by Nic Brown
Cliff lined frozen cinnamon rolls on a sheet pan at the kitchen table while Birdie sprinkled cinnamon. They worked by candlelight, cooking the extra dough while the rain continued against the windowpanes, lower pitched here than in the bakery but no less urgent. The dough was already fleshy and swollen, the yeast coming to life as its temperature rose. Cliff was proud of his exact rows, his role in the creation. Birdie intended to take the finished rolls to Rebecca’s wedding, now moved from its original location, Mankin Park, to a haphazard fete at Matthew’s house later that evening. In the corner, a large metal mixing bowl with a towel wrapped around it caught a constant flow of brown water that was trickling out of a rotten spot of plaster on the ceiling.
The legs of the kitchen table were scarred with deep pale grooves. Cliff guessed this was Bojangles’ work. He imagined Rebecca painting Tabasco onto those legs and it seemed ingenious, too clever for anyone to have come up with on their own. He wondered if she had read of it somewhere, and how many bottles it had required. Then he remembered that the trick had failed and was glad, because if it hadn’t, perhaps the girls never would have given Bojangles to Gordon, and then he wouldn’t have had the surprise now waiting in the truck.
Matthew washed his hands at the sink, then walked over to Birdie and Cliff and put a damp hand on the shoulder of each.
“I like you,” he said. “And I like you. And I just want to say that I think it’s a good thing that you two have kindled this little romance.”
Birdie smiled and Cliff looked down, shaking his head.
“Hey, cuz,” Matthew said. “There’re no secrets here. Chill!” He shook Cliff’s shoulder a little. “You know what cracks me up, though? He told me you’re still into those ribbed condoms.”
Cliff tried to remain calm. He took a deep breath and said, “No, I didn’t.”
“We’re all friends,” Matthew said.
Birdie turned towards Cliff, but he couldn’t meet her gaze.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“No, it’s alright,” Birdie said.
“No, but I . . .”
“Yeah, I’m still into them,” she said.
Cliff felt like he had never had so little at stake. What else could happen? So he stood up and said, “I’ll be back.”
The chill still radiated out of Bojangles’ legs as Cliff pulled him from the truck. It was fascinating how one could so quickly improve at such a particular task, how his body could learn the odd choreography of moving this dead bloodhound. It was so much easier the second time. He propped the frozen torso on his shoulder and walked.
He reentered the kitchen and stopped a yard beyond the threshold, rain dripping out of his hair and into his eyes. The storm door slammed shut behind him. Bojangles’ back leg, the one that was not broken, stood straight out, pointing at Birdie and Matthew as they washed their hands at the sink. Matthew turned from the sink, looking for a towel, when he saw Cliff.
“The fuck!” he said, stepping back. Frosting hung from his moustache. He held his hands before him like both had gone limp, water running off his drooping fingers onto the floor below. Birdie followed Matthew’s gaze, then held her wet hands to her mouth in shock.
“It’s so we could bury him,” Cliff said.
Matthew and Birdie just silently stared. The chill from Bojangles had seeped into Cliff’s shoulder and he thought, What if I have to take him back?
“Cliff!” Matthew finally said, and laughed one loud, hoarse guffaw. “Holy crap!”
Birdie took her hands away from her face and revealed her gap-toothed smile.
“That is the most fucked up thing I have ever seen in my life,” Matthew said.
“You,” Birdie said, “are crazy.”
But Cliff could tell she didn’t mean it. What she really meant was something like thank you.
He dug a wide, shallow grave in Birdie’s backyard, which filled with red mud at each shovelful, then went inside to retrieve the corpse. He resisted Matthew’s offers to help, insisting again on carrying the dog himself. He felt strong, like some righteous minister leading his flock to the service. He gingerly laid Bojangles in the grass at the edge of the hole. His back ached and his blistered hands stung, but Birdie’s dog was going to be buried and she was going to have him to thank for it. He felt good. He had crossed a milestone of courage, of boldness. He didn’t care that by now his parents were surely panicking, looking for him in the storm. This was more important.
He stood back and admired his work, then turned to the mourners. But Matthew and Birdie were backing up, both faces filled with silent terror. Cliff followed their gaze. It was a white dog, the same he had seen crossing the field of mud, now standing by the rhododendron bush behind the grave like some canine angel come to hasten the process. As it approached, Cliff too retreated. The dog was a pit bull, a sick and thin one. Its ears were flattened, its tail hidden between its legs. Cliff looked to the others, unsure if this was some hallucination, perhaps a delayed marijuana-cigarette effect, but Birdie and Matthew were both stunned, clearly attuned to the same apparition.
“Not good,” Matthew whispered.
“I saw it in the tobacco fields,” Cliff said.
“Oh my God,” Birdie repeated, so quietly Cliff could hear only ga cutting through the wind.
The dog began sniffing slowly around Bojangles, pausing predictably and yet unbelievably at the frozen anus.
Surely this phantom intruder would disappear in time, Cliff thought. They could just go inside and wait. But Cliff felt somehow proprietary about this moment, defensive of its fragile sanctity. He had gone too far to let this go.
“Hey!” he said, and stepped forward.
“Cliff!” Birdie cried, grabbing him from behind.
But the dog had already begun its attack. It rushed towards them across the wet grass so quickly that its paws barely touched the sagging blades beneath them. Birdie held on tightly, and suddenly the beast was upon them. Two white paws landed on Cliff’s shoulders and a tongue with one black spot shaped like some unknown country shot into the space below his chin. Cliff clenched his eyes and held up a hand to ward off the teeth, but no teeth came—only that wet, urgent muscle. Cliff lifted his heavy eyelids and found no dog spirit, no attacking predator, only a stray, sick pit bull looking for sugar and cinnamon. He leaned back into Birdie’s tiny arms and let the dog lick.
trampoline
Manny stood with his hands on the rusty frame of the trampoline. He was a tall, skeletal freak with huge lips and a blond pompadour that was now drooping in the rain. Leaves were blowing into him and sticking onto his arms. Heavy, fat raindrops splattered onto his forehead and down his neck.
The trampoline was big, probably six feet across, and circular. Manny picked up one side of it, then let it fall back onto the yard, and the rusty metal springs rattled.
He looked around for something to hide it with. There was an upturned three-speed bicycle with only one wheel. A charred grill in the high grass. There was a pile of plates there, too, which Manny had never noticed. Nothing that might help. The whole neighborhood was like this. Junk in unmowed yards. One-story brick houses. No sidewalks. No curbs.
Manny forced the trampoline onto its side. It wasn’t heavy, and because the frame was round he could roll it. And so he began rolling it towards the street.
Manny had been excited when Amelia had woken him up that morning, because it was the first time she’d spoken to him since Friday. It soon became clear, however, that she was only yelling at him about the trampoline in the yard. A trampoline where there had never been a trampoline before.
Amelia was Manny’s girlfriend. She was little, twenty-seven years old, with stringy brown hair and a mouth that always looked dark and chunky because of the set of braces she had recently been fitted with. She’d been living with Manny in the house there on Boylan Avenue since they graduated from high school.
The reason she hadn’t been talking to him the past few days was because of what had happened wit
h Casper.
Casper was the white pit bull Amelia had recently found.
Manny hated the dog. He truly hated it. He didn’t want it at all. He was embarrassed by it. The neighbors were scared of it. It barked at anything that moved. It loved going after squirrels, cats, moths, anything, but especially people whom it sensed were even slightly scared of it. On top of it all, Amelia made Manny walk it and pick up after it with little plastic baggies. It was a pit bull, Manny had tried to explain to her. “It’s dangerous. It’s like some redneck trophy bride.”
On the previous Friday, while Amelia was at Elon, going to her nursing class, Manny had put Casper into his Chevy Cavalier and driven out to the spillway. He liked to walk out there, through the woods at the edge, where he didn’t have to worry about the dog attacking anyone or pick up after it.
It was a sunny day and the shade felt good as he pulled into the little turnaround near the concrete lip. The gravel was stenciled with light through the branches. He opened the passenger-side door and Casper immediately sprinted out, crapping a huge, stinking mound on the gravel before chasing a squirrel across the clearing. Manny hadn’t even had time to put the leash on. He called the dog’s name, but each time Casper just ran a little bit farther. Manny didn’t think the dog even knew its new name yet. They’d had it for only a few weeks. If the dog wanted to run away, so be it. Manny wasn’t going to wait. This was his chance. So he quietly got back into his car and drove away, watching Casper in the rearview mirror licking the air and staring up at the branches.
Amelia came home that afternoon and Manny told her what had happened. He said, “I’ve got bad news, baby.”
She told him to go back. To go back and get the dog. Manny could see little pretzel pieces in her braces as she spoke.
“How the hell am I going to get the dog back?” he said. “He’s gone. Gone. He ran away.”
“Did he run into the spillway?”
“No, he didn’t run into the spillway. Does it matter? He ran away by the spillway. Look. It was not safe having that dog here, Amelia.”
“I cannot believe this.”
“What? That thing’s always showing up here anyway. Maybe he’ll come back. I tried to catch him.”
“Manny, I know you. I know you didn’t try. Not really,” she said. She was starting to tear up.
That was the first night he slept in the living room.
The trampoline was surprisingly easy to roll, but Manny had no idea where to take it. He was just standing at the end of the driveway, trying to think of where it might have come from. His friend Alec had helped him steal it the night before. Of this he was sure. And they had been very drunk. On many things. But beyond that, the specifics were gone. Clearly the trampoline was from a house nearby—they couldn’t have moved it far.
Their neighbor Flash, the thirty-two-year-old newspaper deliveryman, was rolling up the windows of his white van at the curb. He had long blond hair that grew only from the sides of his head. It was pulled back into a thin, wet ponytail. Neither Manny nor Flash waved, even though both looked at the other.
“Hey, Flash!” Manny said. “Know whose trampoline this is?”
Flash looked at Manny with his mouth open. He shrugged.
“Thanks, pal! Just, you know, trying to sort this out.”
A burst of wind threatened to force the trampoline over, but Manny leaned into it. The trampoline was like some suburban sail, straining to drag him along. The rain was overflowing the storm drains and he was already soaked. He turned towards where Boylan Street connected to Tripp Lane. This was the way he’d have come home the night before.
Across the street, Kenny Craven was on his front stairs under a camouflage umbrella. He was a young guy who always had sunglasses hanging around his neck and wore shorts no matter what the weather was. Manny never saw him do anything other than grill out by himself.
“Whatcha got there, Manny? Trampoline?”
“Yeah. Listen. Somebody put it in my yard last night. You know who might be missing a trampoline?”
“Hmm. Don’t know. Hey, I heard this thing’s going towards Charlotte,” Kenny said, looking up at the sky. “Bummer.”
“Right.”
“I thought it was gonna be a big one.”
“Yeah.”
Manny continued to roll the trampoline.
“Hey, wait!” Kenny said. “Listen, if the power goes out, I’m going to be grilling up all these steaks I got in the freezer. I can’t just let them go bad. You guys should come over.”
Manny nodded. He was always avoiding Kenny’s invitations.
Again the trampoline almost blew over. Manny kept it up.
Boylan Street was just a short dead end, one block long. There were about ten houses on the whole street. On its open end, Boylan continued down a little hill and connected to Tripp Lane. Manny kept rolling towards the hill, the rain and wind buffeting him. More leaves blew into his face and against the trampoline. He made it to the top of the hill and stopped rolling. Tripp was a larger street with more traffic and Manny knew he couldn’t roll the trampoline down it. He also couldn’t just leave it in the street. He stopped and just held it there, swaying in the wind.
“Hey!” Kenny said. He had stepped into the road behind Manny. “Set that thing down. Come here for a second.”
Manny wiped at his dripping face. He didn’t have any desire to enter Kenny’s house, but he knew he couldn’t return home with the trampoline. He was at a loss. With exaggerated arm motions, Kenny gestured for him to come in. So Manny turned around, set his shoulder, and started back up Boylan.
Kenny’s front yard was one of the largest on the street and was empty except for a deflated volleyball melted halfway onto the ground, the high grass around it wet and drooping. Manny set the trampoline down by the curb, the springs rattling in assorted wavering pitches. As he walked through the high grass to the door, water from the thick vegetation seeped through the last dry spots on his pants.
“Power just went off,” Kenny said. “So the cookout is on. I want you to look at these steaks.”
Manny followed Kenny inside. The house was dark and smelled like cigarettes. Manny stood beside the kitchen window and wiped himself off with a dishrag. Someone had painted a large black wizard on the front of Kenny’s refrigerator, where he was pulling huge, frosted pieces of wrapped meat out of the thawing freezer.
“We have to eat these today,” Kenny said. “I’m putting them on ice, but that’ll only last so long. Really. Pick one out.” He held up a chuck blade. “Look at this.”
Manny nodded. He was just stalling for time. He still couldn’t think of anywhere to put the trampoline. He looked away, out the window, at two young boys who had suddenly appeared. They looked to be about nine or ten, both blond with shaggy bowl cuts, and stood silently beside the trampoline. One wore a green Izod shirt, the other a T-shirt with The Punisher on it. Manny had seen them before, at the end of the street, where they read comic books on the stoop of a house exactly the same as his.
“Hey, look,” Manny whispered.
Kenny walked over with a set of ribs in his hand.
Without speaking to his friend, the boy in the Izod got onto the trampoline and began to jump. His hair slowly floated up with him on each bounce while drops of rain made spots of dark green on his shirt. He was doing at least twice his own height. More, actually. It was easy and slow, and then he did a perfect flip, his legs tucked beneath him as he languidly turned through the rain.
Manny was mesmerized, probably still partially drunk, but people truly couldn’t normally jump this high, even on a trampoline.
“Think it’s theirs?” Kenny said.
Manny hadn’t thought of this.
He walked through the front hall and pushed the storm door open. Izod violently turned to him in midair.
“Hey,” Manny called. “That your trampoline?”
Izod said, “School’s out.”
Then The Punisher said, “It’s Myron’s. They
left it.”
Manny vaguely remembered now. The Haskells, at the end of Boylan, had just moved. He remembered going through a pile of trash in their backyard the night before, ripping apart a Trapper Keeper while Alec put on an apron. He remembered breaking a long fluorescent lightbulb against a tree, then finding the trampoline in a dark corner of the yard. All of a sudden he felt free, released. Almost happy. This wasn’t anybody’s trampoline now.
“Let me on that thing,” he said.
Izod slid off quickly, spooked, wiping rust marks down the side of his shorts.
Manny swung his bony leg up onto the frame. He got himself into the middle and slid a bit in the rain, which was now coming down steadily. Then he began to bounce.
The Punisher started laughing.
“Yeah,” Manny said.
He was clearing several feet and the trampoline creaked and rattled. His feet almost touched the grass each time he landed, the fabric sagging drastically beneath him.
“Amelia!” He knew she could hear him from across the street. “Amelia!”
As he rose in the air, before he had reached the top of his arc, he saw the screen door of his house swing open.
“I’m gonna flip!” Manny yelled, his hair an explosion. “Watch!”
He hit the bottom but his legs slipped out beneath him. He whipped back onto the fabric, his head just missing the metal frame. Then he rose back into the air for a second as he flew over the edge and crumpled to an electric stop on the wet grass.
Manny was sure that he had been broken. Completely. Every bone. He moved his legs. They moved. He did it again. They didn’t even hurt. He did an internal assessment. There was nothing that actually hurt.
