Pilgrims Upon the Earth Page 6

  Terry put his eyes on the ground, and then back up.

  You’ve got mange I bet, Nola Walker said.

  Terry scratched one side of his head.

  Whatever that means, he said.

  He hated Nola Walker, his ridiculous and shined new truck, raised high on show tires, spitting gray from the pipes. He hated his glossed brown shoes with tassels on them. He hated his white pressed shirt. He hated his cursive initials on the cuffs. He hated his pretty fucking hands.

  You don’t know a goddamn thing, Terry said.

  Is that right?

  Nola Walker pointed at him and took a step toward.

  You like the police, he said.

  I don’t even want these rocks.

  Nola Walker turned from him and took a few steps toward the filling station; Terry’s head went hot, and light, and he could feel all his ribs, forearms beating, he didn’t know what else. He reached behind, at his belt, and pulled the empty gun. He held it low at one side, where Nola Walker could see, and spoke loud.

  Right there goddammit.

  Nola Walker held and turned around.

  What?

  I’m going to shoot you in the head.

  Nola Walker looked at the gun stuck out and then he stayed at Terry’s face. He put up his hands. Terry took a big step, poked the barrel at him high and shoulder level. Nola Walker’s head dropped some, face scrunched in what looked a cry

  Don’t fucking move, Terry said. I mean it. Turn around.

  He kept his hands up and turned his back slow to Terry.

  Keep that way.

  The back of his head went a nod and Terry kept the nose on him.

  Come on now. I won’t say anything. I won’t.

  Start counting goddammit.

  He nodded again and whimpered the first number.

  Terry put the nose at the back of his head, the dip where neck met skull, and he pressed it hard. His back raised and bent with his fast breath. On his stuttered number five Terry pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked dull plastic. He felt Nola Walker clench and then stop counting. He kept the gun.

  Keep going, Terry said.

  Nola Walker started crying faster, and more.

  I guess you better pray if you do that sort of thing.

  He got slow to twelve; again, Terry pressed the trigger.

  Terry ran from Nola Walker and the parking lot and didn’t stop until his ribs screamed a cramp. He stopped at a small bridge over a creek. He took the gun from his pocket and bobbled it, and it fell at the ground, and he bent and gathered it up, swept dirt from the rough handgrip. He held it an arm over the water, and then he pulled it back. He took the jacket off, used one sleeve as an oven mitt and wiped it down. He held it over the rail and let it fall on the black water.

  He woke flatback near a small table and no light in the room. Head stilted, he wore his jacket still. The rotary phone shook at a ring and feet stomped the wood near his head. His eyes dumb at the quick dark, he blinked hard. The phone slammed, the plastic base cracked. He blinked again. His father paced the room to the front door and went out to the backyard.

  Terry slapped his cheeks one at a time, wagged his head and got to his elbows. He went over to the window and looked out to the yard, night wet, a yellow tint. His father lifted a shovel and swung it high through a floodlight and down. The square head cut the dirt. He was not digging, but wanted only to hit something hard. He did it once more, then left the wooden handle and walked rings around it and panted steam. Sweating in the cold dark Benjamin Webber looked the leftovers of a dogfight. Terry slouched below the window, back to the wall. His head went a waking dream; a bear sat nearby in the room and turned at him, and the two locked eyes. Outside the engine turned, wheels backed fast on the drive.

  FOR TWO days the river ran a high flood in the woods between John Michael Johnson’s house and the small bridge where the interstate crossed above the water, and then it shrank back some, and left things stranded. The metal boat fit two, but John Michael said it could hold three of them. He, Terry, and Curtis, together, didn’t weigh too much, and he did it before, not long ago with his older brother, a hairy, giant man named Turbeville. The boat sat flipped over in the work shed near some open paint cans. There was an orange riding lawnmower a few feet off, two plastic jugs of gasoline nudged at the wheels. Leaned to the wall beside he saw yard tools; a pair of hedge clippers, wood handle duct taped at the grips, metal shears a curved beak on top; hoe, spade, stump shovel, rake with blue comb rusted at the tips; all of it layered dust and cobweb. There was a work counter at the back; a mounted vise clamp, nails and screws and bolts and washers in a slide drawer box, cuts of sandpaper, a blue and orange instant coffee tin used as an ashtray, two cans of industrial lubricant for greasing metal parts, pumice soap in a gallon press dispenser.

  On the long shelf above the counter there was an old radio, a clock, two bottles of castor oil, and a mason jar with what looked a large kidney bean floating inside. He went over close and picked it from the shelf. It was a heart, a small one, wafted in clear, heavy liquid. He asked, and John Michael told him he pulled it from a duck, a mallard he helped his father and grandfather clean about six years before. The pharmacist downtown gave him formaldehyde for the jar so the heart would keep a long time. Terry put the heart back on the shelf. Tacked on the naked beam walls were pages cut from department store catalogues of women in bras, black and red and pink. Curtis stared at one, bright leaf green.

  I can see this one’s nipples, he said. They’re really big. Like drink coasters or stars or ferris wheels or something.

  Curtis put a finger against the cutout and held it there.

  I’d cut off my pinky finger if this one would let me see her titties. And I could give her my boner.

  Your boner? John Michael said.

  My dipstick.

  You’d cut off your pinky?

  Give me a hatchet.

  Have you seen Jessica’s?

  Through her shirt. But she won’t take it off. I wish she’d let me play with them sometime.

  Her titties?

  Her nipples and her titties. I can tell they’re big. Both of them.

  They turned the boat over and carried it outside, through the back field and to the start of the woods and the old hunting road, and then they dropped it, huffed a moment at the work and caught their breath. It was too heavy to carry the whole way like that, a mile at least on the path before the shrinking waterline. John Michael latched a rope he tied at the bow on two hands, hung part of it over one shoulder and drug the boat behind him. Curtis walked and pushed at one side, Terry at the other, and the ground got softer the farther they walked, and soon it was pluff and mud, and they stopped, turned the boat upside down and sat on top to rest again. Terry took a new pack from his bag and gave one to each of them. Curtis lit his cigarette with a silver army lighter, butane swathed his face when he snapped the top cap open and drug his thumb over the flint and the wick caught. The high water turned the ground compost, pine needle and brown leaf mashed to a thick veil, and left fish behind, yards of them it looked, endless, gray as brains.

  Your mom’s got nice legs, John Michael said.

  John Michael stood up, hopped between fish, put a toe against one colored pewter and poked it.

  I bet she runs a lot.

  John Michael kicked the fish then. It broke in two pieces, at the gills.

  Don’t say that, Curtis said.

  John Michael held a small one head up, gray tail jutted from the fist.

  I’m just saying, he said. I bet she runs. Fast, man, and often.

  Curtis stooped over and put his hands against his knees, dropped his face, huffed a sigh. He stood up from the boat, walked at the trees grown thick past the edge of the path.

  Hey man, John Michael said. Hey.

  Curtis hopped a fallen tree, then they couldn’t see him anymore.

  Where’s he going? John Michael said. It’s all woods.

  He went a step in the direction
Curtis took and yelled after him, hands cupped a lampshade at his cheeks.

  You’ll get lost man, he said.

  He stopped and looked for a moment at the trees, yellow pine and sycamore, yaupon holly thrush red at their trunks, and then he turned back, long strides, like a stilt walker, sopped and loud when his boots raised from the peat.

  They burned most of the short cigar Terry cut in the middle, dope twisted in with the tobacco, a few shards of hash John Michael got from the pocket of Turbeville’s aviator jacket. With the smoke the woods got clear edged, trees singled and named, and some of the fish gasped. He wondered if he could eat them and he wondered how to catch one in a river. He wondered what they were before they were fish, and then he wished he had gills on his neck. He thought to find a dragonfly and eat it. They waited on Curtis to come back, but he didn’t. He’ll catch up, John Michael said.

  They got to either side and flipped the boat. John Michael went up front to the pull rope. Terry pushed at the back end. Soon the hash let off some in his head and the water got higher on the ground. A fish landed out front, and a few moments later another went near John Michael’s feet, and then they came faster. The eighth fish caught John Michael on the ear. He stumbled and the rope dug on his shoulder and came loose. The weight of it spun him around. His finger hold gave and he let go and the bow dropped and splashed river on his back. He put a hand on the ear and grimaced. Terry stumbled forward, and caught himself with his hands on the gunnel and stood right. He saw Curtis in some trees on the far side behind them. Curtis gathered up another fish and tossed it overhand at John Michael.

  Quit, please? John Michael said.

  Another fish and then another struck his back.

  Those are your issues, man, not mine, John Michael said. I’ve got my own ones, man.

  The fish, then, flung handfuls, like dropped nickels.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, John Michael said. I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry

  Do you mean it? Curtis said.

  John Michael shook his head and didn’t say anything. Curtis scooped another fish and pegged it sidearm. John Michael put his forearms up and winced.

  I mean it man, he said. I swear. I won’t say things about your mom anymore.

  Curtis dropped the fish readied at his hip.

  You know it bothers me, he said.

  I know, John Michael said. I’m sorry, like I told you man. I won’t do it again.

  Do you swear?

  Yeah. Yes, dammit.

  People said things like that often about Curtis’s mother. Terry knew he was tired of hearing them. She was good looking the way they were in old movies, had a boyfriend seven years younger who taught guitar lessons and played lead in a Rush cover band. Curtis hated him, even though he was kind and well meaning, because his father was dead in Korea or somewhere, but he wasn’t sure exactly. Curtis never knew him, not even a minute, but conjured him some valiant soldier fighting communists.

  Just don’t anymore, he said. Alright? I have to hear that shit all the time.

  Okay. I won’t.

  John Michael got the rope again and stretched it at his shoulder and started pulling the boat. Terry got back at one side and Curtis went to the other.

  The water welled at their knees, and then it was on their waists. They sat in the boat, pushed the ground with a split oar until they floated beneath the overpass, sun red over the guardrail, water glassed beneath the full leaves, the flooded oak, sumac, and gum. John Michael pointed the binoculars up, at the tails of cars passed west on the interstate, and he read their license tags out loud. For a few years he catalogued plates, had twenty-four of them so far. The hardest ones to spot, he said, were states in the upper midwest, Minnesota and the like, and then Idaho, and Wyoming, and Montana; he wanted Nebraska, badly.

  Ohio, he said. Delaware. Virginia. Goddamn South Dakota. I’ve got all these. South Carolina. South Carolina. North Carolina. South Carolina. Dammit. South Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. Motherfucker.

  I need to bone Jessica real bad, Curtis said. I mean it. She smells like jelly donuts.

  Would you shut the fuck up? John Michael said. I’m counting tags here.

  John Michael let the binoculars hang at his neck. A leak came on at the boat head and dribbled water at the floor.

  They left the boat at the edge of the woods, amongst thick shrub, black-haw and guelder rose, below beech and sourwood branched thick overhead. John Michael stole his sister’s keys inside, from the newest place she hid them, balled inside a red scarf on the closet shelf above the coat rack. He left a note there that read checkmate, bitch. They went fast in her car and put the windows down. They stayed in the wet clothes and pushed glass double doors, and the air was food locker cold, and his shoes put wet spots on the grocery tile. They thumbed cleaning supplies both sides of aisle four, bleach, detergent, and sponges, plain and bristled, and air freshener in metal cans, spring mist, country garden, winter pine. They argued brand and taste and the foam made inhaling. Curtis liked the foam, said it tasted like candy flowers, but Terry didn’t much, and neither did John Michael. They took four cans labeled Country Garden. Curtis got one called Cinnamon Holiday, put the top close to his nose and breathed in hard.

  It tastes like Christmas, he said. Reindeer. Colored lights. Pecans. Pine trees. They got washrags at John Michael’s house and draped them over the spouts, put one hand beneath the cloth and pressed the nozzle, used the other to hold the cloth tight, and the spray filtered through it, white pink at their lips, fumed in their throats and in their brains.

  John Michael faced a long mirror on back of his bedroom door, moved a robot gait, white foam on his mouth, and Curtis lay on the floor beside the bed, empty can fell near a shoulder, another rested on his belly, washcloth over his mouth pushed with his breath. The fumes sat in Terry’s head a slow hum, rose a wave and went to flatline, soldered him cross-legged and pinned eye, shoulder blades hard on the closet door.

  Next day the light outside came early on the house and he pushed the window shade a slit. He watched his father open the passenger side door and put a blue duffel bag into his car. He came back to the front steps and picked up a cardboard box and carried it over. He got another one, and then another. Terry coughed at a fist, lit a cigarette and knocked ash into a soda can on the sill. His mouth tasted rosewater, and petals, teeth still foam slick. He tore a page from a beat up school notebook, spiral blue, marked history and his first name, and folded it five ways to an airplane. He tossed it a crooked line to the ground. He went to the desk again and knocked scrap paper at the floor, opened the lock drawer and got one of the felt bags he took at the filling station. He shook the rocks inside. They clinked small, sounded like marbles or necklace beads. He went over to the window and threw one at his father’s car. It landed short and jumped the dirt, and the next fell the same, and the next skidded on the drive. He threw a few more, and then he dropped the rest slow over the frame, to the grass, and then he flicked the bag, and then at the desk he got the other bunch, tied still, and let it fall. His father cranked the car, and it puffed when he put it to gear and sputtered at the tailpipe. He looked once over his right shoulder and backed out.

  DECEMBER SCHOOL let for holiday Her parents found an open pack of menthols in her knapsack and put her in the house for two weeks. He stayed at his room, and he watched the streets, and at night he went out with a wooden bat, and split a wooden cut out of a coal eyed snowman with a red scarf, and he went for a reindeer at the front of a sleigh, antlers glistened with snow paint, busted two candy canes, and then he backed his car at a yard tree strung with colored lights, yanked a bundle and held, punched the gas, and the lights tore from the tree. He trailed a long rope of them and the wire flapped at his windows in the cold air passed, and he opened his hand, and let it go at the street.

  THEY SAT crosslegged, past where floodlamps from her house lit the grass yellow, on top of two small mounds at the center of what looked six or seven in a row, the re
ar section of her backyard where she buried old pets. There was a wire post fence separating them from twelve acres owned by an old man, Foncie Allen, who in his old age leased his fields to soy farmers, let them build drums to house the beans, set deer corn in fall and kept peacocks all year. They heard them gurgling in the dark, baby clicks, tail fans open and shut.

  Drink it, Alice Washington said.

  Terry got two bottles for a dollar and thirty-one cents, four cigarettes.

  You do it, he said.

  That stuff’s nasty, she said.

  Terry held up one of the bottles, wrapped with foil at the mouth instead of a plastic cap. Inside looked dirt shaken, flakes spun behind glass in a snow globe.

  Is not, he said.

  You drink it then, she said.

  He looked inside again, then he let it down near his lap and took the foil off, held it to his nose, turned it up. He meant to swallow quick, keep his nostrils locked, but the drink was strong once at his tongue, it welled up in his face and clenched his throat. He spit the mouthful near his feet.

  They won’t stop with those hammers, she said.

  Who?

  Them.

  She pointed to the framed tudor at the new cleared lot north of their property line. He stood up with her, they walked over and toed the yard, all dirt, a long narrow green bin for the site forklifted there, foundation mounds, two of them, beside the open air carport. They got inside, over the railing, stood on cardboard boxes broke down at the folds, stacked leaves, roving nails, shingles, and dry wall, flush valves, copper pipe fittings, supply lines and wall spigots, blazed newsprint at their faces. They sat down and smoked and sometimes put their hands to the box flats. The ink stained their hands. Alice Washington looked at hers and rubbed them together. She looked again. It was worse, smudged with more ink. She laughed, and leaned over. She looked at his slight jaw, then to his forehead, pox marks at his brow, and kept her eyes there. She brushed his hair back some, combed a sweep at his bangs with the end of one finger. She looked at him some more. He thought to say something, tell her she smelled like pink shampoo, that most of the time he wanted to lick her face. Sometimes, too, he wished to lick her arms. Sometimes he wanted to suck on her fingers.