Bill Alton

Speakers throw music through the room. Dancers slam. One corner holds the beer.

Bad beer but it’s free.

People hold their beers like mothers in a flood. Someone laughs, a splash of ugly.

A girl who’s not really a girl asks my name. They call her Scarecrow. She smells of pot.

She has a heavy voice. She wears her skin tight to the bone. Large hands hang from too long arms. Veins run blue in her face.

You want to get high?

She takes me to a bedroom, all laundry and posters. Dim and safe.

She brings the needle.

I don’t know.

It won’t hurt.

The needle pops and all that matters are the flies between me and the ceiling.

I see my name there. The Book of Life like the Baptists say. God knows my name.

I know His too.

Vodka, gin, whiskey and tequila.

Vodka’s my favorite. Eggs and vodka are a bad breakfast.

I can see the tip of my nose. Things split, jump and slither.

School’s hard. I sleep and I smoke in the bathroom.

The principal calls me down. Mom’s there, thin and white.

No school for a week.

Mom takes me home. She sucker punches me. She slaps and slugs and spins me around.

She cries.

There’s nothing I can do.

She just shakes her head.

I go for a nap.

It’s been a long day.

Voices whisper at me. They’ve been coming for a while. I don’t know when they started.

One day it’s quiet. But then I have company. Like a fat man at dinner. Uninvited.

My voices don’t like me.

You’re going to die, they say.

I didn’t used to believe them. Now, I don’t know. I don’t know how to tell with these things.

Outside, it’s quiet enough to hear the stars. Quiet enough to walk across town and back.

I walk slowly and I walk fast.

Mom’s waiting in the living room.

Where are your shoes?

I go to bed.

The sun comes up like a dying cat.

Today, we’ll dissect sentences in English.

I’m sleeping, only I’m not sleeping. I close my eyes and count the hairs on my arms. It’s hard. Shift and the hairs move around and I start over.

One hundred. Dad’s home. Mom’s locked the doors with new locks.

Glass breaks.

Now he’s cussing and kicking dents in the garbage cans.

All the noise cuts into Mom, whittles away the flesh of her face. Skeletal knuckles rap the tabletop, counting something. One hundred raps. One breath.

She’s quiet under all the racket.

Cops come with their lights, run Dad off. Cops come to the door with questions.

Everything okay?

Mom nods and wipes her face.

Fine, she says. Tired.

If there’s a problem…

Yeah.

She lights a cigarette. I get her some coffee. She holds my hand.

Is he coming back?

She shakes her head.

Not this time.

Dust and heat in a white sky. I’m young. Barefoot. Shirtless. Next door, an empty house. Yellow grass and packed dirt. A stone chimney leans into one side. No one sees the rock come loose until it’s too late. It lands square on my head.

I can’t see right. My legs won’t work. My head wobbles on my neck. My skin is too thick to move.

Doctors say my skull’s fractured. Ear to ear. There’s nothing they can do.

Mom sits in the chair by the window. Sometimes she sleeps. Sometimes she goes out for a cigarette. Sometimes she just holds my hand and waits.

You’ll get better.

I’m not sure I believe her.

She’s naked and holds out her hand. My dad’s in his chair.

He pushes her. She falls, legs wide, pubic hair dark and heavy. Her breasts hang from her ribs, nipples like chocolate.

She smashes his face. He takes the coffee table to her, brings it down on her shoulders. Again and there’s blood. Again and the table goes to shards and slivers.

She doesn’t move.

Oh God, he says. I’m sorry.

She lays her hand on his face like it’s all okay.

I can barely hear her crying.

My folks’ closet is crazy with coats and clothes hung like lonely hides waiting for someone to pull them on again.

Secrets sit in the corners, up on the shelves.

My dad’s old uniform is huge. The sleeves drop over my hands. The weight of it makes me important.

The war sits in his face, the crawling around in the mud and constant shit. Guys weeks dead, bloated, skins split, their innards a meal for the ants and monkeys.

We found a pit once. Smelled like barbeque.

Something’s gone out of him.

He closes the door and stays there until morning.

Mom sits in her kitchen with her cigarettes and her coffee and her book. It is her day off and she has nothing to do, so she sits in her kitchen, quietly.

Everything smells of dust and the tar the asphalt spits up into the heat. Shirtless kids poke at it with sticks, clumsy attempts at art drawn out on concrete curbs.

I can’t move. The day is too heavy. Even the flies are slow in their circles.

I sit in the kitchen and I’m quiet. I watch Mom smoke and read her mysteries. I watch the way her hands hurt when she lifts the coffee cup, two fingers folded around the handle.

Sadness has settled in the dark skin around her eyes. She bites off chunks of smoke and waves the cloud into ribbons with her bony, baba yaga hands.

Cigarettes wrinkle her face up, pulled it down in folds and frowning pouches.

Thin, black hair hangs dull, graying in streaks.

She sighs and lights another cigarette because tomorrow she has to work but right now she sits in her kitchen with her mysteries.

I have no shoes. There are no words for my mouth. There are no words to make things not happen.

My dad’s knuckles are little stones. Blood tastes like blood. Pain is not bright.

Mom says, You’re not doing this.

Today Mom’s strong. Today she’s fierce.

The first shot takes me in the eyes. I can’t see.

Now the nose.

The chest. The belly. The eye again.

I wing a flat, jagged rock at him. It flies like a Frisbee. Bone flashes. Dad bleeds.

That’s enough of that.

He tries to push past to the bathroom.

Mom says, I told you not to.

She has a knife.

I think it’s time you left.

The living room is dark and warm. The music is soft, bluesy music the color of cigar smoke. They dance with their hips.

Her tits come out. Her head is on his bald spot. All night, I watch their secrets. Their secrets fill me up.