“So now,” Butthole said, taping my wrists to the kitchen chair with the same roll of tape I’d used on Mr. Cannon. He’d already done my mouth. “You had everybody worried and here you were all this time. I near lost my patience. Time you set things straight, so we can wrap this mess up. Don’t you want to be finished with all this?” He took a handful of hair and nodded my head, putting on a high, whispery voice as a stand-in for my own. “Yes, Mr. Gibbs, I sure do.”
The smoke in the house thickened and made it difficult to see more than a few yards. Something orange and unpleasant glowed from the direction of my mom’s room. My eyes watered and every few minutes I coughed through my nose. With the tape over my mouth, it made my sinuses sting. Butthole turned the chair so I faced away from the back door. In the porch light, his shadow stretched over my head and out across the kitchen floor. He put his face down next to mine and pressed his melted ear stubs against my cheek.
“I’m going to tell you a story. Don’t worry, it’s a quickie. Keep your eyes on the wall over there.” Butthole straightened up behind me and smoothed my hair with a hand.
Because of the tape, I couldn’t do anything but look straight. The shadow of his head moved aside and, in its place, a shadow monster made of hand and wrist wriggled across the wall. A nasty sort of snake with giant fangs.
“The old gardener pulled out his red hanky and blew his nose.” His laugh rattled like a handful of shook pebbles. “My mama always says that instead of ‘Once upon a time.’ In this story, there was a bad little girl, and this bad little girl knew a secret. A big secret.” A mushy-headed figure with flapping arms and legs danced across the wall. A pretty sorry looking excuse for a girl. “This was a dangerous secret, a deadly secret, because more than anything else in the world, a monster wanted this secret for his own.” The monster snake wriggled in from the other side, rearing up in front of the shadow girl. “The first time the monster asked the girl about this secret, he used his nicest voice. ‘Please tell me where the magic beans are,’ he said. But the girl was stubborn. She didn’t want the magic beans, but being hardheaded, she didn’t want nobody else to have them either. This made the monster irritable, but he tamped down his temper and asked again. This time in not so nice a voice. ‘Where are the magic beans?’ ” Butthole thumped me on the back of the head with his bad-girl hand.
Something heavy and metallic clattered onto the floor, but I couldn’t turn my head to see it. Both shadow puppets vanished for a moment.
“Mr. Asshole, you shouldn’t of taped her up like that.” It was Logan. From his voice, I could tell he must of been in the doorway to the living room. My lips tried to smile under the tape. All my numb brain could think up at that moment was: I’m sure glad he’s not saying “hajji” anymore.
The snake and the girl reappeared. “The third time the monster asked about the beans”—Butthole made a growling sound—“the girl just shook her bad little head.” The shadow girl swayed back and forth.
“Let’s us see how well you do without your rifle, huh?” Logan stepped forward. The knee on one side of his jeans hung torn. Soot covered his chest. His left arm was red and blistered. “What you think?”
“When the girl told him no the third time, the monster said, ‘Fuck the beans, I’m going to eat you.’ ” The shadow snake gulped her down.
Logan stepped in front of me and winked. “Don’t worry, baby.”
“Fuck the girl,” Butthole said, “I’m going to eat you.”
He jerked my chair aside and the kitchen floor rose up to punch me in the shoulder. Logan’s bare feet moved past my head. The black loafers lashed out at him. Logan grunted and tripped over the back legs of my chair, falling and breaking one of them off. He picked it up and threw it. From the thud it made, I knew it’d hit something soft. I hoped to God it hurt.
Butthole yanked my hair. The chair slid backwards, and I screamed through my nose, a sorry sound like a kitten drowning in a sack. He shook my head back and forth. “No, I won’t tell you where the beans are.” This in his whispery girl voice.
“I knew you’d hide behind her like a REMF pussy,” Logan said, edging out of my vision.
My head slapped the linoleum. Tears made a blurry mess of the kitchen cabinets and everything else. My head throbbed so bad I didn’t know what to do with the pain. For a while, I saw nothing but heard a lot. The slap of bare feet. The gritty sound of leather sliding across the floor. Puffs of breath. The moist smack of skin hitting skin. Swallowed groans. The table fell on its side. A pepper shaker rolled over and bumped my nose, filling it with a sharp, dusty smell. The fighting noises moved away. Maybe into the living room. Something brittle smashed.
During all this, the smoke went from filling the kitchen with a haze to pushing out all the breathable air. I’d known before something had caught fire, but with everything else going on, I hadn’t thought much of it. Now I felt the heat on my legs and listened to that heavy breathing sound a fire makes when it’s getting big. It panted and roared. I couldn’t get enough air through my nose.
In the other room, a giant crash, followed by a bunch of smaller ones. I imagined my mom’s boat bottles falling one by one onto the coffee table and bursting into tiny shards. Each bottle meant a month of her life. I had to get out.
Using my free leg, I pushed against the linoleum. My sweaty foot slid at first, then caught traction. Blood rushed into my head and pounded in my ears. Each push cost me. I felt middle-aged by the time I made it past the fridge. My hair went white and I grew a thousand wrinkles by the time my face moved over the doorjamb. The cool metal felt as good as a glass of iced tea. For a time, it was enough just to hang my head out and suck in the cool, wet air through my nose. I was a hundred years old and dying. Raindrops smacked my cheek and ear. I wanted more than anything to open my mouth and catch them. I wondered, Am I dead?