Wide Blue Yonder (36 page)

Everything was murky mud. The light was thick, brown, so he saw only lumps and shadows. Something broke loose and floated
past him, which was creepy. You weren’t supposed to smell things underwater but he could swear he did, something foul down here that wouldn’t let him drown his fever, a floating dead ghost filling his ears with moaning. He panicked and tried to breathe before he remembered that water choked you and he thrashed his way to the surface—then he was driving in the dark, he was
Porque,
he was and everything else had been a dream. He was just this minute born. He was faster than the eye could imagine and if only he didn’t have to keep tearing up his skin so bad his fingernails were bloody, if only he could get a little real sleep, everything would be perfect forever. Here were streets, houses, lights, things he hadn’t seen for the longest time. The houses were like enormous toys. Big soft dolls lived inside.

He flickered past them like electricity in a red tube. Here were trees and chimneys and dollhouse lamps. Here was an old man doll, watching him from his front porch. Watching? Something wrong about that, as if he could be seen. He stopped the car with a lurch, got out and walked on tiptoes, just to make sure, all the way up to where the old man stood. “Can you see me?” he demanded. The old man just yapped and paddled his arms in the air. “Can you see me, huh, answer quick!” Gurgly sounds came from the old man’s mouth. Was he the old man from the store? He had the same scared, hollow look about him and was shame going to follow him around forever?

Just in case it was, he said, “You didn’t see me there either, understand? And what you thought it was, it wasn’t. That girl was too ugly so I changed my mind.”

But the old man kept mewling like he didn’t believe him or maybe he was trying to give him an argument, which made him so goddamn mad he went chasing after him. Who was some old man to tell him how to get his stuff working right? Like he was
supposed to be some expert on taking it out of his pants. He kicked the bastard door and broke his foot, howled and kicked it again just to make it hurt more.

What was the girl doing in here? No, it was a different girl but they’d taken screaming lessons together SHUT UP SHUT UP what was it about these bitches? They were all in on things together, gossiping and making things up and probably the girl in the store had told this one everything just for a laugh SHUT UP. finally they quit their noise and were just giving him the big-eye stare. He didn’t like them doing that either but how to get them to stop? This girl was prettier than the other. Just look at those chiches, the sight of them was enough to get you hard but no he wasn’t. What was she, one more bruja trying to mess him over? The old man was talking about rain, floods, storms, what did that have to do with anything? no it was something else, television. The television must be wired up to his brain like a kind of generator. He would have liked to shut it up also but he was too tired and the electricity was leaking out of him in ways it was getting difficult to control. Why couldn’t he sleep? He must have forgotten how.

He heard his own voice. It echoed in the air. The two of them were looking at him like he had left something unanswered and then the girl began talking, trying to tell him what to do in her know-it-all voice and why couldn’t everybody just SHUT UP. The girl went quiet but her mind was still talking. He could hear it like he heard everything in the world, all the voices that filled his electric head like a cloud of insects swarming around a light. Well of course she wanted to run away, everybody ran from him but he was the one in charge here so he made the door slam BANG and put an end to that.

Except now he could not remember clearly why he was here, which embarrassed him and seemed like the sort of mistake you
shouldn’t be making at such a time, and since the gun never forgot he held it up and tried to think of some words it might say.

“Your money or your life!”

What were you supposed to do with words anyway? There were so many of them and they piled up one on top of the other so fast that by the time you heard the last one you forgot the first. The girl was talking again, trying to confuse him with words that were meant to coax or tickle or persuade him to do or not do something. Give me all your words no he meant money, he was getting the two of them hopelessly mixed up so he kicked the son of a whore mess at his feet. Nothing in it. “Over there,” the girl said, pointing, and when he held up the SHIT what did you call this thing this thing held it up and shook it, words came tumbling out no it was money. Coins spattered across the floor and the bills floated.

He bent down to pick it up and here was that fucking bad luck money, the face on it bearded like a goat, staring him down. The very feel of the paper scalded his hands GODDAMN GODDAMN a witch’s trick, what were they trying to do, kill him? This girl who was so sneaky, her and every other witch woman who laughed at his shame. Everywhere he went they planted their bad magic. He made the noise in his head come out of his mouth. It felt good to have the stream of noise burning through him, the way vomiting out a sickness could feel good. The noise he made was red like electricity and blood and the mouth of the dead woman, the ghost who kept sending him the bad times.

Then he saw her. It scorched the breath right out of him. She was waving to him from the television with that same slit-eyed look, red smile and yellow hair. Prancing around in a tight red dress and shaking her ass like the whore she was. Somehow she’d gotten better-looking dead, which was just to taunt him. She had
followed him all the way here, riding the electricity that he could not shut off. Get out of here, he said uselessly. Her giant head and face filled the screen. Her teeth were as big as piano keys. She laughed and sang a little song. She was pretending to be one of the angel girls, mocking the last pure memory that remained to him. Ohhh, she sang, turning it into something low and nasty, turning her beauty into something rotten dead. He gathered what was left of his courage and showed his own teeth—and then she was gone and some other shit came on, so quick that he almost mistrusted his eyes but no it had been here, and she could come back anytime to play him, wear him down, steal his sleep, wilt the thing between his legs, burn up his skin. Sleep he could sleep for a week a month a year he was so hollow and fevered. If he could just lay down but not with this girl and this old man watching him. He had almost forgotten them as well as the gun in his hand that said things in its own language.

In his other hand was this pile of of he was determined to get it right money, and the girl was saying, “We seriously don’t have a lot of cash. I think you must have the wrong house.”

Was she making fun of him? He couldn’t tell. She was giving him the big-eye stare but even scared she looked pretty, her face and the way she was put together just right, not too skinny, he didn’t like that, he liked to lose his hands in softness. He wanted to explain to her that only out of necessity was he behaving impolitely, because everything was so uncertain, and the girl said, “Just take the money and go, OK? This really isn’t good for my uncle, he’s old and he’s sick and”

He sure was old. And he had spooky eyes that didn’t seem to be looking in the same direction they pointed. Which was maybe how he came to see him even when he was invisible except he wasn’t anymore. How had that happened? The girl in the store must have stolen that from him along with his manhood
BITCH. She’d slowed him down and now he couldn’t get going again, not with these two following him with their eyes and their nervous thoughts. He wanted to holler at them and make them stop thinking but just then his insides twisted up on him so bad that he doubled over, his emptiness tying itself in knots and the electricity zooming into his head like it was on an elevator and his brain was the top floor. His mouth shook in an
Ohhh,
an electrocuted angel, and at first he thought he was finally dead but no he was just hungry.

Well, that was a surprise. He wanted to goddamn laugh except it hurt too much. He got himself straightened up and pretended he had just been coughing, because it was foolish, getting yourself so worked up over an ordinary thing like that. “Comida,” he said, both by way of explanation and demand, but they just sat there, what was it with them, were they deaf or simple? He said it again, shaking his face in theirs, and when they still didn’t understand he ran through the rooms, making them scream and dive behind the furniture and here was the place they kept it but all they had was SHIT little puny odds and ends and he wanted some FOOD, why were they hiding it from him?

The girl said, “If you would just not point that thing at us, OK? You can go buy food or whatever you want, there’s nothing stopping you, I promise we won’t even tell anybody you were here. In case you’re a fugitive or something.”

She was peeping over the edge of where they had been sitting except they were mostly on the floor now and the old man had his hands over his ears like he didn’t want his thoughts to leak out. “Come on,” he told them, sighing, because of course they didn’t understand, and he would have yelled some more except what good would it do and also he was afraid he’d fall over from his bunched-up insides. “Come on,” he said again, and they didn’t want to come on but the gun made them do it as he held his stomach
with one arm, out the door and into the night under the swarming stars.

Then he put them in the car because they were damn well going to help him find food and get it right this time. The girl was up front and the old man was in back. He couldn’t keep from looking in the mirror to make sure the old man wasn’t doing anything tricky. Something about him was hard to figure, the way he kept moving his mouth without anything coming out like he was working spells, the way his eyes wouldn’t look at you straight on, and when he tried to read his thoughts there was only a fizzing blankness, like a television screen when the station goes off the air. Then the old man said
I will deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians,
what was that shit, well, screw him, he wasn’t going to worry about some old party. This girl now, he had to say she looked very fine in the front seat of the car. It occurred to him that never before had he possessed a car of his own into which he could put a girl. He liked how her legs stretched a long ways from top to bottom and how her hair caught the light from the street-lamps and just maybe she wouldn’t be like all the other bitches in the world although she wasn’t looking at him, like she was stuck up or something. So he said, “Nice car, yes?” just to be making conversation and besides it was a very excellent car and he wanted to make sure she was aware of that.

But she only said, “There’s a McDonald’s up there, is McDonald’s all right?” Was he supposed to know what she was talking about? And then his hunger remembered itself to him with another violent squeeze of his midsection, like it was angry he’d forgotten it.

If he didn’t get some food into his stomach in the next TEN SECONDS he was going to going to he couldn’t think of what new and terrible thing would be bad enough but then the girl said, “Here, right here,” and he saw those big yellow shapes lit up
in the black sky,
pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night,
the old man’s whispery voice talking more shit but no matter because he knew this place meant food.

The girl said, “How about if I go in? That would be the easiest thing, just tell me what you want. You know I’d come right back because of my uncle,” and boy she must think he was really dumb. He had the gun lying between them and he gave it a little pat, letting it speak for him. The girl slumped down in her seat and he didn’t worry about her but here was a new problem, how to get at the food he knew was inside. There was a way you were supposed to do it but it was like making love to a woman, he might get it wrong in some embarrassing fashion. “Are you going to the drive-through window or what?” the girl asked, and of course that was the deal.

Now he had to concentrate because there were all these people and cars around and he couldn’t shoot them all, but when he got up to the place where you told them what you wanted, he couldn’t think and the old man was whispering
plague of locusts, plague of boils,
SHUT UP who wanted to hear that shit when they were eating? He didn’t care what food they gave him as long as it was NOW and that’s when the girl leaned over him to speak into the box. Then she asked him if he was going to pay for the food or just commit armed robbery? He thought she was making fun of him but already they were at the window with a fat man’s face leaning out at him wanting money, so he shoved some at him and FINALLY here was food. He tore through the wad of paper and clogged his mouth with hot bread and God he’d forgotten about cheeseburgers but he never would again.

Cars were honking. The fat man in the window was pointing him out to somebody else, what was his fucking problem? He didn’t want to stop eating to shoot them so he moved the car to one side and the girl said, “I ordered a lot of stuff so we could
have some too since it’s like, our money.” And because his stomach was now in an agreeable mood, he shoved the paper bag at her and she gave some food to the old man and they all sat there under the yellow lights having themselves a swell little picnic,
a land flowing with milk and honey,
the old man whispered in between mouthfuls and he got that part exactly right.

His stomach felt warm and drowsy, like a purring cat. He bet he could sleep now. Little sleep bubbles were percolating in his blood. He licked the inside of his mouth for the memory of taste. He liked the big yellow arcs overhead. They never changed, they radiated holy peace and love and FOOD. The girl was scrubbing at her fingers with a paper napkin. He approved of her tidiness, he liked that in a girl. The old man in the backseat was rummaging through the bag for the last of the french fry ends. He guessed the guy was all right, for an old party. The three of them could drive around to places together. They could take turns driving. They could eat cheeseburgers. It would be nice to have company for a change. And he wanted to tell them both, the girl especially, that he was not a bad person, or at least he had never intended to do bad things that were not entirely his fault or maybe they were but none of it had been planned, none of it had made him happy. People were meant to be happy, weren’t they? Even if they weren’t he was going to damn well try because he couldn’t think of why except he liked it better, the way he liked food better than no food.