Gutshot (12 page)

I was happy with the life we made, but she decided she wanted to find me a bride. I laughed a little, milk spittling around my mouth, but she didn’t return my laughter. She said there would be a time when we could not enjoy these long afternoons and I would be in the world alone. She said her heart broke to think of me out there, wandering. The milk in my mouth took on the salty tinge of the tears she had absorbed.

I said Think of the myth of the pair becoming a tree, of an old couple looking out the same window while they share a silent song. We have each other.

But not for long, she said.

And so we auditioned prospective girlfriends. They sat on my mother’s couch, either too fat or too thin, too pretty or too grotesque. One was focused on the trajectory of her career, while another was practically bovine in her interest in children. A girl played with her hands in her lap, claiming her girlfriends talked her into the whole thing. It was a disaster.

Mother had been making notes in a book, but had taken to facing the wall during the interviews and at the latest girl stopped responding entirely. I told them all to clear out when I saw that she had begun to shudder. I stumbled to her feet, pushing my face into her lap, kneading her stomach and breast like a cat.

She clutched the arms of her chair, quaking so violently it seemed as if a spirit was leaving or entering her. These fucking women, she said. I reached for my divot, blindly trying to soothe her. She pushed me away but I pressed on, wrenching free the buttons of her blouse and drawing her breast roughly into my mouth. She screamed at the pressure of my teeth but quickly calmed and fell asleep in my arms. I held her, dipping my head to reach.

Five

Flight Log, Chicago/Toledo

Smooth air into Chicago this morning. You would have liked it, probably. I mean it would have reminded you of yourself. The sun was rising over the big lake and the captain took the plane around downtown in a circle. We get sick of that kind of view, I mean the captain and I, because after all that splendor we have to bring her down onto some sad tarmac.

*   *   *

Everyone thinks I’m drunk these days. Even in the morning. I’m sure you’re doing fine.

*   *   *

As the navigating pilot, I felt like it would be fine if we made a nice soft landing in the water, which looked very smooth and dappled from the morning light or similar. That’s not something one suggests, of course. It was what we referred to in the Air Force as an internal opinion.

*   *   *

And then from Chicago we headed into Toledo. It’s hard to leave Toledo. Just kidding.

*   *   *

I do wonder what the captain is thinking while we’re bringing the plane into some place like that where people live their lives. I’m afraid of what he’ll say when I ask.

*   *   *

It’s probably time to go back to base when every question from the flight attendants inspires me to make the words “Please leave me alone” inside my mouth while my lips are closed while I am smiling and sometimes nodding a little. When you make the words silently, it becomes a secret you can keep. I learned about this in the Air Force.

*   *   *

Some nights, I feel I could slip away into a hangar and live in a janitor’s closet.

*   *   *

This morning I bought a banana and left it on the counter because I didn’t like the look of it. I can’t even remember where I was at the time, if you can believe it.

*   *   *

You’re such a pretty skeptic.

*   *   *

I’m afraid he’ll say he doesn’t think of anything at all and then that will make two of us.

*   *   *

I wonder about janitors. If when they close up shop, they go home and clean their own homes. I figure if I was a janitor I would pop a squat on the floor and make a watery BM every now and again to keep myself humble.

*   *   *

What do you do to keep yourself humble? You’ll have to remind me because I can’t think of a goddammed thing.

Loop

You are one man standing barefoot in a grocery store. You regard rows of snack-cake cartons stacked like bricks when your mind begins to go. You knew it in your heart: Your heart is a wall of the same brick repeated. You’re standing barefoot because you put your slippers into the coffee bulk bin where they make like rabbit ears and listen up.

At home, you call your mom and her voice reminds you of a pancake you dropped on the floor that morning. Because you have no dog, you got on your hands and knees and ate that pancake up off the floor. You licked your lips and the floor and took a nap in your nap spot.

You tell your mom you don’t remember her wearing a lot of denim. Your mom corrects you and says she did wear more denim than you remember. She says, Your father worked in denim. Your crib was made of denim. He covered it for your safety. Every problem can be traced to attention or its lack. As your mom goes on you watch a video that features a woman facing the camera and talking about yoga, and her nipples straining her costume are themselves talking in a sea tone of the responsibility of owning animals.

As you watch the video for the tenth time you work your way down the numbers in your Casual Encounters file but each call receives no answer. You try one number again and again until a bird picks up and tells you to fuck-right-off, fuck-right-off. Your heart is a wall of the same brick repeated.

A man returns your call and asks if you’re the guy who wants a visit. Says he knows a guy, knows a lot of guys actually and some women, that every one of them knows a thing or two about bricks and they’re all coming over.

You have been surrounded all your life by people concerned for your health. Men build scaffolding to protect your stupid skull. Cars stop and allow you to cross. Every problem in the world can be traced to attention or its lack.

The man arrives at your door wearing some serious denim. You carry a folding chair and follow him down the steps to the alley. He has assembled a crowd. He produces an awl and taps it around the circumference of your neck. Checking out, he says. I’ve had my days and yours aren’t my business.

You can’t feel it. The man tells the crowd That’s all, folks. He angles it in the nape of your neck. He is a magician. You smile for the crowd. Your heart’s a wall. Your heart is a wall.

Mom calls, but the man is tapping his awl beside your ear and you can only hear her saying denim denim denim, denim denim. Denim denim. Den-den-denim-denim. Denim. Den-den. Denim-um. Denum. Denumm. Den-den-den-den. Um. Umm. Um-um.

Your collarbone crk-crks and is liberated. The man in denm is whistlin “Home on the Range.” Word lip saside. Yu make a momont to fleck on the lean of the nalley, the pn sponch & yr hart it’s a wallv th sambrick repeetd, th snik-snik, th sm-brk, rpt-rpt-rpt.

Thank You

The woman checked her mail every afternoon. One day, she found a card from her friend. The card, pale green and decorated with filigrees and flowers, was lovely. Inside, the woman’s friend had written a sweet note, thanking the woman for a baby-shower gift she had sent from a catalog.

“Such a beautiful card,” said the woman, turning it over. She wanted to show her appreciation for the sentiment presented and the effort implied, given that her friend was quite pregnant and still thought to sit down and write a heartfelt note in a darling card.

The woman sat down at her desk and opened the drawer, extracting a few options. One card was festive, with holly sprigs and a touch of glitter. Another featured a nautical stripe and a jaunty anchor. The woman, feeling the season appropriate, chose the first. She picked a fresh pen and wrote: “Thank you for your kind thank-you card. I appreciate so much that you considered our friendship this month, and I so look forward to meeting the new addition to your family. All my love.”

She signed her name, addressed and stamped an envelope, slipped the card inside, and dropped it in the mail.

Some days passed, and the woman received another letter. Inside its sturdy envelope, the cream-colored card was embossed with her friend’s name on the front and inside that, with the woman’s name. The woman gasped with delight and sat down in her office to read: “Thank you, my dear, for the thoughtful thank-you card in response to my thank-you card. It pleased me greatly to see your response, as I count you among my most polite friends. Yours.”

Such a thoughtful gesture! She immediately picked a card from her drawer; this one was sunny yellow, with four butterflies in a line. Inside, she wrote: “Thank you for your thank-you card recognizing my thank-you card for your thank-you card. We are truly friends.”

This returned sentiment seemed slightly less personal and the woman panicked before remembering the small craft supply she kept for her children to play with when she worked late. She uncapped a tube of silver glitter and deposited a healthy quarter cup into the envelope before inserting the card. She dropped it in the mail and went to bed.

Eight days later, a brown paper package arrived. The woman took it up to her room. Inside, she found a handful of bright cherry bombs and a decorative plate, on which her friend had painted the words THANK YOU. The woman lit a cherry bomb, threw it into her bathtub, and watched it crack merrily about, thinking of her friend’s thoughtful nature.

The woman spent the afternoon assembling supplies to make a chocolate cake. She waited patiently for it to cool before she piped raspberry cream between the layers and at the base. She found a box that would fit the cake and tore out the pages of five of her favorite books, running them through the shredder to make a nest for the cake to travel on. Discovering she was out of pastry cream, she wrote THANKS on an empty paper towel roll and affixed it to the frosting. By the time the postman picked it up the next morning, a fluid had condensed, leaving a sticky ring on the mailroom floor.

She began to have trouble sleeping. A postal tube arrived and she opened it to release eight disoriented white mice. They tumbled out in a line and scrambled for safety. She gave them water and sliced up an apple but was confused by their presence until later that evening when, save for one, they seized and made tiny bowel movements that respectively produced alphabet beads T H A N K O and U. The last mouse was uncomfortably constipated in a life-threatening way until she took him to the vet and had the Y extracted at the expense of forty-five dollars.

A fever gripped the woman and she was bound to her bed for a week. When she could walk again, she set immediately to work. She mixed industrial buckets of yellow lye, loaded them up after dark, and drove to the park, which featured swings for children and a community garden and a broad green lawn.

In the morning she set up an old VCR to record the news and drank coffee while she rebandaged her chemical burns. They came in live from the grassy field. There was a clip of the landscape men being piled into the back of a police truck, one of them crying. There was a good live shot of the THANKS on the grass still smoking comically from burned patches. There was talk of reevaluating local law enforcement, of adding cameras. She popped the tape in the mail that afternoon.

The following week, the woman opened her door to find a baby boy in a basket. The infant was too small to speak but the woman knew exactly what he would say when he did.

Legacy

Keepers here are required to do more than trim and water the plots, make a note of sinking or cracking, seed bare patches, feed the peacocks, and feed the cats. This is the last piece of luxury property most people ever own apart from acquisitions in the afterlife, and so there’re a few special things we do to make the investment worth it. The slings and trappings all find their way here. We know how to treat such matters with respect.

You’ll recall the pharaohs were entombed with whatever they wanted to hang on to: usually women and cats, pots of honey. These days, we might pour in a shipping crate of golf balls before nestling the linksman into the dimpled rough and covering him up with a soft layer of tees. We had a starlet request her casket be filled with vodka, the good stuff. We floated her in it like an olive and locked it down. She didn’t spring for watertight, though; for five months, the grass wouldn’t grow. We had to lay down plastic turf.

A tax man had a crate of mice scattered through his mourners so he could be entombed with the sense of panic he inspired. A ballet instructor wanted her students to pas de bourrée in the grave to tamp down the soil before she was placed. We got the girls out before their teacher was lowered in, but for a little extra, who knows—maybe we would have looked away, have one of them do a solo piece while we backed in the dirt.

There was the assistant, beloved by all on the lot next door, who was placed in a grave we left unmarked but for a stone bench so his boss could sit and yell
Martin! Get on the fucking call!
and similar for many glad hours. The studio even financed a granite letter tray. Every full moon, they say, a ghostly figure deposits three duplicates of a contract to be sent to Legal.

People ask about the rock stars. Are they all mix tapes and pinners? Is the crypt packed with roses? These are secrets we keep. We surround folks with what they put a lot of energy and effort into, a lot of value. It might be color wheels of gel acrylics, letters from old friends. A nice layer of cash. Every body of work deserves its spoils. When we keepers go, we’ll get maps and plans and cenotaphs in miniature, all housed deep under slabs bearing the names of every man, woman, and blue-faced baby we drew down, a towering monument to our work.