And The Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day (6)

Louis spreads himself across Bo's back, lying with his dry, open mouth against the base of her neck, inhaling the stale smell of her skin, the way the inside of an old beat-up suitcase smells. His lips are so chapped that hundreds of tiny little split have shriveled them up into dried skinnybeans and his throat feel dusty and old. He can barely swallow. It hurts so bad. He's pretty sure that even if he did have water, he wouldn't be able to drink it. His throatmuscles feel like rusty watchparts.

The wind blows dry and weedy and Louis hangs onto Bo's back with the last of his energy. He's fallen off twice before.

Already, he's realized he will die out here, in the shrubgrass and the dirt that's hard and dusty and stubborn. So he prays. He prays through his unmoving lips with a quiet voice, as delicate as wildflowers. He prays that the family of the Mexican man will find his body and find Bo. He prays that Maria will forgive him. He prays unceasingly, until his voicebox cracks, too, and he can't squeeze any more words out and then he prays in his head.

Bo lopes along.

**

Mother and Father are in their bedroom with the door shut up tight screaming so loud that the walls shake. I can picture them now, apart from each other, sprawl-legged and bull-horned. Their eyes'll be all withered up and black when they come out and their faces will be rigid and locked. Mother will go straight for the bathroom for another bottle and Father will walk into the library and slam the door shut so hard the pictures in the hallway will fall of the wall like old fruit.

I sit watching television.

Maria is frying onions.

I can't focus on the television screen whenever they fight. All the images kind of slip sideways and warp themselves, like I'm watching them through bottleglass. My mouth is cottony. I sink into the sofa, rotting a little until there's nothing left of me but a skinbag and twigbones.

I turn up the volume.

So do they.

¡Madre de Dios! Maria says and tosses the onions, little flatworms, in the air. “Don't they ever shut up?”

The door bangs open.

Mother comes stumbling into the family room, her face tight and blue, and Father right after her with his body all tensed up, like pinball spring, screaming, “Godssakes, Angie, get back here! We're not finished, we're not finished!” He grabs her by the upper arm and she shakes him off. Her lips are smeared together and she cries mascara. She shakes her magpie arms, wrapped in a shawl and gropes at the kitchen table.

“Get away, you bastard! I swear I'll leave you! I swear it!”

Father steps back, smiling a little bit. “Sure, hon. Sure. Who's gonna give you dope then? Huh? What? You gonna beg on the street corner? Get those bee-U-tiful white hands all filthy? I don't think so. Gal, you're staying right here. Let's just go back to the room and talk things over. Nice and dignifi –”

“Shut up! Just shut up! I won't take anymore. I won't, I won't, I won't!”

“Okay, okay. Sure. Tell you what? I'm gonna take a leak, alright? I'm gonna go take a leak and while I'm there I gonna take all your juice and I'm gonna smash it in the tub and it'll go trickling down the drain and it'll never come back. You like that? You'd like that wouldn't you?”

Mother stands up straight, all shrunken and hunched up in her drunk-purpleness. And then she smiles, sweet and sugary.

“Robert. Honey. If you do that, you're going to have to ask Maria to hide all the knives. And you'd better lock up your guns to, sweetie.”

Father stares at her.

Silence for a moment.

Then, he slaps her.

He slaps her so hard that a red imprint of his hand is leftover on her face.

“Don't threaten me, you little slut,” he hisses, his voice rough and hard, like shoeless feet.

But Mother ignores him. She seems to shrink up inside her folds of clothing, her shoulders trembling up and down and her hands are excited and squirming in front of her, like insects under a turned over rock . At first, I think that she's crying. Then, I realize that she's laughing. Hysterical, hiccupping laughs that are wrenched right out of her gut, like feathers stripped off of pimply birdskin. I sit there. I sit there with my mouth open and I can see that Maria is burning all those onions because she's busy watching the whole scene with dumb, crabapple eyes.

Mother is still laughing.

Father is repulsed. “Shut up! Shut up! What the hell are you doing? Are you out of your mind? Crazy whore!”

He slaps her again.

Maria screams for him to stop, to stop!

Mother laughs, laughs, laughs. Gulping at the air with an elongated fishmouth. I'm standing. Father hits her again. Mother falls over onto the tile, writhing and laughing, her face sinking into gullies and ravines of uproariousness and crazy glee. I'm pulling at Father's shirt, beating his back, hugging his legs, but he keeps advancing, spitting and screaming, his knothole eyes black. Maria dials the phone.

¡Madre de Dios! She gasps.

¡Madre de Dios!

Father finally pushes me away and I fall onto the tile and bruise both of my elbows. Hot, shameful tears gather at the corners of my eyes. Mother is no longer laughing. Instead, she's there on the ground, twitching and rigid, like a worm on a hook, pink spittle frothing at her lips. Her eyes are so wide, so wide. So wide and animal. Father isn't hitting her anymore. Now he's holding her and rocking up and down real weird on his heels, saying shh-shh, shh-shh.

Maria hangs up the phone and picks up a knife and comes around the corner.

She brandishes it at Father.

“Get away from her. Get away.”

Father looks up with tears percolating on his cheekbones, and his eyes all puffy and red, like muddy puddles.

He hisses through his teeth, “Hell. Oh hell, I'm sorry. Forgive me, forgive me. Angie, forgive me.”

The TV watches, blue-faced.

**

The desert stretches on in front of him, he knows, eternal and flat, like the face of God. All he sees though, is the insides of his eyelids, which the sun paints skillfully. He keep them shut because when he opens them, he sees crazy things. Things from the past and the present and the future and the land warps and shudders and twists like some great dying seamonster. There are shadows here. They stand druidical, with empty faces and wrapped up bodies. They creep around his head, long-legged and spindly, like daddy-longlegs, and never draw closer than a couple feet. Circling, circling, circling. He feels their feathertouch every once in a while, gentle and unintrusive.

Bo stumbles on a rock and Louis is jarred awake again.

His rainpipe throat rasps and rattles and his crusted eyes see the blur of the darkening sky and the bleak, naked back of the land. Bo is just as tired as he is; he can feel it. He feels it through his cheek and through the palms of his hands. She's winding down. Her heart pumps with tired strumbeats and her skin is dry and cracking and caked with dust. He runs his fingers on it. The movement is painful and his joints feel like old junkyard car parts, baked and rusty.

“Please, God,” he says.

Around him, shadows shift.

He sees a whole bunch of little Mexican children beside Bo, walking, silent. They never look at him. They always look ahead. Their eyes are lifeless buttons stitched onto their faces. Grim, they seem to be waiting.

Waiting for him to fall of the horse.

They have round, black toes, like quarter notes.

Maria sits behind him on the horse. He can feel her breath on his neck. She says the same thing over and over again, Mi chamaco, mi chamaco, mi chamaco.

The Mexican man.

He is sitting on a hillrise crosslegged with the shotgun in his lap. His chickpea eyes crinkle up and he smiles toothlessly as he sees Louis. His face is earthenware and cracked and his eyes are packed soil and when he breathes there is dust, dust, dust. He raises the shotgun and fires.

Louis gasps.

He falls off the horse into the hands of all the little Mexican children with brown, groping hands.

Unconscious before he hits the ground.