"You cross my path again," she’d said, "you’ll regret it for certain. I’m worse than death.”
That’s what I told Classique: "They got lucky -- Dell’s meaner than death.”
I lay on my stomach beside the hole -- hands folded under my chin, the boa sandwiched in my palrns -- and related the entire episode. I mentioned that Dell had the boys unload their rifles, that she took their bullets and_their rabbits. And the boys were shaking and nervous the whole time. But Dell didn’t suck them. She just warned them with her froggy voice.
"You cross my path again-"
Then she let them go; they rushed from the footpath, bounding through the woods like deer, boots crackling on twigs, vanishing.
"And I’m probably invisible,” I said. "Dell didn’t see me, Classique, ‘cause I’m almost a ghost. I really think I am, don’t you?”
I stared into the hole, waiting for an answer that never came.
So I closed my eyes and sent psychic messages: You there? Can you hear me? Am I loud and clear?
Nothing except static, a far-off hiss.
I needed the radio. I could use the dial to find Classique, to tune her in. Then maybe I could remember my song. And she'd enjoy hearing me sing, a special broadcast just for her. She’d stay awake and listen. And she wouldn’t feel so lonely - my song would keep her warm in the hole.
15
Dickens came for me with a pocketful of bullets, and I thought he was the squirrel at first. I was upstairs and heard him stomping around below. And because I’d opened the front door that afternoon -- letting in fresh air, clearing out some of my father’s stink -- I was sure it was the squirrel in the living room, rummaging about, searching for crackers and peanut butter.
But when going downstairs to investigate, I found Dickens -- shirtless, in jeans and flip-flops -- standing in front of my father, gazing with the blue goggles on.
"Hi," I said, stepping up behind the leather chair.
He glanced at me, flinching. And I expected him to start hugging himself. But he didn”t.
"I’m sorry,” he began. "I better go -- I didn’t knock and that’s rude -- and it’s getting late already -- so I’ll go, okay?"
His fists tightened. He seemed like the squirrel, jittery and ready to dash for the door.
"You don’t have to go,” I told him.
"Oh," he said, nodding, "that’s good -- ’cause I was thinking you should play with me today, okay?”
"Okay,” I said.
And just then I wanted to ask if he’d rescue Classique. I was about to say that his skinny arms could stretch deep inside any hole in the world. But before I had the chance, he said, "Your daddy sleeps a lot. My momma does too. That’s all she ever does these days."
I tried imagining Dickens' mom, but Dell filled my mind instead; she was sleeping somewhere in that dim house, or sitting still in a chair, the hood and helmet resting on her lap.
Where was his mother?
"Is she a ghost?"
He shook his head.
"Not anymore, not really -- she’s just a dozer. She’s isn’t as pretty as your daddy. Her hair isn’t nice like his is.”
"It’s only fake,” I said. "Look-”
I reached over the chair and tugged on the bonnet and blond wig, lifting them a bit.
"That’s funny,” he said, flatly. "You fooled me ‘cause I didn’t know.”
"Not supposed to be funny," I replied, straightening the wig, smoothing the coils. "It was Classique’s idea anyway, it wasn’t my idea. And now she’s in the hole and I can’t get her.”
Dickens pinched his nostrils, fanned the air with a hand.
"He’s spoiled,” he said, his voice sounding nasally. "He must’ve been sleeping forever."
"He’s cuttin’ muffins is all."
"Oh. I guess that’s what it is, I guess. Whatever it is-"
Then he dug in a pocket, removing six bullets. He held them in his palm for me to see.
"I can feed the shark these," he said. "If you want, you can help me too. We can’t catch the shark with these but we can lure it. "
He let me hold one; -- gold-colored, rounded at the tip, longer than my fingers. I rubbed the bottom of the shell, remembering how Dell made the hunters unload their rifles. I figured she’d given the bullets to Dickens -- or maybe he stole them when she wasn’t looking.
"All right,” I said, "I'll help you, but you have to help me later. You have to rescue my friend.”
"I don’t know,” he said. "I probably can’t do it."
"It won’t be hard, I promise. She’s in trouble. She’ll get l hurt bad if you can’t save her.”
"Maybe she’s hurt already."
"Or she’s dying. She’s farther than the ocean, I think.”
"Uh-oh,” he said. "That’s farther than the moon."
"And you’re better than a stick or a rake -- you’re the captain!”
"Yeah, I am. I’ve got my own submarine."
"I know."
"Her name is Lisa."
"I know. Will you help me?"
"Can we feed the shark? I’d like to do that. I’d like to play with you too."
"Then you’ll rescue my friend."
Dickens shrugged.
"If you’ll show me what to do," he said, "in case I don’t understand everything about it. "
"Yes."
He popped his knuckles and sucked his lip and tilted his head and sighed.
"Okay,” he finally said, moving toward me. "Okay,” putting his slender hand in my hand.
And off we went -- through the front door, along the porch -- escaping the flatulence of What Rocks. Across the yard. Into the sorghum. Swishing among the grass. Climbing to the tracks. Moving into the tideland, going underwater. Dickens couldn’t have known this -- I was an octopus, he was swimming like a dolphin. If I told him, he might’ve panicked. Then he’d drown for certain and Classique would never be saved. So I didn’t mention that we were beneath the sea, or that there were men miles above us fishing.
Dickens said, "You get three."
Three bullets, clanking in my palm.
We crouched on the tracks, downwind from Lisa and the flattened pennies.
"Put them here this way-”
He carefully set each of his bullets on the rail, crosswise, spacing them apart by a foot or so. Then he watched as I did the same on the opposite rail.
"What’ll happen?” I asked.
Dickens puffed his cheeks. He made an erupting noise and clapped his hands together.
"The end of the world,” he said.
"The monster shark will die?"
"No. The shark never dies. It eats bullets like candy, I think."
I thought of bullets shooting in the shark’s mouth, exploding, a snack.
"If we had a gun we could kill it,” I said.
"No way,” he said. "l can’t use guns. I can’t or I’ll get walloped.”
Walloped?
"What’s that?"
"Like this-”
Dickens slapped his chin, twice, striking himself so hard the second time that he nearly lost his balance. Then his skin turned bright pink, burning with the imprint of his fingers, and he rubbed his chin, frowning.
"I got walloped plenty, ” I told him. "At least a thousand.”
"Me too,” he said. "It’s big business, my sister says. She only does it when I'm wrong -- which is a lot, I guess."
Dell hit Dickens. She was a walloper, like my mother.
"You miserable creep," I heard her telling him. "What good are you? Explain that to me. I never liked you, I never did, you know.”
And there was Dickens -- hugging himself, cowering in a corner of their house -- talking in his spooked voice, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t-"
He took my hand.
"We better go. Monster shark catches us here and we’re doomed. We better hide.”
Off we went again; Dickens leading the way, me wondering if he massaged Dell’s legs at night. All I could think o
f was flesh being grabbed and pressed-and an arm raised, ready to swing, poised for the slightest of transgressions.
"Bad dog!"
That’s what my mother often said, what she’d call me; sometimes she was joking, mostly she was serious.
"Bad dog! Bad dog!”
What had I done now? Massaged too hard? Massaged too soft? Massaged in one place too long?
Resting in bed, she’d shove her fat legs in my direction. I knew when she was about to start kicking; she always snorted, then exhaled an angry breath. And I could easily dodge her feet. I was fast. Her legs operated in slow motion. But her hands were another story.
"You’re a bad dog,” I admonished Dickens, who’d just returned from using the bathroom in the Johnsongrass. "You watered all the fish and seaweeds."
"No,” he said, shaking his head, "you’re the bad dog!”
We were sitting inside Lisa.
Or Lisa II, as Dickens now referred to the repaired wigwam; he’d patched the fallen roof, removed the tires and bicycle. On her maiden voyage, we explored the ocean floor together, hoping for an encounter with the shark -- but, as evening approached, we grew tired of the search and surfaced.
‘'What can we play?”
"I’ll think."
Late afternoon light streamed through the cracks in the submarine, shining on us, illuminating the scant hairs sprouting from Dickens’ nipples. He patted his narrow rib cage, his chest, smooth and fallow, almost appeared translucent.
"Let’s go to the bus,” I said. "It’s the best place for watching light bugs. They visit me there.”
"Can’t do that.”
"How come? We can play.”
"Can't go there.”
Dickens paused. He looked at his belly button.
"Take the bus for shark bait and drive it on the tracks and it tips over and burns up -- then you get in trouble. Then you can’t ever go there again, ever.”
He glanced at me, gravely. His toes fidgeted in the flip- flops.
"And I’m not supposed to drive anyway, you know. Or steal buses, or steal anything anymore. That’s what gets me in all the trouble -- even if it was a million years ago. Lucky they didn’t send me away forever, all right? Lucky I didn’t burn and die too. And Sheriff Waller said you have to have a license -- and even then you can’t take a bus -- ’cause it isn’t the same as Daddy’s tractor either. You can’t drive a bus on the tracks or it tips and burns, you should know that. That’ll get you sent away, Dickens, so I can’t go there with you."
"Oh,” I said, confused.
Captain, you’re acting silly, I thought. You’re crazy.
He mumbled, "Sometimes you just worry about it too much -- just pretend it never happened, okay?”
"Okay," I replied, uncertain if he was talking to me or himself.
Then he was standing, saying, "I better go home now and eat, I think. We shouldn’t play no more today."
It didn’t matter. I was bored with playing. My stomach ached for crackers and bread.
"But you have to save my friend, you said you’d do that.”
"I don’t know how,” he said. "I make mistakes if I try some things.”
"‘I’ll show you," I told him. "You promised.”
And then it was me taking his hand; I wasn’t planning on releasing my grip -- not until he squatted at the hole, not until he used his hand to rescue Classique.
"But-"
"No, you have to," I said, tugging at his arm.
Soon I walked alongside the embankment with Dickens in tow. Already my head swam, my stomach burbled, a mixture of anticipation and hunger. We passed by Dell’s meadow of bluebonnets and rocks. Then we wandered across the clearing of threshed grain -- clomping on white stalks that had turned golden in the evening rays -- and headed for the shaded footpath, where rnesquite branches crisscrossed overhead. Behind me Dickens’ feet flip-flopped.
And when we arrived at the hole, I loosened my hold on his hand and explained that Classique had fallen from my finger: "But she’s pretty close. Butmy arms aren’t like yours and I can’t get her, but you can. She’s really close. It isn’t very far, it just looks far in there.”
Dickens knelt. He stared at the hole, pondering the darkness within.
"What is your friend?” he asked.
"A head. A Barbie head."
"Does she bite?”
"No. Her mouth is like this-”
I pressed my lips together for a moment.
"She doesn’t have teeth.”
"All right,” he said, nodding.
Then his arm sank inside the hole, slowly, all the way to his shoulder. He brought out both parts of the broken branch and tossed them aside -- he slid his arm in again. Then out.
A handful of dirt and pebbles.
In again.
And his face strained as he felt around. My heart began racing.
"Don’t know," he said. ‘just can’t find nothing.”
I was on my knees, beside him, watching.
"Wait. I got her. It has to be her. It has to be-”
Out.
An oblong stone, bigger than Classique, sat in Dickens’ palm.
"She’s weird,” he said. "Not a head at all, not like you said."
I was suddenly tired and dizzy. I lifted the stone and let it drop to the ground.
"No,” I said. "No, no-"
"That’s all that’s down there,'’ he told me. "Nothing else, okay? Nothing but dirt and more dirt.”
"She’s dead," I said.
In the distance, the train whistle blew. Dickens glanced in the direction of the tracks.
"Uh-oh, the monster shark -- it’s coming."
Then he made the erupting noise with his mouth.
But everything was spinning, so I shut my eyes. My body became heavy. And I slumped forward. And I don’t recall much after that -- except sensing my fall. I was entering the hole, tumbling straight into blackness, disappearing. The earth had swallowed me up.
16
What Rocks had drowned.
I stirred on my father’s bed -- reversed in position, my head resting at the foot of the mattress -- disoriented, lightheaded, and parched; everything around me was tinted in ultramarine, blurry. The ceiling. The lamp glowing at the center of the night table. My dress, my legs, my sneakers. The backpack and small pile of dirty clothes and the Peach Schnapps bottle, all clumped at my feet. Blue and slightly out of focus.
At the bottom of the sea, I thought.
My fingertips touched my face, feeling for wetness. And I opened my mouth wide, expecting a gush of water, but found myself swallowing air instead. Then I realized the goggles were covering my eyes, the frayed elastic band pressed against my ears.
"And then you fly," Dickens said.
Turning my head sideways, I saw him. He sat on the throw rug, playing with Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans and Cut ’N Style. The heads lounged in his level palm, a flying carpet sailing back and forth above his lap -- and he was underwater, breathing as effortlessly as a goldfish.
'‘We sunk,” I rasped.
Dickens glanced at me, his palm stopping in midair.
"No," he said softly, "Dell says you nap until she’s done with him. Or she says you stay here and eat something if you wake, all right? You’re lucky she’s strong and held you -- lucky she rescued you or I’d have fainted too.”
Dell rescued me.
"Did she suck my blood?"
"She doesn”t do that. That’s wrong.”
"Oh."
My belly groaned.
"I’m hungry," I told him.
"'I`hat’s what she said,” he muttered, returning his attention to the heads. "She already said that."
His palm landed; he lifted each head, one at a time, setting them upright on the rug.
"A safe crater trip -- everyone had a safe trip visiting the moon."
Then he climbed from the floor and crossed to the night table. And I propped myself up -- pushing the goggles off my eyes, onto my forehead --
so I could see what he was doing.
Mitch Cullin Page 12
