The Quick & the Dead

by Joy Williams

  “Yes,” Alice said.

  Annabel wanted to make Alice cry, just once. That was her goal, to bring tears to her eyes on some subject. Then she’d say, “I didn’t mean it,” and console her to the extent possible.

  “You should have seen your tail drop!” Alice said.

  “ ‘You should have seen your tail drop.’ I hate it when you say things like that. You sound retarded. Or like somebody’s grandmother.”

  “My granny met my grandpa ‘at the fair.’ Do you know what that means? It means it was love at first sight.”

  The woman in the red dress entered their courtyard. She stood with her hands on her stomach and peered at the girls.

  “Uh-oh,” Alice said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Annabel hissed. “Birth. There’s nothing wrong with birth.”

  The woman came up to them. She was really not much older than they were. Her hair was a mazy mass of dark curls, and she had bright blank eyes. “Would you like to feel my tummy?” she asked Annabel.

  “Oh no, thank you,” Annabel said. “Thanks a lot. Really, that’s very kind but not now? Not now,” she said.

  The woman smiled at her slowly and contemptuously.

  “Hi, Candy,” Alice said glumly.

  The popping sound of rifles miles away rolled down the mountain. It wasn’t robbery or homicide, rather the continuing subjugation and subtraction of nature in full swing.

  “I lost my job,” Candy said. “Teaching kindergarten. I never thought they’d fire me. I thought they’d be afraid of a lawsuit, but the kids got on my nerves the other day and I sent them all away. Just opened the door and told them to toddle homeward. A lot of those kids didn’t even know where they lived, much to my surprise. Their parents think they’re so smart, but they have zero survival skills. Social skills they have. They’re polite and they share and they show sympathy and consideration, but has anyone evaluated the importance of social skills in a situation where one is faced with a stampeding mob or a knife-wielding lunatic? It makes me want to laugh.”

  But she was only smiling again at Annabel, contemptuously.

  “When’s it going to be, Candy?” Alice asked.

  “Two weeks. They promised two weeks.” The woman’s hands seemed determined to grasp Annabel’s own. They were small hands, the dimpled kind. They feinted about. “I am alone,” she said to Annabel.

  “What about the father?” Annabel heard herself saying. “The daddy of your baby should take an active interest.”

  “The daddy? You mean the perp?” Candy’s smile had become more reserved. “But he’s so busy. He’s the bouncer at the White Shark, that neon country-and-western dance hall, he’s the guy who patrols on the horse.”

  “Oh, I saw his picture in the paper!” Annabel exclaimed. “I thought he was so fly. That ‘Acre of Dancin’ and Romancin’,’ I’d love to go there.”

  Candy gaped at her.

  “The cute ones sometimes try to take advantage,” Annabel said uncomfortably.

  “Who is this—this idiot?” Candy screamed. Then she spat, just missing Annabel’s perfect toes, and moved heavily off, muttering.

  “That is so disgusting,” Annabel said. “What if that had hit my foot? What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

  “Candy’s tale,” Alice said.

  “Yes, what is her story?” Annabel demanded, patting her toes.

  “When she was seven months’ pregnant, there wasn’t a heartbeat anymore, but the doctors didn’t want to do a cesarean or induce labor so she has to carry it around stillborn full-term and she’s trying to make a new world cataclysmic situation out of it. The cycle has been broken, the web of life torn, dead world coming, et cetera …”

  “Et cetera? You can’t possibly be as cold and uncaring and unfeeling as you sound. That is the most wretched story I—”

  “… everything reversed, everything its opposite and out of order. Everything dead dead dead but continuing. She keeps trying to get the media involved. She wants to urge people not to make the event vulnerable to cult group misapplication, but of course no one wants to talk to her. Not even the cults are interested. She has potent materials to work with, but she lacks charisma.”

  Annabel wanted to go back to her own room, the peach-colored room that had been painted with the special brush in the special way that made simple wallboard resemble the finest linen. She wanted to lie down and put cucumber slices over her eyes.

  “And that spitting, how far does she think she’s going to get with that spitting?”

  Annabel wanted to turn up the air-conditioning in her room as high as possible and curl up beneath a blanket. Annabel wondered if Alice was experiencing the same blotting up of the desert’s colors, as though a giant gray sponge preceded them as they walked.

  “That guy on the horse is such a jerk. He dumped her so fast. Don’t go near him,” Alice said. “He licks frogs to get high.”

  “Nobody would lick a frog,” Annabel said without much conviction.

  At the edge of the school grounds, a paper fluttered from a mock orange tree. It was a blurry picture of a cat with a little conical birthday hat on its head.

  LOST WHITE CAT NAMED TU-TU.

  TU-TU IS DEAF!

  “Please, Alice.”

  “I am not responsible for Tu-Tu’s disappearance.”

  “Oh, please please please,” Annabel begged.

  “I’ve never seen that cat before in my life.” Alice looked into the cat’s crazed photocopied gaze. Surely it had been the indignity of the hat that had caused Tu-Tu to seek a different life.

  “Please,” Annabel was saying, “promise me you won’t kill cats for the time being.”

  Trying to make the world just and natural only makes it more unjust and more unnatural, Alice thought. “Okay,” she said.

  “I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown for a second. Everything was pale, this blinding pale and … trembling. Is there any place around here we can get some bottled water?”

  “Sure,” Alice said.

  “The kind that’s treated by reverse osmosis and enhanced with minerals? That’s the superior kind. You have to look on the label.” After a while, she said, “That poor Candy.”

  “I think not being born is ecologically responsible,” Alice said. She wasn’t about to go all soft over Candy. “It has more sense than its mother.”

  8

  Annabel wanted to commemorate her mother’s birthday by having a nice dinner party for just the three of them, her mother and father and herself, with lamb chops and candles and some lovely dessert.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Carter said.

  “I think some ritual restored to our lives would be nice, Daddy. I want to share some of my memories of Mommy with her. If you don’t share memories, they’ll disappear, and we’re responsible for what we forget, Daddy.”

  Carter loved his daughter deeply, but the thought that she might be a little simple occurred to him frequently. Hadn’t Ginger insisted on painting the entire second floor in the first trimester? Hadn’t she persisted in those Bloody Marys at lunch?

  “We’ll remember her on her birthday,” Annabel said determinedly. “We’ll devote the whole dinner to her. If it works out, we’ll extend it to other holidays. We’ll set a place for Mommy and pour wine into her glass and put food on her plate.”

  Carter thought she was getting Ginger mixed up with Santa Claus. Each Christmas Eve they left some apples on the hearth for the reindeer. Plus a good strong belt of whiskey for Santa. Carter rubbed his face. “Are we really going to have lamb chops?” he asked.

  Annabel nodded; it was her mother’s favorite. Alice would kill her, of course, if she found out, but Alice didn’t have to be informed of everything. She’d tell her they’d had pasta. Personally Annabel didn’t see anything wrong with a lamb chop now and then.

  “I’ll take care of everything, Daddy.”

  Or perhaps, Carter mused, she had in mind that thing the Mexicans di
d. One day a year they gave the dead food and flowers and in general made a big fuss, so they’d stay put and wouldn’t bother them all the other days of the year. Suddenly he became more interested. “What can I do to help, honey?” he asked.

  “No gifts,” Annabel said.

  They dressed up and set the table nicely. At first it was a little strange, but the food was good. Annabel chattered away to Ginger about her new friends, looking fixedly at the empty chair. She told her about the pimple she’d found—she couldn’t imagine where it had come from. She told her about the new Corvette Carter had bought.

  “No, no,” he said, “she won’t approve of that.” Annabel looked at him oddly, and he laughed.

  Midway through the meal, Annabel began to cry.

  “Oh, honey,” Carter said.

  “She’s not here!” Annabel cried.

  “She’s probably not used to the house yet.”

  “I don’t expect her to really be here, Daddy. That’s not what I’m saying. That would be silly. I just don’t feel she’s listening to us. I don’t feel her presence.”

  Where was she, for godssakes? Carter wondered.

  “I miss her,” Annabel said. “I wish we hadn’t scattered the ashes. I thought the empty chair was going to be the best part, but it isn’t.” She quickly cleared the dishes from the table and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Carter sat there. Really, Ginger, he thought, this is mean of you. To be a termagant is one thing, but where is your compassion?

  “I miss her,” Annabel called from the kitchen. “I miss her.”

  Carter believed this and was horrified. He had another glass of wine and wandered outside into a beautiful night, black and still. Couldn’t make out a thing, actually, but he knew that all around him were Donald’s admirable touches. Donald, the young gardener, had presented himself at the door just last week, offering his services, his landscaping services. Donald could move a rock and effect an improvement. Restless, Carter returned to the house, poured himself a nightcap, and got ready for bed. He turned down the covers, put both pillows behind his shoulders, and cracked open the Jack London.

  “Daddy,” Annabel called out, “I’m going to deep condition my hair and maybe wax my legs.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  “Good night, Daddy.”

  London had gotten Carter through many a long night. “There were no mourners save a huge wolf-dog, to whom the taste of his master’s lash was still sweet,” he read. This was the real stuff. Blood on the snow. Sneering white silence. More blood. And no one cared. Nobody cared, and there was no law. Blazing eyes, slavered fangs, and wretchedness. Oh, it was a maggot’s life, a cosmos of death. But this was the way things were.… Carter lowered the book, and shut his eyes. His thoughts swung pleasantly to Donald. He was so tall. He had a face smooth and guileless as a baby’s and a thick mat of hair on his chest. Carter would’ve loved to press his mouth against that salty, soft amazing pelt, but of course he wouldn’t, absolutely not. He was an amusing man, a lighthearted man, he wanted to be happy, not to make a fool of himself.

  He opened his eyes and flipped through the pages. “At the sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life’s apex in the grip of death, the full pack at Buck’s heels raised a hell’s chorus of delight.” Carter frowned and studied the book’s cover. This shouldn’t be included in a collection of stories, it was part of The Call of the Wild. He was about to turn off the light and think about Donald for just a tiny bit more when he noticed Ginger perched at the foot of the bed. She was wearing a dress he’d always disliked—a shapeless green rayon thing that you could see right through.

  “I always knew you were a faggot, Carter.”

  “Why, darling!” Carter said. “I don’t understand. Why weren’t you here earlier?”

  “What was that all about, anyway?”

  “Annabel would have been thrilled.”

  “We never celebrated my birthdays, Carter, as you are well aware. But it’s your full-blown faggotry we’re discussing here, not my age. And that Donald character. Honestly, Carter, you are so common, so ordinary. That little scar on his cheek! And the way you speak to him.… ‘This is all you have to remember,’ Ginger said mincingly. ‘Mozart’s subject is pleasure, Beethoven’s is joy, Wagner’s an insatiable yearning, dissatisfied with all consummation.’ ”

  Carter blushed; it was true they’d been discussing music.

  “That scar’s fake as a three-day tattoo.”

  “Someone dropped a pruning saw on him. He could have lost an eye.”

  “Well, I’ve lost everything, you idiot, and I’m not going to let you forget it. Why was I cremated? If I’d ever thought about it, I would have expressly instructed that there would be no cremation. And to scatter me where you did, in that sound. Some of the worst toxic polluters in New England dump everything they’ve got into that sound! I expected to be placed in a handsome vault. You know how I really pictured it? I pictured you going first, of course. And then when my turn came and I was lowered into our tomb, your skeleton arms would open to receive me.”

  She got that right out of Héloïse and Abélard, Carter thought, history’s most tedious couple. He hoped Ginger wasn’t going to start writing to him. “Darling, please,” he said, “give it a rest.” Dead for months and still complaining about his driving, the way he had to clear his throat sometimes, his tipping practices (twenty percent), which she considered excessive. He studied her. She looked the same, and she was glaring at him.

  “You never liked my breasts. You never paid any attention to them.”

  “I disagree with you there, darling. I’m sorry to say I disagree with you categorically over that one. I love—I loved—your breasts, your silver breasts. Your pearlescent breasts.”

  “No, no, no,” Ginger moaned. “You were a false alarm, and I answered it.”

  Carter’s stomach hurt. Those lambchops were down there thinking, What’s happened to us now? Where … why, this is incomprehensible.… He closed his eyes, hoping Ginger might vanish, though this had not been effective in the past. She stayed and stayed, sometimes for hours, her masterly and intricate condemnation of him going on and on. Ginger was clearly, merely, a thought of his and could be replaced with another. Why couldn’t he do that? Maybe he needed a little instruction along these lines, a little training. He opened his eyes. Ginger was still there.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, “why you didn’t show up when Annabel wanted you.”

  “Never, never will I. She’d flip out if I did.”

  “What is it you want, Ginger?” Carter asked. His stomach shrieked, then fell silent.

  “I want you to acknowledge your responsibilities. You’re a married man, and marriage is a sacrament. It is indissoluble. I’m mortified by this Donald business. Mortified. You’ve turned into an old queen, Carter. You look so silly when you’re infatuated. Your eyes practically cross.”

  Suddenly, the bedroom door began shaking in its frame. The ties, hanging there on a hook, slumped to the floor. The door flew open, and Annabel stood yelling in full nightmare.

  “Pieces—in all the corners. Small, but too big—little pieces—”

  Ginger evaporated as Carter hurried toward his daughter. He wore enormous blue boxer shorts.

  “Left-handed people die sooner,” Annabel hollered, flailing out at him and hitting him in the mouth.

  “Not true,” he managed to say. “It isn’t, no, none of it.”

  “Oh Daddy, I’m sorry.” Annabel said. She went back to bed. Carter went to the kitchen and made another drink. He pushed ice under his lip, sliding it along his gum. Nobody he knew was left-handed. He put Tristan and Isolde on and sat in the dark. He loved Tristan. All meaning lay in the things its characters didn’t do or say; everything vibrated within the stillness of the characters, poised for actions that they postponed indefinitely. Opera was wonderful, Carter thought happily. An art devoted to love and death and the cryptic alliance between them. An art devoted t
o the definition and interchangeability of the sexes, to madness and drink and blasphemy! The characters of opera obey neither moral nor social law, which was pretty much what he’d been telling Donald. He sat in the dark listening to everything happening darkly and invisibly. When it was over, he still sat there. He supposed he should have outgrown Wagner by now. He wanted to throw a party, fill the house with people. Use that piano. He’d been sold on the house because of the existent piano in the otherwise empty rooms. He’d never had a piano before. It had yet to be utilized for anything except to display Ginger’s photograph and, more recently, Donald’s weekly flower arrangement. Donald. He was such a talented young man. Carter was definitely going to throw a party, fill this place with some life.

  9

  Ray Webb was trying to sell shoes in Houston, Texas, universally acknowledged as this planet’s place of penance. He knew no one. He hadn’t a single friend. He hadn’t had a friend since he was eight, actually—that little bald-headed girl in rehab had liked him—and now he was nineteen, drifting across the country, working, and stealing now and then. He wanted to be a waiter but was a little wobbly with the trays, and people didn’t like watching his mouth as he reeled off the specials. He’d kept those jobs for about two minutes. If the little bald-headed girl came in for a pair of shoes, he wondered, would they recognize each other? Of course she wouldn’t still be eight. They’d had some good talks once. Or rather, she had talked at him. He couldn’t speak very well because of his stroke, which is why he was in rehab to begin with. The little bald-headed girl had been struck by lightning. She’d been out picking blueberries, skipping along from lovely high bush to lovely high bush, unaware of the darkening day, and Whup! Nine times out of ten she could guess how many pennies were in a person’s pocket. Being struck by lightning had given her special powers.

  Ray didn’t drink or do drugs but various ischemic incidents had given him an eager, erratic nature and a variety of facial contortions that allowed permanent employment to elude him. He hated selling shoes. He wanted to sell boots, but the manager disliked him. Even so, Ray performed his office enthusiastically. After only a week he’d developed a patter he was proud of, even though the better it got, the more wary his customers became. He couldn’t help that.