Pilgrims Upon the Earth Page 15

  I don’t know what they are, Terry said.

  He rattled them in the plastic bottle, opaque, orange brown, and the cap white, label handwrote and faded. Noah took the bottle and studied the label a moment and then he uncapped the lid. He put one to his mouth and chewed, shook another and held it to him a fistful.

  Take it, man, he said. It’s fine. My uncle’s a nurse.

  Yeah?

  He will be in two years. But he’s got the uniform and everything.

  The pill was shaped like a football. Terry palmed it, fat and thick in his hand. He studied the pill and then he threw it back. His mouth lacked spit. He bit hard, tasted chalk. Noah put the bottle into a pocket, and then he took it out again quickly and uncapped the lid, looked inside and shook the pills around. He pinched another one, thought for a breath, and then he ate it, lips grazed powder blue.

  They took the stairs back up and stood in the kitchen. Some of the ones from the back room came out and milled around. The bony, dark-haired girl from the guesthouse in Echota was there. She came over and stood in front of him with another girl called Finley Right above her bellybutton, moving up to her ribcage, was a thick straight line, rough and pink, like a zipper yanked out. Terry wanted to put his hands to it. Things in the room were looped and funny, like a stranger’s family picture album, like church on television. She let the shirt drop, and took a sip from the red cup, ice beaded drops on the plastic, chewed teeth marks along the white Up.

  I dig your wavelength, Terry said.

  What? she said.

  She put the cup to her mouth, gnawed at a spot already worked on.

  Nothing, Terry said.

  Noah mixed a glass of grain alcohol with pink instant lemonade powder. Terry drank it straight, and then Noah made another one, and Terry took that one up, too, and drank fast. His face started to beat warmly, hands, thighs, and then his groin went hot in the same way. The ground shifted beneath him. Noah’s face dropped off. One of the girls grew ten feet to a terrible giant.

  Terry’s feet were light on the stairs going down, plank rail trembling beneath his right hand; he spit flowers in the yard, fell on the hood of a fast red car, felt his hands slide cool beside the air vent.

  Terry woke beside the house, looked up at Noah’s face and his stubby hand held down to him. He propped himself on his elbows.

  What’s all this about? Terry said.

  His shirt was wet on the front. He thought maybe he was dead, or dreaming he was dead. He tried to stand but could not.

  Deceased, Terry said.

  He got to his knees, wobbled and fell back against the ground. He took Noah’s hand and pulled himself up, looked then at his jeans, wet at the front, groin to thigh. He strained his head over one shoulder and looked at the backside of his jeans.

  I might have pissed myself, he said.

  Happens, Noah said.

  Terry blinked at the night around him, thought he felt a bug crawl at his neck, and slapped it with a hard swat. He looked at his hand; nothing. He shook it, then. He smacked his lips and it made a noise like tape peeled back from cardboard.

  Where’s that red door? Terry said.

  He stood still for a moment. Noah dusted grass from his shoulders and pointed to the street at his back.

  Terry walked fast, and thought it must be morning, the air wet and pregnant, but it was still night.

  He passed another white house with the lights up. In the front yard three men stood at the back of a silver car like moviegoers. Another lay like a sunbather in the grass, lit pink in the taillights, feet out front, propped up to his elbows. Terry didn’t want to know what it was they were doing. He smelled menace, felt some ancient fight playing out. He kept his face down, tried not to look, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from turning up.

  Someone said, Hello!

  Terry lifted his face, spoke loud to the night dark.

  Hello! he said. How are you!

  He walked a little faster, crossed his arms jacket tight over his chest.

  Two of them came out of the dark and took each of his arms at the bicep. It was not a hard grip. They turned him around, and he walked with them.

  Okay, he said. Okay, okay, okay.

  Terry’s feet turned pink in the headlights. He studied the man laid there, a boy, really, who looked Terry’s age, or maybe a little older, eyes wet, but not from crying. Terry took in the rest; all of them boys, he saw, faces twisted brown liquor drunk. One of them explained that the boy on the ground was a good friend of all of theirs, but he’d stolen a hundred dollars from one of them.

  I did, the boy on the ground said.

  He leaned to one arm and raised the other one.

  I did do it, he said. I stole. That money and all what.

  We don’t know what to do about it, one of them said.

  Oh, I don’t care, the boy at the ground said. Just get on with it. All of you tiny shitcakes.

  We thought maybe we should hit him with sticks, another one said.

  Terry saw, then, that all of them were holding large branches torn from a bush or tree.

  Those aren’t sticks, Terry said.

  They didn’t seem to hear him.

  That’s fine, the one on the ground said. Hit me with sticks and whatall. The branches. Whatever the shit they are.

  I think that’s a good idea, Terry said.

  He didn’t realize that he’d started to cry; more than anything else, he wished to get away from these four. Terry turned to leave and one of them took his arm again, then bent down to the ground, picked up a branch and held it to him.

  What? Terry said.

  Terry looked at the one on the ground; he was set on seeing this through. Terry waited, and the others started with the branches, and then the rush of cut air took him, white trails from the branches whimpered in the dark. He raised the branch and brought it down against one of the kid’s shoulders. He felt scared, but good at the same time. He kept swinging, felt each tiny moment of the world turned solid and clear in the sharp whack of wood against bone. The one on the ground clutched his gut, and they stopped hitting him, all of them gripping split branches. The one on the ground raised himself to an elbow and spit, wiped his mouth at both corners with his sleeve.

  Terry heard his heart in his ears and ribs when he stumbled away from them. He pushed open the red door; dark inside the room, Noah splayed on the couch, red metal flashlight on the floor beside him like a stowed rifle. Terry went over and took it up and shined it down on his face. Noah had dark, elegant and swooping eyebrows drawn over his real ones with a deep black marker, and a curled mustache over his top lip. He looked like a matador. Terry told him so, even though Noah was sleeping, and patted his head, hair dark wet and cold, breath low and patient through his nose. He turned off the flashlight and put it back on the floor and then he went to the corner beside the couch and sat down, pulled his knees high to his chest.

  THE SAND was warm around the house stilts. Terry’s eyes hurt. They walked on the side of the road and stopped in front of a house painted brown and orange. Noah hustled up the stairs to the deck, touched a girl on the back, close to her shoulder blades. She turned around and put her arms over his shoulders. She smiled, had tall shoulders and red skin, wore swimming goggles with blue lenses and a white rubber strap banded at the crown of her head. Noah pointed down to Francis and Terry, barefoot in the sand, and they squinted up to her like they were seeing a monument for the first time. She waved, and they waved back.

  Who’s that? Terry said.

  He forgot, with the grain alcohol, the night before, that he’d studied her stomach, the pale scar above her navel.

  Merriam something or other, Francis said. She has a great ass.

  She faced them, and Terry couldn’t see.

  I can’t see her ass, he said.

  The house was like the place before, one large and bare space at the front, a pair of bunkrooms on back, walls colored clay and shale. A disco ball hung from a twisted clothes hanger jammed at
the ceiling. Pieces of particleboard fell to a small pile near the center of the room, and people stepped over it, and tapped the disco ball when they passed beneath.

  In the bathroom a girl sat on the toilet with the lid turned down, vanity mirror at her lap. She hunched over it, rounded her spine, back heaving when she drew in through her one nostril and then the other. She put her fingers to her mouth, traced her gums and teeth with the tips, the motion shaped a dance in the mirror above the sink. Terry stood back against the door. There were four people in the bathroom. They used a cut-off purple straw. He didn’t know what it would do shot up his nose to his brain, but he put his face on the mirror, anyway, held his left nostril closed with his thumb and sucked in. For a moment, nothing, but then whatever he nosed spread inside him, felt like cough syrup did when he drank mouthfuls, felt like the sound of a car running too high in a low gear, pistons burning. He put his shoulders and the small of his back against the wall, couldn’t swallow, felt lead in his teeth, sulfur on his tongue.

  Terry left the bathroom and went to one of the bedrooms. Francis got the cigarette near his mouth, and then the door opened and squared him on the back. He fell down, cigarette flown to a clothes pile. A pink shirt on top started to smolder, and then more pieces caught, and everyone around him stood up and moved fast from the room. Noah and Francis were gone then, screeching yells from the yard batted the windows. Terry sat a moment, leaned his head to one side and watched the pile catch. He meant to see them burn, take the room and then the house, but he stood up when the smoke got thick and hazed in the room, stepped over to the fire and stomped at it. His right pants leg caught, burned some on the cuff. He punched it out, turned back to work on the mound, hopped boot heels until the clothes did not weep. Most were charred on top, blacked patches and smelling like cold weather. Terry sat back down on the bed and started a cigarette. He smoked slow, stayed a moment to make sure the pile did not catch again; he did not understand police were in the front yard, gathering handfuls of kids from the house, smell of billy club and handcuff in the air, officers working like those who tended bar, like deacons, cobblers or stonemasons.

  Terry left the house at the back stairs and ran west though the yards. He made back to the main road, slowed his gallop to a careful walk, like stepping over graves.

  Merriam was standing in the side yard of another house. The ones swarmed there were screaming on the ricket porch and in the yard. She leaned on a small red truck parked a drunk slant, and smoked a long, white filter cigarette, looking like a woman in the old movies on television, and he wondered if she ever wore a tiara, some diamond beaded headband. Behind him the police took apart the house, a storm of navy and flashlight, scattering all of them with the weight of gold badges and nightsticks. Merriam didn’t turn when he came up, didn’t say anything. Terry stood close to her. He didn’t know why, had never thought to do such a thing, but he pressed his waist into hers, nudged her feet with his in the sand-choked grass.

  I saw you back there, Terry said. I can’t remember when that was. Today, I think.

  Yesterday afternoon. Last night.

  Francis said your ass is bionic.

  That’s right.

  And before, I saw you, too.

  Right.

  You were leaning on that piano.

  It was a nice one. Don’t turn around.

  Terry was confused for a moment. Merriam dropped the cigarette at his feet and stood close to his chest, turned her face on his.

  Don’t do anything yet, Merriam said.

  She spoke close to his mouth, her breath warm, night wet.

  Listen, she said. They took a left just back there, and they’re going to come around this way.

  She bumped her head in the opposite direction. Terry gripped her on the wrist and thought to run, but she took his wrist with her other hand, and stopped him.

  If you do that, she said, it will look very bad. In five seconds they will be here. They’ll let the sirens go, and the world will light up like a fucking atom bomb.

  The police cars stormed the lot and the sirens wailed, the late dark gone loud and blue and red and white and flashing like some county fair. Merriam pulled him to her chest, said something close to his ear he couldn’t make, and then she kissed him hard, and he followed her mouth; this moment stretched for some time. She pulled back and turned around quickly in the sand and led him on the road past the wide backs and shoulders of the police, the lit faces of startled kids, some at a sprint, some thrown to the ground. All of it happened in the sudden manner of a winter storm.

  Soon they knocked at the red door and went inside. Merriam sat down in one corner near the window, and ground her teeth. It sounded like green wood snapping. Terry pulled the blue snow hat down to cover his ears, and then he went over to her and took her hand and pulled her up.

  What are we doing? she said.

  Don’t be silly, Terry said.

  He didn’t know what to do. He took a pale pink sheet from one of the beds, and a small chair from the corner, stuffed one end of the spread into a drawer and draped the other over the chair back, and then he sat cross-legged underneath it.

  It’s a tent, Merriam said.

  She sat beside him. He took a lighter from one pocket, flame lit the blanket underneath.

  A teepee, actually, he said.

  You want to tell me something? she said.

  I would, he said.

  The words went sour and to a mash in his throat, and he couldn’t make any sense of them. Merriam took his hands and held them at her lap. He didn’t want her to look at them, didn’t want her to see the lines cut there. He leaned over fast and kissed her on the mouth. They stayed a moment, and then she pulled away, reached up, yanked the spread down in ruins.

  He stood up when she left the house and draped the spread over his shoulders like a cape. He went into the front room and paced, looked a dog at the gate of a yard fence. He sat down in one corner for what seemed a long time, and he tried to sleep, but could not.

  The next morning Noah kicked his leg. Terry blinked, slapped both cheeks to shake his head. Francis slept on the floor. The rest of them were gone. The room smelled sharp and desperate.

  Get up bastard, Noah said.

  Alright, goddammit, Terry said.

  Noah thumped Francis at the ear. Francis rubbed his eyes and sat up and propped his arms behind.

  Is it time? he said.

  Yeah, Noah said.

  Is there work? Terry said. Are we farming?

  They got stoned and drove to a long white rectangle church built high on stilts. It was Easter; the preacher threw God at them, knocked handfuls down between the pews.

  ON THE Monday and Tuesday after Easter he stayed home from school. He sat in the backyard on the grass and it was quiet. But on Wednesday it turned cool, and he went back to class, and then later the hearse idled in front of the house.

  Carly sat in front. Louden was her boyfriend. He opened the small window between the front and back. Terry sat in the rear seat, as wide and long as a bench in the bus station. They passed a joint. Ashes tipped at the front, and Carly dusted them off. Terry thought about her hips, wished to put his hands there. He thought about her bare stomach and the brass snap on her jeans, thought about ghosts in the wide casket space over his shoulders, how many cries the hearse knew. He felt the road change and the cold past the open windows, and the red metal of the hearse run fast through the night. Louden pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, pistons sputtering, then slowed, belts smacked loose on the metal. Terry saw then it was very dark outside.

  The band practiced in a cinder block, white painted house with a septic tank at one side, shaped round like an ornament for a Christmas tree. There was a steep drop down to a parking lot behind. The spaces drawn at the lot below were faded, blacktop split by weeds. There were two shops built at the back of the lot; dance hall, paint store, windows boarded with knotted shanks of pine. They got out of the hearse and walked up to the house. Carly pecked
at gravel with a shoe toe, and then she opened the door.

  In the front room people sat on a long yellow couch and in lawn chairs and on the floor. There was a hole in the floor, near the middle of the room. One of them finished a cigarette and thumped it there; it kept burning, put arms of smoke in the room, and then someone threw another one to the pit. Cold air shot through and drafted the room. Some people’s breath fogged. Louden went over and looked down into the pit. Carly and Terry stood back some, like they expected a fireball to leap out.

  That’s a fire waiting, Louden said.

  One of the kids nodded.

  It’d help, Louden said. This cold damn place.

  He opened the door on a woodstove in one corner, poked coals with a fire-blacked hanger, balled a section of newspaper from the floor and put a match on it. The paper caught, and then he tossed it into the stove. The flame hissed and rose. Louden shut the door and fixed the latch, flame jumping behind a jagged fist-size hole in the stovepipe. There was a record player at one side of the stove, two cabinet speakers at either side. The music from the speakers was loud and fast, garbled like a fistfight. There was a glass pipe, a spoon they called it, colored blue and green and orange, passed to all of them, the head a deep bowl. There were many wallets with long chains attached, and a mannequin in one corner missing both legs and one arm.

  Isaac Calendar played a beat Strat knockoff, stickers pasted to the neck and body of the guitar over pieces knocked out. He had a large silver paper clip stuck through his left earlobe. He sat the guitar flat on his lap and rested a beer on top. The tattoo artist set up a drum kit. It was small; bass, torn, snare, brass metal crash, white tape patched crosses on top.