Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

  “If you want,” Tommie said, “I could give you my e-mail or something.”

  “Why? Are we meeting again?”

  Her face went blank. She had the most vacant, stupid expression when she wasn’t angry. Extraordinary skin, speckled little piglet skin, but no lights on behind it. He had a sudden impulse to strike her, print her with a bruise in the shape of his hand. Put something behind her face. Make her shriek. Hear something wild and untempered come out of her. Hadn’t there been some little rage in her an hour ago? And was there no way to rouse it again?

  “Want to know something?” He looked at her dim eyes. “I don’t exactly have any friends in this town.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  • • • • •

  They met ten times in the next week, before school and after. He fed her a little something every time: sliced her an apple with his pocketknife, drove her all the way into the city for a street dog and a pretzel. He brought her little things from the boxes of precious junk from his father’s house: a silver can opener for soda bottles, a little book of hand-drawn North American birds. He brought her a white paper bag of cut licorice to put under her pillow to sneak after midnight and a heavy pocket-sized pencil sharpener made of solid silver—something she could reach into her pocket and hold on to when Sid or Jenny or anyone else was nearby or whispering across the room. She made it early to the bus stop every morning and he picked her up and brought her to a pancake house and still delivered her on time to first period, her belly full of blueberries and sausage.

  Eventually, when it seemed time, he took her for a whole day. “We don’t want any trouble, we don’t want any worry. So we have to plan carefully,” he’d said. “Right?”

  And so they had. He drove her in his Ford past the Fox River and into the prairie reserves and green and muddy ponds beyond. It was a day suddenly hot and clear. The weather like summer again—a lie of lies when the first of autumn’s cool rainy mornings had already begun. The day itself drowsy in the honeyed light, as if space itself were drained of the energy it took to sustain such falsehood.

  “Do you want me to tell you about it? How it will be on the other side of Nebraska?” He handed her a cold orange-and-silver can of soda and she leaned her head against the inside of the rear window frame, skinny bare legs stretched out along the tailgate behind him. His blue shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows and he stood leaning against the truck, his new boots crossed in the dirt. It was hot. Nothing moved. Where he’d parked, the narrow road was split with a high stripe of needlegrass and thistles. I-80 hummed behind them. He took off his father’s baseball cap and wiped his forehead on his forearm.

  The girl snorted and opened her soda, a fine spray of mist.

  “I can take you home if you’re just going to snort at me, miss piggy.”

  “No no. I’m listening.”

  “Are you going to interrupt?”

  “No.”

  He reached over and, without touching her, ran his palm close before her face. “You have to close your eyes. Are you ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Keep your eyes closed.”

  “I am.”

  He sat opposite her on the tailgate, his legs stretched out alongside hers, his boots at her hip. He cracked open his own soda; it hissed. “This is out in a high, wide valley,” he said. “Okay? Really high. Thousands of feet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you see it?” He paused, drinking. “Acres of pale grass. Almost gray. Big knots of silver brush. We call that sage.”

  “I know that.”

  “Good. Picture that. And one house. A little one, whitewashed. A slash of dark green half a mile off where the cottonwoods and tamarack grow by the river. Can you see all of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why it’s half a mile off?”

  “Why?”

  “In case it floods.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s only this one road, the Old El Rancho Road, and it’s still unpaved. It’s locked behind a cattle gate you have to open with a little black key.”

  “I like that.”

  “I know you do. Beside the little triangle house there’s a shop, with a woodstove, and an old AM radio, and all my father’s old tools, and his old arc welder, and the table saw. A freezer full of hot dogs and a cooler full of Mexican beer. On the workbench is a giant glass pickle jar filled with old nails. Beside that, a little tin box where I’ll keep half a pack of cigarettes. But you’re not allowed to have any.”

  The girl smiled, eyes closed, the cold can sweating between her bare thighs. He looked at her short blue cotton shorts. Doll clothes. He measured her up with his eyes as he talked, her arms and shoulders and wrist bones. God, she was small.

  “Just off the back of the shop, there’ll be a smaller room, with a bright rug of braided rags on the concrete floor. You know the kind? Kind of a country rug, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This room stays real cool in the summertime. Inside there’s a set of bunk beds. Soft old sleeping bags open on them. A metal nightstand beside the lower bunk with a couple of books on it, right? Your bird book. And a water glass. In the spring, when it’s warm enough, we’ll move out to this little room. And I’ll sleep on the bottom bunk, and you’ll sleep on the top, next to the small sliding window that looks out over the water tank for the old ragged brown horse we keep. And Tommie, let me tell you something: this is a horse you really love. Beyond that, just road and high grass and more high grass, and shadows of low clouds racing over the ground, and far out there will be the range, purple and blue, a long jagged bruise across the palest stripe of sky. And sometimes, if from the bottom bunk I call up to you, will you lean over the edge of the bed with your round shoulders, and let your hair hang down, and say oh hello, you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I know you will. You’ll be so good to me. I’ll be all old and gray and all the sturdy young men on the plain will be in love with you. They’ll come by on their motorcycles or in their fast cars and they’ll have dark shining hair and straight white teeth and they’ll be tall and beautiful. You have to promise me you’ll go with them.”

  The girl snorted.

  “And I’ll fry you eggs early in the morning, and butter you a thick piece of cold bread, and I’ll slice the bacon myself, and bring you hot chocolate, and you’ll sit on the wood rail fence in your nightgown, and I’ll put my jacket over your shoulders, and we’ll balance our plates on our knees and watch the sun come up while we eat. And when I have to leave the house to go to work you’ll wait for me, won’t you? You’ll sit on the fence and watch the dirt road till you see me coming back home to you.”

  “Will you be on the old horse?”

  “Oh, you sweet girl. I’ll be that horse. Look at me. I am that sad old horse. I’ll come stumbling up the edge of the road. So tired. But if you put your face very close, here, to my breath—here, closer, like that—and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear me whisper. Come up. Let’s go get the world while there’s still some of it worth getting.”

  They sat very still.

  “You want to?”

  She opened her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Okay?”

  “You mean really?”

  “I mean really. Ready or not. How long do you need to pack?”

  She grinned. “Oh please,” she said. “About one minute.”

  He tipped back his soda and went aaaaahhhhh and grinned at her. “Wouldn’t it be fun if we could?”

  “Can’t we?”

  “Of course not, stupid.”

  • • • • •

  The dear girl. How could she not carry Lamb with her, all the grassy fields he painted hanging between her little face and the world, bright screens printed with the images he made for her: flashes of green and silver; huge birds circling in the wind; the wet brown eye of a horse; yellow eggs on a breakfast dish; the curve of their backs atop a weathered rail fence on a cool blue morni
ng.

  When she returned home the night after their tailgate picnic, it was almost dark. Lamb watched her go in and wait in the dirty yellow light for the steel elevator doors to open. She’d travel up the nine floors with a skinny boy whose face was lumpy and red with acne. He lived on fourteen. He wore skinny black jeans and a silver chain from his front pocket to the back. He might smirk and point his eyes at Tommie like he was hungry, and didn’t she know what for?

  “What happened to your face?” he would ask her. “Did someone put a colander over your head and spray diarrhea on you?” He crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back against the metal wall. “I have a special lotion that’ll take them off. If you want me to spread some of it on you.”

  Tommie would stare ahead until the boy spat across the car to the dented steel wall upon which she’d fixed her gaze. A yellow-brown glob would slide down the metal, and Tommie would shut her eyes, the bees and white heads of flowers nodding in the warm daylight and the silhouette of Gary’s baseball cap written across the inside of her skull.

  Her mom and her mom’s boyfriend would be on the new couch watching TV, two plates greased and salted and peppered before them on the coffee table. The boyfriend—we’ll call him Jessie—would turn around when Tommie opened the door with her key.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Jenny’s.”

  “Your mom just called there.”

  “I took the long way home.” Her hair falling in tangled strings about her shoulders and her skin gray in the weak light.

  “It’s not safe for you to be out walking around there alone in the dark, baby,” her mother would call out from the couch.

  “Okay.”

  “What do you mean okay?” Jessie would say, the girl’s mother lifting her drowsy head from Jessie’s lap.

  “I won’t do it again.”

  Say she stood there watching them watch the screen for a minute. Two minutes. Three. No one saying anything.

  “I know someone who died watching TV.”

  “No you don’t.” Jessie turning from the screen to look at her.

  “Hey, baby. Come over here and say hello.” Her mother would be a little round, soft, heavy. Her hair short, all her movements slow and tired. Tired all the time. “Are you hungry?”

  “Well, not someone I know,” Tommie might say, coming around the couch. “Just someone I heard about. One of my teacher’s dads.”

  “He was probably old.”

  “It just goes to show, you know. You die the way you live.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Some families do other stuff.”

  “Tommie, your mother is tired. She’s been working her butt off for you all day. We sit here worrying about you, wondering where the hell is Tommie, and the first thing you do when you come home is tell us you don’t get enough attention.” Jessie might raise his voice, his neck very straight and head lifted toward her but his eyes pointed at the television.

  “Give me a kiss. And go take a shower,” Mom might say. “You smell like a puppy dog. Where were you all day?”

  “Making mud pies.”

  “There isn’t any mud around here,” Jessie would say.

  “You have everything ready for school?”

  “Yep.”

  Then Tommie would go into the bathroom and move all her mother’s and Jessie’s things out of the way and fill up the tub and sneak her mother’s razor to shave her legs. First time.

  • • • • •

  The first Monday after his father’s funeral, a dark belly of heavy, low-hanging sky split open before the first line of daylight had cracked the eastern horizon. Rain splashed against the concrete and pooled in colored puddles of grease. The chilly images a forerunner of winter, an early glimpse of those dark mornings and afternoons that fill a Midwesterner’s heart with dread.

  Miserable in jeans and his father’s ball cap nearly soaked a dark and even blue, David Lamb went in early to work, to pack up and clear out his desk. When Wilson came by in his long coat, still shaking out a cool slime of rain from his dark umbrella, Lamb sat down on the edge of his desk and faced the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, David.” Wilson stood in the doorway. There may have been a time when Wilson would have called him Lamb. Would have had David and Cathy over for dinner with his wife and two daughters at Wilson’s house in Evanston, the kitchen full of clear, steady light glancing off the metal lake outside the French doors.

  There was a time ten years earlier when he and Wilson met after work to talk about the five-year plan, the ten-year, and the twenty. Cheerfully bent on establishing their own firm, and equal partners. They took a vacation together, then two, with their wives, with Wilson’s girls.

  “He was a good guy,” Wilson said.

  “Thanks.”

  Wilson held a stainless-steel mug of coffee before him like an offering, raising it a little in anticipation of stepping back and excusing himself.

  “It’s been one thing after another,” Lamb said.

  “Family in town?”

  Lamb nodded. “Staying with me and Cathy.”

  Wilson looked down at his shoes, his ears red. “You’ve kind of made a mess of things here, David.”

  “With the girl.”

  “With the girl.”

  “She’ll be all right. She just needs not having me around for a while.”

  “It puts me in a hell of a spot.”

  “I can appreciate that.”

  “She know you’re leaving today?”

  Lamb said nothing.

  “Jesus, David.”

  “Will you give me a few weeks, Wilson? I just need a few weeks.”

  “She doesn’t know you’re divorced, either.”

  Lamb’s face warmed. “You talked to Cathy.”

  “Months ago, David. July.” It could not have been an easy conversation for a man like Wilson. “There are real limits to what I can do here. This is all sort of beyond what I know how to deal with.”

  Lamb said nothing.

  “This is a great position for Linnie, David. And she’s good for us.”

  “I know it.”

  “Don’t wreck her career. Take your three weeks. Take a full month, okay? Figure it out.”

  “I understand.”

  “I want you here, David. We all want you to stay. In spite of. Everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll carry your accounts till we hear from you.”

  “I can keep them.”

  “No.” He stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll tell Karen to forward your calls. It’s only a few weeks. You just go.”

  Leaving the office, a cardboard box under his arm, he ran into Linnie in the lobby in the long blue raincoat he bought her.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re in early.”

  Water ran from the ends of her hair. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m just making calls today,” he said. “Thought I’d work from home.”

  He looked around, lifted her chin, and kissed her lips and the corners of her mouth.

  “Can you come to dinner?” She stepped back a little on one foot and looked out at the rain, sorry to be asking. “I have this really good wine.”

  “I know what you have.” The heat rose in her face. She was a beautiful girl. Woman. He checked his watch. “I don’t think I can wait for dinner.”

  “You say.”

  He lowered his voice. “Will you open your raincoat for me?”

  “David. We haven’t had a proper conversation in two weeks.”

  “We had a proper conversation last night.”

  Her face reddened. He loved to see it. “Come,” he said and took her hand. “Let’s take the stairs.”

  In the stairwell she twisted her hand from his. “You know there are plenty of guys who would be happy to come sample my wine.”

  “Lin.” He kissed her mouth. “You knew how this was going to be.” He kissed her neck. “Would you rather I just leave you alo
ne?” He backed up. “This is just hurting you, isn’t it?”

  Nothing.

  “Am I just hurting you, Lin? Am I ruining your life?” She slouched into her hips and reached her arms around his neck. He untied the belt of her raincoat. “Okay?” The coat swished in the stairwell and her shoes echoed as she adjusted her feet. They listened and watched and moved slowly. He held her head in his hand to keep it off the cinder-block wall behind her. “Right?” he said. “Is this what we do?” She nodded her head in his hand. “Say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Say this is what we do.”

  “This is what we do.”

  She was retying her hair when Lamb pulled her in by the loose ends of her belt and pressed his forehead to hers. Both their faces damp and warm, their breath quickened. “You should let the world have you a little more than it does,” he said. “Go find your local alum chapter. Hang out with some of those young Princeton guys. Do it. Have them over for your wine. It hurts me to say, but it’s the truth. You should let one of them take you to the Nine and you should share a dessert and let him put his arm around you while you walk through the city.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Let me say this, Lin. It’s important for me to say it. You should. You should let him walk you to the end of the pier.”

  “The pier is yours.”

  His eyes filled. “Do you mean it?”

  “It’s just how it is.”

  He looked down at his hands. “It isn’t easy for me to say these things.”

  “I can’t share myself like that David. I’m not like that.”

  “Oh.” He let her go and leaned against the metal rail behind him. “I see.”

  “No, come on. I wasn’t … I just need you to know that. It’s important for me to have you know it.”

  “What do you want me to do with that information?”

  “Just keep it for now.”

  “Okay. You’ll tell me if there’s something else I ought to do with it?”