City Fishing

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  “I know, mama. But it’s like the love goes inside me and gets lost and then it just isn’t there anymore. Like I eat the love, mama. And then I’m still hungry.”

  Ray came back into the room and flopped down into his recliner. He sighed and looked directly at Jimmie Lee. “Well, son, you’re lookin’ … better. Better than the last time I seen you. That’s good to see. You doin’ a job now? You find yourself somethin’ you can do?”

  Jimmie Lee leaned forward and tried to smile. But the cracks in his lips and around his mouth bent and twisted the smile. Vivian started crying softly to herself and Ray looked at her with what she thought was an unusual sadness on the face of this man she’d known almost all her life. Then Jimmie Lee must have known something was wrong, because it looked as if he were trying to pull the smile back in, and it just made it worse.

  “I left that show, papa. I know that’ll please you. Made a couple of movies. And I did some real work, too, like at a packing plant, and once I spent almost a year at this junkyard outside Charlotte …”

  “Junk yard? You learn the junk business? Now that can be a good trade for a young man. There’s always goin’ to be junk lyin’ around.”

  Jimmie Lee looked down at his feet. “Well, papa, there was pieces the man couldn’t sell, and they were just sittin’ around his yard, takin’ up too much space he said, and he couldn’t get rid of them …”

  His father interrupted. “You’re talkin’ about the eatin’ now, and I ain’t gonna talk about the eatin’.”

  “But, papa, eatin’ metal junk, especially cars, why that’s become almost like a regular thing in some places. They put it in the papers, and sometimes it even gets on the T.V. Some fella’ll eat a big Buick, or an old Ford Mustang …”

  His father leaned forward out of his recliner and stared hard at Jimmie Lee. “We don’t talk about the eatin’ in this house. Look how you’ve gone and upset your mother.”

  Vivian sat rock-still in her chair, her eyes closed and mouth open, crying without sound.

  “Vivian, why don’t you go on out to the hen house and get the boy some fresh eggs? The boy always liked fresh eggs.”

  She stared at him, her eyes sharp and red. “Wh-what?”

  “Papa, I don’t need eggs …”

  “Sure you do. Vivian, go get the boy some eggs. He used to eat a dozen of ’em at a time, from what I remember. Shell and all. But at least it was real food. Go on now.”

  Vivian stood stiffly, and left the room. She went out through the back door and around the side toward the hen house. But when she passed near the open window of the living room she stopped, because she could hear her husband and her son talking inside. And she knew what they would be talking about—she knew what Ray would be saying to Jimmie Lee. She crept closer, and stood just under the lilac bush by the window, where she could see their faces, and the feelings painted there.

  Ray started talking low and firm. “Now it’s good to see you, I mean that, son. I know I ain’t always been as soft as I should of when you were at home, but I been thinkin’ about you every day since you left us. You been sorely missed—you sure have—and not just by your mama.” He leaned back and sighed. “But your mama’s sick, boy, real sick, and I just don’t know if she can stand watchin’ what you go through, havin’ it be like it was before.”

  “Mama? What’s wrong with her? Tell me …”

  “Well, she never did eat all that well, and I reckon we all know the reason for that.” Jimmie Lee looked down at his stomach and away. Vivian held her throat and struggled not to make a sound. “But that don’t matter so much now. It weakened her, and she’s had pneumonia so many times over the years she damn near coughed her lungs out. But she’s got the cancer now, and it’s clean through her, Doc Jennings says, and she can’t have long to go.”

  Jimmie Lee’s face was sheened with sweat. That’s what he did, instead of crying. His body never had let him cry.

  “Even less, I reckon, if you stay around, son.”

  Jimmie Lee stood up. “I understand, papa. I appreciate you levelin’ with me.”

  “You’re a good son, Jimmie Lee.”

  Vivian rushed down to the hen house and grabbed what she could, then ran back into the house and into the living room, out of breath, a scarf full of eggs hugged to her bosom. Jimmie Lee was still standing, but had already started for the door. She looked at her husband, then at Jimmie Lee. “You’re leavin’,” she said flatly. The eggs tumbled out of her arms and splattered across the braided rug.

  “I gotta check some things out down at the pasture,” his father said, getting up. He pulled on his sweater, started to leave, then walked over to Jimmie Lee and gave him a quick hug.

  After her husband left the house Vivian still stood there among the broken eggs, looking at Jimmie Lee as if she were memorizing him, or trying to puzzle him out. Jimmie Lee bent over and started picking up the eggshells. “Leave those alone,” she said softly. He straightened back up and looked down at her, his thin lips twitching, the scars around his mouth wrinkling like worms moving across his face. “He told you, didn’t he?” she said. “He told you all of it.”

  Jimmie Lee nodded. “I better go, mama.”

  “You come here, baby.” She held out her arms to him and when he wouldn’t come any closer she walked over to him and attached her frail body to his. “You’re not leavin’ me this time.”

  “Mama, please. I gotta go.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Mama, I’m hungry.” And he tried to push her body away.

  She pressed closer, and raised her hand to his lips. “I know, baby.” And pulled his thin, cracked lips apart with her fingers. And put her fingers inside her baby’s mouth, and then put her hand inside, then both hands. As if out of his control, his huge jaw dislocated, his pliant facial muscles stretched. He tried to pull back, to make his mouth let go of her, but she wouldn’t have any of that. “No, child. Just take it, child.” His mouth wouldn’t let go, and as her head disappeared inside him he heard her say again, “I’m not leaving you.”

  For the first time in his life, what he ate, all that he ate, became nourishment, and remained inside him.

  MOUTHS

  Sometimes the mouths reminded him of his wife’s mouth: alternately seductive and angry. When he still had a wife. Before the mouths had eaten up the very idea of companionship.

  Sometimes the mouths reminded him of his daughter’s mouth: pouting, hungry, always seeking food. When he still had a daughter. Before the mouths had eaten his future.

  Sometimes the mouths seemed to be speaking his name. But then they devoured his name, and he had no idea what to call himself.

  He’d first been alerted to their presence by the all-pervasive fatigue. Each morning he would awaken later and later, despite multiple alarms and wake-up services and angry calls from work. And after the loss of his job, when punctuality no longer seemed an imperative, he didn’t even attempt a morning schedule.

  When he finally did awaken, and managed to stagger the dozen steps or so into his small bathroom, he never failed to be shocked by his well-worn appearance in the mirror, or by the countless little love bites and bruises—a scattered few haloed in blood—decorating both the visible and invisible aspects of his body.

  “It’s a hungry world out there,” his grandmother once said, after his grandfather had lost his business, the house, everything. “You have to be careful of it, else it’ll eat you alive.”

  It’s a hungry world in here, as well, Grandmother, he might have told her, if the mouths hadn’t already eaten her alive.

  “Daddy, spend time with me,” his daughter would say, and how could he explain to a little girl how the mouths had eaten all of his time?

  “What is it, honey, what are you thinking about? Where is your mind this morning?”

  He looked across at his wife, who sat with both hands clutching her coffee cup. A huge-lipped mouth perched on her shoulder, dripping blood down onto her white blouse. She set
the cup down shakily. “You always seem to be somewhere else anymore,” she said, as the mouth surreptitiously took a huge bite out of her donut. Blood splattered across the bright yellow surface of the kitchen table, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  “I’m here,” he said softly, “I’m here where I’ve always been.” Then he turned away so he didn’t have to see the mouth grinning at him.

  “Well …” She set the mangled donut back onto her saucer. “You could have fooled me.”

  Could have fooled me … the mouth echoed, lips smudged with sugar, but she didn’t seem to hear.

  The mouths devoured the next day, and the day after that. He woke up one morning alone, a note from his wife on the kitchen table. But he could not decipher the note: the mouths had eaten too many of the words. He went to her closet and looked inside: the mouths had eaten most of her clothes, leaving behind only the less fashionable dresses. He went into his daughter’s bedroom to tell his child that her mommy was gone, that the mouths had finally eaten her all up, and quickly discovered that the mouths had eaten most of her clothes as well, along with her best toys. A few dolls remained scattered on the floor, miscellaneous pieces chewed off. There was no sign of his daughter.

  He went into the living room and flopped down into his chair. He struggled to pull the remote control out of a bloody mouth, finally succeeding and sending the mouth flying across the room, where it hit the wall and stuck with a loud, lip-smacking sound. He punched his way through the channels until the image of a newscaster in a tweed coat stopped him—-the coat was too heavy for this time of year, but still pulled tightly around the neck. Mouths leapt and crawled about the newscaster, who winced and avoided them with an agitated dance while still in his seat, trying to perform his job.

  “All life feeds on life,” the man said, shoving away a mouth that was attempting to French kiss him. “That is an irrevocable law of nature. We feed on each other, make a feast of one another’s love, excitement, despair. It’s a natural outcome of our solitary conditions. But some people!” he shouted, as several mouths seized the opportunity of a sudden gap in his collar and dived in, writhing beneath the coat, eating their way both inside and out. “Some people go too far!” The newsman disappeared beneath the set as the camera lens was splattered by shredded tweed and blood. He turned off the set.

  The next morning the boredom reached an intolerable level so he got into his car to go looking for a new job. The mouths were in the car waiting for him. One of them had a cat’s leg between its lips, the fur and meat mostly gnawed away but with just enough remaining traces of black and white that he recognized it as a leg from the family cat, now missing more than four days (perhaps much more, as so many days had been so neatly digested leaving no trace). With his rolled-up newspaper he knocked lips and cat leg together out the car window.

  The others in the company lobby had mouths attached to them at various places: hanging with clenched teeth from a tie, kissing the thin cloth covering a shoulder blade, licking the underside of a bearded chin. He tried to ignore them. But then a man stood up, screaming, and ran down the hall, blood streaming from a gaping hole in his left buttock.

  “Mr. Smith?” The woman had huge, pouty lips. She was too close to him; he had a sudden terror that she would suddenly start kissing him. “Mr. Reynolds will see you now.”

  He stood up and followed the woman into Mr. Reynolds’ office. Smith … he supposed that now he had his name back, but something was still wrong with that. He thought that perhaps he had once had a longer name. Smithfield. Smithers. Smith and Wesson. Something like that.

  “Smith!” Reynolds stood and extended a hand with teeth. Smith took it reluctantly, wincing as it bit through his palm. “Glad to meet you! Mighty glad! We could always use a good man like you!”

  “How do you know?”

  Reynolds frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t get you, pardner.”

  “I mean how do you know I’m a good man?”

  Reynolds opened his mouth into a grin spreading wider and wider until he was showing four sets of teeth. “Why, I can smell it, boy!” Then he leaned over and kissed Smith wetly before beginning to feed.

  S. wandered the beach for days. He had many parts missing, but he could not remember their names and he had lost the memory of their appearances. The mouths had come out of the dark water and were waiting for him at the shoreline. They shifted about restlessly as S. strolled near them, poked at them with driftwood, examined them, looking for ones he might know: his wife’s, his daughter’s, his parents’, long dead but their mouths remembered with fondness.

  Her lips had only a trace of substance left, and so floated with but a hint of breeze. He leaned close and said, “I love you,” even knowing they might attack. He closed his eyes and pushed his own mouth forward, acutely aware now of the thin line separating a kiss from a bite.

  note that the switch from smith to s. as the main character’s name at the end of this story is intentional. — steve

  THE BURDENS

  “Stiffen your back; then it won’t hurt so much.”

  His father used to say that before giving him a whipping, one of the vicious ones, with the leather belt strap flying all over buttocks and thighs and back like frantic, heavy wings. As the beating proceeded, he would be aware mostly of the wings, and imagined a great prehistoric bird attacking him, sinking its beak into the flesh covering his spine, attempting—in fact—to eat him. Later it would occur to him that that was a special thing—they called it a “vision” in the Bible, and he imagined that the vision gave him an extra strength that ordinary people did not have. It made him special. He could bear more than most.

  In the Bible people had visions of heaven and visions of hell. He had both, but he couldn’t always tell the difference between the two.

  “Stiffen your back; then it won’t hurt so much.”

  Those words, repeated again and again before the whipping—strange how his father always said them so gently, so softly, and with what seemed to be such regret. The strange thing was he never could decide if that was good advice or not, if it really made it hurt less or if it was a trick his father played on him, designed to actually increase the pain. Or maybe his father had been trying to teach him a particular sort of posture to take toward circumstances: the stiffened back, the spine that refused to be bent, much less broken. Those words were still the most gentle words his father ever said to him. But with all that regret his father never softened the blows, never held back. His father saw those blows as his duty, his burden.

  And now, each night in bed, the words came back to him, soft and insinuating. Now that he had his own family.

  He couldn’t see well in the darkened bedroom, and he found it difficult to reach his arms out to touch Linda on her half of the bed. His head was too heavy. His arms were pressed so firmly into the mattress he could not lift them. Some nights he thought he might smother. Some nights he thought he might die without the comfort of his wife’s embrace.

  Embraces. Difficult for him even during the daylight hours, with his back so stiff, his torso so rigid. There was imagined pain when he forced himself to bend his arms for an embrace. Such strong arms, too, in most other ways. By day they moved pianos, sofas, credenzas, entire bedroom suites from warehouse or showroom to various homes in the metropolitan area. He’d been at it a long time. Had to keep at it, with the kids growing up so fast, eating so much. He didn’t understand how you kept a family going—he didn’t like to think about it. If you thought too much about it you couldn’t do it. Like swimming—if you really thought about how you were doing it you might sink. He just kept working, moving the heavy loads with back and two good arms, and they kept giving him the money.

  He was sure that his wife knew better, but he never could bring himself to talk to her about it.

  Two good, strong arms. Just like his father—he remembered the old man as all back and arms. Enormous back and enormous arms. He could live by those alone. Well-equipped for any burden.<
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  The ticking of the clock was muffled, his ears were pressed so firmly into mattress and pillow. Earlier in the evening his hearing was always much more acute, but as the hours ticked on the old gravity took over, and he slowly began to sink into his own bed, as into a sensory deprivation chamber. He wished he couldn’t hear the clock at all. The muffled ticking was a constant reminder of his burden.

  Two good arms. Stiffen the back. You can carry a real load then, boy, a helluva load.

  As he got older, the stiffness in his back had become much more pronounced. He was particularly aware of it when he was just walking, not trying to carry anything. The back was like a board—it made the hips feel much too loose, the legs irritating the joints when he moved. He’d want his entire body to stiffen, to become immobile. Then maybe the pain would go away.

  The dark shifted on his shoulders; a shadow leaned out over his head, as if to try to see the expression on his face, see how he was handling the weight. The heaviness settled over his back, increasing, and he had to stiffen it, stiffen it real good this time because he could feel the back muscles protesting, squirming on his thin frame. His father always said he was built too small to do most kinds of work.

  The back stiffened, and the muscles stilled. He could feel the dark hanging over him, pushing him further into the bed. He tried once again to lift an arm and reach out for Linda, but the arm would not budge. It adhered resolutely to the mattress, as if it were finally lost to him.

  He never dreamed anymore. All his thoughts had been drawn up into the darkness overhead.

  Sometimes—when he didn’t fight it, when the back stiffened as if of its own accord and there was no pain to speak of because of that—sometimes his rigidity during the long nights was actually enjoyable. As if he were a bridge over a dark stream. He could hear, or imagined that he could hear, every sound along the stream beneath his span, even the flies threading the cattails, and nearby, his wife’s blood pumping slowly into secret places. Travelling from an island downstream, the sound of his two children dreaming of their futures echoed against his brick.