“I did until my dad went, then I didn’t have no one to take care of my kids. So I get by, you know, I sell my beadwork and stuff. If I moved into town, I guess I could do pretty well.”
“Oh, I’d say,” but when he looked sideways at her, Ira thought he meant something else.
“Not that way,” she stated, without laughing. Now was when she began to wish she hadn’t touched him.
Morris gave a little hoot. As the heat came on, the cab of his truck began to smell like blood.
“You hunt yourself?” said Ira.
“Do I hunt myself ?” Morris asked. “I’d like to see that.”
“I mean, do you hunt, just hunt?”
Morris didn’t answer, so Ira said, “You can’t shut your eyes for real?”
“Yeah. They will not close. I put drops in. Take the wheel.”
He quit steering and Ira slid over beside him to keep them from going in the ditch. He plucked a little squeeze bottle from his breast pocket and tipped back his head. “Ah,” he screwed the top on the bottle, dropped it back in his pocket, took the wheel with one hand. He grabbed Ira with the other and hauled her close to him. “I liked that.” The truck swerved.
“You got to keep both hands on the driving,” she said, unhooking his arm from around her shoulders. She slid back to her side of the truck. “Look, it’s iced up bad out there. Really, it’s very dangerous.” The road was plowed recently enough so that beneath the new and fluffy snow there was a hard, slick finish. “The conditions are definitely no good. Hey,” she tried to shift the mood. “How do you sleep?”
“I never do sleep,” said Morris. “That’s why I’m crazy.”
“You don’t seem too crazy,” Ira said.
“The VA sent me everywhere, all around the world, I been to Singapore. They couldn’t do shit. I can’t have sunlight or any light. Mostly I live inside listening to TV. Tapes. I got a million tapes. Cassette tapes. Nobody wants their cassette tapes anymore. The church gives ’em to me. People give ’em to me. I sit indoors and listen. So I know everything. All there is to know. It’s all on tapes. It comes through my ears.” He tapped the side of his head.
His ears look normal, Ira thought.
“My brother is the good talker. He’s the one who charms the ladies. He told me all about you.”
“What about your tapes? What are your tapes about?”
“Every kind of music, you would not believe. I got opera tapes which I can’t make out the language, Mötley Crüe tapes, George Michael, every C-and-W tape there is or was. I got classical music tapes however I don’t like to read the labels as it hurts my eyes, so I can’t tell you who is who by name. There is this one guy I listen to all the time, the fucker plays like his hands are on fire. And books, every book. Everything from horror books to spiritual messages. This one I had on before I left, I got the whole set of wisdom. Listen to this one,” Morris spoke slowly and carefully. “‘If anyone were to ask life over a thousand years, why are you alive? The only reply could be—I live so that I may live. Life lives from its own foundation and rises out of itself.’ How about that?”
As they bounced along Morris steered the truck, slowly, carefully.
“A guy wrote that in the twelfth century A.D.”
“If somebody asked me over a thousand years,” Ira said, cold inside, “I would say I live because my children need me.”
“Yeah,” said Morris. “That’s what my brother said. He told me all about how you needed money.”
“I don’t need it all that bad anymore,” Ira said. “I only got to last until tomorrow.”
“Well, I got money,” said Morris. “I got quite a bit of money. On me. And I don’t ever get a chance to be with a woman. I can’t go in bars.”
Now Ira knew why her throat clenched, why she’d been afraid. She knew why John had delivered her to his ma’iingan brother.
“If you have so much money,” she said, her voice rising too high, “why don’t you buy CDs?”
“Well, I have them too, and a player, of course. But I like listening to tapes for some reason. The assortment, I guess, and they’re free. My house is a grab bag of tapes. Powwow tapes. Poetry tapes. The most beautiful stories in the language. Ira, listen to this,” Morris’s voice rose high, almost a wail. “‘It isn’t given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal.’ What about that? Fitzgerald. I wish I could stop this truck,” said Morris. “I wish that I could kiss you.”
“No,” said Ira, “I got to get back to my kids.”
“Well, I think this is a rare healing moment, and a kiss”—Morris slowed the truck until it crawled—“that won’t take a few seconds. A kiss is an efficacious drug. It might change my life.” The truck stopped, idling. Morris turned to her and the light played up in his eyes so they flashed and burned. “Please,” he said, putting the truck in park. Ira didn’t move. “You want me to start the truck moving?” They sat suspended, breathing, looking at each other.
“You’re pretty,” said Morris. His voice was low. He was choking on his breath. “Want me to start the truck?”
“Yes,” Ira said.
“C’mere then.”
She slid across to him in a trance of fear, but when he did not move toward her but only sat very still, something else happened. She put her hands over his eyes. He seemed to be holding his breath now, even trembling a little. He wasn’t going to hurt her, she realized. She kissed his mouth, and his foot pressed the gas pedal involuntarily, so it roared with a human sound. He laughed sheepishly and said, “I guess that tells you how I feel.” His breath was surprisingly sweet and his face smelled like soap. Still, underneath that, the truck smelled of blood. He leaned back into the seat like he was fainting a little. She kissed him again. Then she took her hands off his eyes and got back on her side of the cab. He sat up, stared forward, then pressed the gas pedal slowly and shifted evenly so there was no sudden jolt. They went along in silence.
“You do love your children, don’t you,” he said.
“Yes,” said Ira.
“But that second kiss,” Morris said. “Was it maybe personal?”
Ira said nothing, just pointed out the many small drifts on the road. Morris concentrated, slowing now, very cautious. When the driving was smoother he put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out and slid it across the seat.
“You take this.”
It was a wad of money.
“No,” Ira said. “I didn’t do nothing.”
“Please keep it,” Morris said, in a formal voice. “I feel dishonorable. Anyway, I got to get us to your place and return home by sunup. Morning light hurts my eyes very bad, I might need a pain pill, though I’m trying to get off those things. In the full sun I’ll get sick. I maybe could go blind. Things are going bad for me. Yesterday I head-butted a mirror. Then I cut my feet bad walking in the bits. I scored my knuckles with a knife, cutting cabbage for a soup. I had to go to the emergency and get everything sewed up and there’s still frozen blood all over in here; I guess I was hunting myself.”
“You don’t have a bandage on.”
“I don’t care to have one.”
He put his hand in the dash light’s glow and she saw black stitches running down between his fingers. His hand looked like a paw.
“You shouldn’t go slamming your face at mirrors,” she said.
“They give me the creeps. The Chinese believe you shouldn’t ever have one facing your bed or your soul might crawl out of your body at night and slip into the mirror.”
“Oh,” said Ira, startled, “I sort of believe that too.” Then she was watchful. “We’re almost at the turnoff. Slow down.” She helped him steer and they bumped down the awkwardly plowed road until they came to the place where Ira’s house was. The dark was lifting only slightly and at first she couldn’t see past the headlamp’s arc. So she couldn’t tell what had happened until the truck got close to the black and delicately smoking foundation.