Suitable Precautions (15 page)

The Meteorite Hunter didn't have a phone, which was no surprise. They were going to have to drive to a police station and file a report. The officers were going to ask Diana about what she saw, and what could she say to that? David looked at the Meteorite Hunter rotting in his chair. Who was going to bury him? He hoped someone was going to
mourn what had been lost. That there had been something to lose, after all.

David walked slowly back to the car with the notebook in his hand, opening the passenger door as gently as he could but Diana still jumped. He picked her up and slid into the seat, rocking her as she cried.

“It's going to be okay,” he said, even though he had seen the expression on the man's face, flies feasting on his eyes as they stared unblinking at the one dusty window of the cabin, the glass as thin as paper at the top of the pane. The hunter's lips were purple and peeled back from his teeth. It might have been a smile or a scream, David didn't know, but it was a silent answer to the one question he couldn't bring himself to ask.

“It's okay,” David said again, and Diana buried her face in his shoulder the way she had done as a baby, tired and squalling. It was almost a selfish thought, but he knew there was a small chance she still somehow remembered that, him cradling the warmth of her tiny body as it howled against the night.

T
HIS HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. It is nothing all that special, despite the fact that you have worn uncomfortable shoes and underwear that gives you a rash. More wine, he offers, pouring without a question mark. The heart is an involuntary muscle, you think to yourself.

His aftershave smells like your father's. You scrape your face against the stubble of his beard and wonder if the little hairs from his razor are still in the bathroom sink where he left them, bleeding from his chin then and already late to meet you at the expensive restaurant where you sat crossing and uncrossing your silk-stockinged legs, wondering if you would be able to find a 24-hour drugstore that sold Vagisil. He panted his apology, you with one arm already in your good wool coat, and you saw the wrinkles between his eyes. Yes, yes of course you would stay and have a glass of wine, a nice meal, with the man whose cheek, when it brushed against yours, sharp but not unkind, reminded you of climbing into the rope hammock, your father folding his
newspaper and saying, Well there's my girl, him playing with your hair as you listened to the strange smallness of his heartbeat.

Would you like to come in? followed dinner, dessert, coffee that came in a tall glass with a long silver spoon. There were thirty-two steps up to his apartment, each one crooked, the grey enamel worn by the generations of transient footsteps carved into the staircase. More wine, he says again now, the point being that there are too many obstacles to your leaving. Your teeth already blackened with tannins. Your lips stained.

You met him at a party where it was easy to smile, your lip gloss shining and your hair flat-ironed, everything about you smooth. Anyone special in your life? he asked, but it was difficult to take him seriously in his tuxedo shirt with “Year 2000” suspenders, the implication being that both of you should party like it was 1999, the joke made several times, the realization dawning that you had promised yourself at midnight of the new millennium, drunk and throwing up into a punch bowl, that within five years you would be somebody's wife. You would have a car, a dog. A baby. You thought about sleeping late on Sundays and making him coffee the way he liked it and never again wearing the underwear that cut between your legs while making your bum look so small and shapely. You saw yourself eating Chinese food in bed. Him teaching you how to use chopsticks, you getting rice all over your nightshirt, the two of you falling asleep with greasy mouths of unbrushed teeth. That is love, you thought. The kind of love that tastes like sweet and sour pork. Of tart, sticky fruit.

The bottle of wine is almost empty and you have had enough dates with him to know that soon he will bite your
lip, stand you up and press you against the wall. You on the tiptoes of one foot, the other leg wrapped around him, solely for balance. And because you tell yourself you are in love, you might let him flip you over on the bed, the fingernail of his left thumb sharp and cutting as he pushes inside you, the other hand grabbing your hip bone like it was a haunch. You will whimper just like your best-friend-forever Marie taught you to when you practiced French kissing in her bedroom. Rolling on the unicorn bedspread. Touching the mohair blanket. Velvet teddy bears. Eighth-grade breasts. Until she whimpered.

No, no, it's fine—guys like it when they can't tell if you're gonna cry or if you're gonna come.

The two of you in prom dresses, drunk on the hood of the car your dates had rented, the boys getting high behind the sports equipment bunker as you soaked in the orange light of the parking lot, shining. Marie's finger traced the path of your blood as it shuddered back to your heart, your skin a fire she had helped dress. Your hands on her shoulders, her arms open, fanning out the silky fabric you stepped into like the promise of a second skin. Her mother gave you a beer while you did each other's make-up and said, smoothing your blush, God, you'll never be younger than you are right now. She curled your hair and gave both of you emergency money, twenty dollars she made you safety pin inside your bras.

Marie taught you how to ride a bike in the city. She rode ahead of you, your eyes drawn to the flashing red light on her backpack as you remembered your father in the parking lot of the Catholic school, lying to you as you wobbled away: I've still got you, I've still got you. Marie's skirt tucked between her legs and your hands cramping in the cold as
you made your way to Mike Willis' party, the Freshman Fiesta, which Marie called the Freshman Fuckfest. You were invited because Marie was invited. Because Marie invited you. You got off your bikes and chained them to a No Parking sign, and Marie, a slight blurriness to her edges, had tears from the wind freezing to her cheeks. Her eyes were blue like the Indian Ocean, water you had never seen from across the world. The air between you misty from your breath, you thought she might say that she had not forgotten the gift of your grandmother's bracelet, the thin silver bangle you never took off, for her nineteenth birthday. That she was sorry, somehow. But she just smoothed her skirt and reapplied her lip gloss, swigging from the bottle of gin she dug out of her backpack before she said, God, are we desperate or what?

You saw her again at your high school reunion and met her husband, Thomas, who sells radio air time to companies advertising weight loss products. How did you two know each other? Thomas asked, the question in your arms as you hugged her. Her softness, the warmth of it, startled you—Jennifer, Kaleigh, and Martin, she said, opening her wallet to show you the pictures. She was drinking club soda with lime because she was trying to get pregnant again. She might be pregnant now, Thomas said, patting Marie's stubborn belly with the hand that didn't hold his glass of whisky. Her hair was thick and lustrous, her fingernail beds deep pink. Anyone special in your life? Marie asked in a chit-chat voice as she sipped at her straw, and you saw the dark blood inside of her, pooling in the space between her hip bones, hot and vaguely dangerous as it nourished the unspoken needs of another person who did not yet exist.

And your mother, hanging laundry in early spring. Her hands chapped and red against the green of new grass, the white of bleached sheets. You're too young to have a boyfriend, honey (you holding the basket and the clothespins, wishing for mittens). But don't worry, when you're old enough, you'll find somebody. It happens to everyone. Your mother, humming a song, here and there saying the words, Hearts and bones, hearts and bones.

The danger is this: the walls of your heart will become thinner and thinner until there is nothing left but a void, the size and shape of which you recognize in the same way you know your own face, looking in a mirror.

T
HIRTEEN SECONDS is about as long as it takes to settle into the driver's seat of your car, buckle up your seatbelt, and turn the key in the ignition. It's about as long as it takes to eat three french fries, if you're eating them one by one. It's about as long as it takes to carry a bag of garbage to the curb from your front door.

Thirteen seconds is the average amount of time the average person spends washing his or her hands after using the bathroom. Please keep in mind that the average person's hands are, on average, laden with bacteria that can be deadly to the very young, the very old, and those with immunodeficiency conditions. Thirteen seconds is not enough time to kill deadly bathroom germs. This is why there has been a nationwide campaign promoting good handwashing practices. Perhaps you've seen the posters? “Don't be Dirty—Count to Thirty.”

It takes fewer than thirteen seconds to say this: “The chief problem with being a moral individual is the fact that we live
in an amoral universe.” It may be helpful to adopt this perspective as you read the rest of the story.

Perspective is all about looking: who is doing the looking, and who is being looked at. Who is the seer, and who or what is the seen object? This kind of narrative theory sounds simple, but it can get tricky. Sometimes it can pose very serious problems for very serious students—students who are interested in getting it right. In the interest of helping out these scholars, should they happen to be reading, here's a hint: for the most part, you and I will be doing the looking, and the object we will occasionally be looking at is Franklin Murdoch in the last thirteen seconds of his life.

 

Tick Tick

 

MORNING BROKE with a snap of fiery sunrise that felt like the sting of an elastic band. The members of the firing party, standing fifteen paces away from the post, their backs turned, were from Franklin's own battalion. Each man was busy trying to pretend that his rifle was the lucky one the officer in charge had loaded with the blank. That way, each man reasoned, his rifle was just a noisemaker, as harmless as a party cracker at a child's birthday. There was a little white circle of paper pinned to Franklin's chest. Shining.

The Assistant Provost Marshal was there, pleased with himself for organizing the festivities. Franklin's NCO was there, too, looking constipated. There was an officer, petting his pistol like it was a teacup poodle, and a sergeant there just for fun—he didn't even get to shoot anybody. He was an invitee by obligation only. Everybody was there. It was a regular blowout.

And Franklin was there, too.

Franklin handed over his identification and his pay book to the NCO who said in a gravelly voice, “Yep, this is Murdoch. Deserter Extraordinaire.”

There was a stretcher, in case Franklin couldn't make it to the post on his own two legs. He didn't need it, though. Franklin was no coward, despite all evidence to the contrary. He kept his eyes wide open as the blindfold was tied.

You show up just as the last knot is cinched.

Good timing, and welcome.

Now that there are more guests, Franklin gets into the spirit of his own party. In a low voice, sweet and warm, he starts to sing. Unbeknownst to any of the other party-goers, the fragmented song he sings will resurface in the mouth of a 1960s travelling-troubadour-folk-singer who some people—people high on drugs, naturally—will think is Jesus Christ, reborn.

“'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue, and the road was full of mud . . . in a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm . . . I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose . . .”

The song will be recorded in September 1974 and become part of an album released by Columbia Records to mixed reviews in mid-January 1975. The songs will be about love and pain, love and pain, and the album title will have something to do with blood and railroads. Eventually it will be considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Franklin, if not for the unpleasantness he currently finds himself embroiled in, would first hear the song on a rainy February evening. Franklin, then seventy-six years old with arteriosclerosis and erectile dysfunction, would hear the song on his eldest grandchild's record player and proceed to scream bloody
murder: who was that curly-haired bastard who stole his song, the one he wrote in the war? But Franklin, if all this happens, will be a war veteran, the kind people make allowances for. Don't worry about him, his grandson will tell his friends as the record spins. My granddad's kind of crazy.

Luckily we won't have to worry about any of that. The NCO has seen to it, though the singing is starting to piss him off. The APM is all shook up (wahoo hoo, hoo, hey, hey, yeah, yeah). The riflemen are unnerved. The medical officer wishes that he had sedated Franklin. The sergeant is worried: all the singing is bad for morale. Even Franklin knows he is burning up a lot of 4/4 time. You and I, though, we like the song. We just sit back and listen.

 

Tick Tick Tick

 

A LITTLE WHILE AGO, Franklin Murdoch had two thousand, seven hundred and fourteen seconds left. This is a number considerably greater than thirteen, but not any more pleasing an amount—not from Franklin Murdoch's point of view, anyhow. It was an important moment in time, nonetheless: it was then that Franklin finally got an audience with God.

God had been rather difficult to get in touch with lately. In fact, He'd been totally incommunicado. God, Franklin reasoned, was obviously very busy with the war. Besides, everyone, no matter how omniscient, needs a break now and again. A recent study indicates that overworked employees are less productive, and you can't argue with that.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . .” Franklin was confident that God would come through this time. Why, not that long ago (. . . Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done . . .) Franklin had put his hands over the bloody
slop of Conway's arm that was not really there anymore (. . . on earth as it is in heaven . . .) and Conway had screamed “Holy Jesus, Goddamn Motherfucker, Holy Christ! Motherfucking Mary, Mother of God!” (. . . give us this day . . .) and the blood and the sharp bone and the gristle of fat and stringy muscles and tendons had stuck to Franklin's own arm—which was still there, Franklin was pretty sure, and thank God for that!—in a soupy paste of meat (. . . our daily bread . . .) and gore, and he had seen Conway's eyes roll back into his head (. . . forgive us our trespasses . . .), even as Conway still shouted out “Jesus Christ, you Goddamn Motherfucker!” (. . . as we forgive those who trespass against us . . .), and in the end Conway cried as the medic had prepared to amputate (. . . lead us not into temptation . . .) and Murdoch looked on bravely (. . . but deliver us from evil . . .) and was given some sort of medal or ribbon for his part in the whole mess (. . . for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever . . .), and even now he could still hear Conway crying like a baby that he didn't want to die; and please, God, he didn't want to die (. . . Amen).