Pastoralia (12 page)

Outside it’s sunny. A regular day. A guy’s changing his oil. The clouds are regular clouds and the sun’s the regular sun and the only nonregular thing is that my clothes smell like Bernie, a combo of wet cellar and rotten bacon.

Work goes well. I manage to keep smiling and hide my shaking hands, and my midshift rating is Honeypie. After lunch this older woman comes up and says I look so much like a real Pilot she can hardly stand it.

On her head is a thumbprint. Like Ash Wednesday, only sort of glowing.

I don’t know what to do. Do I just come out and ask if she wants to see my cock? What if she says no? What if I get caught? What if I show her and she doesn’t think it’s worth twenty bucks?

Then she asks if I’ll surprise her best friend with a birthday table dance. She points out her friend. A pretty girl, no thumbprint. Looks somehow familiar.

We start over and at about twenty feet I realize it’s Angela.

Angela Silveri.

We dated senior year. Then Dad died and Ma had to take a job at Patty-Melt Depot. From all the grease Ma got a bad rash and could barely wear a blouse. Plus Min was running wild. So Angela would come over and there’d be Min getting high under a tarp on the carport and Ma sitting
in her bra on a kitchen stool with a fan pointed at her gut. Angela had dreams. She had plans. In her notebook she pasted a picture of an office from the J. C. Penney catalogue and under it wrote,
My (someday?) office
. Once we saw this black Porsche and she said very nice but make hers red. The last straw was Ed Edwards, a big drunk, one of Dad’s cousins. Things got so bad Ma rented him the utility room. One night Angela and I were making out on the couch late when Ed came in soused and started peeing in the dishwasher.

What could I say? He’s only barely related to me? He hardly ever does that?

Angela’s eyes were like these little pies.

I walked her home, got no kiss, came back, cleaned up the dishwasher as best I could. A few days later I got my class ring in the mail and a copy of
The Prophet
.

You will always be my first love
, she’d written inside.
But now my path converges to a higher ground. Be well always. Walk in joy. Please don’t think me cruel, it’s just that I want so much in terms of accomplishment, plus I couldn’t believe that guy peed right on your dishes
.

No way am I table dancing for Angela Silveri. No way am I asking Angela Silveri’s friend if she wants to see my cock. No way am I hanging around here so Angela can see me in my flight jacket and T-backs and wonder to herself how I went so wrong etc. etc.

I hide in the kitchen until my shift is done, then walk home very, very slowly because I’m afraid of what Bernie’s going to do to me when I get there.

…

Min meets me at the door. She’s got flour all over her blouse and it looks like she’s been crying.

“I can’t take any more of this,” she says. “She’s like falling apart. I mean shit’s falling off her. Plus she made me bake a freaking pie.”

On the table is a very lumpy pie. One of Bernie’s arms is now disconnected and lying across her lap.

“What are you thinking of!” she shouts. “You didn’t show your cock even once? You think it’s easy making those thumbprints? You try it, smartass! Do you or do you not know the plan? You gotta get us out of here! And to get us out, you gotta use what you got. And you ain’t got much. A nice face. And a decent unit. Not huge, but shaped nice.”

“Bernie, God,” says Min.

“What, Miss Priss?” shouts Bernie, and slams the severed arm down hard on her lap, and her other ear falls off.

“I’m sorry, but this is too fucking sickening,” says Min. “I’m going out.”

“What’s sickening?” says Bernie. “Are you saying I’m sickening? Well, I think you’re sickening. So many wonderful things in life and where’s your mind? You think with your lazy ass. Whatever life hands you, you take. You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying home and studying.”

“I’m what?” says Min. “Studying what? I ain’t studying. Chick comes into my house and starts ordering me to study? I freaking doubt it.”

“You don’t know nothing!” Bernie says. “What fun is life when you don’t know nothing? You can’t find your own town on the map. You can’t name a single president. When we go to Rome you won’t know nothing about the history. You’re going to study the World Book. Do we still have those World Books?”

“Yeah right,” says Min. “We’re going to Rome.”

“We’ll go to Rome when he’s a lawyer,” says Bernie.

“Dream on, chick,” says Min. “And we’ll go to Mars when I’m a stockbreaker.”

“Don’t you dare make fun of me!” Bernie shouts, and our only vase goes flying across the room and nearly nails Min in the head.

“She’s been like this all day,” says Min.

“Like what?” shouts Bernie. “We had a perfectly nice day.”

“She made me help her try on my bras,” says Min.

“I never had a nice sexy bra,” says Bernie.

“And now mine are all ruined,” says Min. “They got this sort of goo on them.”

“You ungrateful shit!” shouts Bernie. “Do you know what I’m doing for you? I’m saving your boy. And you got the nerve to say I made goo on your bras! Troy’s gonna get caught in a crossfire in the courtyard. In September. September eighteenth. He’s gonna get thrown off his little trike. With one leg twisted under him and blood pouring out of his ear. It’s a freaking prophecy. You know that word? It means prediction. You know that word? You think I’m bullshitting? Well I ain’t bullshitting. I got the power. Watch this: All day Jade sat licking labels at a desk by a window.
Her boss bought everybody subs for lunch. She’s bringing some home in a green bag.”

“That ain’t true about Troy, is it?” says Min. “Is it? I don’t believe it.”

“Turn on the TV!” Bernie shouts. “Give me the changer.”

I turn on the TV. I give her the changer. She puts on
Nathan’s Body Shop
. Nathan says washboard abs drive the women wild. Then there’s a close-up of his washboard abs.

“Oh yes,” says Bernie. “Them are for me. I’d like to give those a lick. A lick and a pinch. I’d like to sort of straddle those things.”

Just then Jade comes through the door with a big green bag.

“Oh God,” says Min.

“Told you so!” says Bernie, and pokes Min in the ribs. “Ha ha! I really got the power!”

“I don’t get it,” Min says, all desperate. “What happens? Please. What happens to him? You better freaking tell me.”

“I already told you,” Bernie says. “He’ll fly about fifteen feet and live about three minutes.”

“Bernie, God,” Min says, and starts to cry. “You used to be so nice.”

“I’m still so nice,” says Bernie, and bites into a sub and takes off the tip of her finger and starts chewing it up.

Just after dawn she shouts out my name.

“Take the blanket off,” she says. “I ain’t feeling so good.”

I take the blanket off. She’s basically just this pile of parts: both arms in her lap, head on the arms, heel of one foot touching the heel of the other, all of it sort of wrapped up in her dress.

“Get me a washcloth,” she says. “Do I got a fever? I feel like I got a fever. Oh, I knew it was too good to be true. But okay. New plan. New plan. I’m changing the first part of Phase One. If you see two thumbprints, that means the lady’ll screw you for cash. We’re in a fix here. We gotta speed this up. There ain’t gonna be nothing left of me. Who’s gonna be my lover now?”

The doorbell rings.

“Son of a bitch,” Bernie snarls.

It’s Father Brian with a box of doughnuts. I step out quick and close the door behind me. He says he’s just checking in. Perhaps we’d like to talk? Perhaps we’re feeling some residual anger about Bernie’s situation? Which would of course be completely understandable. Once when he was a young priest someone broke in and drew a mustache on the Virgin Mary with a permanent marker, and for weeks he was tortured by visions of bending back the finger of the vandal until he or she burst into tears of apology.

“I knew that wasn’t appropriate,” he says. “I knew that by indulging in that fantasy I was honoring violence. And yet it gave me pleasure. I also thought of catching them in the act and boinking them in the head with a rock. I also thought of jumping up and down on their backs until something in their spinal column cracked. Actually I had about a million ideas. But you know what I did instead? I
scrubbed and scrubbed our Holy Mother, and soon she was as good as new. Her statue, I mean. She herself of course is always good as new.”

From inside comes the sound of breaking glass. Breaking glass and then something heavy falling, and Jade yelling and Min yelling and the babies crying.

“Oops, I guess?” he says. “I’ve come at a bad time? Look, all I’m trying to do is urge you, if at all possible, to forgive the perpetrators, as I forgave the perpetrator that drew on my Virgin Mary. The thing lost, after all, is only your aunt’s body, and what is essential, I assure you, is elsewhere, being well taken care of.”

I nod. I smile. I say thanks for stopping by. I take the doughnuts and go back inside.

The TV’s broke and the refrigerator’s tipped over and Bernie’s parts are strewn across the living room like she’s been shot out of a cannon.

“She tried to get up,” says Jade.

“I don’t know where the hell she thought she was going,” says Min.

“Come here,” the head says to me, and I squat down. “That’s it for me. I’m fucked. As per usual. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Although come to think of it I was never even the freaking bridesmaid. Look, show your cock. It’s the shortest line between two points. The world ain’t giving away nice lives. You got a trust fund? You a genius? Show your cock. It’s what you got. And remember: Troy in September. On his trike. One leg twisted. Don’t forget. And also. Don’t remember me like this. Remember me like how I was that night we all went to
Red Lobster and I had that new perm. Ah Christ. At least buy me a stone.”

I rub her shoulder, which is next to her foot.

“We loved you,” I say.

“Why do some people get everything and I got nothing?” she says. “Why? Why was that?” “I don’t know,” I say.

“Show your cock,” she says, and dies again.

We stand there looking down at the pile of parts. Mac crawls toward it and Min moves him back with her foot.

“This is too freaking much,” says Jade, and starts crying.

“What do we do now?” says Min.

“Call the cops,” Jade says.

“And say what?” says Min.

We think about this awhile.

I get a Hefty bag. I get my winter gloves.

“I ain’t watching,” says Jade.

“I ain’t watching either,” says Min, and they take the babies into the bedroom.

I close my eyes and wrap Bernie up in the Hefty bag and twistie-tie the bag shut and lug it out to the trunk of the K-car. I throw in a shovel. I drive up to St. Leo’s. I lower the bag into the hole using a bungee cord, then fill the hole back in.

Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, this has ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there’s angry dead all over, hiding in
rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?

I for sure don’t plan on broadcasting this.

I smooth over the dirt and say a quick prayer: If it was wrong for her to come back, forgive her, she never got beans in this life, plus she was trying to help us.

At the car I think of an additional prayer: But please don’t let her come back again.

When I get home the babies are asleep and Jade and Min are watching a phone-sex infomercial, three girls in leather jumpsuits eating bananas in slo-mo while across the screen runs a constant disclaimer: “Not Necessarily the Girls Who Man the Phones! Not Necessarily the Girls Who Man the Phones!”

“Them chicks seem to really be enjoying those bananas,” says Min in a thin little voice.

“I like them jumpsuits though,” says Jade.

“Yeah them jumpsuits look decent,” says Min.

Then they look up at me. I’ve never seen them so sad and beat and sick.

“It’s done,” I say.

Then we hug and cry and promise never to forget Bernie the way she really was, and I use some Resolve on the rug and they go do some reading in their World Books.

Next day I go in early. I don’t see a single thumbprint. But it doesn’t matter. I get with Sonny Vance and he tells me how to do it. First you ask the woman would she like
a private tour. Then you show her the fake P-40, the Gallery of Historical Aces, the shower stall where we get oiled up, etc. etc. and then in the hall near the rest room you ask if there’s anything else she’d like to see. It’s sleazy. It’s gross. But when I do it I think of September. September and Troy in the crossfire, his little leg bent under him etc. etc.

Most say no but quite a few say yes.

I’ve got a place picked out at a complex called Swan’s Glen. They’ve never had a shooting or a knifing and the public school is great and every Saturday they have a nature walk for kids behind the clubhouse.

For every hundred bucks I make, I set aside five for Bernie’s stone.

What do you write on something like that? LIFE PASSED HER BY? DIED DISAPPOINTED? CAME BACK TO LIFE BUT FELL APART? All true, but too sad, and no way I’m writing any of those.

BERNIE KOWALSKI, it’s going to say: BELOVED AUNT.

Sometimes she comes to me in dreams. She never looks good. Sometimes she’s wearing a dirty smock. Once she had on handcuffs. Once she was naked and dirty and this mean cat was clawing its way up her front. But every time it’s the same thing.

“Some people get everything and I got nothing,” she says. “Why? Why did that happen?”

Every time I say I don’t know.

And I don’t.

The End of Firpo in the World

The boy on the bike flew by the chink’s house, and the squatty-body’s house, and the house where the dead guy had rotted for five days, remembering that the chink had once called him nasty, the squatty-body had once called the cops when he’d hit her cat with a lug nut on a string, the chick in the dead guy’s house had once asked if he, Cody, ever brushed his teeth. Someday when he’d completed the invention of his special miniaturizing ray he would shrink their houses and flush them down the shitter while in tiny voices all three begged for some sophisticated mercy, but he would only say, Sophisticated? When were you ever sophisticated to me? And from the toilet bowl they would say, Well, yes, you’re right, we were pretty mean, flush us down, we deserve it; but no, at the last minute he would pluck them out and place them in his lunchbox so he could send them on secret missions such as putting hideous boogers of assassination in Lester Finn’s thermos if Lester Finn ever again asked him in
Civics why his rear smelled like hot cotton with additional crap cling-ons.