Renny
I didn’t want to touch it. It was snaking at me in the dream. Then I halfways woke in the dark cold, listening. Pa was breathing loud in the next room. Hot, sour roses on his breath last night. Ma whimpering and breaking something when he came home like that. I halfways began to think about getting up . . . Kettles got to be lit. It’s donut day. Kettles got to be lit . . . Joby used to light the kettles, now I got to. Pretty soon I was up, my bare feet hit the linoleum. Jesus the water is cold in the morning. I won’t sit on the toilet, just hold it till I warm up. My clothes, ice breathing ice on my skin, shivering. I walked downstairs to the shop to get the kettles lit—once Joby puked in the hot grease. Tater puffs. God that got around and you could bet it was bad for business. Oven. Flourbin. Slicer. Racks of bread and cake, all stale. Business is off. No money to fix the cracked window. Stuff in the window got to be changed, all crumbs. Mice been at it, got to arrange it nice . . . inviting. I couldn’t see out the windows with the lights on so I never knew he was watching. My dress was just starting to get warm on me when I turnt the lights off.
Then I saw him watching black shadow the sky lighting up greenblue behind him.
I got empty inside, pounding. Then he was gone. All day that stuck in my mind like nothing else and at noon I told Mamma.
Oh god Renny don’t bother me, just an old drunk.
Yeah Mamma, I said but he was watching.
Let Pa take care of him Renny, he’s probably after old bread.
Pa came in then and looked at me funny like he always does but he didn’t say nothing. So I didn’t say nothing further on it, but sure as hell I wouldn’t get up next morning because I just knew he’d be watching and it made me sick to think of him seeing me from the shadow when I couldn’t see him back.
Next morning I kept all the lights off at first and checked the window. But I didn’t see nothing and then I thought I heard something in the back. I quick flipped on the lights. Shit, I said, what a baby. Joby would never be scared, not of a man in the dark. Joby would punch out anybody looked crossways at him. Only thing Joby was scared of is really hurting somebody when he got mad. Then I was just laughing to myself and lit up the kettles. Joby once punched out the mayor of the town who is a doctor, for personal satisfaction. He did it because the mayor’s daughter was purely mean, nobody had business raising a child to be like that, Joby said. Also Joby once laid into the half-wit for calling him a dirty name but Leonard meant nothing by it and Joby felt bad after.
I brought up some old donuts, which ain’t so bad before your taste memories wake up on you. That day there was to be an assembly. Fat Pam would wag her boobs at the boys sniggering behind me like I wasn’t there. Dumb farmers, clods, thinking they they [sic] just knew it all. Well I got my little secrets. Jesus yes, more than they’ll ever know about sex. I got on my coat and went out. I was cold already and I had a mile to go in the wind and cross the field.
The field was worse. I didn’t usually think I could make it. I had to cross it because they set the new school out of town where the rich are building up. The wind pummeled at me and got up under my dress and sleeves and down my neck till I was cold inside as the wind. It was just me and that blazing white space. I thought of wolves. The sound they would make. I would hear it from the clump of trees. I used to play there when the big swing was hung from the lowest branch. I thought back to summer and pretended the wind rising gooseflesh on my back was the sun pricking me with heat. The trees were buzzing and the tire swing was taking me high into the clicking leaves. Joby gave me an underpush and I was there, touching the hot green tips with my toes.
It was dark by the time I got out from school that day. On the way home I always went the long way past the cemetery. The burning statue of jesus christ [sic] stood in the middle of the dark pines and the fields of ice. The wind was crossways. I wasn’t bucking it. It moved everything in the cemetery, the pines, the stones, the flickering statue, everything moved. It wasn’t natural and I ran fast, passing the clump of pines at the end and I think I glimpsed a man in them. He stared from the thrashing branches. He had a long coat and something on his head. I couldn’t hardly see his face. It blurred, I ran off and never stopped all the rest of the way home.
Mamma was mad at me being late. I was supposed to work right after school selling long johns and buns to people who had to buy things cheap. That was the only kind would buy in our bakery. The other bakery in town looked clean and hadn’t a cracked front window. Their ways weren’t no better than ours of baking. I knew. They were dirty in the back and just hid it better.
Pa was out back frying twist-ups and glazing them over. I ate a cream-filled and polished the glass thinking of Joby and how he went off in the army. Joby had a girl now, he showed me her picture and she sure was good looking in all the right places. Joby told me I was good looking too where it counted, I got a pretty face and long hair. Anyway, I ain’t so bad. Personality counts too, they say. But lately I’ve got it out for nearly everybody at school.
I had almost forgot about the man but then as I was about to lock up, he came in. Stocking cap, the kind that covers up your face, I was scared to look through the eyes. I ran out on him before he stuck his hand out of his pocket. I ran upstairs. Pa came up just after. Mad but jesus [sic] he was mad. Looked at me like I was nothing he ever wanted to have around.
When you gonna grow up.
John, you lay off her, said Mamma.
But he didn’t. He went on about how stupid I am. I got sick of it.
You ain’t so smart yourself, I said.
He looked about to hit me.
Try it, buster, I said. You can’t run even a bakeshop decent. You get drunk on Mamma’s money. You never cared about me nor Joby. That’s why he run off and I’m going too [sic] Damn fucker, I said. Damn you.
With that I run straight out neverminding [sic] the cold. I didn’t have no jacket on but so what, I said, when I freeze he’ll be pretty sorry for his girl. He used to call me his girl. I was going down to the park, to the warming house. I didn’t have my skates but I had enough money to rent for an hour.
So I got down there and Virgin, who runs the counter, let me have his jacket and the skates for all night. Three hours solid I skated around the rink. Sometimes I’d square off and do curly eights. If there’s one thing I do good, it’s to skate. When I twirled I made my own wind about me in my ears. Some kids watched and wanted me to learn them hot to fancy stop so your skates make a long scratch in the ice. I showed them how to tip up on the stopperteeth [sic] and how to dip down on the blade edge. I went off, dancing through spotlights and flakes in the air, whirling like I was animalfree. [sic] I like to skate. I swooped low and fast, whistling against the wind I made. I never fell once, even when I jumped up to turn and land on one foot which is my specialty though hazardous.
The pond is fairly big. The boys play hockey at one end but the other is dark and willows hang over the edge. It was on the dark end I practiced my most experimental and dangerous tricks for then I was likely to fall.
I couldn’t stay down there that night though, the man with the stocking cap was on my mind. I couldn’t unstick the picture. I kept skating faster as I thought of him standing in his black coat and stocking cap, hands in his pockets and rubber overboots. . . . Standing there with his hands in his pocket and his black coat and his stocking cap. . . . and I kept going faster, then all the wind flew out of me.
I fell at the dark edge. I lay there looking at the stars twirling in sparkling arches like they was skating too.
Missy. Missy longhair. Pretty missy did you fall down little girly?
I heard it. I wanted to get up. I couldn’t tell where it came from, the willows ere dark, they still had their leaves. The willows were black and rattling.
Pretty lamb, lamby longhair. . . . will you come in here and suck . . .
I can’t hear it. I jumped up and skated. It was like I never learned how. I would gobble up the ice too fast then wobble and fall. The wind would rush and then it would stop. I finally got to the warming house. Virgin said he’d take me home but he never did. I waited around but he was so long cleaning up I was scared Pa would get even more sick angry. I couldn’t sit still so I ran out. I was running home.
Then he was in front of me.
Then I was I don’t know where He
Had it It was out He
hit me with it I was down.
cold. black. hot. knife. and he
had me with it and again he
had me with it It
had an eye and it looked all through me
and then it had a hand and it
took metill till till till till
there was nothing left but whiteness the wind
stopping the wolves blazing field
The stars skating Tipping off the edge stopping
The wind up in my clothes.
I had nothing to eat.
There was nothing to feed.
I couldn’t walk.
There was nothing to walk with.
I was all saw inside
Everything had been taken out and looked at.
Nobody could make me go to school for a while after that nor eat nor do anything I didn’t want to do. I couldn’t even do anything I wanted to do. I had begun to feel a slow rot in me starting from where he looked all through me and it spread, spread into my stomach.
Somedays all it would take was the pure, thin, tiddlywink of jesus [sic]. I begun to go to church every morning. I was no catholic but nevertheless I loved jesus [sic]. Jesus never had one. His mamma took it when he was born. He never looked inside a woman but to heal the slow rot she had inside her. Jesus was a sweet one.
The church was down the street from the bakeshop, past the stores and photograph studio. I went there after I lit up the kettles and sat in the place, quiet, warmflickering [sic]. Nobody came but old women in black and Leonard the half-wit with the thick bottom glasses.
Crows, they look like crows at the altar. The bright man comes in with the golden cups. He sings, they flap about him, he sings for blood. The bells ring seven times. Three times the dark birds in the pews touch their claws to their breasts. Crows sing in the loft. Stars turn on the pipes. Smokewater music Sun drowning in music. Dawn of bells and of windows. Ruby red for eyes, gold of gold and the black book and blue cloak and the pur tasteless Christ, blind inside me. It was almost as good as skating, walking down the aisle mouthing that floaty cracker.
And once as I sat there I knew I wouldn’t be scared of stocking cap no more. Soon Joby would be home. All this time I waited for Joby because I knew he wouldn’t let me down. No, I wouldn’t be scared of stocking cap. I’d get what I could use to look through him like he done me. Joby would give it to me. His sweet little thirty-eight. He’d put it in my hand and show me how to work it. We’d go target shooting at tin cans and rabbits. I wouldn’t shoot no rabbits. Joby, he can pick them off a near fifty feet. I don’t care. I won’t be out for no rabbits.
I’d find stocking cap some night but not by accident. I’d be watching and laying in wait. I’d shoot straight through the holes in his cap. He won’t have no eyes to look through anything with. He’d die, I’d see his guts silt in the snow. Sorry. . . . he’d be sorry.
Sorry, it’s too damn late. . . .
Sorry buddy boy, but. . . .
I’d level at him and press the trigger easy like Joby said. I’d let him have it.
Me and Joby, we’d go off. Maybe we’d sit in the church and fall asleep in the pews. The sun would fall on our faces and wake us, making us holy clowns. Skating red, blue, gold across our eyelids. We’d laugh like crazy. We’d hop a boxcar. We’d never come back.
Then I thought this to myself. What if Joby don’t give me the gun? He don’t have to. He might not give me the gun.
I come back to myself in the church and I looked at the candle in the glasses, burning and winking like bad, bright eyes. I looked at the christboy and he smiled. I smiled back and the mystery was on our lips. We knew I had weapons. Other weapons, secret and terrible. His mother smiled too. Her smile was like mine. Her hands were turning and gleaming in the light. The dawn was caught in her long, shining claws.
________________________