The woman leaned beside the cash register and dialed through the pages with those cherry red nails of hers, pausing here and there to judge, her mouth curling more with each turn.
“This is disgusting,” she said, still flipping through the comic book. She smacked her lips and held her hand to her chest, her eyelashes flickering behind her moon glasses. Rodney knew the panels she was looking at. Some were better than others. Finally, she slapped the magazine down onto the counter. “I am not letting you buy this trash.”
Rodney reached for the magazine but she slid it away from him, sucking in air as if he’d pulled a switchblade on her. “I said no,” she practically shouted.
“There’s no age limit,” he said. “You can look.”
“I already did.” She grabbed the comic and shoved the cover toward him, clipping her finger over the top corner. “You can read, can’t you?”
Recommended for Mature Readers.
“I’m mature,” he said.
“Says you.”
He told her again it was only a comic book, but she just shook her head at him. “There’s nothing comical about that thing. There’s plenty of other ones back there that you can get. Popeye. Donald Duck. What’s that kid—the rich kid?”
“Those are cartoons,” he said. “Plus, you read through ’em in five minutes. It’s a waste of money.”
An old woman moved in behind him, clutching a wire basket filled with soup cans. She leaned forward, craning her turtle neck to get a look at what could be creating such a fuss.
“Twisted Tales,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s a comic book.”
“It’s smut,” the cashier said. She held it up so the woman could see just how bad it was. The man’s head floating in the water, bloody and raw. The screaming woman crumpled against the rock wall, a good deal of her private parts pushing out of her dress where they could. The way the magazine shook in the cashier’s hands made it look a lot worse than it was.
“Oh my,” the old woman whispered.
“The guy that usually works here,” Rodney said, “with the tattoos. He lets me buy them.” This was true, and by saying so he probably killed any chance of the guy ever doing it again.
She glanced back at the soup woman and shook her head, as if Rodney was the tenth kid to pull this on her today. “Go and pick out a different one. Or not. I don’t have time to be your mother.”
“Then don’t,” Rodney said, and the old woman said Oh my again, as he turned and moved quickly past her.
There was nothing to choose from, not for him. Archie, Spiderman. Disney stuff. He grabbed last month’s Superboy from the rack and tucked it under his arm, not even giving it the courtesy of a look-through. There were two other copies of Twisted Tales on the rack, and he thumbed at the edge, at the No. 4 right there next to the title. What did she know about how mature he was? He might only be twelve, but he had seen things in his life. He pedaled his bicycle from the grocery straight to the feed store, weaving in and out of parked cars and hopping up sidewalk curbs, dropping from his seat to dig the heels of his tennis shoes into the ground as the rear tire fishtailed on the loose-packed gravel of the alleyway opening to Charlotte Street. There were two long-bed pickup trucks backed to Kruger’s loading dock and about a half-dozen men hoisting bales of hay down into the back-ends. They were in their T-shirts, their woolen hats and lined denim jackets with sheepskin collars tossed aside probably hours ago, long before the early summer sun had poked up over Rattlesnake Hills. It was nearly touching the tops of the Medicine Bow peaks now; the sheet of store windows facing the street reflected a sky that was almost bronze.
Rodney stopped and straddled the bike, emptying the last few pieces of candy into his mouth, sweet and gummy, just north of stale. He chewed and chewed until it felt like he’d been punched in the jaw—and then he gave it a couple more chews for good measure before sliding the copy of Twisted Tales from inside the front of his jeans, the paper damp with sweat. He flipped through it quickly, at the man falling down the well and the woman screaming over his mangled body, her dress hanging off her in shreds. The amphibious creature coming at her, with bold words like Chunk, Sluck and Plat, all drippy and melting down the pages just as they should. He closed it and tucked it inside the Superboy rag and folded it onto itself, then stuffed them both into his back pocket.
It was quiet in the store, and his mother was not where she was supposed to be, in the space behind the front counter. In fact, there was no one behind that counter at all. Anyone could just reach into the register and take whatever they wanted, Rodney thought. He waited there, not really thinking of stealing anything, but leaning his body over the countertop, hoisting himself onto the glass to look behind at the stacks of boxes, and clipboards that hung from nails, the simmering pot of black coffee, jeweled beads of sweat against the glass bulb. From somewhere near the back of the store there came a tumble of voices, low and clipped.
He slid from the counter and followed the noise, down the center aisle past the shelves of horse tack and rubber boots and sheepskin-lined jackets, to where the whispers grew louder. It wasn’t until he rounded the corner at the end that he saw three of them there, huddled against the wall. His mother faced him but stood looking down at her shaking hands. A man Rodney recognized as Charlie Kruger was at her side and he kept a hand resting on her shoulder, his curled, silver mustache poking from his profile. Patchy cheeks flushed pink against a stiff collar, too snug, his white hair clipped short and tight, like a patch of frosty grass sitting there on top of his head.
Between them and Rodney stood a woman with her back to him, a globe of blonde curls and frizz ticking as she shook her head from side to side. Rodney forced a sniffle and it was then that his mother finally looked up at him. Her eyes were raw, the lids red and angry.
She said, “What are you doing here?” and when Rodney cocked his head at her she quickly answered, “Oh God,” and wiped at her eyes. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
Mister Kruger glanced at Rodney briefly, the pouches beneath heavy and reddened, then turned back to her. “What do you want to do here, Rose?” he asked.
The blonde woman said, “You want me to call the cops?”
Rodney’s mother shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said. Her hand went to Mister Kruger’s, her knuckles white as she squeezed. “I’ll deal with it.”
Rodney asked what she was talking about and then she put her hands to her eyes, and said, “Just stop,” as if he had done something. She turned and pushed past them all and began walking the aisle to the front of the store, her pace clipped and intentional. “When you’re done sweeping I want you to wait up here for me,” she said to Rodney, shaking her arms at her sides as if coming in from a thunderstorm. “Don’t go anywhere until I say so.”
There was a moment when he thought he would refuse, that he would just stand there and stare at her until she told him what had made her so upset. But then she turned from him and found a stack of papers and started flipping through them, pausing now and then to wipe at her eyes.
He had seen his mother in situations that had caught her off guard or rattled her cage to the point of anger. A lying refrigerator repairman, a roadside flat tire in the middle of a storm. And there was his father. But in all these, no matter how far she had been pushed, he could not remember ever having seen her cry. It was something he could not make sense of, and he wondered if his being there to see it only made the whole thing that much worse.
He pushed the broom through that warehouse like it was a race, the dust thick and choking, corners and perimeter lousy, but he didn’t care. And when it was all good enough he dropped the broom against the wall and slipped from the edge of the loading dock to his bicycle, climbing aboard and letting his weight move him over the rutted parking lot to the main drag. He opened up and sailed down Charlotte until he got to Cedar, then he cut across the short route, side-cutting streets by sticking to the alleyways and vacant lots before finally coming out onto his own block. Half the driveways up and down the street were occupied with cars, including his own father’s blue Impala, backed up tight to the garage. And as Rodney got closer, he could see on the passenger side of the windshield a golf ball-sized sunburst, the fissures in the glass webbing outward to crackle over the driver’s view. He gave the pedal a final pump and coasted up onto the sidewalk, dismounting on the last fifty feet or so and dropping his bicycle on the lawn like a bad experience.
The house was silent and choked with shadow. Rodney could see that his father was in the living room, seated backward in one of the dining room chairs, his legs spread and planted on either side of the seat back. His chin rested on the top rail, and his fingers curled around the spindles, one hand wrapped in white gauze. A quarter-sized patch of red seeped through over the knuckles.
There was two pieces of luggage at his feet—a mismatched pair that Rodney had never seen before. His father did not look up, but simply stared at the television as a program flickered silently over the screen: two men with pistols drawn, each of them hugging the outside of a warehouse building.
“Why do you have those?” Rodney motioned to the suitcases. His father looked at them as if they had suddenly appeared. As if he’d just awakened to see them sitting next to his shoes. “Where are you going?” Rodney asked.
“I don’t know,” his father said. “Missoula, I guess. For a while.”
“For work?” There had been times when he did this, for a day or two. Those had been one-bag trips.
“We’re not divorcing,” his father said. His voice was coarse, as if the mere idea was unheard of. Insulting. “Your mother and me. We’re not getting a divorce.” He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.
Rodney’s eyes stung and his throat felt like a marble had jammed itself down there. His father’s shoes were scuffed and gouged from the edges all the way up over the toes.
“Were you at the store?” Rodney asked, and the sound of his own voice—the severe, callous edge—was not him.
His father leaned over and slid a suitcase to his knee. He fiddled with the handle, flipping it from one side to the other, not looking up at his son. “You must think I’m a goddamned monster,” he said.
Rodney said, “I’m not thinking anything.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” his father said. “Your mother—” he stopped, cleared his throat. “Goddamn it,” he said. “Your father’s turning into someone he doesn’t even recognize anymore.”
Rodney went to him then, stood between the television set and his father. “I don’t know what that means,” he said. His father was scaring him. This was different than times before, when he might just drive around for a few hours or, at worst, grab his coat and disappear until morning.
His father coughed, almost the beginning of a cry, perhaps, into the circle of blood at his knuckles. “She’s making me crazy,” he said, looking up at Rodney now, brows raised into a field of ridges. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
Rodney turned and looked back out the window, at the street that ran east, back toward the feed store. “Did she tell you to leave?” he asked.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” he snapped. He stood from his chair then and took up the suitcases, and lingered there in the middle of the room. A scarecrow in the field, aching for some sort of reaction to his presence. His eyes bored into his son and Rodney knew it and he felt it, and it was all he could do to keep from looking up, from matching his father’s stare. He kept his head still as a fencepost, his jaw pulsing in and out, while the people on the screen threw silent shouts at one another so that their necks strained, and their eyes bulged from their sockets.
“I want to go with you,” Rodney said, and there were all kinds of crybaby in those words and it embarrassed him. It embarrassed him that he should be coming apart like this, and it embarrassed him that his father should have to hear it. If there was ever a chance he might bring Rodney with him, it was dead now.
His father reached over and put his hand on Rodney’s shoulder.
“Walk with me,” he said. And then he gave the boy a tug on his sleeve that lifted one of Rodney’s feet from the floor.
Outside, Rodney could see that there were bedclothes folded on the rear seat of the Impala. His father dropped the bags inside, sliding them against the blankets, then leaned against the closed door, hands shoved down into his trouser pockets. His keys tumbled in there.
“You’re not coming back,” Rodney said.
“The hell I’m not.”
“You’re just lying to me, so I won’t cry.” Rodney felt the tears pushing at him hard, but he would win this one. He ground his teeth and dug his fingernails into his palms.
His father said, “You’re twelve now, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got a long way to go till you can wear these shoes,” he said, nodding toward his feet. “When that happens maybe then you’ll understand things better.”
Rodney shrugged. What could he say to that?
“Or maybe you never will,” his father said. “Till then I don’t want you judging your old man, cause you don’t know what you don’t know.” His father reached over and scratched his son’s head with his fingers, like he might scratch the belly of some dog.
He told Rodney he would call when he got to where he was going and then he climbed into the car and fired it up, and backed slowly out of the driveway, his elbow in a V over the seat back, head craned to one side, not facing his son. At the street he tapped the horn twice and drove off down Smith Avenue, the streetlamps rolling white circles over the hood, then sliding across the roof and down the trunk as he went.
It was well past dark by the time Rodney’s mother finally came home. She wore her purse on her shoulder like it was a punishment, the front doorknob a lifeline beneath her hand. Rodney lay stretched out on the sofa, hands folded on his chest as if in prayer. The television flickered, an old movie that he had lost track of a half hour earlier but continued to watch.
“You didn’t do what I told you,” she said.
“I forgot,” he lied.
She closed the door behind her. “Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah.”
She paused, nodded her head. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”
“No.”
His mother nodded again and went into the kitchen. Rodney watched her in the alcove as she moved some plates and glasses around, turning the dial on the oven before opening the door and waving her hand around inside. She moved from sink to refrigerator to cabinetry as if she had come from a daylong war and had no fight left in her. Every movement was coupled with a hand on the counter, a hip resting against anything that would help support her weight. She reached up and pulled a clip from her head and let her hair fall around her shoulders, dragging her hand through it twice to sweep it all it back over her head. At one point she turned and her eyes found his, and she gave him a little smile. As if he had caught her in the act.
The movie flipped to a commercial with a man shouting over a huge parking lot of cars, and Rodney stretched on the sofa so that his toes pointed sharp, and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his fists. He looked out into the kitchen again. Now his mother was sitting at the small table with a mug in front of her, stirring it in circles with a spoon.
Outside the wind began to kick up, the branches of the large holly bush scraping at the window glass like fingers. He was probably all the way to Casper by now, Rodney thought. And in that same thought he felt his heart hum as flat as the expanse between them. Shouldn’t he be feeling more? Anything? If it was one of his comic books there would be screaming and tears, and beads of sweat like tiny glass rivulets running down his face. The sky would be crowded with black fists, and something horrible would be waiting on the next page. Yet here he was, in front of the television, feeling next to nothing.
Maybe, he wondered, his father was someplace giving a backward glance at Hope, perhaps imagining his son and wife lounging there in the living room, the two of them pretending at normalcy. As if they expected any moment he would come in the door and say he was sorry and that it was all a mistake, that he had never meant any of it. That when he did so they would all laugh, and agree it had all been a misunderstanding, and there was nothing on the next page other than the words, The End, written in big, curled letters.