Further Joy (27 page)

Mitchell stepped lightly back into the main area of the condo. He circled around behind the brains, checking their position in relation to the couch, and they had definitely moved a little more toward the door. A couple inches, at least. Their formation had lost its shape, now more an oval than a diamond. It was happening, just as he'd thought. They were leaving. It was night now, the first act of the darkness. He only had to be patient.

Mitchell padded back to the bedroom. He kept his money under the bed, paper-clipped, and now he got it out and counted it. He counted it again, and a third time. It would be enough for another month. He was going to double his efforts to find a job. Triple them. If they wanted him
to stack boxes and sweep floors, he'd be grateful to do it. If they wanted him to clean bathrooms, no problem. He was going to catch a break and find employment, and he was going to cook balanced dinners and exercise. Maybe he would ask a woman out on a date, a woman as different from Bet as possible, a woman who stayed in one place and wasn't afraid of being attached to someone—afraid at her own expense. He could get a job and a girlfriend and a dog from the pound. He could keep a hardy little cactus on his table. This was the United States. If you wanted to get with the program, they had to let you. Maybe Mitchell wasn't all that old. He could turn the spare room into a study. There was no telling what he could accomplish with all this peace and quiet. He would get a haircut, get his long-suffering little car washed, buy a comfortable pastel-colored patio chair for his front steps.

He waited another twenty minutes, then couldn't help checking on the brains again. They were still drifting in the right direction, however slowly. A couple more inches, getting past the couch now. He didn't want to hound them, didn't want to drive himself crazy checking on them, but he felt nowhere near sleepy. He went over to the front door and disengaged the deadbolt. He opened the door about halfway, wondering if a gust of wind was going to blow it closed. He needed to prop it open. He went and grabbed the Russian novel off the floor near the TV and rested it against the foot of the door. The chilly air was washing in slowly from outside, smelling as clean as glass, the darkness out there enormous and fair.

Mitchell awoke on the couch, staring at the ceiling, the silvery dawn everywhere in the high corners of the condo. He felt rushed, startled to have fallen asleep, and he stayed put until his pulse calmed. His throat was dry and his neck cramped, but he felt great. This was the first morning of whatever came next. He felt different, confident. He was better, he could tell. He got himself to a sitting position and then rose to his feet and wheeled around to face the front door. It was still open. The novel was sitting at a different angle than he'd left it, the door not even touching it, thrown all
the way open against the outside wall. He walked through the doorway and out onto the steps and stood with a hand on his hip, looking up and down the road that wound through the complex. Nothing was amiss. The air was brisk. Cars were in driveways, newspapers lying here and there. The world could not have been in better order, could not have been more credible.

Mitchell picked up the big novel and took it back inside with him. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Bet's letter. He would throw it away later. He wanted to savor that moment, maybe make a little ceremony out of it. He knew what he would do, after he opened the spare room door wide and opened the window in there so it could air out. He was going to get in his car and zip over to Thewlis and buy a sleeve of bagels and some cream cheese and a jug of orange juice. And he was going to pick up a newspaper, not one of these outpost rags but the paper from Albuquerque. He was going to sit on the front steps and rattle the pages and find out what was going on in the world. He would find out what fun was to be had over in the city this week—bands playing, special exhibits at museums. All the things he'd gotten used to doing with Bet but that would probably be more fun without her. He would make a shopping list and pick up a cheap grill. He had a steamy shower ahead of him. Maybe he'd jog. Maybe he'd take a nap in the afternoon and then attend a happy hour downtown somewhere.

Mitchell strode down the hall toward the spare room, a man rightfully reclaiming a portion of his home. He would hang a couple pictures in this hallway, and he'd get mats for the bathroom and for in front of the kitchen sink. He filled his lungs easily and pushed the door all the way open and stood inside the moment, his body blocking the light from the hall. He was conscious of standing in the direct center of everything he knew, a divide of some sort.

First the smell hit him, the woody stench of protein. The hum was in his ears, but the world was full of such sounds—water in pipes, electricity in wires, the tunneling of insects. Mitchell could keep himself from looking directly down for only so long and when he did he saw them. The moment assumed its shape. The brains were without luster and stationary and very much alive, like always. Mitchell heard himself snort. He felt
his throat tighten. He squeezed the doorknob until his forearm began to quiver and pain shot through his wrist. It felt like his soul was lost out at the bottom of a canyon somewhere, like anything could be happening to it. He knew by now he could expect no explanation. It wasn't simple blood that was coursing through his veins, and he thought he might not be able to stop himself from putting on his work boots and stomping the brains into a fucking puddle. He stood stiff, not moving a muscle, his fingernails cutting into his palms.

Mitchell staggered to the kitchen. He ripped open Bet's letter and yanked out what was inside. There were two items, neither, in fact, a letter. One was a photograph and one was an invoice Bet had printed up that showed Mitchell owed her half the first month's rent and security deposit she'd paid on the condo. Mitchell laughed aloud. It wasn't from a lawyer, wasn't anything official. She knew he'd never pay her; she wanted to make him feel small, wanted to have the last word. The photograph was a picture Bet had taken of Mitchell way back when they'd first met, back in Chattanooga that first weekend. Mitchell was hanging off the balcony of a downtown bistro, trying to pluck a blossom off a pear tree. The entire time they'd been together, Bet had used it for a bookmark. His hair was thick in the picture. His back was straight. He was trying his best to win an enchanting woman but he knew it was okay if he didn't. He had the look, in the photo, of a person in possession of a reserve of charm, a person who believed that if he was patient and alert he would get everything he needed.

Mitchell was called into another temp agency and an old lady who should've been retired told him there might be a position for him at a plant that processed raw paper into lunch bags. She couldn't guarantee anything. The old lady had to run his background check and he had to sign some forms.

“Where are you from originally?” she asked him.

“Tennessee,” he said.

“Why don't you have an accent? I can tell people by their accents.”

“Do I not have one?”

She shook her head. “What part of Tennessee exactly?”

“Chattanooga.”

“You definitely ought to have an accent.”

“I used to,” Mitchell said. “I remember it. When I first moved away everybody said I had a drawl.”

The lady looked at him warily. “That's bad news, losing your accent. That's an important part of a person.”

Mitchell had been up most of the previous night. Keeping his wits about him and clinging to his generous spirit had not been the correct program, he'd decided—that much had been proven. Instead, under cover of darkness, stomach growling and eyes red, he'd carried six of the brains, stacked three on top of three in a plastic wash basin, off the rear of the complex's property, past the spot where he'd burned Tom Spelher's papers, and out to a modest, ragged ravine with a dusty arroyo at the bottom of it. He'd tossed the brains one by one into the dark drop, and heard the dismal, moist-sounding thud each made when it found the rocks. Then he'd thrown down the basin too.

“But I wouldn't trade the traveling I've done,” Mitchell told the lady. His voice sounded poor and forceless, so he cleared his throat. “There's a cost, but you also learn about yourself. I wouldn't trade all the one-of-a-kind experiences for anything. I can't imagine what I'd… where I'd be without them.”

The lady nodded. She'd begun flicking through a sheaf of forms.

One brain Mitchell had kept inside. It was still in the spare room, for now. He could participate in this tribulation, could have a say. He could put the thing in the freezer or cook it in a pot. He could lob it down into the ravine with its compatriots, to be feasted on by buzzards. He could just leave it be, his prisoner. The brain had to wait now, like he'd had to wait.

The light filling the windows of the temp agency was harsh. It glinted off a mug full of metallic pens on the old lady's desk. Mitchell still hadn't eaten. He felt mostly calm. He tried to sit up straight in his chair, tried to look eager and capable. He smiled at the lady, wondering what she thought of him, wondering what her hopes were for the days to come.

SKYBOUND

I

SAN JOAQUIN

H
e had sped westward in an access of instinct, fleeing to the far edge of the country and then backtracking a hundred miles. He was forty-five and had enough money to last him a few decades if he lived frugally. He could do that. He could live frugally. He was leaving a few friends behind, but he had often dreaded talking to them as their lives grew less manageable and more joyous. There was a sandwich place he'd miss on weekdays. A radio station he missed in the evenings that played all types of music, punk rock and Brahms. And an uncle he would begin missing at some point. He did not own a gun, was no more a criminal than most in his profession. It was a profession of using advantage, which he'd done to the last. He felt no rush of pride at beating the underworld bureaucracy and did not think of himself as cool. He was cool in that he didn't need other people the way most did, but he was uncool in that he felt able to put himself on a categorized budget and adhere to it for years to come. He chose for himself a dusty town which was a great shopping mall surrounded by farms.

After a week he attended a prayer group founded by a couple who'd won the lottery and then blown all the money. The prayer meetings were held in a building the couple had been unable to sell off, a farmhouse on a busy street. They'd adorned the inside of the place with paired photographs—pictures of places in different parts of the world that looked exactly alike. A sprawling mini-storage facility in front of a retention pond, low chain-link fencing snaking everywhere: India and Florida.

He attended a Catholic church for a time, returning to his heritage, and as before it didn't feel that anything was taking place at the masses that wanted his presence. He tried a Buddhist temple, and nearly tried a synagogue.

He lived across the street from an ignored tourist attraction, an estate once owned by a poet/statesman/farmer. He got the idea that this man was known more for the company he'd kept than for his deeds, that this man was adept at leisure in a way the rich no longer were.

He missed weather, which was nothing now but a breeze and a brush of clouds. There was no guarantee of winter. He had a fireplace and split wood and many copies of the local newspaper, and for all he knew they might just sit there and sit there.

He was wealthy, in the important way. He drove a seven-year-old Honda and subsisted on second-rate sandwiches, but he never again had to work. He had slipped from the machine, he who had oiled and exercised its sharp little parts since before he could drive a car. He who had of course come to depend on the machine.

The sky was splendid out here but it went on and on dumbly. He had succumbed to prayer as the handiest crutch. This is what he'd wanted—this escape. He still wanted it, but in the hollowing way you wanted something once you had it.

The members of the prayer group sat with exemplary posture around a big black table that seemed a few inches too high, and this made them seem like businesspeople at a meeting, like people from his old life, except that they were hammering out spiritual details instead of contract points. There were Bibles lying about in many translations. He could not discuss
his situation, so when it was his turn to address the higher power he prayed in a general way for everyone he used to know, changing their names. He prayed for the men he'd ripped off, though they didn't need it.

II

THE MIGRATION

Men had taken back up the time-honored practice of stepping out for smokes and never returning home, and it seemed all these men were hiding in Oklahoma. Deadbeats from the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont, even the bustling sarcastic northeastern cities, either resting here or losing heart for the road. And some from the West, unraveling the sorry destinies they'd manifested, punishing themselves, wanting a place whose recommendation was its very lack of recommenders. These men had wanton meanness to vent and many were out of cash. They had, in the only matter that matters, failed. The latest trouble was someone had stolen an ancient piano from Second Baptist—or not just some
one
, the thieved item weighing as much as a prize steer. The empty space in the congregation hall where the instrument used to sit now looked like a corner of some ghost town saloon, and the Sheriff couldn't push it to the side of his mind. He couldn't remember names lately, couldn't pick up melodies. The removal of the piano was a brazen and planned act, bordering on a pointed affront to his office. Before all the boarding houses had filled the Sheriff had always had a suspect mated to any crime, and then he could attempt to prove the suspect innocent and often he was successful and often happily so. He didn't know any of these new drifters from the Sultan of Brunei. He didn't know what they would or wouldn't conceive of in the name of fun, didn't know what profit-seeking enterprise they could or couldn't carry out.