Weatherhead Read online

  When he’d nearly died of exposure after they moved to that place pierced by snow and it was the weather that’d got to him, she felt so guilty, as if she had caused it, that she put herself right there in the hospital bed next to him to breathe on him, warm him, screaming and cursing at the extricating staff who eventually gave up and left her there.

  She didn’t need a single friend, he’d realized again all too late, for she only wanted him. She who turned herself inside out for him—inside out? And still he puzzled over this, because he had been too blind, deaf—but one day he’d figured it out—he’d had a book in his lap. What was this book?

  Here in Weatherhead he must remain. She and Love had littered the earth with his only means of escape and he’d given them leave to do so. Why? For her?

  When he arrived in his cruiser, she was sitting on the hood working on a jigsaw puzzle she’d spread out on it. They were supposed to have met for a movie but their truck broke down underneath her. He tried to frown at her but today, with her silken soul and dress and all she was a tad more than half-pretty. “You’re always solving things. What are you always trying to solve?”

  She didn’t look up but he could see the edge of her smile. It was too easy from beyond death to attribute profundities to those who have left us. But Maggie Mechaine was a simple girl, who didn’t like to complicate things by thinking about them too much, so, she had no answer.

  He leaned over her and stuck his nose in her hair. “Do you ever start a puzzle from the middle?”

  She danced a puzzle piece over the backs of her fingers, dug it into the metal thoughtfully. “Hm. Not yet,” she softly drawled. “I will though.” His question was more a challenge to her ears than anything else. But he and Maggie—they’d always had a problem with inners.

  A baby, he knew, could’ve been her friend.

  Maggie,” her brother told him when she was long-dead, “had this tremendous amount of love—she just emptied it all into one person—“

  “Who?” he spluttered in disbelief. The brother stared at him likewise.

  (19 Down) I am the Hair Crept Crypt.

  She was at the end of a rumpled alley full of dead and dying patches of grass and dirt. The approach to all tis alley’s end was cluttered with what he first thought were the cardboard tubes that served as core to all manners of paper products. The short duration of these ones betrayed their former lives as mantle to toiletry. On closer inspection he discovered them to be phallus-shaped. The ground was literally littered with cardboard dicks.

  She was sprawled lazily over a guillotine, one bare leg dangling over the box where the heads came to rest, dress hiked up like a coup’s loser, exposing her elementals to the elements. He did not like this her. It dripped and dribbled with a cloy that she had never reeked of in life.

  I don’t like you like this, he told her outright. Nothing had changed. Her desperation to keep him in Weatherhead had been exactly, simply and only that: desperation. Having won him over to her madness, she could dispel with the pleasantries of association.

  I don’t care, she replied gaily. She stroked the blade with her cheek. This is where the boys of Weatherhead become men! She flipped a wooden switch and the blade fell with a chk! She arched her back with an adultery against decency, stretching a thin arm across the top frame of the device. Under her dress, he could see below the slash of her shaven trim, a faint red ridge of hair stabbing down to form an exclamation point with its dot her—

  He looked away quickly. She was toying with him, mocking him. This is why there are no children in this city, right? You’re punishing them all because of me—

  Ha! You! Who are you? A stranger brought here? Why? Why did you come to Weatherhead? She was a bloody breeze when she jumped down and strode unambiguously towards him, There are those who’d have me dead here—plots, hatchings, incubi and gardeners planting things at the bases of the skulls of the people of this city. Is that who brought you here? To have me killed? Did Hate come with you?

  He puzzled over the possibilities of Hate. If there was Love—

  Out loud: I thought—he swallowed, I thought you brought me here. I stayed here because—because I thought you wanted me to. Love—Love—

  At his fumblesome tongue, she threw her head back and laughed, hands on her hips. It was if yesterday was gone. Oh, no! Her dress slipped down over one shoulder, exposing part of her breast. He looked away again. I? You think I had Love bring you to me? Love does whatever I bid it, but it is not mine—MINE! She roared at him. Spittle sleeted across his face. He shrank back. Her nails dug into her palms, he saw. She wanted him. He could smell it on her breath, on the way the guillotine’s blade was reflected in the spit on her teeth and tongue, beading there like clearblood. Punishing them for you—what are you? Nothing here. Just like the rest of them except they know better than to pin askings to my ears. Maybe we should just—She seized him by the collar. He let her. –just get it over and done with and make you a man. She dragged him over to the guillotine with a surprising, inhuman strength. Come, friend.

  No—please—

  Effortlessly she forced him to his knees. Putting her boot on the nape of his neck, she pushed him down to breathe dirt while she reset the blade with her hands. Come to my city—pestering me and my people with questions, half-man? There are penalties—penalties for not registering your pitch, too. You think I wouldn’t notice? I’ll make you a whole man. She started humming quietly as she prepared the blade. I don’t need a tournament to make you my champion, figurehead.

  All he could smell was cardboard. He thought of the slit throat of the muddy whore. He thought of the cardboard dicks littering the alley. On a sudden, he understood. God—no! Not my fault! Please!

  That’s what they all say just before. She dragged him up. She was in his face now, What does that mean, it’s not your fault? What? She shook him. What?! He stared at the snarl playing with her lips. He was close enough to kiss her, smell her. She smelled like honey. Honey and boxes. Disgusted, she pushed him back roughly. She raised her arms, an invocation to bad weather. Feed it air, she inhaled violence from the winds, winds which weren’t there—let it seethe! Feed it! She backhanded him with a snarl. Life, she meant. All he heard were her bruised and bloody knuckles. She struck him again. Live, bastard.

  I don’t like you like this, he reeled away from her.

  I can kill you whenever I want, she snapped, Love is always close by. All I have to do is snap my fingers and Love— She drew her arm back and up, lording over him. She drove it down straight into his sternum and cursed her curse of life again. She paused suddenly, struck by a sudden sound. Then, something odd happened. She slumped down onto her knees on the cold, cold ground, cupping a hand around an ear. He unfurled his cringe. He heard it too. In a panic, he pressed his hands to his chest. His pulse had started again. When? No, no, no, no! They’d warned him about this, Love had. He could hear Mr. Moustache admonishing him even now, If you don’t register your pitch, mate, she’ll know.

  The tenor of her voice had changed. Was she crying? No. She looked up evil at him and then down at her bloody knuckles. Nobody knows anybody, she whispered. Maybe one or two people in their lives. Then you die.

  Am I one of them?

  There was no answer for a minute or two, then: You weren’t then, no.

  He got on his knees beside her and clutched at her, Then when? Who am I?

  A receding noise, she replied, staring at his chest, hand still seashell at her ear, nothing more than the horrible red sound behind my ears and my breasts. A forgotten tune. How can you live? She stood then and brushed off her dusty dress, smoothing out its folds. Her head held high, she condemned him with a litany of curses. Pitch or die again.

  ⧜

  They’d never have a child. They’d quietly admitted that something was amiss down thereabouts for a while now. For him, at least, it underscored all that was mutual between them. In an impressive act of retroactive continuity, he’d managed to reinterpret the last
three or four years of Maggie Mechaine’s unwavering darknesses as mere extensions of the idea of procreation and its sudden impossibility. This, of course, was an exaggeration on his part, but he’s a male, and as much as biology might drive instincts and desires, there are far too many other considerations to factor in. The problem was, in his own simplistic, selfish fashion, he refused to see Maggie Mechaine’s abysses as anything more than a function of this infertility, whether before or after the fact.

  To him, this was proven by the hippy and his talk of future generations.

  It must’ve been that year full of Summer. Yes, it was. He’d begun what was to be a lengthy, love/hate affair with one of his fellow officers, the aptly named Summer Gruel. This all came after that time when Maggie Mechaine kept getting wet without him, when she fell in the shower and then fell in a puddle. He wouldn’t confess for some time and, thinking he had love to spare, to marshal up for a second front, he put on a good game face for Maggie Mechaine.

  She had cut her hair short like a boy’s just a week or so before her death. It felt like a noose around her she said, the long hair. Locks of hair for which there were no key. Dis-tress, she had whispered around the pale summer’s night of her exposed neck where he longed to kiss her but no longer dared. There was a simple alchemy that brought her hair out of night and turned it into blood-infused gold. He pushed the image of this over snow out of his mind. Remember:

  She had cut it short like this once before, during Summer. Too hot, she said. He sympathized, all that molten red-gold plastered down over her cheeks and neck. He snuck his fingers falsely through the near-peach at the base of her skull. She was watching the band and sweating.

  “Seriously,” he added to her glistening ear, “this song has been going on for almost an hour.”

  She nodded without looking. That was the point. He stared at the neck of the barely clothed girl in front of him. She had a guillotine tattooed on her nape. She had a noose tattooed on her stomach. It hung from her navel down, down, down. She smirked at him when she caught him looking. Not dressed like that he wouldn’t. He detected around the foamy crowd, taking in the skin and ink and sweatshine and bobbing heads and tartan and leather and winkling twinkle hoops tucked into fleshes where they didn’t rightly belong. He looked at his wife but she was gone.

  He didn’t trust places like this—too much meat, too many claws—so he set off to find her. Everyone could see he didn’t belong here, many in their trances and traces correctly guessed that he was a cop. Only a cop would come dressed like that. He found her in the men’s room with a huddle of guys and girls passing a joint around. It even made its way through the crack between door and panel of the nearest stall where two people were, it seemed, having sex. It found its way into his hand as soon as he entered. Maggie winked at him so he made a good faith effort. Guilt’ll make you go along with her, he had told himself when she was leaving without him to come to this place. And he had. The same sentiment was now gracing his lungs and snort with smartsmog. He coughed. Everyone laughed.

  The smoke’s owner was an incongruous hippy. He called himself Jabal which he himself knew meant ‘mountain’. Why this lofty height fit in while he didn’t, he’d never understand. The beads, the shoddy dreads, the poor showing of facial hair—all these somehow made him persona grata amongst all the angry bodies filling themselves with piss, vinegar, and metal. Oh, but it was the smoke that tied them all together, he guessed. Mountain was waggling his impotent goatee at Maggie, peering greedily down at her skinny little legs. They were planted far apart. She looked like a compass drawing a circle. This stance he knew well. She had to stay sturdy and hard against gravity when she inhaled its enemy. Mountain was loose-limbed and puppety in contrast. He was expounding to her in half-nods about global warming.

  Maggie could’ve cared less. She was not one to put much store by the tragedies of man even when it came to the weather. The year was the hottest on record so far, he stuttered. She yawned. She never compared.

  Then Mountain’s gaze focused and he was staring to his left. The tephra with the guillotine had appeared beside him, directly across from Mountain and Maggie. From the front he saw another noose tattooed around her neck. The hippy looked uncomfortable when he looked up and saw this girl.

  “Just think of the future generations,” he pulled. Everyone rolled their eyes. “Everything’s off, man, everything. Vibrations are all wrong. S’like, thanks,” he took the joint, “s’like a buncha different realities getting’ all mixed up—shaking together—rice and sand in a bowl, man—ideas up and walking around—“ He could sense a tremor of laughter out of Guillotine next to him, “—weird shit, man. Weather’s all fucked up—“

  Everyone’s hazy faces said, So? Mountain would only look at Maggie.

  “—the weather right? Everybody’s fixed on all these numbers, ones and zeroes and the end of the world. The world isn’t ending, man, the world is becoming something else entirely. Nines becoming zeroes don’t mean shit, it happens all the time. I’m talkin’ about rearrangin’ life and death, puttin’ shit out of order—pyroclastics and combustibles—“

  “And the zero becomes a nine,” Guillotine’s voice swam all swelter. He fought the sudden urge to dribble spit on her and watch it sizzle.

  Mountain wouldn’t even look at her. His eyes swam, though, in time with her. He rubbed his forehead. “Look, it’s about future generations now, man, we are all fucked—“

  Everyone laughed, but no one deigned speak for a moment, they just put fuel to fire in their slow, burning circle. But it was Maggie, he saw with a hazy, delayed jolt, that finally spoke,

  “Future generations,” the jocose lilt in her voice pitched down a few dark octaves and resulted in disgust, “future generations, hippy-lips? There ain’t gonna be any future generations of me. So why should I care? Right?” She motioned with her chin at him, standing opposite her in the circle. She was feasting on tears.

  “Ah—yeah, that’s, uh—right,” he croaked. They all looked at her curiously. Two tousled heads appeared over the edge of the stall door and peered down at her.

  “That’s my husband,” she told them, “He’s a cop.” Everyone laughed. “We can’t ever have kids.” Everyone stopped laughing. “Can’t trump the most man-made disaster, can ya?” She smiled at each of them in turn. Even the hippy shrank back, away from her. He’d all but forgotten her legs. “And you know, what, hippy-man?” she drawled effortlessly, stretching her arms back behind her and popping her back, “I could give two shits over what might and could happen, yeah? Don’t you know, that when you’re like us, me and my husband, and that’s it—that’s all it’ll ever be and you’re up against a big fucking brick wall made out of nothin’—end o’ tha line, bro—empty pictures is all we got on our mantles—what you think? The stupid little redneck bitch is just gonna turn over and die like that? Nuh-uh. If I’m the end of the line, I’ll take every single goddamn motherfuckin’ one of yous down, that I can, get it? Let it all burn,” she snarled.

  Outside the drum solo had ended and the song entered its second hour with a heady, thrumming slam of grind and sludge. Break was over. Everyone hated drum solos, she assured him.

  “What’s with your hippy friend back there?” She had no friends. What gives? That’s why she never goes out, she told him with a sniff, she wanted nothing to do with all of that.

  “All of what?” She knew these people? How, he stammered. Guillotine was back in front of him and he tested Leidenfrost the next time Maggie disappeared into the bathroom. Later, she made love to him like a little yokel Theseus unraveling slowly around the maze, always sure she could find her way back, silent tracker of silk with all that spit. There had, for years, been something strange with her mouth. It was always scalding hot. Maybe it was just the day. It was really hot that day, volcanoes and all, and the welter of the slag that fills our veins limns night with its fiery edges, leaving burns on the inside of our eyes that everyone else can see. Maggie was very good at seeing
these. His confessions were so much wasted ash.

  (20 Across) I am the Leapt League Across.

  Smoke does not adhere to all things. Thus spake Maggie Mechaine. After a thoughtful pause, she elaborated, “Water, snow—if I was made of those things, you’d be fine with that? I’d never drown.” She’d melt, though, he pointed out from his perch by her bedroom door, or dry up when the sun finally came out. But would it make a difference, the place between her eyebrows wanted to know.

  “I guess not,” he replied, “depends on the weather.” At these words, she got up to leave the room, scarecrowing on the bathrobe she’d owned since he’d met her. By him, she bent down and checked her barometer.

  “30.19. -26. Nothing ever changes.” Her forehead pressed into the glass casing. Easy, he warned. She wandered off into the dark house. It had been night for weeks. They’d been drinking since noon a week ago. Midnight wasn’t ‘mid’ anything she reminded him that morning. But, still, it was a holiday and all. The belt to her robe was only looped through on one side so must of it trailed behind her like a faded tartan tail or a snake in an eveless eden. He followed it out to the back room with its uselessly huge bay window. She sat there in the summer and did her puzzles. Now she just stood, staring out into the snow and cold for which they were all mere periphery. “If”, she said after a long time there, “I turned into smoke instead—“

  “Let’s say ‘breath’ instead. Smoke smells bad, you know?”

  “So can breath,” she pointed out. “But breath has to do with life and that’s not what I’m talkin’ about—“

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like this,” said his mouth, yet, he stood still, leaning in the doorway. “Maybe—for the new year, get out of the house and meet some people. There’s a lot of nice people that live around here. You could make some friends. Market your framing around town.”