Wide Blue Yonder

by Jean Thompson

  “Shut up!” the man yelled again. So she did. Josie and Harvey sat side by side and stared. She had never seen anything like him. He had a misshapen pillar of nappy red-brown hair, a greasy shirt unbuttoned on his dark, greasy chest. His teeth were bared, on display in the middle of his wildman’s beard. His eyes strobed. He looked nasty mean. Josie realized she had wet her pants.

  Harvey was still clutching on to her, but at least he was breathing again. The front door was still open. The man with the gun didn’t seem to notice. He was rubbing at his scalp with the hand that held the gun, like he was scratching an itch with the gun barrel.

  Josie cleared her throat. “So what do you …” Her voice sounded geeky. “What do you want?”

  “I can’t sleep!” he shouted.

  Josie and Harvey held hands. She was too afraid to look at him, she might even laugh. The sound of the television reached her ears, the jingle for the car dealership you heard fifty times a day, You’ve got a fri-e-end at Feeny’s. It had been playing all along. She said, “Well, that must feel terrible. That must—”

  “Shut up!”

  At least Harvey was quiet, wasn’t screeching or blubbering or losing it. She clutched his hand harder to steady him or maybe herself. She had to stop herself from running straight out the door like a deer jumping through a window. Deer did that because they always went toward darkness. Someone had told her that. The door was a perfect dark oblong of night. She would run and run with her heart bursting and then the shot would bring her down, bleeding out in clean snow. Stop that.

  The gunman noticed the door then, as if he had heard her thinking. He slammed it shut. “Your money or your life!” he shouted, waving the gun around. Then he stopped and looked confused. None of them seemed to know what to do next.

  “We don’t have a lot of money,” Josie said. “Of course, you’re welcome to it.” Aiming for a soothing, reasonable tone. “It’s in my bag. I forget where I put it. Oh, and I gave my uncle some for groceries. I don’t know if there’s any change. Probably. Is that thing loaded?”

  Then she ran out of everything at once: air, wits, words. It was like exhaling and not breathing in.

  The gunman kicked the pile of her clothes and other belongings on the floor next to the couch. A lipstick shot out and rolled lopsidedly across the room. “What money, where’s the goddamn money?”

  “Oh …” Josie had to think. “Over there.” He began dumping out her backpack, which was sort of embarrassing, chewing gum and tampons scattering all over the place, not to mention the Kleenex farm she kept in there. Then he found her wallet and instead of opening it like a normal person, he shook it by one corner so that bills and coins sprayed out of it. He was undersize and scrawny, no taller than herself, and if he wasn’t armed and crazy there would have been no reason to be afraid of him. She could smell him, a burnt smell, hot and corrosive, like metal with an underlay of stink. Every so often he reached out and clawed at his own skin, his ribs under his shirt or the back of his neck, as if a rash were eating him alive. He stooped to gather up the money, all the while keeping his eyes on the two of them, Josie and Harvey, and showing his teeth as his lip twitched and curled. He was small and itchy and confused, but Josie knew that here was a face you could match to all the meanness of the world, all the newspaper headlines of cruelty and vicious ignorance: the nail bomb piercing the baby’s skull, the slaughtered cattle, the beaten child, the poisoned river, the mass grave. All the things you kept in the nightmare part of your brain. The stranger’s hands on your skin, your body reduced to its liquid parts.

  With an effort she managed to lasso her mind back where it belonged, right here right now, sitting on the couch and holding Harvey’s hand. The upholstery was so beaten-down and slick and the springs so overwhelmed that she had to brace herself to keep from jackknifing into the folds of the cushions. Harvey, incredibly, seemed intent on the television, where a happy family, Moms and Pops and Sis and Bobby, basked in the sunshine of full insurance coverage. Then the gunman’s strutting legs appeared, blocking the screen. He was screaming something she couldn’t understand, like her brain had so many holes in it right now that words slipped through. But no, it was some other language he was being mad in.

  Josie managed to shout over him. “Slow down! I can’t understand you. U-N-D-E-R-S-T-A-N-D?”

  He stopped his noise and gave her the funniest look, like he was the one scared of her, or of something that was sitting right behind her. Then he growled. Actually growled. She’d never heard such a thing before. This guy was stone crazy. The gun flapped around in his hand like a live thing he barely had control of, oh if she was going to be shot let it be for some reason! Not just because all the evil of the world was busting out through the seams. She closed her eyes and waited for what would come next.

  In the Red Car

  Nobody could catch him because he was moving beyond the speed of superinvisibility. All he had to do was touch his foot to the pedal and he was instantly disappeared. This was on account of electricity, the red electricity of his mind. He was Porque, he was Because. He carried a universe of boiling possibilities in the box of his skull, he was the universe, vast and charged and shooting off sparks in all directions. Even on those occasions when he left the car, no one could see him unless he allowed them to, unless he slowed himself down. Jam those brakes! It amused him when mere people gave him the big-eye stare, or hollered, or wanted to fight. Then he was gone again, zipwhip! like electricity, which could jump in and out of wires whenever it wanted.

  It was night. It was always night. Something had happened to day that he couldn’t figure out. There would come a time when his mind would be wired hot enough to bring the sun up as easy as one of these fancy push button windows. It was night and the road was dark, with dark air rushing over and around him. Darkness held him so smooth and slick, he hardly felt himself moving. Through the windshield, he saw ropes of greasy lightning drop from the sky. Or no. It was just the hair hanging in his eyes.

  He felt silly when he got things mixed up like that. And his hair smelled bad. When he tried to push it aside, his fingers were confused by the woolly feel of it. Now that he was turning into pure brain power, a lot of stupid body stuff wasn’t working right. His eyes played tricks on him. His skin crawled with rashes and terrible burning sensations; he rubbed and scratched and scraped like he was a snake trying to shed. Sometimes everything inside him squeezed up tight, and he had to force his breath through the metal in his chest. Sometimes he threw up blood, which was what the electricity looked like when it came out. It was the price he paid for being what he was. The electricity whispered to him that soon he would be able to leave this itchy, funky shell of himself behind and live in his own exalted air.

  The road was dark, but the headlights stayed straight. The red car always found the road. He loved this goddamn car. It should have a name, like a horse, Diablo, or maybe just Red. Horses were smart fuckers. Loyal too. When you were wounded, parched with thirst, they nudged you toward the water hole. They rode into battle with you, they made tracks up and down mountains just to reach your side.

  And wouldn’t you know it, all he had to do was think horse, and here one was.

  Or at least a picture of one. It was a black horse and it was standing on three legs with the other leg pawing the air and its neck rearing back and its eyes blazing and its whole righteous self ready to kick ass. He supposed it was possible that he was thinking about horses because of the picture, which might have been there all along although he just now noticed. It really didn’t matter which, it just went to show you that there was a plan, an enormous, elegant, glittering design in everything he thought and saw and did.

  He stopped the car to stare at the horse. The picture was way up in the air, a billboard. It was selling something in a bottle, whiskey maybe. Letters he couldn’t read. Reading was one of those things he had decided would take up too much brain space. Floodlights shone down on the picture. Now that he was out of the car he cou
ld see the metal scaffolding that held it up, all looming and dark beyond the circles of light. It stood in a field full of whatever it was that grew in fields. There was a noise teasing his ears, little chips of sound. Ears one more majorly fucked-up body part. But no, it was a real noise, although it took him a moment to put a name to it. Crickets! Such an incredible thing for his mind to provide him with crickets, not to mention this soft night with its swarm of stars overhead, and the amazing horse.

  There had to be a way to get up there. He walked around the base of the scaffolding and flexed the muscles of his mind. They’d made it difficult, it was plain they didn’t want anybody up there grooving with the horse, but they also had not reckoned with the likes of Porque. He took a running start at the metal pole, bounced off, owowowow, tried again, wrapped one arm around the pole and hung there, balanced the tip of the tip of one toe on the smallest bump of metal, not much more than a hinge, holding on, scrabbling around, inching his way up to another toehold. High overhead was the metal grid they must use for a platform, and half a ladder hanging down, just out of reach. He closed his eyes and went for it.

  Then he must have hurt his head because a wind was blowing through it and his mind felt quiet. His eyes opened to darkness. He thought he was falling, he flailed and kicked and braced himself for the impact. But he was only sprawled on his knees on the metal platform, his hands wrapped around its edges. Once his eyes cleared, he saw the horse stretched above him, enormous and silent.

  Up close like this he could see the glossy paint on the horse’s hind legs, its imperfections, the places where the color bled out a little, and from here it was hard to recall that vision of power and beauty that had made him go to all this trouble in the first place.

  So he sat on the edge of the platform and let his legs dangle out in the air, and everything below him was small and remote and he felt cold, which surprised him, cold not being one of those things he had thought about lately. He had to wonder where in the hell he was. He was riding a paper horse forty feet up in the air, he was in the country of night, he was entirely lost.

  If he scootched around on the platform, he could see in all directions. There was a lip of brightness on one horizon, something he connected with possibilities both hopeful and dangerous. Empty paved road below him, crisscrossing with another road some distance ahead, and another road beyond that, and on this farther road a car no larger than a speck was traveling, a grain of light burrowing into darkness. It occurred to him that someone must be driving that car, and maybe they were alone like he was, and at this very moment they might be looking up at him, at the black horse. But could they see him from so far away? He hollered at them—”Hey!”—but the sound fell away into the dead night air. As he watched, the headlights traveled over the edge of the world and vanished.

  It was all so quiet. Even the crickets had stopped. He couldn’t remember quiet. Was it a place you had to go, somewhere he hadn’t been in a while, like daytime?

  He didn’t like the quiet in his head so he started humming, just sounds that came when you pushed your voice through your open mouth. If he didn’t keep the electricity going, other things would try and screw with him, and he had forgotten why he was sitting here with his ass hanging out on this dizzy ledge. What was the deal? Too many things too weird. A bad taste was crawling up his throat. The horse was no help. And here he’d had such a good feeling about it. Its mouth opened just wide enough to say, You fucked up big-time, bato. Which he knew was the truth, straight from the horse’s mouth ha ha. He was pretty sure he had been driving a long time, he thought something must have been chasing him although he couldn’t see it now but he tasted it in the back of his throat and the horse said You are one messed-up moreno. He looked down at his wrists and hands and yes, it looked black, moreno skin all right, which was probably why it was trying to itch itself off.

  The only song he could remember was Las Mañanitas, the birthday song, so he sang it loud enough to drown out the horse’s sly whisperings and the pictures that came along with the whisperings. Was it his birthday? His birthday was in June July August one of those, it was dangerous to open his mind in that way so anything could get in. But here he was, a child, hardly able to reach the table when he sat at one of the chairs. It was his birthday and he was crying because the cupcakes his mother bought at the store were frosted pink and his brothers were making fun of that. Pink was for fags, he was such a little fag. I am not, he said, but he didn’t know what a fag was or how not to be one, and he couldn’t stop crying. Oh look, fag baby’s crying, what a little snot nose. His mother hollered at them and chased them outside to play their swaggering games.

  Why did he have to remember anything, why that scrap of himself? It only told him that he had been unhappy. He hummed and sang louder now because the horse was pointing out to him that he was small and ugly and filthy and of no consequence, a moreno fag, an accidental man, a world-class loser, a joke, a fool. Singing, was he? Right now they were making up songs about him, the kind you got a good laugh from. Here they were, a chorus of ghosts. Here was a face the color of bad meat with snakes of yellow hair. Its rotten mouth opened to sing to him, oh, feliz, feliz cumpleaños, happy happy happy.

  He screamed and held on tight to the metal grid as if a strong wind was trying to blow him off. And indeed, the horse that had turned out not to be his friend after all was telling him he might as well jump. What was the point of sticking around for more of this bad shit? Jump and let the mess inside of his head spill out. But it was only more ghost-talk, designed to make him weak and confused, and he knew where it was coming from so he took the gun and shot the horse four times through its painted eyes.

  Then he climbed down the ladder and dangled by one arm until he worked up the nerve to drop to the ground.

  Back in the car he felt tired, the way you did after a fight, and he was conscious of all the places in him that had bruised or torn. Why did he have to bust himself up so bad? Was there a way to make the electricity stop or no just for his head not to hurt his life not to run away from him?

  He drove toward the lights, which were now close enough to start unraveling into separate lights. He thought there was a good chance that day was in this direction, maybe sleep too, he never slept anymore, unless you considered the times he must have slept as he drove, but he didn’t count those because they were not truly restful. And it must have happened again, because one second he was only thinking about this town and what he might find there, food, he hoped, and now here he was admiring the sidewalks and grassy lawns—and then once again, because the next instant a woman was screaming like an alarm, scared the shit out of him, where was he? The racket was so loud he couldn’t see. His hands had a grip on something. Cellophane? It made a crinkling noise and damned if it wasn’t a package of pink cupcakes. How amazing was that? He broke off a piece of the frosting and put it in his mouth. It tasted pink, it made his tongue curl up all sugar sick. The woman—girl? a girl’s face—was hollering “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot me!” What a thing to say, she must be some nervous type, until he noticed that he had the cupcakes in one hand, the gun in the other.

  Well, maybe he should shoot her. There was no good reason to do so, but there was no good reason not to. The smallest movement or not movement of one finger. How much holy power lived in this one muscle, how easy it was for his enormous brain to direct it one way or the other. Shoot not shoot. It was turning into one of those aggravating things. What was this place anyway? He looked around and saw rows and rows of cellophane food, lots of lights and mirrors and trashy stuff in the aisles and big refrigerator cases full of beer and shit—did he want a beer? No, he wanted orange juice! He didn’t see any, so he asked the girl, nicely, he thought, if she would just stop her noise long enough to help him find some. She had short red hair and a sort of piggy face and she was blubbering, squeezing out little tears. It was a simple question, where was the orange juice, didn’t she work here, hey! She was deliberately not understanding him or not
paying attention.

  He got right up next to her with the gun but he’d forgotten the cupcakes, now wasn’t that silly, so he shoved them into his mouth one-handed and all that sugar exploded inside him in a wave of shaking energy. His stomach cramped and threads of sugar nerves ran up and down his body. He was going to throw up no yes no. The girl’s mouth was open but no sound was coming out because of the roaring in his ears? because she’d used up all her screams? She wasn’t pretty, not really, but up closer to her like this his body couldn’t help but get the way you did around a woman, which was a different kind of electricity.

  She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were closed and she breathed huff huff huff. Because he felt the need to make conversation he said, “You have pretty hair.” It was, it looked like copper feathers. When he reached out to touch it, it sifted through his fingers. Her eyelashes were the same color, little pale spikes. She had drawn blue crayon lines around their edges. All her crying and carrying on had smeared them so they looked, oddly, like an extra pair of eyes.

  Just to see what it felt like, he put his hand on her skin where it met the top button of her shirt, wiggled his fingers around underneath. Her skin was cold. He walked his hand down to the cold nipple at the end of her breast then stopped, curious. There was something jumping around under his hand. Her heart trying to squeeze through the skin. He squeezed back. A sound came out of the girl, eeee, like she was one of those toys you had to press in the right spot.

  They were standing up and then all of a sudden they were toppling over, knocking down the racks of cigarettes and small things breaking. What the fucking hell? She must have fallen, pulled him down. It took them a long time to get to the floor. She was underneath him and her arms were around his neck which surprised him because she had not seemed like a friendly person and then her eyes inside their ragged blue lines opened.