The Ram (11 page)

Sitting on his couch, he squishes the hard footbag in his hands, feels the weight of the old toy he used to kick around with his friends during lulls at track meets. It might be too heavy for the purpose he has in mind, but he’s anxious to see if it will work.

Tucking the bag down into the toe of the snow boot, he maneuvers the beans around until it’s flush against the boot’s edge. He puts the running shoe on his right foot, ties up the laces. Then he puts his left foot, freshly bandaged with new gauze, into the snow boot.

He lucks out. His wound doesn’t completely ram into the bag, but it does touch at all the points where his toes used to be. He grimaces in pain but drops the weight of his heel in the boot anyway. He screams out, balls his fists and smacks the cushions of the couch.

Riley stands then, again without his crutches, and steps only on the heel of his left foot to get to his front door. Lightning shots of agony race up his body, but he refuses to take off the boot and tend to his injury. The afternoon greets him; the sky is overcast and the wind smells of impending rain.

He makes it to the end of his driveway at a steady gimp, putting most of his weight on his right foot and skipping a little when his left needs to touch the ground.

There, at the street gutter clogged with patches of last fall’s leaves, Riley steps off onto the street and starts to run.

And five steps later, he’s falling, his movements unsustainable, his right foot cramping, his left pulsating with hurt. He catches himself with his palms, swearing as he scuffs his hands on the rough landing. He heaves in deep breaths on all four limbs, his back arching like a stretching housecat.

Riley watches a pill bug with its gray armor traverse the small bumps in the asphalt. A tear escapes one of his eyes and splashes down next to the insect. The impact of the teardrop on the road must be like the cascade of an unexpected waterfall to the creature. The shock causes the bug to curl up its exoskeleton into a tight ball. Riley blows on the small being hidden in its casing. It spins away, until Riley can’t make it out against the light black of the pavement.

He’s not ashamed to admit he enjoys, on occasion, taking out his frustrations on things smaller and weaker than himself. He feels it is part of his biological programming, some bit of a gene which firmly establishes him as a man. And as a man, others are sometimes forced to reckon with his superiority.

“I win,” he sobs, crawling on all fours back to his driveway.

“I fucking win.”

30 Peach

The stripper is missing from the stage for awhile and Peach scans the room to try and figure out where she went. Then she catches sight of the woman in her silly Western garb as she moves out a pneumatic-hinged emergency exit. Peach stands and considers going out the same door after her, but thinks it might look weird to follow one of the dancers. She doesn’t want to be noticed anymore than she’s already been. The owner of Blaze Lounge had retreated from her table once Peach had stopped answering his questions and she sees him now, at the bar, a plastic basket of barbeque wings in his grasp.

She leaves out the main entrance and wanders around the outside of the building, worried the woman will have disappeared out of her vicinity and her life. The neon flames on the top of the club aren’t lit yet and commuters rush by on the busy thoroughfare running next to the lounge. Peach turns a corner and sees the dancer leaning against a white concrete wall. She decides she can’t possibly talk to the woman and turns to move away. But the dancer sees her and yells out.

“You’re the only girl in there,” she says and Peach turns back around. “I mean, not working. I like women. They smell nicer and don’t touch during lap dances.”

Peach clears her throat and takes shuffling steps toward the dancer. She transfers her fleece jacket from hand to hand and stops a few feet away from the stripper. The woman is smoking a peach-flavored Prime Time. Peach can smell the sweetness of her namesake in the lit cigarillo.

The stripper is shivering in her skimpy outfit. Peach looks at her fleece jacket and holds it out to the woman. “You cold?”

“Thanks,” the dancer says. She holds the cigarillo in her mouth and reaches out for the jacket. She swings it over her shoulders, leaving her arms free to rub at her bare thighs.

“So are you a lesbian or are you wanting to dance?”

Peach looks at the woman’s cowboy boots. They’re the antithesis of real Western boots. These have platform heels.

“I don’t dance well,” Peach responds.

“So you like girls?”

She doesn’t answer instantly and the stripper moves away from the subject, astute enough to see Peach squirm. Her fingers dart upwards to pull the cigarillo from her lips. “I dance to sleep more than anything else.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m an insomniac,” the stripper says. “For some reason, the dancing helps me sleep at night. Might be the exercise. I guess I could just go to the gym, but I wouldn’t get paid there.”

She snickers at her own joke and Peach laughs along for a moment before growing quiet again. Peach studies the woman’s face and her body with subtle gazes. She can’t believe she’s standing next to her. It’s an unreal moment for Peach and she feels a tingling throughout her entire body, but especially in the depths of her pelvis.

The metal side door swings open and Peach has to move to escape from being hit by its weight. A big man in a leather jacket emerges, a frown on his face.

He doesn’t notice Peach at first, just narrows his focus solely on the stripper. He looks around the area where they all stand, like he’s on alert for wild dogs or enemy combatants.

“Didn’t see you leave, love,” he quips.

“Just out for a smoke” she says to him but smiles at Peach. Peach smiles back and cannot believe she’s smiling at
her.

It’s then the man notices Peach. She’s thrown by his size. The backs of his hands are decorated with raised veins the size of her pinkie fingers. His ears, pierced through with gold rings, are double the size of her own.

He nods at her and Peach first thinks it’s in greeting, but then realizes it’s to point her out to the dancer.

“Who’s the enchantress?”

Peach can’t contain her smile when she hears what he’s called her. A tickle starts at the base of her spine and dallies around her lower back until she has to rub it away with an open palm. All of her body is at attention.

“I’m Peach,” she says and delivers her rehearsed line. “Just doing research.”

“I’m Sev,” he responds and takes the cigarillo from the stripper and pulls out the last drags of smoke it holds. “And this is my girl, Nell.”

Peach almost says,
I know
. The words get out of her before she can stop them, but she’s able to catch her voice mid-breath and spin it into something absurd.

“Idaho,” Peach gets out. “I mean, welcome to Idaho, Sev.”

The man tosses the spent tobacco to the ground and shakes his head.

“Strange,” he says and pulls open the side door. Nell slips in before him and gives a little wave to Peach before adjusting the leather string running along her ribcage. He motions for Peach to come back in but she doesn’t move, watching her fleece jacket leave, spread across the shoulders of the woman she dreams of and has thought about for so long.

Before the man goes back inside, he looks at Peach and purses his lips. “Isn’t that what the main characters in the Chinese fairytale,
Journey to the West
, are looking for? The Monkey King wants it, right?”

“What’s that? I’m not a literature buff. I stick to science fiction,” she answers.

“A peach,” he says, “to give him immortality. I think it was a peach.”

She shrugs her shoulders and walks away from the hulking man. Nell. Nell Hyde. She considers it a good stage name. As she moves back to her Honda, away from the temptations sheltered in Blaze Lounge, she thinks of quests for unobtainable things, thinks of what people are willing to do for the rarest of grails.

Wednesday, the 1
^st
of April, 2015

31 Riley

Though his mailbox is at the end of his driveway, Riley speculates his regular mailman must have seen him try to run the other day and fall on the street outside of his house. Because today, his mail has been tucked neatly under the sage coir welcome mat outside of his front door.

The morning is colder than usual. A frost hit the night before; he can see the apricot blossoms on his neighbor’s tree did not survive the freeze. He rubs his arms and balances on his right foot, hinges at the waist and goes down in a makeshift yoga pose to pluck up his mail.

Riley nearly stumbles on the door threshold back into his open foyer. He hops to the living room and lowers himself down on his brown leather couch. He focuses on controlling his descent, regaining some physical composure one day at a time. His left foot fared poorly from his attempted run the day before. The use of the footbag for more stability in the snow boot had caused too much pressure on the wound. He’d had to peel the gauze from the tines of the stitches, working at each piece of cotton gently to keep from pulling at the healing skin.

He shuffles the mail in his hands. There’s a flyer for a local pizza place and two offers for credit cards. And at the bottom of the pile is a card.

He doesn’t need to look at the writing to know it’s from the same sender as the card he opened in the hospital. The feel of dried wax on the underside of the envelope tells him through his fingertips. He tosses aside the other mail and breathes out hard.

The impress of the wax is similar to the seal on the first card, but this oval is slightly bigger and he guesses that whatever is being pushed into the wax is something organic, a bit asymmetrical. His name and address are spelled out in the same tilted, curly writing.

Like last time, he rips the side off of the envelope to preserve the wax seal. The content is a card; the cover displays a photograph of a meadow of wildflowers in pinks and white with a placid lake in the middle distance.

It had been a blank card inside, its message added by hand. Riley reads this card out loud:

You’re healthy, wealthy and wise! People adore you because of your successful career and your giving spirit. Luck follows you wherever you go. Best yet, you have a family that loves you and considers you top priority!

April Fool!

Life’s Fool!

Love,

Hamal

Riley clenches the envelope in his hand, wadding it into a tight ball of wrinkles. Some of the maroon wax chips off the seal and drops to his jeans. He doesn’t know why this stranger insists on sending him cards, but this note is harsher than the other, more obscure communication. He wonders if it’s a cruel joke being played on him by his coworkers at High Desert Trommel.

His face drops, his eyes widen and his stomach does a flip. It takes a moment for Riley to realize what’s going on with his body. But then his heart catches up to his mind and he admits it. His feelings are hurt.

He shuts the card and stares at the photograph plastered on the front. It’s a scene of beginning, of springtime and awakenings. But all he can focus on is the dreary lake in the distance. The surface of the water is staid and Riley imagines he stands at the pond’s edge, taking in an expanse of stagnation. To Riley, the shore smells sharply of dried out algae and the piquant stink of fish.

32 Peach

There’s no use in Peach trying to focus on her client reports. Though it’s only midmorning, she’s coming down from her experience yesterday with Nell. She almost can’t believe she was bold enough to talk to the stripper and even let her wear her coat. It’s then that she realizes she never got the fleece jacket back from her. She imagines it smells like stale tobacco with a hint of artificial peach.

She pulls a small Moleskine notebook from her white and tan purse tucked under her desk. She touches the soft binding. It’s a deep teal color and has an elastic band to keep the pages together and free from wrinkles. She doesn’t flip it open. Instead she places it on her desk and puts her cheek down on it, resting her head and shutting her eyes.

The sensation of the firm binding touching her skin and the smell of the pages reminds her of the Bible she used to lay her face on during Sunday Mass. Though she only went to St. Mary’s briefly during her childhood and rarely when she was with Adam, she could remember how the weight and shape of the Bible would push back against her cheekbone. She’d get askance glares from other parishioners but she always told herself putting your face, the mask you present to the world, on the Bible, was like baring yourself to God.

This notebook is thinner and squatter, but the contents of the pages are no less important to Peach’s life and future goals.

Sheep wander into Peach’s mind. She heard somewhere that of all the animals mentioned in the Bible, sheep are written about the most. She can believe it. The Jews were shepherds. Peach feels like a shepherd, always tending her charges, anxious to control their lives. A good shepherd will lay down her life for the flock. And all the shepherd asks for in exchange is the very same. Some sheep might provide wool. Others milk. Others meat. But they all have their uses to the shepherd. Otherwise, what purpose do they serve for the shepherd’s life?

Peach thinks about the Bible study classes made mandatory while she lived with one foster couple with the last name of Dorset. Then she calls to mind the yellow cake Adam would insist on making each Easter they were together. It was baked in a metal form pan and when turned out on wax paper, a lamb, legs tucked under its body, would be ready for decoration. They never ate the lamb, choosing to let the white frosting and sprigs of grass wrought with sugary gel dry out and harden to an inedible shell.

But the classes, she remembers, make her realize now that sheep got a lot of people killed in the Bible. Abel, the first shepherd, felt a murderous blow from his brother Cain. And Isaac or Ishmael—his name debatable amongst the religious groups following Yahweh—was nearly dispatched on the whim of the Old Testament God. Peach whispers to her office the Bible passage she memorized long ago.