Stories (2011) (7 page)

He walked up behind her and said. "It sure is,
sugar." and he hit her in the head with the pan. It gave a real solid
ring, kind of like the clap of a sweet church bell. He figured that one shot to
the bean was sufficient, since it was a good overhand lick, but she was still
sitting up and he didn't want to be no slacker about things, so he hit her a
couple more times, and by the second time, her head didn't give a ring, just
sort of a dull thump, like he was hitting a thick, rubber bag full of mud.

She fell over on what was left of her head and her butt
cocked up in the air, exposed as the sheet fell down her back. He took a long
look at it, but found he wasn't interested in doing what animals do without sin
anymore. All that hitting on the Widow Case and Cinderella had tuckered him
out.

He pulled his arm way back, tossed the frying pan with all
his might toward the lake. It went in with a soft splash. He turned back toward
the house and his car, and when he got out to the road, he cranked up the Dodge
and drove away noticing that the Halloween sky was looking blacker. It was
because the moon had slipped behind some dark clouds. He thought it looked like
a suffering face behind a veil, and as he drove away from the Case's, he stuck
his head out the window for a better look. By the time he made the hill that
dipped down toward Highway 80, the clouds had passed along, and he'd come to
see it more as a happy jack-o-lantern than a sad face, and he took that as a
sign that he had done well.

From the Journal of Paul
Marder

(Boom!)

That's a little scientist joke, and the proper way to begin
this. As for the purpose of my notebook, I'm uncertain. Perhaps to organize my
thoughts and not to go insane.

No. Probably so I can read it and feel as if I'm being
spoken to. Maybe neither of those reasons. It doesn't matter. I just want to do
it, and that is enough.

What's new?

Well, Mr. Journal, after all these years I've taken up
martial arts again--or at least the forms and calisthenics of Tae Kwon Do.
There is no one to spar with here in the lighthouse, so the forms have to do.

There is Mary, of course, but she keeps all her sparring
verbal. And as of late, there is not even that. I long for her to call me a
sonofabitch. Anything. Her hatred of me has cured to 100% perfection and she no
longer finds it necessary to speak. The tight lines around her eyes and mouth,
the emotional heat that radiates from her body like a dreadful cold sore
looking for a place to lie down is voice enough for hen She lives only for the
moment when she (the cold sore) can attach herself to me with her needles, ink
and thread. She lives only for the design on my back.

That's all I live for as well. Mary adds to it nightly and I
enjoy the pain. The tattoo is of a great, blue mushroom cloud, and in the
cloud, etched ghost-like, is the face of our daughter, Rae. Her lips are drawn
tight, eyes are closed and there are stitches deeply pulled to simulate the
lashes. When I move fast and hard they rip slightly and Rae cries bloody tears.

That's one reason for the martial arts. The hard practice of
them helps me to tear the stitches so my daughter can cry. Tears are the only
thing I can give her.

Each night I bare my back eagerly to Mary and her needles.
She pokes deep and I moan in pain as she moans in ecstasy and hatred. She adds
more color to the design, works with brutal precision to bring Rae's face out
in sharper relief.

After ten minutes she tires and will work no more. She puts
the tools away and I go to the full4ength mirror on the wall. The lantern on
the shelf flickers like a jack-o-lantern in a high wind, but there is enough
light for me to look over my shoulder and examine the tattoo. And it is
beautiful. Better each night as Rae's face becomes more and more defined.

Rae.

Rae. God, can you forgive me, sweetheart?

But the pain of the needles, wonderful and cleansing as they
are, is not enough.

So I go sliding, kicking and punching along the walkway
around the lighthouse, feeling Rae's red tears running down my spine, gathering
in the waistband of my much-stained canvas pants.

Winded, unable to punch and kick anymore, I walk over to the
railing and call down into the dark, "Hungry?"

In response to my voice a chorus of moans rises up to greet
me.

Later, I lie on my pallet, hands behind my head, examine the
ceiling and try to think of something worthy to write in you, Mr. Journal. So
seldom is there anything. Nothing seems truly worthwhile.

Bored of this, I roll on my side and look at the great light
that once shone out to the ships, but is now forever snuffed. Then I turn the
other direction and look at my wife sleeping on her bunk, her naked ass turned
toward me. I try to remember what it was like to make love to her, but it is
difficult. I only remember that I miss it. For a long moment I stare at my
wife's ass as if it is a mean mouth about to open and reveal teeth. Then I roll
on my back again, stare at the ceiling, and continue this routine until
daybreak.

* * *

Mornings I greet the flowers, their bright red and yellow
blooms bursting from the heads of long-dead bodies that will not rot. The
flowers open wide to reveal their little black brains and their feathery
feelers, and they lift their blooms upward and moan. I get a wfld pleasure out
of this. For one crazed moment I feel like a rock singer appearing before his
starry-eyed audience.

When I tire of the game I get the binoculars, Mr. Journal,
and examine the eastern plains with them, as if I expect a city to materialize
there. The most interesting thing I have seen on those plains is a herd of
large lizards thundering north. For a moment, I considered calling Mary to see
them, but I didn't. The sound of my voice, the sight of my face, upsets hen She
loves only the tattoo and is interested in nothing more.

When I finish looking at the plains, I walk to the other
side. To the west, where the ocean was, there is now nothing but miles and
miles of cracked, black sea bottom. Its only resemblances to a great body of
water are the occasional dust storms that blow out of the west like dark tidal
waves and wash the windows black at mid-day. And the creatures. Mostly mutated
whales. Monstrously large, sluggish things. Abundant now where once they were
near extinction. (Perhaps the whales should form some sort of GREENPEACE
organization for humans now. What do you think, Mr. Journal? No need to answer
just another one of those little scientist jokes.)

These whales crawl across the sea bottom near the lighthouse
from time to time, and if the mood strikes them, they rise on their tails and
push their heads near the tower and examine it. I keep expecting one to flop
down on us, crushing us like bugs. But no such luck. For some unknown reason
the whales never leave the cracked sea bed to venture onto what we formerly
called the shore. It's as if they live in invisible water and are bound by it.
A racial memory perhaps. Or maybe there's something in that cracked black soil
they need. I don't know.

Besides the whales I suppose I should mention I saw a shark once.
It was slithering along at a great distance and the tip of its fin was winking
in the sunlight. I've also seen some strange, legged fish and some things I
could not put a name to. I'll just call them whale food since I saw one of the
whales dragging his bottom jaw along the ground one day, scooping up the
creatures as they tried to beat a hasty retreat.

Exciting, huh? Well, that's how I spend my day, Mr. Journal.
Roaming about the tower with my glasses, coming in to write in you, waiting
anxiously for Mary to take hold of that kit and give me the signal. The mere
thought of it excites me to erection. I suppose you could call that our sex act
together.

* * *

And what was I doing the day they dropped The Big One?

Glad you asked that Mr. Journal, really I am.

I was doing the usual. Up at six, did the shit, shower and
shave routine. Had breakfast. Got dressed. Tied my tie. I remember doing the
latter, and not very well, in front of the bedroom mirror, and noticing that I
had shaved poorly. A hunk of dark beard decorated my chin like a bruise.

Rushing to the bathroom to remedy that, I opened the door as
Rae, naked as the day of her birth, was stepping from the tub.

Surprised, she turned to look at me. An arm went over her
breasts, and a hand, like a dove settling into a fiery bush, covered her pubic
area.

Embarrassed, I closed the door with an "excuse me"
and went about my businessunshaved. It was an innocent thing. An accident.
Nothing sexual. But when I thing of her now, more often than not, that is the
first image that comes to mind. I guess it was the moment I realized my baby
had grown into a beautiful woman.

That was also the day she went off to her first day of
college and got to see, ever so briefly, the end of the world.

And it was the day the triangle-Mary, Rae and
myself-shattered.

* * *

If my first memory of Rae alone is that day, naked in the
bathroom, my foremost memory of us as a family is when Rae was six. We used to
go to the park and she would ride the merry-go-round, swing, teeter-totter, and
finally my back. ("I want to piggy Daddy.") We would gallop about
until my legs were rubber, then we would stop at the bench where Mary sat
waiting. I would turn my back to the bench so Mary could take Rae down, but
always before she did, she would reach around from behind, caressing Rae,
pushing her tight against my back, and Mary's hands would touch my chest.

God, but if I could describe those hands. She still has
hands like that, after all these years. I feel them fluttering against my back
when she works. They are long and sleek and artistic. Naturally soft, like the
belly of a baby rabbit.

And when she held Rae and me that way, I felt that no matter
what happened in the world, we three could stand against it and conquer.

But now the triangle is broken and the geometry gone away.

So the day Rae went off to college and was fucked into
obli4on by the dark, pelvic thrust of the bomb, Mary drove me to work. Me, Paul
Marder, big shot with The Crew. One of the finest, brightest young minds in the
industry. Always teaching, inventing and improving on our nuclear threat,
because, as we often joke, "We cared enough to send only the very
best."

When we arrived at the guard booth, I had out my pass, but
there was no one to take it. Beyond the chain-link gate there was a wild melee
of people running, screaming, falling down.

I got out of the car and ran to the gate. I called out to a
man I knew as he ran by. When he turned his eyes were wild and his lips were
flecked with foam. "The missiles are flying," he said, then he was
gone, running madly.

I jumped in the car, pushed Mary aside and stomped the gas.
The Buick leaped into the fence, knocking it asunder. The car spun, slammed
into the edge of a building and went dead. I grabbed Mary's hand, pulled her
from the car and we ran toward the great elevators.

We made one just in time. There were others running for it
as the door closed, and the elevator went down. I still remember the echo of
their fists on the metal just as it began to drop. It was like the rapid
heartbeat of something dying.

And so the elevator took us to the world of Down Under and
we locked it oft. There we were in a five-mile layered city designed not only
as a massive office and laboratory, but as an impenetrable shelter. It was our
special reward for creating the poisons of war. There was food, water, medical
supplies, films, books, you name it. Enough to last two thousand people for a
hundred years. Of the two thousand it was designed for, perhaps eleven hundred made
it. The others didn't run fast enough from the parking lot or the other
buildings, or they were late for work, or maybe they had called in sick.

Perhaps they were the lucky ones. They might have died in
their sleep. Or while they were having a morning quickie with the spouse. Or
perhaps as they lingered over that last cup of coffee.

Because you see, Mr. Journal, Down Under was no paradise.
Before long suicides were epidemic. I considered it myself from time to tune.
People slashed their throats, drank acid, took pills. It was not unusual to
come out of your cubicle in the morning and find people dangling from pipes and
rafters like ripe fruit.

There were also the murders. Most of them performed by a
crazed group who lived in the deeper recesses of the unit and called themselves
the Slut Faces. From time to time they smeared dung on themselves and ran amok,
clubbing me, women, and children born down under, to death. It was rumored they
ate human flesh.

We had a police force of sorts, but it didn't do much. It
didn't have much sense of authority. Worse, we all viewed ourselves as
deserving victims. Except for Mary, we had all helped to blow up the world.

Mary came to hate me. She came to the conclusion I had
killed Rae. It was a realization that grew in her like a drip growing and
growing until it became a gushing flood of hate. She seldom talked to me. She
tacked up a picture of Rae and looked at it most of the time.

Topside she had been an artist, and she took that up again.
She rigged a kit of tools and inks and became a tattooist. Everyone came to her
for a mark. And though each was different, they all seemed to indicate one
thing: I fucked up. I blew up the world. Brand me.

Day in and day out she did her tattoos, having less and less
to do with me, pushing herself more and more into this work until she was as
skilled with skin and needles as she had been Topside with brush and canvas.
And one night, as we lay on our separate pallets, feigning sleep, she said to
me, "I just want you to know how much I hate you."