There were still crumbs and icing on his face, that was probably what was drawing it. The tape laughed at him. Somebody’s sweet on you, big boy.
Fuck you. He made another lunge at the fly, clobbered it but only managed to wing it. It landed upside down on the dashboard, zzzzz, tiny and furious, but he wasn’t paying attention anymore. The newspaper in his hand was all wadded and wrinkled, but one headline unscrolled before his eyes:
WOMAN FOUND MURD
The edge was torn, the words below it were all in a mess: night floating spokesman unknown dead Tuesday. He turned it round and round, sweating and scrabbling, he couldn’t make it make sense, like he’d forgotten what reading, or even words, were for. He didn’t remember getting a paper, it could have been in the car for a day or a week, it could have been from anywhere. Somebody was running a game on him and he could guess who so he reached out and SLAM, the fly crumpled and lay still.
Just to mock him, the tape said, Zzzz.
What do you want? I need to get some sleep, OK?
Go ahead. What’s stopping you.
Look, I never did nothing to you.
Ya, I know. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. ZZZZZ.
His head spun with noise. He screamed and screamed. Hurt himself flailing around, blood in his eyes. He battered his way out of the car and rolled around on the ground. His hands hurt, how did he hurt his hands? Gravel dust in his mouth, coating his sugar tongue.
He was Porque, he was Because. And he could do anything except sleep.
In Kansas City he fired the gun. Bang bang bang. Or maybe he had fired it before, he couldn’t remember. He was tired of the car so he was walking, in no particular direction, northsoutheastwest. It was night but he couldn’t see stars, moon, nothing. Maybe it was his eyes. They didn’t work so good these days, like there was a film or screen before them, something he couldn’t rub away. Since he no longer slept, not really, he dreamed all the time. He dreamed he was in Kansas City, walking under a smeared sky with a smell of rain. Every darkened house held sleep. It leaked out the windows and under the cracks of doors. He could almost see it, touch it. It was like the air, all around you but nothing you could lay your hands on.
The sleep was inside the houses. He thought he could follow it there, sneak up on it somehow. So he looked for a house that would let him inside. The sky growled as if there was a storm coming and the rain smell thickened. A window had been left open a crack for the sleep to escape. Curtains whipped and knotted in the sudden wind. He crouched beneath the window, listening. Did sleep have a sound? He thought he heard it, faint and silvery. Soft as pillows. He used his knife to loosen the screen. It scraped and rasped and he froze, but nothing changed. He raised the sill an inch at a time, smooth as his heartbeat.
He had to hoist himself up to look inside. The blowsy curtain drifted across his face. The thunder edged closer. The whole world was asleep except for him.
His eyes didn’t work for shit. The inside was just lumpy darkness. Then, gradually, things took shape. White bedsheets unfurled before his vision like a rose blooming. He actually thought this, a rose. Such things kept sneaking into his head the way they never would have before he had his powers. In the bedsheets, arms and legs.
You wouldn’t want to wake them and scare the sleep away. So very soft, very careful, feeling his way, head and hands first, he got himself through the window. He landed upside down. Carpet rubbed his back through his shirt. His back hurt but that wasn’t his fault, bitch, she should only stay dead, it was probably messed up forever like his scrambled head that couldn’t stay focused on the very important thing he was doing right now. Something on the bed moved, making the mattress bounce. Quickly he turned himself right-side-up in case he had to move, take them on. The sheets rustled. The bed only a few feet away. He flexed his hands. But the sleep held, and it was quiet again.
There were two of them. When he got to his feet and stared down, he saw their two heads clearly. Close together, like melons on a shelf. Man and woman. He could have reached out and touched them. In the window behind him the sky filled with edgy light, startling him, and the thunder rolled and the first rain scattered against the window. He almost cried out. The light rippled across the surface of something that he did not at first recognize as a mirror. Because his reflection showed his hair and beard so wild and matted that he looked like a goat, his eyes also the eyes of a beast, a goat, maybe, if the goat were also the devil and the devil hadn’t slept for a hundred years. He raised his hands to the crusted edges of his hair. So this was him now. It was going to take some getting used go.
For a while he just watched the people in the bed. They didn’t seem to move but if you looked close, you could see a slow, continual shifting, one body aligning itself toward or away from the other. They were old, he realized. Creaky old. The man’s hair was thin and seedy. The woman’s pale bare arm was fatty dough. The sleep came out of their mouths in little puffs and snores. He bent close to them, breathing it in. If only there was some way he could lay down between them, soak it up. Old people’s sleep was probably good stuff. Peaceful. Everything worn smooth.
The tape said, in a voice that was like a nudge in the ribs: A guy could have some fun in here.
You are a total pig, you know?
Seriously. How long’s it been? So she’s old. You can just keep your eyes closed.
I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.
Like you never even thought of it. Right.
The rain was coming on harder now and the tape’s voice blurred and went quiet. Good riddance. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to him. But now he couldn’t help sneaking looks at the rest of her. You couldn’t tell much. She was all humped up under the covers, sea-monster style. He wondered if her and the guy still did it, in some disgusting old-timer’s way.
The sheets were white like the wedding cake. The bed was like the cake all sliced up. Now that was a weird thing to think. But it was how his crazy head worked.
He dug in his pants pocket and fished out the little bride and groom. They were stuck together and they’d picked up a layer of grit and crud, as if they’d gotten into a hell of a fight once the wedding was over. He pried them apart and tried to clean them up some. Voodoo? His father was the one who had known that, and he had never known his father. But his new extraordinary kick-ass weird-looking self was picking up on all manner of previously unimaginable things. It really shouldn’t surprise him anymore. And what was voodoo except trying to get all the good and bad luck in the world to answer when you called its name?
He set the bride and groom in front of the mirror, on a tabletop that held some old-lady stuff, pictures in frames, hairbrushes, perfume. He turned the figures so they faced the mirror, so that everything was reflected in it, them, his goat-self, the sleepers in the bed. Sleep, he said, but not out loud, and leaned forward to fog the mirror with his breath. Then he crouched down and wiggled himself underneath the bed. There was more room than you’d think. Lots of dustballs, like the old lady’s housecleaning had fallen off some. But he could stretch out, prop his head on the crook of his arm and look up into the complications of the bed frame. The mattress sagged in the center. Years and years of sleep weighing it down.
There had to be two dreams. A his and a hers. Bride and groom. Like two different TV channels coming through the static. He closed his eyes. There was such a thing as trying too hard. With his eyes shut he was more aware of the ebb and flow of their breathing. The old guy didn’t breathe so good, there was a hitch or a catch in it. He was dreaming about … digging in a garden. Digging with a spade in black earth that had its own good smell, like you could eat handfuls of it. Digging and digging until the hole was so deep the earth closed in around you. The old lady’s breathing was a song, a little snoring song with trills and flutes in it. Her dream was mixed up with the rain falling outside and dripping on the carpet where the window had been left open and with the water running in the gutters. She was singing to the rain. Hush hush hush. Thunder gon
e under. Rain brain. Heap of sleep. Night good night.
A toilet flushed. Even that didn’t fully wake him. He tried to roll over and caught himself on the bed frame. What the shit? There was a gray light in the room, a morning-after-rain light. But even the panicky swell in his head didn’t change the ease in the rest of his body, knowing that he must have finally slept.
A sink tap turned on and off. Somebody up. Then slow, padding footsteps, and a pair of feet in quilted house slippers appeared next to the bed on a level with his eyes.
Reach out and grab them feet. Tickle them, even. She’d scream, but that wouldn’t last long. Even if the old man pitched in, you couldn’t regard an old man as a serious concern. Then the slippers lifted clean away and the mattress groaned with her weight and the old woman groaned along with it and he could have goddamned laughed at the three of them all tucked in and cozy. Now he had to think about what to do, either wait them out or make some boring scene, and why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
Hack ack ack. The old man coughing. His lungs sounded no good, rubbishy. There was a noise of flesh smacking flesh, like one fatty leg heaving on top of the other. Somebody moaned. The old man? The woman said, “Is it another bad one, Jim?”
“Oh blessed Jesus.”
“Just bear down on it. Thrust it from you.”
“It won’t leave me be.”
“Do you want your pills?”
“Pills don’t help none.”
“It’s only the body, Jim. It’s not intended to last.”
The bed cried along with the old man. Its springs drooped. The old woman murmured to him, “Just say the word, I’ll grab them pills for you.”
“I can feel it eating on me.”
“Now that’s no way to talk. Think about something happy, like rainbows.”
He was starting to feel that under this bed was not a good place to be. These people were just too messed up and sad. And here he’d stolen sleep from them. He could trade them the gun, so the old man would have a way to end his suffering. Or he could just shoot them. They were old and sick and tired. Do them a favor. Quick, so he wouldn’t scare them. Hell, just the sight of him would probably be enough to finish them off. If they fell back to sleep, he could do it easy. But he wasn’t going to wait too long because he had to piss like a racehorse, not to mention getting hungry.
He must have made some noise. The old woman sucked in her breath. “What was that?”
“Help me, Jesus.”
“Hush up a minute.”
He heard her listening. He must have been careless, had been thinking inside his head too hard to pay attention to what the outside of him was doing. The bed sagged as the old woman struggled out of it. Her feet in those ugly slippers scuttled past his face. The old man coughed and asked her what was it and she said, “Nothing, Jim,” and by her voice he knew that she had seen something, either the window screen or else the little bride and groom, all dressed up in crumbs and spit. “Jim? Let’s get up now.”
“Oh I don’t know.”
“Come on, honey. Let’s get up and go to the IHOP.”
“Oh I don’t want no pancakes.”
“Well, I do. I want us both to go. Come on.”
Coughing. “What’s the big—”
“Come on, Jim. Please please please.”
He felt for the gun, squirmed around to work it free.
“I can’t—”
“I’m just starving. Oh my.”
The old man groaned and hacked and lurched upright and his knobby bare feet appeared at the edge of the bed. It didn’t seem right to shoot someone in the feet so he waited for the old man to stand up and walk away, which was taking him a very long time. Why did there have to be such a thing as sickness anyway? Why couldn’t you just fall down dead when it was your time, like a bird dropped out of the sky? There had to be an end to this suffering shit, his and everybody else’s, and perhaps he was meant to shoot every limping leaking coughing body in the world, cleanse and purge it, which would give him a great deal of personal satisfaction, the world being the screwed up place that it was. He would look them all in the eye, straight on. Why should he have to hide himself? He had spent too much of his life seeking out corners and doorways and empty streets. There would be an end to that now, an end to caution and camouflage and all the devices of shame. He drew air into his chest and readied himself for the bellowing cry that would be the last thing they’d ever hear, squeezed himself free of the bed frame, rolled out, and sprang to his feet into the center of an empty room. Stone empty.
It gave him the creeps because here he had been trying to pay very particular attention and instead his thought had wandered off somewhere and left him looking very foolish. His warrior’s cry slipping back down his throat, gun pointing at nothing. He took a look around the room. In daylight it was just ordinary. Small and overcrowded, a miracle he didn’t break his neck on all their stupid fusty old people’s furniture.
Enough of this scene. He gave a salute to the bride and groom. They could hang out here, keep tabs on things. He slung one leg over the windowsill. And looked up to see the old woman’s face at the door.
Her mouth was open. You could have popped a lightbulb in it. People kept sneaking in and out on him, it was so rude. He raised his gun hand, just to see what she’d do. Her face went all rubbery, like every bone in it had been broken. He would have liked to ask her just what was the matter with the old man, and if they had been happy together, and if they were ready to be shot now. He wanted to know if he’d gotten their dreams right. But it occurred to him with some embarrassment that he had forgotten how to say any of this in either English or Spanish. It was all turning into too much hassle anyway. So he put a finger to his lips, silencio, the gun still leveled at her rubber face as he hoisted his other leg over the sill and dropped to the ground.
He felt some urgency, not just wanting to get away before the old woman began flapping around and screeching and making phone calls, but an anxiousness and pressure, a need to catch up with the day, as if it had moved on without him. He would need another car, on top of all the other needs. He didn’t see any cars around here. People must keep them locked up. He’d come to a wide bare intersection. Not even a friendly wall he could stand against to relieve himself. Incredible.
But because he needed a car most of all, one appeared, sidling and idling up to the stoplight. A hot-looking ride, red and low-slung and sparkly. The driver, a kid, leaning his arm out the open window, radio playing some loud crud with the bass turned all the way up. Oh yes.
Strolling alongside the open window, like he wanted to ask for a light or directions. The kid either not noticing him or not paying attention, not until he was right on top of him. When he stooped and poked his head into the window—“Hey, man”—the kid looked up at him with his face a perfect blank. The next instant the gun was under his chin and the door was yanked open.
“Out of the damn car.”
The kid still looked like he didn’t get it. The cruddy music was so loud, he probably hadn’t even heard him, hadn’t yet figured out that there was something going on besides the noise in his ears, that he was about to lose his pretty car, not until his ass was kicked out on the street. Eat cement, white boy! But he fumbled around trying to get the car in gear and then the radio turned out not to be a radio but a CD player, which was excellent but how did you turn it off? Then the music became sirens and the rearview mirror filled up with cop lights, ah shit.
Except now the kid on the sidewalk was yelling Don’t shoot!, his hands paddling in the air, because here was a laugh, a cop jumping out of his squad and reaching for his gun but distracted by the kid, hesitating for an instant so that it was possible to step out and aim his own gun, all the while the little asswipe on the ground crying like a girl. The gun popped and did something to the cop’s hand, like it exploded from the inside out. Blood sprayed from it and the cop was rolling on the ground but still trying to get his unhurt hand on his holstered gun and the
n instead of putting the car in drive and getting away clean, he hit reverse. Smashed into the squad car and maybe the cop and the kid too, he couldn’t tell because of the music noise, BOOM BOOM BOOM, finally getting the whore ass gear into drive and hauling out of there. BANGBOOM. The cop might have been firing, or else it was just the bass on the speakers that kept up its noise for blocks and blocks until he finally figured out how to shut it off.
Not wanting to slow down, he got on some freeway and kept going. It was a hell of a car, truly, the best he’d had so far, but there was no time to appreciate that now because everything had happened so fast and was still happening. He kept finding himself on bridges. He was either crossing three or four different rivers or the same one many times. The tires hummed on the steel plating, the sky above was crosshatched by girders, the river below surprising him with its bigness, its toy boats kicking up foam, its distant misty green-brown curves, what a ride he was having! A song came into his head, Across the wi-ide Missouri, was that where he was? He didn’t know the rest of it, so he sang it over and over again, Across the wi-ide, across the wi-ide, and then he forgot that too.
He was a little sorry when the rivers went away but he had a pleased sense of really covering ground now. Seeing things he had not been able to imagine, he was cooking, he was damn near flying, and for everything his useless brain forgot there was a new thing to take its place. All day he drove in directions he did not think anyone would look for him, and when he reached the Mississippi it was night and the water was dark, lit by beautiful red and green and white lights. He was Porque, he was Because, his own reason for doing what he did. And so he passed on into Illinois, looking for the next place he had never been before.
Part Four
September
Eye of the Storm
Arlene never got past Tropical Storm. Bert was a hurricane. He made landfall along the south Texas coast and pooped out. Cindy stayed out in the Atlantic, past Bermuda. None of them anything to write home about. But low-pressure masses kept firing themselves from the Cape Verde Islands, from the coast of Africa, like baseballs. An ocean full of storms. Dennis was lumbering toward Florida. Emily was a whirling blob somewhere east of the Windward Islands. Floyd was stacked up behind them, a giant saucer of wind and rain. Floyd was the one everyone at the Weather was keeping an eye on, the one getting all the attention. If there was going to be a Harvey, it would simply have to wait its turn.
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