“Just hurry with it if you want to get paid,” Wallace was saying. I was trying to breathe as quietly as possible, and it was hurting my lungs.
Gerald and Wallace went around to the door of the barn, and I squeezed my way between the fence slats. “Fuck, this shit is heavy,” Gerald said.
I thought about all the little moments in my life that had brought me to this moment and how pointless they all seemed. A brown chicken walked around the side of the barn, and I tried to shoo it off. It moved closer, bobbing its head. It seemed to be staring me right in the face.
“Carol?”
I looked up. Gerald had materialized on the roof. The rolled-up tarp was at his feet. He held a hand over his eyes to gaze down at me, making his face pitch black.
“What are you doing down there?” he said. He had a big smile sliced into the center of his beard. The sun was shining hard on him.
“Who’s there?” someone said. Then Wallace hobbled around the side of the barn. “Why if it isn’t a pretty lady,” he said. He reached out with his good hand. The other was limp in a sling. “How are you, Carol? I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
“I was just out for a walk,” I said. I could feel my heart thumping impotently against my chest. “How’s the roofing?”
“Coming along,” Gerald shouted down. “Hot day, though. If you’re walking back through, could you bring me a glass of lemonade?”
I found it harder and harder to talk to Gerald. He would come home sore and hungry and ready for the TV. We would eat dinner, make love or not make love, then go to sleep. I stopped asking him about Wallace or the body. The roofing job went on and on.
When his snores started, I slid out of bed and searched through his clothes. There was nothing unusual, only some movie ticket stubs. I didn’t know what clues I was supposed to be putting together.
The corner of the fence was still a quiet place for me. I would go there to read and think. I rubbed the dark veins creeping up my calves. I could calculate only a year or two before we’d probably want to add a child. Life settled into its mold no matter what you did.
It was getting close to dusk. I went over to the fence and ran my fingernail over the rusty wire. Gerald was off hammering nails into something with Wallace. It was a quiet day, and the clouds knocked into each other in the sky. I stood in front of the fence and got on my knees and scooted in backwards. My arms were out in front of me. The mud was cold against my face.
I didn’t think about a lot of things. Or I did, but in a detached way, as if they were slowly trickling out of my mind.
I felt comfortable, you could even say at peace, and lay there in the mud for a long time.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Mitzy. She darted behind an oak tree and hissed loudly. With one ear in the mud it was hard to hear, but one or possibly two sets of boots were approaching.
FAMILIAR CREATURES
LAWN DAD
Some nights Dad would come home with the demon on his breath and topple right over in the yard. Momma would have to tug on him till he came inside so the neighbors wouldn’t start yapping.
One night she didn’t even bother waiting up, and he was left out there on the lawn. He woke up the next day to the crunch-crunching of the garbage men. I was running to meet friends at the pool and almost tripped over his legs.
“Can you believe it, Luanne? Your momma’s abandoned me.” He was weeping into a handful of dandelions.
I could see the neighbors’ silhouettes watching us from behind their curtains. Momma had told me not to help him, but he grabbed at my ankle, so I gave him my lunch. It was only baloney and swiss anyway.
When I got home, Dad was still sprawled out on the front lawn as if he was trying to make a snow angel out of grass. The neighbors were peeping through holes in the fence.
“I married a damn fool,” Momma said. “He can rot out there for all I care.”
I sneaked him a pack of crackers later. He was bunched up in the dark like a pile of leaves. Up close, I noticed his face was scrunched in pain.
“Luanne, love eats away at you like a colony of termites,” he said.
I told him he should move inside, that he was liable to melt away in this heat, but he said the woman inside was not the same woman he married, and that was a terrifying thing.
Dad stayed there all summer. Momma wouldn’t talk to him, just smoked cigarettes and glared at him through the window. I was sneaking out the back door to see Bobby Jackson that summer. He had a bright yellow motorbike and took me anywhere I wanted to go. One night, Bobby put his hands under my shirt and said we’d never be apart. I skipped right across the yard forgetting Dad was there. He was scowling as Bobby rode away through the night. In the weak glow of the streetlamps, Dad’s face looked thin and green.
Finally, Momma went outside and grabbed his arm. “All right,” she said, “we have our differences, but who doesn’t? I think we can start again.”
“I fear it’s too late,” he said. When Momma tugged on his arm, he screamed in pain. The grass had already grown up through his skin. His roots had taken hold, and I had stopped bringing him food weeks before.
Slowly his body grew softer and greener until it split apart into the lawn. Momma cried a lot in the bathroom with the tub running. Fall crept up on us, and the summer was done.
Now Dad was just a thick clump in the dirt. I kneeled next to him and put down my ear. “Promise me you’ll keep me nice and trim,” the wind whispered through the blades. I didn’t think he could hear me anymore, but I said I would.
I mow lawns all around the neighborhood now. I have a shiny, red mower I can spin around on a dime. I charge exactly ten dollars a yard.
MY LIFE IN THE BELLIES OF BEASTS
I was born prematurely and, as such, was a very small child. So small, in fact, that shortly after emerging into the world, I was gobbled up by a clever fox that terrorized my parents’ farm. It had sneaked in the back door while everyone was distracted. My mother’s tears of joy turned acid, and my father cursed the lazy farmhand he’d tasked with mending the fence. These were the first and last words I ever heard my parents utter.
It was cozy and warm inside the fox’s belly. I barely noticed what had happened. To me, it seemed I had merely gone from one womb to another. When I was hungry, I ate the scraps of raw meat that fell around me. When I was sad and wailed, the fox howled lullabies to guide me back to sleep. All in all, my early days were bearable.
In time, I began to grow skittish. I was no longer a baby, and I needed to stretch my limbs. One day, as if to answer my prayers, the fox was cornered by a local hunter and his giant mastiffs. The fox tried to run away, but I had grown so large that I weighed her down, and she was torn apart by the hounds. I felt the cool air and saw the harsh sunlight for the first time before being swallowed by the largest dog.
I can’t deny I felt a great sadness as I settled among the bits of organ and clumps of fox fur. Yes, the fox had kidnapped me, but she had also been my home, and that is never an easy thing to lose.
Still, the mastiff was roomier and more appropriate for a growing boy. I could feel my muscles developing as I did push-ups on the soft stomach floor and pull-ups on the outline of the mastiff’s large spine. When the dog bounded through the grassy fields, I would crawl up his throat and rest my chin on the back of his massive tongue, gazing out at the dry, open world.