Farto and Leonard started scurrying about like squirrels, looking for rocks or big, heavy logs. Suddenly they heard Vinnie cry out. “Godamighty, fucking A. Pork. Come look at this.”
Leonard looked over and saw that Vinnie had discovered Rex. He was standing looking down with his hands on his hips. Pork went over to stand by him, then Pork turned around and looked at them. “Hey, you fucks, come here.”
Leonard and Farto joined them in looking at the dog. There was mostly just a head now, with a little bit of meat and fur hanging off a spine and some broken ribs.
“That’s the sickest fucking thing I’ve ever fucking seen,” Pork said.
“Godamighty,” Vinnie said.
“Doing a dog like that. Shit, don’t you got no heart? A dog. Man’s best fucking goddamn friend and you two killed him like this.”
“We didn’t kill him,” Farto said.
“You trying to fucking tell me he done this to himself? Had a bad fucking day and done this.”
“Godamighty,” Vinnie said.
“No sir,” Leonard said. “We chained him on there after he was dead.”
“I believe that,” Vinnie said. “That’s some rich shit. You guys murdered this dog. Godamighty.”
“Just thinking about him trying to keep up and you fucks driving faster and faster makes me mad as a wasp,” Pork said.
“No,” Farto said. “It wasn’t like that. He was dead and we were drunk and we didn’t have anything to do, so we—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Pork said sticking a finger hard against Farto’s forehead. “You just shut the fuck up. We can see what the fuck you fucks did. You drug this here dog around until all his goddamn hide came off. . . . What kind of mothers you boys got anyhow that they didn’t tell you better about animals?”
“Godamighty,” Vinnie said.
Everyone grew silent, stood looking at the dog. Finally Farto said, “You want us to go back to getting some stuff to hold the nigger down?”
Pork looked at Farto as if he had just grown up whole from the ground. “You fucks are worse than niggers, doing a dog like that. Get on back over to the car.”
Leonard and Farto went over to the Impala and stood looking down at Scott’s body in much the same way they had stared at the dog. There, in the dim moonlight shadowed by trees, the paper wrapped around Scott’s head made him look like a giant papier-mâché doll. Pork came up and kicked Scott in the face with a swift motion that sent newspaper flying and sent a thonking sound across the water that made frogs jump.
“Forget the nigger,” Pork said. “Give me your car keys, ball sweat.” Leonard took out his keys and gave them to Pork and Pork went around to the trunk and opened it. “Drag the nigger over here.”
Leonard took one of Scott’s arms and Farto took the other and they pulled him over to the back of the car.
“Put him in the trunk,” Pork said.
“What for?” Leonard asked.
“’Cause I fucking said so,” Pork said.
Leonard and Farto heaved Scott into the trunk. He looked pathetic lying there next to the spare tire, his face partially covered with newspaper. Leonard thought, if only the nigger had stolen a car with a spare he might not be here tonight. He could have gotten that flat changed and driven on before the White Tree boys even came along.
“All right, you get in there with him,” Pork said, gesturing to Farto.
“Me?” Farto said.
“Nah, not fucking you, the fucking elephant on your fucking shoulder. Yeah, you, get in the trunk. I ain’t got all night.”
“Jesus, we didn’t do anything to that dog, mister. We told you that. I swear. Me and Leonard hooked him up after he was dead. . . . It was Leonard’s idea.”
Pork didn’t say a word. He just stood there with one hand on the trunk lid looking at Farto. Farto looked at Pork, then the trunk, then back to Pork. Lastly he looked at Leonard, then climbed into the trunk, his back to Scott.
“Like spoons,” Pork said, and closed the lid. “Now you, whatsit, Leonard? You come over here.” But Pork didn’t wait for Leonard to move. He scooped the back of Leonard’s neck with a chubby hand and pushed him over to where Rex lay at the end of the chain with Vinnie still looking down at him.
“What you think, Vinnie?” Pork asked. “You got what I got in mind?”
Vinnie nodded. He bent down and took the collar off the dog. He fastened it on Leonard. Leonard could smell the odor of the dead dog in his nostrils. He bent his head and puked.
“There goes my shoeshine,” Vinnie said, and he hit Leonard a short one in the stomach. Leonard went to his knees and puked some more of the hot Coke and whisky.
“You fucks are the lowest pieces of shit on this earth, doing a dog like that,” Vinnie said. “A nigger ain’t no lower.”
Vinnie got some strong fishing line out of the back of the truck and they tied Leonard’s hands behind his back. Leonard began to cry.
“Oh shut up,” Pork said. “It ain’t that bad. Ain’t nothing that bad.”
But Leonard couldn’t shut up. He was caterwauling now and it was echoing through the trees. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he had gone to the show with the nigger starring in it and had fallen asleep in his car and was having a bad dream, but he couldn’t imagine that. He thought about Harry the janitor’s flying saucers with the peppermint rays, and he knew if there were any saucers shooting rays down, they weren’t boredom rays after all. He wasn’t a bit bored.
Pork pulled off Leonard’s shoes and pushed him back flat on the ground and pulled off the socks and stuck them in Leonard’s mouth so tight he couldn’t spit them out. It wasn’t that Pork thought anyone was going to hear Leonard, he just didn’t like the noise. It hurt his ears.
Leonard lay on the ground in the vomit next to the dog and cried silently. Pork and Vinnie went over to the Impala and opened the doors and stood so they could get a grip on the car to push. Vinnie reached in and moved the gear from park to neutral and he and Pork began to shove the car forward. It moved slowly at first, but as it made the slight incline that led down to the old bridge, it picked up speed. From inside the trunk, Farto hammered lightly at the lid as if he didn’t really mean it. The chain took up slack and Leonard felt it jerk and pop his neck. He began to slide along the ground like a snake.
Vinnie and Pork jumped out of the way and watched the car make the bridge and go over the edge and disappear into the water with amazing quietness. Leonard, tugged by the weight of the car, rustled past them. When he hit the bridge, splinters tugged at his clothes so hard they ripped his pants and underwear down almost to his knees.
The chain swung out once toward the edge of the bridge and the rotten railing, and Leonard tried to hook a leg around an upright board there, but that proved wasted. The weight of the car just pulled his knee out of joint and jerked the board out of place with a screech of nails and lumber.
Leonard picked up speed and the chain rattled over the edge of the bridge, into the water and out of sight, pulling its connection after it like a pull toy. The last sight of Leonard was the soles of his bare feet, white as the bellies of fish.
“It’s deep there,” Vinnie said. “I caught an old channel cat there once, remember? Big sucker. I bet it’s over fifty feet deep down there.”
They got in the truck and Vinnie cranked it.
“I think we did them boys a favor,” Pork said. “Them running around with niggers and what they did to that dog and all. They weren’t worth a thing.”
“I know it,” Vinnie said. “We should have filmed this, Pork, it would have been good. Where the car and that nigger-lover went off in the water was choice.”
“Nah, there wasn’t any women.”
“Point,” Vinnie said, and he backed around and drove onto the trail that wound its way out of the bottoms.
if you were a dinosaur, my lo
ve
rachel swirsky
If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge.
If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.
If I sang you lullabies, I’d soon notice how quickly you picked up music. You’d harmonize with me, your rough, vibrating voice a strange counterpoint to mine. When you thought I was asleep, you’d cry unrequited love songs into the night.
If you sang unrequited love songs, I’d take you on tour. We’d go to Broadway. You’d stand onstage, talons digging into the floorboards. Audiences would weep at the melancholic beauty of your singing.
If audiences wept at the melancholic beauty of your singing, they’d rally to fund new research into reviving extinct species. Money would flood into scientific institutions. Biologists would reverse engineer chickens until they could discover how to give them jaws with teeth. Paleontologists would mine ancient fossils for traces of collagen. Geneticists would figure out how to build a dinosaur from nothing by discovering exactly what DNA sequences code everything about a creature, from the size of its pupils to what enables a brain to contemplate a sunset. They’d work until they’d built you a mate.
If they built you a mate, I’d stand as the best woman at your wedding. I’d watch awkwardly in green chiffon that made me look sallow, as I listened to your vows. I’d be jealous, of course, and also sad, because I want to marry you. Still, I’d know that it was for the best that you marry another creature like yourself, one that shares your body and bone and genetic template. I’d stare at the two of you standing together by the altar and I’d love you even more than I do now. My soul would feel light because I’d know that you and I had made something new in the world and at the same time revived something very old. I would be borrowed, too, because I’d be borrowing your happiness. All I’d need would be something blue.
If all I needed was something blue, I’d run across the church, heels clicking on the marble, until I reached a vase by the front pew. I’d pull out a hydrangea the shade of the sky and press it against my heart and my heart would beat like a flower. I’d bloom. My happiness would become petals. Green chiffon would turn into leaves. My legs would be pale stems, my hair delicate pistils. From my throat, bees would drink exotic nectars. I would astonish everyone assembled, the biologists and the paleontologists and the geneticists, the reporters and the rubberneckers and the music aficionados, all those people who—deceived by the helix-and-fossil trappings of cloned dinosaurs—believed that they lived in a science fictional world when really they lived in a world of magic where anything was possible.
If we lived in a world of magic where anything was possible, then you would be a dinosaur, my love. You’d be a creature of courage and strength but also gentleness. Your claws and fangs would intimidate your foes effortlessly. Whereas you—fragile, lovely, human you—must rely on wits and charm.
A T-Rex, even a small one, would never have to stand against five blustering men soaked in gin and malice. A T-Rex would bare its fangs and they would cower. They’d hide beneath the tables instead of knocking them over. They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood.
If you were a dinosaur, my love, I’d teach you the scents of those men. I’d lead you to them quietly, oh so quietly. Still, they would see you. They’d run. Your nostrils would flare as you inhaled the night and then, with the suddenness of a predator, you’d strike. I’d watch as you decanted their lives—the flood of red; the spill of glistening, coiled things—and I’d laugh, laugh, laugh.
If I laughed, laughed, laughed, I’d eventually feel guilty. I’d promise never to do something like that again. I’d avert my eyes from the newspapers when they showed photographs of the men’s tearful widows and fatherless children, just as they must avert their eyes from the newspapers that show my face. How reporters adore my face, the face of the paleontologist’s fiancée with her half-planned wedding, bouquets of hydrangeas already ordered, green chiffon bridesmaid dresses already picked out. The paleontologist’s fiancée who waits by the bedside of a man who will probably never wake.
If you were a dinosaur, my love, then nothing could break you, and if nothing could break you, then nothing could break me. I would bloom into the most beautiful flower. I would stretch joyfully toward the sun. I’d trust in your teeth and talons to keep you/me/us safe now and forever from the scratch of chalk on pool cues, and the scuff of the nurses’ shoes in the hospital corridor, and the stuttering of my broken heart.
give her honey when you hear her scream
maria dahvana headley
In the middle of the maze, there’s always a monster.
If there were no monster, people would happily set up house where it’s warm and windowless and comfortable. The monster is required. The monster is a real estate disclosure.
So. In the middle of the maze, there is a monster made of everything forgotten, everything flung aside, everything kept secret. That’s one thing to know. The other thing to know is that it is always harder to get out than it is to get in. That should be obvious. It’s true of love as well.
In the history of labyrinths and of monsters, no set of lovers has ever turned back because the path looked too dark, or because they knew that monsters are always worse than expected. Monsters are always angry. They are always scared. They are always kept on short rations. They always want honey.
Lovers, for their part, are always immortal. They forget about the monster.
The monster doesn’t forget about them. Monsters remember everything. So, in the middle of the maze, there is a monster living on memory. Know that, if you know nothing else. Know that going in.
They meet at someone else’s celebration, wedding upstate, Japanese paper lanterns, sparklers for each guest, gin plus tonic. They see each other across the dance floor. They each consider the marzipan flowers of the wedding cake and decide not to eat them.
Notes on an eclipse: Her blue cotton dress, transparent in the sunlight at the end of the dock, as she wonders about jumping into the water and swimming away. His button-down shirt, and the way the pocket is torn by his pen. Her shining hair, curled around her fingers. His arms and the veins in them, traceable from fifty feet.
They resist as long as it is possible to resist, but it is only half dark when the sparklers are lit, from possibly dry-cleaned matches he finds in his pocket. She looks up at him and the air bursts into flame between them.
They are each with someone else, but the other two people in this four-person equation are not at this wedding. They know nothing.
Yet.
In the shadow of a chestnut tree, confetti in her cleavage, party favors in his pockets, they find themselves falling madly, falling utterly, falling without the use of words, into one another’s arms.
Run. There is always a monster—
No one runs. She puts her hand over her mouth and mumbles three words into her palm. She bites said hand, hard.
“What did you say?” he asks.
“I didn’t,” she answers.
So, this is what is meant when people say love at first sight. So this is what everyone has been talking about for seven thousand years.
He looks at her. He shakes his head, his brow fur
rowed.
They touch fingertips in the dark. Her fingerprints to his. Ridge against furrow. They fit together as though they are two parts of the same tree. He moves his hand from hers, and touches her breastbone. Her heart beats against his fingers.
“What are you?” he asks.
“What are you?” she replies, and her heart pounds so hard that the Japanese lanterns jostle and the moths sucking light there complain and reshuffle their wings.
They lean into each other, his hands moving first on her shoulders, and then on her waist, and then, rumpling the blue dress, shifting the hem upward, onto her thighs. Her mouth opens onto his mouth, and—
Then it’s done. It doesn’t take any work to make it magic. It doesn’t even take any magic to make it magic.
Sometime soon after, he carries her to the bed in his hotel room. In the morning, though she does not notice it now, the hooks that fasten her bra will be bent over backward. The black lace of her underwear will be torn.
This is what falling in love looks like. It is birds and wings and voodoo dolls pricking their fingers as they sing of desire. It is blood bond and flooded street and champagne and O, holy night.
It is Happily Ever.
Give it a minute. Soon it will be After.
So, say her man’s a magician. Say that when he enters a forest, trees stand up and run away from their leaves, jeering at their bonfired dead. Say that in his presence people drop over dead during the punchlines of the funniest jokes they’ve ever managed to get through without dying of laughing, except—
Like that.
So, say he knew it all along. This is one of a number of worst things itemized already from the beginning of time by magicians. This falls into the category of What To Do When Your Woman Falls In Love With Someone Who Is Something Which Is Not The Least Bit Like The Something You Are.
The magician shuffles a deck of cards, very pissed off. The cards have altered his fingerprints. Scars from papercuts, scars from paper birds and paper flowers, from candle-heated coins, and scars from the teeth of the girls from whose mouths he pulled the category Things They Were Not Expecting.
The Humanity of Monsters Page 20
