33 Snowfish (15 page)

In the picture Seldom don’t have none of them old wrinkles on his forehead and he’s got hair and his smile is so big it’s like half the moon shining in the middle of his face.

His wife’s got these big juicy lips and she’s real pretty for a nigger woman. Their heads are kinda touching like they got the same thought; like they got that psychic love thing going and shit.

Seldom was asleep and his face was all black and burnt-looking. His mouth was kind of open and his bottom teeth was missing. But his top teeth was so white they looked like that shit the toilet factories use.

You could hear the air sliding in and out of his lung bubbles, going
sloosh-sloosh-sloosh,
and you could see his one eye twitching a little.

The moon looked all swollen in the window, and that same blue light that was laying on the baby’s face was laying across Seldom’s, too.

He almost looked like he was dead with them bottom teeth missing and that moonlight on his face. I just stood there and watched him sleep for a minute.

When he woke up his nose twitched a little and he just laid there and stared at me.

“What you doin’, Jimster?”

I didn’t say nothing back. I just took my pants down and climbed up in his bed. His mattress is real high off the floor so you kind of have to jump up in it.

After I got up in his bed I turned away from him and got on my hands and knees like a dog.

I didn’t notice it when I walked in the room, but on the wall across from his bed there was a picture of this clown with balloons in his cheeks. The clown had this upside-down smile and he looked sad and happy at the same time. I just stared at the picture and waited for Seldom to do what I knew he was going to do.

Seldom went, “Jimster?” again, but I just stayed there like that for a minute. I just stayed there all doggy-style and naked with my ass in the air.

Seldom went,
“You asleep, Jimster?”

I just went, “Go ’head, Seldom. Go on and do me.”

Then I closed my eyes tight and I held my breath cuz I knew he had his big nigger dick out and I knew it was all long and scabby and I knew it had that hook on the end of it like Bob Motley talked about.

And I just knew that shit was going to
hurt
when he stuck it in me and took my buns, too. It didn’t matter how much hair grease or motor oil he used. But I didn’t care. I just said it again.

I went, “Go on and fuck me.”

But Seldom didn’t do
shit.
He just grabbed me and turned me around real fast and slapped me across my face and it stung like some bees and then the next thing I know he’s sliding my pants back over my feet and over my legs and over my ass, and he’s sliding them so fast they burn my knees, and then he zips up the zipper and snaps the front snap and takes his big hand and puts it on my face and wipes these hot tears off my cheeks.

“I ain’t gonna do that to you, Jimster,” he said, kinda shaking my shoulders. “That ain’t me.”

I felt real small all of the sudden. Smaller than I ever felt in my life. Like I was turning into a plastic toy or some shit.

Then Seldom went, “And what’s wrong with your fanny? You got all types of stuff. . . .”

I got out of Seldom’s bed real slow and just sat on the floor. For some reason it felt better down there.

I did a thirty-three even though I hadn’t done one in a long time.

My face was wet where he slapped me. I could almost feel his big-ass hand still on my skin and how the heat from it sunk way deep into my teeth and into the bones in my jaw.

I could feel him watching me and I could feel how he was all frozen and scared, so I just kept doing that thirty-three and let them numbers make shit slow down.

After my thirty-three I got even lower and just laid on the floor. I spread my arms and my legs as wide as they could go and just let the magnets in the earth hold me there like that.

My heart felt all sick and small in my chest.

After a while Seldom lowered one of his pillows and lifted my head and slid the pillow under the bend in my neck.

I started another thirty-three.
One, two, three . . .

The last thing I remember is staring at that picture of the clown with the balloons in its cheeks.

The next day, Seldom walked into town with them tennis rackets stuck to his shoes and came back with these little penicillin pills. I had to take them three times a day, and drinking all that water kept making me fart, but it didn’t hurt no more when I shit, and I started taking showers, too, cuz I didn’t have to worry about that burning.

That shampoo Seldom got me did smell like pop, too. Like some cherry cola or some shit. I even started combing my hair. I tried to do it like Boobie’s, with a part down the middle.

Things was pretty crisp after that.

Me and Seldom got real good at living together.

In the mornings, he would wake up early and feed Deuce, and I would feed the baby and change his diaper in the bathroom.

Then I’d sweep the floor and take the trash out to the backyard and burn it and watch the smoke curl over the Itty Bitty Farm all black and skanky.

The snow kept coming and Seldom kept watching it through the window, shaking his head, going, “My gracious light. Oh, my gracious light.” Sometimes it came down sideways, but most of the time it just came from everywhere.

We even had to shovel our way out of the house a few times. That was kinda fun, though, like we was at the North Pole and shit.

Seldom gave me a pair of old gloves and this long-ass yellow scarf that I had to wrap around my neck like skeighty-eight times just so I wouldn’t trip over it.

Seldom also gave me this crazy hat that looked like a cinnamon roll.

I got pretty crisp at walking with them tennis rackets. You gotta lift and go slow. Seldom always said, “Go slow and know the snow.”

We kept the Christmas tree in the backyard for a long time. And even though it started turning all brown and skanky, it was still cool to look through the window and see it laying next to the shed.

Every once in a while Deuce would come into the living room walking like one of them Bolingbrook hookers. Seldom would pop popcorn and throw it on the floor and talk to her the way you talk to someone on the telephone. Deuce would just start eating the popcorn and walk right back out, burning a stare through me with that doll’s eye the whole time.

Sometimes it seemed like she didn’t even have to wait for Seldom to come get her from the chicken coop. It was like she could just
appear;
like she had special
powers
and shit.

At night we’d build fires and just sit there in the living room. Sometimes you could hear that train whistle off in the distance. That was about the loneliest sound in the world. Sometimes I pictured me and the baby on that train. But in the picture we was always cold and shivering and starving to death and both of us had lung frosts.

But then Seldom would kinda hum like he was remembering something, and that lonely train feeling would go away.

I think my time on the Itty Bitty Farm’s been some of the best days I’ve ever had. Even better than when me and Boobie and Curl was living back in the woods.

There’s always plenty of food to eat and there ain’t never no driving and you always wake up in the same place every morning. Even if it’s under a kitchen table sometimes, it’s still the same place.

I guess the Itty Bitty Farm became the most official crib I ever lived in.

And them migration headaches didn’t come once.

Sometimes in the middle of the night me and the baby would creep into Seldom’s room and sleep next to him on the floor. He started leaving one of his pillows and a extra blanket for us. I liked the smell of the pillow. It was kinda like a old coat that gets left in the closet.

After the morning chores we’d stick them tennis rackets to the bottom of our shoes and go looking for sticks together. It wasn’t too easy cuz of all the snow, but I got used to it.

Seldom made a pouch for the baby out of a pillowcase. He poked four holes in it — two for my arms and two for the baby’s legs; that way I could carry him on my back when we was stick collecting. The baby didn’t give no shit. He would just squeak and wiggle and play with my ears.

At first I thought we was collecting sticks for firewood, but Seldom said he had enough firewood in the shed to last for like a year and shit. He said we was collecting sticks cuz we was gonna make a raft. I was like, “A
raft
?” and he was like, “Shoo, you’ll see.”

He said we needed a raft cuz one day the sun was going to come out burning like crazy, and he said it would burn so hot that all of the snow around the Itty Bitty Farm and all of the other snow over by the van and the Crow Wing River and all the snow from like skeighty-eight miles around was gonna melt all at once and start a flood and that the Itty Bitty Farm would just get drowned in it.

He said we was gonna build a raft big enough for me and him and the baby and Deuce. He said we was gonna have to build it on top of the house cuz once the snow started melting everything was gonna flood so fast we wasn’t gonna have much time.

At first I thought he was crazy, but then I started looking at all the snow around the house and how it was higher than some of the windows. And I looked at how that shit was
still
coming down; how even though it wasn’t sideways no more that it was
still
falling.

So we started putting all them sticks and tree branches on top of the roof and Seldom would stay up there for hours, joining them parts together with rope and twine and this skanky waterproof stuff that smelled terrible.

It even started to look like a real raft after a while, too; the way a raft looks if you see it on a cartoon or in a comic book or some shit.

Sometimes I would bring the baby up to the roof with me and all three of us would sit on the raft like we was practicing for the flood.

Seldom would tease Deuce and go, “Hey, Deucey, we leavin’ without you. Watch your buttons,” and shit like that. Deuce would just kind of peck at the roof and walk around in these funny little circles.

One day me and Seldom and the baby was all just sitting there on the roof, watching the sunset and how them colors was kind of melting through the sky. I had a big spool of twine between my legs and the baby was kind of pulling on it from his pillowcase when Seldom went, “Hey, Jimster, can I ask you somethin’?”

I just nodded and kept watching them colors falling through the sky.

He was like, “Who’s Tiny?”

I was like, “Who?”

And he went, “Big Tiny.”

I went, “Big
who
?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t know no Big Tiny.”

“You did last night. You was talkin’ to her in your sleep.”

“Sounds like you was trippin’.”

“You was talkin’ to her like she was layin’ right next to you on the floor. Goin’ ‘Yes, ma’am, yes ma’am, I promise.’ Real quiet. Like you was whisperin’ in her ear. You was dreamin’.”

“
You
was dreamin’.”

A few days later we was in the kitchen. Seldom was washing dishes and I was rolling pennies and watching the baby at the table.

The night before I creeped into his room and slept on his floor again and when I woke up, Seldom’s bed was all made up and the sun was shining through the window and you could see the colors of the balloons in the cheeks from that clown picture, and you could see dust sliding in the light. My back was all sore from sleeping on that hard-ass floor.

When I came out to the kitchen Seldom had just got done feeding Deuce. He was whistling this song and wiping some dust off the shelf over the fireplace. He was in such a good mood I thought he was gonna fart balloons and shit.

Then he grabbed the baby out of the TV and started singing this old wack song about how nickels sound like rain when you got enough of them in your pocket and he was holding the baby over his head and kinda dancing with him and you could see the baby kinda smiling and you could see the muscles muscling around that seam in his forehead.

For some reason I started feeling that fist going hard in my stomach again, and all of the sudden I was like, “He ain’t yours.”

Seldom stopped and turned to me. He went, “I know he ain’t mine, Jimster. But I can play with him, can’t I?”

He was holding the baby in front of him now. The baby looked like the whitest baby in world. He looked like a
snow
baby and shit.

Then Seldom went, “He likes me,” and turned the baby so he could look at him and went, “Don’t you, Little Jimster?”

I just sat at the kitchen table for a minute and watched how that light was pouring in through the window. It was real bright that morning, like the sun was out for revenge or some shit. You could see dust sliding through the light in the kitchen, too.

Seldom shifted the baby to his other side like he’d been practicing that shit and went, “Come on now. I’m makin’ pancakes.”

But I still wouldn’t move. I was getting pissed off for some reason and I think Seldom knew cuz of how I was all still.

Then Seldom went, “You can have him back,” and held out the baby, and the way he was holding him made it look like the baby was going to fall and I pictured that old bone in Seldom’s arm crumbling or breaking or some shit, so I got up and took the baby.