by Taylor Brown
Now the other one touched his arm.
“We’re hosting a little mixer next weekend. Saturday?”
Rory could see the stream of normal thoughts he should be having, and slightly apart from these he stood, bewildered. He was not sure if they were asking him to come to the party or did they want to buy whiskey now. He waited for this point to be clarified, but both of them simply stood smiling before him, their heads slightly cocked, waiting.
The one with her hand on his arm squeezed slightly, as if testing him for quality, but he hardly noticed. He was looking at the flowers in the other girl’s hatband, bright-wheeling blossoms that made him think of Christine’s cloche hat.
“Well?” she said. “Can you get us some?”
Rory eyed a pink rose in particular.
“Some what?” he asked.
“Whiskey, of course.”
Without thinking, he leaned forward, poking the flower with his finger.
“Silk.” He grunted. “It ain’t real.”
The girl stepped back, giggling behind a cupped palm, as if he’d touched a funny button on her. The other girl’s face darkened.
“Of course it isn’t real. It would rot.”
They were wearing perfume, not the oils like Granny used. Something factory-made for fancy parlors, hovering all about them in invisible clouds. The two of them closed in again, all smiles and smells, and he thought of Christine. He was struck by the terrible notion that if the sharp points of their breasts so much as grazed him, hers never would.
“You got the wrong man.” He slid edgewise against the wall. “I’m a clean-liver, pure as the driven. Wouldn’t touch the stuff with a mile-long yardstick.” He was nearly to the door. He flattened his back against it. All he had to do was lean back.
“That’s not what we heard.”
“Tell you what. If you two are hell-bent for whiskey, I advise you to go see Eli Uptree at Howl Motors, just up the mountain. He can square you away.”
Before they could reply, he was through the door. He found himself in the sanctuary. The pews sat in rigid formation, burnished by decades of satin-clad rumps. An aisle ran crimson from the back of the church like an open vein. The ceiling arched high, ribbed and timbered like the belly of an upturned ship, as if the whole place could be upended and set sail. Past the altar stood the organ, the ranks of silver pipes thrust upward from the wind-chest.
He could feel the sudden soundlessness of the place pulsing against his eardrums, the weight of old voices and hymns. The shudder of silence. He felt tuned to the underside of the world, the things laid aground. His wooden foot had begun tingling at the end of his leg, as if newly fleshed. He could feel blood popping and whistling, as if through the grains of wood, a capillary slink. As if some miracle had been performed upon him, his sawed-off shinbone sprouting a new foot like the eye of a potato in the root cellar too long. Phantom limb. Here was a little ghost of his own, unseen but surely felt, realer than any black-veiled lady walking the hills of a night. Despite this, he kicked a nearby pew, making sure. A wooden thud echoed through the darkened whale’s-belly of the place. Right then—sure as the blow of an ax—he knew Granny had sabotaged the cake.
“Damn crazy woman.”
He crossed to the far side of the sanctuary and pushed through the door, emerging into the evening. He made for the back of the place, creeping in the shadowed lee of the wall like a thief. The land sloped down from the road, revealing a basement floor, and a line of golden windows hovered a story over the rear lawn, looking onto the fellowship hall. He found an old ladder in the maintenance shed and leaned it against the wall, the stringers trembling and twisting as he scaled the rungs. He climbed just high enough to peep over the window ledge, eyeing the people at Sunday dinner.
“Jesus God.”
They were fat-cheeked and slit-eyed, their faces beaming like spotlamps, as if Granny had conjured them into a congregation of round-faced idols, newly enlightened. Some sat bemused in their seats, smiling at the walls, and others had taken to examining patterns in the tablecloth. Many were still eating, bent low over their food, their jaw muscles pulsing over pouched cheeks, their utensils stuck like communication antennas from resting fists. They’d laid waste to the serving table, the surface littered with scraped-clean dishes and plates and trays. No rubble of stackcake remained. The plate gleamed as if tongue-polished, and maybe so.
He saw two men bent double, guffawing over their shoes, their bellies held in place with both hands. When they looked up, their faces were red and wet as sink-washed beets. He saw prim little housewives who must survive on leafy greens and boiled eggs during the week, and they were ravaging drumsticks with their teeth, their lips puckered over clean-sucked thighbones. The pastor, an aging white crane of a man, sat at the head of one table, his flat belly fronted by a flotilla of deviled eggs. He was palsied, each egg riding waves into the red pit of his mouth. A blue-haired woman at the far end of his table belched, clapping an age-spotted hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, and the rest of the table roared. One of the women laughed so hard a white mustache of cookie-milk sped from her nostrils. The table roared yet louder, the old-timers heaving, gripping the table edges to keep themselves from flying away. One or two might die soon, thought Rory, stroking slack-faced onto the floor. He decided to make his escape.
He was nearly to the street when Big Carling stepped out from a side door, adjusting his belt. His bulk blocked the sidewalk. He turned and saw Rory, clapping a hand onto his shoulder.
“Jesus wept,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Jesus wept. John eleven: thirty-five. Shortest verse in the Book. He wept before the sisters of Lazarus.” No moon tonight, but the big man’s face shone, his eyes red-edged, as if he himself had been weeping. “You know what come him to weep?”
Rory shifted his weight.
“I ain’t put much thought toward it—”
“I’ll tell you,” said Carling. He scrunched up his face and looked to the distance. “He knowed what he had coming. Seen it.” He nodded. “It’s a blessing, son. Most of us we couldn’t but weep, seeing suchlike for our own selves.”
“That’s mighty pessimistic of you, Sheriff.”
Carling shook his head.
“It’s a blessing, got-damnit. I knowed what was on the ground waiting for me, I never would of rolled that tank off the boat.” He looked at Rory. “You, you might not of rode that ship to Korea.”
“You don’t know what I would of done.”
“We can take what comes, it comes out the dark. It’s the blindness that bears us along.”
“I better get along myself, sir.”
“There’s something coming, son. I’ve felt it. The world is speeding up, whirling like those winds high on the mountain. You aren’t careful, it’ll blow you right off.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”
His fingers dug hard into Rory’s shoulder.
“See that you do.”
* * *
Granny was on the porch, her eyes bright with expectation. Rory bent and kissed her cheek.
“How they like that cake?” she asked.
“You might of earned yourself some new customers, they don’t burn you at the stake.”
“I’d like to see them try it.”
That night Rory lay in bed thinking of Christine. He thought of the wide slash of her mouth and bold green eyes, her milk-white skin. He thought of the dark hollow at the base of her throat, an invitation as if for his thumb. Her breasts, naked and ripe, floating silver-bright above him, the nipples like hard little stems beneath his tongue. He thought of the pink furrow, dark-furred and glistening, he wanted so bad to taste. He slid his hand under the covers, between his legs, and closed his eyes to see it all, clearly.
V. SICKLE MOON, WAXING
Bonni knew the old hollowed-out sycamore by the rope-swing nearby. Here, when she was a girl, her mama and the other working girls would come on Sundays while everyone was at church.
They would strip down to their skinnies and swing hooting over the green water. They would drink beer and eat fried chicken and smoke thin cigars, their white breasts bobbing in the river like buoys. They would wring the water from their hair, and Bonni would marvel at the mottled bodies of these giantesses, at their bruised and curdled thighs, the furry pockets between their legs. The girls would speak of men’s organs like garden-grown mushrooms, discussing attributes of length and girth and straighthood, coloration and flavor and scent. Bonni would envision them squatting on their beds each night, inspecting these strange growths that sprang newly from each man’s trousers.
They found no parakeets in the tree hollow, but Connor wasn’t discouraged.
Let’s wait awhile, he said. Maybe they’ll come back.
Bonni went to the horse, brought down his violin case.
Play for me, she said. I want to dance.
The instrument wailed under the flick of his bow. She kicked off her shoes and let down her hair, wheeling and bobbing on the riverbank. Her face shone; sweat gathered in the shallow valley between her breasts. She slid the loops of her dress from her shoulders, her nipples berry-firm under the sun. She drew him toward her, her hands on his wrists. She unbuttoned his shirt. When it fell, she saw the purple storms of bruise over his ribs and kidneys.
She drew him into the green river, as if into healing waters.
CHAPTER 20
“You think she’ll put out?”
“I ain’t really considered it.”
Granny just looked at him, her mouth flat.
“They cut off your leg, son, not your pecker.”
“Jesus God,” said Rory. “I know good-and-well what they did and didn’t.”
“Well, you ain’t been laid since coming home.”
“How in the hell would you know?”
“You wouldn’t be so ornery you had.”
“I ain’t ornery.”
Granny sucked her teeth, squinting at his red-riled face. It was Thursday, dusk, and the bullbats were out, lone silhouettes over the purple meadow that surrounded the house.
“The hell you ain’t.”
“Only because you’re riling me.”
“Let me tell you something: one that don’t put out ain’t only a waste of time, it’s a unnatural phenomenon.”
“Jesus God.”
“There you have it. Them Christers like to lock they little pussies up tight, keep your pecker a-hunt like a witching rod. Want you to marry them first. Hell, would you buy a car you ain’t test-drove it yet?”
Rory bolted upright from his rocker, clapped his hands over his ears.
“I can’t hear you. Really I can’t.”
“Oh, you heard me, all right.”
Rory stared up at the haint-blue ceiling of the porch.
“I got to go.”
“Go where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.”
“Well, go on, then, wherever you got to go. Ain’t no skin off my nose.”
“I will.”
He tromped off the porch, heading for the car. She called after him.
“Don’t wed ’em till they spread ’em, son. There’s words to live by. Any girl wants Jesus in her more than you, something ain’t right.”
“Jesus God,” she could hear him muttering. “Jesus God.”
He got in the Ford and fired the engine and swung in a circle back down the drive. Granny watched him go, smiling to herself. She didn’t know this girl, no. But she knew her boy. Sometimes he needed a little prompting.
* * *
Rory idled past the Adderholt house—a foreman’s bungalow, white and tidy in the mill-workers’ section of town. He parked down the block, then walked back toward the house, hands in his pockets, as if he were just another worker from the mill ho-humming his way home. But his hands were fists in his pockets, his breath short. His heart thundered like a bloody stormcloud against the wall of his sternum, lightning searing through his veins. There did not seem to be enough air in the world. He wondered if he were going crazy. If he had been dosed or cursed or cast beneath a spell. If he were sick in his blood. He was shivering with desire.
The moon was the thinnest sickle now, carving itself from shadow. He stopped and leaned breathing against a telephone pole, casing the place. The house had a low-pitch roof, gabled, and a front porch that sat beneath a shingled overhang. Above the porch were two small, square-shaped windows set side-by-side. They gave onto an attic space, the glass panes glowing in the night.
Her room.
A pebble rolled between his fingers. That age-old suitor’s device. He was halfway across the yard when a dog came tearing around the corner of the house at speed, a mongrel beast with a black mask and purple tongue, a cage of white teeth. Rory juked one way, then lurched another. The beast bellied itself in the yard, legs spread, watching this absurd dance with a ragged smile. When it pounced, Rory gave it the calf of his wooden leg.
The dog drove its teeth into the limb. Rory dragged the beast stiff-legged and growling across the yard, making for the one-car garage at the house’s flank, praying the door was unlocked. If it wasn’t, he was going to cave it beneath his shoulder, to hell with the noise. Anything was better than the dog turning up tail-thumping on the girl’s porch with his leg for a trophy, or else burying it somewhere on the grounds like a bone.
He twisted the knob and the door gave and he tumbled into the darkness, kicking back the dog with his good foot while he slammed home the door. The beast whined and scratched. Rory sat spraddle-legged on the floor, breathing hard. He pulled up his pantleg. The maple calf was scored and furrowed in a dozen places, ravaged. He shied to think of the gashes those teeth would have made in true meat.
Small blessings.
The darkness was absolute, the windows papered, and he stood slowly into the cavelike space. He spread his arms out to either side and twisted a slow circle to find his bearings. The dog sniffed back and forth along the bottom of the door, hearing him move.
Rory’s fingers found something smooth and round, the size of a skull. Now others. Wooden heads, faceless, each adorned with a hat. His hands found the fabric orchids of cloches, the feathers of fascinators, the veils of pillboxes. Now something else. A hard corner, covered in a sheet. He stepped toward it, spreading his arms to the question. He hand-shaped the machine from the darkness, a steel ghost rising beneath the sheet. A car of another era. Stubby hood and upright cab, shaped like a man’s top hat. The wheel hubs were octagonal, with letters cast on their faces. He knelt down, remembering his lighter, and thumbed a flame. A bouncing orb of orange light. The initials DB on the wheel hub. Dodge Brothers. A Prohibition-era coupe with a 35-horse motor, nearly twice that of a Ford of the same era. He wondered if it was stock under the hood.
He bet not.
The flame turned blue and waned, winked out. The darkness came back in a rush. He ground the thumbwheel again, again. Only sparks. He stood upright into the returned dark, too quickly, and felt dizzied. The blood swam from his eyes in silver threads and the ground tilted beneath him, out of plumb; he cast out a hand for balance. His palm pushed a can from the shelf, and he heard it crash on the floor as he landed alongside it.
The sound that followed, he would never forget it. A serpent’s rattle, that perfect frequency of threat, eons in the making, came echoing from inside a tin lard can. The sound amplified to something modern, machinelike, a new and terrible weapon, like the machine gun of some war yet to come. Now others joined in, who knew how many. The little garage alive with their anger, a thousand maddened marbles. Each serpent speaking the same message to him, the only one they knew: I am death I am death I am death.
A ripple in the dark. He scrambled to the door, flattening his back against the wood. He could feel the beast through the thin pine, the barreled ribs quivering with lust. He tried to find a quiet place inside himself, an attic of calm. He closed his eyes. The temple of stone.
The door fell open behind him; he fell flat on his
back in the yard. He held out his palm, as if that would calm the red fury of the dog, stop the coming teeth. Instead he found himself looking up a woman’s shift, a pale gleam of panties cradled between her thighs.
Christine.
She stepped back. The dog sat beside her, whining through an open mouth, waiting for permission to dismember him.
“House.”
The dog dropped its head and slunk toward the porch. Christine’s arms were crossed under her breasts, her hip kicked out. Her eyes had that catlike glow.
“How’d you find me?” he asked.
“How couldn’t I? You got Ornias all worked up.”
“Orn-yus? The dog?”
“The snake.”
She stepped over him into the garage, silent on her bare feet, and pulled the chain of an overhead bulb. A weak yellow light splashed across the garage. There were hats everywhere, sitting on mounts and hanging along the walls. A wide, sawhorse table piled with scrolls of fabric and felt. Cut dresses and neckties. Paisleys and flowers and stripes. Shears of various sizes hung from hooks behind the table, and rolls of framing wire.
“I could hear him from the house,” she said. “Rattling.”
In the middle of the floor lay the lard can, quiet now. It had a piece of tape on it. ORNIAS, it read. She picked it up, arms outstretched, as if she were handling a live depth charge.
“What kind is he?”
“Eastern diamondback. He’s Daddy’s favorite.”
“‘Favorite’? There’s a word I never heard applied to a rattlesnake.”
She raised up on her toes to place the can back on the shelf. There was a row of them, lined up like munitions in the belly of a ship. The back of her shift displayed a dagger of bare skin, her spine studding through a valley of flesh. He watched the muscles of her upper back ball and slide as if of a mind themselves.
“You work in here, with them?”
She threw her chin over her shoulder, her eyes alight.
“They ain’t such bad company, long as nobody knocks them off the shelf.”
“It wasn’t my first choice for an entrance.”
