by Ann Pancake
“Nuh-uh,” he says.
“You’re sure?”
Mish nods sharp, twice. “Only Toyoda’s a Tacoma.”
Daddy slaps the star on his back. “Okay. Good. Good job, Mish.”
They roll through the field, the house swelling in the windshield. Bob is gone. Daddy drives to the right to straddle the road ruts, the wash of grass against metal, the car cold now because Daddy left the door open while they were looking for the Four-Runner. As the house grows larger, clearer, the heaviness drains out of Mish, leaving something worse. When it’s summer, Daddy lets him sleep in the car seat, he leaves the door open for air, and sometimes Mish doesn’t even wake up. But in the winter, he has to go inside. The car pitches into a deep hole, and Mish is thrown forward, and he thinks to reach behind him, to the star, but the car seat straps bind him. Then Daddy’s carrying him, crunching through frozen mud to planks across cinderblocks that climb to the front door, and when the planks wobble, Daddy stumbles to the side, Mish scissors his legs around Daddy’s waist, Daddy finds his balance, and the door opens.
The party explodes in Mish’s face. Laughter without fun, heat without warmth, smoke without smile, every party he’s ever entered, and the grown-up bodies packed upright and reeling, an October cornfield, rattle and wind. “Hey, Steve!” somebody yells, then somebody else calls it, too, and Daddy grins and yells back. The top half of Tater swims out of the crowd, him brandishing a quart-sized Sheetz cup. “Mish! How you doing?” He strips Mish from Daddy and squashes him to his soft chest, Tater in a T-shirt odored of cigarettes and mildew, and the cup’s straw pokes Mish’s head and whatever is in it splashes a little on Mish. “Ricky’s got it,” Tater says, and Daddy says, “Where’s he at?” and Tater says, “He’ll be here.” Past Tater, Mish sees a silver Christmas tree on a table, listing to one side, drooped with brassy, teardrop ornaments, each exactly the same.
He is set on his feet into the cornfield of legs. No, not corn. Brush, thicket, thorn, briar, the legs pressing, posting, buckling, shifting, and Mish clings to Daddy’s jeans pocket to avoid being swept down. “Who’s this?” The lady stoops to Mish, and her face reminds Mish of the file Daddy uses to sharpen the chainsaw.
“This is my son, Mish.”
“Mish?” This is what they always say.
“That’s what I call him. He’s named after me, my initials smashed together.”
“Oh, isn’t he handsome?” They always say that, too, unless they say “cute.”
“Yeah, looks just like me when I was little.”
“What did Santa Claus bring you, Mish?”
“He can’t talk very good. I’m the only one who understands him.” Daddy ruffles Mish’s hair. Mish ducks. “You got someplace he can sleep?”
Then Daddy is steering him by his shoulders through more legs. There’s not even room enough for Daddy to pick him back up. Mish stumbles around mud-splattered work boots, plasticky high heels, tennis shoes with mismatched shoestrings, Christmas gift clogs. He watches the feet, his head lowered, to save him from belts and butts, zippers and belly fat. Hands reach down to pet him—“Ahhh, cute!”—Mish fighting the urge to bite Daddy’s fingers, until they’re in a skinny hall, passing a vibrating washing machine, and finally entering a back room where Daddy swings Mish onto a coat-heaped bed. He pulls Mish out of the Dallas Cowboys coat and wraps the coat around him like a blanket. Then he sheds his own coat and spreads that over Mish, too.
“Will he fall off?” the file lady asks.
“Nah, nah. He’s three years old.”
Daddy leans in as if to kiss Mish good night. Mish snakes an arm out of the coats, snatches Daddy’s Nike cap, and flings it as hard as he can. One of Daddy’s hands flies to his head, the other tomahawks out to intercept the cap. It misses. And there is Daddy’s head, naked. The smashed wads of his balding hair like damp caterpillars crawling his scalp, the patchy bare places in between. The file lady giggles at Mish, and Daddy sweeps his cap off the floor, jams it on his head, and shoots Mish a scarlet look. Mish shoots the look right back.
“Sleep tight, cutie.” The file lady’s voice.
The door shuts, ugly music damps by a third. Mish slings Daddy’s reeking coat off himself. He rolls out of the Dallas Cowboys one. Then, his brow hard, his teeth steeled, him holding tight to the Cowboys coat, he windmills his arms and his legs to make a clearing for himself. Furious snow-angel, the foreign coats rolling and bunching away, some of them tumbling onto the floor. Mish’s breath comes hard and coarse, and he picks up Daddy’s coat and heaves it over the bed edge, too. Then he seizes the Cowboys coat in both hands and clashes it together, nylon on nylon, drowning the horrible music, the coat louder, louder, the coat hollering, screaming. And then Mish stops. His breath comes more quietly. He turns on his side and hugs the coat towards him. He opens his eyes and there’s the label where Granma inked his name. M-I-S-H. Matthew Steven Halliday, Junior.
It wasn’t long after he began Head Start the fall before that Kenzie started the game. “Let’s play school!” She’d grab Mish and push him onto the couch. “I’m the speech therapist! You’re the kid!” Her hands pinning his shoulders, one knee on his thigh, Mish squirming, while Kenzie swooped in and out of his face. “Repeat!” in-swoop, “After!” out-swoop, “Me!” in. Then she would hover, inches from his nose, her breath odored of cold, boiled potatoes. “Ma!” she’d bleat. Then, her tongue tipping out and sucking back, thick. “Thew! Ma-Thew!” Mish wiggling, grunting, shoving her away. “Ma! Thew!” Twisting his head to the side, clamping tight his eyes. “Thew! Thew! Repeat!”
Mish reaches into his Dallas Cowboys pocket and touches the man there. It is Dash Incredible. Luke he dropped in the car. He holds Dash quietly in the pocket. He doesn’t bring him out into the room.
Suddenly, Mish is being arranged in the car seat again. He recognizes this from deep in a hole of sleep, and after the recognition, he sinks back, but then a knowing pricks him. He blinks, half-opens his eyes, closes them, reopens. And begins clambering up to awake. As he does, he reaches for the man in his pocket. But the man is not there. Daddy is blundering the seat straps, his hands revved to their highest, bumblebees, propellers, the buckles clacking, missing. His face so close to Mish’s that Mish can feel the heat off it, smell the salt of sweat. Then Mish feels that it’s not just the man who’s not there, the pocket isn’t there, either, and then Mish understands: the Dallas Cowboys coat is not there.
“Wheresh? Wheresh?”
He is swaddled in Daddy’s stinky jacket again. He sees that Daddy’s flannel is gone too, him in only his long-john shirt, the yellowed armpits ripped, the sleeves pushed up, and Mish hears himself say, “Wheresh my Dawash Cowboysh coat?”
Daddy is slamming Mish’s door and reeling around the front of the Cavalier, one hand scratching vicious the back of his neck, then he drops in the driver’s seat. Mish shakes his way out of Daddy’s coat and throws his head around, sweeps his arms, hunting the dark car insides for his own coat, and he asks again, panic sparking his voice, “Wheresh my Dawash Cowboysh coat?”
Daddy taps a close-parked car, then another, cusses, pulls forward, tries again. Now he’s gaping over his shoulder so he can see behind him better, showing his face to Mish, but Daddy doesn’t look at him. “Calm down, Mish. I had to loan it to Ricky for a few days. Then you’ll get it right back.”
“Wicky? Who Wicky?”
Daddy escapes the mess of cars and throws it into Drive. “Ricky needed it for a few days. Then you’ll get it back.” They are bouncing down the dirt road, and Mish twists in his seat, the house, little, littler, littler behind them, and then, Mish remembers. Dash is in the coat pocket.
“Go ba ge i! Go ba ge i!”
He is shrieking, his words unraveled to how he talked a year ago, two years ago, Mish hears it but cannot help it. The dirt road levels and they plunge even faster, and Mish smacks the seat beside him, searching for the fallen Luke Skywalker, but hits only Dorito crumbs. Then Mish feels the pressing in h
is chest. The cave begins to creak. The black to leak. Mish grabs hard, pushes back, and when he shouts next, it is a command, no whine in it. “Take me back to Mommysh!”
At the hard top, Daddy jets left without braking.
“Take me back to Mommysh!”
“Mish,” Daddy says, “are you a baby or a man?”
“Take me!”
“I can’t, Mish.” One front tire drifts onto the shoulder, snags on the pavement lip, the ripping sound of asphalt against rubber, and Daddy jerks it back up, the car swerving into the left lane, then sailing back right. “This is how the judge did it. I’ve told you a thousand times.” He talks the after-party talk, each word deliberate, an egg laid. “It’s not my decision. You’re with me from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. We have to do what the judge says.”
“I doan care wha da judge saysh!”
“Well, I do. It’s the law.” Now Daddy does look at Mish, his I’m-a-grown-up-and-you’re-not look. He turns back to the windshield, his forefinger massaging the corner of his eye. “C’mon, Mish.” Now he’s lightened his tone, a phony breeze in it. “We’ll go in to Burger King tomorrow and get you that man.”
Mish’s lips are sucked tight in his mouth. His fists are clenched, his arms, too, his stomach, all of him seizing against it, pushing back. But the cave—gradually, excruciatingly—opens. Mish’s chest slow-cleaving, the stones cracking, the walls unsealing, until, like always, the first part can’t help but spill out. The first part not even plain pain, but the warm wave of pity, and not even for himself, pity for the coat and for Dash, left behind. But once the pity’s free, nothing can stop what it’s blocked. The grief batter-rams Mish’s chest and leaps torrenting out.
The G.I. Joe left at Ponderosa, the Superman shoes outgrown, Kingy run away and the monstrous stench from the ditch, Mommy breaking up with Aaron who liked to play Spiderman, Daddy gone a long time away so the doctors could help him. Daddy gone a long time away. The loss is a tidal wave and Mish strains against it, shoulder to boulder, leaning, gasping, his fingertips shredding from the rough of the rock. Crybaby. Stop that right now (no woman, no cry. No woman, no cry). Until, finally, Mish feels it. The breach swings back. The cave, heavily, slowly, closing its walls. The rift shrinking from yawn, to gap, to slit to, finally, nothing at all. Mish breathes. As his heart shuts, all that black loss is anviled, smelted. Into a tower of flame-colored mad. And the right words come.
“I’m gonna tell,” Mish says. His voice is even. Only he can feel the buzz underneath.
Daddy hesitates. It’s less than a second, but Mish hears it.
“You’re gonna tell what?”
“Dat you sto dat money fom Pappy.” On “you stole,” Mish feels a spurt of fear, exhilarating. Not of Daddy, but himself.
Daddy watches the road. Mish watches Daddy. “Pappy owed me that money, Mish. For that wood I cut. I just didn’t want to interrupt his nap.”
“Dat you sto Gransh contacsh.” The cave is sealed completely now, and Mish feels himself growing bigger, even without the coat.
Daddy is quiet. Then, “I’m not going to argue with you, Mish.”
“Dat you sto my Dawash Cowboysh coat.”
Daddy whips his head around, and the bare anger in his face pumps Mish even bigger. Mish almost smiles, and Daddy sputters, in the tone of the wrongly accused that works so well on Gran. “Mish, I did not steal the coat. I loaned it to Ricky. I’ll get it back when I get paid at the end of the week.”
“You doan eben hab a job!”
Daddy is watching the road again, each hand clamped on its side of the wheel, his shoulders squared. The model of the safe driver. Trees along the road scroll up gray then disappear. When Daddy speaks this time, his voice is flat again.
“This is between you and me, Mish. It’s between men. Babies tell Mommy and Granma.” Daddy glances over his shoulder. “You keep our secret . . . I’ll get you an iPod.” He nods. “Yeah, how about that, buddy? Like Carlin’s.”
Mish sits motionless in his car seat. It has begun to snow, the flakes driving against the windshield haphazard, bewildered. Then Mish feels, there in the front seat, Quickshiver inside Daddy ease down. Quickshiver drops his shoulders, unkinks his neck, loosens his knees, and lies down. And with each step Quickshiver unwinds, Mish flares a notch higher. Breath to Mish’s ember, gas to his blaze. Now both Quickshiver and Daddy think it is over, Mish bought off by a lie, and the cave again bulges, Mish squeezing with all his power back. Daddy is ejecting the Bob tape, jabbing in his new one, and right when he is lifting his finger to PLAY, Mish says, “I’m gonna tell Uncle Dabid.”
Daddy’s hand freezes, finger extended. For one cold moment, everything hangs in air.
Then Daddy is slamming on the brakes, Mish shot through with gratification and fear, a hah! and uh-oh, all at once, the car yanked onto the shoulder. With a thud-crunch Daddy throws the gear into Park and twists all the way around, his knee against the back of the front seat, in his eyes a full white circle around each iris, Mish sees them clear. Daddy squeezes the front seat back.
“Mish, listen.” He speaks from between the rotted teeth, the others gritted. “You listen.” He moistens his lips. “Even if you tell Uncle David, let’s say you sit right down and tell him.” Daddy’s eyes grip Mish’s. “Do you think he’d understand anything you said?”
Daddy’s eyes hold Mish’s. The dry screek of the windshield wipers on too fast, the snow too thin. Behind Daddy, the snow spins, scattershot, eddying, like it’s not even down it’s falling, not even sky it comes from. Finally Daddy turns. Inside Mish, a hundred things scutter away into dark. Daddy drives.
DADDY CARRIES MISH, wound in the canvas coat, through the black kitchen and into the blacker front room, tripping over Mish’s men. He totes him up the stairs. He sets Mish down in the cold bedroom, switches on the bedside lamp, and clatters over a stack of CDs. Mish lets the coat spill off him and onto the floor, then, like every Saturday night, he follows Daddy to the bathroom. Both of them wary around the floor hole, Mish pees first, as he always does, Daddy waiting, then Mish waits for Daddy. Back in the bedroom, Daddy shakes out the old Gran covers on the unmade bed, tugs off Mish’s shoes, and scoots him under. Daddy drops his cap on the floor and strips off his jeans, his heel catching in the folds and almost bringing him down. Then he crawls under and pulls Mish to him.
“I love you, Mish,” he mumbles. He kisses Mish, hard, on his forehead. He reaches over and snaps off the lamp.
Mish lies still, not touching Daddy. He tries to turn himself into a stick on the very edge of the bed. But it is cold in the bedroom, the bed a twin, the blankets thin, Daddy warm. Mish draws a little closer, still careful not to touch him.
“Shit,” Daddy says.
He flops over, clicks the lamp, and swings his bare legs over the side of the bed. Rummaging in the junk on the bedside stand, he comes up with a grubby contact case. He pinches the contacts from his eyes and slides them into the case. Then he worms back under the covers and after a single blast of outbreath, begins to snore. The lamp blares on.
Mish squeezes his eyes shut. The light bleeds through. He opens them. The lamp’s plastic body is shaped like a lamb. It was Daddy and Uncle David’s when they were little boys. Mish watches it. Then he widens his gaze to the photos curling on their tacks on the wall. Various Mishes from baby on up. Daddy snores louder.
Mish slips out of bed. He pads into the hall, the floor numbing his feet. He stops at the top of the steps, where the bedroom lamp throws light before the staircase diminishes into dark. “Ma,” he whispers. Then he concentrates, his brow hard. “Yew.”
Mish sighs. He licks the roof of his mouth. “Ma,” he says again, full-voiced. Then he lifts his tongue, positions it between his teeth like Kenzie does, and sucks it back. “Foo,” it says.
Mish drops down one step. He tries again. “Ma. Foo.” One more step, and he tries it quick, all run together, a little spit flying, “Ma-foo.”
He blows out his breath, kno
cks his head gently against the wall, and descends another step. And this time he doesn’t even try. He just opens his mouth. Matthew.
He stops. Not quite believing, he tries again. Matthew. Although his ear still doubts, his mind hears it clear. Matthew, he practices in his head. Matthew. Matthew, once for each cold stair, until he steps into the room where all his men wait.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MY DEEP GRATITUDE to the friends and editors who helped me with these stories: Lia Purpura, Jane Vandenburgh, Stephen Corey, Patty Boyd, Philip Terman, Carol Tiebout, Laura Long, Ellen Cooper, Jackson Connor, Tracy Oberg-Connor, Sam Pancake, Nancy Morgan, Elea Carey, Suzanne Berne, Melissa Delbridge, Anna Schachner, R.T. Smith, Mary Rockcastle, Christina Thompson, and Jennifer Drew. A special thank you to Jack Shoemaker for his ongoing faith in my work. And to Caitlin Sullivan, first reader always, greatest thanks of all, for everything.
