1- paint-by-number
The old man quit the bus and turned to see the sun setting what looked to him like a smoldering fried egg of a different color. He stood before the entrance to a valley of track homes that spread clear to the far mesa like so much color coordinated debris left from a high tide.
Taking first from his shirt pocket a small note pad and holding it with one telescoping arm and removing his hat with another to shield his eyes from the sun, he checked his coordinates. Then he returned the pad to his pocket and brought from the back of his jeans a red rag across his brow before he replaced his hat, tipped it at the gate, and began his patient stride.
His boots were worn nor was the asphalt forgiving despite its smoother, softer complexion than his own. His feet aching so, he was taken to leaning on a roughly hewn staff of half petrified cedar and favoring one grave shoulder upon which hung a duffle bag no color but that which the weather and the earth had bleached it long ago. The brim of his hat casting ageless shadow over his face in perpetual grimace. Children were abandoning front yards at first sight of him. Now and again he would hear a door slam ahead of him and he would come to a wobbling halt and look to it as if he were a man with no name and he had come to understand that dry latching, careless echo to be the worlds way of calling his attention. And in this manner of lethargic fragmentation, he conquered his inches in a sea of suburbia.
Upstairs in the clone of some mother track home a girl of sixteen years lay across a bed that was not her own with her head sideways against the wall prying her neck to all manner of physically compromising angles. She fancies herself the lily of the valley and across the room writing a list of people to kill on the back of his homework sat a boy just her minor who fancied her much contrarily.
You wanna hurry up some?
The boy raised his eyebrows without interest and added her name to the list.
I spend so much time over here everyone at school thinks Im your girl friend. She sat up and brought her legs under her and leaned towards him. Do you think Im your girl friend?
No. The boy was still looking down, waiting to feel her look away. When she did not after a time he looked up. No Beth. I dont think that. He looked at the front of her shirt with an expression that could have meant anything. Now why would you put that on?
What do you mean?
I mean what in the shit are you wearing?
She looked down. She was wearing a pink t-shirt that said princess on it with a little crown to dot the i. Theres something wrong with you she said. She was beginning to cry. She didnt know that days ago he had posed the same question to two strangers at a department store one of which was wearing the exact same shirt and the other advertising her college astraddle the rear seam of her shorts. Both of the girls had taken such offense as to notify the manager and he and his mother had been escorted and banned from the store. His mother staring at him like she wasnt sure what he was.
Outside in the front lawn, just under the window two younger boys were throwing a soccer ball back and forth as if they didnt know what else to do with it. Now and then they would drop kick it in an attempt to knock the other off his feet. The smaller one had bright girlish eyes and tight lips and such perfect features that his peers had been calling him Gorgeous from the start just as though he had introduced himself that way. He would occasionally stoop and pick out a small rock incognito and throw the ball as high as he could so as to pitch the rock at his friend while he stumbled around watching the balls descent. Always he missed entirely and he was getting bored and frustrated with himself when the conversation topic switched from intergalactic superhero fights to personal fears. It started naturally.
Im not scared of nothin.
No, me neither I guess said gorgeous with a purposeful intonation of doubt.
I mean I hate spiders and snakes, but Im not scared of em.
But are you sure youre not scared of nothin? Everybody must be scared of somethin.
Well Naw. My dad aint and I aint.
I guess youre gonna make me go first. Well Im scared of (he paused to the effect of sincerity) Im scared of being alone.
Shoot. Im alone all the time and it dont bother me.
No like really alone. I mean waking up and theres nobody around you. Not anything around you. Not your bed not your room not your house. Youre not on anything or anyplace that you can tell because that wouldnt be alone. Like youre buried but not by anything. And not buried exactly because it cant be something you know what it is or you would know it and that would be something. I mean alone like nothing at all.
The boy across the yard began squinting at him but the sun was not in his eyes.
So. Cmon what makes you scared?
Well besides that Im scared of being trapped. You know? Like in small places. Mom says I got claustrophobia.
Oh. Gorgeous smiled thinly and they began throwing again. After about a half hour of unsuccessful tries, Gorgeous finally managed to throw the ball in just such a way that it tipped off the boys fingers and rolled down the ditch and into the culvert under the driveway. When the boy reached the culvert he stopped and looked mutely at Gorgeous much like he had looked at his parents when he stopped believing in Santa Claus. Gorgeous was hopping towards him excitedly and chanting get it out, get it out.
But its but I just. The boy was scratching his arms and stuttering. I cant.
You touched it last. You got to get it. He was grinning past his ears and giggling while he talked. A fairys got to do what a-
Shut up Gorgeous. Im gonna get it I aint scared. But you got to hold my feet so I dont get stuck you can pull me out.
O.K. boss. Gorgeous harbored a momentary look of sobriety before his eyes went back mad and he let out a joyful burst from some strange abyss within and it doubled him over and he came back up smiling profusely. You big pudinanny.
The boy responded with an animated breath and he narrowed his eyebrows and got down on his belly and started head first into the culvert after the ball. By the time he was down past his torso, Gorgeous had located a large stone and was rolling it end over end toward him whistling inconspicuously. For it was his loves labor he was at and when the boy yelled out I got it, he shoved the stone upon the upward soles of the boys feet and began piling other rocks in a sadly strategic manner about the lips of the tomb until he was satisfied among the muffled yelps from within that the boys legs were securely immobilized.
Thus came the terrorized cries, desperate among the flowering sunset, to the window above. But they would not have come through had the lily of the valley not opened it for the need of fresh air by which many young princesses like herself so narrowly maintain their sanity betwixt their misunderstood sorrows. The boy behind her raised his ear. Who was accustomed to the muffled cries of his little brothers victims and he set his jaw like one who in a battle with nausea resolves to hold the war within. He paced to the window to see what manner of certain desecration was manifesting itself in his brother below.
Outside his own flesh and blood was pacing the drive way at a curious prance with his dukes up as if in a boxing match with some sort of invisible flying thing. The shadow boxer was laughing uncontrollably so that sometimes he would come to an abrupt snort and wipe a little drool off his bottom lip and spin about and start again. To the left he saw the two feet sticking out from under the drive way scramble free from the rocks and disappear within the culvert. He shook his head and called hey Gorgeous.
Gorgeous stopped cold and looked up at the window, his mouth agape to match his brothers. An old man had stopped at the corner fifty yards down the hill and he was watching and no one ran inside and no door was heard shut.
From the window the boy looked at the old man like he didnt want him to hear what he was about to say but the old man was looking right back and he could have been standing there all day and he could have been standing there for years. The boy pointed at Gorgeous. If you dont let that boy out Im gonna lock you in a house of mirrors and let you starve to death with no one around to close your eyes.
A dark point glimmered in the pupils of that gorgeous son of man as he imagined his brother tortured at his hand swirling in a rhapsody of blue hot flame and calling upon him cries for mercy but rendered mute by the laughter of millions and the scorching stench of his crisp skin, melting flesh. Yes sir, he said.
The time was gone for letting though and the boy had concluded his baptism and was out the other side of the culvert slick with mud and shaking and walking towards Gorgeous like some energized corpse. There was no reaction by Gorgeous save what the physics of the matter would allow. His jaw was clamped shut and crooked. His bicuspids went through his tongue and his incisors through a small part of his lower lip and his head bobbed like it was on a fishing line. Then he bent over to hold his kicked gut and was taken by the hair and held up like a t-ball for a final blow that sent about his face that strange red yarn of mucus that blood and saliva become. His head lashed backward and his body followed to the ground. From there he watched that muddy specter running home crying and holding his hands. He spat a red splatter on the concrete and ran the back of his hand across his mouth and smiled.
The boy ran around the back of his house and up the back porch and smack into the sliding glass door. He fell down holding his nose and looked up at the mud print on the door and looked around and there was no one and he disrobed and went in. He went up stairs and into his room where the lily of the valley was laying across his bed in her princess t-shirt and she pointed at his homework and he looked down at her and shook his head and sat down where the carpets joined beneath the door frame and said I dont care princess. Theres nothin I can think of that I even want.
copyright Braden Land 2006