Fat Man and Little Boy (21 page)

Soft.

He's soft. Like a slug.

“Don't.”

She curls her fingers more tightly.

“Don't,” he shouts, and pushes her away. Too hard. She raises her hand to slap him. He cowers. She reaches out for him again. He scoots away, beginning to cry. “I can't. I never, ever can. Don't,” he heaves. “I can't.”

When she tries to ask him what he means he tells her to shut up.

She leaves him there. Walks home, in the dark, her bike trapped behind the door of one in a hundred anonymous, identical cabins. All the wives and husbands are indoors—she can feel them on the sticky air, working to conceive.

Days later, when Peter's flu has left him and his strength is back, he comes to see her at night, while her mother is out on one of her dates. He comes to her and they kiss. He is becoming a man. His back has grown broad, his arms muscled, and, when she touches it, when she grasps it in her hand, his prick is hard. They breathe into each other's mouths. His breath is like a heavy bread. They are both waiting until the day, the inevitable moment, where she will flick her tongue across the cleft of his upper lip.

He asks her what she is thinking. He kisses her earlobe, bumping foreheads painfully. They both ignore the impact. That happens sometimes, like the gas-bloat of a stressed stomach. She doesn't answer. She is thinking how Matthew doesn't like all the things they like. This, for instance. Matthew doesn't like this.

HOW MANY

Fat Man sees their car first. Short Mr. Bruce and thin Mr. Rousseau, the police from up north, investigators of the Blanc death, or, as they see it, murder by abortion. The car is a nice one, white, with shining wheels and a quiet little engine. It wears its roof like a hat. It isn't obviously a police car or not a police car. The other guests, the husbands and wives—some now mothers, bumping babies on their knees or feeding them with newly-swollen breasts—wave at Mr. Bruce and Mr. Rousseau as they approach, assuming them to be new guests, potential friends. Mr. Bruce smiles in the passenger seat. Mr. Rousseau scowls as he drives—the car does not come to him naturally.

Fat Man ducks into the kitchen. “They've come,” he says to no one. The cabin is empty. There are many dirty pots and pans he has been meaning to wash. There is a boy who comes down to wash them in the evening, when he's freed from chores at home. He doesn't come long enough to do it all though, and he's all Rosie is willing to hire. She brought on a full-time maid, as Little Boy has failed to keep pace with the growing needs of the guests, but she didn't like doing it, and often mentions the new expense to Little Boy, though the hotel is thriving now thanks to the medium's cult.

Fat Man scrubs the pots and pans. He begins with a heavy black one. Its bottom has a scorched rind, a mottle of orange and carbon. He spoons it into the garbage can, scooping divots in the sauce. He turns the pan sideways and digs deeper, pushing more into the can. A mold is growing on the rind. He scrapes away the mold as well, cursing, wiping sweat from his eyes.

Meanwhile the other pots and pans grow differently colored molds, plants, and flowers. A little tree buds in a cup lined with cream; a lily in a pan littered with stale scraps of cornbread; a fat mushroom cap atop a thin, twisting stem in a bowl full of decomposing fruit. The growth ripples outward from Fat Man through the cabin, those things closest growing most quickly.

This, he thinks, is surely evidence against him. It explains everything. It reveals him. He empties all he can into the garbage, shaking scum, flower, weed, little tree, seed, fungus—all of which grow as he shakes them loose, and as he adds to the waste it becomes one solid mass, ingrown, a bin full of tumor, teeming, brimming. When they open the door he pushes the mass down with his hands. It writhes.

Mr. Bruce and Mr. Rousseau stand in the doorway.

“Chores?” says Mr. Bruce.

“I'm a cook,” says Fat Man. “It happens. People make messes.”

“People clean them up,” says Mr. Bruce. He takes Fat Man's elbow. Mr. Rousseau takes the other.

“We'd like to rent a room a couple days,” says Mr. Rousseau. “Use it as a home base.”

“The widow handles all of that,” says Fat Man.

“Why don't you go ahead and unlock one of them for us to start with, and we'll settle up with her later,” says Mr. Rousseau, twisting the end of his mustache.

They lead the fat man out the door.

“We've got this thing sewn up,” says Mr. Rousseau. They sit across the table in the cabin for which they promise they'll pay later. “Soon we'll lock you away for good.”

Fat Man palms his face. “You still think I killed the Blanc woman?”

Mr. Bruce taps a fingernail repeatedly against his shirt's highest button. “Not just Mrs. Blanc. We think there are others. You've killed more girls than I've had. Does it make you feel like a big man to know you've killed more girls than I've had?”

“I already told you that I never even met Mrs. Blanc. I couldn't pick her out of a crowd.”

“You said a lot of things,” says Mr. Rousseau.

“You seemed
ambivalent
,” says Mr. Bruce.

“I didn't do anything to those women.”

“What about Adrienne Defoe?” asks Mr. Rousseau. “Paris, three years ago. Cut open with a long, serrated blade, perhaps a bread knife. Do you like bread?”

“Denise Desmarais? Paris, died two years back in a back-alley abortion. Bled out on the cobblestones.”

“Danielle Morel,” suggests Mr. Rousseau. “Strasbourg. Five years ago. At the time we thought she was a suicide. Slit wrists, found long dead in the bathtub. Blue skin, red water.”

“White tub. She took a bottle of aspirin before she did it. We figured she didn't understand how painkillers work. Now we know it was you trying to poison her.” Mr. Bruce turns a sharpened pencil over and over in his hand. “She was your first.”

“I can't help but notice you're both wearing ordinary clothes,” says Fat Man. “You don't look like police anymore. I don't think I have to listen to this.”

“Very sharp,” says Mr. Bruce, exchanging a smile with his partner. “We work for Mr. Blanc now. He pays us a modest salary so that we can focus our energies on solving his case, and his case alone. But you shouldn't leave your seat until you've heard us out.”

He produces a typewritten list, some names crossed out, others underlined. But he reads them all, and he reads them all the same way. A flat delivery, pro forma, as if their meaning, such as it is, is already known, and in the rehearsal there is nothing new accomplished, but a recitation for its own sake, a list that exists to list and be listed, an index to itself. “Corinne Roux, Nantes. Caroline Fortescue, Nantes. Bernadette Boucher, Toulouse.” Those should be Japanese names. “Christiane Bourque, Lyon. Alice Bessette, Bordeaux.” A woman crouched melting all around her baby, back turned to the low sun of his explosion, the flash-bang, pika don. Their collective shadow stained onto the wall, a heavy smudge, the baby subsumed somewhere in the melting mother, perhaps identifiable in the bodies themselves—you would cut through the meat char, to the bones, to learn what was where—but the shadow lost in the shadow projected on the wall. “Dianne Chevalier, Paris. Florence David, Paris. Lorraine Girard, Paris.” Meat rolling back from fine, delicate bones, in layers and peels, revealing the joint of a knee, revealing the cold, hollowed whiteness of a hip bone, rolling back, unveiling organs, which flow away as bright many-colored steam, revealing a spine, rolling back from the breasts, sponges sizzling, veins like fuses, revealing ribs, white smiles. A face becoming a skull, becoming a toothless, hollowed thing, the eyes boiling and then gone, all gone, revealing the brain, which hardens, raisin-esque, though the nose slowly collapses, though the ears drip away. “Alice Bernard, Paris. Lucie Michel, Marseille. Martha Grosvenor, Marseille.” A city stripped the same. Trees aflame, revealing foliage, revealing grasses, revealing dirt, becoming mud, flowing away, pushed back all wiggle-pudding by the force of Fat Man's low sun, and layer, and layer, until the dinosaurs surface; their bones, the pterodactyl midflight midst the mud, the brontosaurus mourning its lost tail, the tyrannosaurus rex reaching up with stubby arms as if to finally crown itself king of the lizards; all floating out of gravity's grasp, into space, among the stars, revealing the core, the burning center, orange-yellow swirl, and underneath that red, a red light, pure as pure as pure as pure,
throb
—and him, Fat Man, exploding still, a white sphere opposite the red throb, singing, a single note, no sound now, nothing heard or felt in space, in vacuum, but still, the song, a single note, and all else gone but for the other's throb.

“All of them pregnant, or with a child recently born,” says Mr. Bruce. “That's how we know you did them. It's a pattern.”

“The pattern fits,” says Mr. Rousseau, jabbing Fat Man's chest with his forefinger.

“Black palms,” says Mr. Bruce. “Stained by sin. They used to think the body would show guilt. Then they decided against it. We'll show them they were right before.”

Fat Man belches nervously, biting it back so the stench and the sound die in his mouth, becoming a burn in his throat. He wipes tears from his eyes.

“It's like fingerprint ink,” says Mr. Rousseau.

Fat Man weeps openly. He blubbers, “You don't get it.” Spit running down his chin.

“There, there,” says Mr. Rousseau. He rubs the fat man's back in circles. “So we caught you. You had to know it would happen. Crack cops like us.”

“All those dead girls,” says Mr. Bruce. “You wanted to be caught.”

Spit bubbles pop as Fat Man speaks, “No, no, no, no, no. It's not enough.”

Mr. Bruce says, “Evidence? We're still building our case. Unless you are willing to turn yourself in. If you feel guilty, as you should. We brought the cuffs. You could try them on. See how you like their fit.”

“No,” says Fat Man, running at the nose, rubbing his palms in slow, vertical swipes across the tabletop, and then again, and again. “No, no, no. No, oh no. They're not enough.”

“You mean you'll kill more?” says Mr. Rousseau. “We won't let you.”

“I mean you need more names. Hundreds of times more names. Thousands of times more. There are scores of hundreds of women you haven't named, dead women, dead children.”

“Is this a confession?” says Mr. Rousseau to Mr. Bruce, taking the pencil from his partner's hand—apparently, to write it down.

“Exaggeration does you no good,” says Mr. Bruce. “If you want to be arrested, there can be no falsehoods in your acceptance of guilt. The scales of justice require you only take credit for what wrongs you have done with your own black hands—there can be no falsehood. Otherwise the scales will be lies, and the exercise moot. So if you tell me you killed hundreds of thousands, you'd better hope that you can name them all, if you want to be damned properly, and in proportion to your crimes.”

“Let me write this down,” says Mr. Rousseau, who takes the list of names from Mr. Bruce and lays it face-down on the table so he can use the blank side.

“What were their names?” says Mr. Bruce.

“I don't know their names,” says Fat Man. He wipes his eyes with his shirt, clears what he can from his mouth with his palms, wiping them to make a glistening shellac across the table.

“They were strangers?” says Mr. Bruce.

“Perfect strangers. I didn't know a one. I didn't see them, even.”

“You're not being serious. Give back my pencil, Mr. Rousseau. He's trying to foul up our investigation. He wants to make it sprawl. He'll have us busy for years, hunting go-nowhere leads. If he really wanted to be punished, he would give us their names.”

“Or at least descriptions, if he doesn't remember the names,” says Mr. Rousseau.

“Precisely.”

Fat Man closes his eyes and presses his temples. He thinks what'll happen to Little Boy if he goes to prison. He thinks also of the guilt his brother shares. He thinks how Little Boy would never come clean on his own. Fat Man will have to take the fall for both of them. He can be the guilty one. Little Boy can be the innocent. In this way they can live as they should, imprisoned and free. They can do both. Little matter if one should be responsible for one half and one for the other. It's easier that way—to share the guilt, share the prison, is impossible. Better that the heavy one should have to take the heavy load.

Innocence is the hardest thing. He wouldn't know where to start.

“I won't give myself up,” says Fat Man. “That's not how it works. You're still something like police. Connect me to these women in a court of law, you can put me away. Find the others, you can put me away for them too. Keep me locked up for the rest of time. But I won't do your job. You find the evidence. You get the testimony.”

“We'll talk to Matthew now, if you'll kindly call him to us,” says Mr. Bruce. He takes a bar of chocolate from his pocket, peels the wrapping off one end, lays it down on the table.

“My nephew doesn't talk.”

“You mean you've trained him to be afraid of police.”

“I mean it's a miracle if anyone gets a full sentence out of him. You can try, though.”

He goes to the door and shouts for Little Boy. “Matthew,” he calls. “Matthew!”

They sit together, waiting. He says, “I'd like a little chocolate if you can spare it.”

Mr. Bruce sneers. He has a piece himself, but does not share.

LITTLE BOY LISTENS

Upon Little Boy's sitting down, Mr. Bruce offers him the chocolate bar. If the missing piece concerns him Little Boy doesn't say so. He sucks his treat to make it last. The once-police ask him questions. He doesn't answer most.

“Matthew, do you know any of these women?” says Mr. Bruce. He reads a long list. Little Boy shakes his head. He really doesn't. A couple sound familiar. The rest are mysteries to him.

They describe the murders. How the girls were found. Some with necks snapped like flower stems. Some with guts cut out. Some merely disappeared. They might have run away, concedes the short one, but they fit the pattern: young, pregnant, pretty.

A feeling like a toothache grows in the center of Little Boy's brain.

In a wasteland you can look for food, water, or people. You can wait to die. You can assign the blame for what's been done, or you can accept it for what it is and survive. The food and the water can wait. The people can't. They can't wait to find the food and water. Some are screaming in a makeshift hospital bed. Others have glass in their feet. Ask yourself why you get nothing but hurt and bellyache. It's best to eat with other people if you have to eat. It's best to drink alone.

After the incident in Masumi's cabin, after vomiting outside, after falling asleep on the grass, Little Boy found a taste for wines and spirits. He sneaks them where he can. They make a feeling like the toothache, or the tooth itself, only numb, a calcium whiteness coating the nerves, a bone-brittle fog. He hid the bottles in the blankets of the bed in his secret cabin, then, under cover of night and moon glow, he moved them to his second secret cabin, in both cases leaving several glasses in the dresser, tipped over on their sides.

They roll and clink together when he opens the drawers. Then he has a taste. The taste is good. It makes him sleep. The sleep is good, and dreamless, apart from certain vivid flashes.

Mr. Bruce says, “I know you didn't mean to do anything you did.”

This is true. Little Boy didn't mean it.

“It was all your uncle's fault. He'll be held responsible. All you have to do is help us. Cooperate, and we'll cooperate with you. You scratch our back, we'll scratch yours.”

Fat Man looks at him and nods. Maybe he wants to be turned in. For what, though?

They ask him how he sleeps at night. Alone? With help? Does his uncle touch him? Does someone hurt him? Has he ever hurt someone? Or something? Maybe they're asking what he's done to other people. Maybe they're asking what other people have done to him. Maybe they don't recognize a distinction.

“Sometimes a little boy gets confused. He doesn't know who his friends are.”

His hair is getting long. He lets it fall over his eyes. He sucks his teeth, prodding their backs with his tongue. He sometimes wonders if these are baby teeth or grownup teeth, and if the former, will he lose them, and if the latter, can he keep them? He sucks the chocolate.

The short one is rubbing his shoulders. He purrs into Little Boy's ear.

“If you tell us what you know . . . a very wealthy man . . . kind . . . he might adopt you . . . very grateful . . . tutors . . . fencing . . . horseback . . . imagine. All the chocolate you can eat . . . shares in the factory . . . a house like a palace . . . you never know, it never hurts to ask . . . he always wanted a son to call his own . . . only tell us what you've seen.”

Little Boy shivers.

“You've got to gather your wits, now. Think carefully. Does your uncle ever do suspicious things? Does he disappear for days at a time? Does he bring home unfamiliar garments or bottles? Does he cry suddenly? Does he talk in his sleep?”

Sometimes Fat Man says things with his eyes closed. It might be sleep. He narrates the apocalypse. “Dogs dragging their bellies,” he says, “over a junkyard.” Bees falling from the air, wings stripped. Boot treads sculpt the sand. Water in strange places—in shoes, in overturned umbrellas, in cars, in bags, in egg cartons, in fish tins, in capitols—frozen, come winter, into eccentric ice cubes.

“Bodies twisted in half, their shoes going one way, their hats in the other.” No more Jews, no more Japanese, all the blacks dead, white men perhaps an extra winter, warming themselves beneath the piled corpses of their enemies, blood igloos, all congealed, cat fur coats. “A smell you can't get out.” The ocean swelling. Radio waves turned poison. Cups full with twitching ocular nerves. Piled teeth. “All manner of swarm.” Fumes. Horror.

“What are you thinking?” asks Mr. Rousseau.

“What?” says Little Boy. He bites the chocolate bar through. It sticks on his teeth.

The short one cuffs his ear. Bright, brief stars.

“You can't beat a witness,” shouts Fat Man, standing from his chair with some effort, stomping his left hoof.

“You can discipline a child.” Mr. Bruce slaps the back of Little Boy's head. “Come on. Tell us what you've seen.”

Little Boy puts his face on the table. “I don't understand what we're doing.”

Mr. Bruce screams, “WE ARE RIGHTING THE GODDAMNED SCALES OF JUSTICE.” He rips the chocolate from Little Boy's hands—an audible snap as the string of drool connecting his chin to the bar breaks, spattering his cheek.

Now Rosie bursts through the door. “What in hell is going on here?”

She says it in English, in Spanish, in French, in Japanese.

Four languages for inner and outer peace.

In a barren field you can plant seeds or you can leave things as they are. You can break the silence or keep it. The widow chases the police out of the cabin. They say she can't do that. She says get off her land. They say it is French land. She says the French sold it. She harps on French surrender. The once-police defend their country. Fat Man makes a farting sound with his mouth and hands. Rosie invokes the image of her husband hanging from a parachute, shot to pieces in a tree. This was for their freedom. Little Boy pretends to be asleep on the table. When everyone is dead you can try to bring them back, you can bury the bodies, or you can step over them.

Fat Man says he will bodily carry out the intruders and throw them at the wheels of their car. They say they will be back. They will find all the victims. They'll name them. When all names are all collected they'll come back, and then he'll see what justice is. The short one knocks over a mirror. Rosie demands he pay for its replacement. He says he will not pay. She demands he pay for the mirror's replacement. He pays.

Little Boy enjoys the silence—the quiet shiftings and huffs of the short one searching for his wallet, lost among the many pockets, the shuffles and puffs as he takes the paper money from its folds.

“Now go,” says Fat Man.

Seeing Little Boy is asleep, Rosie lifts him and lays him on the bed. In a minute he will shift and wrap himself in the blankets. His chocolate lips will smear the pillow case, leaving a brown sideways smile.

“Why are you crying?” says Rosie.

Little Boy can't see it without opening his eyes. He can't hear it either; instead the slow, pacing shuffle of his brother's shoes on the floor.

“I hate to see a man cry.”

Some time later Little Boy hears a kiss.

“I am not a handsome man,” says Fat Man.

He says, “I am a fat man.”

He says, “Your husband was a handsome man.”

“He was,” says Rosie. “He was very handsome. So I've tried that already. It didn't make me happy.”

More shifting sounds. None clear. Could be anything.

“Do you think that I can make you happy?” says Fat Man.

“No. But I could make you so.”

Little Boy regulates his breathing.

“Don't worry,” says the widow. “I'm barren. I can do whatever I want.”

There is a whisper. There is a whisper.

There is a whisper.

Peace and peace and peace.

There is a sound that could be a wooden chair shifting beneath the weight of two bodies. All its pieces snapping into the sweetest position of their most perfect strain, their maximum capacity, the tremor of bearing all that can be borne.

Or it is the sound of a door slowly latching?

What do you do in a quiet room?

What can you? Alone.

The objects are innocent. They can stay that way. The knife did not mean to cut. The gun does not weep. So why should the bomb?

If you are alone, then no one is hurt. If no one is hurt, you are pure: beautiful and small.