God Doesn’t Want You to Be Happy, He Wants You to Be Strong

As Roman passed Kilderry Park he saw the black pillar of smoke issuing from down the hill and his stomach sank. He hurried, but when he reached the Rumanceks’ plot there was nothing waiting but the scorched husk of the trailer. He got out and stood for a while as close to the black and buckled metal as the heat would allow. On the ground there was a carpeting of ash and debris and something fluttered into his jacket. He took it in his hands; it was the singed fragment of a Peanuts cartoon he recognized from the refrigerator. Roman released it and turned from the trailer. A broken compact mirror lay on the ground, open like a clam. It was cracked and reflected the wash of black smoke in the sky’s white.

His phone rang. Peter. Destiny had had a dream in her Third Eye and retrieved Lynda in the night. They were in the city.

“How’s it look?” said Peter.

“Like the last time Shelley made toast,” said Roman. “Molotov cocktail, maybe. Or grenade.” Peter was quiet. Then he said, “What happened last night?”

“I don’t know,” said Roman. “Last I saw you were down and Chasseur was going to take you and there was nothing I could do about it. So I’m driving, just driving up and down the river until, you know, a better idea comes along, when Mom calls and says to come back and keep an eye on you. I go home, there you are. She isn’t. Is she back yet?”

“No,” said Peter.

“Well, looks like I won’t be bringing you a change of socks.” He rubbed his face and his hand came off blackened with soot.

“I watched you change back,” he said. “This morning.” There was another pause. “Yeah?” said Peter.

“Yeah. It’s actually … it’s … beautiful.” “Okay,” said Peter.

“I’m not a homo,” said Roman. He hung up, noticing a black shape reflected in the driver’s window, and turned to find the cat sitting a few paces off. It looked at him, flames licked the menisci of its eyes. Roman looked at the cat. It peered into his face hieratic and unknowable as the night. Roman stepped forward, scooped a hand under its belly, and tossed it into the car.

* * *

Peter hung up and regarded himself in the same mirror in which he had done the other night, pondering what it would reflect on this morning after the Snow Moon. It was equally useless, showing nothing but a face as grim and gray but one day older. A face without options. He had one option. Whose son was he? He slapped his bare stomach hard with both hands and went downstairs to the kitchen and rooted through the refrigerator. On the bottom shelf there was a twenty-two-ounce rib eye bulging red and wet against the wrapper. He put a cast-iron skillet on the stove and turned the burner on high and tore the meat from the package. He gave the skillet another minute to get hot before dropping the steak into a searing scream, that

scream like it is just now dying. He let it sit for only a few seconds before pinching it between his fingers and flipping it. He extinguished the flame and lifted the skillet and slid the steak into his hand. The surface was brown but red juice welled in the striations and the trim of fat was still pink, and when he bit into it the center was an almost iridescent purple. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. He hardly chewed and swallowed before tearing another bite, and the next. The juice ran down his hands and his chin and the hair of his torso. He held it greedily with both hands and snapped his head back to tear the gristle. He saw Letha standing in the entryway.

Peter stood with his face glistening and the greasy trails running down his chest. Neither knew what to say. The mystery of what another person may be thinking at any given moment. Then, by nameless stimulus, he dropped the steak to the floor and they fell into each other and held.

“What do we do now?” she said eventually.

“I guess we just stand here like this until something happens next,” Peter said.

She laid her face in the nook of his arm. He was clammy as though from a night of fever and smelled as bad as he looked and this sounded like a fine plan.

The front door was kicked in.

Peter seized Letha’s arm and pulled her out the back door. Not thinking, but heedless obeisance to his most basic instinct, the foundation upon which all others were constructed. The woods, always run for the woods. They raced across the deck and through the yard, but before they reached the tree line there was the report of the back door banging the side of the house and along with it the Jehovan command FREEZE.

They froze. They turned slowly. Neck was standing in the doorframe. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt but he had a sidearm aimed at Peter. Peter had heard of the big bang theory and the idea of the whole of the universe squeezed into one little black dot but it was never something that made any sense to him until looking into the barrel of that gun pointed at him. Nose appeared, also in street clothes.

“Hands up,” said Neck. They raised their hands.

“You,” said Neck, indicating Peter. “Down on the ground, you sick fucking animal.”

Neck held the weapon on him as Peter lay flat on his stomach. The grass pricked his skin and it occurred to him now that it was a very cold day, how cold he was. The kind of cold like you feel you will never be warm again. Which Peter knew he would not. Nose came forward and roughly wrenched Peter’s arms behind his back.

“Be careful,” said Letha feebly.

Nose dug his knee between Peter’s shoulder blades and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

“Peter Rumancek,” he said, “you have the right to remain fucked, you fucking deviant piece of shit.” He stood, pressing extra weight into the knee. Peter gasped.

“You have the right to fuck yourself,” said Nose. “If you choose to waive this right, an ass-fucking will be provided for you in a court of law.”

He kicked Peter. Letha screamed for him to stop. He ignored her. He was just getting into his element. He hauled Peter to his feet. The bolt of pain in his shoulder socket was an unwelcome distraction from the pain of the metal biting his wrists.

“You have the right,” said Nose, almost singing, “to suck the hairy hose of whatever heathen god awaits you, buddy-boy—goddammit!”

Letha was trying to pry his hands from Peter. “I won’t let you,” she said. “Stand away,” said Neck.

“I won’t let you.” She sounded stupid like a child and gouged her fingernails into Nose’s knuckles. “Don’t,” said Peter. Her intervention before had saved him from a gang of boys, but these were men

with guns and a mission and fighting it was only the difference between its happening here in front of her eyes or by the river somewhere, a bridge overhead like the underbelly of a snake. Assholes.

“Back off!” said Nose, shoving her. She fell to the ground and Nose snaked a forearm hard around Peter’s windpipe. Peter choked for air.

“Stay down or I break his goddamn neck.”

He jerked Peter toward the house. Letha watched, sunken by her own powerlessness. A condition that seemed to give people named Godfrey so much trouble to understand.

Peter met her eye and he tried to say several important things with that look. When you have nothing else, have dignity, he tried to say. Nicolae had always told him that and he never knew how he himself would do in practice.

Tell Lynda when the time comes that with my last spit I will spit in their eye and with my last breath curse them so their dicks fall off, he said with his eyes. Tell Lynda when she feels the wind just before the first rain of spring it’s me, that will be me checking to make sure she is still just as fat as she is today.

And Roman. Help Roman become a man on the path of light and love. Not the other way. Tell Roman … all the things I couldn’t.

You are as full of light and love as anyone I know, his eyes said. I’m sorry I will never see the baby hanging off your tits. I’m sorry I will never see your tits again. They’re good tits and I’ll miss them.

Nose threw a fist into Peter’s kidneys. “This one’s sweating like a nigger trying to read,” he said. Behind the pain, this struck Peter as odd—didn’t he realize how cold it was?

There was a creak and Shelley emerged onto the deck. Neck looked over and said, “Christ, fucking perfect.”

“Go back inside,” said Nose. Shelley didn’t move.

“Get back in the goddamn house,” said Nose.

Shelley began swaying from side to side. She made a low keening noise like an anxious ruminant. “Fucking wonderful,” said Neck.

“Back in the fucking house!” said Nose.

“You don’t need to yell at her,” said Peter. He waited for the blow to follow and was obliged: the man’s fist landed on the side of his head. The keen became a muted wail as Shelley covered her face and reeled.

“Will you deal with that fucking thing?” said Nose, shaking out his knuckles.

But there was a noise inside and Neck stood to the side of the door out of view of anyone else who might join this party.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Letha quietly, still sitting on the ground. “You think you do, but you don’t.”

Nose’s face went red as a drunk’s and the veins in his neck stood out. “One more word and buddy-boy gets gutted like a fucking fish right here!”

Shelley began to flash discordantly. “What the Christ?” said Neck.

Roman emerged then from the house. Everyone but Shelley was silent. Roman surveyed the scene. He did not see Neck.

“There is,” said Neck, “a gun pointed at the back of your head. Do not, repeat, do not turn around.” Roman turned.

“Back off,” said Neck.

Roman looked in his eyes. “Put the gun in your mouth,” said Roman.

Neck put the gun in his mouth. Nose started to come at Roman, but Roman cast a finger at him without taking his eyes from Neck and said, “If he moves, pull the trigger.”

Neck’s eyes bulged and he grunted hoarsely and Nose stopped. Roman went to Shelley. He put his hands behind her head and pulled her to a crouch so his forehead touched hers and he breathed with her

down to a gentle lull. He was calming because he was calm himself. He had made mistakes out of confusion but just now, when he had pulled up out front, he had heard the sound of his sister needing his help and this was all the focus he needed.

Letha stood by Peter. She did not understand what she had just seen happen but did not need to. She reached for Peter’s face and smoothed the bangs from his eyes and tucked them behind his ear. She needed to do that.

Roman addressed Nose. “Uncuff him.” Nose hesitated.

Roman looked at Neck. His face beaded sweat and he panted through his nostrils. “If he’s still handcuffed by the time I count to three, pull the trigger,” said Roman. “One,” said Roman.

Nose freed Peter’s hands. Peter rubbed the red rings on his wrists. Nose cast his eyes fierce and fearful to the ground, the mirror of an adolescent dealing with a hated cop.

Peter took Letha’s hand. He saw Shelley observe this small intimacy and waved with a pinkie. No one’s forgetting you.

“You will go to your car,” Roman instructed Neck. “That faggot will take 19 to the Allegheny County line.”

“There’s no reason to call him a faggot,” Letha said.

“That … knucklehead will take 79 to the West Virginia state line. At that point you can take the gun out of your mouth. And you”—addressing his partner—“punch yourself in the nose.”

* * *

“Someone told her,” said Nurse Kotar. “We were going to wait until you came to decide how to handle the … situation. But she knows.”

Godfrey breathed deeply and tried to think of all the reasons not to put his fist through the drywall but the only one was habit. He didn’t anyway.

“What’s her condition?” he said.

“Catatonia. Not crying, not speaking. I had to double-check to make sure she was blinking. And Doctor. Her hair.”

He went to Christina Wendall’s room. She was in the armchair and her feet were flat on the floor and her hands were in her lap. Normally she was so full of nervous energy that in the moment he could not remember seeing anything sadder than her hands being still. Her hair had gone uniform white. Godfrey shivered, the window was open. But her arms were bare. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap shirt and her skinny arms and shoulders were indifferent in the chill.

“Christina,” said Godfrey. She looked at him but he expected no response and she gave him none. His heart wasn’t in it anyway. The thing between her and him right now was greater charity than any he might provide. He took the blanket from the bed and tucked it around her shoulders. This paternal reflex gave rise to another he probably should have curbed. But he was a father and a human, and he was tired. He brushed the hair from her face and kissed her cheek.

The door opened and Godfrey quickly straightened. Nurse Kotar stood in the threshold. “Why is this window open?” said Godfrey, misdirecting his own impropriety.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, I don’t know. But your daughter is on the line. She said it was an emergency.”

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 586