Whiteout Conditions

by Tariq Shah

  I do as he says, watching while he redresses the wound.

  “…You could’ve just told me. Didn’t need to see it. And that whole ‘I hammered my hand’ thing?”

  “You know I could probably hammer nails blindfolded by now. Anything else, officer? Or can we go?”

  “Give me one and we’re cool. You been holding out on me.”

  “God, you’re a vulture.”

  “You ruined my funeral,” I say.

  He groans, then yelps. He wrapped the gauze too tight.

  “…Bottle’s in my coat.”

  I reach in the backseat, grab at his sport coat.

  “Not the blazer,” he says, “the p-parka.”

  I find the clear orange bottle in the inside pocket, give it a little rattle, and pop it open.

  “He payin’ you? For the pills?”

  “Not a lot of work for a roofer in the winter. Those’re thirties, now,” Vince tells me, shifting in his seat, “take just a half.”

  “The better half, right?”

  “Well. I guess that all depends on how your day is going,” he says, and helps himself to one as well.

  *

  To our right, the sun is a hurt red drain. For a long time I don’t know how to talk to him. Maybe it was the oxy. Maybe it was Ray, who will be kept in a drawer until April, or maybe seeing Marcy, lost in herself and lost in the snow. There is a woozy half hour of driving, of fuzz-sunk warmth, knotted to nausea, cold sweat, before I hit a kind of blithe cruising altitude.

  Crossing back into Illinois, to Dan and Marcy’s, landmarks dredge up old states of mind, childish, idle daydreams, but I just smirk at them, too fried to feel much. That drain in the sky draws us toward it, toward the wide, river-split ravine along which, long ago, limestone was hewn free by the ton and used to build Chicago.

  Vince blows his nose in a McDonald’s napkin and murmurs, “Think I should get off the road.”

  “You are such a total pussy, Vince, I swear.”

  “Should probably eat something. Not worth—crashing…”

  So I turn to him. I look at Vince, at Vince’s weirdly downy freckled earlobe. He keeps his face forward, pretending I don’t exist, but I know he feels it. I think he feels it, at least. He hiccups. We accelerate.

  “Today the day?” he asks, letting go.

  The wheel, once it’s free, turns by itself.

  “All right, all right, Christ almighty, you win.”

  Vince pulls the wheel his way, steers us true, and I get wracked with electric shivers of delight, nape to tailbone, as we swirl down the exit like a wind-caught feather to the Funny Bunny nestled underneath the overpass.

  “Can you believe it’s barely past four pm?” Vince says, gazing up at intestinal clouds the color of old tangled shoelaces that the winds seem keen to rip apart.

  “I believe I can.”

  We have a grim chuckle, commiserating, for a moment, in this shared plight. It’s ours. It’s all we sometimes have. Smiling as we purchase our stupid glazed donuts, a dozen of them, laughing as we force each one, all warm and shiny with icing, into our numb mouths, as we swallow down, our tongues barely tasting a thing, but what they make out tasting superb enough to wash out almost everything about today. By the time we reach the car, though, even that is fading, draining fast as rain-drenched sidewalk chalk.

  A snowflake, two, floating heavy and aimless as cottonwood seeds between us. Then more. I hold out my hand. I want the car keys, but Vince, the box of donuts under his arm, the keychain dangling from his mouth, just gives me a firm handshake.

  We get in and without much thought at all the both of us wipe our hands on the seats—streaks of sugar and soot. Old habits die hard. And so we split another pill, partially as a compromise, and since we are unable to come up with a single damn reason why it ought not be like this all the time, and we peel out, and Vince even pulls a run of radical donuts in the parking lot, burning rubber through sloppy snow, the few customers inside watching with dread, and I’m laughing and dizzy as we book out of there like hell-raisers, leaving what would be the last of the light far behind us, and Vince is laughing, but with tears bright as chrome running down to his chin when the lights hit them, another thing we can barely metabolize, much less talk about.

  *

  Dan and Marcy’s house isn’t terribly far away, but we speed the whole way down, since the roads are miraculously clear as they’ve been all weekend. There are cars parked up and down the snow-banked cul-de-sac when we get there. Vince bends a couple fenders parking. I ring the buzzer, but he snorts, “Just go on in.”

  Dan’s just about to open the door when we walk up. The place is crammed with people.

  The Christmas tree’s still up. Someone’s kids are playing tag with somebody’s cousins. Dan shakes my hand. It sobers me up a little.

  “Long time no see,” I say. He grimaces, a tacit acknowledgement of the scene back at the funeral home. I look around for Vince but he’s already melted away.

  “You caught us by surprise back there,” he says, and though I have some clever remark all loaded up, I just squeeze his arm. By this, I hope he knows I know tough days can go sideways on people, that whatever it was I saw back there won’t be held against him. I’m not sure what else to do, nor am I sure whether Dan expects a different sort of performance of grief. I don’t ask about Marcy.

  “The roads are pretty clear,” I say, taking off my coat.

  “Yeah, they’re good about plowing,” Dan says. “From I-80 all the way up to Northville, they’re running the salt trucks. We’ll see how long that lasts. Weather says we’re supposed to get a bit more snow tonight.”

  “Traffic was great, I was shocked.”

  “Marcy and I just flew down. I was worried, with all that construction they got going on, over in… what’s that place. Not Kenosha…” Dan’s snapping his fingers.

  “Algonquin?”

  “Over there in Waukegan. They got that expansion on the 94 that they’re doing. It’s down to one lane all winter.”

  “Gross.”

  “Just a mess. Used to go skating out there. They had a rink off the edge of the lake, you could take the kids.”

  “That sounds nice. We had that little pond out by us.”

  “I remember.”

  “You see where Vince snuck off to?”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “No, he was, I just—

  “Personally, I never liked ice skating.”

  It could have been any Christmas Eve family get-together, the way the old banter played itself out between us, I think. Automatic as a player piano. Dan was aching for it, and the thought brings a little shudder. His family was destroyed and Dan wants to schmooze. I excuse myself then, having spotted the wet bar in the parlor, wondering: and am I so different?

  I grab a short clear plastic cup from the stack and pour a vodka, but it’s too well distilled. I want my throat torched. How did we come to believe employing such poor, impulsive tactics would convince us that things, that we, are under control? Just how many holes can one man dig? As we both meekly fall back to opposite corners of the room, I can’t help pondering this bewilderment: perhaps I should’ve cracked him in the jaw, maybe he should’ve spat in my mouth?

  *

  Everyone revisits the old memories, staring at the cold cuts, tuna casserole, mostaccioli, waiting for the food line to dwindle.

  Some may find this sad, or pathetic. I certainly did, for the lion’s share of my youth and young adulthood, but I don’t really, anymore. And though the conversation is a little boring, a little shallow, a little bit grating, how they are, how they have been, what they are going or have been through—a bit of authenticity does shine through the rote, typical small talk we make as the mushroom soup is ladled out and bowls are passed around.

  The sour Midwestern accents have deepened and calcified in their throats, their words now short a syllable here and there. The old grudges too, which I have been largely absent for, are more
entrenched, now tribal lore; the weary, inflected anger when griping on homeowners associations, the stubborn stances on Mayor Daley now taken for gospel, for essential wisdom, the way they rave about the latest Michael Bay blockbuster—it’s just variations on a theme. What we say never changes. How we say it reveals our age, a history invisible to the stranger’s eye, one that is never really addressed by those familiar with it.

  What I reveal of myself in my blasé non-answers remains beyond me, as theirs are to them. Whether this is sad I can’t say, but it endears me to this messy band of suburban dead-enders, for a moment.

  I’m trying to unpack all of this to Kristen, four, the niece of Caroline’s sister Elisa, I think. I’m sitting on the stairs as she comes dragging a puff plastic tricycle down the steps. But after a minute of listening, she tells me she’s gotta run, I’m super boring, and rides her plastic trike through the orchard of legs to the fridge for a grape Crush, her favorite.

  She parks her ride against my knee and asks me to open her can of soda, climbing into my lap with a Ziploc of crayons and a coloring book. By now, those pills are in full bloom.

  “What’s that you got?” I ask.

  “Colors.”

  “Oh, nice. What color’s roses?”

  “Red.”

  “Very good. What about grass?”

  “Mmm… brown. Is Ray really dead?”

  “Pretty sure he is.”

  “Where do people go when they die?”

  “The airport. I want a sip of soda.”

  “I’m outta here,” she says, and gets back on her tricycle, turning imaginary keys. I give her ride a little kick and off she goes, running over feet toward the TV room.

  *

  “There is little to report about me—work is fine, life is fine, it feels good being back!” This is what I tell the others—Auntie Irene and her glum posse of Old World Polskis, seated knee-to-knee around the sectional sofa, as though guarding their monopoly on the crudité platter no one wants. Each grumbles a weary reply, but I can tell they don’t expect more news than this. Each gets a peck on the cheek, then I’m craving a smoke, a breather, rushing to slip outside, but Dan flags me down from across the room and makes his way over.

  “Watch yourself,” he says. “Our back deck’s been invaded by gremlins.”

  I open the sliding door and clusters of beady eyes peer at me. Huffys, Schwinns, all piled up in the yard like fuel for a bonfire.

  Ray’s high school classmates. Wouldn’t venture to call them friends, but what do I know about Ray, the high school freshman?

  Out on the deck everyone’s coifed and dressed for confirmation—all sweater vests and oxford shirts underneath parkas, in hand-me-down loafers. A few booze and share smokes around the table, playing stud poker in winter gloves. Others are out back, got a game of drunk horse going in the drive.

  The boys’ cheeks are raw from razor burn. Braces glint when some of them grin.

  The girls shiver in wool skirts and mall jewelry. They all squint my way. I’m just a silhouette made from the kitchen light.

  A scan of their faces is all it takes to confirm I don’t know any of them, do not really want to, that Vin’s not here, and that gremlins is the perfect word for them.

  When I turn to leave, someone shouts my name. He is hard to find at first.

  “Lo and Behold, is that an Ant I spy?”

  They watch me. Some take a step or two closer.

  “What’s the good word?” He gives a light toss of his keychain, with its red rabbit’s foot, and snatches it from the air, watching me.

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  They all bob their heads, sip their Solo cups. Some return to arguing Illini football. One big-eared boy fake trips on his shoelace and tries groping either of the two girls nearby.

  “Randall, ugh…”

  “Think they’re gonna you know—burn him?”

  “Seen Vince?”

  “Maybe,” says the guy who knows me but whose name I don’t know, though I dub him Bat Neck, on account of the blue vampire bat tattoo sprawling across the width of his throat. “He was on the phone with someone inside someplace.”

  His eyes flash blue as wiper fluid when I trigger the security lights on my way back in. He’s been out of school a decade at least.

  “Marcy and Dan are laying him to rest after winter,” I mention.

  “Wait up.” He drops his Newport in the frozen pot of geraniums on the table. “Let’s get a quick game in first. Hey, you guys, clear the table. Mumbly-peg, lightning round.”

  The kids come to life and crowd around. Ten, maybe fifteen of them, sopping up most of the light given from the twin bulbs screwed into the eaves.

  “…Probably not drunk enough yet,” I say, as Bat Neck splays his left hand atop the table.

  Before he begins, he lets me see the blade of his survival knife, holds it up close to my face and at such an angle the black metal’s sharpened edge catches the light beams and flashes its thin silver half-smile.

  “He bested me last time. I got a good memory,” he says, tapping his temple. Then looking at the others. A few are wiping their runny noses on their sweater sleeves. One tall, snickering beanstalk of a kid is taking a steaming piss in the bird bath. “I got good aim now though,” he says, spinning that ring of keys on his finger like a gunslinger.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “C’mon, Ant, I’m kidding. Don’t be a bitch. Ray’s watching.”

  “Lord Jesus too,” one of them says, then the others start smelling fear and giggle and echo the call—“C’mon, PLAY for RAY.”

  “Yeah, Ant, play for Ray, may he rest in peace. Chuckie, hit him with a swig first.” Bat Neck sits up. His splayed-finger hand hasn’t moved since he first placed it down flush like a sticker before him. Chuckie passes me his bottle of Jäger. It’s heavy, tastes black as it looks, makes me sputter.

  Bat Neck starts. The knife hops between his thumb and index with increasing speed, then leaps back, maintaining pace, then goes back again, and from there into the next gap, between his ring and middle fingers. He’s jabbing the tabletop like mad now. Everyone is silent. Back goes the blade, and it repeats its hopscotch, to the last space between his fingers, when he says, “What you got, Ant?” and pushes his speed. Little gougings mar the plastic. Close little groupings. The others are hypnotized.

  “Okay now, dinner’s getting cold,” croaks Auntie Irene from the sliding doorway, and all the kids glare at her, even Bat Neck, whose blade then cuts into his thumb’s webbing. It yawns wide open, a small red mouth, before beginning to bleed everywhere, and Auntie Irene makes a quick retreat inside again.

  He puts the wound to his mouth. The girl in the bright yellow puffy coat hurls a wad of napkins at him and averts her eyes. A sick mirth spreads amongst them all. Bat Neck’s laughing too then.

  “Your go,” he says, then he’s sucking at the cut and rubbing out the blood drops with his sneaker.

  “After dinner.”

  Groans and boos from all around. Someone whips a crushed empty at me, then runs away. Quick ripple of oohs and ahs.

  Down on the back lawn the smallest, goofiest one pours his drink all over his buddy who said something, soaking him in blue punch and sending him to the ground in a fit of laughter.

  “I told you this’d be awesome…” a girl says to her pal.

  “Nah, see, he’s a pussy, just like Ray,” he says.

  “Dog food,” someone mutters, a scrawny misfit late to arrive, hopping up and down to keep the blood pumping, not sure what’s going on. Another leers at me and Bat Neck like it’s a peep show.

  I sit down at the table. Bat Neck licks the flat of the blade and makes a girl shudder.

  I make a half dozen stabs before slashing a knuckle. The crowd cheers, but it’s short-lived when they see I’m not embarrassed or at all concerned by the cut. From the kitchen window, Auntie Irene glowers, draws the little curtain when our eyes meet.

  I shrug. I sit there, let the fle
sh wound drip as the mob melts away, hunts for something new to tantalize them, a few of the boys gobbling down hot roast beef sandwiches taken from the kitchen.

  “You’re not as fun as I remember,” Bat Neck says to me, and juts out his lower lip in a mock sad face.

  “You’re about the same,” I reply. Whoever he really is, there were many just like him back in school. They were churned out by the dozen.

  Standing then, I lean in to give him a couple rough pats on the cheek, and before he can pick up his blade, I swipe up his dumb keys and chuck them as far as I can into the dark beyond the wood fence at the end of the property, then make my way indoors.

  I’m not as fast or accurate as Bat Neck. But I’m not afraid of knives. Mom taught me that.

  *

  Evelyn, Vince’s mom, is smoking with Marcy in the upstairs bedroom when I come up looking for him. Except for the soft glow of a night-light plugged in the socket by their feet, the two quietly sit together in weak shadow.

  Evelyn fans away the cloud she exhales, saying when she sees me, “It’s all right, it’s okay—I got the ceiling fan goin’. Don’t go tattlin’ on us.” Gingerly, Evelyn rises and embraces me, the cool aunt I never had. She’s frail in my arms now, smaller than I recall, wearing glasses with thicker lenses, but her sarcastic sense of humor has only appreciated with time. I’ve missed her more than I thought.

  Marcy sniffs, tries out a laugh. “Come, sit with us, Ant,” she says, patting Ray’s bed.

  Here I am, in his bedroom, with its White Sox pennant, Slayer poster, cracked digital clock on the wall. I’m already ready to leave. Downstairs, I can hear guests are starting to give their goodbyes. This room is rank with dryer sheets and the dull sting of Calvin Klein cologne.

  “He was such a good boy,” says Marcy.

  “It’s all beyond me,” I say. “Dogs don’t know any better. Their behavior’s a reflection of their training. Maybe Gavin will get what’s coming to him one of these days. Hopefully, who knows.”

  “I meant Ray,” Marcy says.

  “We could give a darn about the dog…” Evelyn adds.