No one to trifle with, Slot Mouth. Nor am I. Nor am I, ol’ buddy ol’ pal Landreaux Iron. According to my exceedingly detailed memories of our so-called runaway escape, said Romeo to a sky blue dream catcher with iridescent threads, the reason which I am rubbing Icy Hot into my sad ol’ leg, you Landreaux Iron have much to answer for, things you never have addressed!
The good stuff penetrated and his leg felt immediately warm. Pain melted away into the luxury seat. Yet things did not feel very good at all when Landreaux’s avoidance of their mutual past was considered.
You ol’ war bitch, cried Romeo, happily, waking later to Rummy’s interview, sound off, the glow of his mango-scented sparkle tree. Having drifted off, he was now comfortable with the resentment he’d stifled before. Landreaux maybe should have not acted high and mighty to the point of stealing my son Hollis’s affections. Leading my son to join the military, even! Landreaux was the one who dragged me into his plan, and he should have not pretended all his life that he didn’t remember. Landreaux should have shared and shared alike the stuff that he could acquire. Landreaux should not have imagined people had short memories, or would forget. Because people had long memories and never stopped talking around this place. Romeo had heard them and Romeo knew. Landreaux should have not imagined it was over and done with—because a man had ears, tough little pinned-back ears that pricked up when people whispered. A man had a brain that decoded guarded talk between professionals. A man’s heart, shriveled raisin, prune of loneliness, burnt clam, understood what it was to lose out on love. And lose to a lying liar. Romeo bet his livid black heart could burst Landreaux’s baggy heart sack. If he could just get something solid on Landreaux to bring him down.
The Green Chair
THE BOREDOM OF late summer covered Maggie like an itchy swoon. Thirteen, but living in her girl body. No breasts. No period. Too old to act like a child, too underformed to feel like a teenager, she wandered. She packed herself a sandwich, a can of pop, and took off. There were old paths through the woods, made long ago when people still walked places, visited one another, or hiked to town, church, school. There were new paths made by kids with trail bikes and ATVs. If there was no path, Maggie crept in and out of tangled bush, slipping into places of peace or unrest. When she went off the paths, anything could happen but nothing bad ever did. Nobody noticed. LaRose was sometimes with his other family, and Peter was at work.
When had her mother stopped looking after her? Stopped checking? Stopped spying?
Maggie sat in a tree and watched what she decided was a drug house, black muscular dogs chained to the porch. She watched for a week to see if any drug freaks went in or out. Finally a car drove up. A woman she recognized got out. It was her kindergarten teacher, the only teacher she’d loved. Kindergarten was the one year she had been good in school. The muscular dogs tossed themselves over on their backs for Mrs. Sweit to scratch their bellies. When she went inside, the dogs followed her like children. Maggie keenly wished she could tag along with them, but she had to turn away knowing that inside the house Mrs. Sweit was feeding the dogs milk and cookies. She was reading them stories. She and the dogs were cutting lanterns from construction paper. Maggie went home.
The next day she saw a bear digging up some kind of roots beside a slough. Another time a fox arched-leaped high in the grass, trotted off with a mouse. Deer stepped along with their senses bared, stopping to twitch ears and nose-feel scents, before moving from cover. She watched the dirt fly behind a badger digging a den. White-footed mice with adorable eyes, blue swallows slicing air, hawks in a mystical hang-glide, crows tumbling on currents of air strong as invisible balance beams. She began to feel more at home outside than inside.
One day she was sitting high in a tree, pulling apart a wood tick. Something large flowed at her, ghost-silent. She flattened against the bark. Hung on. She felt fingers rake her hair lightly and the thing rushed up, soundlessly sucked into the leaves. She didn’t scare easy, but her breath squeezed off. She scrambled halfway down and huddled against the trunk. It was coming at her again, she could feel it. An owl with great golden eyes lighted on the branch before her, clacked its beak, fixed her with supernatural hunger. She looked straight back. At that moment her heart flung wide and she allowed the owl into her body. Then it sprang. She threw her arms up and it left razor cuts on the backs of her wrists. Her screams impressed it, though. It kept a distance while she climbed the rest of the way down. It swooped her once again, raising the hair on her scalp as she barged through the scrub.