Delicately triple-clutching his way into first, Joe said, “Michael, put some Chapstick on those sores.”
“I forgot my Chapstick. But they don’t hurt, honest.” Michael’s main task in life was to try and put everybody at ease by assuring them his mini-leprosy really didn’t hurt at all.
“Check out the glove compartment. Maybe there’s a tube of bacitracin.”
They lurched forward and rocked over the irrigation ditch. By swinging wide and skimming past the woodpile, an old clothesline, and the back of Eloy’s truck, Joe managed to forge a circle and head out in the right direction. Unaccountably, Old Duke, the inventor of canine lethargy, suddenly scrambled erect, barking and snarling, and furiously chased them—slaloming between geese, ducks, wayward turkeys, and flea-bitten tomcats—down the driveway, ordering them never to return.
Heather asked, “Does that dog bite?”
“He’s a killer.” Absentmindedly, Joe reached in his pocket for the notes. “Two days ago he ripped my pants to shreds before I finally beat him away with a log.” Unfolding the larger paper against the steering wheel, he turned it around so the message was rightside up. “They say last year he attacked three little eight-year-old girls skipping through the back field, killing two, and putting the third in the hospital for a month and a half with one leg chewed off at the knee, and her left arm severely mangled.”
“You’re full of it, Daddy.”
The note said:
Dearest Joe,
After the way it has been with us, I don’t see how you can wind up making love with that woman. I know you are a free person, and also a grownup adult, but you must be very careful with her—she has so many negative vibes. And she is the sort that takes energy from you but doesn’t give any back in return. You are such a lovely person and I would hate to see you hurt by her. You’re not a self-destructive person, but she is. I’m sorry if I bothered you by coming over last night—I didn’t mean to intrude. When you love somebody it’s important to let them have their own space. And if you love someone, you should support them in anything they choose to do. So I’m sorry I cried last night, that’s not like me at all. I just hope you are careful, and that I am able to see you soon, for you make me so happy when I am with you.
I miss you terribly,
Nancy
PS Sasha is “critical” still, but listed also as “stable.”
He unfolded the other, slightly more cryptic, epistle:
Miniver, you keep it up,
and you’re dead.
At nine on a school-day morning, Heather now actually had the brass balls to ask: “Daddy, can we go to school by the Seven-Eleven way and stop for an ice cream?”
Joe snorted, facing her almost admiringly. Where had she gotten the panache? “You’re nuts, Heather. After a healthy breakfast of Cocoa Puffs and what—Kool-Aid?—you’re asking me to feed you an Eskimo Pie, a Fudgsicle, a Super Tango, or a … what are those enormous things called, the really hideous, fat, cone-shaped, grisly, blue-colored blobs?”
“Malt Crunch Bombs!”
“Never. You kids are sick. By the time you reach your teens you won’t have any teeth, all your hair will fall out, you’ll have rickets, sickle-cell anemia, and beriberi.”
“Well, at least we need lunch money,” Michael noted.
“If I give you lunch money, you’ll probably ditch school at noon, trot up to the plaza five and dime, and blow it all on Jujyfruits, Pop Rocks, and Gatorade.”
“No we won’t.”
“Bullshit. That’s what I always did as a kid.”
“Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O!” Heather rolled her eyeballs.
A second later, Michael drew Heather into a whispered conference. Emerging from the huddle, Heather said, “Daddy, if you’re not gonna live at home anymore, will you at least come over tonight and wrestle?”
One lesson years of parenting had taught Joe was never, ever tell kids outright, unequivocally, “Yes.” Because they’d hold you to it come hell or high water. They would make you feel so damned guilty about promising something you couldn’t deliver that you’d wind up delivering something you had never meant to promise. The cardinal rule, in answering kiddy requests, was: Always Equivocate.
Joe said, “We’ll see.”
Heather never gave up. “Well, if you can’t come for a wrestle, could you at least drop by and play us some songs when we go to bed?”
“I dunno. Maybe. Can’t say for sure.”
They lapsed into a brief silence that Heather killed. “Daddy, do you believe in the Monkey God?”
“What? Who says?”
“Don’t get a hernia. I was just asking.”
“Nobody in this town just ‘asks’ a question like that.”
Michael said, “Everybody’s talking about the unveiling on Thursday.”
“Who’s everybody? What do you mean?”
“Oh … just people in school,” he said evasively.
“We had monkey cookies at lunch yesterday,” Heather reported self-righteously.
“Monkey cookies? At school?”
“In art all this week we had to draw gorillas and chimpanzees and spider monkeys,” Michael informed him.
Joe was shocked: “They’re not supposed to teach you religion in the schools.”
“Are Hanumans religious?” Heather asked.
“Hanumans…?”
“What is a Hanuman exactly?” Michael wanted to know.
“It’s God disguised as a big monkey,” Heather replied. “And if you don’t believe in him, he punishes you with a stomachache, or takes you to the devil.”
“God doesn’t look like a monkey,” Michael said. “She’s crazy, isn’t she, Dad?”
“God knows karate, smarty-pants.” Heather displayed a feisty fist. “He could knock your teeth out with one little chop.”
“No he couldn’t, could he, Dad? There’s no such thing as God, is there?”
They had been over this a dozen times: Joe never knew exactly what to say. “Well, we don’t happen to believe in God. I mean, not like there’s an actual person up there, you know, an old woman with white hair and a long flowing beard—”
“God’s not a woman!” Heather said. “He’s a man!”
“Nobody knows for sure. God could just as well be a woman as a man. I mean, if there was actually a God at all…”
“Then he could be a monkey if he wanted to, couldn’t he?”
“Don’t interrupt, Heather, or I’ll karate-chop your teeth down your throat.”
“But you just said—”
“Heather, shuttup. I haven’t finished what I was saying.”
Arms folded stubbornly, she couldn’t resist further needling. “Well, what you were saying was dumb.”
Joe said, “Jesus, I hope they pass the Equal Rights Amendment and draft you to go fight in Nicaragua.”
“What’s the Equal Rights Menendent?”
“It’s a law that says women have just as much right to do anything that men are doing. It’ll probably even force us to rewrite the Bible so that God is a hermaphrodite.”
“What’s a maphrodite?”
“A half-man, half-woman thing.”
“With a penis and a vagina?”
How did he get into these things? “I don’t know, I suppose so.”
Michael said, “Then God could fuck himself.”
“Or herself.”
Heather said, “Somebody painted a monkey with a halo over its head in the girl’s lavatory yesterday.”
“Forget the monkey. God isn’t a person, or an animal, or a real being at all. God to me is just a word to mean the essence of everything human. It’s a metaphor for the … for the personality of humanity, I guess.”
Blankly—he’d lost ’em, but fast—they muttered, “Huh.”
“But you don’t want to go around telling people there is no God,” Joe said. “They might not understand. Also, many folks believe in different interpretations of God, and they get upset if you claim there
is no divine critter up there, punching buttons, concocting plagues, guiding wars like a maniacal three-year-old. The whole concept is such a philosophical mare’s nest that the best thing to do is lay low. Don’t worry about religion until you’re old enough to start drinking.”
Heather said, “Well, what about the Hanuman?”
“Forget it. It’s a false idol.”
Michael said, “Tofu Smatterling came up to me yesterday and said if I didn’t say I believed baboons were holy, he would punch me out.”
“What did you reply?” Joe asked angrily.
“What could I say? He’s bigger than me.”
“All this monkey talk is pernicious garbage. Forget it.”
A beat and a half later, Heather opened her fat yap again. “Everybody says you’re fucking a monkey-lover.”
He should have exploded. Instead, he sagged, at a loss for words. You dug this grave, his brain said. Now lie in it.
Embarrassed, Michael said, “You’re really dumb, Heather. Jesus Christ.”
Joe moaned, “Leave her alone, Michael: I asked for it. Now do me a favor and shut up for a minute, okay?”
Heather said, “Before we shut up, can I ask one more question?”
“All right. But just one.”
“Okay. What about angels?”
“I give up. What about them?”
“Is there such a thing?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Well, Sanji Smatterling said he saw this great big ol’ angel hanging out in the Seven-Eleven telephone booth yesterday.”
“Oh Heather, you’re crazy!” Joe guffawed.
“I am not crazy. Am I, Michael?”
Her brother hemmed uncomfortably. “What about when we heard Mr. Irribarren tell us about the angel, Dad?”
“That’s it!” Joe snapped. “Enough! You had your question. Now stifle.”
A quarter-mile later, Joe pulled into a parking lot opposite the ramshackle grammar school, and said, “We’re here. Scram. You’re late.”
“What about lunch money?”
Joe forked over the dough and stepped down. As they piled out the driverside door and raced pell-mell for the building across the potholed street, he yelled, “Wait a minute—how about a kiss good-bye?”
“You didn’t shave,” Heather cackled. “I don’t wanna get my face all scratched.” And then she suddenly flung up her hands, jutted one hip, did a quick jive two-step, launched a mockingly obscene cheer—
“Had a little monkey
Took him to the country
Fed him on gingerbread;
Razzle, dazzle
Kick him in the asshole,
And now my little monkey’s dead!”
—and fled.
Joe settled behind the wheel, closed the door, and faced in the direction they had gone. All at once life seemed overwhelming and hopeless. Sensations of loss and of longing half smothered him. Just possibly, he might never again cohabit day in and day out with his children. After a divorce, Heidi might split. Or he’d move to Altoona for some obscure but inevitable reason. Then he would see his children only occasionally, on a weekend visit, during their summer vacations. How could they survive without Joe around to offer protection, answer their silly questions, provide wishy-washy explanations about Hanumans and God, and condemn them for noshing Cocoa Puffs? His heart threatened to break. He felt like throwing a maudlin drunk. Would he simply, from never being around, fade out of their memories? In later years, would they recall the wrestling matches, the bedtime songs, the weekend nights in sleeping-bag nests when they had watched “Star Trek” together right after the ten o’clock news? How could Michael become a Little League all-star without a father to play catch with? More to the point (feeling sick to his stomach), could he pull through without them?
As always, clutching that enigmatic suitcase, Nick Danger scuttled across the road … but Joe barely noticed.
His vision had blurred: he struggled not to let tears fall. An awareness of his own vulnerability made him shudder. Time for something to eat. Then he’d locate Heidi, sink to his knees, and beg forgiveness. Screw the cocaine—it wasn’t even remotely worth the risks involved. What they shared as a family was precious: how could he have placed it in such jeopardy these past few days?
Joe ripped the monkey-cartoon death-threat note to shreds and dumped the confetti out his window. Trailing a remote aura of menace, Nick Danger disappeared around the corner of a building. Then a bullet-shaped hummingbird zipped through the driverside window, colliding against the passenger door. It flopped backward onto the seat, cold-cocked and not even quivering: its tiny feet, toes splayed, poked up stiffly out of its teeny-weeny tummy.
Never had Joe viewed a hummingbird up close. Timidly, he cupped it in his palm, astonished by the achingly precise workmanship in the minuscule feathers and in the powerful wings. The shiny ruby and olive colors seemed more like the luster of jewels than of a living thing.
Joe waited for a sign. Gradually, the weightless thing quivered, blinked its eyes. A sharp, speedy tongue flicked out one side of the needle-thin bill. Quicker than the eye could catch, the hummer turned over. Beady eyes, no bigger than the gems inside expensive, precision Swiss wristwatches, glared at him, assessing survival chances.
“It’s okay,” Joe soothed. “Go ahead, kid. Fly away. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
Joe blinked his eyes, and justlikethat the broadtail zipped off, so fast he had no clear impression of its departure. There had been no little push as it jumped up, no flutter of wings—nothing, just a lightning-quick “now you see me, now you don’t.”
In the center of his right palm lay the smallest feather he had ever seen, a positively exquisite piece of fluff.
Then a mischievous breeze tooled into the cab, and, although Joe emitted a heartrending “Wait a sec!,” it plucked up the almost microscopic shaft and carried it off to Never-Never Land.
* * *
THE JOGGERS WERE out in full force, huffing and puffing in their rainbow warm-up suits and color-coordinated earmuff AM and FM radios. Probably a fortune could be accumulated insuring automobiles against jogger-related accidents, Joe thought, as he chugged warily toward the Perry Kahn Subdivision # 4. Or vice versa. Every year at least a dozen gasping Chamisaville runners were poleaxed by wayward autos. Especially those with earmuff radios—they never heard any vehicles coming. Too, among joggers, the newest fad form of suicide was veering into the path of an onrushing Pontiac. Also, more and more murders involved first-degree vehicular homicides, as angry husbands and miffed wives nailed their aggravating spouses with the family station wagon while those partners were out Staying Fit in Order to Live Right. A great problem for the insurance companies, in such cases, was that many such acts of mayhem did not result in instant death. Old-style ten-ton wood-paneled Chevy and Ford station wagons would have made perfect murder weapons. But today’s lightweight Toyotas and Datsuns lacked real killing power: and murder attempts often resulted in agonizing manglings, vegetablizations, and other similarly gruesome injuries that stopped short of death and entailed years of lingering hospitalizations (and litigations) that could break even the wealthiest insurance conglomerate.
On Santistevan Lane, a crew of eight hardhats, manning a bilge pump, two jackhammers, a portable generator, and a backhoe, had gathered around a large cavity out of which steam and irregular burps of sewage water flowed. Joe braked, steering into the Guadalupe church parking lot where he managed to forge a circle, arriving back on the artery headed in another direction. Placitas Road seemed like his best bet for an alternative route across town. But it was soon blocked off by an enormous machine laying down a hot mix. The machine was followed by two gravel trucks and a large four-wheeled iron roller flattening the hot mix, trailed by a bulldozer gouging up the just-laid macadam. Joe braked again, executing a hairy U-turn that almost landed him in a ditch. He idled momentarily, aimed west yet staring east at the simultaneous road-building-and-destroying operation, trying to und
erstand the paradox. Then he guessed that LeDoux Street might land him across the North-South Highway. Thirty yards short of his goal, however, even that innocuous and seldom-used path was blocked off by a crew of fifteen men, a bulldozer, a large watering truck, a backhoe, and a crane attempting to set a concrete four-way sewerline-junction-fitting into the flooded earth.
Chamisaville had a semifunctional new sewage plant in Ranchitos Abajo, completed two autumns ago. Already, it was badly oversubscribed. But recently the city fathers had wangled a half-million dollars for sewage-system expansion. The project entailed placing sixty miles of trunk lines underground: the construction involved had staggered the picturesque little village around the clock for the past year. Of course, once the trunk lines were buried, both private citizens and municipal organizations would be forbidden by federal law to hook into it, given the inadequate capacity of the new sewage plant. The plant itself could not be expanded, however, because the valley’s rapidly depleting water table could not be tapped any further to form additional fecal slurry necessary for moving more shit.
Joe was only a mile from the plaza. But to get there, now, he aimed south along Suicide Lane, driving two miles down through the Perry Kahn Subdivision # 6. At the Our Lady of the Sorrows Hospital on Valverde he turned left and hung another louie a scant half-mile later, onto the North-South Highway. There, due to a jam created by a cement mixer and six men fashioning a totally useless, surfboard-shaped island in the middle of the road, Joe had to turn right onto a Santistevan Street detour. On Santistevan, the bumper-to-bumper traffic was completely veiled in a thick, dusty smog. Last week, in the Chamisaville News, Joe had read that this picturesque little town, in clear Rocky Mountain air at seven thousand feet, was one of the state’s four most polluted areas. Its airborne particulate poisons rated favorably with the air over two uranium mines, an open-pit copper operation, and a power-plant complex whose pollution had been the only man-made crap visible to the first astronauts circling the globe.
A perfect environment for asthma!
* * *
REGULARS DOMINATED the Prince of Whales when Joe stopped for breakfast. Silhouetted in the doorway, he wondered whether to enter, sit down, and make believe nothing had happened, or turn heel and flee. For when, responding to the doorbell’s jangle, everybody (in unison) glanced up with varying degrees of recognition, Joe suddenly thought: I’ve become one of the lead clowns in this circus.