Letting Loose the Hounds
Page 20
Walking toward that house it’s like I’m a ghost, floating, nothing but air. I can’t feel my feet touch the ground. I try not to think about what I’m doing, what I’m going to do. Once I’m within ten feet or so I can see that the house is a ram-shackle adobe affair, mud showing through holes in the stucco. Somebody has done their best to make the place look nice, the tiny, half-dead lawn cluttered with ceramic elves, ducks whose wings spin when the wind blows, birdbaths and plastic sunflowers.
I step up on the porch and give the screen door three good raps. A long, sick minute passes before I hear someone shuffling along the floor. The porch light clicks on, the door opens toward me and somebody leans half into the light.
It takes me a moment to recognize Calfred Pulsipher. Instead of the young man in the newspaper picture, or the even younger man I’ve seen in my father’s old yearbooks, this Calfred Pulsipher looks like he belongs in an old folk’s home. His hair is thin and colorless, his back bowed, his skin papery and stained with coffee-colored blotches. An oxygen tube, strapped around his head, feeds into both his nostrils. He’s pulling a wheeled tank behind him with one hand and in the other he’s holding a rusty sawed-off shotgun, pointed at my stomach.
The light blinds him for a moment and he squints at me, bracing the screen door with his elbow. We stand there like that, two feet apart, staring at each other, until his eyes suddenly go wide, his mouth opens slowly, forming a circle, and he says, “Oh.”
The gun slides out of his hand, bouncing off the threshold and clattering against the oxygen tank.
I can’t do anything but look from his right eye, which is locked on me, burning and wet, to his left, which is swiveling around in his head like a thing that’s got a mind of its own. His brows are pushed up and together and his mouth is opening and closing without any sound.
He takes one stumbling step toward me, arms out. One of his knees buckles under him and he grabs my shirt, pulling himself back up, leaning into me, reaching up and putting his arms around my shoulders. I can feel his whiskers on my neck and I don’t know if the strong, bitter smell of alcohol is coming from him or me. He holds his head against my collarbone, moving it back and forth, saying, “Oh, oh.”
It would be so easy, all I would have to do is return his embrace, crush him in my arms until his bones cracked and his worthless lungs gave out. But I can’t do it. I can’t. My whole body feels numb and my hands are at my sides, as heavy and useless as hub caps.
He hangs on me like that, until Jesus steps out of the shadows and pulls me away. Jesus leads me back towards the truck and I make it only ten steps or so until I fall forward, my whole body gone limp with shame and relief. I catch myself with my hands and begin coughing into the dirt, it’s like there are chunks of black matter dislodging themselves from deep inside, stuff that has been there forever is coming up, and I can’t stop, my stomach heaving, and I begin to weep. I can’t remember ever crying in my entire life, but I’m making up for it now, my sinuses burning with tears, my throat constricting on me, and I go like that, hacking and retching, unable to breathe, until I vomit violently into a clump of sagebrush.
Jesus stands over me, his hand on my back, and he says quietly, “Come on, Arshie. Get it up.”
He wipes off my mouth with his shirt, helps me to my feet, and with his arm locked in mine, we start again for the truck. I look back and the last thing I see is Calfred Pulsipher still standing in the light, like a man caught in the bright beam of a spaceship.
The ride home is nothing more than a dense fog moving past, and when we get back to the trailer Doug is in the front room, waddling around in the dark like some deformed duck, picking crumbs off the carpet. Jesus kicks him out of the way, and Doug goes flapping toward the kitchen, a few black feathers coming loose. Jesus sits me down on the couch and asks me if I want him to stay with me. I tell him to get his ass on home where his wife is waiting for him to finish the job he’d started and he is out the door in a heartbeat.
Richard appears in his bedroom doorway, wearing his camo-pajamas, his hair smashed against one side of his head. “Hey, Ms. Condley called again,” he says. “Sounds like you’re in a little trouble.”
“Ms. Condley can go to hell,” I say, not caring whether Richard notices my puffy eyes or the thickness in my voice. “And so can you, for that matter.”
Once Richard retreats to his room, I go and get Doug, who is sulking under the kitchen table, and take him outside. The sky has cleared and the stars are shining down and even though I’ve slept only a few minutes in the past few days, even though I’m exhausted and weak, there is still something inside me that needs to be released; I want to open up my lungs and shout like a maniac, wake everyone for miles. Instead, I take Doug in the crook of my arm and walk up the hill past the ranch house, which is glowing a faint, moonlit blue, all the way down to the mud pond where a few steers are standing around, rubbing their heads together. It’s become such a bright night there’s no difficulty at all in finding the anchor post, the one with my father’s initial. I squat down next to that post and bite into it, hard, right near the Q. I bite so hard the muscles in my jaw begin to burn and I come away with a taste in my mouth of wood and salt and dust. I stand up, holding Doug close, looking down at the indentations my teeth made and a feeling of pride and certainty rises up in me. There is no doubt in my mind: this is my place, it’s where I belong, and I’m here to stay.