Flesh and Bone Read online

  Saddled

  THE HORSE’S SPINE runs parallel to my shoulders. Bekah saddles it up and shows me how to mount. I crawl into the saddle and stare out the barn door to the pasture there. We won’t be going to the woods today. No, today we’ll just ride around the barnyard. I need to develop my seat before charging in amongst the trees.

  Bekah leads the animal out of the barn by its bridle and I hold tight to its back with my knees and thighs.

  “Relax,” she says. “Winnie’s a gentle ride.”

  We walk in circles and I get more comfortable. The saddle rubs the inside of my thigh and after an hour, the muscles in my ass and legs are worn to nothing. My knees shake, but I say nothing, not wanting to wimp out too soon.

  “You done?” Bekah asks.

  “All done.”

  Bekah leads us back to the barn. Hay and horseshit, dust and hair stink the place up. Getting off the horse is harder than getting on. My legs won’t hold me and I can’t just slide to the ground without falling on my face.

  “Here,” Bekah says. “I’ll catch you.”

  Her hands slide up my thigh, my belly and ribs to my armpits. She laughs when I wobble and stumble. There’s a bench by the door and I sink onto it gratefully.

  “Not bad,” Bekah says.

  “I feel like water.”

  “Riding’s harder than it looks,” she says.

  “No shit.”

  “Next time we’ll let you have the reins.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “I’ll always be there when you fall.”

  For some reason, I believe her. She’ll always be ready to catch me no matter how far I’ve dropped.

  Consequences

  LUNCH. WE ALL stand in the Pit passing a bottle of schnapps around.

  “Back home,” Mina says. “We have real schnapps.”

  “It’s free,” Richie says. “Quit your bitching.”

  I light a cigarette and it tastes of toothpaste. Renee rolls a joint. It smells both thick and sweet.

  “Let’s go to the movies,” she says.

  “What about class?” Mina asks.

  “Fuck class.”

  We get in Ed’s car and we smoke the joint. It disappears fast with all of us toking.

  The theater is across town. The streets are filled with people going places, doing things. Ed runs a light and a cop stops us.

  “I smell weed,” the cop says.

  “I hit a skunk,” Ed says.

  “A skunk?”

  “A skunk.”

  “You should be in school,” he says.

  “Half day,” Ed says.

  “Bullshit.”

  The cop calls our parents and tells them to come get us. We wait on the sidewalk and our parents come one by one. The cop talks to them and they all look unhappy and put out.

  “Skipping class?” Mom asks.

  “It sounded good at the time.”

  She drives us home

  “I was sleeping,” she says. “I have to work.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Jesus,” she says.

  They suspend us for three days. Mom’s pissed.

  “They kick you out of class for not going to class!” she shouts. “Fucking incredible.”

  For three days, I sit around the house. For three days, Grandma eyeballs me. For three days, I wait for the chance to go somewhere.

  “Did you learn anything?” Mom asks.

  “Don’t get caught.”

  The look on her face says that’s not the answer she wants, but what can I say? I can’t tell her I’ll never skip school again. That would be a lie and I see no reason to dig that hole.

  Flirt

  STANDING ALONE ON the corner. Cars growl past, the street dry, the wind gentle and slightly warm. I light a cigarette and watch the smoke rise, a frayed string. Zephyr walks down the street looking like he’s always been here. I don’t know why I called him, but I wanted to see him. Now that he’s here, though, all I can think about is getting away.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says.

  “No worries.”

  My hands itch with the desire to reach out and touch him. I can’t help but look at him. My head feels loose on my neck. I can’t keep it from swiveling around and pointing my face in Zephyr’s direction.

  “You ready for summer?” he asks.

  “I got a job picking berries on my grandmother’s farm,” I say.

  “Is she still hiring?”

  “I’ll ask.”

  This is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what makes him smile, what makes him want to spend his time with someone. I’m looking for ways to make him want me the way I want him. But I’m also looking for was to be with him without losing my mind. I can’t afford for people to find out that I have crush on the new guy. No one would ever forgive that. I’d have to move or I’d have to die.

  “How are you settling in?” I ask.

  “I miss my boyfriend,” he says.

  We walk into the restaurant and the girls behind the counter smile at us. It’s a waste of time. Zephyr isn’t interested and I’m preoccupied.

  “Where’s your boyfriend live?” I ask.

  “Back in Tennessee.”

  “Is he going to move?”

  “I doubt it,” he says. “His folks won’t let him.”

  Maybe I stand a chance. Maybe if I play it smooth and gentle, he’ll give up on his long distance love and realize that I’m closer and easier to reach.

  “His parents don’t like me much,” he says.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “They think I recruited their boy,” he says.

  “Recruited?”

  “Turned him gay.”

  “Jesus.”

  We sit with our food in the corner booth. No one pays us any attention. How do you live a life without people finding out? I can imagine the stares if people knew I was in love with Zephyr. I imagine the fights I’d have to fight.

  My hands itch with the desire to touch him. I can feel his skin under my fingertips. His face is perfect. The heat of having him so close presses through me. Sweat gathers in my palms, along my ribs. I’m lost without him.

  “Do you think you’ll stay together?” I ask.

  He looks at me, raises an eyebrow. Blood rushes to my face. I stare at the table.

  “We’ll see,” he says.

  That’s it. There’s hope. Someday, maybe I’ll be the one he thinks of when he’s telling people about his lover. I’ll be the one who makes him smile just by walking into the room. There’s hope. For the first time since I moved here, I feel as if maybe I could belong.

  Weight

  I CANNOT SEEM to do anything. Gravity seems to have doubled here. I’m weak and tired, but my back hurts and my mind spins as if running from a fire that’s completely circled it, leaving nowhere to go.

  The mattress is firm, but soft at the same time. Blankets are a warm and comfortable weight on my thighs, my shoulders, my arms. I cannot move, but I have to. I have to get up. I can no longer stay in bed, even though waking seems a dangerous and wild proposition.

  My feet hit the floor and I straighten up from my bed. Dressing quickly, I stumble into the living room. No one’s up yet. Mom’s only been home an hour or so. Grandma has taken to sleeping in since Grandpa died.

  I make coffee in the kitchen and find eggs in the refrigerator. Outside, a fog rises from the grass in the field. The sun is up, but the light is pearly and hard. I think that I could kill myself now and all they’d find is a body. They wouldn’t have to worry about decomposition. Someone would find me soon enough.

  But how? I ask myself. The knives are not sharp enough. I’ve tried them before and the best I could get was a burning scratch on my wrist. I could fall on it, though. It would drive through the muscles in my belly and lacerate the liver or the bowel. I’d probably live through it, though, and then the mess, the blood all over the place. Even if I died, someone would have to cle
an it up and I’m not rude enough to leave a chore like that for anyone else.

  Sweethearts

  THE FLOWERS COME at sunset, lilies and crocuses, blue and white. The delivery guy gives them to Mom and she buries her face in the petals.

  “Bobby?” I ask.

  “Bobby.”

  She takes them to the dining room and leaves them on the table. I don’t know what to make of it. The thought of my mom in love disturbs me. Love is for young people. Is she having sex? I don’t want to think about it.

  Mom dresses in her work clothes and smokes a cigarette in the kitchen.

  “Will he come in tonight?” I ask.

  “He’s on the road.”

  “You like him,” I say.

  “A lot.”

  She gets her shoes and her coat.

  “Stay out of trouble,” she says.

  “You too.”

  She smiles.

  “All my trouble’s behind me.”

  The Spot at the Lake

  “WHEN I WAS a boy,” Harold says. “We used to come out here to fish.”

  We sit in his truck just to the side of the boat ramp.

  “This is where I learned to swim,” he says. “My uncle took me out in a boat. He tossed me over the side and rowed back to shore.”

  I sit there and imagine him as a boy struggling to make it to the beach before the lake swallowed him. If it were up to me, I’d beat the shit out of his uncle for his cruelty, but Harold’s so old his uncle’s probably dead by now.

  The sun’s dropping into the trees and the park at the lake is closing. People are bringing their boats out of the water. Families are piling into their cars and driving away. Kids come climbing out of the lake dripping green water from their hair and arms and wrap themselves in towels, huddling in the last of the sunlight before rushing off to the bathrooms to change into warmer clothes.

  “If you walk down that way a little ways,” he says. “There’s a deep spot perfect for trout.”

  I hate fishing. Fish freak me out with their mouths gaping open all of the time, the fight they put up when you hook them. I don’t want anything to do with them.

  When the last of the people slip out of the park, Harold leans in and kisses me. I put a hand on his chest and push him away a little. He stops and frowns and looks at me like I’ve gut punched him.

  “Something wrong?” he asks.

  “I just… I don’t know.”

  “I love you,” he says.

  “No you don’t.”

  “I do,” he says. “I love you like I’ve loved no one else.”

  “That’s not fair,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “It’s not, but it’s the truth.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What do you want me to say?” he asks.

  I stare at the bats cutting curves through the sky. Pearly light eats the shadows. Elms along the shore stretch their leaves toward the last of the light.

  “I want to go home,” I say.

  “But I brought you out here…”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  He stares at me for a second and I don’t know what he’s going to do. Things could get ugly. Things could get violent. There’s no place for me to run to. But he just shakes his head and starts his truck.

  “We’re not done with this,” he says.

  “I know.”

  There’s no way this could just end, not this easy. Nothing like this ever ends neatly. It drags out and stains your life for weeks and months and sometimes years. I wonder how long it’s going to take for me to get him out of my life. I wonder if either of us will make it out alive.

  The Barn, the Girl, the Fight

  DUST AND HORSE shit make the barn itchy and thick. Sunlight burns through the spaces between the boards. No one smokes here. It’s too dry, too combustible. Only a fool would add fire to this stack of tinder.

  “You hungry?” Bekah asks. “I brought two sandwiches.”

  We sit in the hay loft watching the horses in their stalls on the ground floor. There are three of them. Soon she and I will take them out for a walk around the pasture, but right now we’re sitting here eating sandwiches. I’m thinking of going down for a cigarette.

  “We could fuck,” she says.

  We could. No one’s here but the two of us, but I don’t feel like fucking. I feel like sitting here and waiting for the sun to go down. I feel like keeping to myself. Nothing can get to me. I’m a stone in a river. Water and time washes over me, peeling away little layers of cells, imperceptible until years later when the corners have all been rounded and the surface is smooth as corn silk.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Bekah asks.

  I shrug. I’m not thinking. I’m just sitting here, waiting for something, only I don’t know what.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” she says.

  “Sorry.”

  She jumps from the loft to the floor.

  “Let’s walk these beasts so you can go home,” she says.

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “You don’t want to be here either,” she says.

  “This is true.”

  We walk the horses. The musky smell of their bodies lies heavy on me. Their eyes glitter with an intelligence I never figured I’d find in an animal. They follow us along the fence, round and round, hooves cracking on the stones in the grass. We walk them and Bekah won’t even look at me. She stares out over the pasture. Somehow, I’ve pissed her off. Somehow, I’ve broken something between us.

  “Do you want to go now?” she asks.

  I have nowhere to go. Home is too heavy. Harold would give me a place to hide for a while, but he’d want something from me. Maybe I could go to Ritchie’s.

  “Don’t stay just because of me,” Bekah says.

  “What do you want to me to do?”

  She stares at me for a moment.

  “Nothing,” she says, but her tone says I’ve missed something.

  “Bekah…”

  “Never mind,” she says. “You owe me nothing.”

  “I can stay,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “Let me get my keys.”

  She disappears into the house and I stand in the yard waiting. I don’t know what’s going on, but somehow, I keep breaking things. Maybe someday someone will explain it to me. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to read people. Until then, I’ll just be careful to remember the way people act around me and try to do everything I can to keep from hurting them. Until then, I’ll keep things quiet and spend more time alone. It seems the only way to get along with folks is to keep interactions simple and seldom. Right now, my life is too complicated, too confusing to understand. I’ll make it through somehow. If I don’t, I’ll simply float away. If I don’t, I’ll walk out of the world and live in the shadows of madness.

  Are You Happy?

  MOM ASKS IF I’m happy. I shake my head.

  “What does that mean?” Mom asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  She touches my face where tears would fall if I ever let myself cry.

  “You never talk anymore,” she says.

  I shrug.

  “Just like that,” she says. “You’re nothing but shrugs and grunts.”

  I look at her and I realize that she’s old. Lines mark her face and gray dulls her hair.

  “Do you hate me?” she asks.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I just want to get along.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  She turns on the television.

  “My stories are on,” she says.

  Isn’t that the truth? All of our stories are on. All of us sit back, waiting for what comes next, waiting for the plot to turn, the surprise ending.

  Consolation

  HIS CIGARETTE BURNS quickly. The paper and tobacco sizzle. I walk naked to the kitchen and get a beer. I’m drunk already. Harold and I did tequila shots before fucking. It helped put me in the mood. It made it possible t
o walk naked through my friend’s home.

  “You’re wasted,” he says.

  “I am.”

  He wears smoke like a diaphanous gown. His face is lined and soft, harsh around his chin with white whiskers. I can still feel them on the back of my neck, the rash itching like I’ve been swarmed with fire ants.

  He digs in his wallet and hands me a twenty. I fold it up and slip it into a pocket of my jeans before finding my underwear and starting the slow process of getting dressed.

  “You’d rather I was younger,” he says.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t love me,” he says.

  “You never gave me the chance.”

  Wind slips through the open window and pushes the curtains out like the capes of small superheroes.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  And I do. I have to get out of here. My stomach burns with the tequila and I hope the beer will drown it a little. I need to get away from this room, this house, this land.

  “Do you want me to drive you?”

  “I can walk.”

  “It’s a long walk.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Outside, the sun burns as if nothing happened. Trees grow not caring that I’d given up my ass for twenty bucks and a little booze. Walking is a little awkward. I trip on stones and fall once in the trees. I gave myself up again. I don’t know how to say no. I don’t know how to push Harold out. I need the cash and I like the booze. It fills the hours when there’s nothing going on in my life. With Harold, I don’t have to be alone. I don’t have to think about what I’d rather be doing. He eats my boredom and gives me pain and grief. Pain and grief are better than loneliness and fear, so I come back every time and he gives me money and I give him sex.

  Somewhere on the other side of these trees, my house holds everything in my life. I can pack up and be out of town in under an hour. But what’s the point? There’s nothing out there I want and nothing out there wants me. With Harold, I at least know there’s someone in the world watching me, someone in the world wanting my attention. That’s enough, even if he makes me sick when I think about him. At least I know I don’t have to be alone if I don’t want to.