Upright Beasts Read online

  We were drinking vodka cranberries on her porch. I’d decided to get off the property, sit somewhere where I didn’t feel the presence of the spot by the fence.

  “I used to use powdered sugar, but it always tasted like some trash from Olive Garden.” She gave a laugh. Margaret liked to repeat the tricks she’d learned on cooking shows. I waited for a lull to release my secret.

  “Margaret, we found a dead woman on our land,” I said, taking her hand as if to protect her. “She was by herself and bleeding all over the ground. The killer is still out there.”

  I waited for her shock.

  “I know, isn’t it awful? You poor darling.”

  I pulled back. “How did you know?” I’d been watching the local news every night and hadn’t heard a peep.

  “Gerald told me. Raj and I ran into him at the store.” Margaret took a sip from her drink. The cranberry juice left a thin red sheen above her lips. “What can you do, though? Last week Asha’s goldfish went belly up, and she woke us up screaming. She was in our bedroom doorway with the sad, slimy thing in her hands. Just have to put it out of your mind, I guess.”

  There were a lot of paths in the woods. I kept thinking someone would spring out from behind a hill or oak and twist a knife into my stomach. I picked up a large stick to walk with. There was a chunk of wetness around the top, some fungus or mold, and I dropped it back down.

  When it was Gerald’s turn to pick our movies, he always chose detective films. His favorites were the French ones that were filmed in such dark shadows that you’d think the sun never flew over Paris. I never quite understood them, but Gerald would squeeze the popcorn in his fists into tight wads of excitement. And yet here I was scouting the woods alone.

  The spot seemed all wrong without the body. Even though I had visited that corner of the pasture dozens of times, nothing looked right. The barbed wire was spaced too far apart, and the trees had been moved a few inches to the left. I stepped on a small plant with foreign-looking leaves.

  I walked around stooped over until my back hurt. I didn’t find any clues. Even the bloodstain seemed to have been soaked up by the dirt.

  There was something peaceful about the spot though. I went home and packed a small lunch and came back with a blanket and a book. After a time, Mitzy came by and jumped on my lap. Together we dozed off and woke only when Gerald’s truck pulled into the driveway.

  Gerald peeled off his undershirt and approached me in bed. His beard glistened with flecks of water from the sink. We had the window open, and the wind moved over my face and shoulders. Mitzy watched us from the foot of the bed. When Gerald’s fingers landed on my neck, I rolled myself onto him. Gerald was silent as I grunted. Something had been welling up inside me, and I let it out until we returned to our sides of the bed covered in a sheen of sweat.

  “Well sure, I could be over there in an hour,” Gerald said.

  “What’s happening?” I said. “Was that the police?” It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and we’d been playing cards on the living room table.

  “It was Wallace Smith.”

  “Oh my god, Wallace? He did it?” Wallace was our neighbor who owned the farm the body was half on.

  “What?” Gerald said. “Wallace wants me to help reshingle his barn roof.” He smiled and got his measuring tape out of the top drawer. He pulled it out a few inches and let it snap back. “I guess he heard about my employment status. ‘Neighbors help neighbors; that’s what we do’ was how he put it. Funny guy.”

  It didn’t sound right. Wallace Smith had never called Gerald for any help before. In fact, when we’d first moved in, we had a big dispute over the land boundary. For a while we thought we were going to have to hire a lawyer.

  “What if he thinks you know something?” I said.

  “I know a lot about roofing. That’s why he’s hiring me.”

  “No, Gerald, about the murder.”

  “Murder?” he said. “Are you still on about that? Wallace is just a nice old man who needs a hand. I think he got an arm twisted under a tractor or something. But don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” He winked and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “It’ll be nice to have a little extra cash flowing in, eh? Maybe we can see that movie.”

  Margaret was insisting I try a new Thai restaurant with her in town. She said I needed to breathe some city air. I was afraid something would happen, and I would miss it.

  “Gerald,” I said, “do you know where my shirt is?”

  “What shirt?” He was shouting but standing only in the other room.

  “My green blouse. The button-up one with the pockets from Gap.”

  Gerald walked around the corner. He had Mitzy in his arms and was pulling back her ears. He shrugged. “If it was stained, I probably threw it in the wash.”

  On one path, I found a candy bar still in its shiny wrapper. On another, three crumpled beer cans and a full pack of cigarettes, which looked like hunter trash. It was almost cold in the shade of the woods. All the bugs and animals were hiding from me.

  I went back to the spot. I placed my hands carefully between the barbs of the fence and maneuvered into the cow pasture. A barb caught my thigh and ripped a hole on the way down. I could feel a trickle of blood dampening the denim. There were a few footprints in the mud and cow pies. They led in different directions. A cow wandered over and licked my hand with a rough, pink tongue.

  The pasture was a few hundred feet long. At the end of it I could see the Smiths’ barn. The only thing on the roof was a rusty weathervane. Had Gerald lied to me? What was he doing instead of roofing?

  I thought I could follow the line of trees on the far side along the barbed wire without being seen. When I got close, I crouched behind a row of hedges and listened to Gerald and Wallace Smith laughing. Gerald had something in a blue tarp about the size of a body draped over his shoulder.

  “Just hurry with it if you want to get paid,” Wallace was saying. I was trying to breathe as quietly as possible, and it was hurting my lungs.

  Gerald and Wallace went around to the door of the barn, and I squeezed my way between the fence slats. “Fuck, this shit is heavy,” Gerald said.

  I thought about all the little moments in my life that had brought me to this moment and how pointless they all seemed. A brown chicken walked around the side of the barn, and I tried to shoo it off. It moved closer, bobbing its head. It seemed to be staring me right in the face.

  “Carol?”

  I looked up. Gerald had materialized on the roof. The rolled-up tarp was at his feet. He held a hand over his eyes to gaze down at me, making his face pitch black.

  “What are you doing down there?” he said. He had a big smile sliced into the center of his beard. The sun was shining hard on him.

  “Who’s there?” someone said. Then Wallace hobbled around the side of the barn. “Why if it isn’t a pretty lady,” he said. He reached out with his good hand. The other was limp in a sling. “How are you, Carol? I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  “I was just out for a walk,” I said. I could feel my heart thumping impotently against my chest. “How’s the roofing?”

  “Coming along,” Gerald shouted down. “Hot day, though. If you’re walking back through, could you bring me a glass of lemonade?”

  I found it harder and harder to talk to Gerald. He would come home sore and hungry and ready for the TV. We would eat dinner, make love or not make love, then go to sleep. I stopped asking him about Wallace or the body. The roofing job went on and on.

  When his snores started, I slid out of bed and searched through his clothes. There was nothing unusual, only some movie ticket stubs. I didn’t know what clues I was supposed to be putting together.

  The corner of the fence was still a quiet place for me. I would go there to read and think. I rubbed the dark veins creeping up my calves. I could calculate only a year or two before we’d probably want to add a child. Life settled into its mold no matter what you did.

  It was gettin
g close to dusk. I went over to the fence and ran my fingernail over the rusty wire. Gerald was off hammering nails into something with Wallace. It was a quiet day, and the clouds knocked into each other in the sky. I stood in front of the fence and got on my knees and scooted in backwards. My arms were out in front of me. The mud was cold against my face.

  I didn’t think about a lot of things. Or I did, but in a detached way, as if they were slowly trickling out of my mind.

  I felt comfortable, you could even say at peace, and lay there in the mud for a long time.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Mitzy. She darted behind an oak tree and hissed loudly. With one ear in the mud it was hard to hear, but one or possibly two sets of boots were approaching.

  FAMILIAR CREATURES

  LAWN DAD

  Some nights Dad would come home with the demon on his breath and topple right over in the yard. Momma would have to tug on him till he came inside so the neighbors wouldn’t start yapping.

  One night she didn’t even bother waiting up, and he was left out there on the lawn. He woke up the next day to the crunch-crunching of the garbage men. I was running to meet friends at the pool and almost tripped over his legs.

  “Can you believe it, Luanne? Your momma’s abandoned me.” He was weeping into a handful of dandelions.

  I could see the neighbors’ silhouettes watching us from behind their curtains. Momma had told me not to help him, but he grabbed at my ankle, so I gave him my lunch. It was only baloney and swiss anyway.

  When I got home, Dad was still sprawled out on the front lawn as if he was trying to make a snow angel out of grass. The neighbors were peeping through holes in the fence.

  “I married a damn fool,” Momma said. “He can rot out there for all I care.”

  I sneaked him a pack of crackers later. He was bunched up in the dark like a pile of leaves. Up close, I noticed his face was scrunched in pain.

  “Luanne, love eats away at you like a colony of termites,” he said.

  I told him he should move inside, that he was liable to melt away in this heat, but he said the woman inside was not the same woman he married, and that was a terrifying thing.

  Dad stayed there all summer. Momma wouldn’t talk to him, just smoked cigarettes and glared at him through the window. I was sneaking out the back door to see Bobby Jackson that summer. He had a bright yellow motorbike and took me anywhere I wanted to go. One night, Bobby put his hands under my shirt and said we’d never be apart. I skipped right across the yard forgetting Dad was there. He was scowling as Bobby rode away through the night. In the weak glow of the streetlamps, Dad’s face looked thin and green.

  Finally, Momma went outside and grabbed his arm. “All right,” she said, “we have our differences, but who doesn’t? I think we can start again.”

  “I fear it’s too late,” he said. When Momma tugged on his arm, he screamed in pain. The grass had already grown up through his skin. His roots had taken hold, and I had stopped bringing him food weeks before.

  Slowly his body grew softer and greener until it split apart into the lawn. Momma cried a lot in the bathroom with the tub running. Fall crept up on us, and the summer was done.

  Now Dad was just a thick clump in the dirt. I kneeled next to him and put down my ear. “Promise me you’ll keep me nice and trim,” the wind whispered through the blades. I didn’t think he could hear me anymore, but I said I would.

  I mow lawns all around the neighborhood now. I have a shiny, red mower I can spin around on a dime. I charge exactly ten dollars a yard.

  MY LIFE IN THE BELLIES OF BEASTS

  I was born prematurely and, as such, was a very small child. So small, in fact, that shortly after emerging into the world, I was gobbled up by a clever fox that terrorized my parents’ farm. It had sneaked in the back door while everyone was distracted. My mother’s tears of joy turned acid, and my father cursed the lazy farmhand he’d tasked with mending the fence. These were the first and last words I ever heard my parents utter.

  It was cozy and warm inside the fox’s belly. I barely noticed what had happened. To me, it seemed I had merely gone from one womb to another. When I was hungry, I ate the scraps of raw meat that fell around me. When I was sad and wailed, the fox howled lullabies to guide me back to sleep. All in all, my early days were bearable.

  In time, I began to grow skittish. I was no longer a baby, and I needed to stretch my limbs. One day, as if to answer my prayers, the fox was cornered by a local hunter and his giant mastiffs. The fox tried to run away, but I had grown so large that I weighed her down, and she was torn apart by the hounds. I felt the cool air and saw the harsh sunlight for the first time before being swallowed by the largest dog.

  I can’t deny I felt a great sadness as I settled among the bits of organ and clumps of fox fur. Yes, the fox had kidnapped me, but she had also been my home, and that is never an easy thing to lose.

  Still, the mastiff was roomier and more appropriate for a growing boy. I could feel my muscles developing as I did push-ups on the soft stomach floor and pull-ups on the outline of the mastiff’s large spine. When the dog bounded through the grassy fields, I would crawl up his throat and rest my chin on the back of his massive tongue, gazing out at the dry, open world.

  I even fell in love this way, believe it or not. There was a kind girl who lived next to the hunter’s house who would feed the mastiff I lived in tasty leftovers through the gaps in the fence. She wore pastel sundresses and had dandelions in her hair. I couldn’t believe how light and beautiful she looked in the sun.

  “What are you doing in there?” the girl said when she saw me peeking from the back of the mouth.

  “I live down here,” I said, ashamed.

  “Well, come on out!”

  She laughed, but I was afraid and slid back down into the guts. I didn’t think a boy who had lived his life in the bellies of beasts was worthy of her.

  I howled with self-pity, and the girl rubbed the mastiff’s belly, saying, “There, there.”

  Eventually my constant loneliness made me resolve to leave the dog’s belly. And I did. Using all my strength, I pulled my way out of the mastiff’s maw. It was dark outside the dog. My limbs ached, and I decided to rest. As I sat on squishy ground, I realized I was merely in another belly. The dog had been gobbled up by a grizzly bear when I hadn’t been paying attention. I couldn’t believe my bad luck!

  When I tried to escape the bear, she grew angry and climbed up a tall tree. I was almost a teenager now, and life felt like a rotten trap. Everything that seemed sweet contained hidden thorns. If I had fresh honey in my grasp, it was followed by the painful sting of swallowed bees.

  But life moves on, and one grows accustomed to anything. Years passed. The grizzly was drugged and placed on a boat that set off for a foreign zoo. The boat was caught in a terrible storm, and the bear and I were tossed overboard, only to be consumed by a shark that was later swallowed, accidentally, by a giant sperm whale.

  I was now in the largest belly I had ever been in. There was nothing to restrain me anymore. I was a man, and I had to make a life for myself. I set to work, building a shelter out of driftwood scraps and skewering fish from the stomach’s pond for food. Sometimes I thought about the little girl in the sundress and felt a sadness in my stomach. I lived in the whale for a long time. My skin grew spots, and my hair fell softly to the ground. My years were swallowed one by one by the beast of time.

  Then one day, I noticed the whale was no longer moving. I hadn’t felt stillness in many years. I was afraid and sat waist deep in the cold saltwater. I pressed my ear to the whale’s rib cage and heard shouts and noises beyond the barrier of flesh. Then metal claws tore the walls of my world open, and I tumbled onto a wooden deck.

  It took my eyes quite some time to adjust to the light. My old skin was covered in flecks of blood and slick blubber.

  Between the unshaven sailors, I saw a woman looking at me and smiling. Her skin was crumpled with age, and her hair w
as long and white. She was wearing a green sundress and holding out her hand.

  “How did you find me?” I managed to say.

  “I’ve been searching for you all my life,” she said. She bent down to kiss me softly on the brow.

  She helped me off the ship’s floor and gave me a bowl of hot soup. The sailors waved good-bye to us at the next port. We married and bought a little apartment in the city, far away from the woods and wild beasts. Inside, we enveloped each other in our arms and whispered the words we’d saved up over all that time. There weren’t many years left for us, so we were determined to live them happily. We drank dark wine and filled our bellies with rich meals of liver and ripe fruit.

  Time passed, and my days were calm.

  Yet despite all my happiness, life was uneasy for me on the outside. Often at night I would wake up in a sweat, my body encased in the tight sheets of our little bed in a cold apartment in a city surrounded by the warm sea. I felt small and alone in that dark room. I could feel the breath of my wife on my neck, but it felt like the breath of some unstoppable and infinitely large beast, the one waiting for the day that it would swallow me inside the blackness of its belly forever.

  THE SOLDIER

  The soldier was called into the sergeant’s tent and slapped across the face. There was something the soldier had done, of course, but he wasn’t sure what. The sergeant was yelling at the soldier, about either the shine or lack of shine on the toes of the soldier’s boots. It was a hot day in that foreign land. The soldier left the sergeant’s tent and, with the sting still blooming on his cheek, kicked a mangy dog in the ribs.

  I would like to make a point here about violence inflicted on one person being passed down to another in an endless cycle. But the kick was accidental. The soldier was running to hide the tears welling in his eyes and didn’t notice the dog in his path. The soldier was far from home. He was in a lonely place, and the men he was trying to kill always seemed to be hiding in large bushes where he couldn’t see them.