Part One: Dol WGAW Registration: 1120382

9.

You've got to make sure they're sleeping. You've got to tip-toe and peek and keep your fingers crossed. You don't get done half of what you've got to when they're up. You don't get done half of what you've got to. You see them. You can go on knowing they look like that, knowing they're sleeping with their itsy-bitsy minds on God. You go dream of God. Go.

Daddy? Your nine-year old Sex up on her elbow. Chump snuggles against her back.
SSt, sst. Go to sleep.
I'm cold.
Chump's warm, get closer.
I can’t get closer.
Okay. Nighty-night.
Is she going to be nice?
Who, honey? Then you get it. Yes, she's real nice and she'll be here when you wake up. Get under the covers. I'll leave the light on in the other room. You leave the door cracked.

If somebody would've told you then what they were going to be to you now - you cannot imagine. You cannot think you have that in you. You can't know that. You don't think God would ever give it to you. You're only old You and You and He both got your number.

You know, you never think that this - you might only hear your voice in secret. Sometimes your body doesn't catch up. Like a…like a…you don't know…like a bad…you remember those blue dinner plates and every time you took one out it scratched on the others. They tell you, you've got to practice on your new voice.

Your last doctor gave you a book to practice on but you choose your own because you know better. You get it at the library in Lake City, it's a twenty-mile drive but you take the kids and you go. It's a thin book called Speak You! with an exclamation point by Dr. Jane Peabody Harris, also with an exclamation point. Your voice is a beach ball, starting at the base of your spine, rolling upward into the mask of your face; on the exhale you can place your voice right where it sounds like you. Initially, this was your problem with the book. You don't want to sound like you, you want to make your sound. But this was a gross misunderstanding, Dr. Harris advised in an email: you find it this way. She says you'll know your voice when you hear it. It'll feel like home. So. If don't use her way the closest you may get to using your own voice is to sound like you. It’s an individual exploration akin to the individual’s individuation. That’s from the Forward.

But here's her point. Most people only use voices that they think are their own. Most people talk like their mama or their daddy or sometimes even like the people they see on TV. That is true. Listen to people, you can hear it. You'll see them sitting right there on couch mouthing the words, then they get up and speak like they're their own. Do we not, as well, sleepwalk through ninety percent of our lives? Unconscious? People have no idea that they are not themselves. No idea. And they can't know - how're they supposed to know? Who's going to tell them? Not the people that want you to sound like and be like and live like them. Oprah's not going to tell you.

You got to go on that journey all by yourself. A-L-O-N-E. If you look like Tinker Bell and sound like Paul Bunyon you had better go on the journey. And you had better be ready. Because they will hurt you if you don't. You don't look or sound like what they want - boy. Don't go there, don't think about that. That is bad, that is negative that is out of the question. That will not be considered here for you. You will not think this way. You will not. Change your mind. Change it. Change it. Positive positive positive. Oh God. Stay. Please.

Yes and that is what happened to Elaine. And you. She is so buried. In her beautiful body. It's not something somebody teaches you to think about. You find it out. In Little Rock, in the unkempt motel when she thought you were with Wilson.
But you weren't,

you were practicing. You were all
dolled up. You poked your eye with the forgiving eyebrow pencil when she kicked through that door, her black hair pulled back so her face was tight, her eyebrows like Mt. Olympus to do a number on you: she was Zeus or Apollo, you were human. That was it. For a split second, she gave you no dignity. None. Like you were nothing and she was somebody. Oh, she had you. She had you good. But then she just, she opened her mouth. And then the edifice of her being collapsed. You could see it. Like she was a construction site, like she was scaffolding. Her whole self fell.
You did not deny yourself. You did not blink. You looked at her, you went to her, and you held her: her body shivering, the pitch of feelings, her smell of Safeguard. A copper hairpin on the sill spit the sun surging in. How's she gonna understand? Who could? You can't ask that of people, they don't have it in them. They got to get supper, go to work, and get to the bank. She wet your shoulder. When she stood back, she was different. Her eyes could have been the sky, when you were playing. No more, now they were a tornado in to root out the truth. Her clay skin held the indent of your fingertips.

She hit you. Hard. Tore after the stuff on the bed, tortoise-shell hair band stung your chest, blonde wig under the desk, silk hose in the trash. The rayon sun dress and, man, she just ripped that up. You had moisturizing mittens on your hands. It wasn't her husband in heels, it was the cliché. She found a hanger and beat you.

You are a cliché!! She screamed. A cliché! I am a cliché. You’ve made me a cliché!

She kept screaming but Motel 8 didn't kick you out. You held her, then let go. We all got our row to hoe.

Don't tell Sexton, don't you dare tell Chump.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

She took up Jesus, I took up Mencken.

Part One: Wilson cont'd WGAW Registration: 1120382

8.

She and Dol niver even messed around. If they were goin to Wilson ought to get it started. All their dealins, over all these years, since they were kids were nothing but clean and proper. She ought to be grateful.

A week ago Wilson spied on Dol,
and her nine-year old, Sexton, through a hole in the dining room shade. Sexton had planted her feet flat in front of the bedroom door. Wilson couldn’t see the whole thing, but Sexton was pulling on the doorknob, humming at her reflection in the full-length mirror, gummed up with water spots and toothpaste. And when Sex tugged the door back, singing, Dol was there in the bathroom putting his face on.
Honey, Dol said, whyn’t you learn a good song!
Daddy, you sang to me when I was in Mama’s belly.
Times change.
I’m crazy for you,/ touch me once and you’ll know it’s true,/ I feel it in your kiss…
You don’t feel nothing in nobody’s kiss, young lady.
I do too.
Dol came to the bathroom doorway. Whose kiss you feel something in, sweet thing?
Yours.
Aw, ain’t that nice? Dol needed the mirror to get his eyeliner on right. You kids didn’t clean behind the stool.
We traded and that Pig-eyed Sucker won.
Your brother ain’t pig-eyed.
You looked at him? I’m crazy for you.
Sex, please? The swinging on the door – I got to see myself.
Sexton pulled the door shut, so Dol could have a good look at himself.
Wilson could see Dol’s reflection. He had piled his brassy blond hair on top of his head, put on the leather skirt Wilson had got him when he first told him he was going to get all his work done, and lilac eye shadow thick enough to butter bread.
How you think Daddy looks?
Let me see. Sexton stuck her head in around the door. Pretty.
Pretty is as pretty does. You’re just sayin’ it.
I ain’t.
Yeah, y’are. But I’ll take it.
Wilson could hear Dol putting his red, blue and lilac pencils along with his other doo-dads back into the medicine cabinet.
I see you at ten-thirty? Sexton asked.
You see me little girl, tomorrow in the a.m. I’ll come in and kiss ya.
Wilson got self-conscious. She stepped away from the window. At her feet, dried out brooms-edge hadn’t been mowed. All summer. It clumped all yellow and tangled looking to be a lot of hell come spring. Somebody ought to be out here pulling it all up and seeding it through – no reason it shouldn’t be her. She could take care of Dol and his kids, Sex and that little porcupine, Chump. It had got her to thinking.

Part One: Wilson cont'd WGAW Registration: 1120382

7.

Wilson ripped the rest of the label off the Bud and wadded it into an itty, bitty ball. She had squared off once
with Julie in the backyard at a BBQ.
Julie planted herself in front of Wilson, eyeing her up and down, grilling her same as a stuck pig.
I don’t know. What doesn’t make a woman?
Don't get fancy on me.
Julie, I don't want trouble. Let's just sit ‘ere and drink our beers.
Standing there, Julie’s lips cut straight across her thin face in the habit of one used to nappy tasks. Her eyes creamed to Dirty Harry snake slits. She drew air circles with her lemonade and vodka. I ain't drinkin beer, that's a difference right there for you.
A difference?
Between you and me. Mister.
Julie - .
Mister.
Fine. Wilson ought to have stuck with the guys in the driveway. Charlie wasn't there either.
He's gone.
Is he?
Oh, yes. Charlie always gets while the gettin's good. Julie squatted on Wilson's knee, rutting ever so slightly with an acid vinegar breath. Feel like something you know?
I don't want trouble, Julie. Whyn't you have a seat?
Tell me what a woman is. Tell me what a woman is and I'll have a seat.
She meant to get Wilson in trouble. You wouldn’t call her drunk, but you wouldn’t call her sober. It was quiet.
I don’t know why you have to get so worked up. We’re just havin a little discussion. She chewed her ponytail.
Her jaw hung slack and she rolled her eyes.
The screen door thwapped as Charlie walked through it. He froze. Julie. Wilson. Talking. He shook his fingers at both of them. Then he hid his head under the hood of the'68 Delta for sale.
Pussy.
Don't call him that.
You gonna tell me what I can and cannot call my husband? Hah! Julie hauled up a lawn chair under the silver maples. Shade’s cooler ere, huh? It's been a long time, hadn't it?
Not long enough.
Aw, come on. I’m not worked up, let’s talk. I know who I am. You and that buddy of yours down at Avery's ever figure out who you are?
Dol?
Is that his name? That's a funny name.
He likes it.
What's it stand for? Donald or Danielle or Suzanne Sugarbaker?
That ain't nice, Julie.
No, it ain't, is it? I don't like feel like bein nice to a grown man, with two kids, whose name is Barbie.
His name ain't Barbie.
Well, it ain't Ken.
Boy. She was a tough nut to crack. Ungrateful. Unfair. Rude.
You are fucking my husband.
If I said no, Julie, would you listen?
Sure, I would. I'm as more fairer than Carter has peanuts. Or something.
No. I'm not. Wilson lied because, one of these days, it was going to be the truth.

Part One: Wilson WGAW Registration: 1120382

6.

Everyone in town treated Wilson as a man. Not cause that was what she was, but looking at her you’d guess wrong what was between her legs. Her head rose out of shoulders wide at the base and stumped on top. Charlie said her neck matched a pork shoulder. Wilson thought that was close to the truth most days. God gives folks gifts yet it’s the smart folks what use them. Her arms were thicker than her neck, even, yet a hell of a lot stronger. Get a sack of Idaho potatoes, you got her gut. Chase a chicken, that's her legs. She'd out-lifted three-quarter of the guys on the three o’clock so beating, say, Charlie was a breeze. He had got it in his noodle he was going to beat her this year. Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. Just ‘cause he’s aiming at a target don’t mean he’s going to hit it. ‘Cause by the time Charlie got himself up for the job, maybe she wouldn’t stand for it no more. Maybe Dol would come first and whoop her heart like she'd never been whooped. How ‘bout that? Could she even dare to dream a thing like that? She’d find out soon enough, huh? Wilson smeared the ring her beer bottle bled on the table. Dol said he'd bring her a glass but never did. He's got a lot in his head about now.

Dol led her on. They all did. Dol, Charlie, Julie, every darn one. They had good reason. Wilson could lift where God didn’t have no time to. Take Dol. Dol needed his strength to draw that make-up pencil across his brow. It was heavier than she’d ever know, he told her.

Take Tanya and Michelle. Where was they going to get reliable transportation to take them all the way out there? In what part of God’s plan would they be driving that chi-chi Midnight F-10 truck out past them mountains? Huh? Wilson’s part, that’s what part. When they was clowning with their five cd compact disc changer, sporting a remote control, who’d they have to thank? Uh, not Charlie. Charlie couldn't lift a ball peen hammer to save his life. Sure as hell not that mother of theirs wound up tighter than a bull snake just before she strikes.

Wilson, herself, niver needed no lifting. If she herself didn't amount to nothing it wasn't no skin off her back. And compared to the dreams of some, compared to the dreams of them girls, compared to the dreams of Dol, say, there warn’t no way she was going to. She spun her bottle. Fifteen or twenty minutes ago when Dol asked what could he could get her, he puckered his lips. Don't think Wilson didn't note it.

Tonight was the night Dol was going to ‘fess up. A person puckers on purpose, even if they don't know it. With all her heart she knew, pressing hard enough, she could draw blood from a stone. And she meant to. Speaking of stones, she scratched her nose. Her fingers smelt like sugar char of burnt cow hide and they would straight through to April. She never wanted to look another cow in the eye as long as she lived. The sadness there soaked in same as their burning. Jesus they're the lonesomest animal God ever put on this earth. She ought to go in the restroom and try that powdered soap Avery keeps in there. But it'll take off the top layer of skin and it's too cold for that. Nobody was looking so she stuck her fingers in her beer and sucked them dry. All them enzymes eat off the smell. She and Charlie’d been doing with carcasses all week. She had to put down every last one of them save that one at Charlie’s for quarantine. If she didn’t, the County would shut her down permanently and she'd never get to have her own head again. What a rotten business, it killed her.

Went like this: get the seventeen of them and line them up. Get one of them in through the post and leave the others by the fence. Out there waiting, their eyes fuming same as mud puddles. A shadow’d crawl to the rump as Wilson cleared the door, before shutting it on account of it making the others anxious, while leading the animal in. Once inside, the swallows seething above, Charlie would soothe it. The tail would swish from habit since, at that time of year, horn flies were mainly dead. The head would come in, the shadow would creep, the door would get shut.

Wilson would grip the hammer handle, raise it high above, aim. She’d land the blow in at the crook of the neck hard enough to lift her up, yet them necks’re strong and didn’t buckle. Right then Charlie would sink a bullet in before the knees caved, but every couple cows or so, the skull would be weak enough so as the innards would shoot out. The animal’d loll there like a mixed up retard. Charlie would tuck his gun in his belt, at which point the animal’d weaken, teeter, and then founder. Then it was hook the shoulders through, yank the pulley and haul her up. There was a lot of crap coming out after, and them not being a professional operation, them brains and crap’d make a foot hazard. What got Wilson was them oozy blank eyes niver closing and not seeing they was dead.

If a cow was anything like a human being, each of them’s outside listening to what’s done to the one coming before. There warn’t much variation and all of them got killt if they was out there in the pen. At the time of one coming in, they was maybe postulating of the future or where they just was, but not much before that, and now the floor and the mess under-foot. What they saw in the barn was niver as bad as what they thought it might be.

Part One: Charlie (WGAW Registration: 1120382)

5.

Charlie set his foot on the poplar porch but brought his weight off the railing
Dont creak shes there
He listened The flurries elm leaves car crick his breath Snow spiraled up off the drifts seemin like that old Impala they used to have the one with the cream vinyl roof that got all worn to shreds when the tornado sped through tearin to Fort Smith He twisted his knee til it popped
Devil
He blew into his fingers
Numbin night Ol Julied have a recipe for that wouldnt she Shed set me on fire Shed burn me clean alive Shed peel the skin off my bones That girld leave the gristle for the coons He could just hear her
Warm up big boy
Thats his girl go in and havid out That would be that Go in havid out let her know there was no way in hell She was not doing it Go in Dont even think about it She was not havin one Go in and Doncha ask me to say it you know what I'm talkin about Doncha say it doncha say it doncha dare You know the word what Im thinking Doncha make me You say things you make em real
He put his other foot down
He was gonna go in But well now maybe shes already went out Maybe shes there now Maybe her legsre spread The deeds done the arms pulled the legs ripped the brain burnt her agony to begin again It was a done deal A fact Shes a big girl aint she She didnt need him to hold her hand Go see the doctor Well now Somebody woulda told him Dont go against Heaven Somebody woulda Who Who woulda told him Who did he know at that office The only person he knew enough to nod to was Burns himself and Burns wouldnt Doctors dont have to tell a husband jack shit Charles Ceame beloved husband to Julie Ceame dont mean shit Not these days thank you Jane Fonda You can do anything you want if youre a woman you dont have to vouch nothin to nobody as long as you got your insurance card You can get any healin you want Nobody hasta know nothing You barely have to know yourself Shoot the girls coulda walked right into Burns office and told him they was knocked up and away a babyd go Boom boom down a chrome-plated drain Like that gone Poof Oh God she coulda done it huh Oh why didnt he come back You
Fuck fuck fuck Charlie
He shoulda been back here Oh boy you blew it Goddammit you blew it Yup What would your mama say Now now who is standing up for that little baby


his mother chosen hairbrush in
hand beating him into a corner behind the bathroom door Ill beat the bejesus out of you You grimey little termite

Her shriek in his brain now on the porch See What See Whatd I say Aint gonna save that child is she You married her Thats wholly the way welfare worms into folks They got so much dependence on themselves relyin on the government to feed em and then when it comes time to take care of their own they cant They cant cause they don’t know how Aint never done it have they Nope All they done is wait around for the government to hand em a check So when it comes time to take care of a child growin in em Forget it All they can think of is to kill it Its the governments fault A woman whod crucify her own Charlie these babies barely got They aint got fists They cant fight Can it Whyd you wanna marry a woman like that She aint like us son Shes from Nebraska

God maybe he shoulda been home tonight He would never forgive himself He was goin be one of those now One of those folks who kill their babies One of those men who wont stand up for the seed hes spilt Hed be one of those butchers Gods Assemblies in Christ II hunted

Part One: Julie cont'd (WGAW Registration: 1120382)

3.

Holed up upstairs, I couldn’t see Charlie but he would've stayed low, sneaking over to the shades on his knees to see who it was. Who it was was Wilson, that side of a house prettied up like a titted caboose. She was lying in wait, tying her boots. He might've taken the drying drapes on the back of the couch and wrapped them around his waist before he went to the door. His own nipples’d scream when he cracked the door and September, queerly cold and ready to soak us up, stung into him.
Get your clothes on! It's one o'clock, said Wilson.
Charlie would've fumbled with his curtain then the door saying how he'd just waked up.
Just waked up, my foot. Let me in!
That refrigerator box would've pushed the door open. Charlie would’ve hid himself behind the door.
Ain't no one out there wants to see you. That swollen six-toed two-by-four walked in.
Charlie'd shut the door, shivering. He ran up the stairs and put some clothes on. Me, face down on the bed. Then Wilson led him out to the driveway and an idea. A calf snorted in the bed of her new pickup. Overhead, clouds elbowed on in and what sun there was got clobbered while Charlie hopped foot to foot warming up. What's it want?
Its mama. Wilson scratched the animal behind the ears. It yanked back.
Probably don't like riding. The animal flinched when Charlie first fondled it but then went stock still.
'S so little I ought to save it, don’t you think? asked Wilson.
Keep it out in my shed if that's what you're thinking.
Yuh.
Okay.
Can’t jump ahead of me, if you tried. Charlie scratched the little thing rougher.
County's gonna get me. You watch. They're going to make me get them all. I got them all apart but I don't know. Wilson hooked her thumbs in her belt, her eyes lingering on his.
Charlie jumped up into the truck, kicked aside a bunch of straw, untied the calf, picked it up in his arms, and jumped back down. He set the pitiful thing onto its wobbly legs waiting for it to steady. He stroked under its chin saying he ought to tie the thing up and asking was it a he or a she?
A she.
If they'd been watching Charlie and Wilson would have caught me fogging the bathroom window. Breathing. I had drawn a cauled female figure there, like I felt myself, and let it fall off before I pressed my eyebrow into the stinging glass, thinking. Thinking and watching that crabapple tree screeching and knifing at the sky.

Wilson brought that animal in September. Me and Charlie ain’t talked since
last Tuesday. He come home for

lunch about the same time I come in. My lips wouldn't open. I wiped the kitchen counter. I’d never’ve thought it. I folded the lab results up and put it in my purse. God. I was done with babies. Not Charlie.

What do you think of the idea
of being a daddy again?
He said he didn't think much of it but then he had one arm under the coffee table pushing over piles of National Geographic, People, Entertainment Weekly, and Premiere and griping about how come they couldn't just get one of the magazines since they all say the same thing.
Ask your daughters. As soon as they get straight I intend to send em to them. I don't read them, do I?
Oh, now. Charlie needled on to inquire how come we don't keep the remote on the top of the TV which really means how come I didn't put it back so he could find it so I told him to get a belt wallet and chain it to his hip then it'd never be out of sight. I am just saying couldn't we fix the roof with the price of these things?

Save questions, we don’t speak.

What would you say if I said Burns
says I'm pregnant?
That got him up on his feet. Oh…. Jeez. Okay. You sure? Are you? Is he…?
I hung the dishrag over my shoulder and got my purse from back behind the back door and told him I had the lab results if he wanted to see.
Charlie slithered into the kitchen. Honey, that's real good news, ain't it?
Yeah, we need another kid like we need a hole in the head, don’t we? I fished in the outside pocket where I keep all my receipts. Ain't his head up his ass? I handed the stinking paper to him with one hand and got the stock pot out of the dishrack with the other. Take it. Ain't he?
He didn't seem like he wanted to take it. His eyes grew chock-full and his shoulders zoomed up to his ears. He looked like somebody about ready to take a prize they won but didn't for fear of being greedy. He’d won alright, on my lottery ticket. ‘Cause then, like lightening, he became one of those bomb defusing experts on the terrorist shows. He licked one half of his mouth.
Aren't you going to take it?
He squinted, then snatched the paper. He read every last number burned there. Twice. When he was done he put on a show. He made a big wind-up pitch and knocked his forehead into the door jamb.
I was his prize hen. I could’ve beaned him with that pot I was wielding. I watched him out one eye but kept the other hid in the cupboard. Us having that baby was not an option. Canning's done 'til Fall. Now don't say a - .
Well, now that's a Howdy Doo. Here's my second-.
Don't you say it, Charlie. Don't even speak it once. I did my time. I'm done.
He slumped onto the counter staring at his reflection in the toaster.
Charlie? This is our time now. Now you know that.
How come it can't be by the grace of God and include one more?
God ain't spreading his legs and chasing it. I ain’t never been nothing but a Mama. I was tired. I didn’t want to start again. Then, tears came. For crying out loud - I KNOW, CHARLIE. I wasn’t hatched on Monday, you're such a goddamned - I love you. But Elaine Little's been sneaking into the bar too, hain't she too?
If this is what God wants - .
Goddamned snaky proselytizer - . That’s where you get all this God now. I shook my fists like in a TV movie.
Now, what are you saying?
ELAINE LITTLE's speaking to you about populating the Earth and spreading your seed. I know it, I got ears. And - . I was talking about A-D-U-L-T-E-R-Y. Twice. Wilson and that, that, that - proselytizer. But, I saved it. I might need the details. I got up on the wobbliest kitchen chair to put the stockpot over the cupboard. If God were in good humor, he’d of kicked a leg out of that chair.
Charlie raced over to brace it.
I was safe.
How would I know about what Elaine Little is doing? I just know it's my 'second chance' chance. He was bringing up a little chat we had as the girls were
taking off for Hollywood. It ain’t been a secret. He’s a lousy father.

And I nailed him there.

Where was he when Cole Little was feeling up the girls? Huh? Both of them? We dogged through a hundred magazines to find a peaked and peerless lawn like they said, which he bought on a month’s mortgage, which turned out to be Saint Augustine’s weed but then where was he when Tanya was mowing it and hit that smoke tree stick that nailed straight into her leg? Where was he when the basement windows got so piled high with snow, the glass broke on Michele's head when she was cleaning the stairs? Huh? Where was he when their bleeding came? The way I see it is I was pleased to see the girls leave. Being hurt at the time I told him we were not the best operators. We're a nice roll in the hay. Okay. The girls're alive, and they're gone, and God hate me but I'm happier for it.



4.

I didn't know that day what I knew later wobbling on that kitchen chair.

I squat on my haunches, teetering. Charlie and I, eyeball to eyeball. You got another think coming, Bud.
I, for one, could do better this time.
Have it yourself then because I am done. D-O-N-E.
Naw - .
Oh, I cornered the lizard poking my sewed up finger. Don't even start with me, you proposing to raise it up? It were three, three, three years ago we chewed that fat. I don't know what I was thinking then but I am for sure certain what I am thinking now.
He coiled up against the molding.
I put up his stubby, hooked chin so he could see beyond his belly button and over my shoulder. What you are not done with and what I am going to give you a second chance at is the grime on that ridge up there which is ready to grow legs and feed an army of cockroaches - . Funning was a strategic mistake but I didn't want to talk it out anymore.
He changed his game plan. Ain't no cockroaches in Arkansas!
Hah!
Okay, there’s two in Jonesboro - ! He ran his finger along the ridge. I can clean this up.
He was making peace.
You do that. And I lurched off the chair curling into his fur like the pleasure-bunny I was at heart. I can taste our future, baby. His rolly belly pressed against mine. We did our time, hon'. The girls're grown, it's us now.
He got me in his arms and let me rest on him. Well. It'll work itself out in the wash, won't it? He surveyed the back forty through the sink window, scheming.

And I haven't seen him since. Since Tuesday. Time was tightening on us. Come on, Charlie. C’mon, we're going to settle this. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, mister. It stopped there.
Wind's picking up. Nothing’s coming down yet. The couch seam had a serated edge. If I squeezed my eyes and dreamed my arms wide I could fly, I could fly straight onto my tummy, and reach in tearing it out, and then stream into the sleet shaking my bloody hands and screeching. Or I could stay here and straighten Charlie out when he makes it here. Jesus, smell the bouquet of shit in the shag: macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, cupcakes, and cigarettes. One’d taste so good right now. The beer he's spilt. Aw, you name it, twenty-five years of us: Michelle, Tanya, him and me.
That driving mess aimed to take off some siding out there. It was whacking into it good. I wanted to hear if he slammed the Luv door shut. The irony of that sentence is not lost on me yet I am speaking of his Toyota. If I could’ve just seen him or just heard his voice then I'd see progress but there I waited. I felt like I’d awakened up. That night, it became so that I didn’t know if I's asleep or awake or even dead.
If it were to be him in the driveway, I ought to have sat right back down so I's the first thing he recognized with them raccoon eyes of his coming through that door. The coal lining his eyes comes from not eating or sleeping right. When did speaking to me get so spooky? When couldn't we make a little decision just the two of us together?
If it wasn't him out there then I might as well’ve got up. My eyes’ren’t leaving that front door. That sonuvabitch was going to hike in hang dog and sneak into the kitchen. Yeah, and when he was in there he could clean that danged grime piling higher than my nail polish. Meatier than my two fingers sewed together.
When he roamed home, I hoped to profess what's on my mind. I ought to have owned up. Then if he romanced me sweet, in his smoke voice, he'd talk to me and thaw my hand in his and mold his forehead into mine. He spun that web too, way back when. My moaning for his stony head’s the grounds for my letting his scheming get the better of our game. But last Tuesday I found my wobbling voice, by Jesus Christ, I caught myself in what I was saying. I unearthed my tongue. I'm going to get it again. But tonight, just like last Tuesday, it may needs be the bite that proves the spider.
Tonight, in a dream, I called to him. Charlie'd cast us off for groceries on the slope of an Ozark mountain. Our daughters and me tossed over the side with the howls blowing down on at us, violently. Tanya crouching with pouches of soap, Michelle holding squawking crows, and me rolling a boat for the snow. We were expecting a flood, I guess. Even now, I can feel the rock scoring the soles of our sneakers. But then Charlie revolved around and we, both of us, shouldered their weight and one-eightied their faces. I had Tanya's, and he had Shel's, and we made 'em gaze at where the day was perishing a ways off. We mislaid the cleaner and the birds and the boat, I guess. We all teared off down the slope. The way was so precarious, we were scared. You didn't know where to walk. And then I caught a sound - a car door. Like a latch under a blanket. I know it was what it was ‘cause I let go of Charlie's hand to see behind and there they glared, some headlights. Then I couldn’t lay eyes on the girls and I prayed to Charlie that we oughtn’t to leave them and to please could we go, I guess, back up from where we came. I couldn't see nothing but gray up there. Daylight in the night. But Charlie carried on, racing down ahead and I turned back facing the blizzard. Now that we’d got em out there, I didn’t believe I was going to leave em alone. Then the snow was, for all intents and purposes, sideways to the ground. I got up some til I followed the two beams taking me to the girls hurrying back and forth cutting the light and loading up a tiny Echo. That's right where I woke up.
And did my best to incline to r-e-a-l-ity. We could do a trade-off, couldn’t we? This thing is growing in me here, that calf is growing fast there. In the barn. When I went to see Father Tibs

this morning I compelled myself to
decide: peel it off or avail it of my womb. The ballpoints on Tibs’ shelf appeared to me as cotton mouths groveling to a ditch at dusk. Fitting right in with his sex, Tibs posed clear across the room and shot one of those Bics into the can.
Hoo, boy…. Julie. Got me. Postulations: not good. He fluttered his fingers to drum out I mustn’t come clean.
I hadn't done nothing vicious. Yet. I called upon him to tell me something superior. Something awful Catholic.
What do you want from me?
Being a man what would you say to me, forget the priest in you.
He looked at the desk calendar, the clock with Roman numbers, and back at me. Still smoking Kools?
I dug ‘em out of my purse. Take 'em.
Hmm. That's good. Quitting means you care.
Of course I care, Jesus Christ, what do you think?
They put us in classes for this.
Reason Tib to Julie.
' Tib to Julie' what does Charlie say?
Not a peep. Please, steer me. Not too deep down, I was driving to Burns’, bringing up my legs and allowing that Hoover of his to fix me.
He's a good man, Jules - .
Well, jail me tight and fling off the key - .
Help him, help you. Is it true you're not issuing him credit where it's due?
Reel off one thing he ain’t got credit for. There wasn’t nothing stopping me from just going and getting it done then. What lines of credit would he apply for with my shanks up in the air? That's the same thing my Mama said too. The bane and beauty of our body is you can hide things from almost anybody. But then it was also true she said but what you do hide is yours to hold. Not giving him credit.
Man to woman, chew to him.
He’s got no appetite, he's not there, he sneaks in, feeds the calf, eats at Avery's.
Have you gone over there?
Jeez, no I ain't gone there. That got me to thinking. I could try there, couldn't I?
Jeez Louise, it's a free country.
That's what they say. I am chewing this.
Neato.
I aim to wrench that calf's throat.
Don't do that.
I aim to ease him home.
Coercion - .
Is nine-tenths of the law.
He could maybe not know what words to say.
Strange hour to get tongue-tied.
There's a lot riding on what he says.
Then, I'll do it.
Do what?
Have it. After. I'll do it.
He offered to come over at seven so we could all stroll out to the shed and yak it through. I told him you bet Charlie was going to talk. He was going to talk like he never talked before.

And, come Spring, that crabapple was going to bloom again.

Part One: Julie (WGAW Registration: 1120382)

1.

The glass was brittle since the sun set. A hush’d set on everything the way it does when weather’s coming. When things’re going to change. Charlie’d better’d got his raggedy ass back in this house and on that sofa was what was on my mind. I was biting my nails and tossing it over. How long’s this bun going to stay in the oven? He and me can’t talk. We can’t talk except through our skin. Some just don’t. We say what we got to say when we’re doing it. All them things I can’t find words for come through the skin, making love. Most of them.
A few months ago, when Charlie and I did it on the carpet, a kid wasn’t already chewing out my guts. The milk’dn’t shot in, so to speak. And I almost got by. Almost. The past piled up behind me goosing me through. I’ll come back to where I am now after and where I was that night with the storm coming in and the hardening glass. But boy there was that afternoon, a few months ago, not too long after our daughters took off when the calf came.
I was scrubbing fingerprints off the kitchen wall where they all lean to get their shoes on and, at the same time, I was peeking about seeing where in the place we hadn’t christened, as they say. In the living room Charlie, seated on the final stair, was groping around for it too. We don’t even have to be near each other for that animal kind of thing to go on. Hell, I can see him and see what he’s thinking and I don’t even have to peek at him to know how the wheels of that brain is turning. I get goose-bumps from it. He was biding his time, seated right there. I put my cleaning away and angled myself onto the door-jamb separating the kitchen from the living room. He’d been home from gallivanting for a half-hour or more. He sat there. Still prying his boots off. We was both seeking alright.

I held onto the slick legs of
the couch and grit my teeth. With no consideration at all, which is just the way we like it, Charlie stuck into me with a shove, held himself up inside, his thumbs dug into my hips, his mouth ferocious and horrible. He pumped all the way up into my belly, and when he dug in, my knuckles burned in the shag. He hadn't thought of anyone but himself for twenty-five years, he wasn't gonna start then. Could be there was better leverage up on all fours so I got one leg up. He got me around the gut, hauled me up, and flattened me back.
Stay here a sec.
Not much difference, is there, me and a rabbit caught in a trap. A molded stain on the paneling in the living room had blossomed to look like mums to me since spring. Every. Storm. That thing. Bloomed. I. Studied. It. Getting. Jerked. Back. And forth. My grunting turned me. On. But. Then. I just. Forced my mind to. Think of. Wilson each. And every spike he made.
Radio says. You know?
What. Is. That? Charlie’s mind was not on the weather.
Radio said, this winter was - .
What. About. It?
Said this, winter was, going to- .
Said. Was. What?
Winter was, a lot of, oh, was - .
‘Winter’. ‘Was'. What - ?
It wasn't going to - .
To what? What they'd say? Say it.
If you'd - .
Come on Julie. Say it out. Say it out. Say it out.
It ain't going to -.
To what?
To be, there's going, to be - .
To be what, there's going to be what, a lot of what, what’s there gonna be- ?
There’s gonna be - .
Yeah, what is there gonna be, what is there gonna be-?
A lot of - .
Yeah, like what, like what, like what, a lot of what, what’s there gonna be, what’s there gonna be, what’s there gonna be?
Yeah it ain't it ain’t Charlie it ain't going to - .
Be easy be easy be easy to be easy to to be easy to to - ?
To what, hon'?
Charlie couldn't’ve cared less if a hippopotamous climbed out of my behind. He walloped my ass, come out, and squat there.
I repeated myself. To be easy?
Hoo baby. He was done with me. First, he screwed himself into a fetal curl, then he yawned out into a square of sun that heated the carpet. The leaves’d fallen off the crabapple by then so it was just branch shadows flickering on his hot-dogging skin and a robin calling in his migration.
I climbed to my feet, threw my bra around my neck, Charlie’s jeans over an arm, kicked his boots by our front door, and his shorts at his face. Scrutinizing him, you wouldn't think he was the kind to go out on me. Just eyeing him lounging in the sun on the watermelon shag with his hair the shade of oxidized copper. Crow’s feet were sneaking out from his eyes etching his cheek. I poked his squashy belly with my toe and asked him ain’t he weighing me against Wilson?
Ah, you know, what’s the reason to weigh one against the other?
He could just kick me in the stomach. He wasn’t even going to deny or pretend. I been around the block, Charlie, ain’t I?
I’m yanking your chain.
Are you? You wouldn't go and fool an old fooler, would you?
Charlie rolled on his back stretching up to the sun. We had an old Tom that'd do that. Roll onto his back and stretch. Charlie had chalky fur on his chest and a goofy paunch hanging over his belt like a soaked loaf of Wonder Bread. That afternoon had got nippy. I wrapped them shirts and pants to me and soon as I even thought of it I was back on the shag with my back put against his. I snuggled close. The stain above bulged down.
The whole damn house leaks.
Up on one elbow, my right breast fell flat on the floor the way it did now.





2.

Years ago, I'd spend hours in the mirror marveling at the curves out of my chest, down to the nipple which the only time I saw a pink like that was at the 4H booth. And there was a cow one year, and they were drinking its milk right out of the teat, and the judge had the teat right up to his mouth which was wide open and they squirted milk out of that teat, the same pink as my nipple, into his mouth. These days the skin hangs from my breast, where there ain't the kid muscles, and then falls off past the bone at a right angle. And the nipples are not pink. Pink says spring, pink says fresh. The last thing my nipples are is fresh; they’re mauve. They're the color of kidney beans and that clay along Interstate 40 the more east you go into Tennessee. I ought to have made Charlie tell me and I ought to have made him good. But no, not me.

I beaned my breast into his back,
near to where it used to hang. You like that? It’s, I'm saying, and it’s, I'm doing it easy, it’s, don't think for a minute it’s a mystery, okay?
Charlie blinked. Jesus. You gotta take a nice easy siesta and make it a pain, you need to do that every time, don'tcha? Every single time.
I hiked a leg up on his thigh.

I used to do this way back when we were always dreaming of Mexico.
You can’t put it on the table?
You ain’t saying what you’re saying, are you? He became real concerned with that ceiling bulge. He couldn't look me in the eye. We ever going to replace those tiles?
Wilson.
What, Wilson? He rolled away from me to his side sticking his lip out and facing the side glass griping how come we got to keep the heat so low.
I scrunched close against his back so he felt my heat.
He got the lip of the last stair in a grip to where his knuckles went white. When we had got going that day, we couldn't remember if we'd done that particular section of shag.
I drew his hand to me. I kissed it. There's still meatloaf in the carpet, huh? Charlie, what do you say this weekend we go to Lake City and see what they're charging?
What for?
I angled over him so I could get a good look.
His moss-colored eyes were open. Got no reason, do we?
I got into his neck while he had his face buried down in the carpet, sniffing.
You smell that powder? I chewed his ear and lay my head on his shoulder. It's nice, huh? Summer rain smell. I stretched my leg out. It had a little of what it used to. It’s a wonder he didn’t smother in all of Wilson’s fat but God knows she turned him on more. I bobbed my chin on his arm. We have a chance here. We can just make it up now, our entire lives, we could just ease on, and make it all our way, like a fairy-tale. Tanya and Michelle're gone now. Can’t you see it? Ain’t a thing keeping us back from making our days what we want, you know? I caught my breath. We could be like that crabapple. In a few months, it’ll be spring. Couldn’t we bloom? Like the tree, just the same?
For what?
The flat side of my hand ran the length of him. The length and breadth of him, from his armpit to his ankle.
Getting tender?
You don't think I can’t see when you got that railroad car in your eyes? And, it ain't just her - it's…you know, don't you? Don’t you know, Charlie? Can't we bloom?
Anybody tell you you can’t bloom?
I kept my head up. Ain't kids anymore to keep us apart, is there?
Charlie went on about how we couldn't even rest on the shag without it being so itchy, and then he turned over, and he faced me. And shut his eyes, drumming his fingers on my toes saying he never thought nothing. Nothing more than he ought to. Of Wilson. Why do you got to insinuate things?
See Charlie? This is what I told him. See me. I am not insinuating. Look at me.
Well, I sure didn't give you a holy writ to tell the truth, did I?
That's what I am saying about, see we can't talk straight. Can we? It's weird. You're way over there. You got Charlie-world, I got Julie-world. We wouldn't know the Truth if it was a strawberry in the meatloaf. Would we?
You hearing all that from the boob-tube.
I bound myself with that old reeking flannel of his with the “Moon River” singing starfish and got to my feet. Then, boy, I got him good. I took a step over him baring my mother lode. I got my yoo-hoo right in his face. I brandished it. It's yours, buddy. It's been yours. We got a good thing if we want it and you ought to want to think about it. Wilson shave down south?
Ugh.
I pranced up on the stairs then. And I was gonna go up but then, at the landing, I got, oh, brooding over this trip we took. It was one to the Grand Canyon and we were on the North Rim, oh, we were poring over stones and scrub over on the other side on the South Rim no doubt was where it was and I just supposed Charlie’d noted it too. I pounced back down them stairs and I seized him at the collar, and told him too that he was like one of those teeny little scrubs we could hardly make out, and I meant there he was laying right there on the floor but he was so far off and then I stopped ‘cause I didn't want to say what I couldn't take back, and being married I don't say everything that comes into my head, I pick my battles, and I stopped, but then bolted right up the stairs two at a time for show, and he hollered how come I wasn't leaving him nothing to wear and right on cue, that packing box trussed up like a trucker with tits rolled up toting that cow and then rang the doorbell.

What's the Weather?

Please interact with the text and I at comment links in the postings or up at the top at BLOG THIS link. BLOG READING NOTES: the posts're numbered in sequential reading order (1., 2., 3., etc.). I'm just getting the hang of posting so scroll up or down, find where the novel begins (1.), continues (2.), continues (3.), etc. That formatting is not a part of the novel rather it is toddler blogger in action.

During an Arkansas blizzard, three women and a man learn a funny, awful and bloody thing -getting what they want may mean leaving behind their sex, their past and a future.

Gender, Memory & Recognition are THE WEATHER blasting these folks along intersecting paths of what has been, what is, and what will be. The consequences of gender, the meaning of memory, and the safety of recognition. THE WEATHER has four parts; the main folks we're concerned with Julie, Charlie, Wilson, and Dol take the lead in different sections of each Part (Part One: Julie, Part One: Charlie, etc.). A character's point of view or outlook on her/himself dictates how their sections are expressed, i.e. the four characters each demand their own writing style and I have tried to be true to them. Enjoy!!

In the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio THE WEATHER is about four folks not getting much airplay these days. Julie, a middle-aged, pregnant housewife whose husband, Charlie, has transferred his affection to an abandoned calf; Dol, a male-to-female transsexual father forced to cut himself from the body he loathes to the one she dreams of; and Wilson, a factory worker built like a refrigerator and Charlie’s best friend, who cares less about what is between her lover's legs than what's in his heart. In a mean blizzard, you got to get through THE WEATHER to get what you want.