The start of something

I’m much better at starting things than I am at finishing them, so this is just a start. Please tell me how to make it better.

——————————————–

Muriel got down under the front porch and tried to drag the dog out. Her behind stuck up like a hillock and I sat back in the lawn chair enjoying her behind and the sunset, in that order, with my beer a distant third.

“I can’t believe he hasn’t gotten used to thunderstorms yet,” she said, muffled, from under the porch. “Thirteen years, Christ.”

“He got killed by lightning in a past life,” I told her. “What?” she said. Lebo was whimpering more loudly than I would’ve imagined an animal could whimper, if I hadn’t been hearing it regularly for the past thirteen years. She started scooting back, yanking the dog with her.

“Lebo got killed by lightning in a past life,” I said again. She looked up and pushed a flip of graying hair out of her face. “He used to be the world’s tallest man. But he led a life of sin. He was struck down by the hand of the Lord in the middle of a beach in Florida, and when the crabs came out at night he was already toasty. Nature’s microwave.”

“You’re a nitwit,” she told me, and heaved Lebo, that trembling bag of bones, into my lap. My lawn chair flipped. I spilled my beer all over the dog.

***

By eleven the power was out. We made a cave out of our forty-acre quilt and used flashlights to read each other’s palms while Leboshivered under the bed and outside it rained.

Muriel’s left palm was almost completely smooth, with one tiny cross of inch-long lines, just in the middle.

“I used to have stigmata in high school, did I tell you that?” she said. “That’s where it healed.”

“Bullshit.”

“Do you really think that God would have chosen me if I were the kind of person who would lie to you about having stigmata?”

There was something wrong with that but I was too tired to figure it out.

“I…” A gargantuan yawn shut me up for a minute. “I can’t believe that in twenty-two years of marriage you never told me that you had stigmata.”

“Idiot,” she giggled. Then: “Actually it was self-inflicted. I used to stab myself with scissors so that people would think I had stigmata.” There was something wrong with that, too, but my ears were full of cottony thunder and I was underwater with Muriel in our quilt cave. There was no fighting sleep; I shut my eyes and went away.

***

Saturday we patched pants; Sunday we snapped beans. Monday night Janet called.

“I’m thinking about coming up for a visit,” she said. I was down in the kitchen, Muriel had the upstairs line.

“That’d be sweet of you,” said Muriel. “Would you be bringing that Gus?”

“We would like it if you brought that Gus,” I said.

“I haven’t been with Gus for eight months,” said Janet. “It’s Bob now. You met him at Christmas. He gave you those art prints.” I remembered. He had been wearing a shirt and tie at Christmas.

“We would like it if you brought that Gus,” I told her again.

“I just remembered, sweetie,” said Muriel. “All the roads are actually flooded right now. No one can get in or out of town. If you try to come now, you’re liable to get capsized.”

“It’s been raining,” I put in.

“Your roads aren’t flooded,” said Janet. I heard something start beeping in the background. “Shoot, I have to go. I really have to go.”

“Your father had to build a raft out of spare tires just to get the groceries,” said Muriel.

“I really have to go,” said Janet. She went.

Muriel came downstairs and we sat on the couch together and wished that our daughter had the good sense to recognize a damn fine man, by which we meant Gus, when he was staring her right in the face.

***

I hauled myself out of bed the next bright morning and went outside to get my feet dewy when I noticed that the car had been spraypainted overnight. I went back up and gave Muriel a nudge. She came slowly and beautifully awake.

“Did you write Fuck You Mr Patterson on our car?” I said.

“No,” she said. Light cast through the netted curtains and made a shrine of her nose. “Did you?”

“It must have been Ted,” I said. Ted was our neighbor who twitched.

“It wasn’t Ted,” she told me. “Ted’s in Lancaster County on a healing retreat.”

She had to be dreaming. “No he isn’t, that’s crazy. Wake up.” I gave her another nudge. She opened one eye and looked annoyed.

“I am awake. Ted’s learning to use meditation and the earth’s natural healing power to center his energies and achieve levitation. He told me about it last Tuesday.”

“Levitation?” I said, but she had already closed her eye. “Well who was it, then?” I asked the bedside table. There was no answer. “Nobody calls me Mr Patterson,” I said.

***

Muriel was still asleep when I finished breakfast and went back outside. The car was still painted. I rolled up my pajama pants and crossed the wet grass. The welcome tree sighed and licked at my cheeks with its red leaves. Barks echoed from the field across the road as Lebo came rushing up to shove his nose deep into my crotch. I gave him a scratch and he hopped back, yipped at me once with his ears up and his black eyes fixed on me, and then sprang away to water the feet of the welcome tree.

“John?” Muriel called in a soft voice from the door. I turned around. Her nightgown clung to her like a kid. I ambled back over.

“You got up!” I told her. “That’s wonderful.”

“You weren’t making up the car,” she said.

“Would God have chosen me to have my car vandalized if I were the kind of person who’d lie about it?” I smartassed.

“Would God have reincarnated the world’s tallest man as a tree-pisser-onner?” she smartassed back. She had me there. Lebo looked up at us and grinned, leg raised. “Come on, don’t let him do that.”

“What are you worried about?” The tree was doing fine. “It isn’t going to shrivel up. Hearts of oak, ma’am.”

“How many times does he need to mark it, though? It’s your tree, Lebo! Who else pees on this tree?” She turned to me. “Do you pee on this tree, John?”

“My secret is out. I’m competing for territory with our dog.”

“Is that so,” she said. “You’d better make sure he doesn’t get me too, in that case.”

“Come over here and I’ll mark you,” I said. I would’ve, too, if the mailman hadn’t come.