by Joy Williams
“Remember at the county fair last year, son, do you remember that tent we went into?”
“The Ambassadors from Mars were in that tent, Daddy.”
“Well, yeah, they was, but remember what was in there too was that individual who bit off hens’ heads.”
“I couldn’t see that too well, Daddy.”
“Well, that individual hates chickens like the way your momma hates us men now,” Duane said. “So forget momma, son. Be on your guard, but put her right out of your mind.”
Not long after Duane’s metaphorical chat, Teddy began breathing oddly and wetting the bed and waking in the night with terrible dreams of something gaunt and bearded, like the person he had almost seen in the tent, chuckling and tearing at him, snipping off his fingertips with its teeth and pulling his toes out with its teeth in the same way he had been taught by Liberty to get the meat out of an artichoke leaf. In the night he imagined his mother calling to him … Teddeee … Teddeee … a pale stretched-out skinny sound … calling and laughing and groaning to him.
He decided he needed a little magical protection, something he could devise for himself, so he began collecting the silvery paper bears. The phalanx of bears would protect him when he slept, when he could not be on guard. Their thick cold coats would muffle the sounds of chuckling and tearing and calling. They had already caused the dreams to change their nature, and he felt that when he had gathered enough of the bears, when the ceiling was complete, the terrible dreams would stop.
The bears marched glittering across the ceiling. Teddy was getting there, Liberty thought. He was almost there.
Teddy rushed into the room. “Liberty!” he said. “Do you know that during the Second World War, the Americans were going to use bat bombs against Japan? They were going to tie little cylinders filled with napalm to the bats’ chests and drop thousands of them from airplanes. They would be in hibernation, but as they fell from the planes they’d wake out of hibernation and then they’d go into buildings and houses and after a few hours they’d blow up.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I’m taking a course at the junior college called Oddities of War.” He took the egg out of his pocket and examined it. “Still with us,” he said. “You know, it’s hard to take care of an egg. A baby’s easier to watch than an egg, isn’t it, Liberty? It’s so much bigger. It would be hard to lose a baby. Some of the girls in my class have lost their eggs already. They think it’s a stupid assignment. Liberty, do you know that at that party Daddy and Janiella had, our pool got broken? Daddy broke it. He was just fooling around, Janiella said.”
“Let’s get out of here right away,” Liberty suggested.
“Yes!” Teddy said.
They waited at the end of the street for the bus. When the bus came, Clem leapt nimbly up the steps and settled himself on a seat beneath an advertisement for roach poison. Roaches were entering a Roach Motel, carrying little suitcases, little tennis racquets. They were wearing sunglasses and smiling.
The bus driver wore mirrored sunglasses, and there were comb marks in his hair. The big wheel moved smoothly through his hands. The bus driver loved his wheel. He would have taken it home at night with him if he could.
The only other passengers on the bus were three elderly women comparing the scenic designs on their bank checks. One had kittens, one had seashells, one had an old man and a small boy raking leaves together.
“The leaves are nice, but they don’t represent very well life in the South, what do you think?” the woman in the middle of the group said.
“Well, I’m from Cleveland,” the woman with the autumnal checks said. “I think it captures the nostalgia of a simpler time very nicely.”
“Oh, look at that dog,” the woman holding the seashell checks said.
One of her friends looked at Clem and frowned. “White dogs are so difficult to keep clean,” she said. “They show every speck of dirt. I had a white poodle once.” She placed her hand against her heart and rolled her eyes.
“I think Ethel has made the best choice,” the woman in the middle said, looking moodily at her own yellow kitten checks. “These shells are so refreshing. I can almost feel the ocean spray just looking at them.”
The three women stared at Clem. They began talking about their dead husbands.
“When Ernest passed away I was there by his side in the hospital and there was a napkin under his juice glass and I went out of the hospital with it,” Ethel said. “I left the room immediately with the napkin in my purse. It had sleigh bells printed on it because it was the holiday season.”
“Do you still have it?” the woman with the kitten checks said. She was a little embarrassed. She looked at her wrist-watch.
“I do,” Ethel whispered.
The woman from Cleveland gave a little grunt. “After my Harold died,” she said, “I found the most disturbing items at the bottom of his sock drawer.”
Her companions stirred in their seats.
“We always exchanged greeting cards on special occasions and there were cards there for the next five years, all signed by Harold and marked with the year. There were Christmas cards and Easter cards and Valentine’s Day cards and anniversary cards and birthday cards. And there was a get-well card for me in case, with no date on it …”—her eyes were fixed on Clem’s blank, benign ones—“… and Harold had written on it, ‘Hope you get your pep back soon.’ ”
Liberty and Clem and Teddy got off at the children and dogs’ beach. There was the nude homosexual beach, the nude heterosexual beach, the surfing beach and the shelling beach, as well as the beaches that belonged to the condos and the beaches that belonged to the rich. It was all the same thin, sparkling ribbon, but mind and predilection had divided the areas as effectively as shark-infested inlets. Liberty and Teddy sat on lumpy sand. There had been a sandcastle contest there the day before and the beach was humpy with failures. The sand structure contest had become a highly competitive annual event. Nonprofessionals and children were being edged out. Often there were fights. Grown men in madras bathing trunks could be observed circling one another, dying to throw a paralyzing punch. Slim, freckled ladies would be kicking. Plumper ladies, screaming. There were categories and prizes. Participants weren’t satisfied with making space platforms and cattle herds anymore. They busied themselves with cathedrals and Rolls-Royces. The winner yesterday had been The Last Supper. Judas had even had red hair.
The day was sunny, the water calm. Tiny, endless waves died upon the shore. Liberty suppressed visions of cruising barracudas, undertows, cramps, heart attacks, kidnappers bearing down in shining cigarette boats.
“Look, Clem,” Teddy said, “there’s Hermann.”
A Doberman acquaintance of Clem’s trotted by. He was a gorgeous-looking animal, but overbred. He had narcolepsy. In the midst of high-spirited play, sometimes even while eating, he would collapse as though hit on the head with a brick. He would have fallen asleep, deeply asleep. Who knows what he felt before he dropped? An indeterminate anxiety, a vague malaise, a sense of detachment, a revival of memories, a sense of harmony with the universe? He would wake up in a minute, several minutes perhaps. He had to take a tricyclic antidepressant daily so he wouldn’t get excited about things, perhaps triggering an attack. The Doberman ambled along and past them, his destination all about him.
“Poor Hermann,” Teddy said. He found some sticks and made a little awning with his T-shirt for the egg.
A woman in a large hat ran toward them down the beach, waving.
“There is someone who knows us,” Teddy said.
“Hi!” Sally Farrell said, falling down beside Liberty in a spray of sand. “Hi, everybody!” She kissed Liberty on the cheek. “I came down here to see the babies. I love the baby beach.”
Teddy looked at her with wide eyes.
“Don’t look at me too hard or you’ll wear me out,” Sally said, laughing.
He scrambled up and ran to the water.
“That didn’t scar
e him, did it?” Sally said, dismayed. “You’ve heard that before, haven’t you, you look at something too hard and you’ll wear it out? Maybe I don’t have a way with children. I brought my lunch. Do you want some of this sandwich? I’m making my own bread now, but I’m also trying to lose some weight. You know, I want to do different things these days.”
Sally exhibited her sandwich. Shredded carrots and a few raisins lay between two large pieces of underdone bread. The bread was damp and pale, as though it had seen something terrible.
“Sally,” Liberty said. “How are you, Sally? How’s JJ?” She felt guilty that she had not kept up with the troubles of Sally and JJ.
JJ was a retired movie stuntman who owned the Gator Bar. During his career he had broken his right leg three times, his left leg half a dozen times and his back and his jaw bone twice each. He had been a highly respected stuntman. He was a tumbler and a horseman and did cars and motorcycles and helicopters, but he liked fire gags the best. He had a muscular, battered body and a big, well-formed head. He loved his bar, which was cool, dim and loud. The walls were covered with framed stills of incredible stunts. To garrulous regular patrons like Charlie, JJ would speak about skill and pride and bravery. The two of them would yell and shout about meeting Death man to man, cojónes to cojónes, about triumphant exits. JJ Farrell had grand plans for Death. Then he had a stroke. The light went out only to flicker back on again. JJ’s grand plans for Death went right down the pipe … Sally had been running the bar for the last month ever since JJ’s stroke. They’d been married for three months now.
“Well, I had all my moles taken off, notice?” Sally pushed her pleasant square face forward and waggled it. “Remember how I used to worry all the time about those moles? I didn’t have a worry in the world back then except those silly moles and they turned out to be nothing. Six big nothings. JJ’s back from Haiti. He went over there for the herbs and the voodoo, but the herbs and the voodoo didn’t work. Still, he’s better. He’s a lot better than he was when you saw him in the hospital. Remember that! The guy on the other side of the curtain had cancer of the corneas. Cancer of the corneas, can you imagine! That hospital is so overcrowded. They send tourists someplace else now, they won’t even let them in. But JJ’s got his looks back. He doesn’t say much and he can’t use one leg and one arm, but the amazing thing is he’s got this permanent erection. He is just engorged all the time … I mean even when I help him out of the bathtub … especially when I help him out of the bathtub.…” Sally patted Liberty’s hand.
“I’m sorry I disappeared on you, Sally. I didn’t know how to help.”
“We haven’t seen you and Willie for a long time,” she said without offense. “But what could you have done? There was nothing you could have done. You know what I did all those weeks I was waiting on JJ in the hospital? I colored. I bought all these coloring books and I really went to town. I’d like to show them to you sometime. I’m not saying they’re art but they’re awfully good … It’s a pretty day to be on the beach, isn’t it? Do you know what JJ told me they do in Haiti? People offer to drown for a dollar or two. They pretend to drown.”
Liberty raised herself up on her elbows so she could better see Teddy in the water.
“They thrash around and then sink and then come up and float on their faces,” Sally said. “I mean I imagine that’s what happens. And people give them money.”
“Stay close in, honey,” Liberty called to Teddy.
Sally looked around them at all the children playing on the shore. “I’ve got to have some babies,” Sally said. “I love babies. I still want to get my babies from JJ, but who knows, I might have to get them from a man I don’t even know yet.” She made a fist and punched her thigh, annoyed. “JJ hasn’t lost his touch, but I must admit not much has happened lately. He gets confused. He says that sometimes when he feels my breast he doesn’t know what it is. Sometimes his brain says honeydew melon, you know, sometimes it says gearshift knob. But he’s better. Maybe he’ll get even better. When he got the stroke he was at the bar making somebody a piña colada. God, I hate piña coladas. I was at home and I remember the exact moment it happened. This big picture fell off the wall. There was something else too, this feeling. I knew something was happening. There was no reason for that picture to fall off the wall. Then the phone rang. Have I told you this before?”
“That’s all right,” Liberty said.
In the sky, a solitary pink cloud hurried by. It seemed just the type of cloud that would appear in answer to an unspoken prayer, dumping rain precipitously, for example, on a single, parched tree in a forest. The cloud hurried over the Gulf.
“It’s always a telephone call these days,” Sally said. She sniffled, having sad memories. She was remembering JJ. she remembered him jumping from a helicopter onto a speeding train. Actually, she had never seen this, he had told her about it. JJ was considerably older than Sally. She had been ten years old when he had done this stunt. She had been in school, learning about participles, about how light went around corners. She remembered JJ falling, his back full of arrows, JJ leaping from bridges, JJ burning up in a German tank. She was eleven or twelve when her husband was doing these things. She had no idea he existed. JJ loved to fall. She remembered him falling. He loved to die. He had different expressions for different deaths. How did light go around corners? Sally wondered.
“When I first saw JJ,” Sally said, “I got hot all over. Fate’s got that kind of heat, don’t you think? I was just burning up.” She nibbled on her sandwich, then made a face at it and buried it in the sand. “Do you know what his initials stand for? They don’t stand for anything. His parents just gave him those two lone letters for a name. I always thought they stood for something, but they’re just two lone letters. I learned that in the hospital. Actually, what I know for sure about JJ you could put in a cup.”
The small pink cloud Liberty had noticed earlier seemed to have reversed direction and was now hovering directly overhead. Liberty had the unsettling feeling that the cloud was about to rain blood on them. This was not unheard of, but it usually happened in places like Calabria or Tennessee. Homer had even written about it, although, of course, Homer had been blind. Liberty remained still, barely breathing, until the terrible feeling passed.
Black Hermann, believing himself invisible, stalked a seagull on the white sand. The gull looked at him with scorn.
Sally adjusted her hat. She wore a long, gauzy dress. She was a neat, round young woman, a measurer, hopeful. The small brown egg beneath its makeshift awning suddenly appeared to her. “What’s that!” she cried.
“Teddy’s taking a sex-education course,” Liberty said. “He has to take care of an egg for a week.”
“That’s an egg! Well of course it’s an egg, isn’t it. What will they think up next.” Her hand veered from touching it and fell lightly on Liberty’s leg. She began patting Liberty’s leg. “I like you a lot, did you know that? You’re reserved. I always liked it when you dropped in at the bar. I got so I looked forward to it. Didn’t we have some nice chats? I love the way your pelvic bones stick up like that. I think women are more genuine than men, don’t you think so?” She moved her hand up to Liberty’s stomach. Liberty removed the hand and placed it against Sally’s own stomach. The hand had taken on certain properties. Both women looked at it. Clem looked at it.
Sally blushed. “I like you. That isn’t nothing, you know. Are we friends? What are friends? I’m sorry,” she said, “all I can think about lately is sex. JJ was the most sexual man I’d ever known, but I don’t know him any more. How much do you know about Willie? He’s smart, isn’t he. Does it make sex any different?”
Liberty laughed.
“I just love that reserve of yours. I always felt Willie was sexual too, but he has sort of a malignant sexuality, do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t, no,” Liberty said.
“Sure, you know what I mean. Sort of like Pete. You know Pete. Poor Pete.”
“Wh
at’s Pete doing these days?” Liberty asked.
Sally’s brother, Pete, had been a Marine in Vietnam. There would be a Club Med in Vietnam one of these days. People would pay for drinks with beads, fuck strangers and dance beneath whispering palms. Pete had been eighteen when he had gone to Vietnam and now he was over forty. His specialty had been defoliating jungles, turning ancient forests into pancakes. He had been happy enough at the time, but now he was terribly unhappy.
“He’s still suffering a little environmental dislocation,” Sally said. “He thinks he’s still there or something. ‘Here is here, Pete,’ I keep telling him. JJ used to try to talk to him too, but it didn’t do any good. He’s pretty aggressive even after all these years. He had a job for a while at Skippy’s Cars which he really liked, but he lost it. He was the guy on the television commercial. Did you ever see it? It was wild.”
“The man in the white tuxedo,” Liberty said.
The man in the white tuxedo ran back and forth in front of a row of cars. The hoods of the cars were raised and pennants flew from the antennae. I want your attention! the man screamed. Give me your attention! He took something out of his pocket and threw it in the window of an unassuming green sedan, and the sedan blew up. Orange flames climbed skyward. What do I have to do to get your attention, the man, Pete, screamed. Do I have to hit you over the head with a shovel! Sweat poured down his face. I can make you the best deal in town!
“Pete loved that job,” Sally said. “But now he works in a juice bar. Why don’t you come down there with me sometime and say hello. We could get a glass of juice.”
“Oh, certainly,” Liberty said. Someday, absolutely, she thought, Pete was going to pour Liquid Plumber into the papaya essence and rock the retirement community by terminating two dozen social-security checks simultaneously.
