Fuckness (24 page)

“
You still don’t look too good,” she said. “You should stay here tonight. We have plenty of room. Come on into the kitchen and eat something. One of us can drive you wherever you need to go tomorrow.”

Drive
, the word sounded like time travel. How much ground could I cover if I had a car? The promise of this advanced transportation kind of canceled out my previous feelings. After all, if I left in the morning, it couldn’t really be considered
staying
. Besides, this woman seemed hellbent on nurturing
something
. I was probably just another wounded dog found by the side of the road.

I followed Maria, watching her long skirt flap around her ankles.

I admired the interior of the house as we crossed from the living room into the kitchen. It was impossible for their house to be any cleaner than the parents’ but there was something about it that seemed nicer, homier, more decorated. There was something about the soft yellowish lighting that seemed a little bit depressing but that was only because the parents’ house was usually as brightly lit as the set of a porno. I tried not to look around too much so she didn’t think I was some sort of criminal, casing the joint. The kitchen was much brighter and less depressing. She motioned toward the huge table and said, “Take a seat.”

I sat down. I wondered why she was being so incredibly nice since she looked like she had the potential to be a huge blob. She put the plate of food in front of me and I was beginning to think that, since I’d never been good at just walking up to people and introducing myself to them, I should pass out somewhere within close proximity to them. Apparently she had assumed I must be incredibly hungry. The entire plate was covered; half with some sort of thick beef stew, the other half with warm cornbread.

“
I hope you like it,” she said. There were six chairs at the table. She sat me at one end and pulled back the chair on my right and closest to me, sitting down and crossing her legs.

I felt kind of uncomfortable. The family hadn’t eaten together since I was like maybe eight. The burden of small talk nagged at the back of my mind. She just sat there staring at me. By glancing at her in brief snippets, I couldn’t really tell if she was more concerned or more afraid. I suddenly panicked, thinking she had maybe called the police on me. My hands trembled as I brought a forkful of food to my mouth.

“
You’re shaking,” she said.

“
I’m okay,” I said, then, “Slight palsy.”

“
I’m so sorry.”

Then I took a deep breath and asked, “Did you call the police?”

She giggled, “Why would I do that?” And then, maybe because for a brief moment she felt unprotected, like maybe I had just given her a reason to think she
should
have called the police, she said, “Besides, Boo’s gonna be home any minute.”

“
Thank goodness,” I said.

“
Boo’s my husband. His name’s Robert Thiklet but everybody calls him Boo.” A strange look came over her face. Then she said, “I don’t know why.”

She got up and went over to the counter, grabbed a coffee mug from the cabinet and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“
You want some coffee, Wallace?”

“
No, thanks.”

“
Are you thirsty? You want some Coke?”

“
Sure. Thanks.”

She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Coke, sitting it down in front of me. I pulled the tab and drank down half the can. Maria came back over to the table and sat down. She slowly sipped her coffee, staring out into space with those calm blue eyes.

“
Are you a runaway?” she asked.

“
I think I’m too old to be a runaway.”

“
How old are you?”

“
Sixteen.”

“
A sixteen-year-old should still be at home with their parents. That’s what I think. Are you running away from
them
?”

“
I guess I’m running away from everything.”

She paused, taking another sip from her mug, looking as though she was trying to find an answer to that.

“
Me and Boo can’t have any kids. That’s why there aren’t any running around. If I could have kids we’d have a whole bunch of them. I guess your parents aren’t very nice to you, huh?”

“
It’s not just about them.”

“
When I was your age, I think I wanted to run away, too. That’s probably why I got married so early. Boo and me got married when I was seventeen. He was twenty-two. My parents had to give permission for us to get married. They were probably glad to get me out of the house. We had to go to Tennessee to do it.”

I briefly thought about this sober-looking woman giving anyone a hard time.

“
What about you? You gotta girlfriend?”

“
Good Lord, no.” Look at me, I thought.

Then Maria fell silent again, staring at me.

“
Dinner’s really good. Thanks.”

“
You’re very welcome. I guess I found you about the right time. I have dinner waiting every night for Boo. I don’t mind being the one who cooks and cleans, though. All I do is some work at the church. He should be home by now but sometimes he goes out with the boys. He’s gotta unwind, you know. Boo works for Korl out in Milltown. He works an awful lot. You work?”

Not a day in my life, I thought. “No,” I said.

“
Boo works real hard. He’s already paid for this house.”

I was glad to be eating so I had something to do. Otherwise I would have been thrashing all around with boredom, the patented vapidity threatening to suck me in. It sounded like Maria was talking from a script, saying all the things she knew she was supposed to be saying. Except, when I looked up and glimpsed into her eyes, there was something there that said maybe she knew this life was a joke. I’d been awake and conscious in the house for under an hour and I already had the feeling the only thing this house had to offer was comfort. The stagnancy clung to my skin with sticky little teeth. I had an impulse to reach out and shake Maria. Where was the passion here? I scraped up the last remnants from my plate and fatigue overwhelmed me. I could have dropped right out of the chair and went to sleep right there on the floor.

“
You look tired,” Maria said.

“
A little, yeah,” I said, my eyes drooping with drowsiness.

“
You’re more than welcome to stay here tonight. Like I said. We have a guest bedroom. Keep waiting for the day we can turn it into a nursery.”

“
Can I really?” I asked. I was genuinely surprised. It seemed unusual to drag me in from outside and feed me dinner but it was completely unexpected that she invited me to stay for the night.

“
Sure. You look like you’ve been through a lot. We humans hafta help each other out. Besides, you don’t look like you’d hurt a flea. Follow me.”

I stood up, sluggish, and followed her back through the vaguely depressing and dimly lit family room all the way to the far end where brown carpeted steps led to the upstairs. Maria turned a light switch and I followed her up the steps, my legs straining. Sleep will do me good, I thought. A night of genuine rest. It occurred to me that I hadn’t slept on an actual bed for years.

I followed Maria down the hall. She pushed a door to her right open and said, “That’s the bathroom up here. If you wake up in the middle of the night you don’t have to go all the way downstairs.” She took a couple more steps and opened a door. She stepped across the threshold and turned on a light. “This is the guest bedroom. Just make yourself at home. Me and Boo’ll be right across the hall if you need anything. We’ll probably just eat dinner when he gets home and then we’ll probably go to bed.”

“
Thank you.”

I walked into the bedroom and kind of stood there. She took a step toward me and looked at me with that curious stare. She put her hand on my forehead and said, “Still kind of warm.”

“
I feel fine. Really. I’m sure sleep’ll do me a lot of good. Thanks.”

“
I guess I’ll just leave you alone, then.”

She shut the door behind her when she left. I wandered around the room, kind of pacing, feeling the plush carpet mush beneath my feet, looking around the room. A small lamp with what I figured must have been a 40-watt bulb illuminated the room. The walls were primarily yellow, light pink flowers spaced throughout at wide intervals.

The dresser shoved against the wall had a large sparkly mirror on top of it. I avoided looking at myself. I dragged the dark green comforter off the bed and threw it over the dresser. The one window in the room looked over the churchyard. The church itself was a huge brick thing. I noticed the graveyard behind it. It was one of the old graveyards with the gargantuan tombstones sprinkled with a few heavy square mausoleums. I waited for the melancholy feelings to hit me, that giant wave of sadness. But standing there I didn’t feel much of anything at all. Like my emotions had just run up on a brick wall. I seized the opportunity. I pulled back the skin-colored blanket and climbed into bed. Maybe I would let this feeling give me a good night’s sleep but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it lull me into a sense of complacency. Some moments I might be exuberant and other moments I might be melancholic but complacency—the complacency would allow the fuckness to trample all over me. And I knew the fuckness wasn’t gone. It was simply poised in some dark corner like a snake.

It took me longer to fall asleep than I thought it would. The house was entirely quiet. Like an intimidating void. I couldn’t hear the wind or the big machines wrestling with sheets of steel, or the dark railroad speeding through the night. Lying there wide awake, I thought to myself, this
is
sleep. Being awake in that house was as good as being asleep. Maybe I was just being cynical. I didn’t know these people, these Thiklets, but I imagined them. Tomorrow was Sunday. They would undoubtedly rise and go to church. They’d get all dressed up too, a brimstone-threatening end to their complacent week. A few hours of being bombarded with fiery hells and mortal sins and morals, morals, morals. Then the week would begin anew. Maria Thiklet would run around town, rushing to pay bills, buy groceries, running home and hurriedly preparing dinner for Boo. I was sure Boo was a real cockwrinkle. Gotta work to pay the bills. Gotta pay the bills to live. There may have been fun in Boo’s world but it was probably the kind of fun you had to buy. I was sure he came home and sat down in that big recliner I’d seen downstairs, pressing his tainted ass-reek into the buttocks- indented cushion. I imagined him sitting there, maybe drinking some beer and watching auto racing on TV. Maybe he just sat there and made Maria give him head, the crumbs from his sandwich dropping onto the top of her head. He probably asked her to hop off so he could shoot his wad into her face. “But it gets in my
eyelashes
,” she’d complain. And I was sure he didn’t just blow farts but was also the type of person to comment on the flatulence. “
Whoo hoo
,” he’d say, waving his hand in the air and wrinkling his nose, “‘bout ripped the seat of my pants out on that one.” A real cockwrinkle.

And what would I be when I was that age? Would I be
anything
? If this is what I became by going and getting a good job as a steelworker, how would I tolerate it. I would have to find some illicit habit to throw my money toward. Some type of heavy narcotic that would sugarcoat the daily death march to work every day. Every fucking day. How could anybody do anything every fucking day of his life. That certainly wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted the fuckness to go away. Maybe the parents weren’t too bad. Maybe the fighting made me happy. Maybe being someplace where my bitterness and anger was completely understood was just what I needed. I decided I’d start back home the next day. I was tired. The burning in my lungs and the nearly constant whumming in my head told me that I was probably sick. I didn’t think I’d be able to spend the rest of my life running. I would go home and pretend nothing happened. I could probably do that. It’s what I did most days anyway. It’s what I had to do because
most
days, something did happen. Maybe somehow, I kidded myself, the parents were still alive. I could only hope the parents would be more enthralled by having me back safe and sound than the fact that I’d put them through a couple days of hell. Maybe I could tell them I was abducted. Maybe as I rubbed some sort of burn salve on them I’d ask, “How did this happen?
Me
? Oh, no, I was out in Farmertown finding myself.”

And that was what scared me the most, wasn’t it? The fact that, maybe there wasn’t a self to find.

The thought of that overwhelmed me to sleep.

Another short sleep, another vivid dream.

Some dreams are seen from my eyes. Some dreams are seen from some place far above. This was one of those dreams. Below me was a dark forest but the trees were jaggedly cut sheets of metal with corrugated iron trunks. The trees were tall, huge, the forest floor littered with cans and bolts and shredded tarpaper. The parents were down there. Not the vibrant parents of the last dream. These parents were the rundown gutter version of those people. The father wore a stained white t-shirt stretched over an enormous gut. Blackened jeans truncated at the tops of his thighs. His shiny new legs were now thickly rusted iron springs. He bounced heavily around the forest floor. The mother drank her gin out of a pitcher, sloshing the brownish-tinged liquid down her chin. Even from my vantage point, I could tell she had had another stroke, something in the way she carried herself. She wore no wig at all, strands of gray-black hair pasted down to her filthy scalp. They both scurried around, kicking the stuff on the ground away, occasionally bending down to move something with their hands. They were looking for something.