Flesh and Bone (13 page)

Embers rise from the fire pit, challenging the stars in the dark sky. Dawn is still hours off, but I'm ready to lie down and close my eyes, only this is my field and I have to be the last one to pass out. I have to make sure the fire doesn't spread. It's my job to make sure no one dies.

“Back home,” Mina says. “We build fires on the beach and watch the waves.”

There are no waves here, no water. Even the creek is too far away to hear. Renee rests her head on Mina's shoulder. Bekah kisses me. Richie lies down next to the fire, not moving, not talking. Ed closes her eyes. People are drifting to their cars and driving into the night.

“Back home,” Mina says. “It's all work and snow and ice. I was hoping to enjoy the summer here.”

We're all looking forward to the summer. We want to swim in the lake, work the hours we have to work, stay up late and not worry about having to finish our homework or getting up in the morning early enough to make it to school. Come summer, we'll all be kids again. Our days'll not be cut into chunks of classes. We'll smoke and drink and play. We'll be free, if only for a while.

“Back home,” Mina says. “We don't know how to say goodbye.”

S
COTTIE'S IS A
little restaurant on the edge of town, small and greasy and old. It's been there since Mom went to school here. She used to come here when she was younger. Now she and Bobby take me out for a burger. Bobby holds the door and we find a booth in the back of the room so Bobby can sit with his back to the wall. Bobby gets nervous if he can't keep an eye on people coming and going.

“I really like your mom,” he says.

I don't know what to say to that. It doesn't matter to me that he likes Mom. I like her too, but she seems to like Bobby better. She's always going out with him. This is him trying to be my friend. I don't need his friendship. He's old. I have friends my own age. I have people I like to spend time with. Bobby wants me to like him because he's fucking Mom. Mom wants me to like him so she won't feel so guilty about being gone all of the time.

“She's a special lady,” he says.

I hate the way he talks about her like she's not sitting right next to him. I hate the way he smiles at me when he
talks. I wouldn't have come tonight if it weren't for Mom all but begging me. I'm tired and a little sick. I want to get high, but now the whole night's eaten up with this trip to the diner. I have a little heroin in my room, and it's all I can think about.

“Are you okay with her going out with me?” Bobby asks.

What's it matter? Mom's a grown woman. She's going to fuck who she fucks. I just don't want them getting into my life. I don't want Bobby thinking he has a handle on me just because he's dating my mom. Not even she has a handle on me anymore. I've become kind of independent in the past few months. I don't care what she does as long as it doesn't get in the way of my life.

“I want to respect your feelings,” Bobby says.

My feelings? I have no feelings. I have wants. I have desires, but no feelings. Right now, I want to go home. I'm not hungry and this whole going out for dinner is beginning to wear on me. I have better things to do than sitting in a restaurant with my mom and her boyfriend because they feel guilty about leaving me out.

“I have my own friends,” I say.

“Be nice,” Mom says.

“Just don't knock her up,” I say.

“Jesus.”

“Can we go home now?”

“Probably not a bad idea.”

We get to the car and no one says anything. I light a cigarette and listen to the tobacco burn. I watch the fire burn red and black and wonder what Mom's going to say after Bobby leaves. I wonder if there's going to be a fight. There's always a fight coming it seems. All that matters is the heroin in my room waiting for me to lie alone in my bed and drift into soft dreams. That's all I want, soft dreams. I don't want to worry about my mom's boyfriend. I don't want to worry about being in love. I don't want to worry about sex or no sex. With just a touch of heroin, I can pass out and the whole world'll leave me be for a few hours. That's enough for me. Just a few hours. Please. It's not a lot to ask for.

N
IGHTMARES FOLD AND
unfold. People without faces, only mouths and hands, grab and bite away pieces of me. They chase me over uneven ground. I fall and rise and fall again.

I know it's only a dream, but I cannot force myself to wake. So I run and stumble. Fear ratchets along my bones, through my muscles.

But then it happens. I wake. I wake, but I can't move. Sleep has slipped away, but my body's not my own. I'm frozen to the mattress. Right when I'm sure I've stroked out or something, I can move again, first my fingers and feet, then the muscles of my legs and arms. My eyes open and I lie there staring at the wall, waiting for the dreams to wash away. But the longer I wait, the more anxious I get. Pretty soon my heart's fluttering in my chest and I can't breathe, so I sit up. My legs cramp, so I get out of bed and dress and walk out to the living room.

There is no light in the living room. There is nothing but shadows, especially in the corners and the edges where the furniture meets the floor. I light a cigarette and sprawl
on the couch and watch the fire burn red and black. Smoke rises into my eyes and tears run down my cheeks. Sitting like this is not good. I think of killing myself. Suicide seems not only possible, but likely.

I smoke a little heroin and rush to the porch and puke into the tulips growing there red and white. Euphoria washes over me. I nod on the couch, curled with my face buried in the cushions. My skin seems ready to fall from my bones. My bones bend and stretch. Nothing can hurt me now. Something like sleep, but not sleep, comes over me. I float and drift around the room. If I look over my shoulder, I can see myself lying on the couch, comfortable and warm. I'm up in the corner of the room, sharing space with cobwebs when Mom comes home.

“What's the smell?” she asks.

“Smell?”

“Like something burning.”

“I dropped my cigarette.”

She looks at me like she knows I'm lying but she can't prove it. I wouldn't argue with her if she decided to call me on it, but she doesn't.

“What're you doing up?” she asks.

“Nightmares.”

“Again?”

“They come and go.”

“We have to do something about that,” she says.

She has no idea that I've found the perfect drug for it. She won't ever know about the heroin, the Vicodin I take. Some things are just meant to be secret.

“Do you need anything?” she asks.

“I'm going back to bed.”

“Good idea.”

I rise and move with the grace of the thoroughly stoned, careful to put one foot down before lifting the other. In my bedroom, I collapse on the bed and let the heroin run its course. I melt into the blankets. I am water. I am wind.

I
N THE BASEMENT
at Richie's place, we smoke pot and stare at the black light mounted on the table so that everything white glows purple. It's a strange thing to watch people's eyes moving in their sockets, reflecting the light back like a cat caught in a flashlight. Their teeth seem alien to me. Renee takes her shirt off and her white bra blazes.

Jefferson Airplane bounces out of the stereo. No one dances. No one wants to dance. We sprawl all over the couch on the floor. No one moves. The whole world burns around us and there's nothing we can do.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Go where?” Ed asks.

“Home.”

“I thought you were staying the night,” Richie says.

“I was.”

“But you're not now?”

“Not now.”

I have to get out of here. There are too many people here. Noises seep from the walls. Red and silver pollywogs swim over everything. I can't breathe. I have to go.

Now that I've made up my mind, I move with a purpose. I stumble through the room and up the stairs. No one stops me. No one says anything. Outside, night has come. I walk through the neighborhood. Houses rise like stumps over me, windows bright and yellow. People go about their business. Part of me wonders why they have to stare. I can feel their eyes pressing against my skin. Their judgments are loud and condemning. I've done nothing wrong, but they still watch me.

Down by the park, there's a tree that I have to climb. I mean, I can't go home. It's too far away and I'm too stoned to deal with Grandma or even Mom. I have to walk some of this shit off. I have to climb above and there's a white oak down by the park waiting for me to come climb it.

The bark is rough on my hands. I hug the tree, inching up to grab the lowest branch. The rest is easy. Up and up I go. I climb until the limbs become too thin to hold me. I sit and watch the cars. I light a cigarette and wait. Someone will come for me soon. The tree sways and dances with me in its arms. I wait and wait and no one comes. Minutes feel like hours. I have to move again, but getting into the tree is easier than getting out. I could just
jump, but then I'd ricochet from branch to branch, probably breaking something, definitely bruising myself. I don't need any bruises. My hands are already scraped and raw.

A cop finds me hanging from a branch and stands under the tree waiting for me to drop, but the space from the ground to my feet seems deadly to me. Maybe I'll just hang here a while. The cop shines his light up at me and my eyes start to water and my hands slip and down I go. I land in the grass and roll onto my back.

“How you doing?” the cop asks.

I shrug.

“Do you know what time it is?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“It's nearly midnight,” he says.

“Really?”

“The park closes at dusk,” he says.

“Oh.”

“What were you doing up there?”

“Hanging out.”

“No shit,” he says.

“I need to get home.”

“Not a bad idea,” he says.

“I need to call my mom to come pick me up,” I say.

“Where do you live?”

“Gales Creek,” I say. “Out in the country.”

“You need a ride?”

“I need a ride.”

“Come on,” he says and we walk to his car. “You have to sit in the front.”

I get in and stare at all the lights and screens, the switches and knobs.

“Are you going to talk to my mom?” I ask.

“Do I need to?”

“I hope not.”

“I'll let it pass this time.”

“Good,” I say. “I don't want to fight that fight.”

“Me either,” he says.

G
RANDMA STIRS THE
stew and watches the rice simmer. Steam rises from pots and fogs the window over the sink. The kitchen smells of browned meat. String beans wait in the skillet with the garlic and slivered almonds to be sautéed. Rolls bake in the oven.

“Do you miss him?” I ask.

She stops for a second and stares at the wall, but then she starts the beans and the sound of butter melting rises into the room.

“Mornings,” she says. “I wake and he's not there.”

She takes the spatula to the beans. Soon we'll sit down together and eat, just the two of us. Mom's working and after work she's going out with Bobby. Bobby's taking up more and more of her life.

“He hated beans,” she said. “Any kind of bean.”

She doesn't blink. Her voice is even, quiet. The diamond on her finger catches the light and turns blue. She's worn that thing for over forty years. It's only been a few months since Grandpa died. I never saw her cry. I never saw her grieve.

“I'm glad he went first,” she says. “I wouldn't want him to go through this.”

S
UNRISE IS NEARLY
an hour off. Jays and robins scream in the trees, calling up the day. A raccoon ambles through the yard on its way to the woods, its nest and rest. The only light is my cigarette's fire burning black and red.

Thoughts of suicide invade me. I see it happening, like watching a bad b-grade movie in my head. I see the blood and the red muscle sliced through. My wrists imagine the pain, but it's not real pain. It's simply my mind giving me a taste of what it would feel like.

I am alone here and everywhere. Even when there are people with me, I am alone. No one understands the quiet madness filling me with fear, making my stomach ache, my head spin with white noise and vertigo. I have no one to talk to, no way of emptying out the shit that's piled up inside of me.

A truck rattles past on the road, headlights bright in the darkness, cutting through the shadows like a sliver of glass cutting into flesh. Someone is going to work, or maybe coming home. I don't know. It doesn't matter.

I stare down at the yard and tell myself that today I will mow the grass, but I won't. I won't have the energy or the desire to do anything other than lie in bed, or sit on the couch watching television.

Mom'll try to get me to talk. She's been trying to get me to talk for months now. I have nothing to say. If she knew what I'm thinking, she'd have me put away. I cannot stand the thought of being locked up.

My cigarette's done now. I grind the fire out on the step and toss the butt into the can by the door. Inside, I go to the kitchen and make coffee. It'll be hours before anyone wakes. I'll be alone for a while yet. I'll have my thoughts to keep me company; I want to go back to bed. I can't though. There's no room for sleep right now. There's only room for bloody thoughts and coffee, cigarettes and the cool morning air. There's only room for sadness and fear.

B
EER SIGNS AND
posters of men with rifles decorate the truck stop's walls. Truckers sit at the tables. Families come in sometimes and eat, but mostly it's men who run from state to state with freight and produce, with cattle and cars. They drive for a living and eat fried food and smoke too many cigarettes.