Popping Kalyn
WV
Lew and I kidnapped my sister the day Pop came crawling out of the corn fields. He came in with green silk in his hair and kernels stuck between his teeth; he smelled something like dirt. Lew had told me to watch out, that the old man hadn't been himself lately, that his dancing had gotten sloppier. His rhythm's all off, Lew said. And I could tell, by the way he swaggered into the bathroom and sat on the toilet across from me. I was taking a bath at the time.
"Got problems here," the old man said.
I hadn't seen Pop up close in over two weeks. He'd kept himself busy out there in the corn fields, doing whatever it was he did with the corn: some kind of fertility dance? First he'd swing his hip out to the side, shake his butt a bit, shuffle around, touch his toes, and spread himself out like a starfish. Then he'd repeat the routine, or do variations of it, until he collapsed from the heat. He stayed away from the house, never looked in our direction, though Lew and I would sometimes sit on the roof and wave his scarves in the air, and talk about him till our legs itched.
"Pop's not making any progress, Ego. Look at the leaves out there: all golden and crisp!"
"It's the drought," I told my cousin. "Fool's gonna die if he don't come in soon."
We'd watch him a little longer, and then we'd watch our neighbor's prize bull, which was more fun to look at.
It didn't surprise me that Pop chose that day to come in. The wind had been whistling through cracks and slamming doors all morning, and whenever it gets like that, the corn stalks start whipping around and can do real damage. Pop looked like he'd taken a licking or two before he got out; he had some welts across with his sunburned arms.
I stood up and wrapped a towel around my waist. "Sir, I think you need this bath more than me," I said. "Don't worry. I didn't fart in it or nothing."
Pop raised both hands and cracked a grin. "No, no, you go on and enjoy. I got something important to say, and I think you'd take it better lying down."
I settled back in and stroked myself with the soap. "What's the trouble, Pop?"
"It's your sister," he said quietly. "Something ain't right with her." He leaned back on the toilet, rubbed some cornsilk off his face. He looked much older than my friends' fathers, though Pop was only thirty-six. I was exactly half his age.
My sister Kalyn had just turned thirteen. Unlucky year to be alive. I remember my own thirteenth clearly: Pop driving us out to the lake every weekend; Pop forcing me and Lew to walk across the Bridge; Maw having her first two breakdowns; me raiding Maw's closet while she was away at the hospital. That was the year I started having panic attacks in my sleep; that was also the year of bad skin. My sister, on the other hand, showed every sign of being normal.
"She ain't the same as before," Pop cautioned. "The girl's become something else, son — I saw it just a minute ago. She's different."
"How's that?" I tried to imagine what he was talking about. Kalyn still had the same pale skin, the same lopsided mouth. She wore the same clothes, ate the same fat-free foods. "I know! She's wearing makeup now, is that it?"
"No..."
"Zits? She's got zits now."
"No..."
"Tits?" I laughed. Then I frowned when he didn't say no.
Pop leaned forward carefully, steepling his fingers. "Ego, she's getting pretty," he said. "Dangerously pretty."
The notion made my brain hurt. I couldn't deny that she was blossoming — my sister was blossoming! — but the idea of her being "dangerously pretty" didn’t quite register.
"It's just her growth spurt, Pop. It's a good thing."
He sneered as if I'd dealt one. "Has the sun scrambled your brain, son?" He leaned over the tub, his cornfed face inches from mine. "How long you think it'll be before some guy gets her in his car? Takes her to the back? That's where prettiness can get you!"
"She'll know what to do," I said.
"Ain't a matter of her knowing, even if she did know. It's a matter of her getting hurt, and if some boy goes and hurts her, the chap'll be hurting every one of us, too." Pop went on about family honor and what we, as members of the Knappy clan, stood for. History meant everything to the old man; he spoke about feuds long since settled... and how our ancestors struggled to make life easier for us... and how it was our duty to carry on their legacy... and how we were supposed to resolve all conflicts within the family... and about our clan's heritage and traditions and customs... and about the secret initiation rite pertaining to female virgins —
My sphincter twitched. "Woah, sir, you want me to do what?" Did I hear the old man alright? Did he really expect me to— Did he really believe in this ancestral hokey pokey? Seemed like the drought had finally deep-fried his noodle; he'd been out there for over half a month, after all. Maybe this was just some corn-crazy delusion of his.
"Ain't nothing a man like you can't handle, right, boy?"
I looked into Pop's husky face and saw that he was serious. The old man was serious. He had that same look when I was thirteen, when he told me and Lew to get out of the car and walk across Lake Cheller. The Bridge had been a hundred feet above the water those days, and Pop would drive real close to me and Lew so that we stayed near the edge of it.
"This ain't a complicated matter," he was saying.
I remember walking along the puny knee-high railing and doing what I never should've done: look down at the wrinkled sheet of water below. Sometimes I couldn't move, I was so scared, and Lew would have to talk me forward and drag me along. I remember Kalyn looking at me from the passenger seat, blue eyes all big.
"Why's it have to be me?" I said. "Whycome? I can't do something like that...with my own sister! Plus, I have this little problem with —"
The old man gently pulled my hands away from my ears. "You know something, Ego, this is in her best interest. It's what's best for the family. And if she can't trust you to guide her — if she can't trust her own brother — who can she trust? Who's next in line? Her father..."
Pop lowered a towel over my head and walked out.
Later that morning, after corndogs and a dip, Lew and I climbed up the side of the house and sat on the roof again. This time we didn't bother with waving scarves. Instead, Lew handed me his pump-action Daisy, and we took turns shooting at our neighbor's prize bull. We aimed for its left testicle and kept squeezing off rounds till its sac had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. The bull tried to escape by ramming its head against the fence.
"Let's shoot Pop in the butt," Lew then suggested. He pointed to the clearing where Pop had continued his fertility dance, now that the wind had died down.
I pushed the rifle into my cousin's hands. "You do it. I bet he won't even feel it."
Lew spat out some dip juice, slowly raised the scope to his eye. He hesitated for about a minute, waiting for Pop to turn around.
"Gimme that," I said.
"Naw, I got it."
Pop started twirling so fast Lew accidentally fired into his crotch; the old man went down like someone who'd won the lottery.
We scrambled off the roof, throwing the rifle underneath the porch and running towards McGraw's Hill. We made it to the top and stared at the creek.
"What do you think of my sister?" I asked Lew.
He gave me a strange look. "Dunno," he said. "She's got good posture."
"I wonder if she's got a boyfriend."
We kept some old refrigerator boxes hidden in the woods. Lew and I searched the area and found them caught up in barbed wire, mangled but still usable.
"She never talks about anyone, does she?" I said. "Boyfriend-wise?"
Lew hocked up a loogie. "What do you care? All that girl ever does's sit around on her soft butt. She'll sit in the garage for hours staring at the Abflex like it's her worst enemy."
It scared me how little I knew of Kalyn. Lew, on the other hand, I knew more than I cared to. I knew that he'd lock himself in the toolshed to count nails; I knew that he liked to take showers in his underwear; I knew that he stole money from Maw. I knew that at night, when he thought he was alone, he'd talk to the truck drivers. He kept a CB radio hidden behind his bed, where not even Pop knew about it, and before he'd go to sleep, he'd lay in his dark room and switch it on to the truck driver station. Around midnight there was always at least one driver on the Interstate willing to talk.
My cousin would tell them everything: about me, about Kalyn, about Pop and Maw. He'd tell Big John about the drought, he'd tell Grayson about school. He'd tell Russ about Pop's dancing. And as any trucker passing through the area around midnight would know, my cousin was in love. Lying in bed at night, Lew would describe his dreams about What's-Her-Name in play-by-play detail, and the drivers would talk back and give advice.
Lew and I carried our refrigerator boxes over to the hill and greased up the slick cardboard side with spit. The grass on the slope was yellow and dead, and some of it could cut us if we weren't careful. Lew took off running before I could warn him, legs working like pistons until he dove, headfirst, onto his box and slid.
"WHEEE[uh]ee[uh]eee[uh]eee!"
He was leaning too much on his left, and his scrawny legs swung out to the right and swept around, helicopter-style. My own run wasn't much better. I thought I'd take the easy way out and slide with the front raised like those Christmas sleds, only here in West Virginia it was summer, and the dead grass flew in my face and blinded me. I spun out of control and crashed against Lew, and we both lay there looking up at a cloudless sky, watching a plane spray insecticide over us.
"You OK?" I asked, afraid to move.
"Naw," he replied, getting up. He hobbled over to an abandoned tractor, climbed in the driver's seat, and wrestled with the gears and steering wheel. He gazed at the green mountains.
"What're you thinking about?" I said. "You ain't thinking of that lady — What's-Her-Name?"
Lew twitched.
"Forget her, Lew! She's married and got three kids, and you're only seventeen. Just because you see her on TV all the time don't mean you'll actually get to meet her."
My cousin shrugged. "New York's not that far away, right? It's only three states away. Why don't we go there?"
"What for?"
"Lots of reasons. Rockefeller Center."
"What if Pop finds out?" The old man had given me a week tops to do the brotherly thing for Kalyn — then he would audit her, whatever that meant. I couldn't imagine what he'd do if he found us all gone.
"The Bug probably won't make it that far," I said.
"It might," Lew said, pretend-driving.
"It'll cost us."
"Maw's got money."
I wracked my brain, figuring it out. "Think New York's a very sexy place? I mean, you think a person could get laid there?"
Lew brayed ass-style. "Of course, Ego, they got prostitutes! But wait a second, you ain't thinking of that, are you? Remember, you got a little problem with —"
"I know, I know." I went back to the plow attached to the tractor and ripped off a long piece of metal. Lew must've seen my face changing colors because he jumped off and stood back. I got some good hits on the tires but I couldn't poke a hole no matter what. I gave up on them, leaning on one for support so I could catch my breath.
"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" Kalyn said.
We were thirty minutes out of town, and the Bug started making this weird farting noise. It could've been any number of things: the drive shaft, the transmission, the carburetor, maybe even the fuel tank. My sister glanced at me and shrugged. Limestone mountains crept by, and the sky looked like it was about to fall on top of us. Lew had fallen asleep on the suitcases in the back where the back seats should've been.
"Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you!"
It didn't take much to kidnap my sister. She'd been in the garage all day staring at the Abflex and drinking iced tea. I figured she was hungry, so I went in and made corndogs for both of us. We sat eating them on one of my skateboards, back to back.
"Pop came in today," she said.
"I know."
"What do you think's wrong with him?" She leaned back against me, breathing hard.
"Too much corn, looks like. No telling what he might do." Then I asked if she wanted to go for a ride, an afternoon drive to Charleston.
"Lew and I are going to the pill store. I need to get some weight-gainer and vitamins for my acne."
An hour or so later, we'd hit the Interstate and a nasty stretch of road. The Bug had been moving slower than usual, and other drivers would ride behind us for a while, then zoom around and cut us off. If someone tailed us for too long, Lew would load up his spud gun.
Kalyn didn't approve of the spud gun.
One car we'd driven behind had a bumper sticker that said HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS, so Kalyn leaned over and held down the Bug's horn for so long I almost ran off the road.
"You wanna get us killed?" I said. But the driver stuck her arm out and waved for us to pull up. Lew stuffed a potato into his pipe, but I told him to hold off and brought the Bug level. The lady grinned at us, passed Kalyn some pamphlets, and said, "Praise the Lard!" We nodded thanks and drove on past.
"If your brother sins against you," Kalyn was reading, "go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. Matthew 18:15."
She tossed the pamphlets aside, flipped down the visor, and looked herself over in the mirror. "Ego, do you think my face'll ever explode like yours?" she asked.
I reached up and felt the gravel in my cheeks and realized I hadn't cleansed my face that morning. I'd probably forgotten to pack my foaming face wash, I was in such a hurry. I went through a quick mental rundown of the essentials: toothbrush, toothpaste, panties, money, maps. Three out of five wasn't bad.
"I think I'm getting fatter," my sister said. "Take a look at my tummy. I'm getting bigger right around here, I can feel it. See — take a look."
She lifted her shirt so that I could see her faint chubbiness — it was there — but what I couldn't help noticing was her bra. It had laces around the edges.
"What're you looking at!" she screamed.
"Your stomach. You told me to look at your stomach."
"Yeah right," she said. "I saw you."
The Bug gasped and wheezed as we moved on. We were traveling along the red lines and staying away from the blue ones, according to the map. The purple places where the lines crossed were the worst, and I did all I could to avoid them. But sometimes a bridge would pop up that I had no way of knowing would be there, and I'd have to sweat it out.
"Hey, Kalyn," I said. "If you were ever good at anything, and if you became famous for what you did, to where you became a household name, would you ever appear on Circus of the Stars?"
"Depends," she said.
"On what?"
"On how much they pay me. And if I get to do the trapeze."
Lew jerked awake right as the car went into spasms. "We there yet, Ego?" he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Still don't know why you dragged this girl's soft butt out here with us."
I slammed the seat back as far as it would go, crushing my confused cousin. The Bug started to slow all of a sudden, and flooring the gas didn't help any. We cruised onto the shoulder.
I went back to the engine, lifted the hood, and stared at the Bug's steaming intestines. I knew little about cars. The one thing I did know about the Bug, though, happened to be the reason why it stalled out. It needed a nickel on top of this hole in the engine block; the coin must've fallen off.
Kalyn went through her purse and pockets and came up with nothing. She went through the glove compartment, the ashtray, the cracks in the seats. Nothing.
"Lew?"
Nothing.
Ain't it strange, though, that my sister happened to be carrying around a black felt-tip marker? We took out the cardboard sun reflector and changed the message on the back from EMERGENCY CALL POLICE to EMERGENCY NEED NICKEL. Then I got my sister to sit on top of the Bug, holding the sign up for all the passing cars to see.
We waited. I leaned up against the side of the Bug, popping a few zits. Not a single car stopped or honked or did anything to save us.
My sister looked down at me with her blue eyes, smiled her lopsided smile. "This is so funny!" she said. I got bored and picked up rocks to throw at her, which she deflected with the sign.
Just then, an eighteen-wheeler drove by and blasted its horn; it didn't stop. Lew chased after it, shouting, "Is that you, Larry?"
I figured it was high time for tears. I spat out some of my dip juice and started walking down the road. If somebody saw the sign and actually cared, it'd take that person a while to fish out a nickel. And if that person just tossed it out the window at 70 or 80 mph, thinking we'd notice it, it'd be some distance from where we were at. I kept walking along the shoulder and looked.
The faster we go, the faster it'll be over, Lew had said. Sometimes. Sometimes when we walked across the Bridge, Lew did his best to help me out; other times, he didn't. Heights didn't affect him the way it did most people. I was convinced it had the opposite effect, especially when he'd hop up on the rail and wobble across like a tight-rope walker. Pop would get nervous and honk at him, and the blare would almost push us over.
Pop sent us across the Bridge once a week for a whole year: it was his way of making men out of us. Lew and I spent a total of 8.6 hours up there. The Bridge was 105 ft. high and 1760 ft. long. The railing was 2 ft. high and made of corrugated tin.
Lew told me a story once about a kid who'd actually jumped off. "Guy was drunk and got all his friends together and said he was gonna jump. So they all went out here, just to see if he'd do it. They had to take him to the hospital after. Turned out Cheller almost ripped him in half. His legs were split at like 90 degrees to his body. Every day at the hospital, they moved his legs closer and closer while he was healing. He walked outta there a she."
PA
"Now hold on," Kalyn said. "I just saw a sign says we're in Pennsylvania."
"Already?" I said.
"Well, ain't that the wrong direction? Ain't Charleston the other way?"
"Who said anything about Charleston?" Lew said. "I thought we're headed
for —"
I swerved to shut him up. Kalyn began hitting me on the arm. "You lied! You lied about going to the pill store, you turd! You... KIDNAPPER!"
"SHUT UP!" I screamed. "Shut up for about thirty minutes so I can think."
But I couldn't clear my head of Pop's kernel-studded grin. If only I could go through with it — or maybe get someone else to. Kalyn did not look bad. The only problem was I didn't have an ounce of drive in me. Here is what happened:
Couple years ago, Pop and Kalyn had gone to visit Maw at the hospital right after her first breakdown; Lew stayed behind to count nails in the toolshed (his way of shortening the time between him and What's-Her-Name); and I was sitting in my room smiling. I had the house to myself: I had to do something memorable. I reached up one of the shelves in the den and pulled down Maw's crystal vase. Perfect. I dumped the flowers and water and carefully inserted my dick into it. My dick began to get hard, and it enlarged, and I found I couldn't remove the vase.
I yanked and prayed. Long story short, I decided to risk penal damage and ran out to the shed, searching for a hammer. Lew sympathized with me. He didn't laugh or ridicule me: he actually cared. We laid the vase out on his table, and I trusted him enough to smash it open. A cautious swing, the tinkle of glass. My poor swollen dick lay there like a newborn something.
"Looks dead," my cousin observed.
From that day on, it killed me to have an erection. Maybe I'd done something to the blood vessels down there.
Pennsylvania's green hills moved slowly past. The three of us sat in silence for a while, the Bug making all the noise. Then, out of nowhere, my sister started whining. I looked over at her. She had her zit cream in one hand and was pointing at her left eye with the other. A dab of the white stuff had somehow gotten into her eyelashes, so we took the next exit and headed into a nowhere town. I parked at the nearest building.
"Go wash that out at a fountain if you can," I told her.
She nodded and ran off towards the entrance, beneath a banner that read LADIES' NIGHT OUT. Lew and I sat in the car and looked at the map, trying to figure out where we were and how much longer it'd be before my cousin realized his dream. He was getting more and more impatient.
"What do you want from What's-Her-Name exactly?" I asked. "She's almost as old as Maw, you know."
"I know. All I need is a piece of her hair. Maybe one strand."
"What're you gonna do with her hair, eat it?"
He looked at me, surprised. "How'd you know?" He explained how one strand of her hair contained her entire DNA sequence — her entire physical makeup! — and that if he ate it, he would, basically, be eating her and would have her inside him. He'd become One with her.
Right as I was about to slap the boy, he squinted his eyes and said, "Hear that?" I listened. It was a weird bunch of sounds: shprang, shprang, shprang, and a crunch! every now and then. We shut the Bug and wandered to where the noise was. Behind the building, we came face to face with a fat man on a pogo stick, bouncing around, and below him, scattered all over the concrete, were these things. Crabs. About seven or eight of them.
shprang shprang crunch!
"What're you doing that for, mister?" I said.
"Got to [uh] kill the [uh] crabs," he said.
He wouldn't say why, so Lew and I sat on the curb and watched him go. He killed three more — they exploded in a burst of shell and meat — before jumping off the stick. He wiped an arm across his shiny forehead and sat down next to me, grimacing at the twilight.
"You want to know why?" he said. "I'll tell you why. When I was eleven, my mother asked me to kill a crab for her. She had it in the sink. I felt sorry for it and wanted to let it go, but my mother wouldn't hear of it. She was going to cook the crab for dinner. 'Fine,' I told her. 'If you're gonna cook it, why don't you kill the damn thing?' She said, 'Fine.' She took out a meat cleaver and whacked the creature in half. What she forgot to do was remove her thumb."
"Bet that smarted," I said.
The fat man grabbed me by the shirt, put his sweaty face in mine. "Do you know what it's like, having a mother without a thumb? Do you know how much I had to do for her? She can't even put on a bra by herself!"
Lew picked up the pogo stick and tapped the fat man on the shoulder. "Can I give it a go, mister?" The fat man nodded, and Lew mounted the stick with his puny legs. Before he could get a few bounces in, he fell off and the crabs tried to grab hold of him.
"Goddamn crabs!" the fat man yelled. He snatched away the stick and mounted. "A word of [uh] advice, boys: [uh] if your mother [uh] ever asks you [uh] to kill a crab [uh] you better listen..."
"Maw wouldn't do that," I said. "Maw would never do that."
We walked back to the parking lot and waited for Kalyn. I took a minute to whiz against the side of the building and to dig my panties out of my butt crack. I was getting down to my last pair, I figured, and the last thing I wanted was to get them all browned up.
Minutes later, a flock of old ladies left the building. They waddled off to their cars, swinging their purses and looking angry; some of them were cursing. Then Kalyn stepped out, hanging on the bicep of a big brawny man. He was wearing a tight PROPERTY OF OAKVILLE REC CENTER T-shirt.
"Look what I won at BINGO!" Kalyn said. "His name is Chet."
Chet had a mustache, sideburns, and the thickest neck I'd ever seen. He grinned and shook my hand, then Lew's. "Your sister won me on Black-out," he said. "Rules are she gets to keep me for a night to do with what she wants. Then I can go home."
"Ain't she too young?" Lew asked, before I could rib him.
"Rules don't say anything about age. We looked it up. And to be honest with you, I'd pick this girl over them old bags any day."
We stuffed Chet into the Bug before climbing in around him and driving off. I figured the best thing to do was leave Chet alone with Kalyn for a while, drop them off at a nice burger place somewhere. Then we could pool up what little money we had left and get the two a motel room; Lew and I would sleep in the car. Then we'd turn around and head back home first thing in the morning.
"Hey, what's this?" Chet said, reaching for the pamphlet. "The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
"Gimme that —" I grabbed the pamphlet and threw it out the window. Chet gave a low whistle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kalyn reaching from back to feel Chet's massive arms and shoulders. I grinned. My sister cooed.
"You know that sound you're making," Lew said, "reminds me of the sound chickens make right before they die. It's true. I heard them coo like that, whenever my friend catches one and starts getting all friendly with her. You know what I mean. Just before he blows, my friend'll take two bricks and bash the chicken's head, says the death convulsions feel something wonderful."
"LEW!" Kalyn screamed and frogged him on the leg. I tried to slam my seat back to crush him again, but the lever was jammed.
"That one's nothing," Lew said. "I heard about these two queers, one of them stuffed a hamster up the other's butthole, and it crawled up in there and died. Sort of got stuck, so the other one lit a match and tried to look for it. Just then the dude farted and the hamster shot out —"
Kalyn lunged at Lew, going for a stranglehold, but my cousin slipped away and put her in a half-nelson. Then he made her apologize for rudely interrupting his story. "That's where I got the idea for the spud gun," he said.
At the next traffic light, Chet got out of the car and ran.
"Where's he going?" Lew said.
My gut was yelling at me to chase after the man, somehow reel him in and tie him down, but it was getting too dark and Chet had already scaled a fence. The Bug felt much lighter now, emptier, and we drove on down the road having no other choice. Kalyn's lower lip trembled.
We checked into a twenty dollar motel around nine and watched TV till ten, flipping through all the channels we didn't have at home. Since there was only one bed — a single — we played paper-rock-scissors to see who got to sleep where. Kalyn and Lew won the bed; I got carpet. My sister balked at the idea of sleeping with Lew, so our cousin said, "Fine, her butt's too soft, anyway," and slept out in the car.
While Kalyn was taking her shower, I undid my pants and checked to see if my drawers were close to being clean. They weren't. I hobbled over to the luggage and dug through my supply of clothes, then Lew's, hoping against the odds to find clean underwear. I finally decided to free-ball it, and tossed my dirty panties in a drawer, on top of the Bible.
The panty-wearing started not long after Maw's first breakdown. I was thirteen then, skinny enough to fit into most of her clothes. Every week while Pop was away visiting Maw at the hospital or out mining, I'd sneak into their bedroom and lock myself in their closet. I'd run back and forth through Maw's wardrobe, smelling where she'd been, biting into her foam pads, leaving tracks of saliva behind. Once a mothball had fallen into my mouth, and I just kept on sucking.
I'd get bruises from all the coathangers slapping my face and have to rest for a while. Then I'd take off my clothes, pick out a new dress or blouse/skirt combo, and put it on, making sure to fasten all the little buttons and clasps. While Maw and Pop got worse, I went through their drawers looking for more things to wear. Panties, stockings, bras; no one found out.
After Kalyn dried off and put on the same clothes, we lay down together and watched a talk show. The motel shampoo smelled strong on her hair, syrupy, and I reached up and played with a wet lock of hers that rested across the pillow. She caught what I was doing and jerked her head away.
"What's with you?" she said.
"Nothing."
"Think Lew's all right out there?"
I went for her hair again. She told me to cut it out, that I was acting all weird. I gave up. Right then the noise started. It started slow and began to build through the walls, and then it died down. I kept my eyes shut and pretended not to hear; my sister froze.
Ooooh ah ah AH!
Kalyn turned up the volume on the TV, and the talk show drowned out the sounds. I grinned sadly into my pillow and waited the two hours it took for me to fall asleep.
After ham and eggs at Denny's, we drove through an old town full of farms, Dutch houses, and windmills, like something you'd see in a postcard or painting. Traffic was bad.
I spent most of the morning trying to shake off the dream I'd had the night before. Another one about bridges. This time I was on a hundred-footer at least, and below my sister was dancing in a field of dandelions, picking them. Pop came from under the bridge and tried to snatch them away, and Kalyn yelled up at me for help, but I couldn't jump down because I knew I'd lose it. I stood there.
Lew also had a dream — something about What's-Her-Name — and he wouldn't shut up about it. Kalyn wanted to know who the lady was, she was really curious, but Lew blushed and pretended like he didn't want to tell. Finally, they played Twenty Questions.
Q. "Is she a teacher from school?"
A. "Naw..."
Q. "Is she a movie star?"
A. "Naw..."
Q. "Is she famous?"
A. "Yeah, I guess..."
Q. "Would I know her?"
A. "Maybe..."
Soon as we got on the highway, I could see brake lights ahead of us and had to slow down. Everyone was fighting to get into the left lane.
Q. "Is she on a TV sitcom?"
A. "Naw..."
Q. "Is she on a soap opera?"
A. "Naw..."
The Bug kept overheating because of the traffic, so I killed the engine, opened the door, and used my feet to move us along.
Q. "Does she got her own show?"
A. "Sort of..."
Turned out there wasn't even a car-crash, just a bunch of cop cars and police officers standing around, talking to each other.
"I think I know who it is!" Kalyn squealed. "I think I know!"
"Who?" Lew demanded.
She whispered something into his ear that turned his face brick red. He tried to burrow under my seat. My sister clapped her hands and howled in delight.
Once we got moving again, I started to see something in the distance, something that made my sphincter tighten. It was so far away I could barely make out its hazy gray shape, but there was no mistaking what we had before us: a mammoth of a bridge. Bigger than the one in my nightmare! This one even crossed over a river, the Delaware.
"I can't do it," I muttered. "No way, Pop, not this one." I pulled us off the road and explained my problem. Luckily, they didn't laugh at me or slap me in the face. My sister told me that my fear was adorable and gave me a little pat on the leg before offering to drive over the thing herself. I handed her the keys.
"Are you corn-on-the-cob crazy?" Lew said. "Why can't I drive?"
"Naw, Lew, you'd get us killed."
"Listen — if you trade seats with her I'll kill you now."
My sister and I traded seats and I kept my eyes squeezed shut even after she said everything was OK.
"Hey, guys," I said. "Ever been in the situation where you know you gotta do something, but... you just can't go through with it? And you know that if you don't go on, you'll regret it for the rest of your life?"
Lew gave a long sigh. "Yeah, like her show might get cancelled, and she won't be famous anymore, and you'll never get to see her again, and —"
"Well, something like that..."
"What is it, Ego?" Kalyn said, eyes on the road. "What do you have to do?"
"Nothing."
"Well, whatever it is, make sure it's legal. I'm not sure what Lew wants to do is legal."
"Hey!" Lew said.
My sister drove us into New Jersey without even flinching. Twenty minutes later, I spotted just the place I was looking for, and told her to pull over into an empty parking lot about a block down.
"You gonna leave us here?" she said as I stepped out.
"Won't take long, I just need to pick up something—"
The entrance was in the back, next to a dumpster, and I followed this long hallway into a room: a video shop. The guy behind the counter wanted some ID; he had on all kinds of tattoos.
I showed him my driver's license and looked down into the glass counter and stared at those things I'd never seen before in my life. I wanted to turn tail and leave, but the guy seemed friendly enough and casual about the situation, so I tried to play it off. I pretended like I was a regular. First I wandered through the aisles and picked up a video or two, studying their covers. Then I stood in front of the magazines, picked one up, and browsed through. I felt a shiver in my hotspot and slammed my eyes shut, but too late, the images were already burned in.
"Looking for anything in particular?" the guy said. I shook my head. The others in the store took care of business and left; I realized I was staying there way too long. I tried to keep as straight a focus as possible and headed back towards the counter.
"What can I getcha?" the guy said. His voice was loud.
I searched out a size that would get the job done and not hurt my sister too much. My eyes kept coming back to the narrow pink one in the corner; all the rest were too big. The guy didn't say anything. He rang the thing up and threw in a packet of lube.
I stuffed the purchase in my pocket and headed towards the car, feeling a little less anxious now, whistling a tune. Then the reality of what I'd done hit me like a ball-peen hammer, and my chest caved in like so much rot. The hell was I thinking? I tore the thing from my pocket and threw into a dumpster.
Next minute I was inside the dumpster.
NJ
The Bug scuttled off the Turnpike in the late afternoon. The second motel was better than the first — the sink drained faster, the air-conditioner didn't whine as loud, the bed was bigger. My sister fell asleep right away, without taking off her shoes, and Lew locked himself in the bathroom first thing; I had to pee outside.
The sky had turned purple, and a sulfury breeze kicked up. I smiled at the thought of rain and feeling it on my skin after those two long months of dry heat. The people walking around the plaza across the way already had their umbrellas and raincoats ready.
My stomach was growling animal-style, so I walked past the plaza looking for something to eat. It was rough going without any underwear and with the thing in my pocket; I plowed forward till I found a small seafood market. The owner tried to sell me some lobsters, but instead I had my eye out for some crab, which she didn't have. I settled for a pound of jumbo shrimp and a bottle of spicy sauce.
It started drizzling. The droplets pricked my skin like so many needles, and my arms and face tingled like they'd fallen asleep. Halfway back to the motel, I barely made out my sister in the distance, waving. She came running with her hair flying all over; we met on top of a cement hill.
"Ego — where'd you go off to?" she cried. "He's gone!"
"What're you talking about?"
"He left us! Take a look at this..." She handed me a sloppy note written on the motel stationery.
Dear Cousins,
A brother trucker is picking me up at a truckstop here. He says I can be in Rockefeller Center in a couple hours! Sorry, cousins, but the Bug's no good. This starting and stopping business is damn ridiculous. Next stop... New York City!!!
Love, Lewis
P.S. I'll catch a ride home too.
I crumpled it up. "Dumbass! He don't even have any money!"
"Maybe we should go look for him," Kalyn said. "We still got the Bug and everything."
The drizzle turned into a shower, and our clothes were getting sticky. We needed someplace to sit while the storm passed, but the motel was at least half a mile away. Kalyn pointed across the road to a bridge, a small sixteen-footer that crossed over the Interstate. I shook my head, but she'd already climbed over the little guardrail. I chased her down the grassy hill, slipped, grabbed her by the ankles, and took her down with me. We slid all the way to the bottom, where the cars roared and the sound echoed inside the bridge like a nightmare. With my sister's help, I climbed up the steep concrete slope, and we sat right underneath the skeletal ceiling. She grabbed my arm and squeezed.
"See, there's nothing to it," she said. "Bridges are designed to help us."
I shook my head and tried to calm myself, breathing deeply. Kalyn untied the plastic bag from my left arm and opened it on her lap, handing me the spicy sauce and working the twist-tie off the paper sack. Some of the shrimp tumbled out and rolled down the slope to the highway.
"Dinner?" she asked.
I nodded. "Lemme show you how to take off their shells," I said. "Grab their legs first and rip 'em around so that the first three segments come off. Then pull on the tail, and there." I ended up doing most of it for her.
We peeled, dipped, and ate till our stomachs settled. A stream of shells formed beneath us. I poured out the rest of the sauce and tossed our trash, watching the wind pick it up and carry it away.
"When are we going back, Ego?" Kalyn asked.
"What?"
"Shouldn't we be heading back? Once Lew gets here, shouldn't we go back home?"
I closed my eyes and pictured it, our arrival: Pop grinning at me in the dark, his whiskey-sour breath on my neck, his rough hands on my body, kneading my body. What was he going to do to me? How would he punish me for not doing the honorable, brotherly thing? I felt the rain drip-dropping on my skull, each drop smacking the top of my head — smack! smack! smack!
Then I had it. West Virginia was hundreds of miles away now, two states away. We had enough distance between us, we had the Bug, why go back? I knuckled my head for not having thought of it sooner. I knuckled myself again and again, hard as I could, till my head hurt.
Kalyn grabbed my wrist and yanked it away from me, protecting what was left of her brother. "What're you doing, Ego? What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I..."
"Ego! Tell me what's wrong!"
I kicked away the rest of the shells and buried my face in my arms. My sister was shaking me and saying something, but there was a roar in my ears and it all sounded like noise. I felt a grin cracking my face. I looked up at my sister and grinned.
"What," she said.
"We did it," I said. "We made it."
Her eyes widened in worry, and suddenly I was sucked in and falling in their deep blue depths, arms flailing, holding onto my last thread as I stared face to face with the breaking water. My mind unraveled like a sweater, bits and pieces fell off like shell. I was stripped clean, pure and innocent, thirteen years old again.
The thing fell out of my pocket and rolled down the steep slope to the Interstate. The grinding tires of an eighteen-wheeler smashed it to pieces.
Maw had two nervous breakdowns when I was thirteen. The second time she had to stay at the hospital for more than a month, and I got to know her wardrobe pretty well. Pop was out drinking more than ever, so I basically had their bedroom to myself, a couple hours every night, after Lew and Kalyn had fallen asleep and before Pop came back.
Starting with the panties, I'd dress myself up in Maw's more complicated outfits, the ones with straps and buckles and elastic. Sometimes I'd squeeze my feet into her leather pumps and walk around the room like that, like I thought she did. I began to see traces of her in my reflection.
One night I put on her nightgown and plastic hair curlers, set my dip juice bottle on the bedside table, and slipped in between the bed's crisp, cool covers. I was amazed at the softness of Maw's pillow. I breathed in the faint smell of her hair. Next thing I knew, two hours had passed and Pop was lying beside me.
I remember how his rough hands had rolled me onto my side, so that my back was facing him. I remember how he'd pulled up my nightgown and yanked down my panties. I remember how his hands had seized me, grabbing me so hard I almost yelled. I remember how he smelled like dirt.
All the while he was muttering Maw's name, saying how much he missed her, how much he wanted her. I felt Pop getting hard down there, coming up against me, searching for something that wasn't there. I panicked, grabbed my spit bottle, jammed it between my legs. Pop found the glass hole and proceeded to fuck it. He had me by the waist and slapped himself against me; he'd slow down once in a while and groan. Near the end he got stuck down there, but then he shot his load and pulled away. It lasted about two minutes.
Afterwards, Pop leaned over his side of the bed and puked. Then he fell on his puke and passed out. I snuck out of bed, and the next day at school, I waited till four o'clock when everyone had gone home and the classrooms were empty. I went into Mrs. Williams' science room and set up a microscope and fixed a slide of Pop's load from the bottle. Under the highest magnification, I stared at the dead particles of sperm, each one twisted in so much agony: all my brothers and sisters. A janitor passed by and asked me what I was looking at. I just shook my head.
Another day passed, and Lew still hadn't shown. We couldn't afford to drive into New York and go looking for him, and we couldn't stay for much longer in the motel. Kalyn had caught something of a cold, and I mostly sat around on the toilet because of something in the shrimp.
I studied the map later that day and traced a red line that would take us to another state, trying my best to avoid the rivers and lakes and other bodies of water. But there were just too many of them; I couldn't go one way or the other without having my finger run into one. I threw the map across the room.
That night, while Kalyn was taking her shower, I snuck into the bathroom and stole her clothes. I drew the motel blinds and shucked off the ragged, smelly T-shirt and shorts I'd been wearing, and stood before the mirror naked. Then I slipped on her pale blue panties, blue jean shorts, and green cotton shirt that had her smell on it. The clothes fit snugly, and I sat on the bed with my heart pounding, waiting for the moment when my sister would come out and see the real me.
Very Gothic.
Now that’s what I call Vollmann