In the City of Shy Hunters (62 page)

I got the machine, Fiona said. I didn't want to leave the message on your machine.

Fiona still stared at the flame.

I was on the couch, Fiona said. I woke up and went in and Harry was sitting up in bed. Madonna was sitting by Harry's pump that pumped medicine into Harry's heart. Madonna was sitting by the pump. The blind was drawn. The only light in the room was the amber night-light, the Christmas-tree kind you plug in the socket.

Harry said this, Fiona said, her lips rubber around the words. I'm the luckiest man. Life is absolutely, mysteriously beautiful. Life has always been here all around me, in me, of me, has always been this fascinating mystery, but it wasn't until now that I have been present, completely present, been aware enough to witness. I am here now in this room in this light with the sound of the pump and Madonna watching the pump and listening to the pump, and just now, Fiona, you were in the other room snoring and I realized I was alive and I was aware.

Harry said, When you're thirsty, water is so beautiful.

I got up from the bed, Fiona said, went to the kitchen and poured Harry a glass of water, took the glass of water to Harry. I sat on the bed and helped Harry hold his head up. One by one, Harry ate the whole bottle of pills I fed him. When he finished the water Harry said, Beautiful,
just beautiful. All at once, Harry was staring at me. And then his eyes rolled up and Harry wasn't present, wasn't with me anymore.

SO STILL IN
the room. I got up and knelt at Fiona's feet, parted her legs, and laid my head in her lap. Fiona's heartbeat. My heartbeat. Lost, stranded.

I was getting snot all over Fiona's T-shirt, so I sat up and snuffed up, but when I looked at Fiona, into her eyes, her eyes looked through me to the fire in front of her she couldn't reach. My chin started quivering and I started in all over again.

Fiona handed me her handkerchief.

Thanks, I said.

Where is he? I said. Is he still in your bed?

Fiona listened to my words like they were French.

Yesterday, Fiona said, I sent Harry's body to Connecticut. He's probably being cremated right now. I called and told his father. His father hung up on me.

Fucking asshole, I said. His own father.

Fiona bent down, put her arms around my head. Her arms were heavy.

We'll bury Harry in the family plot, Fiona said. Next to my mother and my brothers, Fiona said.

With her heart beating and her arms close around my ears, I waited a moment so I could know for sure what she said.

Fiona? I said, and lifted my head up. My face, my eyes, my nose, my lips right up against Fiona's eyes, nose, lips.

Gus and Hunter always did things together, Fiona said. They even died together.

Fiona's lips, the snarl, the quivering lower lip, her mouth the first time speaking the words.

When? I said.

Today, Fiona said.

Shit themselves to death, Fiona said.

The stillness. My God, the dead quiet. I thought times like this would be loud and bright and full.

But you said your mother? I said.

Fiona lifted the cigarette between us. Her red lips inhaled hard and mean on the cigarette, exhaled into my eyes, my nose, my mouth.

A bottle of diazepam, Fiona said, And a bottle of sixteen-year-old Macallan single malt.

I put my arms around Fiona, my hands on her back.

My God, Your poor father, I said.

My God, I said. Fiona, What is happening to us?

I PUSHED MY
face deep into Fiona's crotch. Just like that, the words were out of my mouth.

Don't ever leave me, I said.

I'm going to four funerals, Fiona said.

Don't leave me, Fiona, I said.

I raised my head up. Fiona and me: wet faces, tears, snot. And we kissed, a sweet long dark kiss. I pulled up her T-shirt, put her nipple in my mouth, then went to the other. Fiona slumped down on the couch, the stiffness out of her and into me. I thought the cat was on my back the way Fiona was scratching. I got her pants and panties down and was face deep in her wet poon. Fiona pulled my white shirt up over my head. Something ripped. I stood up, Fiona stood up. Then clothes went flying every which way, the whole time I was apart from her it hurt, everything hurt, and when I lay down on top of Fiona, she was so soft, so alive, so completely real. I watched her eyes, her lip, as I pushed into her, slow. My God, I wanted to eat her up. Then it was the slap-slap of fucking hard and fast and mean that hurt the way you wanted it to hurt. Fiona was slapping my face and crying and kicking her feet against my back. I slapped her back once and she grabbed my face and squeezed my face and bit my lip till it bled. And when her body started the deep come I was coming too and Fiona and I, face to face, nose to nose, eyes to eyes, lips to lips, screaming screaming screaming.

THE NEXT DAY
, when Fiona left from Penn Station, before she got on her train, she kissed me like in war movies.

Both of us were the soldier.

No steam and whistles, just an electric hum.

Standing on the platform waving waving, I knew I would never see Fiona again.

But it's not the truth.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

T
here was an inquest. Lou Racing informed the Pocatello police, and Charlie and I had to go into the police station and tell the cops where we had gone with Bobbie on Fifth Street in the narrow house with gray siding that was supposed to look like bricks, but when the cops went to the house, no one was there, not even the orange couch or the yellow sheets on the windows. The cops took finger-prints and stuff in the house, and Charlie and I had to look through a bunch of photographs, but neither one of us could find the guy who did Bobbie's abortion.

The Sergeant of the Pocatello police, Robert Thompson on his badge, told me and Charlie we were going to be charged with accessory to murder in the first degree.

It wasn't no murder, Charlie said, It was suicide.

What about the murdered baby? Sergeant Robert Thompson said.

But it's not the truth.

We didn't have to go to jail. They just sent Charlie home to Viv's double-wide and me home with Mother and Father.

IT RAINED AT
Bobbie's funeral. They let her get buried in the church because Monsignor Verhooven was there driving his '58 Mercury when Bobbie made the Act of Contrition. Plus Father was a member of the Elks Club and so was Monsignor Verhooven, plus Father gave the Monsignor some money, a hundred dollars, I think.

Father refused to allow Charlie 2Moons to come to the funeral, so Viv didn't come to the funeral either or any of her friends from Viv's Double-Wide Beauty Salon.

Lou Racing and his wife came, and two girls from Pocatello High School I didn't know, and then there was Father and Mother and Monsignor Verhooven and the two altar boys and me.

Bobbie wore the black dress.

Father didn't want Bobbie to wear the black dress, said it made his little girl look too old.

Mother said, Why'd you buy it for her then?

I didn't buy it for her! Father said, It was just a dress that got mixed up with my costume stuff at some dang rodeo.

Lying bastard! Mother said.

Crazy bitch! Father said.

AT MOUNT MORIAH
cemetery, not far from the Chinese part where Bobbie had thrown her bloody panties and Kotex into the bushes, not far from where the three of us lay that day in the leaves, they put Bobbie in a hole.

Father drove his swimming-pool-blue Dodge pickup the fifteen miles back home, the seat I'd wiped down with soap and water so our good clothes wouldn't get soiled; Mother in the middle, me shotgun by the window.

Father driving, in his blue tweed suit and white shirt and blue tie with leaves on it and black shoes and Old Spice, Mother between us in her violet dress, sequined orchid all the way down the front, her nylons seams a mess of swoops, her high heels with the holes in the toes, Evening in Paris, her Orange Exotica lipstick, her knees pointed my way away from the gearshift, me in clean Levi's and white shirt and clip-on bow tie, and the green corduroy jacket Viv sent over with Charlie to give me when Father wasn't there.

Father, Mother, and I, driving home, driving and driving and driving.

I went straight up to my room. All I wanted was to see Charlie, but I knelt right down and prayed my rosary to God that Charlie wouldn't come over with Father in the house, but I knew Charlie would, so after the rosary, all I could do was lie down on the bed, straight, my arms close by my sides, and wait for what was going to happen.

When it got dark, I crawled out my bedroom window and slid down the cottonwood. The moon was so bright, the night had shadows.

In the hayloft, the Marilyn Monroe light was on. The Marilyn Monroe light on the map of the Known Universe made the planets glow, especially Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto. KSEI on the old Zenith, playing Your Dancing Hits.

If we could freeze moments in time.

That night, the Idaho wind was high in the cottonwoods and the sky was a perfect deep navy blue behind the yellow leaves, yellow leaves sigh and scratch. Big gusts of wind through the hayloft, rattling shingles.

I stood at the window, rolling cigarettes for Charlie and for me. The moon was full, the blue mountains far off an even darker blue than the sky. Along the foothills, tumbleweeds rolled and rolled up to the fences.
Together Again
was on the big brown Zenith in the comer, Bobbie's map of the Known Universe hanging above the white-trash couch. The old black-and-white quilt, wedding-ring pattern, draped over the couch, ends tucked into the cushions, just so.

Perfect, just perfect.

That night—wind through the shingles, pigeon flutter, barn spirits—Charlie walked up the stairs.

Sexually haunted.

Want to dance, stranger? Charlie said.

On KSEI,
I've got you under my skin/I've got you deep in the heart of me
. Charlie's Michelangelo bare feet, my new shoes stiff, Shinola. Cheek to cheek—this is how it started, remember Charlie?—where it ended—sliding a two-step on the barn floor through straw and cottonwood leaves.

Heaven
,
I'm in heaven
.

Raven-black wavy hair, big shoulders, beautiful according to Crazy Horse.

Little brother, Charlie said.

I hadn't cried yet but was waiting to, waiting to let loose on a big wail. But then Charlie 2Moons was crying—and hearing him cry made me stop right off.

Charlie 2Moons up against me, crying crying, his body shaking, holding on so tight to me, so tight, tears rolling down his cheeks, onto his chin, onto my neck, down inside my shirt, down my back.

Charlie climbed under the old black-and-white wedding-ring quilt with me, lay down next to me, him a vision smelling of sagebrush, Grandfather's medicine pipe, nothing but blue skies, Old Spice, sperm.

Charlie's visitation was his hand in my crotch. Charlie said he was just warming his hand, warming my crotch, his sure hand unbuttoning me, his sure hand around my medicine pipe, revealing the wound, our secret wound that he know about: the beginning of, the middle, how it ends.

Hard, ancient, roadkill erotic.

When all else has failed, in a hell of a fix, up Shit Creek, things gone haywire, when your sister is dead and there's no hope and you can still
hear the rope swaying in the barn, the sexually haunted barn, my breath into Charlie's ear was the only place left.

THE FLUORESCENT TUBES
on the ceiling of the barn, the unrelenting light from above, flashed down on Father, casting hard shadows close around him on the floor, Father standing in the hayloft, his black bullwhip wrapped around his arm.

Mother walked in behind him, barefoot, wearing her yellow terry-cloth bathrobe. She was smoking a Herbert Tareyton. Her hair was sticking up. Mother lost, not on the premises.

Please remember me.

Don't ever betray me.

Don't ever leave me.

That look. At me.

I sat up quick on the white-trash couch, pulled the old black-and-white wedding-ring quilt over Charlie.

Between Charlie and them, me.

Charlie, I was in between. Can you understand that?

Will, mother said.

Mother handed the Herbert Tareyton to Father, slid her bare feet across the pigeon shit and straw on the dusty barn floor toward the couch, hands out, palms up.

Only silence, in all the world, the whole Known Universe, only silence.

Halfway to me and Charlie, she stopped and knelt down, her bare white knees on the dusty barn floor, put her hands over her face, big sobs, snot running out her nose, her chest up and down, her yellow terry-cloth bathrobe falling open, just her bare chest, Charlie, open.

Lost soul, lost the way, lost the world, lost for words. No lost and found.

Then Mother wiped her eyes with the back of her wrists, snuffed up, swallowed and knelt up straight, put her arms out again, palms up toward me.

Will! Mother said.

My son! Mother said. You must tell me the truth!

Father's long hard shadow unwinding the black bullwhip.

Bobbie had no boyfriends, Mother said. She hardly left her room. The high school girls at the funeral said Bobbie didn't have a boyfriend,
Mother said. They said she was a good girl. She didn't go with boys in the backseats of their cars.

Mother's eye makeup from the funeral was a mess of black-and-blue smears, dark holes on either side of her nose.

Will, Mother said, My son, promise me you'll tell me the truth!

I know you love Charlie, Mother said, And we'll protect him, but, please, I beg you, do not protect him by lying to me.

I must know the truth, Mother said.

Father's shadow growing growing, a storm cloud, a thunderhead between Charlie and me and the light.

Charlie was the only boy around Bobbie, Mother said. It couldn't be anyone else. Charlie is the only one. Charlie had to be the father of Bobbie's child.

That's when Charlie grabbed my shoulder.