Ether (12 page)

“You sure you ain't seen him?” the old man yelled after the boy. “He's seen him. Maybe didn't like him any more than he liked seeing us, but he seen him. ‘Suffer the little children,' doesn't it say that in your book?” he said, elbowing the preacher. “That's the eleventh commandment, ain't it? Make sure the little fuckers suffer good.”

The preacher stuttered out a flustered “no,” and marched off, showing the old man his back and the edict that it bore: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.”

Slow, in single file, the men walked on beneath low, gray clouds. Above those floated other clouds, whiter and softer than those immediately overhead. Above them was the sun, above it the stars. Above them were other stars and more stars still and all the hungry space that connects one star to another and that holds them at the same time apart. And somewhere up there in the space between the spaces, and in the spaces between those, if you searched hard enough you'd find them: barking dogs and fallen mountains, the praying mantis, all the ants.

When he at last awoke, the stranger was no longer lying in the dirt where he had fallen, but in a small, dark room with a floor of cracked concrete. Rain beat hard on the metal roof. The floor was damp, as was the stranger's suit. The room reeked of urine and of mold. The stranger's ankles had been tied together, and his wrists were bound behind him, so he could not remove whatever warm, soft thing it was that filled his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but was unable. He gagged, and tried to choke it out, but that also did not work. He twisted his hands and tried to wriggle out of the ropes that bound him, but he could not do that either.

He heard rustling nearby, steps somewhere outside. He moaned as loud as he could with his mouth obstructed, and banged his feet against the floor. Behind him, a door opened. Light poured in. Rain came with it at a diagonal through the door. Standing above him were the four boys who had stoned him the day before. All four wore yellow slickers. They removed their hoods, shook rain onto the floor.

“Take the mouse out,” the first boy said.

“You take it out,” said the second.

“I'm not touching that thing,” said the fourth boy. “It's slimy.”

“Yeah,” agreed the second. “And he's awake now. He might bite.”

“He might yell,” the third boy added.

“Let's cut off his fingers,” said the fourth boy, the fat one.

“What for?” asked the first.

“We could each take three,” the fat boy answered.

“No, stupid,” said the second boy. “Then he'd have to have 15 fingers.”

“Fine,” said the fat boy. “We'll each take four.”

“That's smart,” the first boy said. “Then his prints would get all over. That's how you get caught.”

“I want to cut off his ear,” the third boy said.

“Cut off his thing!” enthused the fourth boy.

“You're a faggot,” said the third.

“Why do you guys want to cut stuff off him?” the first boy asked.

The fourth boy shrugged. “That way we won't forget. So we'll all be friends forever.”

The boys were briefly silent, taking in this thought.

“It's not gonna look good,” the first boy cautioned. “It's only gonna rot.”

“No, it won't,” objected the fourth.

“It's meat, stupid. It rots.”

Before they could fully contemplate that notion, and bring their discourse to any resolution, the stranger, ignoring the pain in his fractured ribs and damaged kidneys, focused all his strength on his diaphragm and in one great burst expelled the mouse from his mouth. It skidded to a stop about two feet from his head, its fur matted, half crushed. The stranger coughed and spat a black lump of blood onto the ground in front of him.

“Put the mouse back in!” the first boy squealed.

“You!” whined the second.

“Stuff it in his bum,” chimed the fourth.

“Faggot!” screamed the other three.

The stranger spat again and cleared his throat. “Hello boys,” he croaked. “Untie me.”

“His eyes are freaky,” the second boy said.

“I can help you,” coughed the stranger, struggling with the rope that bound his wrists. “I can give you anything you want. I can make you into men, into something stronger still.”

“He's a perv,” the third boy said.

“How you gonna help us if you can't even untie your own hands?” the first boy asked.

“Untie me,” the stranger said. “And I will show you how.”

“We're gonna be late for soccer,” said the second boy.

“There's no soccer today,” said the fourth. “It's raining, dipshit.”

“You'll never have a chance like this again,” the stranger said.

“There's practice inside, asshole,” the second boy said. “In the gym.”

“Yeah,” the third boy said. “Let's go. He'll be here when we get back.” They put on their hoods and zipped their slickers.

“Boys,” the stranger said. “Untie me. I'll make it worth your while.”

The first boy picked the mouse up by the tail. “Just hold his mouth open,” he said. “Can you pussies at least do that?”

The dog was sleeping in the road again. The long-haired girl stopped the car in front of it. The wide bench seat beside her was empty. The back seat too. She was close enough to see the dog's eyelids flutter and its dry black nostrils swell with every breath. She shook a cigarette from her pack and pushed in the lighter on the dash.

The short-haired girl had met a boy and declared their friendship suspended. For now at least, she'd said. The short-haired girl had cried. The long-haired girl, her former friend, had not. The short-haired girl's nose had run. She had blubbered. I'm so confused, she'd said. The long-haired girl said nothing. But when she later saw the short-haired girl kissing the boy in the hall, it had made her feel as if her ribs had snapped inside her chest, as if their jagged ends were scraping against her lungs. She could still feel them scrape. The lighter popped. She pulled it from the dash and pushed its glowing end against her cigarette. She took a long drag, and coughed. Her foot trembled on the brake.

The heat from the engine caused the air above the hood to quiver. The dog let out a small yelp in its sleep, chasing dream rabbits down dream holes and across wide, dream-rabbity fields. Its lip flapped and exposed its yellow teeth and the mottled pink and black of its gums. It was an old dog. Its skin hung from its bones like a separate creature, imperfectly attached. The long-haired girl suddenly hated the dog, its passivity, its sleep. If she were just to lift her foot from the brake pedal, she would not even have to turn the wheel to run square over its head.

She looked in the rear-view mirror. There was no one behind her and no one in front. But the creepy guy who lived across the street to her left stood in his driveway, hosing soap from a shiny, black convertible Saab. He wore headphones, and was glaring at her. She glared back. “What?” she said, flicking her ash out the window as she turned the wheel, released the brake, and steered around the dog.

She drove out past the gate, dropped the shifter into neutral and rode the brakes all the way down the hill. She drove aimlessly, turning when she felt like turning. She drove into neighborhoods her parents had warned her to avoid, down empty blocks lined with liquor stores and churches with hand-painted signs. Men and women pushed shopping carts listlessly down the sidewalks, their baskets stuffed with plastic bags. She rolled up her window and locked the doors, then mocked herself for doing so, and unrolled the window and unlocked the doors. She flicked her cigarette butt into the street. Stopped at a light, she watched a policemen point his gun at four teenage boys with hands held high above their heads while another policeman berated them, red-faced and demonic. She locked her door again.

Three blocks later two more policemen had handcuffed a man beside his shopping cart and with gloved hands were tossing his bags into the street. She stopped the car and looked on through the window until the handcuffed man caught her eye and she saw something like hatred boiling in his gaze and she felt suddenly ashamed and understood that just by witnessing it, she had become complicit in his humiliation. She dropped her eyes, and drove on.

She drove into the depths of the city. The streets were crowded, but no one was looking at anyone else. No one was holding hands or walking arm in arm. Music blared from other cars and out of storefronts, their bright windows lined with naked mannequins. She ran a red light and checked her mirror for police cars. After that she drove too cautiously, causing other drivers to honk and curse her when she failed to obey a green light with appropriate enthusiasm.

She wished she had a radio. She knew another cigarette would make her gag, but she pushed in the lighter on the dash again anyway because she enjoyed waiting for it to pop out — something small to hope for. She inhaled deeply and didn't gag. She turned and found the freeway and drove out again, back into the smooth-paved suburban wastes where no music played and no one walked the streets.

The long-haired girl slowed to observe a small procession of men advancing in single file down the graveled curb. Their leader wore a sandwich board and a necklace of black-rimmed lenses. A megaphone trailed from a strap on his wrist. Behind him walked a bent old man, and behind him rolled twin cripples in matching wheelchairs. Holding up the rear was a fat man dragging three stuffed lawn and leaf bags. One of the cripples waved to her. She waved back and drove on.

The orange Empty light flashed on the dash. “Shit,” the long-haired girl cursed aloud. She had no money to buy gas. She turned the car around to face the direction she thought might be home. She drove over a bottle. It popped beneath the tire and she cursed again. Her anger flared. She wanted the short-haired girl to hurt as she did, in exactly the same spot. She wanted a hole to open in her rib cage and close only when she bade it close. She wanted boils to erupt on every patch of flesh she had been foolish enough to kiss. She wanted the traces of her saliva to morph to toxic sap. She wanted the short-haired girl's hair to fall out where she had gently tugged it. She punched the steering wheel. Why couldn't the world outside better resemble the one she felt inside? Why couldn't everything be in flames?

The stranger waited until he could no longer hear the boys crashing through the bushes. He lay on the concrete floor and listened to the echoes of the raindrops on the roof. It was so loud that he thought the rain was falling inside his head, another downpour of kicks and blows. After a few minutes had passed, he rolled onto his back and over again until his hands were aligned with the edge of the door. He slid his legs beneath him, then with his back to the wall he pushed himself up, catching at the knob with his hands. He turned it behind him, leaned on the door, and swung himself out into the rain.

The stranger stood outside the same railroad shack on the wall of which his assailants had earlier been pissing. Two small windows were boarded up, from within and from without, but the plywood outside one had been torn off, leaving a long crescent shard of pane which caught the stranger's image. His hair lay flat against his head, matted and dark with blood. His face, normally gaunt, was swollen, his nose broken and twisted twice its normal size. His right cheek was crudded up with mud and pocked with tiny gashes from being stomped against the rocks. He was bleeding from a tear across his forehead, and more blood had crusted down beneath his nostrils. His beard was as befilthed as his face and hair, and from between his lips swayed the stiff black tail of a mouse.

He did not look into his eyes, but tore himself away from the shack, and hopped off into the rain. He hopped from puddle to puddle and made it almost half a mile before his legs gave out and he toppled face forward into the mud.

I wake to find the stranger standing beside the bed. That's not quite right. I'm not sleeping, and if you're not sleeping it's hard to wake. But my eyes are closed, and she's asleep beside me, her head on my shoulder, her palm resting on my chest. I count my breaths until I lose track and I start over and begin counting again until it bores me and after that I stop and just lie there listening to her slow breathing and to the rain beating against the windows and the aluminum gutters and the roof and when I open my eyes I see him looming above me, a shadow among shadows. He's dripping all over the floor.

The stranger's voice is ragged. “Are you going to tell me anything?” he says.

I put one finger to my lips. I lift her hand from my chest and her head from my shoulder. I slide out from beneath her, kiss her sleeping eyelids, and point him to the door.

We walk out through the darkened living room to the porch. He leaves a thin trail of mud on the floor behind him. My feet are bare, and with every step I feel the cold, wet grit of the tracks he's left. His gait is cramped and painful, his limp worse than before. He trips over the carpet, bangs his shin on the coffee table, curses.

“Quiet,” I hiss.

I unbolt the door and step out onto the porch behind him. In the yellow light of the streetlamps I can see that his face is a mess, bloated with bruises, marked here and there by clotted cuts as if some overeager illiterate had tried to carve a word into his face. Mud is the only thing holding his suit together. He sits first, lets himself fall into the chair. He hugs his chest and shivers. Out on the boulevard at the bottom of the hill a drunk is yelling and a dog is barking at the drunk. The rain is fine and not as heavy as before. The air feels thin somehow, as if the world were quietly expanding, as if things were stretching farther and farther apart in increments too small to be observed. Which they are. The stranger curls his lip.