He says, “You’re beautiful.”
She says, quietly and reasonably, “I am the abominable, the fiercely deformed tormented one. Your compassion empowers you.”
“That’s pure analytical liberal bullshit.”
She laughs.
“Did the chairperson tell you that stuff?” His blackly lashed, bleached-out devil eyes narrow.
She laughs again. Shakes her head slowly. The hard knot of his red bandana tied around her hair hurts a little, clumped there between her head and the cab’s back window . . . and something else there, close to her head, a jacket hanging from one of the gun racks, jacket with stuff in the pockets. The truck, cramped and awkward, neither Bree nor Gordon being small people. Now Bree isn’t laughing, just passive again, waiting for his next move. A scared-looking fifteen-year-old kid.
Police! Police! Where are the police?
He flings open the truck door.
Outside, he leads her by the hand through waist-high ferns. Song bugs are deafening. Bree’s body is as powered and limber as when she works with her saw or operates a skidder, her climbing and balancing, bending, kicking away brush . . . on the job. The woods. She is at home here. That easy swing of her hips. Even in dressy moccasins and swishy soft dress. He keeps leading her along, however, as though she were dainty. And she does ever so tightly hang on to his hand. And now a fistful of his shirt she grips, she standing behind him, waiting, as he stops to piss out coffee into a rotten thickness of downed birch. He has a little trouble pissing from a penis swollen for its other use.
When he turns, still zipping himself, she looks away.
He says, “They say you’ve already seen it.”
She flushes.
He says, “They say you’ve been with me, that you know me.”
She flushes an even deeper, very unpretty red.
He takes the one step even closer, now rubs his crotch against her, makes a low sound, steps back again, says, “I haven’t seen the paintings. And you have never seen me undressed. But . . . a witch is a witch is a witch.” He breathes fully of the warm layers of leaves, layers of seasons, club moss, princess pine, berry bushes. “In the old days, people would have burned you at the stake. Today . . . everybody gets burned.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean you were to blame.”
“Once you told me you were surrounded by witches. Must be rough.” Her voice is sort of teasy, but melancholy.
Now she looks away. A buzzing yellow jacket swings around and around her bright ripply hair and red knotted bandana. She closes her eyes, soaking up the terrible possibilities of the tiny, the knowledge before transformation that tells you that every penetration of your soul, every tentacle reaching in, large or small, is really you . . . always was you . . . you are just unfolding . . . pain and pleasure, you and he, you and them and you . . . consummate.
Again he presses closer. The ferns swish and whisper, dividing in yellowy-edged green knee-high waves. He mashes nose and beard against her cheek and ear, sniffs her ear and neck, sniff sniff, putting the nerves under her skin there into a frenzy like effervescence. She giggles. He runs the fingers of one hand through her long hair at her back. He whispers against her forehead, “And neither are they to blame. You see, we people don’t get more grown-up with age. Baby girl, you know this? We will always act on the commands of our chromosomes, enzymes, the wishes of chemical synapses and blah blah blah. No one is ever old enough! It’s all dust anyway.”
She leans into him, and this is an embrace, her official permission, both sets of arms locked around the other, both faces in the hair of the other, no words, an aloof though singing stillness all around them as they rock back and forth, back and forth ever so slightly.
And now another bee. This, a bumblebee, fat and fuzzy and drowsy and potent, traveling slowly past them. A worker bee on her way.
Gordon takes Bree’s hand again and leads her a few yards farther toward the slanted sun. Whenever he looks around at her, she giggles, or smiles, her carroty hair parted primly in the middle of her head, tied there in back.
Here he stops walking, glances around on the ground around their feet, pitches some sticks and pine cones away. Begins to undress.
Bree doesn’t move. She averts her eyes.
He says, “Come on. Get yourself ready.”
She slides her eyes back to him as he makes a pile of clothes at her feet, slinging them with rough abandon almost right onto her dressy moccasins. His gift.
Now her eyes are moving over his nudity in a most unnerving way. Her weird eyes, like the eyes of the public. A whole Milky Way of eyes. Now he flushes. “Need help?”
“No,” she replies, pushes her moccasins off, then backing up to a little hemlock with low secrety limbs around it, she takes off her dress and underthings, but hugs the dress in front of her as she steps out.
“Let’s use all our clothes for a pillow,” he suggests.
She shakes her head.
He laughs appreciatively. And maybe a little impatiently. “No pillow? Fine. Okay.” He comes around to stand behind her and again begins to rub himself against her, against her hip and buttocks.
And Bree? She can feel it, yeah it, spear-like and velvety, rubbing there as if to coax her into something besides sex. Something more like jumping off a cliff into the unimaginable and indescribable and unretrievable.
“Okay,” he says, sort of to himself. Starts pushing her slowly down, so that she winds up on all fours. And she is quiet through all this, stunningly quiet, not even a small intake of breath as she receives that darkly haired belly against her spine and it, his penis, seeking, helped by his own hand, and finally he is ramming again and again through the virginal tightness in a way that seems deeper than natural to her, a deeper place than she knew she had.
He doesn’t expect wild shrieks of ecstasy from a fifteen-year-old, but maybe something, like his name whispered. But there is nothing. She is rather studious, even as, at last, his thighs buckle and he groans, and his cry, almost like an angry complaint, “Jesus Christ!” falling to her back with all his weight, his own heart pounding audibly in his ears.
No police sirens. There will be police sirens, right? They are on hold, but the eye of the true issuing authorities is always turning, probing, entering. It shall not miss this, a hot spot on the national graph. Nobody in America can hide from it. There is no alternate universe. There is no secession from the true power that blossoms from every hemisphere, and Gordon St. Onge is not really that special.
Done, he remains, keeping her buried under him, she flattened out onto the ground. Nuzzles her neck and hair. “You’re beautiful.”
She doesn’t argue. How can she not believe it now?
A car passes out on the road. The wonderful terrible ancient late summer song bugs chant. Creak, creak, creak.
In time he stands up, shaky in the knees.
Bree flips around to a sitting position and says in a buttery voice that surprises him, “Do me again. Do me pretty. Not doggie.” And she reaches to bunch his pile of clothes up into something like a pillow.
He smiles stupidly. “Again?”
She looks him up and down. “Yeah.”
So, okay, he goes at it again, with her laying out long and pale on her back under him, knees loosely apart, her dress in one hand. But with the too-soonness of doing it again, he can’t keep hard, just gets slacker.
“I’m sorry,” he says at last, walking backward on all fours, brushing his beard straight down the middle of her whole length . . . and then there between her legs, drives his teeth and tongue deeply, quickly.
“What are you doing?!!!” She yeowls, horrified, gripping him by the hair of his head, ripping his head away from such business.
“Going to give you a good thing,” he says mournfully.
“Gross! I hate that!” This “gross” word makes her sound so . . . so kiddie, so cute.
He draws himself up off her, so full of
regret but chuckling, too. He squats at her feet, looks at her while fussing with his beard, drying the ends of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. The setting sun, chilled blue and gold, barred by trees, falls to Bree’s arms and shoulders and large swingy breasts as she sits up, draws her knees up, wraps her yellow dress around her legs. She whispers, “Don’t look sad.”
He grunts. “I’m not sad. I’m abashed.”
She is watching him.
Now he rocks slightly on his haunches, a restless gesture, still grooming his mustache, watching her. And she watches him. She watches him. She watches him. He smiles sheepishly, and reaches down between his legs, unaware at first that he’s doing it, tugs on his shrinking limp penis, to dry with his fingers what remains of the fluids mixed together of himself and Bree, then looking off thoughtfully into the chilling-down jungle of sumac at his right, says worriedly, yes, and sadly, “World without end.”
Bree’s thoughts as she climbs back into Gordon’s truck cab for the slow ride home.
Then we are not alone. Not in our bodies, not in our soggy self-shaped ghosts.
Oh GLORY! We are not alone.
Glennice St. Onge speaks.
I am not a young woman. But I’m not complaining. I am grateful to God for my health. I see those in wheelchairs, those in iron lungs, those in countries where they can’t pray, and I say “Thank you” to Him.
My first husband, Barry, left me. He, too, had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, but had turned his back on the Lord when he chose to go against our wedding vows, against the laws put forth to us by Him.
He said, “Jinny and Justin are grown now.”
I said, “God marries us forever.”
We had a terrible argument. He said okay, he’d stay. But the next day, he was gone. He sneaked away! Took his car and some of our photo albums, his records and tapes and guns and the dog . . . little beagle pup. He left me money on the table, his whole week’s pay, but he didn’t leave any note.
I was alone for a year. I prayed to Our Heavenly Father that Barry would come back. But God brought me Gordon instead.
It was through Harry Drake’s brother I met Gordon. He took my hand and put my hand in Gordon’s and said to Gordon, “I’d like you to meet a fine woman.”
I know I am special to Gordon. I know that to his soul, I am really the only one. When we are alone, he will kiss my eyes and the palms of my hands and if I ask him to pray with me, he will. He will do anything I want him to do if I was selfish enough to ask for that impossible thing, whatever that would be. But I care too much about him to take advantage. We are not married by law, but by God. I know this because when I asked God, He sent me a sign. Just as I was asking, the sun moved in the window and struck my praying hands, and my silver wedding ring looked gold. I am happy here and they all need me here.
I have a real knack for farming. I love garden work and I don’t mind dirty hands, dirty knees or backaches. I have taught the ways of growing food to most of the children here, not just to my Benjamin, my boy by Gordon, but all of them who come to me on the “garden crews.” I am good with children. My thumb is green. My heart is young. And the Heavenly Father WILL take care of you and give you everything you need in this life. All you have to do is ask. And to believe.
I have my heart set on another baby. The others say, “Don’t do it when you’re over forty-five because it’ll turn out retarded.” But God loves retarded babies as much as regular ones. In the end, it is what the Lord God wants, what He chooses. I leave it up to God. God is grace. God is love.
Beth St. Onge speaks.
I ain’t complainin’. Shit, I’m too busy to complain. Work your ass off from dawn to dim in this place. Run like a rabbit. People here are pretty funny. A lotta noodle heads. You gotta keep right on ’em and give ’em a hard time but people like Suzelle and Bonnie Loo will find out your worst weakness and rib the hell out of you.
My parents visited here a buncha times. And they think they wanna move right in. Probably will as soon as Dad retires. He has two more years. He likes all the gadgets and machiney stuff that’s here, always somebody’s new inventions. You wouldn’t believe the wild ideas that fly around this place.
But I’m pretty sure my folks don’t know how Gordon is, about what he has so many wives. They think he’s all mine. It’s crazy. The whole country knows. But it’s somehow gone right over their heads. Maybe they’re just not lettin’ on. They’ll shit a brick when they finally get it. But I’ll tell them how it’s so obvious who his favorite is. Obvious to me. Maybe not so obvious to the rest here and I never say nuthin’ about his wicked wild passions for me, what he manages to do to my body. A thing that is probably against the law, I heard it was in the state of Virginia. A crime right up there with masturbating a donkey. And also his little gifts to me like wildflowers and memorized stuff in FRENCH. I don’t say nuthin’ ’cause these are my sisters and I always wanted a sister and now here I am with this swarm of sisters and that’s like gold and apple-sized diamonds to me. I don’t mind torturin’ the piss outa’ve ’em in fun . . . you know . . . ride ’em. But I ain’t never been one to wanna put sadness into other people’s hearts. You know how tender hearts are. It’s the softest weakest part of a person. So that I am Gordon’s favorite is just between you ’n’ me.
A night of horizontal wind and hot rain.
Misty St. Onge’s cottage. Her big bed is splattered with every-which-way human limbs, mostly Gordon’s because he tends to sleep splayed out. And all over and between is a pleasant-sounding quilt of Misty’s purring kneading cats. Cats of every color. Any of them would squall terribly if Gordon should shift. So he doesn’t.
But this isn’t exactly so, now that Gordon is missing from the bed.
“Gordon?” Misty’s tremulous voice. Her long fingers scrabble for the chain of her bedside lamp. The scene is shellacked a damning yellow. The entire purring blanket of cats freezes, a stillness that is more bloodcurdling than an air raid alarm.
“Gordon?” Misty’s voice again, this time directed solidly at his bare back, which is near the windows that are full of rainy night. And the wall to his left papered in marching along old-fashioned daisies. And there, Misty’s gram’s chest of drawers. Propped-up photos of Misty’s parents, brothers, and past cats.
Yes, Gordon is standing. But he is not alive, so used up by the bulky custody of him by Settlement land and Settlement lives. His oversized pledge to it all. Till death do we part.
“What are you doing over there?” Misty gets up from the bed, her rosebud print gown flicking from side to side. Cats are interested in the puddle, but disdainful. They wrinkle their noses. A spotted orange and white tom, who has never liked Gordon, almost speaks, “He’s pissed on the wall again.”
Yes, Misty is a romantic person. She doesn’t say, “You pissed on the wall.” She doesn’t say the word “peed” either. She just cradles her husband’s face in her long fingers. His heart is still thumping from his weight being moved by that spooky force of sleepwalking. His whole head yearns into Misty’s hands. He has nothing to say, either. He recognizes her, Misty, luminous on the map of his life. But he doesn’t know himself because this is himself not standing in a display of power and provision, but of shame.
Misty’s fingers drizzle down over his temples.
Some of the cats are self-launched from the rug back onto the bed. They fill in Gordon’s shape, still warm where he had lain. They don’t recommence purring though, because they are bothered and prickly.
Misty, age thirty-one, dark hair Peter Pan short so her long creamy neck is the thing you notice. She never becomes pregnant by mistake or on purpose. Cats suit her, so why go further? Why gum up and smash up this wee home with childly extortions and scrimmages?
This is not the Gordon, this puddling Gordon, not the Gordon she once thought he was, not the man she wanted. No, he’s not the person she thought he was.
Claire St. Onge remembers.
Time passe
d. Everything that before this hadn’t ripened and been picked, eaten or canned, was now ripening and being picked and canned. And eaten. Or saved. The air was odd. Not the usual for September. A lot of days that seemed to arrive from Brazil in a jar. The sun often rose much too red, but it wouldn’t rain as you’d expect. The day would just sort of slide down the sky at evening time in an exotic lather and no promises.
It is blowing rain. Sideways rain. The windows of the old church shake. A leak on the sill of one gives forth jewels that race to the edge and drop to the floor.
The bride’s hair is wet on the ends. Her man is looking into her queer set-apart eyes as the reverend speaks. The reverend is small, not straight-shouldered though he may have been once. Which is older? Him or the church? It is not a full-time church. No furnace. No lights. No downstairs kitchen. The outside paint is coming off in chips, as lead as bullets. Today the wind and rain floats a few of the white chips down the driveway. The stained glass is lilac and yellow. In this light what bride isn’t lovely?
Beside the reverend stands a stout woman in a scarlet suit. She has something in her hand hidden by the folds of her suit jacket. She is the reverend’s niece-in-law, Celia, witness.
The reverend asks the scarlet-haired bride the questions and she answers the way brides always do, staring into her true love’s eyes. She doesn’t giggle.
The style of the ceremony is not one of those creative types you hear of these days. The words of the vows are not “corrected.” The promise is time-honored, classic, a sturdy ripple of a river of nuptials out of the past, out of maybe pre-America, that came across the longitudes in a big boat.
The bride wears her newish yellow dress, which radiates as if she stepped right out of one of the church windows, and so nobody misses the sun.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 54
