Don't Kiss Me: Stories (4 page)

But then it seemed such a long distance to walk, from his exit to hers, and instead Dallas nodded his head at her and walked off toward the highway, another sound. He walked up an entrance ramp headed west, keeping to the shoulder and thinking of his momma and the cold cuts she always had in the icebox, and he decided right then to get off at the next exit and go home, but it seemed like something he wanted to do more than anything he would ever actually be able to do, and then the sun was setting and the sky finally colored and so Dallas walked first toward a horizon colored orange, and then pink, and then blue, and then a man driving a semi slowed and pulled over and offered Dallas a ride, and by then the lights on the highway had come on and he couldn’t see the sky no more anyway, the semi picking up speed and the man whistling a tune and Dallas putting his hand on the man’s thigh because he was hungry enough to eat his own arm or anything that was offered to him from that moment on.

GERALD’S WIFE

The smell of lumber. Bits of wood in the air. Golden motes. The day of the funeral, a stream of light through the curtains. Dust twirling like glitter. Bitsy from next door saying, She never was much of a housekeeper. Skin of a raisin on her front tooth.

You need something cut, my friend? Gerald shook his head. The wood was a comfort but he had to move on.

Aisle of shovels. Something with a handle, ain’t too heavy. Might as well pay the extra two dollars.

Lantern? Flashlight. Years ago they’d gone camping. Gerald backed over the flashlight they’d bought special. Deirdre made a quiet noise with her tongue. Gerald had wanted to yell.

Lantern. Deirdre reading in bed, making those
mmm
noises. Like each word was a revelation. Every now and again she’d leave that lamp on all night.

The day she died, the blown bulb. Flick, nothing. Flick, nothing. The gray bulb, the broken filament. Deirdre’s crumpled arm. The brown wet at the seat of her pants, the small pool of bile. Milk-clouded eyes. Stroke, the doctor said. Her brain broke, was how Gerald would tell it. Cloudy bulb eyes, broken filament brain.

Lightbulbs? Gerald said it aloud, said it toward the aproned black woman limping toward him. Her hand crumpled at her ribs. Mouth wet at one corner. Broke brain, Gerald thought.

Aisle thirteen, came the answer. Clear as a bell. All fixed up. Crescent wrench, x-ray, level. Scalpel, spade. Hard to know where to start. We had to break Deirdre’s hips, the man at the funeral home said. So her legs’d fit right. Obligated to let you know. In the casket the little finger she broke in the fall angled up, dainty as a princess.

Aisle thirteen. Only Gerald couldn’t bring himself. Didn’t seem like the right fix.

Ax. Crowbar? Better safe than sorry. Deirdre had wanted a gun. Better safe than sorry, she said. Phone call from the range. Your gun’s ready, the man said. Come in anytime with a certified check. Hard to shoot when you’re already dead, Gerald told him. The man laughed. He had a brown tooth, Gerald remembered. Fit his laugh, laugh like a lungful of brown teeth. Rev rev rev whee.

All you’re forgetting’s your tarp! Chubby girl, curls hairsprayed to her forehead. You’re committing the perfect murder, right? Chubby smile. Chubby fist at her hip. All that flesh, so much flesh.

Yeah, get me one, Gerald told her. A blue one and some bungees. I don’t want clear.

Chubby face held tight. Quiet call on her walkie. Old man, smeared rose tattoo on his arm. This all right?

Seventy-four twenty-eight. Twenty-eight how old Deirdre was when they married. Deirdre whispered, Lucky you, I ain’t wearing no panties, right there at the altar. Turned out a lie. Minister sweating slick fat drops and all for nothing.

Deirdre always did like to lie.

Whoosh went the doors. Whoosh went the heat. Store climate-controlled as a coffin. Gerald rushed his purchases into the trunk. Safe in there, sealed like a tomb. Coffin, tomb. Beats of his heart. Coff-in, tomb tomb. Coff-in, tomb tomb.

You’re being dramatic. Deirdre’s sister. Hair in a froth. Throat asparkle. Nails like a hawk’s. Swoop, Move on. Swoop, I always did find you manly. Swoop, wet lozenge, nest on a napkin. Swoop, bloodstained beak. Swoop, Gerald played dead. Gerald refused to writhe.

There went the sun. Quick as a cookie into milk. Nothing on the radio. Man promising there’d be something soon, throat like a cave. Gerald agreed.

Deirdre buried way back. Newest part, the man at the funeral home had declared. Deandra got the place all to herself, he said. Didn’t mention the stick trees bent like burnt orphans. Didn’t mention they ain’t built the walkway that far yet. And then Gerald hating to mention how he’d rearrange the man’s acorns should the stone say Deandra and not Deirdre.

Passion, Deirdre would hiss. All I’m asking for. Gerald grabbed, one hand for the tit, one hand for the warmth down between her legs. That wasn’t it, turned out. That was far from it.
A PASSIONITE WOMAN,
the stone said.

Park the car. Throw the tools over. Climb. Climb down. Gerald nothing but a list now, lines on his skin, pencil in the lines.

Deirdre hands in the sink. Deirdre sweaty hair at her neck. Deirdre clap, smeared red of a mosquito. Deirdre in her yellow robe, feet bottoms black as coal. Deirdre Ain’t you going to let me in? Deirdre mmm. Deirdre mmm. Deirdre ding, Deirdre dong, Deirdre How’s a girl supposed to breathe in heat like this? Soapy water, smell of soap. Thread of dirt, black black smell.

Three months buried. Chiff went the shovel. Grass like a carpet. Dry soil, all burnt up. Chiff. Chiff. Chiff. If I ever die, don’t bury me. Denim-blue night. Burn me up, feed me to the pigs, throw me over tied to an anchor. Train whistle, baying dog, smell of rain. Okay? Okay?

Chiff. Deirdre’s hand, cold as a cooler. Mind the pinky.

Just dreams! Deirdre’s sister, feather of lipstick on her incisor. She’s dead!

Day of the funeral, throat shoveled raw. Fart, went Bitsy. Gerald turned to nudge Deirdre. Oh, he said. Oh, that’s right. Oh, he kept saying. Shh, now, came all the replies. Shh.

And here she’d been, to think. Ninety-two days bored and hot. Chiff. Married thirty-three years, a prophet’s lifetime. Can’t escape that easy!

Gerald in up to his shoulders now. Chiff. Sun at his neck like a slap. Shovel to wood, a stop. Stop went the shovel. Go went the ax.

Help you? Wet voice of a boy.

Pow went the ax. Came apart in his hands. Funeral man saying, Nothing’s coming through this sucker, not no maggots and not no ghosts. Rev rev whee. Chain saw? Gerald asked the boy.

Come out from there. Sanded voice of a man. Gerald looked up. Sky boy man. Sky like the water in a tub. Chain saw, Gerald said. Deirdre and all this nothing to look at.

Can’t help you there, came the man. Time to come on out from there.

Dirt on his tongue. She’s in there. Dirt in his eyes.

That ain’t her no more, said the man.

All that dirt in her breaths. Deirdre and the candy pink of her toenails. Deirdre and them dirty feet. Tiptoeing across the porch just the night before. Ruined blade in his hands, shimmering useful as a fish. Gerald at the chipped white kitchen table, night after night these ninety-two days. Crackers cheese beer, all that silence and chewing, the television and its noises. Loneliness a nightly death, bed a burial. All this dirt, all that wood. The sound of her voice, even that gone? Gerald’s cremated heart, Gerald’s aching burned-up heart. Nothing but urn left now. Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, thinking how most of the time he hated her, that mean mouth, he missed that hate, its absence a hacked-up emptiness, Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, Gerald saying, I’m alive and I can’t breathe.

ME AND GIN

Me and Gin play Lips. This a game where you see how long you can touch lips before you need to scream. Gin always the one screaming first, I guess not always, sometimes I scream first cause I don’t want to seem like no weird lips lover.

Me and Gin’s both girls. See.

Me and Gin go over each other’s houses, mostly hers though, cause my daddy don’t like wearing shirts always, and Gin says he got flabby baby boobs, and when I tell Daddy this he cups what he got and says, That bitch just can’t handle her fiery attraction, and I laugh cause it seems like the right thing to do, and Daddy digs out the last of the Skoal and places it tenderly.

Me and Gin decided it ain’t cool to call each other bitch. I nod and nod at her, I want her to know I agree, but inside I am forlorn, I will have to find another word that sounds so powerful. Bitch like a bull stamping its hooves, bitch like a broom after a crow.

Me and Gin got to agree on things, cause she’s my first friend and I got to hold on tight.

Me and Gin like to play preacher and supplicant, Gin is always the preacher and I am always the supplicant. Gin saying, You a fearful sinner, young lady, and me heaving my shoulders, begging, Please. I never say what I’m pleasing for, just Please, please.

Sometimes Gin slaps me in the head and I fall and wriggle, watching the pink blades of her ceiling fan with my boggled eyes, I am consumed with the power of her touch, least I think that’s what I’m doing, other times Gin’ll say, All right, cause that means she’s done and I need to be done too.

Me and Gin hold hands in the movies, practicing, till a fat lady sits in our row.

Me and Gin had a fight once, when I came upon her sitting on my brother’s bed like she does on mine. And my brother just tiddling with his football, poke arms sticking out his muscle shirt like creamy bone. Gin and my brother, talking like they was afraid of the sound. And me wanting to say, Hold up, this is mine and this is mine, I almost said it, but I didn’t, cause no one likes to be claimed. Instead I said, Guess I’ll go to the bathroom now, and I did, and I looked at my face in the mirror so long I got so I couldn’t recognize it.

Me and Gin made up and she let me wear her hair clip for the afternoon.

Me and Gin like to ride our bikes out to the Circle K. I get Gin a Faygo and me a Yoo-hoo and this one time at the last second I add a six-pack of lightbulbs, a treat for Gin, she don’t know what joy she in for. We ride a few blocks and then I say, Okay, Gin, time to stop. Then I show her what I mean, I get me a lightbulb and place it on the ground and then I whomp on it with both feet, the sound, the sound, the God-loving crunch. Now you, I tell Gin, but she ain’t smiling like I am, and she don’t take the lightbulb from my hand. Have fun cleaning that up, Gin says, and goes after her kickstand with a fury that makes her miss it the first try. I didn’t mean to, I call after her, cause this is what you supposed to say in a apology situation, but Gin don’t look back. But see I did mean to, how could I not?

Me and Gin decide she is right, we are too old and feminine for stomping anything into dust. Gin’s momma makes us graham crackers and butter, Gin licking the butter off with the tip of her tongue, I say, No, thanks, I ate a healthy lunch, which is a lie.

Me and Gin talk about what we going to wear the first day of school, I pretend to think about it and say, I believe I will wear my jean shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t have no other options, cause Daddy says we got to make do with what we have, ’less clothes rain from the sky that is, and that is A-OK by me, I like my shorts. But Gin is disappointed, her face a curdled pie, so I add, And some cherry lip chap, and this does the trick.

Me and Gin. That is fun to say, it is right, it is a joyful clump of words. Me and Gin is forever, we planets, everything outside us all but a darkness.

Me and Gin say we best get the same classes or else, cause we is best friends and nothing can change that. I say, Yep, we blood brothers, cause it is nighttime and I’m in my sleeping bag on her floor and it is like the night sky burbling stars is inside me, but Gin says, We ain’t boys, and we don’t mess with blood, and this is a disappointment, but I let it pass, I pretend to sleep, I don’t tell Gin how our blood glitters, how we half light, I keep all that to myself.

OUR MAN

THE SISTER:

Don’t worry, I said. This will hurt, and then it won’t. Or go ahead and worry, I said, if that’s the kind of person you are.

THE DETECTIVE:

What am I here for, if the crime’s been solved?

First you hafta name the crime.

Easy: murder.

That’s only the beginning, Detective Tin Ears.

One of those.

One of those. Better you than me. I’ve got enough blood on my hands.

I’ll start with the scene.

When you find out where that is, you let me know.

Women.

Women.

THE SISTER:

How about this: a man bleeds in velvety ribbons. Our man is a teapot with two spouts. His heart is still intact, if that’s what you’re worried about. (His heart is the problem.) Our man bleeds blackly, redly, deadly. Our man was gone in a few great gushes. I’m a collector and I came to.

It’s me. You can be you. I’ve been honest and I’m being honest now. Blood is just as thick as we’ve heard. Blood doesn’t cool if you admit relief. That rustcolored pump will throb on and on.

Somebody tarred Daddy to the floor.

I can’t deny it’s gorgeous that a brain sees what its experience has trained it to see. If you’ve never known love it’s clear you’d mistake it for something else. Loneliness perhaps. Greed.

How about: blood congeals and forms a skin. Or: our man’s dying breath lasted fifteen seconds. This: we both love(d) you more than life itself.

THE DETECTIVE:

The detective set out. Squeezed the last bits of whiskey from the Ziploc he kept in his breast pocket. The road unfurled in the white wash from his headlights. He had her underwear in his fist, damp with blood, and when he held them to his mouth he smelled iron, or something that should be called iron. Perhaps it really was a man’s blood.