Pilgrims Upon the Earth Read online

  FOR A quarter mile the wide trunks passed by in clicks, high branches grown mesh over the road, yellow pass line in front fuzzed a seam. The moon broke through, put white and shaken spots to the blacktop. Cars were parked at both shoulders on the road, roofs sloped with the easy hills.

  Noah thought there was money to be had. He wanted to sell a half ounce, make enough to buy more, pull some and sell the rest, and keep going as long as the cycle held. He put the car to a low gear, drove the line for a space. Terry looked at the oaks on the side of the road. The car slowed down, and he saw inside them, at the year rings older than money. He saw insects wailing on the leaves and in the bark; he saw heavy white owls standing mottled and blood flecked in hollow spaces in the trunks over tiny bones and tufts of hair. He used the asthma inhaler more times than he was allowed.

  Francis pushed the radio down and turned his head to the back.

  If you do it, like, a hundred times in a row, you get hallucinations, he said. Scientists say that. And, like, various industrialists.

  A few miles passed. Francis spoke then on how his grandmother came from the Balkans.

  Noah settled at the end of the line and parked the car. They went to the trunk. Terry knocked light at the rear glass. Francis looked up, and the trunk rose. Terry turned back to the front and waited, leaned over his thighs and squeezed the police knife cuffed in his right sock, blade end notched to his ankle like a pipe fitting. He pulled the cloth up tight over the knife and dropped the pant leg.

  Noah pushed a tire one side and got the paper bag of dope from the hollowed space beneath. He put it to a back pocket. He looked at the tire again and punched the frayed rubber.

  The houses in the neighborhood were old, wooden and brick, with sharp black iron fences. They walked beside the cars on the shoulder. Francis tapped hoods. Ahead of them a hearse was parked in the grass between the lined cars and the brick fence, its back hitch dropped. A few kids sat there, and some stood around like they warmed their hands at a fire. Music spit muffled and fast from the open hitch. A tall kid faced it. He had a military build; lanky and stern, wide backed. He put a fist hard against another skinny kid in baggy jeans beside him. The skinny one had a chain hung in a loop from one back pocket to the bend of his knee, arms inked to the wrists, hands a shocked white beneath blue and black line. He laughed, got hit again, and then winced and rubbed his shoulder. Terry remembered him from the woods; Isaac Calendar. The one sat to the middle of the hitch he recognized too; Louden; he looked a bulldog, a guard, thick neck and a flat head. The girl beside him had long hair, dark blond and straight, grown past her shoulders and over her back, pecking at the dip above her waist, skin pale in the streetlight. Terry thought about the story with the woman in the tower and her hair so long people used it as a ladder to reach her window. She wore baggy jeans, cuffs that draped wide over her feet and scuffed the ground. She wore a black shirt with BLACK FLAG pasted on the chest in white letters, bottom pulled tight at her back, twisted to a tail in front. Terry stared at the stretch of bare stomach, stared at her hips pushed against the waistline. He wanted to draw pictures, mark them as landmarks, continental divides.

  Terry and Francis stayed back while Noah went over to the kids at the hearse. Noah took out the paper bag and handed some of the dope to a tall kid. The girl leaned back some and dug to a front pocket. She gave Noah a wad of folded bills, and he took the money, put the paper bag in his back pocket and nodded at the ones on the hitch and then he turned to leave.

  Noah and Francis went first to the guesthouse. Terry followed close, and watched the backs of their heads. He stopped past the door and studied a small black piano when he took his eyes from the gloss on the lid, didn’t see them in the smoke and room twitter; they were gone, or they were right beside him; face and light and voice spun together, and he couldn’t tell the edge of anything. He leaned hard against the piano, felt like he would fall, and he was given to it, but his legs welled and he stood back straight. He had a bottle of malt liquor in one fist, his other hand to a pocket. He took the bottle to his mouth and drank. There were stubbed cigarettes and ash on the piano lid. He swept them to the floor.

  A bony dark-headed girl from school was across the room, above heads, through smoke, her cheeks flushed pink in the light. Terry watched as if she were a bear. She held a small box and tipped the open end, threw red candy to her mouth. Her slim body turned through the smoke, her face clear and sharp in the squawk of voices in the room. She moved like a girl he watched in a talent show wearing a blue sequin dress, shone chain mail beneath hot lights on the stage. That one scared him, hurt his eyes she was so blue. The girl across the room turned her face at the corner where he stood, eyes poked big, and he tried to stay at them, but he couldn’t; it was like watching the sun for too long or turning music to a blare. He turned away, pulled the snow hat down far at his forehead and stayed hunched to the piano, turned his head to the window behind him. A floodlight dropped yellow on the brick walk. Terry raised up and looked for the girl across the room. He couldn’t find her; people in the guesthouse confused him, voices coupled with the music; they were so loud, and so many. The open heart of the room felt a question with no answer. He couldn’t tell, right then, if he was dreaming.

  Outside Terry walked past the hearse again and heard someone laugh. A bottle panged empty on the concrete. Noah and Francis were on the path at the north wall, a walkway lined with row plates, stone faces carved smiles and frowns, high bushes on both sides, leaves tipped red. Noah sat beside one bush and laughed. He was sweating, eyes puffed like he’d wept. Francis stood above him and peered down. His hair hung mostly over his face. Noah pointed down, to a streak of foam on the walk stone.

  Francis told me to eat the roach, he said. I said you could, Francis said. That’s it. Nothing else. Is that vomit? Terry said.

  I just spit up some foam is all. I chased the roach with beer see. It was stuck in my throat. It’s still on fire. It wasn’t on fire.

  It was. I could feel it. Right here. Noah put a finger halfway up his neck. It burnt a hole I think, he said. Noah clapped. Terry held a hand to him.

  They went back for the front gate. Noah fell at the shoulder of a kid standing with his back to them, bowed him forward a step. Noah stopped, wobbled, calmly brushed the kid’s shoulder with one hand.

  Sorry, Noah said.

  He brushed his shoulder again.

  Okay, he said. All clean. No more tears.

  The big kid turned around, took Noah by the front of his shirt and wadded it tight, pulled him up on his toes. The shirt stretched to rip at his back; Noah laughed.

  You’re mad, he said. I can see that now.

  The big kid dug at Noah’s back pocket, brown paper bag with the dope inside, got it out and held it wadded tight in a fist. Noah’s shirt slacked and his heels dropped. He grabbed at the bag in the big kid’s hand. The big kid knocked him away with the other hand, held the bag high over one shoulder. Terry felt the knife pressing sharp against his ankle, thought, maybe, this was a good time to bring it out, with this trouble. He went down to a knee, pulled the side of the pants leg up and worked the sock down over the head of the knife. Francis was at the big kid, going after the bag. Another kid, almost as big as the other one, but slim and lanky like a midfielder, stood a few feet away, pulling a baseball cap low, dragging the bill up and then back down, big hands flapped stout from his small wrists, like heavy gloves on a flyweight. They tossed the stash high between them, a game of catch, father and son in a yard lobbing a baseball. Francis and Noah lurched back and forth. The first one stopped after the fifth high-arced toss between them, took Noah at the back of the shirt and planted him to the ground. Noah’s head made a dull sound on the brick when he hit the walkway, ear and temple first. He rolled over and palmed his head like they did on bomb drills at school. The other kid grabbed Francis from the back, long arms around his chest, held him for a moment and then put him down hard. Francis came down on his knees and cocked wrists.

&n
bsp; Terry unfolded the knife, held it blade down and stood up, eyes pinned, slanted in some old fury, and walked fixed, blade bore a point to the ground. He raised it up, held his arm straight, and shoulder level, walked like he thought one of those explorers did when reaching new land.

  The first kid, the big one, sat on top of Noah, held his fist still, mid-punch above Noah’s face when he saw Terry coming with the knife pointed at them; he looked puzzled, and stood up slow. The other kid saw him, too, and let go of Francis’s shirt. He dropped a cigarette, held his hands open palmed at both sides of his ribcage.

  Terry kept his pace, sauntered an even gait, and bore down on the two of them, held each body and face in his mind at once, cued his arm, the knife, to any move they might make. But they stayed as they had been, still stuck, bewildered at him stomping toward them, no sign of halt or conciliation in his grip and the blade point. He stopped between Noah and Francis and kept his arm straight, elbow locked, swung the knife in wide circles like he turned a pirouette. Both the big kid and the other one took quick steps backward.

  Alright, the biggest one said. Alright, cool out.

  Back the goddamn fuck up, Terry said.

  He said this as if ordering cattle to pen.

  Just stop, the biggest one said.

  You’re being stupid, the other one said.

  Terry looked hard at both of them, felt as sure and clearheaded as any moment he could remember before. The coming words were a nettle in his throat, there, but culled now, here on this green lawn, because of the knife, and the night, and Noah and Francis, the only two who stopped for him and called him theirs. Terry summoned them forth like a hungry ghost.

  I will end your lives, right now, Terry said.

  Francis drove fast in Noah’s car, Terry in the passenger seat, Noah gone flat and drop-eyed in the back. Terry thought of the girl through the smoke, thought of the hips on the girl at the hearse, thought of holding the knife and speaking law, thought of the trembled lips on the big kid, cold sweat on the other’s cheeks, thought how, from this point, things could not go back the other way Trouble was waking, and soon, he would answer to it.

  Are you fucking crazy? Francis said.

  No, Terry said. I don’t think so.

  We’re dead now.

  Stop it.

  Fm serious. Those cats aren’t just big and fucking mean. They’re ones to keep grudges.

  Well.

  So you bring a knife, they’re going to want somebody to answer for that. All those people there, fuck man, all of them, makes it worse.

  They can come and get me if they want. Fm not scared.

  You should be.

  Francis drove around through neighborhoods until he said his head was clear. They smoked a cheap cigar, cut down the middle with a razor blade and filled with dope and scrap tobacco. It took a long time to burn. By the end Terry’s face and limbs felt slack, like pillow feathers, and he wondered if his innards were cotton, actually, not blood and organ, or if he was a robot, like from one of the movies they showed late at night on television.

  Play that tape, Francis said.

  What?

  Your radio.

  It’s under his face.

  Francis kept a hand on the wheel and leaned back and smacked Noah at the stomach with the other one.

  Move bastard.

  He jerked his arm, looked to the road to keep straight.

  Hold the wheel, Francis said. He’s using it like a fucking pillow.

  Terry put a cigarette in his mouth, leaned over and took the wheel. The car had a lean, drifted left with the wheels straight. It took a moment for him to feel it out; the top of the wheel turned to the rearview kept the line. Francis twisted at the hips, and held his feet beside the pedals, reached back farther and gathered it up. He didn’t take the wheel, but held the radio at his chest and pressed the button to play the tape. The heads dragged, then stopped. Francis gripped it on both ends and shook it like a change bank, or a present.

  The batteries are dry, he said.

  He put the radio to his lap. The car clipped a mailbox, broke it sideways into a yard. Francis didn’t move his eyes. He said Shit, and kept driving. A few houses passed. He drifted to another yard and went head on against a thick postal beam. The metal letterbox on top cracked a jagged line on the windshield and twisted off the car to the road. Terry fingered the seatbelt at his waist.

  Where are all these fucking mailboxes coming from? Francis said.

  Noah’s breath caught. He snorted loudly

  They’re in the yards, Terry said.

  I can’t see, Francis said. Everything’s dark.

  He woke up in his clothes, shoes tied, gray wool socks bunched at his ankles. The house was quiet, night still, and he felt guilty, but couldn’t figure why. He left his room, looked for his father in the kitchen and called for him in the hall.

  The smoke peeled from his skin in the shower. He went to the kitchen and laid on the long wooden table beneath the tall windows, smoked on his back from the small brass pipe. The light came through the rising smoke and pressed warm against him; again, he slept, and when he woke up, his father stood beside the table, his trunk stretched funhouse slim in the window glare.

  What are you doing son?

  Terry looked to his feet. The light on the table was gone. He wore a towel.

  Nothing, he said. I fell asleep.

  Here? Benjamin Webber said.

  Yes.

  You smoking in here?

  Me?

  Terry, goddammit, yes you.

  No, man.

  Open a damn window, son.

  IN THE late afternoon Terry pawned the dead man’s coins for thirty dollars, and then he gave the money to Noah to put toward an ounce. He wore the wedding band, liked the way it felt when he turned it on his middle finger. He took it off, read a date cut in cursive script to the inside, fourth of June, 1934, and names, too; Howard Wilkins, Mozelle Small-good.

  THEY TOOK Noah’s car. Terry rode in the back. They pooled money for dope and a room.

  The place was part of an old two-story house, bottom and top floors divided into three small apartments. Their door was red. The outside of the house was gray.

  For three days in April the kids from Echota got their parents to rent houses at one block on the north end of the state’s neon beach. They went around screaming and opening their chests; sometimes they went outside and lay down in the sun; sometimes they didn’t notice the person sleeping beside them.

  Noah’s mother rented the place for them. He toothed the key in the lock, and when he turned it, the key went around loose and didn’t click. He took it out and shook the brass knob, put a hand on the door and pushed it open. The lights were off, square window with blinds in the front room, dust clouded in light holed through the slits. There was a brown, sand colored couch against one wall, sink and counter on the other. Francis went to the bedroom. The mattress whined.

  Noah came out to the front room with a joint, sat down on the rotten couch, Terry expectant and crosslegged on the floor.

  Here, here, here, Noah said.

  The joint looked like a plaster cast for a baby’s arm.

  That thing is terrible, Terry said.

  Past the thin wall Francis snored low, even breaths.

  Eventually a doorbell rang, but the place didn’t have a doorbell. The lock didn’t work, even.

  Someone’s at the door, Terry said. I’m hearing things, I think.

  Noah stood up and wobbled, went over and opened the door on nothing. He came back and sat down again at the couch. Terry’s mouth clenched, eyes jerked and his cheeks yanked with them.

  I think something’s wrong with the smoke, he said.

  He heard bird wings, like playing cards shuffled and cut. Blood went up at his face and then left; he felt cold for some reason, and moved his ears for the first time.

  Look at my ears, Terry said.

  He moved them up and down. The sun cracked bright through the blinds. Outsid
e the world caught fire.

  Where are my spectacles? Noah said.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  You don’t wear spectacles, Terry said.

  I should.

  Francis slept. Terry and Noah went out and started on the main road, passed houses painted mint and pale yellow, brown and white, salt peeled on the sides and stilted, raised high at balconies, kids burnt and dangling there, music a throb in the stirred air and salt light. They hunched for three blocks, and then they took stairs to the back room of the second level on a green house. Inside, it smelled old, and wet. Terry shook his arms to see if they were still there. Someone gave him a beer.

  One kid tried to kiss a girl sat next to him. He leaned toward her. She didn’t look at him, kept her face straight, and took a hand soft to his cheek and pushed him away. The kid smiled, head lolled forward, eyes jerked shut and then open. Terry stared at the kid’s gold capped front teeth, suddenly his mouth was full of pennies; a dollar’s worth, it looked. The kid went to kiss the girl again, didn’t seem to remember what came before, even after the fourth time she pushed his face back. Just take him somewhere, okay? she said.

  She didn’t look at anyone when she spoke. Noah got up anyway, and Terry did, too. Noah leaned down over the kid and put a hand on his shoulder like he gripped the end of a church pew.

  Man, come outside, he said. I need to show you a good place to lay down. It’s choice, if anything.

  The kid nodded, seemed to like what he heard. He stood up, taller than both of them, and he wore a thin beard. Noah led him out of the front room and down the plank board stairs.

  In the backyard Noah pointed him to the small opening at the base of the back wall, a door that led to the crawl space under the house. The kid crouched, lifted the cover and went feet first. The door fell behind. They stood and waited to see if he’d come out. Noah looped his hands over a clothesline at their backs and pulled, plastic cord stretched down at his weight. He picked an empty beer bottle near his feet, turned the nose down and threw it high over the house at the dark road in front of them. Terry fished the dead man’s pills from his field jacket.