The New Black

by Richard Thomas

  The next morning his father pulled another dead branch down, so he had two poles now, like a skier.

  The boy watched him walk off into the bright snow, feeling ahead of himself with the poles. It made him look like a ragged, four-legged animal, one made more of legend than of skin and bone. The boy palmed some snow into his mouth and held it there until it melted.

  This time his father was only gone thirty minutes. He’d had to cross the creek again. Slaney was cradled against his body.

  “He was just standing there,” the father said, pouring the meat out for the boy. “Like he was waiting for me.”

  “He knows we need him,” the boy said.

  One thing he no longer had to do was dab the blood off the meat before eating it. Another was swallow before chewing.

  That night his father staggered out into the snow and threw up, then fell down into it. The boy pretended not to see, held his eyes closed when his father came back.

  The following morning he told his father not to go out again, not today.

  “But Slaney,” his father said.

  “I’m not hungry,” the boy lied.

  The day after that he was, though. It was the day the storm broke. The woods were perfectly still. Birds were even moving from tree to tree again, talking to each other.

  In his head, the boy told Slaney to be closer, to not keep being on the other side of the creek, but the boy’s father came back wet to the hip again. His whole frontside was bloodstained now, from hunting, and eating.

  The boy scooped the meat into his mouth, watched his father try to sit in one place. Finally he couldn’t, fell over on his side. The boy finished eating and curled up against him, only woke when he heard voices, scratchy like on a radio.

  He sat up and the voices went away.

  On the crust of snow, now, since no more had fallen, was Slaney’s skin. The boy crawled out to it, studied it, wasn’t sure how Slaney could be out there already, reforming, all its muscle growing back, and be here too. But maybe it only worked if you didn’t watch.

  The boy scooped snow onto the blood-matted coat, curled up by his father again. All that day, his father didn’t wake, but he wasn’t really sleeping either.

  That night, when the snow was melting more, running into their dry spot under the tree, the boy saw little pads of ice out past Slaney. They were footprints, places where the snow had packed down under a boot, into a column. Now that column wasn’t melting as fast as the rest.

  Instead of going in a line to the creek, these tracks cut straight across.

  The boy squatted over them, looked the direction they were maybe going.

  When he stood, there was a tearing sound. The seat of his pants had stuck to his calf while he’d been squatting. It was blood. The boy fell back, pulled his pants down to see if it had come from him.

  When it hadn’t, he looked back to his father, then just sat in the snow again, his arms around his knees, rocking back and forth.

  “Slaney, Slaney,” he chanted. Not to eat him again, but just to hold him.

  Sometime that night—it was clear, soundless—a flashlight found him, pinned him to the ground.

  “Slaney?” he said, looking up into the yellow beam.

  The man in the flannel was breathing too hard to talk into his radio the right way. He lifted the boy up, and the boy said it again: “Slaney.”

  “What?” the man asked.

  The boy didn’t say anything then.

  The other men found the boy’s father curled under the tree. When they cut his pants away to understand where the blood was coming from, the boy looked away, the lower lids of his eyes pushing up into his field of vision. Over the years it would come to be one of his mannerisms, a stare that might suggest thoughtfulness to a potential employer, but right then, sitting with a blanket and his first cup of coffee, waiting for a helicopter, it had just been a way of blurring the tree his father was still sleeping under.

  Watching like that—both holding his breath and trying not to focus—when the boy’s father finally stood, he was an unsteady smear against the evergreen. And then the boy had to look.

  Somehow, using his poles as crutches, the boy’s father was walking, his head slung low between his shoulders, his poles reaching out before him like feelers.

  When he lurched out from the under the tree, the boy drew his breath in.

  The father’s pants were tatters now, and his legs too, where he’d been carving off the rabbit meat, stuffing it into the same skin again and again. The father pulled his lower lip into his mouth, nodded once to the boy, then stuck one of his poles into the ground before him, pulled himself towards it, then repeated the complicated process, pulling himself deeper into the woods.

  “Where’s he going?” one of the men asked.

  The boy nodded, understood, his father retreating into the trees for the last time, having to move his legs from the hip now, like things, and the boy answered—Hunting—then ran back from the helicopter they were dragging him into, to dig in the snow just past their tree, but there was nothing there. Just coldness. His own numb fingers.

  “What’s he saying?” one of the men asked.

  The boy stopped, closed his eyes, tried to hear it too, his own voice, then let the men pull him out of the snow, into the world of houses and bank loans and, finally, job interviews. Because they were wearing gloves, though, or because it was cold and their fingers were numb too, they weren’t able to pull all of him from the woods that day. They couldn’t tell that an important part of him was still there, sitting under a blanket, watching his father move across the snow, the poles just extensions of his arms, the boy holding his lips tight against each other. Because it would have been a betrayal, he hadn’t let himself throw up what his father had given him, not then, and not years later, when the man across the desk palms a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth all at once, then holds his hand there to make sure none get away, leans forward a bit for the boy to explain what he’s written for a name here on this application.

  Slade?

  Slake?

  Slather, slavery?

  What the boy does here, what he’s just now realizing he should have been doing all along, is reach across, delicately thump the man’s cheek, and then pretend not to see past the office, out the window, to the small brown rabbit in the flowers, watching.

  Soon enough it’ll be white.

  The boy smiles.

  Some woods, they’re big enough you never find your way out.

  Stephen Graham Jones

  is the author of eleven novels and three collections. Most recent are The Last Final Girl, Growing Up Dead in Texas, and Zombie Bake-Off. Up soon are Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth, The Least of My Scars, and The Gospel of Z. Jones has some hundred and fifty stories published, many collected in best of the year annuals. He’s been a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, a Bram Stoker Award finalist, a Colorado Book Award finalist, and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction and an NEA fellowship in fiction. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU Boulder and UCR–Palm Desert. More at demontheory.net or twitter.com/SGJ72.

  IT’S AGAINST THE LAW TO FEED THE DUCKS

  PAUL TREMBLAY

  Saturday

  Ninety plus degrees, hours of relentless getaway traffic on the interstate, then the bumps and curves of rural route 25 as late afternoon melts into early evening, and it’s the fourth time Danny asks the question.

  “Daddy, are you lost again?”

  Tom says, “I know where we’re going, buddy. Trust me. We’re almost there.”

  Dotted lines and bleached pavement give way to a dirt path that roughly invades the woods. Danny watches his infant sister Beth sleep, all tucked into herself and looking like a new punctuation mark. Danny strains against his twisted shoulder harness. He needs to go pee but he holds it, remembering how Daddy didn’t say any mad words but sighed and brea
thed all heavy the last time he asked to stop for a pee break.

  Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know I was going to be five in September.”

  Ellen holds a finger to her chin and looks at the car’s ceiling for answers. “Are you going to be ten years old tomorrow?”

  “No. I will be five in September.”

  “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that, honey.”

  Tom and Ellen slip into a quick and just-the-facts discussion about what to do for dinner and whether or not they think Beth will sleep through the night. Danny learns more about his parents through these conversations, the ones they don’t think he’s listening to.

  It’s dark enough for headlights. Danny counts the blue bug-zappers as their car chugs along the dirt road. He gets to four.

  “Daddy, what kind of animals live in these woods?”

  “The usual. Raccoons, squirrels, birds.”

  “No, tell me dangerous animals.”

  “Coyotes, maybe bears.”

  Their car somehow finds the rented cottage and its gravel driveway between two rows of giant trees. Beth wakes screaming. Danny stays in the car while his parents unpack. He’s afraid of the bears. They don’t celebrate getting to the cottage like they were supposed to.

  Sunday

  They need a piece of magic yellow paper to go to Lake Winnipesauke. Danny likes to say the name of the lake inside his head. The beach is only a mile from their cottage and when they get there Danny puts the magic paper on the dashboard. He hopes the sun doesn’t melt it or turn it funny colors.

  Danny runs ahead. He’s all arms and legs, a marionette with tangled strings, just like Daddy. He claims a shady spot beneath a tree. He doesn’t know what kind of tree. Ellen and Beth come next. Beth can only say ‘Daddy’ and likes to give head butts. Tom is last, carrying the towels and shovels and pails and squirt-guns and food. Danny watches his parents set everything up. They know how to unfold things and they know where everything goes without having to ask questions, without having to talk to each other.

  Danny likes that his parents look younger than everybody else’s parents, even if they are old. Danny is a round face and big rubber ball cheeks, just like Mommy. Ellen has a tee shirt and shorts pulled over her bathing suit. She won’t take them off, even when she goes into the water. She says, “You need sun screen before you go anywhere, little boy.”

  Danny closes his eyes as she rubs it all in and everywhere. He’s had to wear it all summer long but he doesn’t understand what sun screen really means. Sun screen sounds like something that should be built onto their little vacation cottage.

  X

  Danny is disappointed with the magic beach because there are too many other people using it. They all get in his way when he runs on the sand, pretending to be Speed Boy. And the older kids are scary in the water. They thrash around like sharks.

  Lunch time. Danny sits at the picnic table next to their tree, eating and looking out over Winnipesauke. The White Mountains surround the bowl of the lake and in the lake there are swimmers, boats, buoys, and a raft. Danny wants to go with Daddy to the raft, but only when the scary older kids are gone. Danny says Winnipesauke, that magical word, into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It tastes good.

  A family of ducks comes out of the water. They must be afraid of the older kids too. They walk underneath his picnic table.

  Ellen says, “Ducks!” picks up Beth, and points her at the ducks. Beth’s bucket hat is over her eyes.

  Tom sits down next to Danny and throws a few scraps of bread on the sand. Danny does the same, taking pieces from his sandwich, mostly crust, but not chunks with a lot of peanut butter, he eats those. The ducks get mostly jelly chunks, and they swallow everything.

  Tom stops throwing bread and says, “Whoops. Sorry, pal. It’s against the law to feed the ducks.”

  He doesn’t know if Daddy is joking. Danny likes to laugh at his jokes. Jokes are powerful magic words because they make you laugh. But when he’s not sure if it’s a joke or not, Danny thinks life is too full of magic words.

  He laughs a little and says, “Good one, Daddy.” Danny is pleased with his answer, even if it’s wrong.

  “No really, it says so on that sign.” Tom points to a white sign with red letters nailed into their tree. Danny can’t read yet. He knows his letters but not how they fit together.

  Ellen says, “That’s weird. A state law against feeding the ducks?”

  Danny knows it’s not a joke. It is a law. The word law is scary, like the older kids in the water.

  Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know it was against the law to feed the ducks.”

  “Okay. So, I can just go order a pizza and some hotdogs for the ducks, right?”

  “No. You can’t feed the ducks. It’s against the law.”

  Danny eats the rest of his sandwich, swinging his feet beneath the picnic table bench. The scary older kids come out of the water and chase the ducks, even the babies. Danny wants to know why it’s not against the law to chase the ducks, but he doesn’t ask.

  X

  Their cottage has two bedrooms, but they sleep in the same bedroom because of the bears. Danny sleeps in the tallest bed. There’s a ceiling fan above him and after Daddy tells a story about Spider-man and dinosaurs, he has to duck to keep from getting a haircut. That’s Danny’s joke.

  Beth is asleep in her playpen. Everyone has to be quiet because of her.

  Danny is tired after a full day at the beach. His favorite part was holding onto Daddy’s neck while they swam out to the raft.

  Danny wakes up when his parents creep into the bedroom. He is happy they are keeping their promise. He falls back to sleep listening to them fill up the small bed by the door. He knows his parents would rather sleep in the other bedroom by themselves, but he doesn’t know why.

  X

  Danny wakes again. It’s that middle-of-the-night time his parents always talk about. He hears noises, but gets the sense he’s waking at the end of the noises. The noises are outside the cottage, echoing in the mountains. He hears thunder and lightning or a plane or a bunch of planes or a bunch of thunder and lightning and he is still convinced you can hear both thunder and lightning or he hears a bear’s roar or a bunch of bears’ roars or he hears the cottage’s toilet, which has the world’s loudest super-flush according to Daddy or he hears a bomb or a bunch of bombs, bombs are something he has only seen and heard in Spider-Man cartoons. Whatever the noises are, they are very far away and he has no magic words that will send his ears out that far. Danny falls back to sleep even though he doesn’t want to.

  Monday

  The beach lot is only half full. Ellen says, “Where is everybody?”

  Tom says, “I don’t know. Mondays are kind of funny days. Right, pal?”

  Danny nods and clutches the magic yellow paper and doesn’t care where everybody is because maybe this means Daddy and him can spend more time out on the raft.

  They get the same spot they had yesterday, next to the tree with its against-the-law sign. They dump their stuff and boldly spread it out. Beth and Ellen sit at the shore. Beth tries to eat sand and knocks her head into Ellen’s. Tom sits in the shade and reads a book. Danny takes advantage of the increased running room on the beach and turns into Speed Boy.

  By lunch, the beach population thins. No more young families around. There are some really old people with tree-bark skin and a few older kids around, but they are less scary because they look like they don’t know what to do. The lake is empty of boats and jet-skis. The ducks are still there, swimming and safe from renegade feeders.

  Tom swims to the raft with Danny’s arms wrapped tight around his neck. Somewhere in the middle of the lake, Tom says, “Stop kicking me!” Danny knows not to say I was trying to help you swim. Danny climbs up the raft ladder first, runs to the middle then slips, feet shooting out from beneath him, and he falls on a mat that feels l
ike moss. Tom yells. Don’t run, be careful, watch what you’re doing. Danny doesn’t hear the words, only what’s in his voice. They sit on the raft’s edge, dangling their legs and feet into the water. Daddy’s long legs go deeper.

  Tom takes a breath, the one that signals the end of something, and says, “It is kind of strange that hardly anybody is here.” He pats Danny’s head, so everything is okay.

  Danny nods. Commiserating, supporting, happy and grateful to be back in Daddy’s good graces. He’s also in his head, making up a face and body for a stranger named “Hardly Anybody.” He can’t decide if he should make Hardly Anybody magical or not.

  They wave at Mommy and Beth at the shore. Ellen’s wave is tired, like a sleeping bird. Ellen wears the same shirt and shorts over her bathing suit. Danny wonders how long it takes for his wave to make it across the water.

  X

  They leave the beach early. On the short drive back, Tom makes up a silly song that rhymes mountain peaks with butt-cheeks and it’s these Daddy-moments that make Danny love him so hard he’s afraid he’ll break something.

  Back at the cottage. Beth is asleep and Ellen dumps her in the playpen. Danny sits at the kitchen table and eats grapes because he was told to. Tom goes into the living room and turns on the TV. Danny listens to the voices but doesn’t hear what they say. But he hears Tom say a bad word, real quick, like he is surprised.

  “Ellen?” Tom jogs into the kitchen. “Where’s Mommy?” He doesn’t wait for Danny’s answer. Ellen comes out of the bathroom holding her mostly dry bathing suit and wearing a different set of tee shirt and shorts. Tom grabs her arm, whispers something, then pulls her into the living room, to the TV.

  “Hey, where did everybody go?” Danny says it like a joke, but there’s no punch line coming. He leaves his grapes, which he didn’t want to eat anyway, and tip-toes into the living room.

  His parents are huddled close to the TV, too close. If Danny was ever that close they’d tell him to move back. They’re both on their knees, Ellen with a hand over her mouth, holding something in, or maybe keeping something out. The TV volume is low and letters and words scroll by on the top and bottom of the screen and in the middle there’s a man in a tie and he is talking. He looks serious. That’s all Danny sees before Tom sees him.