by Joe Meno
Quentin was in the chicken coop again, asleep on a plank of hay, headphones blaring, glasses folded up, open rucksack near his feet. Once more, he had only made it this far. Jim nudged the boy awake, taking a seat beside him.
“You running away?”
The boy nodded.
“Well, how come you don’t get any farther?”
The boy shrugged.
“What are you running away from?”
The boy sniffed.
“Is it me?”
The boy shook his head.
“Is it your mother?”
The boy hesitated, then slowly shook his head.
“Is it the peep? The one that died?”
The boy shook his head again.
“Well then, what is it?”
After a long pause, the boy finally muttered, “Everything.”
Jim let out a disgruntled snort and forced himself to clear his throat. He looked around the coop for some witness, for someone, anyone to see the boy’s cupidity, his off-putting weirdness, but found there were only the chickens asleep in their roosts. He felt for the boy a familiar sadness then but did not know what to say or do.
_________________
The blue light before dawn, breaking through a sunless sky, thinning clouds, a weary moon. Blood on a willow, a barn owl devouring its prey. The world asleep. A loose beam, the creak of the back porch steps, a shattered window in a neglected corner of the house, whistling its familiar tune.
* * *
Around four a.m. the grandfather awoke to the sound of broken glass. Jim did not know if it was a Wednesday or a Thursday. He fell out of bed and crept downstairs barefoot, finding the jam jar broken on the kitchen floor. Small change had rolled everywhere. His daughter Deirdre looked up from her knees, too desperate to be ashamed. She wore some man’s black bomber jacket and had the distant, unrepentant look of a criminal.
Jim switched on the light. The boy crept down the stairs behind him, wiping some sleep from his eyes. He had forgotten to put on his glasses.
“Go on back up,” Jim whispered. The boy nodded and, slowly peering around his grandfather’s shoulder, treaded upstairs. Jim turned back and searched his daughter’s face. She seemed to sink into the floor, head falling into her hands.
His daughter’s face was the town, the state, the country. With her broad forehead and big blue eyes, the feminine cheekbones and soft pink lips, it was hard not to look at her and imagine who she had been twenty, thirty years before. A girl much loved, though sometimes too much, sometimes ignored, sometimes whupped, sometimes overindulged with chocolate or sodas or candy, and then, at once, the face he was remembering was no longer the face he saw. What had been open, trustworthy, wide-eyed with all of the world’s possibilities, those eyes like a newborn colt’s, dark blue, the eyelashes dark and lengthy, the eyelashes being the only thing Jim felt had come from him, her hair once blond, soft and feathery as corn silk, cut in a simple schoolgirl fashion or tied up in pigtails, her skin once a bowl of pinkish cream, without mark or bruise or blemish, except a little crumb or two at the corner of her lip, the nose pert and rounded, the teeth small, delicate, always at the service of a mischievous smile, a single dimple then appearing on her left cheek, her neck long and splendid like her mother’s, well, all of it had become something else. What had once been a face you looked at and saw hope in, the future in, some different world in, a face that had once been named “Best Smile” and “Best Looking” two years in a row back in high school, a face he had said made him proud of who he was, able to endure all of his failings as a father, a face that had led a Fourth of July parade, not once, not twice, but three times as a girl, and had seemed downright beatific standing among the choir each Sunday, a face which had been fawned over as lovely, as one of a kind, as special, had become masked in secrecy and disappointment and guilt.
The face kneeling before him in the near-darkness was the face of the world out there, of the plains that extended in all directions from the back steps just beyond the door, the face of the failing little town, and the failing little state, and the failing little country. It was the face of a girl who had been spoiled, spoiled by comfort, spoiled by safety, spoiled by trinkets and gewgaws and love, a face that had sat before the television and muttered, pointing with tiny white fingers again and again, “I want! I want!” half in love with whatever advertisement was on. It was the face of a girl who had once believed in God but nothing more, not school, not hard work, not work of any kind, a faith as reckless as chance itself. It was the face of a girl who as a baby cried whenever she ate mushed apples—the sweetness being too sweet—the girl demanding more, more, more, her mother unable to spoon the mashed-up fruit into her daughter’s mouth quick enough. It was a face that had been told one too many times that it was pretty, only to discover that there was nothing there but the surface of the skin, the shape of the nose, the structure of the bones themselves, nothing more than the flesh, and all of it had begun to go bad, because it was made of nothing that was meant to last. All it was was flesh. There were waitresses at truck stops who were better looking, and thought much less of themselves. This face, the face of a girl who had been told she was more beautiful than she was, who at the age of twenty decided to leave home without a word, and three years later returned with the boy—already two years old—standing in her shadow, this face that brought more heartbreak than all the beauty it had possessed, this face was lurking in the dark there, eyes downturned, hiding from the glow of the shaded kitchen lamp.
Staring at his daughter, he now saw her face had gone yellow and gray. Yellow in the tone of the skin and eyelids and teeth, gray beneath the eyes and around the mouth. There were wrinkles at the corner of those eyes, the flesh like the flesh of an old chicken, pocked, bumpy, irregular. The eyes themselves had gone from blue to a bruised violet, milky, clouded over in a hazy film, the recurring expression in them of plain confusion, as if she was forever staring off into the near distance at something she did not comprehend—her past, her present, her future maybe. The forehead was perpetually furrowed, a permanent notch having formed between her eyes, the eyebrows themselves having been shaved off, their suggestion now made in sooty pencil. Her hair, once a pride to Jim, the tresses of it like something from a fairy tale, had been bleached and colored so many times that it looked like the hair of a doll that had been left in the weather, or abandoned in a musty attic, the color now being close to copper, like old wires torn from the walls of a vacant house.
“Please,” she said, not looking up at him.
“Empty out your pockets,” he said.
“Please.”
“Go on.”
She nodded and dropped a fistful of dimes and quarters to the tile.
“Now clean this up,” he said, stepping past her. He went and took a seat in his armchair in the parlor, hands still shaking. When she finished, she banged open the kitchen door and disappeared. Her car made that terrible sound again—the alternator or ignition now shot—before she tore away, down the gravel road. Jim sat in the dark and worried about if and when she’d come back.
* * *
When the sun began to rise an hour later, the grandfather was still sitting in the chair. He heard the first cocks begin to crow and stood slowly. He walked over to the kitchen table, started a pot of coffee, and saw the feed store calendar with a red X marking the date. It was the boy’s birthday. The grandfather stared at the X solemnly, went upstairs, got dressed, opened the boy’s bedroom door and saw him snoring facedown on the pillow, then decided to let him sleep. He closed the door, trod out to the henhouse, fed the birds, and began candling the eggs. Rodrigo—a Mexican illegal who helped during the summers—was already at work. With his well-trimmed black mustache and his half-buttoned vaquero shirt, he was hunched over the pen, counting chicks.
The boy was still asleep at seven. The grandfather came indoors, buttered some toast, ate, then puttered off into the field to check on the corn. It was just past his knees now, the
leaves a keen, rich green. He squatted there among the rows, poking his fingers deep into the soil, cupping some of it in his palm, taking in the pleasant corruptness of the dirt.
Next he and Rodrigo cleaned out the roosts. All the dust clouded his vision and caused him to cough. At nine a.m., he got a little winded and came indoors to make another pot of coffee. While it percolated, he stood at the counter and stared out the rectangular kitchen window. The sun was poking a hole in the sky and he leaned there, taking in its rays. Then the phone rang. The old man’s heart sank; he had every right to assume it was his daughter. He stared at the yellow plastic device for a moment and then answered on the third ring; it was the electric company.
“Mr. Falls, sir, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you’ve got until the end of the month.”
They had been telling him the same thing for the past three months. He took a seat at the kitchen table, yellow phone cord stretched across the room, and studied the bill before him.
“The end of the month?”
“That’s right, sir, or we’re going to have to switch off your power.”
“Well, I can get you some of it by then. How’s five dollars?”
“Sir, your bill is for $139.”
“If I had the $139, don’t you think I would have sent it to you?”
There was an awkward pause. “Sir, I’ve just been asked to call as a courtesy . . .”
“What about bartering? Do you ever take in trades?”
There was the awkward pause again. “Sir?”
“I can pay you in eggs,” he joked.
“We take cash, check, or charge.”
“No eggs?” Jim asked with a laugh. “How about hens?”
“No sir.”
“Well then, we’ll see what we can do. End of the month, you say?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Falls. We here at Indiana Light and Power thank you. Have a pleasant day.”
Fifteen minutes later the telephone rang again but the grandfather decided he would not answer it. It kept ringing, making his hands shake. Worried it might be his daughter, he broke, and then stood to angrily grab the phone from its cradle on the wall.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hello?”
He did not recognize the voice. It was a female, someone friendly.
“Is this Mr. Falls?”
“It is.”
“Mr. James Falls?”
“The same.”
“Rural Route Road 20, Mount Holly, Indiana? Is that correct?”
“It is. Who’d like to know?”
“Mr. Falls, my name is Mary, I work in the office of Donadio and Sons, a law firm in Manhattan.”
“Excuse me, miss, but I don’t know anyone in Manhattan.”
“No? Well, as I was saying—”
“Are you a collection agency? Because I just told the light and power company I’m spent. Can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. Maybe you never heard that one.”
“Mr. Falls, I just wanted to call to confirm that we have the correct address.”
Jim felt a flash of rage and then spoke. “I know what goes on here. I was an MP back in Korea. You work for a collection agency and you’re calling to get my whatdoyoucallit? My personal information.”
“Mr. Falls, like I said, I don’t work for a collection agency.”
“So you say. If you’re going to lie to me, missy, I wish you’d have the decency to do it to my face.”
“But Mr. Falls—”
“I believe we’re done speaking.” Jim gummed his jaws. “I believe this is where I say goodbye. I hope you have a nice day in Manhattan.”
He stared out the window for a half hour after that and thought of the farm, the future. He paged through the bank book once more. There was twenty dollars and some odd cents until the end of the week when his Social Security check would arrive.
Then there was the problem of a present for the boy. It was his birthday and he ought to have a present. Jim glanced around the kitchen, hoping there might be something he could give him, but there was only Deirdre’s unemptied ashtray, a stack of bills, and a catalog from Farm & Fleet. He pondered these circumstances before striding upstairs, taking a seat on the corner of the boy’s bed, studying his lumpish shape. After a moment or two, Jim gave the boy a rough shake. Quentin groaned a little, pulling the blanket over his head.
“You planning on sleeping all day?” Jim asked.
“What time is it?”
“Half past ten.”
The boy rubbed his face and put on his glasses, ballooning his eyes. “Why’d you let me sleep in?”
Jim did not respond. He itched the side of his nose and stared at the dust-covered drapes.
“Is my mom home?”
Jim shook his head.
The boy looked confused for a moment and then said, “Oh. She must have forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
The boy looked away, an expression of painful embarrassment crossing his wide, gray face. “Today’s my birthday.”
Jim smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “She didn’t forget.”
“She didn’t?”
“No. She’ll be back.”
“She will?”
Jim nodded, feeling every inch the liar.
They went about the rest of their chores, Jim doing his best to be patient, allowing the boy to drift from his work, ignoring him as he played and cooed with the chicks. He studied the boy’s happy face, though there was nothing in it that gave him any relief.
* * *
The boy searched the house for his present, going through his mother’s room, the downstairs closets, even the supply shed. In the refrigerator, he was surprised to find there was no soda, no frozen pizza, no cake.
At dinner, the grandfather piled microwave mashed potatoes onto the boy’s plate. He inspected the way his grandson ate, watching the boy shovel forkfuls of potatoes into his oblong mouth. The boy noticed him watching and asked: “You’re sure my mom’s gonna be back?”
“She’ll be back.”
“She would have left me a present if she was going to be gone all day.”
“She’ll give it to you when she gets home.”
The boy nodded slowly, unconvinced.
The grandfather saw his doubt and asked, “What kind of present were you hoping for?”
“I don’t know,” he said, chewing. “An Indian cobra.”
“An Indian cobra?”
“I told her I wanted an Indian cobra.”
“An Indian cobra? A live cobra? What are you going to do with an Indian cobra?”
“I dunno. Try to breed it.”
Jim did not respond.
The boy continued to chew loudly, alternating with giant gulps of milk. “Did she leave me a cake?”
Jim shook his head. Instinctively, he piled another helping of mashed potatoes—the boy’s favorite—onto Quentin’s half-full plate.
“Thanks,” the boy said a little sullenly.
“A cobra?” Jim asked, though it was not even a question now.
The boy nodded, looking down at his food. “It was a stupid idea.”
Jim felt a surprising pang of guilt and so heaped on another helping of potatoes. He waited a moment and then said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”
From a shelf in his closet, Jim retrieved a dull black metal box, placing it in the center of the linoleum kitchen table. Remembering the digits—his wife’s birthday—he tumbled the numerical keys and unlocked it. The boy stared wide-eyed as Jim lifted the hinged lid. It was a pistol, a black, glossy-handled, military police corps–issued Colt .45 M1911, its harrowing sleekness dark and visible. Jim quickly fieldstripped the weapon, then reassembled it and slid ten rounds into place.
“What are we going to do?” the boy asked, but the grandfather did not answer.
Outside the two of them took turns shooting at soda pop cans in the dusk. Jim was a fair shot though the boy held the gun too loose and squinted so much it was no surpri
se he couldn’t hit anything. They blew off three or four dozen rounds, their ears ringing, and when it got dark, they went back inside. As the grandfather slid the Colt back into its case, he looked up at the boy, who had a finger in his ear, and said, “Now you know.”
“Now I know what?”
“Now you’re sixteen. Now you’re a man. Now you know where it’s kept.” He gave the boy a hardy stare but Quentin did not seem to know or understand. The boy only shrugged his shoulders and went back to fussing with his ear.
* * *
Later the boy played video games upstairs in his bedroom, his bedroom which had once been his grandmother’s sewing room, and which wasn’t much more than a closet. He sat on the carpeted floor in front of the rabbit-eared television playing Doom II: Hell on Earth. What he liked about Doom II was that it had both science fiction and demons, together. And the megasphere, good for 200 percent armor and health. And the Mancubus. And the Hell Knight.
On the small portable TV behind him, a tabloid-style show replayed moments from the O.J. Simpson trial. Keeping the TV on while he played made him feel like he had an audience. On screen there was a clip of the LA detective Mark Furhman faltering behind the witness stand, as an audiotape of his voice played for the court: “People there don’t want niggers in their town. People there don’t want Mexicans in their town . . . We have no niggers where I grew up.”
The boy heard the word, heard it again, and then sniffed once, pushing his glasses against his face. He had heard it so many times, the word, from his grandfather, from his mother, from the kids at school, that it no longer meant anything to him.
He finished a new level and then decided to work on his WAD. The cool thing about Doom II was that the designers had made their code available on a separate disc so, if you were inclined, you could try to design your own levels and characters. Instead of the space marines and the demons it could be the characters from Batman or Star Wars. So far all he had done with the program was try to make a replica of his own town, the rectangular buildings, the vacant glass windows, the central square, the statue, the birds that huddled around the benches. The biggest difference between his version and the original game was that there was no one to shoot, no demons, no Joker, no Darth Vader, as he had decided to leave the digitized town empty of higher-functioning life forms. Instead, he would walk his faceless character through the uninhabited streets, armed with all manner of extraordinary weapons, from brass knuckles to a chainsaw to a shotgun to the BFG blaster, his computerized footsteps and breath echoing in the neglected half-light. Like a deputy sheriff in a ghost town, he would patrol the streets, walking in and out of stores he had created, knowing there would be no one to trouble him. Somewhere within the dim digital town was his mother. He had built a character that looked almost exactly like her—short blond hair, narrow frame. It was his job to find her and keep her safe. But he could never find her; she was in some secret room he had forgotten how to get to. So on he searched, the pixelated gun held out before him, ready to be fired, and yet knowing there was nothing to shoot. He did not know why he did this; why he had built these replica buildings and had not created any enemies to attack, why he had hidden his own mother somewhere in the imitation town, except that marching along the computer version of those same deserted streets gave him a certain kind of loneliness he often looked forward to.
