Holding Pattern (4 page)

The cab slowed and felled his desires. Slim currents of traffic congealed into a thick pool up ahead. The taxi advanced an inch or two every few minutes. The El’s skeletal structure rose several stories above them. An occasional train rumbled by and shook the cab and mocked his frail yearning. He looked out the window to vent his anger. A good ways off he could discern a woman standing in a building doorway, a guitar strapped to her body and a coffee can at her gym-shoed feet. Coatless, in a checkered cotton dress, her bare muscular legs as firm as the El’s pylons in the bitter cold. She kept rhythm with one foot, while some lensed smiling face rose or fell with each stroke of the guitar.

He shouldered the cab door open and started through the street, his boots breaking through snow at each step, and traffic so thick he had to squeeze between the cars. Wind tried to push him back, and the fat snowsuit wedged between two parked cars. But he freed himself from the moment and thought of his mother and thought of his father and thought of the preacher and thought of Blunt and fancy clothes and contact lenses and lahzonyah and smiles and promises.

Hatch! Mamma shouted after him, her voice distant, weak, deformed, small, dwarfish, alien. Intent on his target, he moved like a tank in his armored snowsuit, smooth heavy unstoppable anger. Close now. Blunt framed in the doorway, his face trained on her guitar. Her hair was not long and flowing and silver but knotted in a colorless bun. Her eyes were not green or blue or brown or gray but a dull black. She shut them. Aimed her pug nose, arrowlike, at the El platform. Snapped open her mouth.

Quick legs, he stepped up onto the curb and almost tilted over in the heavy snowsuit. He kicked the coffee can like a football, coins rising and falling like metal snow, then crouched low and charged like a bull. He felt wood give under his head and loose splinters claw his face. He fought to keep his balance, loose coins under his feet, and in the same instant found himself flailing his hands and arms against Blunt’s rubber-hard hips and legs. Gravity wrestled him down. Dazed, he shook his head clear, gathered himself in a scattering moment, and looked up at Blunt. Her lined face. Her pug nose. Her stork mouth. And the strapped guitar that hung from her body—broken wood, twisted wire, useless metal—like some ship that had crashed into a lurking giant.

His eyes met hers, black, stunned. Wait, she said. You don’t understand. She shook her head. You don’t—

I hate you! he screamed. I hate you! Concrete shoved him to his feet. I hate you! Brutal wind pulled him into motion and led him as if he were leashed. Down the sidewalk, beyond the El’s steel pylons, through warped, unfamiliar streets.

Through a window fogged with his breath, Hatch can see the first and last cars at once as the train curls slowly around the mountain, a giant horseshoe, the other cars—he counts them—like a string of scattered islands, an archipelago. In the green valley below, grass ducks under bladed wind, and trees are naked for all to see, their skinny arms pointing in jumbled directions. The mountain curves up from the valley in a range of stony ridges like knuckles and joints, a peach fuzz of morning light growing from them. Up ahead, the engine disappears into a tunnel, followed by one car, then another. A steady rush of squeezing darkness.

Boy, take this here jar of applesauce to Mr. John Brown. Blunt held out a mason jar, in conventional use a container for storing fruit but in Hatch’s hands a glass zoo for displaying fireflies, holes punched in the lid, metal gills.

Yes’m. His grandmother often entrusted him with such errands.

Free of her, he unscrewed the lid and dipped his finger in for a taste. Moist sauce made from apples fresh from Blunt’s yard. He walked past John Brown’s old red pickup truck, parked on the gravel road, as still as his gray metal mailbox with its little red metal flag. He unlatched the chain-link gate and entered the tree-shadowed yard. He sensed tingling animal smell.

John Brown’s house was exactly like Blunt’s—except that hers was green and white, his blue and white—a long and wide cereal box knocked flat. Hatch banged on the door with practical knowledge. John Brown was hard of hearing. Almost immediately, the door wedged open, inner light spilling out, as if John Brown had been awaiting him in his heavy black shoes, dark brown slacks with sharp creases like raised tents, and crisp white shirt ringed with sweat under the armpits. John Brown poked out his head. A long narrow wasplike face. Hair cropped close, watermelon meat chewed down to the rind. Oil glistening on the scalp. Walnut-colored skin that brightened like a lightning bug in the sun. Hardly a trace of eyebrow, just two dirty smudges. Toothless mouth, puckered, drawstring tight. Razor-slit eyes. Expectant shine.

Blunt send you some applesauce. He screamed the words. She need to send two or three more jars. John Brown was starvation skinny, on the verge of disappearing.

He took the mason jar. Boy, tell Miss Pulliam I thank her kindly.

Yes, suh— But John Brown had already slammed the door shut, bringing a showering of dust down from the porch roof.

Miss Bee pulled a lump of snuff from her mouth and patted it on his cheek. He closed his eyes at the pain.

Hold it in place.

It hurt.

Hold it in place.

He did as instructed, felt his cheek rising under his fingers, swollen like an overstuffed nest.

Keep it on there two hours.

Yes’m.

Two hours.

Yes’m.

If it’s not better in the morning, I guess we’ll have to amputate.

His mouth went tight with concentration.

And keep away from them hedges.

Bent forward in his padded adult-sized seat, he feels light move like hands up and down his back, his face hot with friction against the window’s baked vibrating glass. For as far as he can see, sun covers the world, as thick as honey, a warm buttery yellow over candy-colored houses. Midgets slosh through the valley in rhythmic black duck boots. He is certain that they are singing. A hunting song. They aim their rifles at the sky—a bright shimmering pink—hammers cocked.

Light splinters against the glass and brings a sense of space into the cramped coach. He studies a line of mountains—he has seen many mountains today—and, beyond the mountains, pure distance, until a stiff breeze pushes against the window and breaks his concentration. It continues, a violent rhythm pounding for entry.

Topped with off-white shades and hanging fringes, antique lamps cast soft triangular glow, fine radiance suspended like spiderwebs in the corners. Miss Bee’s store was so dim you had to carry light in from outside, massage it into your eyes. The store proper was pushed back to the farthest room of the house, money hidden in a drawer. A cigar box and a pad and pencil served as Miss Bee’s cash register. An old display case as her counter. Rolls of belly fat pushed her inches from its edge. This woman, akin to no other. Hamster-fat cheeks stuffed with snuff under the constant violence of big greedy horse teeth. She watched you with big round-lidded frog eyes, her face framed by two long skinny snakelike braids. The smell inside the house-store the same as that outside: chicken shit and the stinking ghosts of unborn chicks. Miss Bee had a rooster to crow for day, and plenty of noisy chickens running about her yard, pecking secret codes into the dirt. Every now and then, some lone fowl would escape and wander out onto the gravel road, and you would chase it down.

Thank you, boy. Now, pick you out a sucka.

Thank you, ma’am. That one there.

You a good boy, ain’t you?

Yes’m.

Miss Bee released a space-filling laugh.

She would come to your grandmother’s house smelling like chicken and bearing gifts of food: turdlike yams, runny mashed potatoes, gummy pound cake, warmed-over greens, or a green egg—tree growing inside—from the green womb of one of her hens.

You would crack the eggs and pour the yolks into a big bowl of milk. Blunt would fork bread into the mixture, then fry the slices in a popping skillet. You ate six slices of green French toast and six strips of bacon in a puddle of thick syrup. Chewed slowly, seeking out words in the yeast and meat.

A rattle of rain, hard, slamming, glancing with wind, big crystal-like drops shattering against the window. Then bright light spoking through the clouds. A rainbow formed, a pot of gold at either end to weigh it down, keep it earthbound. Leprechauns leaped at the colored bands with open hands.

Seated inside the deep tub, he extended his arms winglike, grabbed the hard enamel sides, and tried to pilot the vessel forward. The claw-feet dug porcelain talons into the bathroom tiles.

Boy, soap yo rag real good. Blunt stood near the sink, a big washcloth folded over her palm and hanging down to her forearm like loose pizza dough.

Yes’m.

And soap that rag good over yo whole body.

Yes’m.

And be sure to wash yo elephant snout.

He set three quarters ringing on the counter. Miss Bee’s eyes wandered round in her head. Should he slap them still? He wanted to.

Blunt want some bread.

Miss Bee fetched the bread.

He slapped a nickel on the counter. And give me one of them suckas. Strawberry.

Miss Bee looked him full in the face. Boy, where yo manners?

Ma’am?

Give me.

Sorry, ma’am. May I have a sucka? Please.

Miss Bee dug inside her nose, pulled her finger free, and with the same booger finger shoveled a plastic-wrapped sucker out of the box.

Broccoli-like clumps of squat tightly leaved trees and lanky palms—or so he figures; flora not native to this part of the country, the world—prodigious fronds spilling down like dreadlocks, floppy dog ears. Then black ink-lined trees traced on a thin gray-and-pink-cloud sky. Other trees in the valley, heavy with birds—he discovers three or four rare finds, new species, never before recorded by man—photo-still cows, and white houses hemmed in by blue sky, shining, naked bulbs. He fidgets in his seat, hard to keep still. A big sleek silver bird with streamlined feathers and sparkling talons lifts off into sky against the wind’s resistant slap, light forming a bright badge of achievement on its breast. Earth cannot restrain it. It flies off to somewhere behind the sun.

A farmer leads a lone cow off into a clump of bushes while the other cows stand and look on. Hatch sings,

He turns his eyes away from the sight. Sealed in, coach sounds.

And get out that road. Blunt snapped her umbrella open to ward off the sun. He moved under its shade and watched Blunt, her false teeth as bright as cell bars, dead person’s hair concealing gray wire springs poking from her bald scalp. Not in use, the fake hair covered a white faceless squeaking Styrofoam head, like a bird perched in a tree, waiting to lift up its hairy wings and flap away. Mouth free, the teeth slept at the bottom of a mason jar like some strange fish.

Just up the road, John Brown sat on his porch, a look of worry creasing his face. It was a rare sight to see him unguarded in the open. His house was a fort, with squat flowerpots under every window—booby-trapped sentinels—and padded curtains. Even the sun was not welcome. A rare sight indeed. You might spy him in his yard, mowing down millions of green aliens with his ancient cutting machine. Blunt greeted him gladly in the hot afternoon. How you dooch?

Fine.

All right. Boy, where yo manners?

How you, John Brown? Hatch leaned out from the umbrella into the sun.

Fine, boy. Jus fine.

Hatch pepped up his step, the sun circling overhead, heat rising from the ground through his sneakers. Trucks and cars went speeding past—the drivers finding time to wave—rippling the heavy blanket of heat, but the air that circulated was no cooler. Blunt hard-breathed behind him.

Boy, slow down. You catch heatstroke.

Yes’m.

And get back in this shade.

Feet raised and her head arched back—chair and body, a curve of wave—Mamma sleeps beside him, lips quivering with the drive of her snoring, breath regulating itself, deep and slow, lines bunched on her forehead. Windows throw even shadows on her face, moving, a tiny black train. Her mouth makes a swampy sound. He builds a nest around her. Piles high all the reasons she should stay.

I wanna shake.

Miss Bee make you a shake.

Nawl. I wanna go to Chinaman’s.

Go on to Miss Bee.

I don’t want no Miss Bee shake.

Boy, why you so hardheaded?

Hatch watched his feet. He could kick her.

Spoiled. Just spoiled. She done spoiled you.

His line of sight traveled the floor to her sandaled toes, the corns like tiny missiles.

Here. Blunt put the dollar in his palm. You get yo float, but you go to Miss Bee and buy some dranks.

I don’t want no pop. Want some tea.

Don’t be so hard-headed.

Suitcases in hand, they moved slowly through the station, their heels clicking on the tiled floor. He stepped over a puddle of saliva. How come Blunt baptize her teeth?

What?

How come she wear dead hair? He watched the tight purse of Mamma’s lips.

Sometimes you think of the silliest things.

They moved through the station, the air heavy and white, coating the tongue and lips like milk, light sifting through the cloth-shaded windows like flour. Mamma’s head bobbed up and down from fatigue.

You need a break, he said. You need rest.

She did not answer.

Blunt smiled as they stepped out the station—an ancient woman, by Hatch’s most recent calculations, a bundle of dried sticks brittle to the touch.

The next morning, Mamma woke with a nosebleed from the heat.