The character whose POV this is written from has been building up inside me for a while now and so I decided to uncage him for a little and see what he produced. Grammar buffs beware.
-----
she sit there all neat and clean and pretty in that white frilly dress of hers next to her father, she sit there as fresh as vegetables in leafy rows under those supermarket sprinklers that whir and spitter-sputter. she sit there in the sun and soak it all up and her skin turns into a obsidian arrowhead, all black and shiny.
buddy, she my angel.
she dont know me quite yet, but when I see her move and smile, I knows that she'd take me in.
her father.
her father is up there on that pulpit with his flashing eyeglasses and his mouth fulla hellfire and he raise his arms and he shake his jowls. everthing about that man is a-trembling. he got these bandsaw arms that wobble in the air and his words shake the lights hanging from the ceiling. and she just smiles as she watches. she just sit up there with her hands folded in her lap.
I see though her chicken wire skin, though. I see deep past that white dress and into her soul, soft as jackrabbit ears. on the insides, she aint so laced up and proper. she got a wild gypsy soul, I can just see it. if I could touch her, maybe I could be able to read her thoughts like a fortune spat out of those Madame Zoltaire machines at carnivals. we that close. we like one, only we arent.
the preacher churn his wagonwheel eyes and he prod at the sky with his cat-tail fingers, but I only got eyes for his girl and my angel.
in the back of the hymn book, I make a sketch of her with a lead pencil.
her name is Fanny.
my Fanny.
===
sometimes, I follow them home from church.
they both walk all tight and cornstalked – straight up and down. they's wealthier than the most of us and so they live in this little white house with a picket fence runnin around the yard. the sky around their house is always blue, like buffalo herds just before dark and the chimney smokes pleasantly but even the grass cant escape the way the summer sucks all the color out of everthing and makes things washed out and watercolor.
when he walks, her papa clanks. his head settles into his neck and his teeth become grille slats and his arms roll forward in their sockets and his feet clickety-clack along the sidewalk. in the full sunlight, his skin turns dusty and his tongue pops out of his mouth ever once in a while, licking his great tamale lips.
and she walk beside him silent and pure. she walk beside him as quiet as a barefoot Injun and when people pass her on the sidewalk they get all quiet and pious. she is a reverent thing. she is a holy thing. and everthing knows this. I like to think of myself as her disciple and servant and when I go to bed I think about her and how she look in her own bed with her creosote hair and and her chickpea fingertips.
if only I could get close enough to breath her in a little bit.
if only I could smell her clothes. I imagine she smells like the inside of an old saxophone case that's been under your ironframe bed for years and years: dusky with sweet cork grease, but there's a wild scent underneath it all too. an ancient, natural scent.
she blink her featherduster eyelashes at me over her shoulder and grabs her papa's arm a little tighter when she see me walking behind them. then they hurry, hurry, hurry past their white picket gate and into their house and the screen door squeaks shut behind them.
I go home and I carve a heart in the oak out front and I put our names in the middle:
Fanny and Moses.
===
tonight's the night, buddy. I got my shoes all shined up and I got my hair slicked back with water and a little bit of baking grease and a comb in my back pocket. I take a gander at myself in the mirror and boy, do I look sharp! all trim and angled like a kite skeleton. I click my heels together and smile all big and broad. she gonna like me. she gonna barely be able to keep herself offa me.
I walk quiet past the couch with my momma on it. the television is turned on to a game show and she sleeps. she's all scrubbed out and grey, with rough wirebrush hands and gristle hair. she snores a little, cooing like a mourning dove.
outside, the trees are posing for the moon, posing like girls you see in dirty pictures. their greyhound skin peels off of them skinny bodies and they've sold all their leaves away. I get into my truck. the engine starts up coughing and sputtering, then roars to life, chain smoking from its tailpipe. I rub my hands together.
the night is black and full of possibilities, man. her papa's out at the Christmas benefit and she's by herself at the house. with no one to keep her warm. with no one to talk to her or nothing. my fingers is cravin her electric blanket skin already and I know that she'll warm up to me once I talk to her for a while. women are like horses. talk into their clover ears and rub their skin and let them feel your hairdryer breath on their necks and they'll melt. they'll melt right into you like a candy bar that's been your pocket all day long.
but my daddy, he told me once that you gotta show them horses who's boss. you gotta make sure they's broken and gentlefooted before you give them love.
and Fanny.
Fanny got these wild painted horse ways.
I just gotta have to show her who's in charge.
===
I stand there at the door with my hat in my hands and my fingers itchin to ring the bell or knock. there are these pretty little daisy gardens in front of the house and their faces are pale and silvery in the moonlight, like hubcaps. for a moment, I think about picking one and putting it my buttonhole but I can tell by how them daisies stand there with wobbling heads and licorice whip stems that she musta put all her soul and might into growing them things. her dewdrop fingers touching ever single one of them like a regular Florence Nightingale touching the sweat heads of her dying patients.
my hands are cold and slippery as pickle jars when I finally ring the doorbell.
I sees a shadow in the window shiftin around. I can tell it's Fanny. I can tell by how the shadow's shaped. buddy, I could trace that shape like a constellation in the sky!
the lock clicks.
she open the door just a tiny bit and she put her beauty face in the crack with a frown rumpling it.
I smile and I says, Good evening, Ms. Fanny.
she just look at me all funny.
What do you want?
Well, Ms. Fanny, it's an awful chilly night out and I thought maybe you might be willing enough to let me come in for a while, just until I warm up a bit?
her frown, it deepens.
her tealight eyes, they smolder.
after a little while, she opens the door and lets me in and she says, Just for a couple minutes. Just to warm up. My daddy's not here so you can't stay long.
the polished wood floor creaks as I walk into the sittin room, croaking little harmonica notes at me. everthing in this house is all slick and shiny and delicate and it I feel kind like if I breathe wrong, I might break something. there's a dragontongued fire crackling in the fireplace like a bowlful of Rice Crispies that paints that whole room and mesa red. I take a seat on her sofa and I smile at her as she sit in an easy chair, sits there on the edge of the chair with her legs crossed and her hands folded neatly on top of one another.
she says to me politely, What do you go by, mister?
Moses.
It's a good name.
My mama wanted me named somethin respectable, a strong and steadfast kind of bible name.
Do you go to church?
Ever once in a while.
What denomination?
Huh?
Which church?
Oh. Well, sometimes your papa's church. It's a good one.
she smile tightly and her head nods on her slender guitar neck.
Would you like something to drink, Moses?
Sure, mam. Whatever you got.
She get up, her skirt rustling like long grass, and my heart breaks at my ribs as I watch her swish-swish from behind. I get up all quiet and I follow her until she reaches the kitchen and then I stand there watching her in the doorway. she dont wear any shoes. her feet are naked and small, like baby mice when they first come out all squirmy and living and pink. she finishes filling up the glass with tap water and then she turn around and gasps a little when she see me standing there. the glass slips out of her hand and crashes all over the linoleum.
tightmouthed, she immediately bends down for the pieces and I bend down too, saying, Aww. Aww. Sorry, Ms. Fanny. Sorry, if I scared you any.
she just shake her head and picks up the pieces like she's pulling weeds. I stop picking up glass pieces and I hold my breath. I lick my beeswax lips and look at the top of her head and then I reach out real slow and smooth for her cheek. my hand inches, inches until my cold fingertips touch the smooth lambskin of her face.
she freezes up.
ever bone in her body goes rigid and deer-legged.
I reach out my other hand.
I hold her face.
her breath his warm and sticky and rapid as it brushes my hands.
Please dont, she whispers.
Ms. Fanny, I says, mushing her lips down with my thumbs. I think I love you.
the words arent hardly out of my mouth before her eyes go wide and she shoots back, scramblin on her hands and heels until she's pinned up against the cupboards and screaming. her mouth hangs open like a swallow's nest and her hair is all wispy in her face. I start cooing and shaking my head and saying, Fanny, Fanny, but she just keep yelling and screeching and telling me to leave, to LEAVE!
her words hit me like rocks thrown at a chained up dog.
my boots crunch through the broken glass as I move towards her. she hop up all wild-eyed and witch-bent and snatches up a cutting knife and she wave it at me. that hurts the most. I can feel little Tabasco sauce tears building up behind my eyes and I knock the knife away from her and I wrap my arms around her and I hold her tight, tight, tight. she's all fragile in my arms. and her screams, they disappear into my chest and I just hold her. I cry and I hold her.
I cant stop shakin.
I cant stop squeezin.
she wriggles and squirms, but I hold her tight.
I hold her tight.
she smells like the sky right after it rains in the desert, fresh and young and clean.
I slide down the wall holding her face in my chest saying, Fanny, Fanny, Fanny over and over. I say it until the walls are full of her name and they whisper it back to me and whisper it throughout the entire house which is now cold and hollow.
she wriggles and squirms.
but.
I hold her.
I hold her until she stops.
I hold her until I dont feel her breath no more warming up my jacket. I hold her until she go limp in my arms, like a knit winter scarf. I hold her until I loose my voice saying her name over and over again in that little kitchen and until a car pulls into the driveway and until her papa come through the door and finds broken glass all over the linoleum and his little girl sleeping in the arms of a strange man.
I hold her until the sheriff comes and points a gun at my face and tells me that if I dont let go of the body right then and there that he's gonna shoot me.
even now.
even now I got the feel of her body in my arms and her hair in between my fingers like sand in between your toes. the handcuffs are cold like her breath and her eyes and I cant get these tears to stop. I cant stop my nose from running and my lips from shaping her name.
Fanny,
Fanny,
Fanny.
)
