Weatherhead Read online

  “Life is just acting out other people’s ideas,” he sighed, he remembered.

  “Bullcrap—bullcrap,” she snorted, “you volunteered to go to war, bucko.” If there was promise to a thing, he once told a girl who took Maggie Mechaine’s place under him for a bit, Maggie Mechaine’d eat it up and spit it back at you. “Nobody made you go. If life is just being other people’s ideas, then—“ her voice drifted off with her eyes.

  “Then what?”

  “Who keeps giving them to me?”

  “Giving you what?”

  Silent for a moment, then her lumen shone. What reflected off her eyes, he would refuse to know. “It’s you.” Then her eyes went down and she turned all unsun. “Nothing.”

  Come this way, she said again, waving at him, her soft words were as comforting as a black piano in the dead and red of a city midnight. He’d given up and was sullen and grey down there in the traces and wakes that his fingers had stirred in the dead, dead earth. I want to show you something.

  She showed him something. It was a tranquil little lane, off one of Weatherhead’s main boulevards, one of the ones that her war against the city had left gouged, its concrete throat torn out and gravel-blood choke-clot-spat-up and out over the surrounding curbs. The little lane though, falling as it did between two angelic, timid yet intimate stone houses that he remembered seeing once during his war—he no longer questioned such a thing as these houses being here in Weatherhead—the little lane was untouched by her wrath and rapt ravage, a place where kisses could play on the shoulders, between the shoulder blades, butterflies trapped beneath one’s shirt. He desperately wished for this tyranness to be Maggie Mechaine so he could kiss these secret places.

  Everyone returns home to their dead heart, he heard her say. They stood for a while and watched people trickling back into the homes that had spat them out that morning. It was late afternoon and the people out and about had the air about them of the weary rush home. He was wondering what people did for work in Weatherhead when she drew his attention to the lane itself.

  It was simple, a smooth, purplish cobblestoned affair, much like the crossword rocks he’d been squatting over all morning. The people who live here call this the Street of Spits. Time, in this city, and here she held up the pitch-clock within which swirled and enfolded mists of grey and charity, is not how you figger it to be. Even I had to learn its custom when I took the town. You may sit and sulk in your hovel all you want, call me ‘bitch’, ‘tyraness’, ‘villainess’, ‘cunt’—

  I never called you those things.

  She tilted her head and smiled without realizing it. His heart, had he one, would have leapt. No. Just one or two. I’m speaking rhetorically generally, I’m the ruler and I have this prerogative. As I went, insult me , mock me, huddle in your corners and crotches of the world discussing the fall of Weatherhead and the state I’ve left it in—but I’m going to tell you something that none of them know, stranger. She snuck her fingers under the edge of his coat and pulled him close. Surprised, his arms pinwheeled and he stood over her then, again, as he had a thousand thousand times, and she looked up at him with those tired, tired pale blue eyes, looking up, up, up at him, never failing to appear as if she were about to start climbing him, and she told him: Weatherhead has already collapsed. That moment came when I broke the defenses and crushed the resistance. It has already collapsed. Time here would serve the love-maker well, for imagine, she became more animated as she spoke, that an event is not preceded and succeeded by the cause and effect of the event but—and here she cast her eyes about suspiciously—proceeded and succeeded by the cause and cause of the event. She could see he was confused. She stepped away from him and thought for a moment. Then she motioned for him to enter the Street of Spit. This is, she indicated the lane, one of the places where this nature of Weatherhead is most visible. They kept it hidden from me until I found it by accident. The fools thought they could reverse my conquest somehow by invoking the Street of Spit. Her face darkened. I had a fistful that week, I can tell you, stranger. But I found this place, but none of them understand its true nature and thus, the nature of this city. My city.

  See:

  She leaned out over the cobble-stones, cleared her throat and spat expertly out into the middle of the street.

  Adorable, he quipped.

  Arms akimbo, tapping foot, she waited, saying to him, Where did you learn these divining tongues of the hearth? You must have many wives— She stopped short. Something extraordinary, even for Weatherhead, happened: after a moment’s thought, the lane ejected her spit back up to her, following the same arc and trajectory until it coursed back to its place of birth in her foul womb-mouth. As he looked on with revulsion, she sloshed it around, made a face, turned away from the Street of Spit and spat the wad back out. Poison, she explained. I had it—tested. The spit turns to poison.

  And this makes you think everything will be better?

  Because she’ll end, she didn’t say, but her eyes did.

  Can I try? He was her guest, by her manner, and sent a ribbon of saliva newtoning in an arc down into the Street of Spit. And sure enough, the event ran then in reverse. In Maggie Mechaine-speak, the ball returned to the pitcher’s hand after making contact with the bat. So pitch-hit-hctip. Involuntarily, controlled by a shy force from outside of time, his mouth struck back to its previous position and it flew back into his mouth. She drove her wary stare into him so, thinking quick, he faked a toxified face and retched up his prodigal saliva onto the curb between them. He looked down at her with a crazy glare, in sudden disarray. She shot a glance up at him but all he could say was, See that sign that say ‘rib tip’?

  Why do you always say these words? Are you hungry? Need a stabbing? She made a curious whistle with her pursed lips and an old woman happening to be walking by nurse-slapped a dagger into her palm. No? She pocketed the dagger and continued, Weatherhead, and this is why we read the stones—but, I confess, you’re right and perhaps I was ill-advised to deceive you—the questions and answers are often impenetrable and unmatchable—Weatherhead is always on the brink of collapse becomes it hasn’t begun to move beyond the spit hitting the street, yet. I seek the answers in the stones themselves, in the seasons I keep imprisoned, in the death throes of every citizen I kill. Somewhere in this place is an answer.

  He put his hands in his pockets and watched her. And when you find the answer, it will just unravel and everything will be hunky-dory?

  The words are blasphemous but I understand your meaning. I—I’m not sure what will happen. Just one of the many mysteries of this place.

  Amen to that, he said. They left then and he puzzled over the Street of Spit and what it meant to this woman that it tried to poison, for it had not been poison or even saliva that had returned to his mouth. It had been honey.

  ⧜

  We remember best those scheduled days of love.

  Maggie Mechaine had never been musical, perhaps reflected best in her clunky, concrete tastes.

  “I’d wring a banjo’s neck if I got the chance,” she warned him when he pointed out how strange it was that it was not she, the girl from the country, but he, the urbanite, who favored the musicks of the south and its western extensions.

  “Really? And you’re all like Deliverance kind of people? Huh.” Deliverance, he described to her, for he was a cinephile, thus: Savagery tricks civilization into a duel and wins by default.

  “It’s not that bad, you’ll see,” she shifted in her chair. She looked uncomfortable because she almost looked beautiful.

  “I will?”

  “If we’re gettin’ married, yes,” she narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Old-fashioned! I like it.”

  “No—just fashioned,” she finished. She looked around them. “I always feel bad,” she leaned forward and whispered to him, “for bands in places like this. Look—no one is listening.”

  “Funny coming from the girl who was just saying how much she hated the music.”
/>   “I don’t hate it—I just want to kill it.” It was Valentine’s Day for he and Maggie Mechaine. The rest of the world could play along, too, if they wanted. The meal passed without incident. She had baked Alaska for dessert. “Sounds like the whole state is stoned or something,” she directed at their waiter, who shrugged uneasily at this. “I’ll take it.”

  Since they were going to be married in a few months, they both, feeling tipsy and playful, took to the pavement and played jealousies. It was kind of unfair, really, he pointed out, since she’d never slept with anyone but him, but, oh, ah, she tapped his chest, there are kisses and the roughly roughs that accompany all things acned and hackneyed. He was a little taken aback. He’d known Maggie Mechaine long enough to know that she didn’t play at insides and pasts, it was simply something they never discussed. As far as he was concerned, since she’d been sacrosanct and thus merited little attention, it was a topic best left unearthed given his once-notorious lineage of dalliances and perturbed parents and girls alike.

  “Oh, right!” He blinked. It was a chilly night but their coats and her dress were long enough to fortress. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen her in a dress before, had he? She let go of his hand and walked, half-turned to him and told him the following story which he only remembered, much later, on puzzle day in Weatherhead:

  “My brother, you know, he’s thirteen years older ‘n me and my little brother, you’ll probably never meet him, like I said, he’s four years younger.” He nodded. He was listening intently: before she got older, got smeary with him and his city, she, never one for jangle anyway, never ceased to draw him in with her liquid drawls—he hated the South in a way, for its sufficient blacks and insufficient whites, since he’d managed to find, in his life, a way to hate just about anyone and anything—but Maggie Mechaine, with her long, lazy slurs, even when not high, was one of the few things in life that made him actually, physically, and for real, sigh. And it was so rare for her to tell stories:

  “Well, you know, I ain’t ever really been one for animals. My daddy, he had a dog, but that tired old thing was about dead when I was born. I can hardly remember the thing. And, laugh, right, but there was always a bunch of cats around that just took care of themselves. Anyway, me and my brother—the younger brother—I was fourteen—no, I was fifteen, ‘cause we went to see Eight Men Out on my birthday—so he’d’ve been almost eleven, I guess—well, we used to play on up the road with these boys—black boys, they were called Jeep and Tru, I don’t remember why—don’t make that face. You’d think we were all in the Klan or something—like you—nobody cared down there. What? No—this isn’t a story about me kissin’ some black fellow. Just shut up and lemme talk, will ya? Those boys, they came from a sad family—their aunt—this was right around the time I was born, she’d been all burned up, nobody found out who or why—maybe it was you—it don’t matter. Jeep and Tru and me and my little brother, we all came up together, they lived close to our place and, you might know, I’s never one for castles and all that shit—I thought Prince Charming was a kind of toilet paper. No, just a beer, please—and an ashtray. We all grew up together, right, and me, I was hardly a girl anymore but what else did we have to do, so we still played like we always had. So we four—well Jeep and Tru they were around my age and those guys, boy, they were trappers, they could catch anything. Strays, skunks, raccoons—you name it. It got so bad, their folks had to ground ‘em just to keep ‘em outta the woods. Thing was, they’d never let us go with ‘em, so we never learned how they did it. But we’d watch ‘em, me and my brother, watch ‘em buildin’ these elaborate snares and traps and things, then we’d hear ‘em from our backyard whistlin’ us up, and we’d run down and they’d have rabbits and badgers and all kinds of shit. That was summers back then. My brother and me, we just felt kind of stupid after a time—we’d tried buildin’ our own traps and whatnot and I was darn good at it, if I can brag, it’s basically just making four frames like you was going to put pictures all facing in—or out, I guess—and a trigger to swing the fourth one down. Bait. It was pretty simple really. Thing was, me and my brother, we couldn’t find animals the way Jeep and Tru could. I still, to this day, don’t know how they did it.

  “There’s your banjo. This is the worst goddamn jukebox I’ve ever heard. Who picked this place?

  So, however they did it, we were damned sure we could do it, too. Now, that summer—damn if that wasn’t the Dodgers year, now that I think about it—that summer, there’d been foxes seen about, which were kind of rare, and thus bringin’ down a lot of hunters from up here, fixed on gettin’ some, not havin’ much luck, foxes are such sly creatures. Jeep and Tru couldn’t catch any, as hard as they tried, thinkin’ they’d be able to sell ‘em to them hunters who wanted ‘em for their furs, I guess. Me and my brother, we get it in our heads that we were gonna find one and catch it. We went to the library and we read up on foxes and fox-huntin’, a bit extravagant, all of it, more a ritual than anything else. Thing was, foxes’re hard to catch, so part of the thing is just runnin’ the fox to ground, chasin’ it back to its hole, sayin’ you got it and then just lettin’ it be. A fake hunt. That year, though, there were so many and they were gettin’ into farmers’ stock and killin’ lesser creatures, the chickens, for instance, that there was a lot more actual killin’ occurrin’ and no one mindin’.

  “Of course we got one. That’s part of the point! I can see you’re gettin’ tired of me blabbin’ on so I’ll make it short. Uh-huh. Sure. So, long story short, fox huntin’, me and my brother’s unspoken challenge to our friends up the road and us spending weeks settin’ traps, perfectin’ our traps, cussin’ at our traps, mom yellin’ at us making messes in the carport—

  “So this one day, my brother, he went somewhere with my mom, school clothes or something, and I think to myself, ‘Maggie, best to leave men out of this hunt.’ Maybe that’s why it wasn’t workin’, I reckoned or else I was into unicorns and that stuff. The virgin trap, you know. Maybe the smell of a boy or man was familiar to a creature being hunted by ‘em. Jeep and Tru laughed at me trompin’ off into the woods with my cages—they’d be less familiar after that summer, which was my last summer I ever remember thinkin’ about myself as a girl. Them, too, as it turned out.

  “So I’m all alone out there, I’d set all our traps where we’d watched the hunters perusin’ around, there were foxes there down in that little gully, everyone knew it—place was thick with them. I was mindin’ my own business, doing a crossword or something when I hear all their dogs makin’ a fuss up the hill a bit—just mindin’ my own business when I hear this sneakin’ rustle-rustle and what do you think? This fuckin’ fox runs outta nowhere and jumps in my lap. Shut up! I’m not makin’ this up. No—no, no one else saw it—except—do you want me to finish the damn story or not?

  “So here I am, freakin’ the fuck out because this red dart just pounced on me, but damn if the little thing wasn’t just as scared as me, like they always say, shivering and tucking its little nose under my arm. At first I thought it was a dog, a puppy maybe, I couldn’t get a good look at its face, but it was red as can be and you could—you could feel that it wasn’t anything—civilized, does that make sense? It wasn’t cuddly or cute or anything—it dug its nails in my legs, it didn’t want affection—it wanted to live!

  “So here I am, what the hell do I do? I can’t have claimed to’ve caught the thing and I can’t rightly move with it twisting around in my lap and then a man appeared—maybe just a coupla years older than me—a hunter. I guess he’d been stalkin’ the thing and left the others, he said, when the dogs peeled off one way and nobody’d listen that the creature had turned down here into the gully. He just sorta stood and stared at me. I don’t think he realized at first that I was holdin’ the damn thing in my lap. And then he saw it—he mistook it for my hair, he said and he—he knelt down and he reached out and he—he petted the thing like he wasn’t after its life at all, like it wasn’t wild at all the way I felt it to be.
/>
  “’Hunting isn’t all chase,’ he said or something stupid like that. Yeah, stupid. He’d found my traps, he said. He apologized for accidentally crushing one. He’d seen Jeep and Tru, too, he said, all week, but finders were cheaters at hunting, whatever that meant. I think we both knew that no one’d believe me. Some stupid girl has a fox jump in her lap? Right.

  “So he looked at me and he looked at the fox there under my arm and he says, ‘I’d be likely to kiss you both by mistake as red as you both are, but I’ll tell you what, prettier red, I’ll trade you a kiss for that there fox, I would.’

  “And I looked down at that fox and then I looked up at his mouth—and I figured, well, I caught the thing—I may as well take the thing I hadn’t gotten yet. So I did. And—I remember, he tasted like cigarettes and he smelled like our school’s water fountain. We kissed for a long time, then I gave him the fox and off he went, redder than me.

  “And that’s my story about the first boy I ever kissed. Your turn—“

  He sat, beer half-raised to his mouth. He stared at his imminent wife, unsure whether to believe a word of it. But if Maggie Mechaine were anything, he knew already, she wasn’t a liar. “You kissed a complete stranger alone in the woods after a fox magically jumped in your lap. Was he cute?”

  “I guess. He had these pointy little ears—“

  “The hunter.”

  “Oh. Gosh. No. I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that story,” she laughed.

  “Who was the second boy you kissed?”

  “His name was Charlie. Everyone stopped calling him Jeep when he started growing beards.”

  “I knew it. Nigger-lover!” He threw his hands up in despair.

  She became angry. “You need to cut that shit out right here and now! I don’t like that word. How would you like it if I called you—you—whatever bad words people have for you people?”