Breaking and Entering

by Joy Williams

  2

  It was not yet light. The heavy, fish-scented air felt like a curtain falling, instead of rising, on the day. On the road to Buttonwood Beach, just before the macadam gave out, was a twenty-four-hour grocery and tackle store. There was a gas pump and phone booth in front of the store and a set of swings and some animal cages to the rear. By the pump was a large camper with a sedan in tow. Inside were a man, a woman, and a little thing in a terry-cloth playsuit eating a Ring Ding.

  There were lots of things for sale inside—rods and lures, dirty greeting cards, food and wine, and souvenirs of all kinds including stuffed and varnished possums wired to pieces of driftwood. The possum creations were made by the owner, who had one arm. Whenever people asked him how he had lost the other one, he said he had lost it as a prank.

  When Liberty went into the store the man who owned the camper was reading loudly from a printed tag tied by a rubber band to the varnished possum’s tail.

  “ ’Because possums have spurred the imagination of man over a period of four centuries, a great deal of folklore exists concerning this common little animal. The forked penis of the possum is doubtless responsible for the long-held belief that copulation took place through the female’s nostrils, these openings being the only obvious dual orifice!”

  “Argghh,” his wife said.

  “I’ve got to buy one of these things for Woody,” the man said. He read on. “Since the mother was frequently seen pushing her snout into the pouch shortly before delivery, country people believed she was blowing the babies out of her nose into it!” The man looked up, baring his teeth. “Is this for Woody or is this for Woody!” he yelled.

  The owner leered at them.

  Liberty bought a container of coffee and two cheese sandwiches. Behind the counter, the schedule for the high school football team was posted. On the left side of the poster it said HERE, on the right, THERE. Beside the playing schedule was a flyer advertising the services of something called CounselLine, a tape service for the distraught. LET MR. BOBBY HELP YOU the flyer said. The tapes were categorized and numbered, and there were dozens of them available. There were commentaries on fear—fear of women, men, foreigners, heights, disease, success—and on loneliness, rage, alcoholism, depression and unwanted things. New topics would be added all the time, CounselLine stated. The number to call was the same as Liberty’s except for the final digit, which was a three instead of a four.

  “How long have these things been up?” Liberty asked.

  “ ’Bout a week,” the owner said. “I tell you, I use it all the time. That Mr. Bobby’s been so helpful I’d give him my other arm if he asked for it.” He flailed his good arm around to show it off.

  “Can you think of anybody other than Woody?” the man was asking his wife. “How about Diane? Diane’s got a sense of humor.”

  “Diane’s got a big nose,” the woman said. She leaned over and nibbled soft Ring Ding off her child’s fingers.

  “I’d like to give my dog some water,” Liberty said to the store’s owner. “Do you have a bowl I could use?”

  “Sure I do,” he said. He gestured with the shoulder his missing arm hung from. “There’s a faucet and a couple pans out back where the deer is at.”

  Clem was lying beneath one of the swings in a furrow caused by children kicking the earth away. The morning was brightening and Liberty could see the cluster of cages, which seemed to be emerging step by step from the dark. Clem ate his cheese sandwiches. The family walked out of the store and headed toward their camper, the man swinging his possum basket.

  “This is such a sick idea,” he said happily. “I love this sort of crud. It’s what this state is all about.”

  The cages were empty except for one that held a single deer. The deer was a delicate pecan color and shared its home with a great many flies and a hubcap full of chopped-up watermelon. The pans by the water spigot were pie pans from The Blue Gate. Liberty filled one with water. BE THOU PREPARED, it said. Clem drank, and then they walked toward the road, but Liberty hesitated by the phone booth, which had another CounselLine flyer glued to it. The phone booth was like one anywhere with its books of names dangling on a chain, an obscure stain defacing its curved plastic. She dropped in a coin and began dialing her own number. It was like calling a grave, she thought, thinking of those people who buried a phone with their loved one in case an error was perceived by the dead. She shortened the last digit by one. The phone rang once, then twice.

  “Yes,” a woman’s voice said. “Which number please.”

  “What?” Liberty said.

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  “I’m sorry,” Liberty said.

  “Did you call CounselLine by error?”

  “No,” Liberty said.

  “I could give you our most popular number if you don’t have a specific one in mind,” the woman said.

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re glad you called CounselLine,” the woman said.

  A moth fluttered against Clem’s head. He snapped at it. The moth flew into his open mouth.

  “Grief,” a man’s voice said into Liberty’s ear. “Dealing with grief.” There was a pause. “One can experience grief not only over the loss of a loved one, but over the loss of an opportunity. Even the loss of one’s youth, or a pet. We should not be ashamed of our grief. We have survived much before arriving at grief. We have survived fear, for grief is beyond fear. It is even probably difficult for you to remember what it was like to be fearful or apprehensive. All that was but a state of mind, and it is behind you now, as is the long night of sorrow with its twin moons of sadness and regret. Fear, sadness, regret, even anguish, which so terrify the spirit, are all behind you. You have lived through that long night that you thought impossible to live through, and have entered the dawn of a new day where you have been embraced by grief.”

  There was another long pause suggesting that this was not a recording at all, but an intimate personal dialogue depending upon response, query and agreement. There were timed silences, like those on tapes giving instruction in a foreign language, giving one the moment to assimilate and repeat, but what was one supposed to do in the silent interstices of this running monologue on grief—accede? protest? scream?

  “So we can consider grief to be almost our friend, but a friend, like all friends, who will not be with us forever.” The voice was a black man’s voice. “Grief will provide for you. You should be grateful to grief.” It was a river voice, laden with promise. “How best can I describe grief to you? I want to describe it in a picture sort of way.” There was another beat of silence. “What I want you to do is think for a moment of those quilted rugs that moving companies wrap around furniture for long trips in their vans. And I would like you to imagine a particularly fine piece of furniture. And a soiled, heavy, ugly cover draped around it. Now imagine that this piece of fine furniture being transported from one place to another is your …”—the voice hesitated—“… your heart, and that the cover is grief. The grief protects you in a way for the journey that must be made. For the time before grief is far away and in a different place than the time after grief, and the journey seems long. Indeed, sometimes the journey seems endless, and it is a frightful, difficult journey as we know, yet we know too in our heart that this must be so, that the journey cannot be easy or comfortable lest its significance be lost. The journey will end when it is time for the journey to end. And grief will be cast off.”

  The voice dipped and soared like something hunting in an endless sky over a secretly teeming field. Then it dropped. It became light, confident, intimate.

  “Mr. Bobby loves you,” the voice said. “Mr. Bobby has heard it all and he still loves you, each and every one. Now if you want to help Mr. Bobby reach others, lonely as yourself, just send on a little something. It need not be cash. You all know where Mr. Bobby is … Don’t be frightened at the silence that will follow now. Mr. Bobby is just on the other side of it and you can reach him anytime.”

 
The man with one arm was standing midway between the store and the phone booth, squinting at her.

  “Ain’t he something,” he called. “You can get hooked on Mr. Bobby.”

  “I don’t believe I want to,” Liberty said. “There are too many hooks around as it is.”

  “I like to think of him as just being a voice, you know, not attached to nothing. You wouldn’t want to swap that dog there for my deer, would you? I need me a dog out here.”

  “No,” Liberty said.

  “Deer’s name is Elfina. She’s survived three assassination attempts by asshole hunters. Sure you don’t want to swap? She’s lucky. She’ll bring you luck.”

  The deer stood watching them from the cage, flicking its gnat-gnawed ears.

  “What’s that dog’s name?”

  “Clem.”

  “Not much of a name there. Where you off to anyway?”

  “We’re off for a swim.” It seemed unlikely. She started out of the booth.

  “I can’t believe you ain’t moved by Mr. Bobby. Here, try another one. My treat. The number of your choice.” He removed a coin carefully from his pocket.

  Liberty dropped the coin in, dialed. “Thirty-nine,” she said.

  “A later one!” he crowed. “Mr. Bobby really hits his stride with the later ones!”

  With a click, the voice began. “Wanting,” it said lazily. “You got Wanting and Loving here. You want what you don’t got, which is the definition of wanting, and you love your clean kitchen floor don’t you or you love your blow and you want that clean kitchen floor to be cleaner still and you want more blow, and Mr. Bobby is not going to be the one to pardon you this nasty wanting and false loving. You don’t call Mr. Bobby for pardon, do you, no you don’t. You call Mr. Bobby because you suspect he’s got the ways and means to your damaged and enfeebled heart, and you know that Mr. Bobby don’t want a thing, just what you want to give—”

  “Lemme hear now!” the man cried. He used the empty space of his gone arm artfully. Liberty felt its weight as he pushed past and grabbed the receiver from her. His face was full of expectation.

  Liberty and Clem walked along the path through palmetto scrub to Buttonwood Beach. It was a pretty path, but toilet paper dangled from branches and there were several abandoned campsites with their nests of charred stumps and blackened cans. It was quiet in the pine and palmetto wood and the path was empty now, though obviously well traveled. Ahead, the Gulf was like a window placed between the dusty thatch of palms. The Gulf seemed swollen the same color as the sky and the beach lightened and darkened as long waves fell upon it then drew back. Liberty stared toward the Pass almost a mile away. It was narrow but fast-running, and from where she stood the severance between the Keys was barely visible. They startled plovers and terns working the shore into flight as they moved along, but a great blue heron standing hunched near the Pass remained motionless. As they came closer to it, Liberty saw that it was emaciated, fishing line tangled around its neck and head. The pale blue monofilament lay like fine cracks across its beak, and dangled down its neck in the long feathers there. Small twigs were caught in the line’s snarled end, even a shard of dark shell. The heron turned slowly and fixed Liberty with its yellow eye, but still it did not move. Liberty stopped, then inched forward. The heron shifted weakly, dipping its head and raising one leg to claw briefly at its beak.

  A smaller heron, a green one, zigzagged toward them, then alarmed, veered chattering away. The blue stood like sticks a child had carelessly arranged. She should pass it by, she knew, for she possessed nothing with which to free it, yet she pulled her sweatshirt off and held it only for an instant before she rushed the bird, throwing the shirt over its head, clutching at its wings, trying to enclose its length in her arms. Its beak felt like an iron striking her with heat, its long bones felt like brittle grasses. She smelled the nutty, parched smell of dying on it as it flailed at her, making hoarse, barking sounds. The shovel of its chest glistened and was hot beneath her hands. She pushed its wings back close to its body, dragging the sweatshirt away from its head to bind them, and pressed the bird as lightly as she could against the cold sand. She leaned against its breast which rose in scatterings, like pebbles being thrown, and began picking away at the line with her fingers. She looked at the flecks of darkness in the bird’s bright eyes and felt that the moment was already over, that she was remembering it, that this was the moment that there had been just before it had become hopeless. The baggy line dug painfully into her fingers as she tried to snap it, then it suddenly broke. The heron’s head struggled back, the feathers beneath the broken line’s turnings frayed and damp. She was able to unravel several feet of the line, but there was so much of it, webbed and snarled like the matter glimpsed in some dreadful drain. Suddenly, the heron lunged, bringing its beak up and across Liberty’s cheek, tearing out of her grasp. Her hand slipped over its slick back, and then, with a last surge of strength, it was flying, its legs dangling, nicking the water, its long neck extended, trailing still the crippling line. Liberty held her hand to her face. She expected blood but there was no blood. The heron flew to Long Key.

  She remembered a poem she knew as a child about an injured hawk who was able to fly only in his dreams. The child in her remembered everything.

  She felt sleepy with failure and watched the rolling waters of the Pass without enthusiasm. The mist of early morning was rising, and she could see the silver Ts of docks on the sheltered side of Long Key. A red boathouse glimmered on water that looked flat and wooden.

  There were scratches on Liberty’s arms, embalmed by drying salt, and her lips tasted of salt. Clem lay in streamers of railroad vine close by. When she stood up, he rose and trotted toward her.

  They stepped into the water, let the water suck them down. Liberty opened her eyes and saw the emptiness of the water moving her. She couldn’t see herself, but felt her limbs aching dully, her eyes burning. Her body held her back, she felt its stubborn weight. It’s all a misunderstanding, she thought, like almost everything. The speed of the water was terrific. Her shoulder ground against sand and then she was flung upward and floating in calm yet moving water curving toward Long Key. She wanted to fix on something, a tree, the way the land fell, something that would remind her of something else. It had not been too far a distance, but she felt somewhat ahead of her body. Her body seemed to be behind her, still holding hard to nothing in the quick water. This is remarkable, she thought, the air, the muted sun … Her body caught her with a jolt. She coughed and shaking the water from her eyes, she saw Clem already waiting for her on the shore.

  Liberty climbed from the water and sat for a moment, catching her breath. She wore only a bathing suit and a pair of shorts. She took the shorts off and wrung the water from them. Her arms and face stung from the scratches the heron had made. She felt afraid, and it was not a belated fear of the bird’s fierce beak but of the moment that had brought it to be doomed on such a fine morning, the moment that is the fatal one, which lies close and cold next to each thing’s heart.

  Down the beach, she saw Willie, his trousers billowing out with the wind. He had his arms raised. She realized she hadn’t been thinking about Willie, only about reaching him. When she touched him, he kissed her. We are lovers, Liberty thought. We love. His kiss pushed against her like the wind and the sun. Then he pulled away and looked at her, saying nothing, but she saw herself as though she were fifteen years old again and listening to him, nodding her head, agreeing. She saw herself from somewhere, watching this girl in love, this sun-burnt girl, her ear close to this boy’s moving lips. One should listen. And yet … No, one should listen. It is one’s duty, one’s gift to listen.

  Watching left her feeling sad and weary. She couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to. She remembered too much.

  A low and rambling yellow house was behind a hump of dune over which a walkway of weathered boards was laid. They passed through a gated courtyard to the south where everything bloomed in profusion. The hibiscus were t
he size of dinner plates. Heavy brass wind chimes hung beneath the eaves, too heavy to stir in the wind that rustled the fronds of the Cuban Belly palms. Liberty touched one of the elaborate wind bells and it sounded dully. Behind the house, concealed from the road, was a curving, pebbled driveway. Each pebble seemed to have its place.

  “Where’s the truck?” Liberty asked.

  “I left the truck somewhere,” Willie said. “We don’t need the truck.”

  Willie smelled of hot weeds and soap. There was a silky look to him, as though he’d been born in a cocoon. He looked incorruptible.

  “You’re all scratched up,” Willie said, running his fingers across her arm. “You look thin. Have you been eating?”

  “Sure,” Liberty said. “Sure I’ve been eating. You look thin too.”

  “I need you. I need you to be with me.”

  “I need you too,” Liberty said.

  She was enchanted by him, she couldn’t look away. This was the long vacation in a rented world. This was their life.

  “I went into a lunchroom yesterday,” Willie said, “but before I could order, the woman sitting beside me at the counter started to choke. She was eating a piece of cherry pie. She had her children with her. They weren’t eating anything, they were watching her eat. She was a fat woman, perhaps the fattest woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Liberty raised her fingers to her throat. “You saved her from choking.” Willie saved people. There was nothing wrong with that. He covered, for a moment, their shadow with his own. And left them to the baffling light of days that should not have been.

  “It wasn’t difficult,” Willie said. “She didn’t choke. Then she wanted to talk. She told me she was crazy about space. She had only completed the tenth grade, but she had some knowledge about galaxies and moons. She was raising her children to be astronauts. One kid wanted to be an aquanaut, which, she told me, had brought her to the brink of despair more than once. The kids sat there and didn’t say a word. She kept the kids around primarily to remain ambulatory. She didn’t believe in the soul, she told me, but she believed in immortality in an oscillating universe. She believed in bounce and re-expansion and the separation of mind from matter. Her mind, she told me, was not the mind of an obese woman. She assured me she knew how it would all end. She said if more people loved a vacuum, the world would be a happier place.”