Let's No One Get Hurt_A Novel

by Jon Pineda

  * * *

  He didn’t tell me my mother had been released months earlier. I think he was trying to protect me, though I had already seen the letter from the facility. More medical bills came to the house, too. I left them untouched. Packets from a law office would arrive, and I just did what my father asked. I stacked them in piles and left them unopened next to the growing stack of catalogs.

  * * *

  At night, he would read aloud from his pile of overdue library books. He was excited when he discovered a sheaf of onionskin pages my mother had typed up, was frantic when he found the corresponding handwritten notes. For the longest time, he thought she might actually come back for the work she had done. He gave up his own research and began to compile more for hers.

  * * *

  Those times when he passed out, I studied my mother’s handwriting. The loops made me think of sitting on a pier. I was my mother as a girl watching the sky. As for my father, I didn’t know what he was thinking. Some nights I would sit in my room and listen to my mother’s words in his mouth. I told myself I wasn’t going to fall apart. I was just going to turn something off inside me. Marianne Moore licked my face. I translated her gesture into “Everything is going to be fine, Pearl.” But I couldn’t write it down because that would have been a lie.

  * * *

  Mason and I don’t talk for a week, and that’s fine by me. Dox and my father took out Dox’s boat and dragged a net in hopes of catching some puppy drum. Dox was upset to have used the gas with nothing to show for it, and so he went into town, busked for a few hours, and made enough to buy them another bottle.

  * * *

  My father acts different around me now, like I’ve done something terrible to myself. At night Dox seems stuck on playing “Drown,” and I sit by the open window and listen to the slide.

  I try to see the river out there and can do it if the moon lets me, if there aren’t clouds. Fritter is slowly spinning in his room. I picture him floating in a river of his own making. I try not to think about the monstrous fish swimming in the dark, and how, if it’s alive, it shouldn’t be.

  * * *

  My father goes off walking. He takes Marianne Moore with him when he does, but they come back eventually, both intact. I tell myself as long as this lasts, this isn’t such a bad life. Tomorrow I’ll go to Mason’s and pretend like nothing’s happened, like everything’s copacetic.

  * * *

  We lie in bed. The sheets smell like chemicals. They are meant to smell like flowers.

  “You don’t understand,” Mason says.

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “They want to erase us.”

  “Erase us?”

  “Like we never existed.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Hey, are you hungry?”

  “That’s it? I tell you there are people who want you gone, wiped off the face of the earth, and all you can say is ‘Okay’?”

  “Fine, let’s get a little more precise here,” I say. “Who is this us you’re talking about?”

  “You and me. Duh.”

  “So they want to make it so it’s like you and I never existed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not seeing that as such a bad thing.”

  “Yeah, right,” he says. “Wait, are you being serious?”

  THIS TIME IT’S REESE THAT grabs the assault rifle and steps up to the line marked in the field. He says it would be cool if his father used this at the next reenactment. “Can you even imagine?” Reese starts whistling “Dixie.”

  Fifty or so paces from us, the flies had put random stools and small tables in a row. If I squint, it looks like someone made a living room in the middle of nowhere.

  Mason hands me a wooden crate filled with old vases and empty soda-pop bottles. “Do me a favor and go set these up out there.”

  Reese promises he won’t hit me.

  I expect Wythe to laugh the loudest, but he just eyes my legs, like he’s trying to draw a bead on them.

  * * *

  I place the crate on the ground and reach for the vases first. Some of them are already chipped, but most are whole. I line them up. There are buttercups next to the crate. I pull some and drop a few in each vase. I do the same with the bottles.

  When I turn around to head back, the flies are standing shoulder to shoulder, their arms crossed in front of their chests. The only one that isn’t is Reese, and that’s because he’s aiming the rifle right at me.

  * * *

  I stand next to Mason.

  “Took you long enough,” Wythe says. “Playing house?”

  “Leave her alone,” Mason says, and I can’t believe it.

  But the moment doesn’t last. Reese lets loose and sprays my good work. I watch how something is clearly there one minute and isn’t the next. The wood shatters with the glass. Never mind the flowers.

  “That was fucked,” Wythe yells.

  The flies find their voices and chortle.

  * * *

  When they’ve had enough, Everett talks about taking out his father’s boat again. They’ll get some beers and sandwiches. They’ll find an area that shallows and have some others meet them out there, where they’ll tie the boats together and make a big floating mess of a party.

  “Does that sound like fun?” Wythe says to me.

  “I guess so.”

  He laughs. I already know I’m not invited.

  WE TAKE ON WATER. I start scooping with coffee cans and shorn gallon milk jugs, scraping the bottom of Dox’s boat. I wish my father and I had never taken it out. I fill and pour, fill and pour. Water keeps coming in a steady stream, though. I follow it back to where my father is leaning on the stern and one of the joints just below the clamped-on Evinrude buckles. As if it were waiting for me to witness the fracturing, it splits, and this seam of the river pushes inward and begins to weigh us down further.

  “Can we make it?” I stare at the shore.

  My father shakes his head. He frowns. The boards of the stern finally give way, and the motor drops, submerges fully. The plugs are wet now and useless. Above it hovers a quick, bitter cloud of smoke.

  * * *

  One thing my mother once said was to never leave a boat. It was her uncle’s advice from when she was a girl. You can turn the boat so that it’s hull side up. That makes it easier to spot. My father tries to loosen the motor’s clamp. He’s dunking for apples, but the boat doesn’t care. It keeps dropping. It wouldn’t matter anyway. We’re not rich enough for the coast guard to come looking for us.

  * * *

  The river wants to reach us and keeps filling the boat. We’re waist high in rising water. The coffee cans float and the milk jugs float upright, but the net, bunched like fabric, goes down. The rest of the boat goes down after it.

  I manage to hold on to one of the oars and set the stringer of croaker on top of it. My father surfaces in a rush of bubbles. His nostrils flare, and he takes half of the sky inside him.

  “No use,” he says.

  “Is it gone?”

  “It’s gone.”

  I don’t know which way is closest to the shore, but my father starts bobbing up and down, spinning slowly in a circle. He squints and covers his eyes each time he reaches his highest point.

  “I can see the bridge,” he says.

  My heart sinks. I remember the bridge. I thought we were closer to the inlet.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll make it.”

  “I hate that bridge.”

  “I hate it, too.”

  We leave it at that.

  I LET HIM LEAD THE WAY, but soon I’m kicking alongside him. I keep looking from side to side, scanning the water.

  “What are you looking for, Pearl?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Probably better that way.”

  “Yeah.”

  We keep a steady pace until I stop.

  “Cramp?” he says.

  “Let’s just float here for a second.”


  I grab the back of my right leg and knead my hamstring.

  “Come here,” he says. “Here.”

  My father pulls me to him. I put my arm over his chest. He’s going to carry me. I want to cry because I can feel the deep breaths as he holds them. We float toward the shore. I try to keep all images of bull sharks out of my mind. They’re the kind that can move between salt water and freshwater. They have it in them to live anywhere. Maybe that could be my favorite animal.

  * * *

  By the time we reach to where we can stand, it is early evening. The sky has started to dim. There are so many trees it’s hard to tell where we are, but my father looks around and then I see his horse teeth.

  “Might want to throw them back.” He points at the croaker. “If any are still alive.”

  “How are your legs?”

  “Pins and needles, but it’s going away.”

  “What do we tell Dox about the boat?”

  “The truth,” my father says. “That it was a beautiful piece of shit.”

  “He’ll say it was working when we left.”

  “Let him put it in a song. I don’t care.”

  AFTER MASON FINISHES, we lie in bed. I close my eyes. My heart is still going. Out of the blue, he asks me if I’ll be starting school this fall. I grunt, but he doesn’t laugh. He says, “Wythe thinks we should use the field for a party next month, bring out a generator and invite some bands, but I don’t know.”

  “What field?”

  “You know what field. Our field.”

  “I didn’t know we had a field.”

  “Well, we do.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “It’s not sweet.”

  I turn over. I rest my hands and chin on his chest. His hair splays across the pillow and disappears against the white cotton pillowcase. If I blink, his body will fuse with the bed.

  “I was just thinking,” I say. “It could be our first official date.”

  Mason snorts. “Hardly.”

  “You can be that way, but it could.”

  “You mean it could be if I asked you.”

  “Then ask me.”

  “I’m not asking you.”

  “What about when school starts back up? Won’t there be some kind of homecoming dance? I imagine there are lots of dances.”

  “Listen to you.”

  “Well, aren’t there?”

  “Yeah, you dress up. It’s all pretty stupid.”

  “That doesn’t sound stupid to me.”

  “God, don’t become a girl.”

  “What?”

  “Now you want to dress up and hang out. I didn’t think you liked my friends.”

  “I don’t like them, but I don’t hate them. Plus, I wouldn’t be hanging out with them. Not really.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I would be with you. And by the way, I am a girl, so fuck off.”

  “Tranquila, mi corazón. Tranquila.”

  I put weight on his breastbone just to do it. His chest still rises and sinks.

  “Last I checked you didn’t own a dress.” He smirks.

  “I own a dress.”

  His expression doesn’t change. “You don’t.”

  “You could buy me one.”

  “I’m not buying you a dress.”

  “I could make one then.”

  “Good one, Cinderella.”

  “If I make one, would you take me?”

  “Are you even listening to yourself?” The lenses of his Wayfarers are black paint. “Here, get up for a second. I can’t breathe. It’s hard to breathe when you’re on me like this.”

  * * *

  I move off him. He stands up on the bed and stares down at me. There’s so much white hair under and around his crotch. It looks like he sat on a clump of corn silk. He steps off the mattress and walks over to one of the cameras. He adjusts the lens and then hits a button and the corner glows red. I pull the end of the sheet up to my neck and keep my fists bunched.

  “I tell you what,” Mason says, off-camera. “Why don’t you do this. Why don’t you make an argument for why I should take you as a date. But you have to give it to me. I mean, really give it to me, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  I DON’T FEEL LIKE I should have to answer the question, but I do. I start telling him as he stands there behind the camera. I talk about how my father and I live and how we don’t have much. I watch him get hard as I talk. He looks down suddenly, as if unaware of his body. He spits in his hand and rubs it all over.

  I tell him about the blue cat I caught and skinned, and how it fought out of my grasp to vanish into the river. I keep talking, telling him how slippery it was. I start pleading my case even more. I tell him I love it here, in this very room. That he lets me clean myself in the shower, that he feeds me, that he’s so, so big, even though he isn’t. That’s when he closes his eyes.

  * * *

  I go on and tell him what makes me so special. I’m a word in a poem. I’m a thing my parents fought over more than once, just to get it right. Precision, Pearl. But he isn’t paying attention anymore. I’m just watching him. I don’t even know what I’ve been saying. When he comes, he almost hits himself under the chin. We laugh, and that’s when I get out bed and walk over to where he collapses on the floor. I wipe at his neck with my fingers, and I take those same fingers and pull them apart slowly, studying the viscous fluid, its stickiness. The slime is so much like the coating of the blue cat that I can’t stop rubbing it.

  * * *

  “Eat it,” he whispers.

  “You eat it.”

  He pulls away from me.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re fucked-up. I’m not eating it.”

  “Why should I have to be the one to eat it?”

  “Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. You love it.”

  “I do?”

  “That’s right.”

  I stare up at the skylights. They glow above us.

  * * *

  “I’m not sure I love it,” I say.

  “All women love it.”

  “I’m not sure all women love it.”

  I want him to stop talking, but he can’t help himself.

  “If you’re a real woman,” he says, laughing, “then you’d love it.”

  “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

  I have to cup my hand now, to keep it all there.

  “You’ve seen the same videos as me,” he says.

  It all comes back to what we’ve seen.

  “Those were lies,” I say.

  The camera is recording an empty bed.

  I lean over to him like I’m going to kiss him and, instead, wipe my hand on his chest.

  * * *

  “What the fuck was that for?” Mason says.

  “It belongs to you. I’m just giving it back.”

  “I didn’t want it back.”

  I laugh now. “You should taste it at least.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Don’t you want to know what you taste like?”

  “Why are you acting like this, Pearl?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. All crazy.”

  * * *

  He wants us to take a shower together, but I won’t now. I climb back into bed and cover myself with the sheet. I hide my face.

  “Turn off the camera,” I say.

  “I will after we fuck.” He leaves the camera on as he walks into the bathroom. I hear the water start up.

  He’s no longer Mason. He’s Main Boy. That’s who he’s always been.

  I get dressed.

  * * *

  While Main Boy’s still in the shower, I sneak into his father’s study. I take down the fly rod and grab the creel and a pack of flies. I leave the house and sprint to where I’ve stashed my dirt bike in the woods.

  “Fuck the dance,” I keep singing in my head.

/>   The dirt bike sings back.

  WHEN I GET HOME, FRITTER is waiting for me on the back porch. The pickup is off to the side of the boathouse, idling near the gutted washing machines.

  “Where’ve you been?” Fritter stares at the fly rod.

  “Nowhere.”

  “That’s a long time to be nowhere.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Get in the truck, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “It’s Marianne Moore, isn’t it? I knew it.”

  We climb in the cab. I put the things on the floorboard.

  “It’s not about her,” Fritter says as we reverse to a stop. He shifts it into gear and punches the gas. “It’s your father.”

  We fly down the road.

  “Is he okay?”

  “We don’t know yet. He’s not talking.”

  “Not talking?”

  “He can’t even make a sentence.”

  FRITTER SAYS DOX WAS THE one who saw him fall. Earlier, in the afternoon, my father was playing like he was going to dive off the pier again. He took a swig from his bottle and then went to the edge, bending his knees and fake bouncing like he was ready to launch out over the water. But Dox says something was off in my father’s face. He spins around and gives Dox this look like he doesn’t know where he is, like his face was hit head-on by a sadness, and his knees buckle and his eyes roll back, and though Dox calls for him, my father doesn’t look up, because he’s already collapsing into the air just above the river and then into the river itself.

  * * *

  In my mind, I can see it unfolding. Dox grows stronger right there and shoots across the yard, diving headfirst into the water, and though Dox is a small man, he grabs my father around the chest and puts him on his hip as he does a sidestroke back to the muddy bank. Fritter comes out of the house just as my father is having a seizure.

  Dox says, “Don’t touch him, son, let him finish,” and the two stand off to the side watching my father convulse while Dox coughs up water at the same time. Once my father’s body has stopped shaking, Dox checks his pulse and also his breathing. Though my father seems stable, he won’t wake up now. Dox starts crying and asks where I am. No one knows because I haven’t told them. Dox says, “Leave her a note so she’s not scared when she comes back and finds us gone,” and Fritter says he runs back inside, the adrenaline saving his bad ankles for the time being, and looks around and decides to paint a quick message in the white space above his mural—Don’t worry, we’re okay—then he runs out and lifts my father into the truck bed. They push aside some things to make room. Dox climbs in and cradles my father’s head. The three of them take off, driving this same route we’re on, miles and miles from the nearest hospital.