Naked, on the Edge (23 page)

The Dairy Queen was busy. Gaily striped inflated floats were propped up against bike stands. Customers ate inside in the air conditioning and outside at the umbrella-shaded tables. I stood beyond the low chain fence, watching the people eat. Dusty sparrows fared better than I; they flew freely among the tables to gather the scraps. Vacationers watched them with smiles. But I was gawked at by those who noticed me. Their stares held me back behind the chain fence.

To the rear of the restaurant was the Dumpster. I limped around and waited until a pock-faced boy had emptied a container, then I dug inside. Sunshine sat at my feet and waited, chin up. I found some ketchup-covered buns for him. For me, there were chunks of cheeseburger and a third of an apple pie.

I went to a small tree and slid down to eat. I studied the beef beneath the bright orange varnish of cheese. A cow had its purpose. If the cow knew it, would she be distressed? Or in knowing, did a cow embrace life for what it was? The meat was cold.

As I licked grease from my fingers and Sunshine nosed into the towel to get at the fluid from my foot, I saw a flash of open white shirt. My head turned, and there, not ten feet from me, was the Man I Love. He was fumbling in his shorts pocket for his wallet. Seeing his nipples, my own grew hard. I wished I could have licked them like Sunshine licked my foot. I wanted to give them a love bite, and not have the Man push me away because of my smell.

Sunshine ran to the Man. The Man didn't see the dog coming, and when Sunshine jumped up and wagged his tail, the Man stumbled back. Sunshine dropped down and the tail-wagging increased.

"Hey, boy, you're back?" he said.

Sunshine's whole body wagged. I thought, if I was the dog, could I make the man like me enough to take me home? I sucked my fingers and scratched at a sweat-inspired tickle on my stomach.

"You ugly old thing," he said. He rubbed Sunshine vigorously beneath the gangly, whiskered chin. "What do you want from me? You're a mess, now get away."

Sunshine's claws clattered on the concrete of the sidewalk, a happy dog's dance.

"I can't take home an old, skinny dog. Sorry, pup. Vet bills aren't something I want to get into."

The Man I Love squatted down and played with Sunshine's ears. My own ears tingled, imagining the sensation. "Now get. You made my hands stink." He laughed, sniffing his hands. Sunshine's body wiggled with joy.

The Man left, wiping his hands on his shorts, certain to wash them once he was inside the Dairy Queen. But certain not to think the dog was bad because he had a smell.

Sunshine came back to me, sat on his haunches, and dipped his tongue to my foot. I pushed him aside and went back to the Dumpster. Beneath mangled Styrofoam, I found a half a fish sandwich. I took it to the tree, slid down, and worked my fingernail into the gash in my foot. It hurt, but the sharp, rough edge of the nail tore the gash into a substantial hole. Sunshine watched. I stuck a small piece of the meat into the hole.

"Sunshine," I said. I pushed his nose to the hole. He sniffed, licked, and then gave my foot a bite. It was gentle at first. I gathered handsful of grass to each side of me. "Sunshine," I said.

Sunshine licked, then bit again, this time harder. A pain that was not the pain of infection drove up through my ankle into the calf of my leg. I sucked air through my teeth. The grass in my fingers ripped from the ground. "Sunshine," I whispered.

The dog began to chew, working for the fish in my foot. Blood and clear liquid oozed out between Sunshine's working jaws. Bright stars prickled the edges of my vision.

Not here, I thought.

My foot jerked away from Sunshine. He whined softly, and then reached for the running wound again.

"Not here," I said. I put the rest of the fish sandwich down the front of my tee-shirt and tucked the shirt into the waist of my shorts. Then I pushed up from the ground, holding low, thin branches of the tree for balance. My weight was on my good foot, and I was afraid to shift.

A young couple, arm-in-arm, walked by me. The girl wrinkled her nose and nudged her boyfriend. He frowned in my direction and said, "This place wants tourists, they should keep the trash out of public view."

I wobbled; my bad foot caught the brunt of my weight.

A groan scrabbled up my throat and whistled through my lips.

It took me a very long time to walk back to the boardwalk.

The railings of the steps to the beach were hot and welcomed. They eased the burden on the bad foot and allowed me to slide down to the sand. Sunshine kept by my side. His tail didn't wag. He was all business. That was as it should be. I crawled beneath the lip of the boardwalk, then under the steps where the sand was wet and dark and white ghost crabs scuttled about as if it were night.

I eased down onto my butt. My lips were dry and my throat full of the sand of my soul. I wedged my good foot against the back of the bottom step to hold me in place when the real pain came. I pet Sunshine on his gaunt, fur-covered dog skull, and then pulled the fish sandwich from my shirt.

Dogs, I'd heard once, had germ-killing saliva. That was why they could lick their own wounds and not get ill. That, I supposed, was why the dogs who licked Lazarus' sores didn't die. That was why I knew I could feed Sunshine and make him healthy, and then the Man I Love would take the dog home with him.

Through the slats of the steps, the vacationers cannot see me, but I can see them. I can see the hairy legs of the men and the shapely legs of the women as they descend to their temporary paradise by the ocean.

Happy people, oblivious to the crabs and the ugly dog and the stinking woman beneath the steps.

I poke more of the fish sandwich deep up into the gash in my foot. Sunshine nuzzles, licks, and then chews. My eyes squeeze shut against the razor-screams of my foot. I feel the hot blood rush out onto the cool sand and the rhythmic stroke and pull of the dog's teeth.

Sunshine won’t eat all of me. He will lose interest after a bit and will go off after a Frisbee or a toddler, looking for a playmate. I saw a black and white documentary once, a long time ago. A Nazi dog chased down a Jew and mauled him, but even a trained Nazi dog did not eat a whole Jew. The Nazis had to give the man to the wild pigs to finish.

But what I give Sunshine will be plenty, more than I could ever salvage at one time in a dumpster without being chased away. And what I give him will be my end. My bleeding is profuse. Even a towel-rag could not stop it. If I wanted to stop it.

My teeth clench and I search out through the step slats for the moon. I can't find it, but I know it is there. The chalk rock in the blue sky, the meaning of its existence a mystery.

I loosen one hand long enough to cram in more fish. My foot screams the agony of the crucified, offered for a higher purpose. Flesh rips within the canines. Then I feel the bone snap, crunch.

Sunshine will blossom and be fat and full and healthy and go home with The Man I Love. I will be part of it. I will be pet even as the dog is pet and loved even as the dog is loved. I will lick the man's chest and pink moon-nipples even as Sunshine does.

I howl into my shoulder and grab the steps.

Sweat pours from my flesh, thick and sour. My breath on the air is that of a corpse in the grave.

But the smell of my blood is sweet.

T
heir chapel is a gutted service station at the edge of the blistering city, situated between an abandoned warehouse and a lot choked with briars and detritus. They only come to pray at midnight, for that is when no one is there to stare at them or shoot them for sport.

There is nothing left to the station but four walls, a sagging roof, a restroom in the back that requires a key that has been long since lost, and a counter with a shattered glass case that once held candy, quarts of oil, and colorfully illustrated maps to places far away. The floor is covered with leaves blown in on countless winds and bits of glass or metal or cloth the worshippers leave behind as offerings. Sometimes they cut off tiny pieces of themselves, too, pieces decayed and dead, and leave those, but the vermin that scour the small building in the wee morning hours find them and clean them away, carrying the bits home as treats to their nested families.
 

There are teens and children, men and women, none so old as most of their kind die before they are forty. They come from the darkest, most hidden places in the city. They are the hated ones, the abandoned ones, those looked upon by the Ordinaries as less than human. They are the Discards - distorted and twisted, deformed and ravaged. Born to destitute mothers who have drugged themselves so badly that nothing whole could grow in their wombs, dumped out with the trash. Rescued by their own, one generation to the next, squirreled away and fed and kept warm as best as can be done, clothed with cast-offs, sheltered wherever shelter might be found.

Their pastor is Ryan. He is like them in many ways, thirty-four, dark-haired, jobless, homeless. His is missing an eye and one of his ears is melted down his neck. His left arm ends at the elbow at three nubbed fingers that flex poorly. He limps violently, for his right leg is twisted. Ryan sleeps on the damp earth in the cellar of an empty garage. The Discards love to hear him preach, though his sermons are short. Most of the services are dedicated to prayer and songs.

Each night, they shamble to the chapel. Ryan locks the door behind them, lights the candles. Those who have knees kneel to pray. Hands, where there are hands, rise toward the heavens. Eyes, where there are eyes, close in humble respect and penitence. Tongues, where there are tongues, recite the prayer of acceptance:

"We are as You have made us. We ask nothing but nourishment for our bellies, covering for our bodies, and darkness in which to hide. We ask that the Ordinaries find other means of entertainment than us, and that when it is our time to die, that You remember us well."

Ryan always brings food for the service. Half-rolls, cooked potatoes and chicken scraps, lumps of cheese, mangled pastries. The Discards never ask where it comes from, the tasty and plentiful offerings, wanting to believe in at least one miracle. He would tell them he found them in bins behind diners if they asked but they don't. They pray, listen, sing, eat, and then wander off through the shit-black shadows.

It is a cool, late September night when the new Discard comes, inching along in a wheelchair that looks like scrap from the early 20th century – scarred wood, caned backing ripped and rotting, two large wheels with one small, wobbling one in the back. He is no worse off than the others, thin, dead legs, hands twisted and skeletal, and a big hole where his right cheek should be. The bones and teeth that are visible through the hole are blackened, and his breath smells like a fire-pit that has been doused in urine. No one makes a fuss over him. They merely nod and offer him weary looks that accept him into the fold.

He rolls toward the counter where Ryan is shrugging out of his tattered coat and tells Ryan that his name is Ben. Ryan looks at him, says, "Bless you, Ben," and then inclines his head toward an open space beside one of the benches where those who are able to sit, sit.

Ben maneuvers his chair to the assigned spot, thumping into some of the others as he goes. A woman drops down onto the bench beside him. Her head is oddly shaped, as if someone has crushed it in a vice. Her skin is scaled like that of a shedding snake. She looks at Ben and tries a smile. It is the ugliest thing Ben has ever seen, outside the Master when he is enraged.

Ben watches as the rest of the Discards find their places. He breathes in and out through the hole in his cheek as his nose is clogged. He hates this place. This station, this city, this fucking world. He grinds his stubbed molars together, recalling how much the Master wants Ryan, how much he drooled over the prospect of such a tasty morsel sucking his dick then being roasted and served on a skewer for dinner. Ben hates the Master yet must please him. To please him is to suffer less. To not please him is to suffer profoundly. Ben shivers, as much from fear as from cold. He is always cold.

And now, added to the cold, a damned headache. It started the moment he got inside the station, hurting like someone digging at his brain with a nail. He's not sure if it's the Master's doing. It might just be the shitty air inside this shitty place, unfiltered through the shitty hole in his face, the fucked-up face of the fucked-up body the Master gave him for this task.

A one-legged devil walks into a bar, lookin' for a good, stiff whiskey...

The Master never appreciates Ben's jokes. He has no sense of humor at all. Yet Ben can't help it. He was always a joker before, always quick and witty in hopes of a laugh, and can't help himself now. He offers puns or wisecracks or stupid stories, hoping someday to make the Master like him more. Hate him less. Whatever.

Ben crosses his arms, hard. The chair creaks beneath him.

The prayers begin, then the songs. There is nothing melodic about the wailings of the twisted creatures, and it's all Ben can do to keep from putting his hands over his ears. It makes his head hurt worse. He pretends to sing and pray, as well, moving his jaw, waggling the stubby tongue the Master gave him.

The service lasts several excruciating hours. At some time during Ryan's speech about earthy temporals and eternal peace, some of the Discards begin to scrape at themselves and drop pieces of flesh on the floor. Ben knew they did this, had been told by the Master, but seeing it makes his gorge rise. Ryan says nothing, as if he doesn't notice, doesn't mind, or has some strange understanding of the acts. Some of the Discards wriggle in place, working out sounds and smells that cause Ben to tuck his nose under his elbow. The place grows hot and thick with the stink of blood, diarrhea, and resignation.