THE SAND was warm around the house stilts. Terry’s eyes hurt. They walked on the side of the road and stopped in front of a house painted brown and orange. Noah hustled up the stairs to the deck, touched a girl on the back, close to her shoulder blades. She turned around and put her arms over his shoulders. She smiled, had tall shoulders and red skin, wore swimming goggles with blue lenses and a white rubber strap banded at the crown of her head. Noah pointed down to Francis and Terry, barefoot in the sand, and they squinted up to her like they were seeing a monument for the first time. She waved, and they waved back.
Who’s that? Terry said.
He forgot, with the grain alcohol, the night before, that he’d studied her stomach, the pale scar above her navel.
Merriam something or other, Francis said. She has a great ass.
She faced them, and Terry couldn’t see.
I can’t see her ass, he said.
The house was like the place before, one large and bare space at the front, a pair of bunkrooms on back, walls colored clay and shale. A disco ball hung from a twisted clothes hanger jammed at the ceiling. Pieces of particleboard fell to a small pile near the center of the room, and people stepped over it, and tapped the disco ball when they passed beneath.
In the bathroom a girl sat on the toilet with the lid turned down, vanity mirror at her lap. She hunched over it, rounded her spine, back heaving when she drew in through her one nostril and then the other. She put her fingers to her mouth, traced her gums and teeth with the tips, the motion shaped a dance in the mirror above the sink. Terry stood back against the door. There were four people in the bathroom. They used a cut-off purple straw. He didn’t know what it would do shot up his nose to his brain, but he put his face on the mirror, anyway, held his left nostril closed with his thumb and sucked in. For a moment, nothing, but then whatever he nosed spread inside him, felt like cough syrup did when he drank mouthfuls, felt like the sound of a car running too high in a low gear, pistons burning. He put his shoulders and the small of his back against the wall, couldn’t swallow, felt lead in his teeth, sulfur on his tongue.
Terry left the bathroom and went to one of the bedrooms. Francis got the cigarette near his mouth, and then the door opened and squared him on the back. He fell down, cigarette flown to a clothes pile. A pink shirt on top started to smolder, and then more pieces caught, and everyone around him stood up and moved fast from the room. Noah and Francis were gone then, screeching yells from the yard batted the windows. Terry sat a moment, leaned his head to one side and watched the pile catch. He meant to see them burn, take the room and then the house, but he stood up when the smoke got thick and hazed in the room, stepped over to the fire and stomped at it. His right pants leg caught, burned some on the cuff. He punched it out, turned back to work on the mound, hopped boot heels until the clothes did not weep. Most were charred on top, blacked patches and smelling like cold weather. Terry sat back down on the bed and started a cigarette. He smoked slow, stayed a moment to make sure the pile did not catch again; he did not understand police were in the front yard, gathering handfuls of kids from the house, smell of billy club and handcuff in the air, officers working like those who tended bar, like deacons, cobblers or stonemasons.
Terry left the house at the back stairs and ran west though the yards. He made back to the main road, slowed his gallop to a careful walk, like stepping over graves.
Merriam was standing in the side yard of another house. The ones swarmed there were screaming on the ricket porch and in the yard. She leaned on a small red truck parked a drunk slant, and smoked a long, white filter cigarette, looking like a woman in the old movies on television, and he wondered if she ever wore a tiara, some diamond beaded headband. Behind him the police took apart the house, a storm of navy and flashlight, scattering all of them with the weight of gold badges and nightsticks. Merriam didn’t turn when he came up, didn’t say anything. Terry stood close to her. He didn’t know why, had never thought to do such a thing, but he pressed his waist into hers, nudged her feet with his in the sand-choked grass.
I saw you back there, Terry said. I can’t remember when that was. Today, I think.
Yesterday afternoon. Last night.
Francis said your ass is bionic.
That’s right.
And before, I saw you, too.
Right.
You were leaning on that piano.
It was a nice one. Don’t turn around.
Terry was confused for a moment. Merriam dropped the cigarette at his feet and stood close to his chest, turned her face on his.
Don’t do anything yet, Merriam said.
She spoke close to his mouth, her breath warm, night wet.
Listen, she said. They took a left just back there, and they’re going to come around this way.
She bumped her head in the opposite direction. Terry gripped her on the wrist and thought to run, but she took his wrist with her other hand, and stopped him.
If you do that, she said, it will look very bad. In five seconds they will be here. They’ll let the sirens go, and the world will light up like a fucking atom bomb.
The police cars stormed the lot and the sirens wailed, the late dark gone loud and blue and red and white and flashing like some county fair. Merriam pulled him to her chest, said something close to his ear he couldn’t make, and then she kissed him hard, and he followed her mouth; this moment stretched for some time. She pulled back and turned around quickly in the sand and led him on the road past the wide backs and shoulders of the police, the lit faces of startled kids, some at a sprint, some thrown to the ground. All of it happened in the sudden manner of a winter storm.
Soon they knocked at the red door and went inside. Merriam sat down in one corner near the window, and ground her teeth. It sounded like green wood snapping. Terry pulled the blue snow hat down to cover his ears, and then he went over to her and took her hand and pulled her up.
What are we doing? she said.
Don’t be silly, Terry said.
He didn’t know what to do. He took a pale pink sheet from one of the beds, and a small chair from the corner, stuffed one end of the spread into a drawer and draped the other over the chair back, and then he sat cross-legged underneath it.
It’s a tent, Merriam said.
She sat beside him. He took a lighter from one pocket, flame lit the blanket underneath.
A teepee, actually, he said.
You want to tell me something? she said.
I would, he said.
The words went sour and to a mash in his throat, and he couldn’t make any sense of them. Merriam took his hands and held them at her lap. He didn’t want her to look at them, didn’t want her to see the lines cut there. He leaned over fast and kissed her on the mouth. They stayed a moment, and then she pulled away, reached up, yanked the spread down in ruins.
He stood up when she left the house and draped the spread over his shoulders like a cape. He went into the front room and paced, looked a dog at the gate of a yard fence. He sat down in one corner for what seemed a long time, and he tried to sleep, but could not.
The next morning Noah kicked his leg. Terry blinked, slapped both cheeks to shake his head. Francis slept on the floor. The rest of them were gone. The room smelled sharp and desperate.
Get up bastard, Noah said.
Alright, goddammit, Terry said.
Noah thumped Francis at the ear. Francis rubbed his eyes and sat up and propped his arms behind.
Yeah, Noah said.
Is there work? Terry said. Are we farming?
They got stoned and drove to a long white rectangle church built high on stilts. It was Easter; the preacher threw God at them, knocked handfuls down between the pews.