North American Lake Monsters (19 page)

“Please don’t ask me that,” she said.

He was quiet, waiting for her.

“I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know a whole lot about that time. But I just don’t ever want to talk about it. I wish it never happened.”

“Okay,” he said. It wasn’t good enough. But he was just drunk enough to realize that nothing would be. He would have to figure out whether or not he could live with it. It was impossible to say, just now. So he lay there with her and felt the weight of her body against his. When he closed his eyes he imagined himself beneath deep water, part of some ruined structure of broken gray stone, like some devastated row of teeth.

“I should make dinner,” Tina said. “Sarah’s probably hungry.”

Her name went off inside him like a depth charge. He lurched upright, ignoring the swimming sensation in his brain. “Sarah,” he said. “She went out.”

“What?”

“To that thing. She went out to that thing.”

Tina seemed confused. “When?”

“Hours ago.” He swung his legs out of bed. “God damn it. I’ve been drunk!”

“Grady, calm down. I’m sure she’s fine.”

He hurried through the living room, his heart crashing through his chest, a fear he had not believed possible crowing raucously in his head. He pushed her door open.

She was there, illuminated by a slice of light from the living room, lying on her belly, her feet by the headboard. Her arms were tucked under her body for warmth. Her suitcase was open, and the pictures he had destroyed were on the floor beside it.

“Sarah?” he whispered, and stepped inside. He placed his hand on her back, felt the heat unfurling from her body, felt the rise and fall of her breath. He crept around the bed and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed and gummed by tears; her mouth was slightly parted. A little damp pool of saliva darkened the blanket underneath. The rings in her ears caught the light from the living room.

He stroked her hair, moving it off of her forehead and hooking it behind her ear. Anything could have happened to her, he thought. While I was drinking myself stupid in the other room, anything could have happened to her.

Tina’s voice came in from the other room. “Grady? Is she all right?”

Christ. I’m just like her. I’m just as fucking bad. He went to the door and poked his head out. “Yeah. She’s sleeping.”

Tina smiled at him and shook her head. “I told you,” she said.

“Yeah.” He went back into the room. He pulled off Sarah’s shoes and socks, slid her jacket off her shoulders. After a lot of careful maneuvering he managed to get her turned around and underneath the covers without waking her. He leaned over to kiss her on the forehead, and smelled the vodka on his own breath. Self-loathing hit him like a wrecking ball. He scrambled into her bathroom and barely made it before puking into the toilet, clutching the bowl with both hands, one leg looking weakly for purchase behind him. He’d had nothing but vodka and coffee all day, so there wasn’t much to throw up.

When he felt able, he flushed the toilet and headed back to the bedroom. He leaned over and picked up the torn pictures, so he could throw them away. Beneath them he found the new ones, the ones she’d spent all day working on.

He didn’t recognize them at first. She’d used colored pencils, and he initially thought he was looking at a house made of rainbows. Upon closer inspection, though, he realized that she’d drawn the dead monster: as a kaleidoscope, as a grounded sun. His mind reeled. He dropped it to the ground and here was the monster again, rendered larger than it was in real life, its mouth the gaping Gothic arches of a cathedral, its eyes stained glass, ignited by sunlight. There was another, and another, each depicting it as something beautiful, warm, and bright.

Why couldn’t she get it? Why was she forever romanticizing vileness? His breath was getting short. He rubbed his temples, his body physically rocking as waves of anger rolled through him. She was just stupid, apparently. It was too late. Maybe he’d fucked her up, maybe Tina did, but the damage was done. She’d have to be protected her whole goddamned life.

Might as well start now, he thought. Tina was in the living room as he walked through it, shrugging into his jacket.

“Where are you going?”

“Is the shed locked?”

“What?”

“
Is the shed fucking locked?
”

“I, no, I—”

“Good. Stay here.”

When he opened the front door the cold slammed into him like a truck. The temperature had dropped precipitously with the sun. He paused to catch his breath, then jumped down the stairs and headed around back to the shed. He slid the door open and flipped on the light. Inside was a dark, cobwebby tomb of stacked wood and garden appliances with the untroubled appearance of dead Egyptian kings. No chainsaw was evident, but he did find an axe leaning against the wall behind a rusting lawnmower. He reached gingerly through a shroud of webs, wary of spiders, and grasped the handle. He pulled it out, trailing dust and ghostly banners.

It had changed since this morning. It actually was shedding light, for one thi
ng, though it was a dim phosphorescence, the result of some strange fungus or bacterium running amuck through its innards. The creature looked like some ghastly oversized nightlight. The gash that was either a mouth or a wound had borne fruit: a weird and vibrant flora spilled from it like fruit from a cornucopia, pale protuberances with growths like outstretched arms listing this way and that, a dozen vegetable christs. Life abounded here: small chitinous animals hurried busily to and fro, conducting their miserable business in tunnels and passageways in the body, provided for them by nature or their own savage industry; a cloud of insects, drunk on the very perfume which had driven him into fits, alternately settling on its carcass and lifting away again in graceful curtains, like wind blowing through a wheatfield.

Grady raised his axe and took a few tentative steps toward it.

Something moved near him: a raccoon startled from its feast and gone crashing into the underbrush. The flesh around where it had been eating sloughed away, and more light spilled into the forest: hundreds of small insects, their backs coated with the glowing fluids of this dead thing, moved about the wound like boiling suns.

The axe was heavy, so he let it drop. He couldn’t process what he was seeing. He had to figure it out. He sat down in the mud several feet away from all that incandescent motion and stared at it for a while.

He looked at the palms of his hands. They cast light.

The Way Station

Beltrane awakens to the smell of baking bread.
It smells like
that huge bakery
on MLK that he liked to walk past on mornings before the sun came up, when daylight was just a paleness behind buildings, and the smell of fresh bread leaked from the grim industrial slab like the promise of absolute love.

He stirs in his cot. The cot and the smell disorient him; his body is accustomed to the worn cab seat, with its tears in the upholstery and its permanent odor of contained humanity, as though the car, over the many years of carrying people about, had finally leached some fundamental ingredient from them. But the coarse, grainy blanket reminds him that he is in St. Petersburg, Florida, now. Far from home. Looking for Lila. Someone sitting on a nearby cot, back turned to him, is speaking urgently under his breath, rocking on the thin mattress and making it sing. Around them more cots are lined in rank and file, with scores of people sleeping or trying to sleep.

There are no windows, but the night is a presence in here, filling even the bright places.

“You smell that, man?” he says, sitting up.

His neighbor goes still and silent, and turns to face him. He’s younger than Beltrane, with a huge salt-and-pepper beard and grime deeply engrained into the lines of his face. “What?”

“Bread.”

The guy shakes his head and gives him his back again. “Maaaaaaan,” he says. “
Sick
of these crazy motherfuckers.”

“Did they pass some out? I’m just sayin, man. I’m hungry, you know?”

“We all hungry, bitch! Whyn’t you take your ass to sleep!”

Beltrane falls back onto the bed, defeated. After a moment the other man resumes his barely audible incantations, his obsessive rocking. Meanwhile the smell has grown even stronger, overpowering the musk of sweat and urine that saturates the homeless shelter. Sighing, he folds his hands over his chest, and discovers that the blanket is wet and cold.

“What . . . ?”

He pulls it down to find a large, damp patch on his shirt. He hikes the shirt up to his shoulders and discovers a large square hole in the center of his chest. The smell of bread blows from it like a wind. The edges are sharp and clean, not like a wound at all. Tentatively, he probes it with his fingers: they come away damp, and when he brings them to his nose they have the ripe, deliquescent odor of river water. He places his hand over the opening and feels water splash against his palm. Poking inside, he encounters sharp metal angles and slippery stone.

Beltrane lurches from his bed and stumbles quickly for the door to the bathroom, leaving a wake of jarred cots and angry protest. He pushes through the door and heads straight for the mirrors over a row of dirty sinks. He lifts his shirt.

The hole in his chest reaches right through him. Gas lamps shine blearily through rain. Deep water runs down the street and spills out onto his skin. New Orleans has put a finger through his heart.

“Oh, no,” he says softly, and raises his eyes to his own face. His face is a wide street, garbage-blown, with a dead streetlight and rats scrabbling along the walls. A spray of rain mists the air in front of him, pebbling the mirror.

He knows this street. He’s walked it many times in his life, and as he leans closer to the mirror he finds that he is walking it now, home again in his old city, the bathroom and the strange shelter behind him and gone. He takes a right into an alley. Somewhere to his left is a walled cemetery, with its above-ground tombs giving it the look of a city for the dead; and next to it will be the projects, where some folks string Christmas lights along their balconies even in the summertime. He follows his accustomed path and turns right onto Claiborne Avenue. And there’s his old buddy Craig, waiting for him still.

Craig was leaning against the plate-glass window of his convenience store, two
hours closed, clutching a greasy brown paper bag in his left hand, with his gray head hanging and a cigarette stuck to his lips. A few butts were scattered by his feet. The neighborhood was asleep under the arch of the I-10 overpass: a row of darkened shop-fronts receded down Claiborne Avenue, the line broken by the colorful lights of the Good Friends Bar spilling onto the sidewalk. The highway above them was mostly quiet now, save the occasional hiss of late-night travelers hurtling through the darkness toward mysterious ends. Beltrane, sixty-four and homeless, moseyed up to him. He stared at Craig’s shirt pocket, trying to see if the cigarette pack was full enough to risk asking for one.

Craig watched him as he approached. “I almost went home,” he said curtly.

“You wouldn’t leave old ’Trane!”

“The hell I wouldn’t. See if I’m here next time.”

Beltrane sidled up next to him, putting his hands in the pockets of his thin coat, which he always wore, in defiance of the Louisiana heat. “I got held up,” he said.

“You what? You got held up? What do you got to do that you got held up?”

Beltrane shrugged. He could smell the contents of the bag Craig held, and his stomach started to move around inside him a little.

“What, you got a date? Some little lady gonna take you out tonight?”

“Come on, man. Don’t make fun of me.”

“Then don’t be late!” Craig pressed the bag against his chest. Beltrane took it, keeping his gaze on the ground. “I do this as a favor. You make me wait outside my own goddamn shop I just won’t do it no more. You gonna get my ass
shot
.”

Beltrane stood there and tried to look ashamed. But the truth was, he wasn’t much later than usual. Craig came down on him like this every couple of months or so, and if he was going to keep getting food from him he was just going to have to take it. A couple years ago Beltrane had worked for him, pushing the broom around the store and shucking oysters when they were in season, and for some reason Craig had taken a liking to him. Maybe it was the veteran thing; maybe it was something more personal. When Beltrane started having his troubles again, Craig finally had to fire him, but made some efforts to see that he didn’t starve. Beltrane didn’t know why the man cared, but he wasn’t moved to examine the question too closely. He figured Craig had his reasons and they were his own. Sometimes those reasons caused him to speak harshly. That was all right.

He opened the bag and dug out some fried shrimp. They’d gone cold and soggy, but the smell of them just about buckled his knees, and he closed his eyes as he chewed his first mouthful.

“Where you been sleepin at night, ’Trane? My boy Ray tells me he ain’t seen you down by Decatur in a while.”

Beltrane gestured uptown, in the opposite direction of Decatur Street and the French Quarter. “They gave me a broke-down cab.”

“Who? Them boys at United? That’s better than the Quarter?”

Beltrane nodded. “They’s just a bunch a damn fucked-up white kids in the Quarter. Got all kinds a metal shit in their face. They smell bad, man.”

Craig shook his head, leaning against the store window and lighting himself another cigarette. “Oh, they smell bad, huh. I guess I heard it all now.”

Beltrane gestured at the cigarette. “Can I have one?”

“
Hell
no. So you sleeping in some junk heap now. You gone down a long way since you worked for me here, you know that? You got to pull your shit together, man.”

“I know, I know.”

“Listen to me, ’Trane. Are you listening to me?”

“I know what you gonna say.”

“Well listen to me anyway. I know you’re fucked in the head. I got that. I know you don’t remember shit half the time, and you got your imaginary friends you like to talk to. But you got to get a handle on things, man.”