Pilgrims Upon the Earth Read online

  LOUDEN LIVED in a house connected to four others, skinny and high, each one painted grade school crayon; blue, purple, pink, and yellow. The hearse was parked in the drive, back end facing the road, and there was a brown Firebird missing wheels and set on cinder blocks. Louden asked if he could play a bass guitar, and he couldn’t, even a little, but he thought maybe he listened to enough records. The bass player, for some reason, had just stopped showing up.

  We need one, Louden said. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not.

  Alright, Terry said.

  Louden scooped a wooden head driver from the yard. He focused, still, and swung the club. He cut a square of grass. The clod jumped a few feet, then fell back down and broke apart when it hit.

  You just stand there is all, Louden said.

  He stuck his boot at the club hole.

  I should have been a goddamn golfer, he said. A real pro. A jock. A looper.

  They went up the front stoop to the tattoo artist’s house and pushed a jagged screen door to go inside. The same people from before sat in the front room, on the yellow couch, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from blue and silver aluminum cans. Terry sat down between two of them. Louden lapped the length of the room and pulled a smoke, exhaled a stream that trailed behind. He stopped halfway on the second lap and lifted a guitar high at the neck, black lacquer, sharp pointed ears. He plugged the cable to a small amp.

  Can you hold down a string? Isaac said.

  Yeah, Terry said. I think so.

  He wasn’t sure at all. Isaac got up and went over to some tangled cables. The drums sat stacked in the corner, apple red bass leaned to the wall beside the kit. Terry went over and put a hand to the fat neck, touched the strings with the underside of a thumb, thick wound gray metal, like power lines. He picked it up, draped it to his right shoulder.

  Isaac Calendar fixed small pieces of masking tape at the frets, etched letters there in black pen. One named John Quality sat at the drums. Isaac tuned his guitar and looked at Terry standing in the middle of the room, bass at his shoulder like a rifle turned over. He slung the guitar to his back, neck down, and walked over to pick up a cable head. He jammed it to a hole near the foot of the bass, and then passed Terry a string pick, big as a half dollar. Terry pressed the top string at the first fret with his left index finger, did the same at the third fret and then the fifth. The amps hummed, the room filled with blind static. The singer, one called Conrad Frankenstein, held a microphone in one hand, black cable wrapped on both, hands like a boxer’s, like Christ’s. The drums, and then the guitar went loud; Conrad Frankenstein delirious at a scream. Terry watched Isaac and Louden, and he started to get the hang of how things worked. He felt the drums on his back. He felt monsters in his chest.

  Merriam sat on one end of the yellow couch. He hadn’t seen her come inside, didn’t consider, even, that she’d come to such a place. After a while Terry’s fingers bled. He yanked the plug and propped the bass to one amp and sat on the floor next to her. Isaac and Louden, John Quality and Conrad Frankenstein kept going, two songs, then four more. Merriam handed down a joint, leaned at Terry’s ear and spoke muffled. He shook his head and held up both hands, and she bent down again, mouth against his ear, and she kept it there.

  Terry turned on the light in the bathroom and locked the door, heard the band through the walls, an old scream, cymbal crashed brass sharp, and he thought about Merriam, her lips against his ear. He washed his hands and dried them on a yellow hand towel. The knob rattled loose and twisted on the door.

  Someone’s in here, he said.

  Merriam closed the door behind her and leaned against it, hair light brown and limp at her shoulders. Her t-shirt was green, and read HUGS,

  NOT DRUGS.

  That lock doesn’t work, Merriam said.

  She pulled the shirt up over her head and dropped it on the floor, hummed a song he didn’t know. He thought about Alice Washington, how she made her voice very big while singing. He thought about how he’d never seen a girl just take her shirt off like that.

  Come here, she said.

  She hummed again. Terry got an erection, put his hands to it and pressed it down, drew his hips in and kept his hands there.

  I don’t know if I’m ready for that just yet, he said.

  He stumbled at the lip of the bathtub and almost fell back. Merriam put her hands on his shoulders and turned him around, and then she pushed him back against the door.

  You ever been with a girl like this?

  No.

  He thought of Alice Washington, her finger in his mouth.

  Lay down, she said.

  He did. She put a leg on either side of him, sat down and pressed herself against his chest.

  You don’t have to do anything, she said.

  He felt her hand undoing his belt, then his zipper.

  Nothing?

  Just lay there, she said.

  He was inside her, then, and she rocked on top of him, eyes down at his face, then back up. She got his hands at the wrists.

  You can put them right here, she said.

  She led his hands to where her thighs met her stomach.

  Like this?

  He closed his eyes, but did not want to; Alice Washington pointing at the great owl; Alice Washington at the movies; Alice Washington kissing his neck; Alice Washington beneath the Indian head penny bar sign; Alice Washington through the station wagon’s back glass; Alice Washington turned over; Alice Washington held with a seatbelt; Alice Washington gone ash; he was crying; Merriam was moving faster.

  ON Friday Terry went to Louden’s house after dark. Louden said the first one should hurt. They used plastic black ink pens. It was only small letters, five to spell his name. Louden boiled water on the stove and held the razor blade with metal tongs in the moving water. Terry rolled his sleeve and pulled it tight over his right shoulder. His hands tingled. He felt the blood warm down over his bicep and forearm. He stood on a spread newspaper. The headline read RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY. The blood ran off his fingers and dropped at the newspaper. Louden dabbed the letters with a paper napkin. Terry winced, and the room wobbled dizzy and cold. Louden looked at him hard, lit a cigarette, blew smoke.

  Don’t move, he said.

  He broke the ink shaft with two hands, and held the split plastic on top of the razor cuts. He dropped the tube against the newspaper and smeared his hands over the letters and held them there. Terry’s arm was dark blue, and some red, and throbbed at his heartbeat. He held it straight out and Louden covered his bicep with plastic wrap and pulled it tight.

  Terry was crying.

  South Carolina’s first cash crop was indigo, Louden said. Blue ink.

  He mashed out the cigarette on the floor, and then he lit another, blew smoke at the side of his mouth. Terry stomped his foot hard. Louden smiled.

  Awhile now, he said.

  His arm throbbed. He touched the clear tape wrapped bandage and stared as they passed streetlamps. They got stoned off pot that tasted charcoal. He went through half a pack. They drove the same loop four times through one of the old neighborhoods. The dope made him feel mean, and tall, and blank, and his arm burned, and he wanted to tear it off, drop it from the window.

  The front yard of the old wood finished two-story was wet. There was a long porch on the front and kids leaned at the rail and against the wall and sat in lawn chairs. In the front room there was a gas fireplace with fake logs tossed orange and white, and some sat on a couch, and some on the floor around a coffee table littered with bottles and cans. There were ashes on the floor and in the air. In the backyard a fire burned, and people stood around in small knots on the dark grass. Terry and Louden went and stood by Francis. He told them Noah was at home and asleep.

  I cut him, Louden said.

  Francis wore the blue mesh baseball hat. He pulled up the sleeve and looked on the bandage. He squinched his eyes, dropped the sleeve back.

  What’s that mean?

  I don’t know, Terry said.
It’s my name.

  Did it hurt?

  Yeah.

  Bad?

  Real bad.

  Did you cry?

  Some.

  I would have.

  They threw dented cans in the fire. Francis tossed a handful of dirt. The clouds ticked fast over the moon, blue frame, white haze.

  Louden kept his eyes fixed on the road. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and put it to his mouth. He rolled down the window and blew smoke. Terry watched him drive with his sure and crunched face. There was madness inside Louden; his heart, fist and bone, a hundred screams. Terry’s hands and the blue word on his bicep burned. Some blood came from beneath the tape on his arm. He balled his shirt at the bottom and wiped it.

  My old man, Louden said. That fucker, when I was twelve, he got a railroad spike in his temple. He worked there, I mean, for the railroad, on the tracks, fixing things that went wrong, and once he slipped on those rocks, you know the ones that are always on railroad tracks, those slick fat ones that are all jammed up together? He slipped on those. You’d think there’d be a train or something. But no. He slipped. It took a small piece out. The skull, I mean. It fucked up his head some, made him mean, mostly, but also he can’t clean himself anymore. Not like he shits himself, just that he doesn’t have any sense of personal hygiene, like the idea of brushing your teeth, or washing yourself, doesn’t mean anything to him. Like even after people told him, he didn’t do anything, because he couldn’t, like his brain had lost that one single part. Everything else, besides being a fucking asshole, I mean. That was mostly there already, everything else was fine, normal. Not at all out of the ordinary The smell of this man, though, I’m telling you, is incredible.

  THEY PILED amps and cords and guitars and drums back of the hearse and drove it over to the American Legion a few hours before the show started. It was their first one. He rode with Louden and John Quality and Isaac Calendar and Carly and a girl named Roxanne. She wore fire engine red lipstick, and her black t-shirt read CRIB DEATH.

  The building was in the woods out past the county airport. There were pictures on the walls of old men sitting at tables in the same building. They had small heads, and big glasses, wore army or navy or marine or air force hats, and pins and ribbons and wings at their shirts.

  Roxanne Crib Death unhinged one of the pictures and laid it on the table. She spilled two blue pills on the glass and crushed them with the bottom of a beer bottle. She put her nose to the old men’s faces past the glass and the powder. Terry went down on it next. He came up fast, and tried to move his eyes far back in his head. He wiped his nose and sniffed.

  He went back over to the wall and looked at the pictures some more and took out a cigarette. He patted his chest. One could do a lot with pilot’s wings. He thought about his grandfather, how he was dead.

  The place filled up with smoke and bodies, the smell of wet mouths, punk kids from Echota and the spent towns nearby He wasn’t ready to play in front of people, not even a little. Isaac said he was fine. If he fucked up no one would hear anyway.

  He meant to come down a little. He walked laps at the room. He smoked a joint with Isaac and Roxanne Crib Death under the pictures of old men. The two of them left, and Terry stayed looking at the pictures. The cigarettes piled at his feet.

  He took most of the skin from the index finger on his right hand by the fifth song. He drug it over and over against the strings on a down pick. The tips of every one save the pinky on his left bled. Louden jumped off the stage on the eighth song, and then he saw him at the small crowd up front, shouldered through a swarm that crashed one another. He moved through the bodies. He parted them.

  MONDAY HE opened the first stall door at the bathroom on the math hall. There was a cinder block dropped in the toilet. He went to the next stall, locked the door and put his back to it. He got a cigarette. He kept it at his mouth, and pissed the same time, and then a hard knock at the door, and he let the cigarette fall from his mouth to the toilet. He fanned the smoke, and brought a foot to the silver knob and flushed. He turned and opened the door.

  Merrill stood arms crossed over his chest. He played on the team, sometimes midfield, mostly up front. Terry nodded at him, and started to walk past.

  I thought you were a teacher, he said.

  He went to the sink and turned the water, pressed the box holding the pink soap, and washed his hands. Merrill stood behind.

  I already know what you’re going to say, Terry said.

  He didn’t know. He pressed for more soap, worked it into his fingers.

  She’s his girlfriend, Merrill said.

  She can think for herself, Terry said.

  He got a brown paper towel and dried his hands. Merrill leaned against the back wall. He stretched his head toward the bathroom door.

  You got an extra?

  Terry unzipped the back pocket on his knapsack and took out a cigarette.

  First stall’s got a cinder block in the toilet, Terry said.

  Merrill went to the back. The smoke curled one side of the stall. The toilet flushed loud, violent, and Merrill fumbled with the door and stepped out and wobbled some. He looked in the mirror at the other sink and ran water at his hands.

  You three got a bad deal, Merrill said. Shouldn’t have kicked you off.

  I don’t care anything about that coach or that team. You can all fuck off for all I care.

  Merrill shook his head slow.

  Just look out is all I’m saying.

  His jaw hurt. He thought about pulling teeth, counting them.

  Benjamin Webber and the dog came inside the house damp from the grass and the rain stood puddles. The dog was gray and white haired, spotted places on the back legs with mange, and its ribs bared some. It came over and stood in front.

  It’s your dog, his father said.

  Terry leaned and put a hand beneath its jaw and rubbed there. The dog panted a gum red open mouth.

  It doesn’t have any teeth, he said.

  Doesn’t matter. It’s been going on sticks, tearing them to shit all afternoon.

  He squatted deep at his heels and looked the dog in the face. It huffed. His father got the back leg and rubbed a humped spot in the fur.

  He’s got a damn BB in his leg, he said.

  Terry felt the hump, metal buried, and skin grown over. He father loosed the back leg and the dog stayed and tilted its head one side and looked on the yard.

  Somebody shot him?

  I guess. He doesn’t give a shit.

  Is it old?

  I don’t think so. It’s been hanging around the dumpster at work.

  Well where’s the damn teeth?

  Maybe they fell out.

  The dog smiled bare gummed at him and shook its heavy gray tail.

  A dog doesn’t need teeth to be a dog.

  Terry turned to leave the kitchen and the dog followed him.

  HE KNOCKED her front door, and then she came out and stood in front of him. She looked down at the dog. It huffed.

  Whose dog? she said.

  Mine.

  It’s a mutt.

  You shut up.

  They were quiet for a while. The dog nosed the porch, lay down a few feet away and put its head at its front feet.

  Wayne, she said.

  Who?

  My man.

  Oh.

  He’s going to find you. I’m sorry

  What’s that mean?

  It means I’m sorry.

  Does me no fucking good.

  He’s mean.

  I know he’s mean.

  He’s big.

  Alright.

  I mean it. I had to tell him. I was scared. He came at me, stood me against the wall in my room.

  Kick his balls.

  He said he’s going to get you for kissing on me.

  You were kissing on me.

  That doesn’t matter.

  I know.

  You should make plans.

  How should we end this?

>   You pick.

  She closed the door. He stood and looked at it awhile. He called the dog over. He thought of nuclear warheads, just below the dirt, winter drowned plains.

  HIS FATHER showed him the paper next day, thumbed a picture from the front page of a tree through a house. They fell in the storm, and lines broke, and the wind touched sixty. A man two miles past the city limit stayed out in the wind and pulled clothes from a line, and part of his roof broke off. He kept, but then he took a two-by-four into his head, above the left ear, and it lodged and almost touched his brain, and then a doctor pulled it out and wrapped bandages over the hole.

  A few days he thought about her, and his head fumed. He was confused. He scribbled a note, asked her to meet him at a silo he knew. He left it on her front step.

  He shut the dog in the house, and walked six miles outside of town.

  The silo was bullet gray and rust sealed, at the end of a dirt road, fell corn on both sides. A small white house stood dark against the trees in back of the field, and no cars were out front. He walked inside and saw slits in the domed roof of the silo, light coming through onto the curved walls behind him. He sat in the dirt, and stared at the door panel. He waited for it to open.

  He heard her feet soft, and the car door pushed shut, and then she stood in the doorway and looked down on him. The light was strong at her back, and it pinned his eyes.

  Would you shut the door, please? he said.

  I don’t want to, she said.

  He stood up, and reached behind her and pulled the door closed. He turned and faced her. He couldn’t make out her face so well in the dark. He stared hard, and he tried to see something there in her face. He didn’t know what. He kissed her blind, or she kissed him. He was confused as to who started it.

  He’s going to find you, she said.

  He shook his head.

  I’m sorry