Holding Pattern (5 page)

Will you stay? he asked.

You know I can’t.

Why not?

I have to—

You never stay.

She watched him, her chin tucked into her chest, like a boxer.

Hatch quit the house and ran over the dew-filled grass, diamond wetness that vanished in the fingers when touched. Bush and weed reached greedily after him. Gnats bunched into black fists. He mounted his bike, Blunt screaming after him, her words bouncing off his blind back: Boy, slow down. You catch heatstroke. And there was John Brown, standing in his yard, face pointed up at a green canopy of tree. Drawn by the bike’s motion, he aimed his face at Hatch, his chin hard and straight, his eyes sparkling for a moment as if struggling for recognition. Come here, boy. Hatch felt a stirring in the air, a sense of his own weightlessness, a low rising on winged feet. He pumped his legs with all he had and made off. Time flew fast, for he traveled as far as his two legs and two wheels could carry him, to the outskirts of the green and brown world, where he saw, felt, and studied objects and events he believed no other had. (He would speak his finds on one condition: convincing pay.) He returned to his outpost in the dead hours of heat, tired, hunger chewing up his belly, and saw Miss Bee’s familiar slow steps on the road, gravel crunching underfoot. She would be slower still after a full evening of conversation with Blunt. Hey there, boy. Fingers probing his hair, cold snakes. Together, they walked the two splintery planks—swoll up from the heat like two punch-inflicted eyes but bridge sturdy, bridge steady—leading to Blunt’s front yard, Hatch guiding Miss Bee by the angle of her elbow with one hand, his other balancing his forsaken bike alongside him, and Miss Bee singing,

How yall? The words floated down on them from John Brown’s porch.

Fine, Miss Bee said.

Sho is hot.

Ain’t it the truth.

Hatch led Miss Bee through Blunt’s screened front door. She was slow, and a sampling of bugs entered with her.

How you dooch?

Blunt and Miss Bee hugged.

The two women spent hours on the couch, shifting their weight from time to time—their thighs sticking to the plastic covers—and spinning talk from the loom of their wrinkled faces, thin laughter trailing across the room to the deep chair where Hatch sat, waiting, reeling in the clear flow of words, sneakers two feet above the floor, jerking, wiggling, and throbbing like hooked fish. The women used tall glasses of clinking iced tea to quench their fiery tongues, cool them to momentary rest. Then they started again. Miss Bee’s armpits raised a staying odor, a thick hot pressure that filled Hatch’s chest.

Why she smell like that?

She can’t help it.

She got plenty of deodorant right there in her store.

She can’t help it. She sick.

On the sly, he pinched his nose. Thinking, why don’t she pack up her tongue and go home?

Boy, help me to the gate, she would say, rubbing her peach seed–hard fingers on his head, her heavy bowling-pin legs made light by two wings of sweat spread across the back of her dark blue housedress.

You see all them sacks in the backa his truck?

Yes, Lawd.

Hatch too recalled seeing a high stack of grocery bags in the back of John Brown’s red pickup, wheels flat with the weight.

Yes, Lawd.

Must have a tapeworm in his belly.

And still ain’t got no meat on his bones.

And don’t he know better than to leave food out like that.

Maybe he like it that way. Rotten.

Wouldn surprise me one bit. Not one.

Hatch sank deeper into the chair.

He got fever in his feathers, for sho.

Hatch pictured a chicken, feathers aflame.

He shell-shocked.

Hatch pictured a shelled green bean and a green shock of corn.

He touched, fo sho.

Hatch pictured a bullying finger plucking a forehead.

They shoulda put him away a long time ago.

Um-huh. If you got a broken leg, walk it off. But you can’t walk off yo head.

But for the grace of God.

Yes. Grace. Miss Bee made signs in the air above her head.

John Brown peeked through the triple-chained crack in the door.

Hatch inched backward. Blunt wanna know if you carry her to town?

Boy, tell Miss Pulliam I carry her. John Brown shut the door.

Hatch ran so fast that he almost fell, his feet twisting against the porch steps. He liked John Brown’s truck, riding up front in the high cab. So he served Blunt the reply, then darted back to the road and waited for John Brown in the truck’s thick shadow. No sooner had he positioned himself against the sun-heated metal than did John Brown appear in his doorway, appear on his ancient porch, rotating the brim of his hat in the circle of his fingers. He set his shoulders broad and moved slow over the cement walk to the gravel road, shirt buttons glowing like bulbs.

Blunt reached the road with her most youthful gait. John Brown quickened his pace—his shoes light—stepping on the very toes, walking on long black knives. He opened the passenger-side door for Blunt and Hatch—Thank you, John Brown—and shut it, with the clang of a lock, after they got in; then he got in himself, the three of them now in the front seat—the only seat—of the truck, Hatch sandwiched between John Brown and Blunt, rigid, perfectly straight. John Brown gave off a fresh rain scent that had soaked deep into his skin. The cab smelled of electrical wires, flaking leather, old rubber, and rust. Hatch’s skin felt tight, the whole world squeezing in. For the first time he hungered for the truck’s square open space, out back. John Brown worked his fingers near the dashboard, and the engine sputtered, the groan of ignition, air from a balloon. Gears screeched for traction, then they set off over the gravel, John Brown’s big black shoe on the accelerator and brake, his long narrow eyes (like string beans—nigger Chinese, Blunt called them) fixed on the road, as steady as headlights, unblinking. He kept the truck at a crawl, both hands on the huge steering wheel, big thunderous tires roaring through the glassy heat of the streets, the truck shivering like a wet dog. The anchor of John Brown’s heavy-shoed foot kept it squarely on the road.

Ain’t seen brogans like that since Moses, Miss Bee said.

Two tugboats, Blunt said.

Two tanks.

Frogs.

Dawgs.

Hawgs.

Dust sifted off the rusted metal in a fine light brown cloud.

Sure is hot, Miss Pulliam.

Yes, suh, Blunt said. You got that right.

Must be firing up the ovens in hell
, Hatch signifying to himself.

Like to catch heatstroke. Blunt smiled.

Steam-cleaning the pitchforks.

Hot day like this, no way that monkey come down from that tree. Blunt’s elastic smile snapped and broke.

Miss Pulliam, you know anything bout getting a monkey outta a tree?

Why, no, suh.

Well, I might chunk a rock.

Try one of yo big-ass shoes.

Now, there’s a thought.

Can that monkey drive? Hatch said, subdued.

Blunt’s head spun on her neck like an oiled machine. She gave him an unflinching, icy look.

Boy, John Brown said, you old enough to know that no monkey don’t know nothing bout no driving.

Maybe he got his own car. A monkeymobile.

Boy—

How long you had this truck? Hatch asked.

This truck old as me, and I ain’t no spring chicken. Mo like a lazy winter dog.

How old is that?

Blunt’s eyes swelled at him, red, heavy, ripe apples.

These kids fulla questions. If God wanted young folks to be smart, he woulda made em grown.

They passed a junkyard, overturned cars like playful dogs, paws up.

Now, I got a question for you.

Suh?

You know what a horse is?

Hatch said nothing for a moment. You mean that animal?

Yes. Now, what a horse is?

Suh?

That’s a pig that don’t fly straight.

John Brown’s laughter crashed against the windshield, then thinned out to a few snorts and grunts.

Cold light barely warms him through the moving glass. He sneezes. Fog beginning to curl around the valley. Night coming on hard, the sun dropping low and red through the mountains. The sky grows pink then purple. Trees arrowed off into dark heaven.

And there is more to see. Stars, sparkling teeth. The moon, a fierce white pendulum. Red buzzing traffic and squat houses with fat black iron bars on the doors and windows. City lights on the horizon, earthbound stars. The coach glowing, shadows springing to life.

He applies the wool blanket to his body like a fuzzy second skin. Then the moon swings at him, a bright slice of it cutting cleanly through the window. He feels his head for wetness, for blood.

Boy, come here.

Suh?

Come here.

Hatch did not move.

You gon run off? Well, gon, if you want.

Blood went thick behind his eyes. John Brown awaited him in the tree’s shade. His lined wrinkled body seemed to be cracking, fragmenting, into puzzle pieces of shadow. Hatch was not afraid. He needed to see, he wanted to see. He got down from his bike, slow and deliberate. His feet moved even more slowly over the gravel, as silent as house slippers. He opened the metal latch of John Brown’s gate, entered the yard, and let the latch close behind him with a clanging sound like that of a crowbar against a radiator.

See the monkey?

The day calm and vacant. Full afternoon heat. A few fluffy white buffalo clouds. John Brown’s face and chin jutted up at the tree, his eyes closed. He put movement in his body. Slow, a riverboat—plodding along blindly to some hidden rhythm, bent forward against the still and heavy heat, face blank and empty.

Hatch inched backward.

John Brown stepped from the tree’s shade into bright light, raggedly breathing, as if he had just completed a cross-continental swim. He opened his eyes—sun in the pupils, two horizons—and thrust his face close. To see Hatch better? Photograph his thoughts?

Boy, I ask you a question.

Flying spit peppered Hatch’s cheeks. Words hovered, rising, steamlike, from John Brown’s bright face. An ancient face crisscrossed with stiff wrinkles, rusty rails. The old man’s long rigid finger pointed up into thick foliage, where a wide blade of light slashed through the leaves. Hatch looked in wonder. Squinted into the flaming green.

The sky relaxed. Then he saw it, the monkey. Tiny eyes looking off into the clouds. Shoulders hunched up to its ears. Tail hooked over a branch. A hanging ornament.

The monkey shuddered, stirred.

My God! John Brown said. All gravity lifted from his face. His mouth fell open, unhinged.

The monkey took a deep breath, then extended his wings in the sun, which lit them like screens, put them on display. Hatch could see every tracing of vein—miniature roads—every bumpy muscle, and the delicate framework of bone under the skin. The wings were thin, almost transparent.

With effortless arrogance, the monkey began moving his wings backward and forward—all comfort and ease, the wings light and flexible—a timed and measured fanning that gradually built up to a quick and constant haze that caused the air around Hatch to quiver, his heart to beat without mercy.

Few cars and fewer people. The sun perched, hawklike, on a rooftop corner. The sky blue and silent. Hatch gazed into the rich expanse of his shadow and felt challenged. Something flared up inside him. With spring in his legs, he bolted through the strange but familiar constellation of streets. A strong staying breeze, an uneven blowing at his ears. His eyes straining against their sockets, needles pricking his lungs, and the sidewalk grabbing for his ankles. He ducked inside a doorway and sat down hard on the stoop. Head bowed, feverish, he struggled within.

The sun grinned down. What up, homes?

Hatch removed the water pistol from inside his jacket pocket, shielded his eyes, and sighted along the barrel. Curled his finger around the trigger and gently squeezed. The sun steamed from the blast of cool liquid, trembled, but remained lodged on the rooftop. Frowned down into Hatch’s face and spewed sharp angles of light in retaliation. Hatch drew back, defeated.

A small figure moved in the hollow of an autumn afternoon. Jacket, a backward apron; sleeves tied around his waist. The sun waited, half-swallowed by the horizon. But he walked quietly, drawing reassurance into himself with each step, his sneaky shadow slithering along behind him.

Cosmo squats behind the hedge, claws dangling at his groin like wicked catcher’s mitts. The dome of his head visible above the green edge, a half-risen half-fallen sun. His hair crinkled and greasy like fried bacon. The sky brightens. Sunlight darts inside the hedge. Dungarees ignite, boots glisten. A rat scuttles through the grass, unaware.

In one movement, Cosmo crashes through the hedge, lands, froglike, and levels a claw. The rat is still and lumpy, a sack of loose rocks. Cosmo rubs his claws with joy. The rodent recovers and rushes for the grass. Too late.

Cosmo snatches up his prey, cranes his neck, and begins lowering the rat headfirst into his mouth. The rat’s front feet pedal in air. Buckteeth snap at Cosmo’s lips. But the front feet and the buckteeth and the head disappear inside Cosmo’s mouth, a fuzzy sword. A gurgling sound announces its descent. The butt wiggles. The hind feet stroke Cosmo’s cheeks. The tail whips.

Cosmo blinks, hard, squaring his mouth. The feet twitch a little. Cosmo brings both claws to his mouth and forces the rat inside, its tail gyrating between his lips. He sucks it up like a string of spaghetti, throat pregnant.