there was no question of— The Mom-thing biting her lip as she smoked. Dad seemed to take it rather more leniently. They weren’t the first couple to get started early. When life comes your way you ought to accept it. A priest or a pastor must have furnished that line.
Mary-Alice wasn’t showing a bit, but she sat demurely on the edge of her seat, eyes downcast and her soft hands cradling her navel, like a prim little pink-and-white Madonna. While Terrell looked around the room with the eyes of a wolf in a trap.
Small hurried wedding, intimate, one might have said—just the two families, and those not complete. The Catholic Church—the Romans, as we called them then. Did they burn incense? Not in our little town. But I can still picture the Mom-thing bridling as the priest murmured Latin, as though she were a witch being exorcised.
I have to imagine all that part, because I wasn’t there. And Terrell himself was barely there, though no one yet knew he’d already enlisted, would be hustled off to boot camp in a matter of days. Then over to Nam. Somebody, everybody else, would get left holding the baby.
Not me. I stripped Dad’s wallet and the Mom-thing’s purse, then climbed into the garage attic room. Just a few lengths ahead of Mom’s certain arrival, armed with doilies and ruffled curtains, vacuum and Lysol. I inhaled a last whiff of the close dark smell of smoke and rot, old blood, and dried spunk. But I wasn’t there for sentimental reasons. I took the two packs of Newports and the half-pint of whiskey and the half-ounce of pot and the bayonet and our stone knife too, because I wanted to be sure to leave him nothing.
Nothing at all of what we once had. I had lived for sixteen years and my brother had been fucking me for five of them. I hitched downtown, to the corner where the Greyhound stopped, by the bank, and bought myself a ticket to the Summer of Love.
I turned back once I’d slipped through the tear in the fence behind my trailer, and looked again across the desert. Pale glow of dawn on the white flats and a low wind tumbling the weeds. On the horizon I seemed to see the figure of a person, no bigger than a matchstick in my eyes, unusually and so effortlessly lithe and erect that he was clearly not a member of our kind. Framed in the chain-link diamond I peered through, he seemed to hold an arrow, or perhaps a spear. I felt then he must have come to announce something to me. Something.
I strained my ears, heard nothing. The windblown cry of a bird. Flittering, diminishing. The black-throated sparrow, possibly. Zacatonero garganta negra. I don’t know all the voices of the desert birds.
A grumble of machinery in the mountains to the east, grinding, powdering. The line between the ragged ridgetop and the sky glowed incandescent red, increasing its intensity. Burning. That figure on the horizon now no more than a vertical dark line. Lost when the sunrise finally spilled over and poured its red gold light all over the white barren like a bloodstain.
I want you to go with so-and-so, D—— would tell a girl sometimes. Go with Bobby Bo, or Go with Long-John Larry. (There were girls who liked to go with Long-John Larry, who didn’t have that nickname for no reason.) Go with meant to let the guy have you for … as long as he wanted, in any and every way he wanted.
There were a couple of half-derelict motels up on the highway that the guys could use for this purpose—and D—— often preferred they leave the ranch, if hard drugs were going to be involved. Eerie was found dead in one of those. And Ned had furnished a cave up on the dry ridge—a laborious walk, and well out of earshot of the buildings, though just a short hop in one of the dune buggies, supposing any of them were running. He might let the other guys use it, depending. Most girls didn’t like to go with Ned.
One went, however, if One was asked to go.
Ned liked to watch things suffer. He liked to pull the legs off bugs. He could
Mary-Alice wasn’t showing a bit, but she sat demurely on the edge of her seat, eyes downcast and her soft hands cradling her navel, like a prim little pink-and-white Madonna. While Terrell looked around the room with the eyes of a wolf in a trap.
Small hurried wedding, intimate, one might have said—just the two families, and those not complete. The Catholic Church—the Romans, as we called them then. Did they burn incense? Not in our little town. But I can still picture the Mom-thing bridling as the priest murmured Latin, as though she were a witch being exorcised.
I have to imagine all that part, because I wasn’t there. And Terrell himself was barely there, though no one yet knew he’d already enlisted, would be hustled off to boot camp in a matter of days. Then over to Nam. Somebody, everybody else, would get left holding the baby.
Not me. I stripped Dad’s wallet and the Mom-thing’s purse, then climbed into the garage attic room. Just a few lengths ahead of Mom’s certain arrival, armed with doilies and ruffled curtains, vacuum and Lysol. I inhaled a last whiff of the close dark smell of smoke and rot, old blood, and dried spunk. But I wasn’t there for sentimental reasons. I took the two packs of Newports and the half-pint of whiskey and the half-ounce of pot and the bayonet and our stone knife too, because I wanted to be sure to leave him nothing.
Nothing at all of what we once had. I had lived for sixteen years and my brother had been fucking me for five of them. I hitched downtown, to the corner where the Greyhound stopped, by the bank, and bought myself a ticket to the Summer of Love.
I turned back once I’d slipped through the tear in the fence behind my trailer, and looked again across the desert. Pale glow of dawn on the white flats and a low wind tumbling the weeds. On the horizon I seemed to see the figure of a person, no bigger than a matchstick in my eyes, unusually and so effortlessly lithe and erect that he was clearly not a member of our kind. Framed in the chain-link diamond I peered through, he seemed to hold an arrow, or perhaps a spear. I felt then he must have come to announce something to me. Something.
I strained my ears, heard nothing. The windblown cry of a bird. Flittering, diminishing. The black-throated sparrow, possibly. Zacatonero garganta negra. I don’t know all the voices of the desert birds.
A grumble of machinery in the mountains to the east, grinding, powdering. The line between the ragged ridgetop and the sky glowed incandescent red, increasing its intensity. Burning. That figure on the horizon now no more than a vertical dark line. Lost when the sunrise finally spilled over and poured its red gold light all over the white barren like a bloodstain.
I want you to go with so-and-so, D—— would tell a girl sometimes. Go with Bobby Bo, or Go with Long-John Larry. (There were girls who liked to go with Long-John Larry, who didn’t have that nickname for no reason.) Go with meant to let the guy have you for … as long as he wanted, in any and every way he wanted.
There were a couple of half-derelict motels up on the highway that the guys could use for this purpose—and D—— often preferred they leave the ranch, if hard drugs were going to be involved. Eerie was found dead in one of those. And Ned had furnished a cave up on the dry ridge—a laborious walk, and well out of earshot of the buildings, though just a short hop in one of the dune buggies, supposing any of them were running. He might let the other guys use it, depending. Most girls didn’t like to go with Ned.
One went, however, if One was asked to go.
Ned liked to watch things suffer. He liked to pull the legs off bugs. He could
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