Flesh and Blood (9 page)

“Yes you can.” She spoke to him just the way she'd spoken to the children when they awoke from nightmares. Now, as then, she marveled at the maternal certainty she heard in her own voice.
They believe I'm their mother. They believe I know what I'm doing.

“Just close your eyes,” she said. “It'll happen before you know it.”

And, to her surprise, he obeyed her. He returned quietly to his own side of the bed like a randy boy who wanted discipline even when he said he wanted every noise and thrill in the world. She lay quietly beside him, listening to his abating sobs with motherly concern. It was only after he'd fallen asleep that she was stricken with a horror so powerful and nameless she got out of bed and took three of the pills, to give herself the simple unremarkable gift of sleep.

She took a hairbrush, a cheap bracelet, a bar of amber-colored soap. She knew she had to stop. She consoled herself with a short list of virtues. Everything she stole was cheap, and she never used what she took. As long as she didn't use the objects, she did not feel indicted by them. Susan sent postcards from her honeymoon in Hawaii, short and undetailed assertions of happiness written in a hand more scrolled, more adult, than Mary remembered her handwriting to be. Mary attached the postcards to the refrigerator with fruit-shaped magnets. She kept the objects she stole in her drawer, hidden away, until her holdings began to look like the trousseau of an impoverished bride.

1970/
He called it car ballet. It had that strength and grace, that musical stillness. Out on the back roads, trees hung blackly, fence posts were dark and important as tombstones. Behind the trees and the fence posts, farmers slept under roofs blue with moon. Billy liked to imagine the silence. When he pictured the silence he loved all the more what their headlights did to it. What their music and engines brought. Tree limbs jumped, sizzling with gold and silver light. Dust boiled up, yellow at their approach and red in their wake. Bits of his favorite songs found their way into farmers' dreams.

“Car ballet!” he'd call from the back seat. He'd put his feet, big in boots, out the window. At moments, at night, he felt a huge new world of freedom and love cracking open.

Sometimes it was Larry's father's car, sometimes it was Bix's. Sometimes, on lucky nights, they got both. Larry's father had the green Chevy Impala, Bix's had the Ford Galaxie. The Chevy was slightly racier, but the Ford had a rubberized, floating ride that gave you nervous stomach and a hard-on when things got rockety. Billy always hoped for the Ford.

“Faster,” he said. “Floor it.” He was the voice of speed. He was the smallest, the smartest, the one most intricately loved and hated. The radio played “Eight Miles High.”

“You're crazy,” Dina said. She rode in the back seat with Billy, pressing her big knee against his skinny one. She smeared sugary pink lipstick over her heavy lips, blackened her brows with a grease pencil. Her boots were higher than Billy's. She called herself a pirate queen.

“Yeah,” he said. “Oh, yes. I'm crazy.”

She rubbed his knee with hers. The old nervousness came to him, the breathless trapped sensation. In front, Bix and Larry passed the vodka through the blare of the music. Sometimes it was vodka, sometimes beer. Whatever they could get. Once Dina stole a bottle of crème dè menthe from her father, and Billy and Larry vomited green along three miles of road.

“Hey, boys, can a lady get a drink around here?” Dina said. Larry handed her the bottle. Bix sat straight-armed at the wheel, silent and murderously blissful. He was the one with the meanness in him. Night flashed by, with its insects and its threads of deeper and lesser black.

When Dina had had her swig of vodka and passed the bottle to Billy, she left the taste of her lipstick. Billy watched the shaggy brown curve of Bix's head. He filled his mouth with vodka and felt the burn, the little explosion. He kept himself from screaming with the pure rush and happiness of it. The future kept coming and coming.

“Car ballet,” he said. “Time for stunts.”

“What kind of stunts?” Larry said. He had the worst skin, the least complicated sweetness. He gave you things you never asked for. His hair model was Keith Richards.

“Figure eights,” Billy said. He sat up, put his head between Bix's and Larry's. He put his head deeper into the music. On the dashboard, dials and numbers made their hushed glow. Tree trunks hurdled past.

“Figure eights,” Billy said again, handing the bottle to Larry.

Bix swerved to the far side of the road and back again. The tires made their protest, a clean swiping sound.

“Figure S,” Bix said. “Just warming up.”

Bix had a military brain. He aimed himself at the world like a torpedo.

“Don't you boys hog that bottle up there,” Dina said.

“Let's go crazy,” Billy said into Bix's ear. The motion had given him a hard-on. He loved Bix and feared him. A low branch brushed the car like a gigantic wing.

“Wow,” Larry said.

“Girl could die of thirst,” Dina said. Her perfume was everywhere.

“How crazy?” Bix asked. He gave the bottle back to Billy.

“We been on this road too long,” Billy answered. “Let's fly.”

“Fly? You want to fly?”

“Yeah. Oh, yes.”

“Right. Here goes.”

Bix hit the brakes and turned sharply. The car bottomed into a ditch, then bounced up again. Drops of vodka flew glistening into Billy's face. A stick cracked under the axle, loud as a broken bone.

“Whoa,” Larry said.

The car bounced a second time, then settled itself. They were in a field. The headlights showed the field going on until it met a stand of thin, shocked-looking trees.

Billy whooped. Dina screamed, “What's happening?”

“Figure eights,” Billy hollered. “Come on.” He put the bottle to Bix's lips, tilted it. Vodka poured into Bix's mouth and down his shirt. Bix revved the engine and the car shot forward, headlights shining into knee-high grass.

“Whoa, far out,” Larry said with an appreciative smile. Dina put her hand on Billy's shoulder. She wore six rings. Some were silver, some plastic.

“Where are we?” she said. Her voice was thick with the vodka.

“We're in space,” Billy told her. “We're flying.”

The DJ, sitting somewhere in music and electric light, played “Ruby Tuesday.”

“This is dangerous,” Dina said.

“I know.”

Bix steered the Ford in a wide arc. Darkness and a rank green smell blew in through the windows. The axles bumped in the ruts so hard they couldn't get the bottle to their mouths. Grass and trees and wedges of night sky tilted in the headlights. Billy laughed, and Dina laughed, too.

“Figure eight,” Bix said with the suave cruelty of a bomber pilot. Billy's heart swelled. He told himself he was in love with crazy motion.

“Yeah,” he said. Because he couldn't get the bottle to Bix's lips he poured a splash of vodka over his head. Billy felt the edge of the world, the harsh blossoming happiness that moved too fast for ordinary life. Only when you raced, only when you took the risks, could you enter this other dimension that shot through time and space at triple speed.

Larry hummed the “Blue Danube Waltz.” “Da da da da da, taa taa, taa taa.”

“Go,” Billy screamed. “Go go go go go.”

The cow came from nowhere. They swerved into the final loop of their figure eight and there it was, black and white, big as an oncoming car. Billy saw its shining black eye. He saw its nicked white ear. He screamed. Larry screamed. Bix cranked the wheel and the car jackknifed with a shrill mechanical screech. Dirt sprayed up through the windows. Billy's eyes and mouth were filled with dirt. The car skidded, lurched, and stopped so suddenly Billy was thrown into the front seat. He couldn't see. He felt his forehead crack against something that wasn't hard and wasn't soft. A splinter of a dream flashed inside his head: a desert sandstorm with a dark, cloaked figure running through it. Mick Jagger sang, “Who could hang a name on you?”

A silence came up under the music, a steaming windy silence.

Billy blinked, rubbed the dirt from his eyes, blinked again. He saw that he was lying on his stomach, looking down at a boot. A brown work boot. Bix's. He turned around and looked up at Bix.

Bix still sat behind the wheel, smiling and bleeding.

“Shit.” Bix grinned. “Sweet shitting mother of Christ.”

Billy saw that he was lying on the front seat with his head under the dashboard. Bix and Larry were still in their seats. Dina sat blinking in the back with a confused but polite expression, as if the conversation had turned to a topic she didn't fully understand.

“A wreck,” Billy said. “We had a wreck.”

“Wow.”

“Shit. Sweet Jesus.” Bix chuckled. Lines of blood ran freely down his forehead. A garnet-colored drop trembled on his nose.

“Bix, you got hurt,” Billy said.

“I did?”

“Man, you're bleeding.”

“I am?”

“The car could blow up,” Billy said. “Don't crashed cars blow up?”

“I don't know.”

“We better get out of here. Come on.”

Everyone remained utterly still, as if they had all suddenly realized that the car was balanced on the edge of a cliff and any movement could send it toppling into the abyss. Bix remained with his hands on the wheel, smiling and bleeding majestically. Larry looked forward with his habitual expression of good-natured awe, and Dina continued to sit, polite and confused as a great-grandmother, in the back seat.

Billy said, “Move. It's going to blow up.” They all scrambled out into the altered night, the settling whirlwind of dirt. Billy ran a half dozen paces, then turned. Dina was behind him. Bix and Larry had run the other way. The car stood at an angle, its nose in a ditch and its rear wheels a foot off the ground. It was, at once, both titanic and pathetic.

“God,” Dina breathed. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “I just bumped my head a little. Bix is the one who's hurt. Hey, Bix.”

Billy ran to the far side of the wreck, where Bix and Larry stood in attitudes of calm appraisal, hands fisted on their hips. “Unbelievable,” Larry said.

“Bix,” Billy said. “Hey. Let me see your head.”

Bix put his hand to his forehead with a certain reverence, as if his wound was something precious. “It's okay,” he said. “I just knocked against the wheel a little.” When he brought his hand down the fingers were slick with blood. He smiled.

“We flew,” he said.

“Yeah,” Billy said. He stood close to Bix. He could smell the blood, mixed with grass and the faintly fried odor of Bix himself. “You sure you're all right?”

“Never better. You?”

“I'm okay. A little bump.”

Bix looked at his bloodied fingers. He put his hand to Billy's forehead and made a slow, deliberate circle.

“War paint,” he said.

Billy's forehead tingled. He was wearing Bix's blood. Dina, the pirate queen, came up whitely from across the field.

“God,” she said. “Are we all right? What was that that happened?”

“We lived,” Billy said, and he felt the thrill rising in his voice. “We all lived.”

“We wrecked Bix's father's car,” Dina said.

“It isn't wrecked,” Bix said. “I bet we can push it out of that ditch.”

“Wait a second,” Larry said. He ran back to the car.

“Don't,” Billy called. “It's going to blow.”

Bix started to laugh. Then Billy started, then Dina did. Larry went into the car and came out again with the vodka bottle. “There's still some in here,” he called.

“It's a miracle.” Billy laughed.

“Look.” Dina pointed. Her rings put out a dull flash. Fifty yards away the cow stood placidly, staring at them. Billy yelped with laughter. Bix pounded his back. Billy fell in the grass and Bix tumbled onto him. Billy smelled the blood and the crisp personal essence of Bix. Billy was laughing so hard he could barely breathe. He had a hard-on. Larry took a sip of the vodka, passed the bottle around. When it was empty Bix stood up and threw it at the cow. The bottle fell thirty yards short, and broke against a stone. The cow didn't move.

“Argh,” Bix hollered. He smeared both his hands with blood from his forehead and went running at the cow, screaming and waving his hands. As he watched Bix run toward the cow Billy was overcome with a feeling of recognition. There was the car at its crazy angle, still playing music, its headlights illuminating the ground. There was the spotted cow and there was Bix, running bloody and ecstatic in his army jacket. It was not dèjà vu. Billy didn't feel as if he'd seen all this before. He felt instead that it had been waiting for him, this strange perfection, and now that he was seeing it he was becoming someone new, someone particular, after the long confusion of his childhood. A surge rose in him and, with a whoop, he jumped up and ran after Bix. The earth was soft and uneven under his boots and he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting. He caught up with Bix just as the cow turned, with a disgruntled moan, and trotted away. He and Bix chased it until it broke into an ungainly swaying lope that had no true element of haste. The cow was just placid appetite moving, temporarily, at a faster rate. Billy and Bix kept chasing it, screaming, until at the same instant, with a singular accord, they stopped and stood screaming at one another. Bix's face was wild and shining, streaked with blood. They screamed, and something invisible happened. An enormous love arced and crackled between them. Billy stopped screaming. He stood, mute and suddenly frightened. Bix looked at him with no expression, with a face gone blank and stupid as a statue's. Then he turned and ran back to the car. Billy stood alone in the grass, with passion and fear turning hugely inside him. Bix took the moment away and Billy ran after him, greedy for more of whatever could happen. When he and Bix reached the others they all fell briefly into a spasmodic, gleeful dance. The radio played “Light My Fire.” The moment filled everything. It seemed, somehow, that they'd won some kind of victory.

When the song ended they all sat down in the grass. Crickets buzzed, and the DJ played “Incense and Peppermints.” Billy touched the place on his forehead where Bix's blood had dried.

“We got to push the car out,” Bix said.

“Think we can?” Billy asked.

“Yeah.”

No one spoke for a while. Dina sat close to Billy, pulling up handfuls of grass, and he watched Bix. Bix was silent and fierce. He had a soldierly self-containment. Billy's heart swelled. He'd do anything, suffer any loss.

“We flew,” he said. His voice sounded smaller than he'd expected it to. He was aware of the sky—pale stars and the flashing red lights of a plane. The now started to shrink. A whistling, windy nowhere wanted to return.

“We fucking flew,” he said.

Bix stood up. He had square shoulders and a graceful, weighted way of standing. He stood as if his pockets were full of stones.

“Come on,” he said. “We got to get that goddamn car out.”

By pushing on the front fenders, they were able to inch the car out of the ditch, as Bix had predicted. He slid into the driver's seat and, after several tries, got the engine to turn over. There was no damage. A quiet caught and held. Something had ended, at least for the night. There was no damage. Larry got into the front seat, Billy and Dina into the back. Bix steered the Ford back onto the road.

“Some night,” Billy said.

“Far out,” Larry said. Bix and Dina didn't speak. Billy wasn't ready for the nowhere yet.

“I think I need a little more war paint,” he said. He reached over and touched the blood on Bix's cheek. Bix cuffed him with the back of his hand. He caught Billy on the chin, snapped his head back. The car veered to the far side of the road