Sheriff Saunders gives me another ride across the creek. The whole time we’re surging through the cresting swells, she insists I should be going to the hospital. I tell her to just drive. As we pull up to the house, Rosita comes out onto the porch. She’s barefoot, her black jeans and tank top a dark blot among the chipped paint of the pergola.
“What’s the story with you two?” the sheriff asks.
I don’t have a satisfactory answer, but I know what I’d like it to be. Despite the theft and dishonesty, I can’t help feeling a connection between us. Something that goes beyond my need to avoid being alone or her search for more fractured men to add to The Body Book. When she came clean about the theft, I justified it by considering the lengths I’d go to preserve my own art. I almost betrayed Angela for Russell’s money, and that made me feel too hypocritical to judge. Now, I’m wondering if I’ve deluded myself into believing Rosita might eventually care for me. I know I still want her. This realization scares me.
“She came to interview me.”
“That was days ago,” Sheriff Saunders says. “You don’t have to tell me the truth, but don’t lie.”
It’s a fair compromise, so I nod in agreement. As Rosita paces back and forth across the porch, I hear the soft notes for the chorus of another song.
“Jesus,” Rosita says as I climb down from the cab. “What happened?” She covers her neck as if guarding against a similar wound.
“Let the sheriff fill you in,” I say. Luminous music swirls inside my head until all of creation is smothered by song. The notes reach a crescendo as I climb the porch steps, echoing in such a cacophony it makes me teeter. Rosita helps me inside. The sheriff follows without invitation. We’ve gone past pretenses anyway.
“Where are we going?” Rosita asks.
“The bedroom,” I say. “I need a guitar.”
In my mind, the troubadour is dying. Some injury he’s hidden from the boy for days is festering. A putrid smell emits from his flesh and breath. I’ve discovered the man used to be an astronomer and views his coming demise as the natural order of creation. He knows the atoms in his playing hand are filled with the particles from exploded stars. This cosmic dust is also in the boy. Because of this, he knows the boy will understand the songs. The man takes the guitar and strums slow. Lets the boy see the way his fingers change position on the chipped neck. When he hands it over and the boy plays, the rough notes become a symphony in the darkness of their camp.
Back in reality, Rosita chastises me with each step down the hall, asking why I left without her, if I met Angela and what was said. This might just be self-preservation, but underneath that cynicism, I believe she’s concerned about me. It’s been so long since a woman inquired with worry in her voice, I can’t help but smile as Rosita helps me sit on the edge of the bed.
“Bring me a guitar,” I say.
“Why did you go without me?”
“I had to do it alone.” The music is fading. It’s a labor to keep hearing the notes. “A guitar!” I say.
Rosita exits and returns with the acoustic. She lays it in the empty spot on my bed a lover might occupy. I pick it up and my hands become possessed. I’m a part of the old traditions of creation. Muses singing through my digits to play the dying troubadour’s last song. Rosita listens for a minute before the sheriff calls for her. I can tell she wants to linger, but Sheriff Saunders calls again.
The women begin a conversation in the hall. Their whispers rise, occasionally punctuated by Rosita’s sharp swearing. I hope she isn’t confessing her theft. If she is, there’s nothing I can do. My hands won’t cease composing.
Once Sheriff Saunders has gone, I sit on the couch and transcribe the work into a notebook while Rosita changes the dressing on my neck. The room is basted with the stink of our unwashed bodies. The windows in the kitchen stay open but have little effect against the days of our accumulated sweat. The last of the food in the fridge is gone, so we sustain on canned fruit from the cupboard. Rosita drinks a warm Coca-Cola. I forgot to refrigerate the bottles and we’ve eaten all the ice.
The television segues into another update about the police officer’s murder and how the manhunt for Victor Lawton has intensified. A member of the Watchmen environmentalist group is being interviewed. The man’s identity stays hidden by the triangle of a red bandana tied over his face, a ball cap and sunglasses concealing the rest of his features. He says Victor was a member of their organization, but maintains they are peaceful whistle-blowers. Victor was excommunicated for plotting terrorist acts against polluters. Watson Chemical was a name he frequently mentioned.
The reporter grills the man. She wants to know why he didn’t come to the press or police sooner. He stutters through excuses as Rosita peels the bandage off my neck.
“How bad?” I ask.
“You’ll have a scar. I really think you need some antibiotics.”
I should be on guard after the stolen tracks, but I remain softened by her company. Just watching her descend the stairs the other morning, the way she stretched and scratched bed-tussled hair felt like a gift. This companionship is the normalcy better-made men get to experience. The beginning of each day punctuated with a sleep-tinted kiss and a groggy smile. This is what I used to have and lost.
Rosita turns the TV off. “Asshole could have killed you.”
The pessimist inside tries to dismiss the concern in her voice. I can’t let myself believe she could desire me. Not after the theft. Perhaps The Body Book has made her more comfortable with the misshapen, but she still wouldn’t want to roll over in the night and see me sharing the bed. Just like my theory regarding the blue-tailed lizards, she’ll leave and take something with her.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Rosita asks.
“I can tell you do.”
She pulls at one of her toes until it pops. It’s a nervous fidget I’ve noticed. As she hangs her head low, fallen bangs cut across her eyes. Perhaps she doesn’t want to look at me while saying whatever comes next.
“I’ve told you I’m sorry more than once,” she says.
“I forgive you,” I say. “But it doesn’t keep Angela from having heard.” It also doesn’t mend my feelings, but I don’t see the need in telling her that.
Rosita nods. “What did you two decide?”
“I told her these songs were mine and promised to fill my quota with the tracks I originally wrote for her. I’m not sure that will keep her from playing whatever she wants. The only way to be sure is to go public with what I’ve already written.”
“Maybe you should,” she says. “I think you underestimate your audience. There are plenty of shallow people out there, but that’s not everyone.”
She dabs the crusted wound with a damp cotton swab, applies some ointment and wraps the new bandage around my neck. It stings, so I wince and knock the guitar off the end of the couch. Rosita rests it against the plush cushions.
“What would you know about most people?” I chuckle. “You take naked pictures of freaks.”
“They’re not freaks. Anyway, I believed in it enough to steal your music.”
I believe in it, too. I keep thinking about one man she interviewed in Denver with tumors growing on his face. Each mass looked like ripe fruit ready to drop. There is a single picture toward the end of the session where the man grins. Some of his teeth are obscured by a bulbous growth dangling from his upper lip, but the smile is still more genuine than any I’ve cracked in years.
“The people you interviewed?” I ask. “Did it help them afterward?”
“You wanna talk about it now?”
“Yeah, if you don’t care.”
She lights a cigarette. “I just want you to make up your mind.”
“Does it help them?” I ask again.
“I started it hoping so. Now, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer.”
“Let’s just hear your opinion.”
Rosita inhales her cigarette. “Some of them. It might help break them out of the cycle of self-loathing, all those feelings of self-hate, but they’ll slide right back down if they let themselves. I can try and show them their worth, but they are the ones who need to believe it. That’s hard to admit, but I think that’s the truth.”
“I’ve been thinking some of the questions might help me.”
Rosita shakes her head. “I don’t want you making rash decisions. Not while you’re fucked up.”
“I’m no more fucked up than usual.”
Part of it may be an olive branch, but it’s also a hope for something I can’t quite articulate. A last chance to revise how I see myself. Rosita’s poker face is solid, but the opportunist rises inside her. My exposed body is the logical progression from the photos she’s already taken. We both know it’s a necessary addition to the book. Not just stationary nude spreads, but my body engaged in the acts she’s already documented. Without both, the project is incomplete.
“If you feel different later, we trash the photos. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Rosita leaves to gather her equipment. I watch the trail of cigarette smoke disappear in her wake and run a hand over my lower back trying to feel the first spot where the vertebrae went awry, snaked out on an alternate course.
Rosita comes back to position me on the couch. She sits in the chair across from me, readying her cameras. Aside from her Nikon, there is a camcorder to record the session.
“Any questions before we start?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she says, raising the camera. “Tell me your name.”
“My name is Hollis Bragg.”
“Where are you from?”
“Coopersville, West Virginia.”
“Why did you agree to this interview?”
Rosita pulls off her T-shirt, exposing the sweat stains on her bra and the stubble under her arms. I’m struggling to get my own shirt off. If I think too much, I won’t continue. I manage to pull the fabric over the great hump of my back and wiggle like a snake shedding its skin. Now, all my most malformed parts are naked. Back forever crooked forward, forcing my stomach into permanent lines, flesh left sagging from being unable to perform even modest exercise. Caroline is the last woman to have seen me like this, and while we developed a familiarity, I never gained true confidence. Her touch moved over these hidden places, but never healed as they lingered.
Rosita begins to work on the clasp of her bra, but I raise a hand to stop her.
“I agreed because I wanted people to see me,” I say.
Rosita looks uneasy. Maybe I’m the first to stop her. She seems to be waiting for something profound to follow. Should I rise and close the distance, wrap my arms around her and pull her close? Is she wondering what it would feel like to grasp shoulders so sloping, to find a man perpetually bent bending lower to meld into her? Would she feel more whole against me? All are questions I’d ask if I lived in a body like hers. I already know the other side of the equation. Every wholesome body I’ve touched has only made me feel more twisted. That’s the true pain of my relationship with Angela that I never wanted to acknowledge. As much as her body pleased me and offered me pleasure, I was both lustful and envious of it. I desired to be as complete as her as much as I desired to touch her. It’s one of my most shameful secrets. One I know I can’t repeat if I’m lucky enough to have the next woman.
“I wanted people to see even if they don’t want to look. Even if they don’t want to consider the possibility of it. I’ve done things. I made music. I was loved by a woman.”
I slide my pants down. My legs are thick from the work of carrying the rest of me, covered in so much hair I look caught in transformation into some beast. They’re the furry legs of a satyr.
Rosita raises the camera to snap a few pictures. Her hands are trembling.
“Do you hate your body, Hollis?” she asks.
“I think people made me hate it.”
“Has anyone ever loved it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe them. Not until they left.”
“Do you love it now?”
“No, but only because it’s the reason I’ve rejected most things.”
There might be more, but that confession is the extent of the poetry in me. Rosita takes a few more pictures.
After my clothes are back on, we sit in the kitchen booth and burn Rosita’s cigarettes. I’m getting hooked after the chain-smoking sessions these last few days but assure Rosita I’m the sort who can always buy a pack, smoke a few and toss them without much thought. Rosita warns me she used to say the same thing.
Outside, a few crows cackle from the bare limbs of the oaks.
“I haven’t heard the chickens in a while,” I say.
“What chickens?” she asks.
I tell her about the fighting cocks and my suspicion of their death, either dehydrated or poisoned from drinking the water before people were warned. I think about all those dead birds. The field full of dirty white feathers, wings spread wide like fallen angels as the farmer walks across his property picking them up with a gloved hand and shoving them inside a Hefty bag.
“I don’t know anything about chickens,” Rosita says. “Were they white?”
“Some of them,” I say. “He raised all types. Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks, even a big rooster so dark his eyes were black.”
I stare outside as if expecting the birds to come scratching in the dust of the yard.
“I’m going to see her concert,” I say.
“What are you gonna tell her?”
“I have no idea. Before it’s over, I’ll probably have fucked things up for you. The money, I mean. I can’t help that.”
Rosita nods. If she’s bothered, it’s well hidden.
“Will you go with me?” I ask.
“To the concert?”
“I’ll need some moral support being out in public.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Thank you. I owe you a lot for this time.”
Rosita shakes her head. “You’re the one with all the hospitality. I know that wasn’t easy after what I did.”
A splatter hits the roof before I can reply. I cock my head and place a finger to my lips. “Listen.”
Outside, a soft pattering begins. A crack of thunder follows and we both turn to the window. It’s raining. Not a hard downpour, still more mist than precipitation, but I lurch toward the door.
“Get a bucket or something,” I say.
The door swings wide, slams into the side of the house as I trip and fall down the few porch steps. I sprawl on the grass, eyes wide open to the sky. I’m not injured, but Rosita comes out to help me stand. Clods of grass and dirt stick against my back as if growing from a small mountain, then wash away as the rain increases. I turn my face up toward the sky and laugh.
Rosita makes two more trips inside for a total of seven receptacles. I never leave the yard. Just stand looking up into the rain with my shirt off until Rosita goes inside a final time and returns with a camera. Some of the last frames of her time in Coopersville are these images. Photos of me shirtless, hands held out to catch the drops, skin slick as the rain runs off the waterfall of my back.