Upright Beasts (13 page)

“I don't know, it could be any of them,” Foster said. “Hard to tell in that suit.”

We kept watching them for a while, waiting for some sign, I guess. After about forty minutes, we went home.

13.

I guess I've been thinking about my brother's trip a lot recently because I'm feeling a little lost myself. My girlfriend and I recently broke up for reasons I can't really explain. Things just fizzled out without any discernable causes. It was as if we suddenly didn't know who we were anymore, or maybe that we never realized who the other was until the end, and the realization made us simply tired instead of distraught or full of joy. We continued having sex for a few weeks, but even those close moments were spread further apart, until we went our separate ways.

Yesterday, a friend of mine—a good friend I have a hard time getting together with these days—sent out a mass e-mail announcing that he had spent the last month training to be a real estate agent. He had just that day passed his certification. Ever since I had known him, which was at least four years, he had been an aspiring actor. Now he was trading in his auditions for a burgundy blazer and not looking back. He must have mentioned this to me at some point or posted about it online, but somehow it hadn't registered, or I hadn't believed it until suddenly he was texting me to ask if I knew any couples looking for a large one-bedroom in the neighborhood next to mine.

I'm spending a lot of time alone these days. I'm trying to put my head down and get some work done. Finish up some
projects and see if I can be one of the ones who pops out of the rut. Otherwise, I might have to make a right turn myself.

I'm not sure what my brother is doing right now. Last time we talked, he was still on the fence about law school. I haven't talked to him in about two months though. No particular reason. I simply haven't found the time.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE WEATHERVANE

S
o this clown Dave buys the house next door to me, and now he's my neighbor. Okay.

It's one thing that he's a carpetbagger who thinks he can turn himself into some sort of old-fashioned, down-home country boy by wearing a cowboy hat and boots with plastic spurs. This is Virginia, mind you, not the goddamn Wild West. I don't mind. I'm a tolerant guy. But what sticks in my craw is the weathervane.

Lord knows what airplane catalog he found it in. The thing looks like it was designed by someone who was abused by farmers all his life and now gets revenge by making ugly weathervanes. It's gigantic and has some sort of southwestern theme. The rooster is painted fluorescent green with a pink beak, and it has metal ribbons that twist in the wind.

“Dave,” I tell him the first day I see it. “That is one ugly son-of-a-bitch rooster.”

Dave takes this as some sort of Southern joke and pats me on the back. “Looks marvelous, don't it?” he says.

Now it gets pretty windy in this part of Virginia, and the first big storm that hits, the weathervane snaps right off his roof and stabs into my front yard. Imagine if I had a daughter and she had been playing out there in a sandbox or something? She might have been decapitated by a giant rooster! How is that supposed to make me feel?

So I do the only thing I can and go out and pick up the weathervane and toss it through Dave's living room window.

Well, this Dave is a stubborn guy. I see him out there the next morning directing some Mexicans up a ladder to fix the weathervane.

“What the hell, Dave?” I say.

“Damn thing blew off and into my window in the storm,” he says. “Might have to put some crazy glue on it next time. Ha ha.”

Well, the next big storm that hits, what do you know? Snap, whoosh, crash. I stumble outside and pick up the rooster off the wet grass. While it technically landed in his yard this time, it's close enough to mine to make me concerned. So I march over and toss it through the jerk's dining room window.

Dave pretty much stops talking to me after that. But the weathervane goes back up, and then a few months later another big storm hits. Dave is out of town this time, and the weathervane doesn't snap all the way, it's still half-attached and flying around in the wind like a circus flea tied to a miniature trampoline. How am I supposed to sleep knowing that any second this giant weathervane could snap off completely, fly through my bedroom window, and murder me in my own bed? I pay my taxes like anyone else. So I grab my ladder, go over to his house, and wrench off the weathervane with my hands. Then, when Dave comes back a few days later, I grab the rooster, head over to his house, ring his doorbell, and when he answers, I try to toss the damn thing through his stupid asshole heart.

Dave's a nimble fellow, and he leaps out of the way, and pretty soon I'm sitting in the county jail with a whole host of freaks and perverts. I pay my bail, return home, and what do I see as I pull in the driveway but Dave and the goddamn Mexicans reinstalling the goddamn weathervane!

I mean, I'm a man. What am I supposed to do? I've got a job on a farm outside of town. I work with my hands. These days that means pulling levers and pushing buttons on giant machines, but I try to keep some pride in my life. It's been hard lately. I've been lonely since Molly left. She was the only girl I've ever loved. I'd always thought we would be together forever, but I guess she had different plans. Every winter seems colder than the last, and the bills only get longer. And on top of all that, I have to deal with a neighbor who doesn't have an ounce of respect for me or my property? What am I supposed to do?

I just want someone to tell me what I'm supposed to goddamn do.

THINGS LEFT OUTSIDE

I
wish it was me who had found her and not my husband. I kept wondering what she looked like in her natural state, so to speak. What if Gerald had moved her around?

Gerald didn't notice me when I got there. He was walking around in a semicircle as if he wanted to get closer, but her body was letting off a magnetic force that kept him away.

“Who does she belong to?” I said. I was out of breath and leaned against a tree.

“What?” Gerald said, turning around. There were a few cows nearby. They were looking at the three of us with large eyes.

“I mean, she's half on our land and half on the Smiths' pasture.”

“Ah,” he said. “I'm not sure it matters.”

“The head is on our half,” I said. “I think that should count for something.”

I had been folding laundry when Gerald called. I liked doing it right when it came out, when it was so hot it almost burned my hands. I could feel his excitement through the little speaker beside my ear. Gerald told me he had been walking near the edge of our property and found our cat, Mitzy, chewing on a dead woman's face.

We'd lived on this backwoods land for two years, Gerald and I. It was a twenty-minute drive from town. If you walked through the woods, you'd come across a cow pasture cut out
from the forest with rusty barbed wire. When we first moved in, we used to drink a bottle of wine and go and stick our hands through the fence so the cows would lick our palms for salt.

Gerald had already placed his bandanna over the woman's head. He said it was the Christian thing to do.

“Oh, Gerald,” I said, and threw my arms around him. “Who would do something like this?”

“It's deer season,” Gerald said. “She was probably shot by a hunter who realized his mistake and fled.” He was looking past me. He had a large beard at that time, and his face seemed to be shrinking into it as he talked. “Yeah,” he said. “That's probably what happened.”

The woman was on her belly beneath the barbed wire, legs jutting into the cow pasture. You could tell by the color of the dirt that there had been a lot of blood, yet her jeans and green button-up looked untouched from the back. They could have been pulled fresh out of the dryer.

“I think I have that exact same shirt,” I said. “I bought it on sale at Gap.”

I squatted close to the body. I thought she would look peaceful, and that I would feel a spiritual calm spread through my veins, but it didn't happen. With her head hidden under the bandanna, she looked more like a mannequin. I wanted to reach out and bend her limbs into a livelier pose.

Gerald squeezed my collarbone with his hands. He bent down and put his dry lips against my cheek. “The cops said they'd be here soon.” He said it so matter-of-factly. She was already passing out of our hands. “We should go back to the house.”

“No,” I said. “We need to be with her till they come.”

My husband sighed and sat on a stump with his hands on his knees. I stayed in the damp grass near the body. The woman
was laying belly down, with her arms curled in front of her head. I could imagine sleeping like that, with a pillow under my head instead of mud. I kept hoping the wind would blow the bandanna off her head. There were a few bugs crawling over her body. One flew onto my foot, and I flicked it away.

“I'm getting kind of hungry,” Gerald said after a bit.

Not much normally interrupted our eating out here. We inherited the house from Gerald's parents after his father died of a stroke and his mother gave up and moved to Florida. It was a quiet place, but close enough to town that we weren't hillbilly hermits.

Gerald and I had met in high school. He had been on the state champion football team, although I always forgot which position. We'd been together for long enough it felt like nothing at all.

It was already getting dark when the police arrived. They turned the forest upside down with lamps and walkie-talkies. They took Gerald aside, and I couldn't hear what he was saying. He seemed to be giving a description of our cat.

I watched the police dump out the woman's backpack. There was a bag of trail mix, three tubes of beauty product, a bottle of red wine, and a digital camera. All objects I own and use myself. They put these in plastic bags that they zipped shut. At one point I thought I saw Mitzy, her eyes bouncing beneath a bush like glow-in-the-dark balls.

The police only asked me if I'd heard any unusual noises. I said no, and they said they might need to talk to me down the road.

After that we had to leave the area.

When we got home, I went to the bathroom. I flushed the toilet and then looked in the mirror and tried to cry. I walked around the house, calling for Mitzy. She kept darting under different pieces of furniture.

Gerald was snacking in front of the
TV
. I sat down next to him and took a handful of chips.

“Was she beautiful?” I asked.

“What? I didn't know her,” he said quickly.

“But you saw her face before you covered it up,” I said. “What did she look like?”

“Christ, Carol. I dunno. Normal?”

“That's it?” I said. “You don't remember her eye color or anything?”

Gerald stood up and walked over to the trash can and spat out a plum pit, then walked back and sat down.

“She had brown hair,” he said. “About your length. I dunno if you'd call her pretty. Pretty enough I guess. Her face was wide open and stuck in the mud. I didn't want to keep looking at her eyes.”

“For some reason I want her to be beautiful,” I said.

I could have been doing anything when it happened. Slicing an apple, napping on the porch, wrapping my fingers around Gerald's privates. And out there, she was breathing her last breaths. The police had taken the body away in a dark bag, but I kept wondering about her. I would try to imagine her face, and it would be the face of a sister of mine. A twin sister I never knew I had, a mirror reflection I had failed to protect.

I didn't dream about her, or didn't remember the dreams, but I also didn't sleep much. I rolled onto my side and watched a small pool of saliva leak out of Gerald's red mouth.

At breakfast, I couldn't help myself. “Would you say she was older or younger than me?”

Gerald was dipping pieces of bread into his runny eggs. He took the piece that was halfway in his mouth and placed it down on the rim of the plate.

“It's in the past,” he said. “Death is just a part of life. I think we should let it go and move on.” He put the toast back into his mouth. I got up to refill my coffee.