Dwelling (7 page)

Yet, strangely, Bobby recalled feeling as if he had somehow sinned against the integrity of whatever this bond was they shared. But he had to ask. And now he knew. Luna was only trying to help.

“Sorry…” he had mumbled.

Luna had said nothing more. She collected his empty bowl, offering a second helping, of which Bobby refused graciously. While she washed his dish, Bobby’s attention was drawn to his odd surroundings. Her cupboards were open; there were no doors or hinges. On each shelf was an overflowing assortment of mason jars of various sizes, each filled with, of what Bobby could make out, different kinds of herbs. There was some dill weed, and perhaps, if he was seeing it right, basil, lavender, and,
What was it?
Some kind of purple mugwort.

He had come across the strange looking herb as a suggested natural supplement once to treat hypochondria and psychoneuroses, or for his case, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which so happened to be the diagnosis the good doctors had given him just before discharging him from the Army. There were other things, he remembered, in large mason jars, frogs, both complete and ones with just legs, a couple of chicken feet, nasty black and withered. On the top shelf, there was even a stone mortar and pestle, which had looked freshly used. Bobby recalled the stove, half expecting to see a large black caldron, but found only a tea kettle instead.

There was a rather impressive collection of what he assumed to be cookbooks arranged precariously on a very fat bookshelf. Most of the binders were written in French, or perhaps it was Haitian. They certainly looked old, antique even, of that Bobby was sure. Dust covered everything, except for one book, whose track looked fresh compared to the rest of her library. This one had an engraved pentagon perched near the top of the leather binder. Over on the flamingo-pink Northstar refrigerator, surrounding the magnetic ‘to-do-list’ pinup was a collection of odd pictures. Some looked to Bobby like Egyptian, a man with a dogs head wearing a skirt was bizarre enough, but the lady with the six arms and sharp teeth and blue skin was downright frightening.

There were other pictures as well, symbols of things Bobby had a less understanding of than all the rest. His attention had been brought full circle, Luna was watching him with a playful smirk across her face, her green irises glowing beautifully in the morning sunlight, contrasting with her dark skin. Just then Bobby remembered noticing a dismal looking plant pot sitting on the window sill. It was a gnarled looking thing, some kind of plant with roots that fractured and split apart like a barren willow tree.

“Should I even ask?” Bobby had said, finding his own sly smirk.

Luna had grinned.

His first encounter with Luna had been two months ago now. Two months; two changes; twice locked up behind the steel frame of the batting cage. The sun was disappearing now, well beyond the horizon. Bobby could feel the familiar panic setting hard in his heart. The celestial clock was cruelly ticking away—
tick—tock—tick—tock
. He had to keep moving. Passing Ed’s Gas Station, he crossed the street and then humped it over a set of railroad tracks that traversed all the way to Dallas before interchanging to Oklahoma, and from there, Kansas.

From the looks of the weeds growing around the pumps and the boarded up windows, and the strangely deflated price of $.075 cents a gallon, he assumed the area had been abandoned for some time.
Not far, not far
, he thought, tossing himself through a thicket of blackberry bushes. The thorns tore at his skin, adding to the pain of his already heightened senses. A few paces ahead, he spotted a familiar large oak tree. While still moving, he craned his neck and gazed miserably at the deep, aggravated claw marks tattooed down its side. He shivered. For so long he’d ignored the problem and made up excuses.
No—no—I just got drunk. Bad dreams mixed with bad booze and worse dumpster dives. No way is this real. I’m just a terrible and tragic drunk—poor homeless vet living on the streets instead of a warm bed. Warm bed…

Luna had offered, the last two visits, she’d opened the door, kindly, without pity. But for reasons all his own, Bobby refused her offer.
Maybe someday
, he lied to himself. Luna had helped him realize his, as she called it, condition.

“
I’m a rougarou, a fucking werewolf! Jesus-H-Christ…”
Bobby had to give voice to the words in his head every now and again, just to believe the utter ridiculousness of it all. If the words were not enough, the pain sure helped him remember, and the blacking out, and the nightmarish memories that followed the next day.
Maybe this would have been easier for Ricky. He was always into all that horror shit.
But he’s dead—dead, and I’m not. Cosmic fucking blunder.

So, yes, thanks to Luna, Bobby could no longer hide from the thing inside him, the monster, the beast, the wolf. She put the truth in front of him, now he would have to find some way to deal with it. Something better than an old, worn batting cage.

Bobby came into a clearing. The moon was bright and overhead, as if some god-like being was illuminating its creation, calling for its supernatural creatures to come forth into the world. Off in the distance he could make out the modest, white two-story ramshackle home of Luna—he never asked her last name. Beside the home, some yards down a dirt path, the batting cage shone like
New Jerusalem
coming down from heaven.

Bobby ran. His skin was beginning to itch…and then burn. Sweat rolled off him in droves. His head felt as if he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. His breath came in deep, languorous growls. The pain came in lightning bolts coursing through his veins.

Bobby ran faster.

Is Luna there? I can’t see her…Where…? Where…?

Bobby kept running. His feet screamed with each bounding step. His shoes, pants, and shirt felt tight. His skin broke open, revealing dark hair underneath.
She has to be there, has to.

The door to the house opened, light poured out into the dark, and out stepped the frail shadow of the happyish, black woman known to Bobby simply as Luna, who he’d come to love, though he’d never admit it openly.

He could see with what he assumed to be now yellow-devil eyes. She was wearing a sky-blue ankle-length skirt and flower-print sleeveless shirt. A large and overflowing plum scarf covering her shoulders flowed behind her as she ran to meet him at the gate. Her dark skin seemed to glow hot behind his devil eyes as he pounded the dirt toward her, to reach her, to reach the cage before he lost consciousness. Before it was too late.

“Cutting it close, are we?” Luna called out. A half smirk, half concern cloud drifted on her face.

Bobby didn’t waste precious breath with a response. He undressed as he ran. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fly in the wind behind him. Undid his silver pants button and bounded through the open gate. Quickly, he kicked off his beat-up Jordan’s and shoved his pants over his ankles and tossed both toward Luna who caught them but held the discarded clothes at arm’s length, making a
funny face
with her nose. Bobby wasn’t wearing any underwear. Lastly he handed Luna his only treasure possession, a sun-spotted and greasy black Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran hat. The brass Combat Action Badge and service ribbon pin sparkled in the moonlight. He paused handing it to her, his hand still on the brim, shaking.

His strange,
mythical
eyes bore into Luna with a deep profound sadness no one could describe, except for maybe Johnathan and Jake, and
even that son-of-a-bitch Ricky
…

Luna took the hat tenderly. Turning it over in her palm, she seemed to notice the faded picture clipped within. The one of five teenagers standing beside each other in a row of smiling faces. Young. Joking. The innocence of youth. They were obvious friends standing in front of a modest looking farm house. She peeled back one of the edges of the photo without dislodging it from its hiding place and read out loud the words written on the back.

Suicide Squad—1995

Bobby was watching her, struggling to hold on to his humanity. His manhood shriveled in the cold. He didn’t care.

“I’ll wash your clothes,” Luna thumbed behind her, toward his shirt left lying in the dirt. “And I’ll keep this safe for you.” She gestured to the hat he had placed in her hand.

Bobby nodded, unable to speak.
What would I say? What words would come out? Screams of agony? Laughing? Or would the sounds be from It, the wolf, howling?

Luna smiled ‘It’s time’ without really having to say the words herself. Bobby backed away from the gate. Luna closed the fence on protesting hinges, “See you in the morning, okay?” she said, locking the final steel chain and then disappeared toward the house.

Bobby fell to his knees. His teeth chattered and then chipped. He spit them out in fat droplets of blood. His flesh tore in one final, wet rip. Thick, black fur came up from underneath. Bones cracked and repositioned. His hands looked impossibly long. He was reminded again, for a moment, of Ricky and all his dumb horror movie marathon sleepovers when they were kids—
Hell, what
was
that one Ricky just had to watch almost every other weekend?
Bobby searched his memory.
An American Werewolf in London
!
That’s the one!
Bobby thought of the movie now. Looking at himself, he realized he’d never be able to watch the damn movie ever again.

His back snapped as it reformed into a hunch. He screamed, and then faded in the dark, snarling, yellow pool.

***

Luna

Hours later, Luna snuck a glance out her kitchen window. It was pitch black outside. The moon did little to penetrate the vines covering her grandfather’s old batting cage. Yet, something came into focus, stirring amongst the dark. She jerked back.
Is that…?
She leaned closer, her flat stomach balanced against the sink. She inched closer to the window. Nothing. Moving closer still, she breathed loudly. Two sharp yellow eyes glared back at her from the bleakness.
Behind the fence, thank God
. Unmoving. Unflinching. Safe? Relatively. Regardless, the eyes felt penetrating.

Luna ran back to the living room, dead-bolted the door, and then threw herself on the overstuffed couch. She buried her head in a pillow, unable to shake those horrible yellow eyes.

Devil’s eyes
.

CHAPTER 8

MR. STEELE GOES TO WASHINGTON

Johnathan

George Bush International Airport is a pain to navigate. All airports, according to Johnathan, are a big pain in the ass, except for maybe the smaller ones in smaller cities. But not Houston. Oh-no. Houston’s main international airport was expansive, which meant for Johnathan even more area to transverse on foot, from parking, to check-in, to security, to terminal, you could easily walk five miles, if not more. And the worst of it was the security check-point. Passing through that was something he loved the least.

Even now as he pulled onto John F. Kennedy Boulevard, nightmares of crowded lines with strangers bumping into him and bins and belt conveyors and large X-Ray machines buzzing, scanning, probing, danced behind his eyes. And the worst of it, if the security checkpoint was crowded, the crowd of people waiting would
look
at him with pitiful glares, ogling his prosthetic leg as he would hobble on his cane through the body-scanner.

Johnathan recalled flying not that long ago. There had been a little girl holding her mother’s hand. The mother, thirty-something, her attention drawn to the contents of her plastic bin, was checking and double checking her pockets to ensure they were free of any metal. The little girl looked at Johnathan, who stood behind them, waiting like everyone else to walk past the thin, red line. She looked quizzically, then her eyes fell to where his left leg should have been. Her gaze wandered over to the prosthetic plastic-looking leg, shining in the fluorescent glow on the belt conveyor.

Johnathan could see it all so clearly now. Her eyes wide. Her mouth agape. She pulled at her mother’s PattyBoutik cowl neck blouse top. “
Mommy—mommy, where is that man’s leg? Why? Why is it like that? It looks funny…”
And then the mother’s gaze fell distractedly down at Johnathan’s missing leg. Realization dawned in a flood of embarrassment over the poor woman’s face. The mother hushed her girl and pushed her through the checkpoint.
Yes, come one, come all. Come and take a look at the
freak
…Jesus,
if I’m lucky, maybe someone nice is working security and will let me get wanded instead having to take my leg off
, Johnathan thought, he prayed, he hoped.

He drove past the Park-n-Ride and pulled into C-terminal parking garage, the one linked with United Airlines, or so the sign said.
God knows I’ll probably end up flying out of B-terminal.
The Park-n-Ride only cost about ten bucks a week, and the C-terminal parking garage was twenty per day, but it was well worth the extra cost. Johnathan loathed airport shuttles just about as much as going through security. Last time he rode on one, some ballooned nine-year-old boy, mustard stained t-shirt and everything, glared at him unblinkingly. The boy’s father, who just so happened to be sitting next to Johnathan on the shuttle, nudged him and asked, “Lose it in the war?”

Lose it in the war…? How do you lose a leg? It’s not like I woke up one morning and—BAM!
To the man’s credit, Johnathan had been wearing his OIF Veteran hat on that day. The father of the fat simpleton child simply put two and two together, and perhaps thought asking “did ya” was as close to patriotism as he could get. Maybe when they reached wherever they were going, they’d share a story about a wounded veteran they had talked to on an airport shuttle. For Johnathan though, the question had been too blunt.
What do you say to something like that?
He wondered now, pulling up to the garage gate. He punched the parking box and it quickly spit out his ticket with the garage color and level designation. He tried to shake the dark cloud of knowing what lay ahead, all the people with their kids, or just people in general, curious eyes wandering over his maimed deformity as if he were some unordinary impossible thing.

Johnathan parked between a black BMW coupe and a red Chevy Cruze.
Maybe it won’t be so bad today. Maybe it won’t be crowded
. He hoped. Inside, he walked briskly to one of the kiosks in front of the check-in desks. There was only a skeleton crew working and each of them was busy chatting with fellow co-workers. Not that he blamed them. Since the recession of 2008, the airline conglomerates had done everything they could to preserve their end-of-year bonuses and that typically meant taking a big steaming dump on the underlings, the blue-collar laborers, the janitors, maintenance, customer service reps, passenger service agents, airline ticket agents, ramp crew, runway crew, stewardesses, and, God help us, even air traffic controllers and pilots.

He swiped his driver’s license and confirmed his destination: Washington, D.C. For a moment he thought about upgrading to business class, but then decided against it. He looked up briefly as the machine finalized. Gazing at the check-in agents, he felt the ghost of nostalgia creeping through him. Though he cared little for small talk, he missed interacting with a real face to face person. The kiosk was so…impersonal. And with the way prices had been climbing, he wasn’t sure how much money these drones were really saving shareholders, which in turn, according to his brief understanding of how economics worked, should have brought ticket prices lower. Finally, the automaton spit out his boarding pass. Johnathan collected it and then made his way toward security.

A dog barked somewhere, followed by the patter of laughing children, but when Johnathan turned to look he could find neither dog nor any children. The airport seemed empty, much to his delight. Less people meant less ogling at the checkpoint. The walk from the terminal to security was not bad, about a block, in street distance. After displaying his ID and boarding pass, Johnathan was allowed to the conveyor belt to off load his belongings. He was glad he’d decided to wear loose fitting basketball shorts, the one with the Rockets Team logo etched on the trim. He had an extra pair of jeans in his suitcase. He planned on changing in the bathroom once
this
part was over. It was bad enough getting stared at through security, he didn’t want to bare it during the flight. Karen had packed his jeans for him.

She deserves better. Maybe we’ll take that cruise we talked about. ‘Bahama, Jamaica, come-on pretty mama.’ Get a sitter for Tabitha. Maybe my parents can watch her for a week while we finally get away. Karen deserves better.

Johnathan unloaded his belongings on the belt, all but for his leg. If he could, he’d rather get wanded. One of the security guards motioned him forward to climb into the large partially enclosed body scanner. Johnathan moved forward and paused, gesturing awkwardly at his prostheses. The young security guard stood there for a while with a look of pure confusion.
Great!
If this had been any other situation, Johnathan may have laughed. Apparently the guard had never dealt with someone with his deformity before.

“Do you want me to take it off?” Johnathan prodded. A part of him wished he still had his OIF hat; it may have made this gesturing business simpler.

“No, sir. You’re just fine. Come over to this side and I’ll wand you through,” called another TSA guard. He was much older than the one standing in front of Johnathan, still confused.

“Thanks.” Johnathan hobbled over, he felt like he’d already been on his feet all day.
Well, one foot and its alloy partner.

“No reason making you go through the trouble if you don’t have to. We still got these wands, might as well use them every now and again.” The older security guard was kind. His voice was warm and reassuring. It was a voice that spoke with graceful maturity instead of the warped bitterness of a too serious youth.

This was a man who loved and lived with the choices he’d made in life, even the bad ones. Johnathan stood in front of him. Glad to able to keep his arms at shoulder width, a living, albeit slightly ruined—
and maybe one day happily so
—Vitruvian man.

“Were you in the war?” asked the younger security guard. There was no one else in line, and so he had walked over to the thin red line to join them.

Johnathan gazed at him. Was he was wearing his OIF hat after all? No—he’d thrown it away a few months ago. This young
Sherlock
simply deduced Johnathan’s age and the obvious amputated leg and put
two and two together, miraculously, and got it right, plain and tragic as it was.

“What?” Johnathan managed, blinking wildly to clear his thoughts.

“Don’t mind Erney. He’s a little soft in the head,” said the older security guard. The wand whined as it passed over Johnathan’s prosthetic.

“Just curious man. Don’t mean no offense. I’ve got a cousin that’s serving in Afghanistan. I think he’s in
Bagram
…or whatever the airbase is over there,” said the young man. He smiled as he talked, his pride hardly masked behind his freckle-faced ignorance.

Though Johnathan and this young security guard were perhaps not very far apart in age, Johnathan felt decades older. He looked at the man as he would a boy. Even his mannerisms and hideously obtuse questions seemed childlike. How could he berate him? It was slow going at the airport and he was probably no doubt bored, or maybe even worried about his deployed cousin. Johnathan could picture the yellow ribbon sticker, or if he’s fancy, magnet, stuck on the tail of this boy’s green Ford F-150. An American flag—somewhere, it was most certainly there on the cab of the truck, maybe even as the air freshener. The young guard probably went to his cousin’s sendoff party, but did not follow him to the gym staging area or tarmac.

When his cousin comes back, if his cousin comes back, he’ll want to take him out for some beers, but he’ll invite his own buddies to join them. Not dinner though. Most certainly he would attend the welcome home BBQ family get-together. He’ll talk with buds as if he were the one deployed. As if knowing someone who’s deployed comes with some kind of
pseudo
-glory. And then when the years pass he’d forget about his cousin altogether. But if his cousin does die, KIA as they say, this young, baby-faced Erney would most certainly get some kind of ink done and remember his name when talk of war and patriotism ever came up at bonfires or Fourth of July picnics. Because that’s the tragic irony of it all, isn’t it?
We memorialize the dead, not the living.

“Yes, I was in Iraq,” Johnathan finally answered. The older guard was done with the wand and motioned him to collect his things.

“That’s cool, man. Thanks for your service.” Erney followed, standing beside Johnathan, thumbs hitched along the edge of his belt. He smiled as Johnathan collected his suitcase, travel bag, and cane. “My cousin is in the Airforce. Not sure what he does…something with finance, I think.”

POG
, Johnathan thought instantly. He giggled, but did his best to mask it as a cough.

“When do you think they’ll be done over there?” asked the guard.

“Done?” Johnathan was gazing at the directional signs above, searching for where the bathrooms were so he could change into his jeans.

“Shoulda nuked that fucking country to begin with.”

“Um-huh.”

“How many of our brave men have we lost over them, excuse my language, fucking
ragheads
? Too many if you ask me. Tired of seeing this crap on TV, man, about some famous so-and-so making billions, and nothing about our boys in uniform. It’s…its…what’s the word?” The young man scratched his head.

“Tragic?” offered Johnathan, not really caring. He found his sign and started toward it.

“Yeah, tragic…” said Erney. “So, what about this Abu Ghraib mess going on? Do you think there’s a chance them troops will be acquitted?” called out the young guard.

Johnathan had almost reached the main hallway leading toward the terminals, cafés, restaurants, and the restrooms.

“No clue,” Johnathan called over his shoulder before the boy could ask anything else.

“I hope they do, buddy. It was all bullshit, anyhow. Have a safe flight.”

Johnathan did not stop. He kept moving. Any residual want for airport conversation burned away. If he talked with no one else this entire trip, he wouldn’t be sorry in the least. The conversation—
was it really that or banter?—
boiled in his mind. Afghanistan. Iraq. Home. And the ones that didn’t make it.
Ricky
. And now what? According to guys like Erney, now we’re seeing everything fought for and everything lost being flushed.
Did it even matter? Does anything really matter?

Johnathan struggled to push away his thoughts, but they came all the same. He recalled the day his friend died when normal people typically recalled cheating on an exam or forgetting to do their taxes. Dread, guilt. The emotions came with the memories of Ricky’s death and the day Johnathan had lost his leg—
lost…there’s that word again—
and the smell of cooked skin…
Ricky’s skin
, the smell you’d associate with hair blowers set too high, with absolute apprehension. And then there was of course the Thing he saw before it all happened, the insect looking monster…
Did I? Was it real…? Or maybe something…No…it wasn’t real, the Thing, the cicada looking freak was not real. It couldn’t have been. Like the wizard said, I’m manifesting the fantastic to mask my guilt for Ricky’s death…Bullshit, maybe. If I saw it, if it was real…? Goddamnit, leave it alone!