papa’s suddenly standing behind Momma, her head in his hands which he shakes “no” while sticking his bottom lip out, pouting. Then Momma’s suddenly back at the stove stirring that pot and Papa’s over the fire again, throwing nudey cards and pennies into it. I kick my feet up on the coffee table and ask, “What’s for dinner, Momma?” and Momma says, “Something special for a special occasion,” and keeps stirring. The windows throughout the house just reflect the house back into itself. I feel sleepy and start to nod off then my stomach growls and shakes the whole house. It even knocks Papa from his feet. He gets up from the wood floor, laughing and dusting himself off. “What’s for dinner? It smells so good,” I ask, and Momma tells me it’s a special recipe she just invented: one part rubber boots, one part life vest, a smidgen of mother’s hair, and two parts little boy. “Mmm… that sounds good,” I say as Momma and Papa stand over me, pouring the giant boiling pot of stew down my throat. I say, “Mmm… mmm… mmm…” over and over. I say, “Mmm… mmm… mmm…. Aren’t you… aren’t you two going to have any?”
Over the next few weeks I sit and stew. Every night, after dinner, I retreat to a chair outside my shanty and I drink tea made from the weeds Joyce gathers. It mellows me, man. And I’ve needed some mellowing. It’s been taking everything I got to keep from banishing these fuckers to extreme fucking exile. In fact, if I could have, I would have picked them up by their big toes by now and flung each of them into the sun. Right into Hell!
The Sun My Destiny Page 10
