The Lonely Polygamist (44 page)

Golden had felt it then, the beauty of that moment, and he felt it now, thirty-some years later, driving out of the deep river gorge and onto the wide face of a plateau shadowed by a field of brilliantly lit clouds. He had escaped the belly of the whale. He was bruised and battered, covered in dust and blood and infested with fleas, but he was returning home, where he allowed himself to imagine a bountiful and untroubled future, back in the bosom of his family.

For another thirty miles he did nothing but steer and look out into the glare of the day. At one point he reached up idly to investigate the goose egg on the back of his head and instead of his own fingers on the tender skin he felt Huila’s—for a dislocating moment he sensed her next to him, felt the heat of her touch and got a whiff of her, a strong but pleasant smell like a new leather belt. As if it had been burned he pulled his hand away quickly, giving his head a hard shake to dislodge the very thought of her, realizing that he would be shaking off such thoughts for a long time to come.

By the time he made it to St. George, the fleas had begun to stir. They’d been laying low, like immigrants getting used to the neighborhood, but now that they’d acclimated, picked up on the local language and customs, they were on the move and causing trouble. Anywhere there was hair, they congregated: in the vast prairies of his chest and belly and the forests that covered his scalp. In particular they seemed to be making themselves comfortable in the crack of his ass.

His crotch, he noted with bitter satisfaction, was entirely flea-free.

They weren’t biting him, thankfully, but they were, almost literally, making his skin crawl, but then, yes, no doubt about it, they were biting him. At some point he had himself going in a full body flex, craning his neck as he desperately ground his butt against the seat, digging into his belly with his fingers or attacking the soft spot behind his ear like a dog, but it was like trying to scratch a thousand small itches at once. For the last few miles he held on by sheer force of will, going a good twenty miles over the speed limit, and when he pulled up into the gravel drive, he skidded to a hard stop, ratcheted down the emergency brake and jumped out of the truck, scratching at himself in a spasm of delicious violence. When this didn’t do the trick, he skipped around the side of the trailer facing the Spooners’ pasture, away from the prying eyes of Old House, and yanked off his shirt, rubbing at the bare skin of his ribs with his fists and forearms and elbows. He had his pants unbuttoned, and was just sliding them down to have a go at his thighs and buttocks when he heard a soft thudding noise, like a turnip rolling in a bucket. The Airstream shifted slightly and he watched, mesmerized, as the trailer’s doorknob, not three feet from his face, began to turn. He froze, and then—very slowly, very carefully—pulled up his pants. The latch clicked and the door creaked open. And there was Huila, in her pineapple dress with a bag slung over her shoulder, terrified and smiling.

A
T NIGHT, HE WAITED FOR THE HOUSE TO SLEEP. BY NINE-THIRTY
Nephi and Parley were already making wheezy snuzzling noises, bushed after another long and exhausting day of being a-holes, and then the Big Girls in the room below would finally quit their dumb conversations about such fascinating topics as,
What are eyebrows for, exactly?
or
Which is the world’s best shampoo and conditioner combination?
and then somewhere deep in the house Aunt Beverly would conclude her dastardly work for the day and the whole place would be quiet, except for Parley’s all-night farting routine.

Since his mother had gone away to the hospital, Rusty couldn’t sleep—not at night, anyway. At school, sitting in his desk, you can believe he slept just great. He slept so great he snored and drooled a big wet spot on the front of his shirt. And even though he heard the whole class laughing all at once like a bomb going off in his head, making him jerk awake and nearly fall out of his seat, he somehow did the exact same thing the next day, with the huge drool spot and everything, which made Mr. Van De Berg ask why did he always have to be such a distraction? as he hauled him by the arm toward the principal’s office. Which was why they called Big House to see if there was trouble there, which was how they found out that his mother had had a nervous breakdown and was in the nervous breakdown hospital, which was why he had to talk to the counselor, a chubbo with green eye shadow.

Okay, then, Rusty. In your own words, why don’t you tell me a little about life at home.

It’s nice.

Nice?

Yeah.

And how do you feel about your mother being sick?

Fine.

Fine, Rusty?

Yeah. Do you want me to talk louder?

You’re not worried about her? Your mother?

No.

And who takes care of you while your father is at work, Rusty?

My aunt.

Your mother’s sister, or your father’s?

I don’t know. She’s just my aunt. She’s not my mother.

No. I see. Are you happy at home, Rusty? Do you feel comfortable there?

Yeah.

And how have you been sleeping?

On my back.

Okay
.
I feel like you’re having a hard time opening up to me, Rusty. That you’re not telling me everything on your mind. Can you tell me why that is, Rusty?

Yeah.

Well?

Because you keep saying my name like a thousand times and your breath smells like Lysol.

That shut her up for a few seconds. He could feel, from the way she looked at him, how much she wanted him to tell her everything. She wanted him to tell her that his father was a law-breaking polygamist wingnut with a Moses beard who never took a bath, who committed terrible actions against his wife and his children and didn’t make enough money for all of them so they were forced to make their clothing out of gunnysacks and eat dog food for breakfast. She wanted to hear every little thing about their criminal lifestyle, so she could send the police out to their house to haul Sasquatch off to prison and break up their family forever. “You be
careful
when you talk to people like that,” Aunt Nola had told him. “They think they’re doing the right thing, but all they really want to do is destroy our happy little dog-and-pony show, to tear it apart. It’s because we’re special.”

Rusty had thought about telling the counselor everything she wanted to hear so she could do exactly what Aunt Nola said she would. But he decided he didn’t need a chubbo who smelled like cough drops to help him. He could do it all by himself.

And that was why he couldn’t sleep at night. He had some serious things to think about. He had some serious planning to do.

Of course, Aunt Beverly would do anything to stop him. She made him come home right home after school and let him outside only to do chores. And her spies were all over him, following him wherever he went, watching, waiting for him to slip up or make a break for it so they could sound the Rusty Alert. So he had started sneaking out after dinner, when nobody expected anything, when everyone else was downstairs doing their music lessons and homeschool projects. He was supposed to be upstairs in the Tower doing his homework—like it was some kind of terrible punishment not to be able to hang out with the jack-holes downstairs!—but all he had to do was crawl out his window and climb expertly all the way down to the garage roof and he was free to ride around for an hour or so, thinking his thoughts, figuring out how he was going to free himself of Old House once and for all.

When Aunt Beverly discovered he was sneaking out again, she ordered Nephi to nail the Tower’s windows shut, which was turning out to be a punishment for everybody up here because of the lack of ventilation and Parley’s night-farting. But it didn’t matter. You could nail shut all the windows you wanted: Old House could not contain Rusty McCready Richards. Aunt Beverly and her spies and her witchy-woman intentions were helpless against him.

Instead of walking down the Tower stairs, which would have made a creaking racket all the way, he sat down on the top step, let himself go limp, and slithered down like a bag of jelly, the back of his head making a soft
bump-bump-bump
the whole way.

He was unstoppable. He could not be stopped.

At the bottom he did his silent-walking technique—
heel…toe…breath…heel…toe…breath
—all the way down the hall to the window without a screen. The night-light was on in the Black Hole of Calcutta and he could see his reflection in the hall mirror: a black form with a white rectangle on its head.

Here was the weird thing: the rectangle was, if you could believe it, a tampon. He’d gotten it on his birthday, when he had locked everyone out of Big House and Nephi and Parley had tackled him so hard his head smacked the edge of the windowsill. Because doctors cost too much and were not to be trusted, most people in the church went to Sister Sleigh. Sister Sleigh had once been a nurse in the army and everyone said she knew more about medical science than half the fancypants doctors in Europe and New York City put together. Rusty’s head was bleeding everywhere, which was a good thing, because after he’d locked everyone out of the house and ruined the big party, wouldn’t it be kind of like overkill to punish a kid who already had a major head wound and blood running down his face? Parley and Nephi had brought him out of the house with the little ones screaming, “Look! Blood!
Ahh!
” and Aunt Nola hollering, “Clear the way, let’s get him to Sister Sleigh’s, Sister Sleigh will take care of him!”

How did Sister Sleigh take care of him? By shaving a big patch out of his hair, stitching up his wound and taping an enormous tampon to his head. This, to Rusty, didn’t seem like very good medical science. He didn’t know there was a problem until he came home and some of the big girls started to whisper and giggle and Aunt Beverly said, “It’s just a
sanitary napkin
, and it’s serving a perfectly good purpose.”

Did anyone ask him how he was doing? Did anyone wish him a happy birthday? Did anyone even give him a look like,
Boy, we’re sure sorry you have suffered a major head wound on your birthday and are forced to wear a sanitary napkin
? No. They all just stared at him. The only thing he could hope for now was that he would end up with a killer scar.

Within thirty seconds word had gotten around that Rusty was wearing a tampon on his head. Even the little kids, who had no idea what a tampon might be, stared at him and backed away if he got too close as if he had some kind of contagious tampon disease. Except for his father, who had already gone back to Nevada without waiting around to see if Rusty would survive the night, most of the family was still at Big House. It was getting dark, and they had finished off the birthday cake and torn Dwight Eisenhower limb from limb without him, and were all gathered around getting a load of the tampon on his head. Maybe it was the way he’d locked them all out of the house earlier, or how he’d come out with his face covered in blood, or maybe it was how the front of his new sweater was so bloodstained it looked like he’d had his throat slit by a homicidal murderer, but they appeared scared of him now, especially the little ones. He liked the way they backed away, their eyes wide. He made a little grunt and they cringed. He took a step at them and they flinched. Then he hunched his shoulders and tilted his neck with one eye scrunched up like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and yelled, “
Uhhh-wah-hah-hah-haaaaaaaah!
”

The girls shrieked and everybody jumped back and the Three Stooges knocked into each other trying to get away. He leapt forward like a cougar after a herd of frightened zebras, and of course he singled out the weak one, who in this case was Jame-o, who would not abandon his Hoover for anything and was trying to drag it like a wounded soldier toward the safety of the kitchen. At the last second Rusty changed directions and lunged at Naomi and Teague, who were trying to make it up the stairs, and he grabbed at their feet and they kicked and twisted, screaming till he let them go. His father was usually the one who came home from work and played the monster, Bob the Zombie, the Blind Octopus, the Man Without a Head, but his father was too busy to play with the kids these days or to pay attention to anyone at all, which made Rusty’s face hot just thinking about what a gyp it all was, so when he growled and jabbered he did it extra loud, the kids scattering like tadpoles in a puddle, hiding behind furniture, screeching and tripping over each other while he ran around swinging his arms and showing his teeth and snatching at anyone who came too close. He had the Second Twins cornered at the back of the family room now and they looked up at him, covering their heads with their hands, and he howled,
Uhhh-hoooooooooo!
and they shrieked so long and high and with such fear that it sent a weird tingle of satisfaction down the back of his neck. He was Crazy Ape-Guy! He was Tampon Man!
Ah-huuuaaa-haaah-haaaaaaah!

The little ones were shrieking too now, some of them crying and trying to roll themselves up in the curtains and begging for mercy, saying,
Stop! Stop! Stop!
Even Helaman, who wasn’t scared of anything, looked like he was ready to make a break for it at any second. Rusty kept it up, monkey-legging though the kitchen, going,
Uh-hungh, uh-hungh
, until Aunt Beverly grabbed him from behind, and hugged him close, and said into his ear, “Stop this now, please stop, this can’t go on, you can’t do this anymore,” and he looked up into her face and saw even she was scared of him, even the terrible Aunt Beverly, and he made a sort of laughing sob and let her hug him because it felt so good.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

So why was he, Rusty Richards, riding down the middle of the road on a Big Wheel at midnight? Because he wanted to. Because he was the Tampon Man and nobody could stop him, because he was feeling g-g-goooood! Super-good, in fact, which was weird because for so long everything had been bad. And then, two days ago, they went to visit his mother at the hospital. The hospital was not a white place with white walls and white nurses wearing white dresses and white hats, as he thought it would be, but a brown building with green floors and greasy-haired creeps in pajamas wandering the halls talking to themselves or hunched in wheelchairs staring at their knees.

“This place smells like
poop
!” Ferris said, and Aunt Nola said, “I think what you’re smelling is the cafeteria.”

His mother was waiting for them in a room with orange plastic chairs. She wore a blue bathrobe he had never seen before, and then he realized he’d never seen her wearing a bathrobe, not once, which bothered him. At home she would never come out of her room unless she was all-the-way dressed, shoes on her feet, but here she was sitting around right out in the open in a bathrobe and paper slippers surrounded by maniacs with yellow toenails.

Her hair looked grayer than he remembered and she was wearing a paper bracelet with words typed on it. They walked up to her slowly. “Kids,” she said, “oh kids,” and opened her arms.

“Remember the rules,” Aunt Nola said. “Line up. Single file and wait your turn.”

On the drive over Aunt Nola had given them instructions, one of which was they were supposed to wait in line and approach her one at a time. “One of the reasons she’s in the hospital is she can’t take all the stimulation that you little darlings provide, what with everybody coming at her all the time. Believe me, I know how she feels. So you’ll line up and go one at a time and
whisper
. You start yelling or acting up and it’s outside you go.”

Pauline asked why they all had to go at once, couldn’t they go see their mother one or two at a time? This was the question every plyg kid was always asking: Can’t we ever do
anything
alone? And Aunt Nola said what the mothers always said. “You think I don’t have anything else to do? You think you’re the center of the universe? You think your life is hard? Well, boo-hoo. Try thinking about somebody other than yourself for once.”

If there’s anything you learned as a plyg kid, it was that you were not the center of the universe. Rusty knew it better than any of them. The monkey net was big and tangled and had no trouble holding them all at once. And the worst thing? The monkey net would never go away, it was forever. That was what they taught you in church. Because they were a special people, because they were living God’s Principle, their families would live together in heaven for all time and eternity, which everybody seemed to think was a wonderfully fantastic idea. Was it wonderfully fantastic, Rusty wondered, to be stuck forever with a bunch of a-holes you didn’t even like? Was it wonderfully fantastic to have to stand in line to talk to your own mother?

Because they went youngest to oldest, Rusty was fifth in line. Ferris gave their mother a pebble that was almost perfectly round and Fig Newton brought her report card which showed all S’s, which meant Fig Newton was fantastically satisfactory. Wayne, who was mad at their mother for having a nervous breakdown and ending up in the loony bin, brought nothing and after giving her a fake hug stood out in the hall with a sour look on his face. Herschel the Butt-kisser brought her favorite pillow, and her mug that she liked for drinking lemon tea, and Rusty quietly shook his fist, because why hadn’t he thought of that? All he had was the picture of his birthday, with him sitting there cross-eyed next to his birthday cake and putting on the biggest, dumbest smile you have ever seen.