American Dead

by PW Cooper

  “I don't care what you believe. It's true. You know me, Charles. Would I lie?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed.

  He stared at the ceiling. “But... thanks, anyway. This was... I needed this. Patty hasn't... I mean, she isn't...”

  “You can tell me.” She was used to this. Sometimes they needed to talk. Fucking was simple, you could get fucked anywhere. Talking was harder, finding somebody who would really listen. She would kill to have somebody like that. She couldn't tell Dan things, not the things that she really needed to say. It was hard to talk. But listening was easy enough, once you knew how.

  “Since it happened, you know. She won't even look at me.”

  She kissed his shoulder. “I'm sorry. That must be hard.”

  “I think she blames me.”

  “For Michael?”

  “Don't say his name. Not you... just don't say it.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn't surprised; she was used to hearing things like that from men. She wasn't surprised. What was surprising, though, was that it hurt this time.

  “I'm sorry.” He wouldn't look at her. “I shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have even come here. This isn't... I can't do this anymore...”

  She ran her hand over his shallow chest. It bristled with wiry gray hair. She liked the feel of a man's hair between her fingers, it reminded her of being young. She let her hand stray down his belly, down to the thick tangle of pubic hair between his legs. His penis was pale and semi-erect. There were more pills on the bedside table. “Maybe if I was on top?”

  “I told you I can't do this.”

  “You've said that before. You don't mean it.” That was his ritual, no different from hers. She was used to it by now. She brushed her lips across his cheek. “Come on, let's try”" She straddled his belly and, slowly, she lowered herself onto him, guiding his hardening phallus inside with one hand. She settled herself on him, and began gently to rock her hips.

  He shuddered, and reached up his right hand to touch her breast. He caressed her skin, very gently, scarcely touching her. He brushed his thumb over her nipple. “I miss him, you know. I never thought I would. Never even... liked him all that much. God... I miss him, though...”

  She bit her lower lip. His hands were rough, but she was used to that. “Don't talk,” she murmured, “stay with me.” She liked this part, liked to feel them inside of her. It didn't matter who it was, they were all the same. They all felt good.

  She looked down at the man between her legs. There was nothing there in the darkness, just the shape of a face against the white pillow. He could have been anybody. He was nobody to her, just money made flesh. She felt a sneer forming on her lips. There was a fire in her, starting in her loins and burning up through her belly. She looked closer at him. Something glimmered on his face, a wetness reflecting the faintest light. She slowed, “Are you alright?”

  He nodded. “Sorry, I- I'm just...”

  “Charles?” she reached down to touch his face, "Are you crying?”

  He was choking on his tears. “Just don't let go of me,” he choked, clutching her body, digging his fingers into her flesh, “don't let go!”

  Kimberly read the bus schedule again. She wondered how much her children knew. The younger ones, anyway, they might still be unaware. She'd never regretted them, exactly, but there were times... It would have been so much easier on her own. But she couldn't bear to be alone. She needed children around her, needed their innocence like the stars by which ancient mariners charted their way back home. They would show her the way.

  Her fingers drummed on the metal bench. There were spiders building complex webs inside her eyeballs; she could feel their lacy feet. She needed a hit so bad. She would rather die than go on like this. Her fingers curled, fingernails biting into the palms so hard that it drew blood.

  Charles hadn't wanted to leave after they were done. Some guys were like that. Most of them, really. They didn't really come to her for sex, even if they thought they did. They really came because they needed somebody to be close to, a body to pull tight against their own. Someone who would listen to them and not judge or dismiss. She could understand that, she supposed, but there was always a part of her that just shut down after they'd finished, an untouchable part of her which retreated into that warm post-coital glow and could not be coaxed back out by any show of misplaced affection.

  She only wanted the sex and the money. Maybe that was wrong of her. Maybe she was messed up somehow. She'd often thought so. But she only had so much love to give, she couldn't spare any for them. They were only business.

  He ended up giving her extra. She resented it, of course, but not so much that she wouldn't take it. “I just want to help out,” he said, bills sliding against each other like sandpaper. He counted them out from one hand to the other.

  She took the money. Two hundred dollars, ten twenty dollar bills that looked like they'd come straight from the hands of a banker. “That's very generous, Charles.”

  He put his hands in his pockets. “You're worth every penny.”

  She smiled, resisting the urge to shove the money in her pocket and run out the door, and she leaned forward to plant a gentle kiss on his wrinkled cheek. “Anytime,” she murmured.

  He brightened. “You'd come back then?”

  She hesitated. “I mean, of course...” She ran her thumb along the edge of the folded bills. It didn't count if it was just him, did it? She could allow herself that much. As long as Dan never found out.

  “Right,” he nodded, trying to disguise his disappointment, “I know. Of course.”

  That was the part of it she hated most. The look in their eyes when it came crashing down on them, the realization brought home that they had only purchased a fiction, the simulacrum of love, nothing but bright lip gloss on a bought-and-paid-for semblance. She hated that look, she hated the men who gave it to her. Why did they always try to make her feel guilty for not falling in love with them? “This was your choice!” she wanted to shout it in their faces, “What did you expect!”

  They left the hotel together, he even held the door for her.

  Kim sighed. The bus was never coming, she might as well just walk home. Maybe there had been an accident. She wondered if she would read about it in the paper the next day, a bus overturned on the highway or something like that. Maybe she was just misreading the schedule...

  There was a McDonald's across the street. The gleaming reflection of the yellow arches was caught in the dusky half-light, scattered on the glass like sunlight. A man stood on the corner in a dirty wife-beater. He wore a dog collar and barked at the passing traffic. He stared at her, tongue hanging from his mouth. She looked away, up at the bus schedule, her toes curling inside her shoes. She couldn't quite make sense of it, the arrangement of letters and numbers, every time she tried to focus on one line it slipped away from her, like dust through her fingers.

  It was irrelevant, though, as the bus finally did arrive just a few minutes later, pulling up out of the night like a great roaring beast. She got on in a hurry, clutching the precious black pouch to her chest.

  She'd had to got to Robert for the stuff. She hated doing it, but there hadn't been any other options. Usually she got it from Kevin Peterson, but she hadn't been able to reach him. That left Robert himself.

  He told her to come to his new house, which was strange. He was usually so careful.

  She'd found herself standing on the lawn of the lonely house just before nightfall. The waterfall shone in the sunset light like broken crystal. She put her hands in her pockets, digging at the turf of the meticulously cared-for lawn with the toe of her shoe. Her breath misted before her, gathering on the cool air like smoke. She tried not to breathe. The black pouch bulged awkwardly in her pocket.

  He came outside to meet her, the light at his back spilled his shadow across the lawn; it crawled there, vast and formless and black. He lit a cigarette, and the flare of the lighter illuminated his face w
ith an eerie glow. The forest beyond his property was lurching and murky.

  He held out his hand without a word. She gave him the money, all that she'd gotten from the park manager and most of what she'd had saved. She didn't want to have to come back.

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket and handed her a small parcel. She shoved it into the pouch, clutching it in both hands, already deathly afraid that it would go missing somehow if she didn't keep in contact with it at all times.

  Robert smiled, his smile forming around the cigarette between his lips. He blew smoke out his nose. “You're looking good,” he said.

  She felt dead sometimes. Like she was a stitched together bag of nothing, a red-lipped smile sewn on and big bright eyes perpetually open. She put that smile on now, stretching it across her mouth like her face was a rubber mask. She stood there, wiping her damp palms on her flanks, desperate to leave. She didn't want to be near him anymore, on that lawn watching him smoke, listening to his waterfall burbling. Her daughter was inside that house. How had that ever happened?

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You want to come inside?” he shrugged in the direction of the house.

  “Why would I want that?”

  “We're family.”

  “We're not.”

  He held the cigarette out, turning it in his fingers, studying it. “Don't say that.”

  “Why shouldn't I?”

  “Because it isn't true. We are family.”

  She scoffed. “Oh please. Is she in there? Is she here?”

  “Alice?”

  “Of course Alice! Who else would I be talking about?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Is there anyone else?"

  “Only you.”

  She stared at him. She could feel the tears in her eyes. It was difficult to breathe. “Oh, fuck you. Fuck you, Bob!”

  He laughed gently.

  “Is that why you brought me here? So you could... could... Oh, I don't even know the word!”

  “Fuck you?” he echoed her, still grinning. His teeth gleamed horribly in the rosy light.

  “Goddamn it, Robert! How can you?” Her toe tore a little chunk of sod away from the lawn, peeling it off the at the place were the driveway met the grass.

  He tossed his cigarette into the damp gravel and ran his tongue between his teeth. “Is this the part where the degenerate junkie who can't keep her legs shut tells me what a bad man I am, and how dare I?”

  “Why are you doing this to us?”

  “Who's us?”

  “My family!”

  “I am your family."

  “You fucking left me, Bob! You left me and you married her. Just to... what, just to punish me?”

  His smile slipped away. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Don't tell me I don't know what I mean. I know exactly what I mean. And I know you.”

  “Don't start pretending to care about your children now. I know better.”

  “I couldn't do it, Bob! I couldn't have another one!”

  His eyes flashed. "We're not fucking talking about that.”

  “Maybe we should. That's what this is all about, isn't it? That's the reason, isn't it?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Get over yourself, Kimberly. Get back to your fucking trailer and explain to Sally why you'd rather shoot up than be her mother.” Without another word, without even giving her the chance to answer, he went back into the house.

  Kim couldn't do anything but watch him leave, breathing fog into the night air. She couldn't follow, couldn't let Alice see her here, especially not like this. Her hands were closed tight around black leather bag, her skin already clammy with anticipation.

  A half-hour later she was getting onto the bus, waiting to get home. She stared out the window at the sidewalk sliding away outside, at her reflection shimmering formlessly in the glass. Her hands shook. She looked at the bus full of people and knew that she was utterly alone.

  She couldn't wait. Why should she wait?

  The bus stopped, and she was on her feet without thinking, climbing down onto the cold street, crossing the road under the pale light of the street-lamp, pushing through the doors of the grimy gas station on the corner.

  Her breath was coming fast, her limbs trembling. There was an overweight man in a scruffy vest scratching tentatively at a lottery ticket. He watched her go into the bathroom.

  The door swung shut behind her, and she was plunged into a sudden silence, a quiet that was broken only by the hum of the florescent light and the moan of the plumbing.

  She put the toilet lid down and locked the stall door. For a moment she stood there, looking down at the black U-ring seat on the well-worn gas station toilet. The thought filtered through her mind that she didn't really like what she was doing. But it was too late now to turn back; she was in the grip of it.

  Her fingers were unzipping the little black pouch, trembling as they did. She knelt before the toilet. Slowly, carefully, her hands shaking, she took out the contents of the bag and laid them one by one on the toilet lid: two sterile hypodermic needles, a handful of cotton balls in a zip-lock bag, a worn and discolored spoon, a heavy metal cigarette lighter with the image of a Chinese dragon stenciled on the side, and then the little parcel which Robert had given her. All her works.

  She arranged the contents of the pouch neatly on the toilet seat, laying the needles parallel, the bag and the spoon and the lighter beside them. The plastic caps on the needles were made of hard cloudy plastic that smothered the needle-tips beneath. She took one off and held up the needle, staring at its fierce silver length, narrow as a pin all the way to the wicked point. She shivered with excitement.

  She'd always been frightened of needles as a little girl. Still was, actually. She remembered her first time, the way her hands had trembled, the way she'd bit down on her tongue when the sharp tip brushed the soft skin of her inner arm, bit down hard enough to fill her mouth with the coppery taste of blood. He'd been with her then, Jeffrey's father.

  She'd tried talking to Jeffrey, tried so hard. He didn't want anything to do with her. The one time she did get in touch with him, the conversation had been short:

  “Are you doing alright?” she'd asked.

  “What happened on April seventh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw the photo, Mom.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The picture. The picture Robert has.”

  “Jeffrey? What are you talking about?”

  “You don't even remember, do you?”

  “I guess I don't.”

  “Why did you ever do that, Mom. Why would you do that to yourself?”

  “I wanna see you, Jeffrey. I wanna be part of your life.”

  “Don't dodge the question.”

  “But I don't know what you want me to say!”

  “Just tell me the truth! Why is it so fucking hard for people to just say how things really are?”

  “You should stay away from him, Jeffrey.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who! Him. Don't get yourself in trouble. You have no idea how bad it can be.”

  “I know what it's like to be in trouble, Mom.”

  “No you don't. You wouldn't have to ask me why if you knew what it was like.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I ever did it.”

  “I can't talk to you anymore.”

  “Please don't... don't shut me out.”

  “Goodbye, Mom.”

  Remembering it now, she wanted to cry. But she was too excited, and anyway there seemed to be no moisture left in her body.

  The heroin into the spoon, shavings in distilled water, the lighter held beneath the silver metal, the bubbling, the needle prick, the cotton swab held against her inner arm. Then the blissful all-consuming stupor: all those feelings of guilt and regret and fear and self-loathing and hatred and betrayal and unhappiness, all those feelings vanishing, spilling toward
s the drain in the floor like so much waste-water.

  * * *

  Eight hours later the sun rose like a furious red god, lifted its great head to look down in silent judgment on the world. And all the people were scurrying about, frantic as insects, all clutching blindly to their hard-won flecks of necessity.

  Burial

  The day of the funeral, Edward went for a walk. His shoes left heavy prints in the giving earth. He stopped and looked back along the twisting path, traced his route as far back as he could. Lonely footfalls in the fog. There was mist rising from the surface of the lake, wrapping about the shaggy trees which ran along the bank and enveloping them in pale cloud.

  He'd come down the trail many times with Adelaide; it felt wrong to walk it alone. She'd had a determined way of moving, swiftly from one point to the other, never mind the fact that they were just going to turn around and come back the same way again.

  He didn't like walking alone, he decided. The silence seemed to peel back layers of hideous noise. He heard the dark water lapping quietly at the bank, brushing feather-light and scraping the ground very slowly away. He heard the birds high in the trees chirping and flitting from branch to branch, their desperation hidden behind sweet song. He heard the world eating itself.

  The rising sun seared the mist from the lake. There were a pair of ducks paddling silently on the water, every so often bobbing their heads under the surface after some morsel.

  His father had taken him duck hunting once, years and years ago, during the war. Dad got his draft notice in the mail, but before he went away he took his son duck hunting. Edward had been ten years old, maybe. The drive out, he remembered, had taken a very long time. They had gone deep into the woods.

  Edward remembered crouching on the shore of a boggy pond, clutching a bone-cold rifle in his pale fingers and staring out into the endless tangles of cattails. He remembered the dog's golden fir, matted and damp, remembered its lithe canine body dripping and stinking. He remembered a dead fowl deposited beside his father like a bag of torn feathers. The roar of the gun in his hands, the kick of it against his shoulder. All he could think of was the men who would be shooting at his father, and when the dog brought back the dead thing he had been wiping away tears.

  “They'll try and take this from us one day, son.” His father had said, gesturing out at the swampy expanse of dirty water. He gave his gun a shake, “They try to take this too.”