But he couldn't see much more.
Because he was strapped down to an old dentist's chair with leather straps. He couldn't move his head, because his mouth had a bit inside of it attached to an old pair of reigns tied to the headrest of the chair. He drooled spit.
A man with eyes that looked like popped soda can tabs – narrow and metal – walked toward Peter with his hands behind his back. He was talking in Vietnamese, leaking foreign words all over the place, and addressing Peter by name. Peter. His American. His catch of the day. In the shadows of the hut were two Vietcong soldiers standing as straight as uncooked spaghetti noodles and cradling heavy guns in their hands.
The man was dressed in a suit, starched and clean and his hair was slicked back. He smelled dignified. He smelled like typewriter ink and good, American cigarettes. His hands were neat and well-kept, like polished bed-knobs. He ticked.
A wind-up tin soldier.
A pocket-watch man.
He leaned in towards Peter and smiled.
Mr. Hall.
Peter imagined his own eyes were wide and scared and that his naked body – heaving and sweating and bleeding, his chest inflating, deflating – and the gasps coming out of his lips like grandfather clock chimes made him look as small as a child. Skinny and snapped. Broken erector set bones sticking out through his skin.
In mechanical English the man said, Mr. Hall. We both know that you have the information I want, yes? The pain will stop as soon as you co-operate. Nod if you understand.
Peter nodded.
Mr. Hall, I am a generous man. I am willing to negotiate. Your life for a little information. The next hostage trade that comes up will be your ticket home if you just tell me, just whisper what I want into my ear. Nod if you are willing to co-operate.
Peter kept his head stiff, like a pair of leather cowboy boots and the man in the starched suit frowned. He pulled his head back and picked up a bamboo rod propped against the wall.
Then we continue.
Peter's screams could be heard above the rain tantrums, and split the sky right down the middle like a mother combing a part in her son's hair, The sky was crying for him. It was sprinkling apple seeds on Vietnam for him.--
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Peter tosses a handful of breadcrumbs on the ground and the little finches scatter. We are both silent. There is nothing for him to talk about. Our breath swirls like images painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, full of color and spirituality. The spirituality of uninterrupted thought.
It is a new kind of gospel.
The paper bag with all the breadcrumbs in it crinkles as he dips his hand in for more and the sun is as shiny as a new Colt .45.
I feel sucked dry.
A canyon creek in the middle of summer.
Dry mud bed skin.
I can't feel anything anymore it seems. I feel as if I'm watching everything through 3D glasses, as if I'm detached and hovering above everyone by three or four feet. It's weird. I wonder if I'll ever get jarred back into my old body, the one that I could see clearly through.
Everything is all smeared up.
Peter tosses another handful of breadcrumbs to the ground, even though there aren't any more birds and he sits there watching the sky for a little bit. I can tell that he's almost as tired as I am His skin is rumpled and almost transparent, like mosquito nets, and his face is all long and clouded. He is shrunken into his coat, tarnished as an Indian head nickel.
He says to me, “So there's a reason I brought you out here today, Charlie. I've got some good news and some bad news to tell you. The good news is that I've been talking to a friend of mine up in Toronto. Real successful. Built his whole life out of trailer park mud. Anyway, he's a plastic surgeon and I was talking about you to him and he said that he's pretty sure he can fix your face.”
He looks over at me.
“Would you like that?”
Would I like that?
I wonder for a moment. I wonder what it would be like without a pillowcase. Without all this melted skin weighing my face down, warped and soggy, like a carved figurehead on the hull of a ship; a little rotten woman with a moon cheese complexion. There would be no more mask. No more Mars face, red and dry and scarred with dust veins.
It seems.
It seems impossible almost. It seems, just like everything recently, hazy and intangible.
I reach my hand up to my face and touch it. It is warm, like clothes ripped off of Jews before they step shivering into shower rooms.
“I've got a date set,” Peter continues. “A week from now. He says he'll do it pro bono, no charge. He says you'll be an interesting challenge.”
He shrugs and clears his throat.
“The bad news has got to do with Heather Williams. The docs don't want me saying any of this 'cause they think it'll erase any progress we've made, but I think you have the right to know. Heather was pregnant. She went into labor last night and lived long enough to get the baby out before she passed away from some pretty extensive bleeding. Didn't live long enough to give the kid a name or nothing. She just kind of...flickered out.”
I just sit there.
When I blink, the whole world shatters into a bunch of pinball machine lights and I find it hard to breathe all the sudden. Hard to see, hear, think.
Dead?
Gone?
Her bauble eyes and snapdragon lips and coral hair. All white. All pale. Bled out, leeched out. Blood smeared and stained all over the doctor's hands, the baby's face. Blood that belongs inside of her leaked out like tomato soup and onto tile floors making her shriveled and black, an old Negro spinster with poppy hands. I can picture her laying there. I can picture her looking all washed up, beached like some kind of dead mermaid, her eyelids crusted over with salt, crystallized with the name of the baby, whatever it was. Her face like frosted flakes. Frosted tree limbs.
Dressed in Death's hand-spun tinsel gown.
Can you see him?
He's sitting right there.
He's got her in his arms.
That spider king. That pasty tax collector.
Dead.
Gone.
Peter's saying stuff, but his voice shuffles by like moccasin feet.
I turn to Peter and say in a voice that's rusty and sharp, interrupting him:
“Where's the baby?”
He look at me for a long time. He is studying and analyzing me and I can almost feel antennae brushing against and prodding me. Carefully, piecing the words together like Mr. Potatohead faces, Peter says to me, “The Belle Rive hospital.”
***
It is night.
The moon makes the hills outside the institute blue, like big bison grazing at twilight. I have the window open as far as it will go and the air that sneaks in chills me, puts me on ice, and I can see headlights from the highway passing by like Japanese paper lanterns floating on pond surfaces.
On my bed are my clothes in a plastic bag.
I know what I have to do.
The feeling prickles me with pitchfork fingers and smiles at me in the dark with picket fence teeth. I know the consequences. I know that they will come after me.
But it doesn't matter to me. Because ninety miles away is a little piece of me lying in a bassinet with no breast milk. There's a little piece of what I used to be, with little salami stick limbs that twitch around in the around like gearshifts. A piece of Mother. A piece of Heather.
A piece of Amir.
I know that I need to at least see him. That regardless of whether or not I'm caught, regardless of what may happen that I would not be able to live with myself if I didn't pay this last respect to him. To the man whose breath I peeled away from him. To the woman lying on the ground in that crummy apartment limp as a pair of ballet flats.
I need to hear his cry.
I need to see his eyes and feel his touch.
I need to find a way home.
Home.
The air smells like cigarette smoke and poppies and grasps at my fingers. My heart thumps like Cherokee feet through long grass and wind whistle through all the holes in my face, through all the woodpecker gaps that you could look through and see the sky. See it black and soft and slow.
I pick up the plastic bag with my clothes in it and I make my way towards my door.
As I open it, I feel someone's hand slip into mine.
And grape soda lips hiding in the purple dark kiss me goodbye, kiss me good luck.
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I watched as he walked out onto the grounds outside the institute. He was all puffed up and inflated and he no longer ratcheted and wheezed like a coin operated machine. His breath blew smoke rings, smoke signals, into the air and his feet were light as Cincinnati fire kites.
I knew him.
I knew what he would do.
And as he walked into the coal mine black, swirling around him like cave drawings, I could see that this was the first time in a long time that he had his own face, illuminated and bright, that could be chiseled by the night into something as smooth and white as sand-dollar.
The blackness folded him up.
Maybe the sun will find him.
Maybe the sun will find him in the morning, all ruddy-cheeked and cactus-eyed, like some kind of Nevada desert road.
FIN.
{So. There it is! I hope the ending was satisfactory. If not, let's discuss some way to make it better. I am very open to suggestions. I would also like to know how the whole novella stands alone and if there are any things I have left unmentioned (for instance, Joseph's model car). The problem I battled most with in this story was my tendancy to go a little crazy with the metaphors and the similes. Do you think that eventually I cooled down, or do you think that they started to blend with the rest of the story and become part of the style. Or do you think it's still a problem. When I edit this, I'll go through and cut all the unnecessary and boring similes, just to free TEB of a little extra weight.
Special thanks to Conrad Rice, Angel of Death, and Jared. You guys are awesome. If I ever get this published, the story will be dedicated to you.
Lastly, it would be cool if you could point out any themes you got from the story and how effectively they were addressed.
Thanks,
-Kylan
PS: To Conrad >> Almost 10,000 words of falling action.
Ended up clocking in at 9,000.}
