Ravenna Gets Read online

  “He has a shotgun.”

  Mom is pulling skin out from behind her blade. The blade only spins about fifteen seconds before it gets jammed. She manages to get through an artery or two in the throat before it clogs. The wound has to feel like a tap or the enemy keeps coming. If it isn’t quite there the boys hold him down while she pushes the Sawzall through the throat and right into the chest cavity. She snaps what looks like a red rubber band from the saw’s spindle, sets it down and looks at Clarence.

  “Yes, he has a shotgun. And we don’t know where he is, do we?”

  “He’s probably looking out on the street. Got his back to the door.”

  “I dunno. That door’s more dangerous to him. He’s waiting for us.”

  Clarence climbs out of his crossed legs and step over to the door. He puts an ear to it. The blood on the floor has pooled under the door. “He sees this,” he says, tapping the blood with his boot.

  Pitchfork lifts his pitchfork. “Yeah, he knows we wanna get him.”

  “So how do we?”

  Mom has a battery charger and she grunts as she switches batteries on the floor. “We’re like a cat. These boys are the paws knockin him down, you’re the claws keeping him down and I’m the teeth that finish him off. We just gotta get through the door and do it all at once.”

  “Cats explode.”

  Baseball bat nods to pitchfork.

  “We gotta get through that door and explode.”

  “Kick the door in and the boys go low. As they pounce across the floor swinging and stabbin’, Mom, you leap high through the door. You’ll be dashing behind him and he’ll have to swerve ‘cause you’ll look like the biggest threat. Then as the boys crack at his feet and he’s wheelin’ that big old gun back down, I jump in straight and go right in the chest. You boys don’t stay there. You roll away fast, get behind him and pull him down. If you can. I’ll jump at the gun and try and get it while Mom, you come in and cut him real deep and fast. Hopefully I’ll have the gun by then and you boys just put everything at his head. Smash that head right in.”

  Mom and the boys look at each other and squint.

  “Has to be real fast.”

  “We gotta explode.”

  “Like a cat.”

  “That’s right. A cat.”

  “Okay.”

  Clarence steps back from the door and places a hand on Mom’s shoulder as she drives a battery pack into the end of the Sawzall, then the Skil. She looks up at him without meeting his eyes. Her mouth pulls down in readiness. She crouches in front. The boys shimmy on their knees to the sides of the door. They hold their weapons in two hands. They look back at Clarence and he shakes his head once quickly to empty his expression. He takes two fast strides and lands a foot sideways. The door stays and he goes down. Biting pain in his hip. He lifts both legs to kick from where he lies and a hole explodes in the middle of the door. He kicks and the door goes in, sucking smoke over him. He sees the boys tumble across his legs and before he can roll to stand, Mom leaps diagonally through the air.

  Up. Up. His thighs crunch painfully. A blast. The room is brighter than Clarence thought it would be and he sees only swirls for a moment. Then a man in a suit pitching forward. Clarence hurls the javelin and it just catches the man’s back. It looks like a hook in a fly as the man flails to the side, wriggling against his superficial but painful wounds.

  The saw whines, then stops. There is someone else here. Mom is pulling the Skil off the throat of a young woman. Clarence hears the telltale sound. The woman falls from Mom’s knees and begins her death leak. The boys are whacking at the man’s head; the bat busts his hand open and the pitchfork enters his forehead. He’s gone.

  Clarence sweeps down and gets the shotgun. The tower window is broken. He goes to it and leans the gun up, lowers it and watches the street. A group of heavy men burst out of the donut shop and make for the entrance. He shoots down, opening a tunnel on a man’s head. The boys heave the dying man and woman out the window and they fall to the sidewalk below. The sidewalk is empty. The enemy is on its way up.

  They retreat to the room. Mom is touching her shoulder. The shotgun has taken a bite out of her. She says “Oh …” softly. Clarence hears footsteps as the boys close the door. The door is destroyed. They look around for something to block the way.

  “Fuck it. Get on the sides.”

  The boys stand on either side of the door. Mom has fainted or something. She’s down anyway. No help.

  The first guy comes through. He looks at Clarence. He’s surprised. The boys have busted his shins right out of the flesh. He goes down and then there are two more. One falls over the first and Clarence poles him in the back of the skull. The other manages to fire something before the kids whip his teeth down his throat. Clarence got a bullet or something under his ribs and can feel his whole left side turning to water. He goes down, but manages to pry a gun out of somebody’s hand. He fires and gets a chubby boy’s throat to come out. The boys watch him aim. There’s a pile of bodies accumulating and now there’s big guys flying into the room. The kids’ sticks are breaking in the air. These big boys won’t be swatted down. They go for the kids, two on each, and hammer them very hard. The men straighten up and look around. They step over Clarence to the watchtower window. I must look dead or something, Clarence thinks. His eyes are open, though, so he’s a little confused. One man calls down that everyone is dead now. That means Clarence. They leave.

  Clarence can see Mom’s hands to his left. Looks like they finished her off. The kids, too. They’re broken to pieces over there. He does hear someone groaning. A lean guy. Bald. He sits up, breathing hard. He has a bright pink hole in his cheek that he pats at, then winces.

  He stares at Clarence for a while. There is an explosion below. The floor curls around Clarence’s legs, then pulls taut again.

  The winter will be very long.

  The Entertainment District

  Someone stood on my hand in the night. They mustn’t have seen me. Which is good. They might have thought I was a heavy bag or a rolled up carpet. I don’t go out of my way to hide myself in the day, but I do look for places out of the sun. Sunken stairwells I like. Recesses. Spots that are not open. Wind goes elsewhere if your walls are all touching you. But last night someone found me. Didn’t find me, actually. Stepped on me. My hand. Pressure on the fingers, splaying them as I slept. Dreamed of being stepped on. So now that night has fallen I am going to move. I lift and leap to the roof of a shed in the alley then I drop to the narrow curb running against the grass here. I can move silently and rapidly on things that are four inches wide. My feet can grab and release the ground fast when they know what to expect. Up at fire escape. One arm and hand over and I am up four flights in three moves, then using the momentum up to the flat roof. I don’t stop but move. The pebbly surface means I run instead of jump, but still a blur then I’m on the front, four floors up. I don’t look to see who’s in there. A man is standing by the entrance to a hallway. I push off the wall with my feet and move clean through his back with the balled fist. His spine hits the floor like dice and then a woman in purple. She is going to turn but I draw one of her arms off and keep going. The blood is loud as it lands. Kitchen empty, I think. Then gone. The apartment hall is great. Both feet halfway up opposing walls and knees don’t even have to pump. Just the spring at the ankle and I’m like water in a hose. Stairwell down, but I don’t remember. Then the street, which I hate, one older man is just a momentary wetness on my chest and left arm then two teenage girls sort of pop like bubbles and leave a young red wind underfoot. Then the recycle box and halfway up a light standard onto the side of a building above pizza. A man in the window. Can’t not, so I make the glass tiny and stop by him for a moment. Don’t know if he sees, but I get one hand on his jaw and the other on top and turn it upwards. I remove the centre and see the door loose so go. I drop some of the middle of his head and because I’m in a hurry it gets bent around the door frame before something else happens to it. Di
dn’t notice the dog so I take one step back and one forward to drive the chest apart. Feel a little like I’m wasting my time with things that don’t matter. Three at the elevator who saw the dog go down and don’t see me come around off the corner and because three together is not going to happen again for almost a minute I watch where I put things. His hands up into her back and out pointing down into the other his eyes. The fingers are hard and sharp at this speed so they scoop in and are bested by the back of the skull. Hard to know exactly how that ends, but I get a little spasm in my own finger. Could be anything. Probably pass. Gone already. The street again feels like I’ve been here all night and so onto a streetcar two steps, then a car, foot goes through and feel somebody up around it. Light suction as I get out. Red light. Jump to orange. And a hall. Big hall. Music. Land on the third floor but keep going. Don’t know what but this is just the way it has to go. Hard to say and do at the same time. Two shoulders. Use somebody’s hand to stand and it goes out. Chest and three run. I think there is a sense that I am here. Decide to try a slap and four vertebra go under a scalp so worth again and this time the whole shoulder comes off and for a moment looks like you could cook it. Unexpected that it’s its own side event and have to look back to see. It turns an old woman’s stomach into its cloth. He yelling so I do my feet in a quick circle to take out just eyes. Only eyes with tips of feet. Feel good and use the circle as a way of going straight up. You never go straight up and I smear a caged light on the wall. Make it up far enough to reach a beam and dive waiting for my feet to grab and that is a very very advantageous way to pull so the beam comes free at the end I left and I have enough going that I can just hold on as I go through the concrete wall. The beam falls but I am going so fast that I have no idea. Dark, which I like, and people, probably thousands under. The move is amazing. I go probably six hundred feet without having to do anything. I should though and I hit the far side hard and fall. Don’t like falling and it makes me mad. And slow. I make a mess. I pull a throat clear out and onto somebody so bad that the throat is part of his head before he dies. Then, still mad, I push a girl into what might be her boyfriend and her arm is bagged by his left lung. Keep going ‘cause I’m stuck until I feel better. I punch, which I rarely do, and face caves like bubble wrap. Try this: put two shoulders into each other so pressure makes the stomach fizz out between the legs. Slap, slap, slap … eyes and teeth in a braid, then a tongue as if it’s happy to be doing this, goes forever. I feel stupid. Like a bomb, so I move. Just feet to floor but I pump hard and feel people slip over me like hot food. Hold the last person at the door and under me they are a temporary sled. I lie on this wet person and go down the hall. The ground comes up through them pretty quick so I tap the friction quick and that sends me up through a tall window above the main entrance. Streetcar. I go too far and, luckily, into an alley and some papers there and a red light and another fire escape at the end which I bend going up, as turns out, twenty-three storeys. My steam takes me a few dozen more feet into open air then down. Gravity, in spite of what you may think, slows me down. I am pushing against a second force that is terrible lazy and stubborn. I swing in at the fifteenth floor and divide a dog, a man, and three children into 3,989,793 pieces, each one is cone-shaped for one very impressive second then recombines as muck. I check my watch and realize I need to be somewhere.

  Rural Route #4

  The face is what Joseph expects. Roman numerals on the hour marker and a complete non-numerated minute track. It is framed in a hinged brass bezel that sits snugly in a wood bezel. Beneath this he sees less. The pendulum assembly with its brass manta, stops, and springs. He is aware of the mighty and gold lenticular bob as it is, a genital to say and a genital to watch. The case has a side inspection door and at the bottom, behind the bob, a hatch. The key is there too, the winding and the bottom door key, which are often missing from these old mechanicals. It has been wound and the time is correct though who knows how she keeps it. It’s easy enough to bend over when the attention’s elsewhere and push a hand. He doesn’t know if it’s working, and this upsets him unreasonably. He could ask, but he will be told either that it works perfectly or that it is as it is. Its gong could have an ugly sound and no matter where you mount it you will hear this. It might need winding constantly and slip when you try. It may be something he will neglect. Regret. Sitting on the wall like a shadow. It might be a last straw of some kind. He might be acquiring his last straw and not even know it. But if it is that, a last straw, isn’t it the best of all the straws? Isn’t the last straw the one that makes an impossible burden finally what it should be? Does he get this thing, which he’ll call fine, because he knows, or hopes that is not? He looks twelve or so inches past that to a shallow sheet metal case. Homemade. The green surface paint is chipped and scratched. Rust orange and two circular black marks and a heavy diagonal smear that may be a burn scar. The clasp on the side is loose. He flips the lid. Four or five screwdrivers. Each from a different set. Translucent handles. Green. Red. The Phillips has a messy, burred tip. There’s an old slip of wood. A level. He closes the case lightly, more lightly that anyone has in years. An ashtray with a clear glass plate circled by a heavy rubber replica of a snow tire. Ten hacksaw blades. An old Palm Pilot. It looks big as a box spring. The stylus missing. There are pick axes under the table. None of this stuff, at least nothing at this table, is going to help him. He pushes the pointer fingers on either hand down on the table edge so his hands bend in at the wrists. Melissa is probably watching me, he thinks. After eight years together it has come to this. Money. It’s all there is in the end. The terrible dying baby in the hall. His chest streaked with rage. The hour before you eat. The hour before you sleep. Melissa is back there somewhere watching. She knows he’s wrong. He knows he’s wrong. What they need is a gas stove. That would help hydro bills. They need a vacuum cleaner. Melissa is four tables over, holding a long glass. She’s holding it up in the light. There are windows lining the top of the arena walls and sunlight stands like an inverted pyramid. Melissa has managed to hold this imperfect stein into the heavy gold of the inverted apex. He thinks she looked at him, then away quickly. She is saying: Don’t look at me.

  Don’t look at me. People are making their way to the northeast. A short man with a straw hat stands saying nothing while they move on him. He holds a black microphone wrapped in a light blue hanky. He has a cruel face and he is impatiently watching a young man rearrange boxes.

  What we have here we have here we have the main event ladies and boys and boys and girls the main event here we go. We’re gonna do boxes everything in the box you bid on the box and take the box the first box here we start some handy things for handy men, some tools hammer and flashlight and things you can take home and take a look … two dollars two dollars the man in suspenders three do I hear three for the box with the hammer do I have three … once it’s gonna be yours ya you … once twice and that’s your box for three and one the next box we have some … turn these around so I can see we have a box of canning equipment … get it all at once … the whole kit starts at two and do I hear two and two everything you need to start canning all in a box there’s two the lady in the red rain coat … that’s for this box here … move the box, move it … that’s two two dollars come on folks that’s a fine box of canning accessories going for two do I hear three three three dollars for the going once for two twice for two and sold to the lovely lady in the red … she’s gonna have homemade jams and jellies … next box folks next box. What is that? What is that? Looks like a mixed box. We’ll start at one buck for the mix box … one buck … anybody got a buck for this box right here … right here right here a box of mixed things … different stuff only a buck a single dollar … take a look if ya want take a look one dollar and a dollar and a dollar dollaree. Moving on … to the back here. Move! Move! Move back! We have some things from the kitchen the kitchen lotsa beauties for the kitchen and we start with the kitchen with the stove this stove it’s a gas stove heats great cooks great
… all the parts are there the parts the parts are all there … I used to have one just like this … self-cleaning no muss no fuss gas oven folks and in here there should be a rotisserie no siree no rotisserie that’s fine we start the bid at fifty dollars fifty dollar fifty dollar fifty dollar … right there do I hear seventy-five? Seventy-five for this working gas stove she’s a beaut seventy-five seventy-five seventy-five! Young man not payin’ attention down here did you say seventy-five? Young man with the hand there says seventy-five go eighty go eighty go eighty. Eighty to grampa out with the grandkids wants to make thanksgiving dinner the way it wants to be … go a hundred dollars go one hundred go one hundred … this is a beaut folks … had one myself … cleans itself and heats instantaneously … one hundred … the young man with the hand … do I hear a hundred and twenty, gramps, a hundred and twenty? Mr. Hands wants it for the wife. Here she comes. Do I hear a hundred and thirty? Going once. Gramps likes the price … Mr. Hands impresses the wife. Going once going twice and sold to Mr. Hands!

  Joseph’s face is burnt now. It was like being on fire. The auctioneer has such hard hard eyes and he won’t stop. Blow that hanky. Cough on that mic. Joseph takes a step toward his new stove and looks up. The auctioneer sees him sideways through lids that are sliding laterally across his yellow eyes. He lets him reach the oven, then points. Joseph smiles stupid and turns like a game show blonde with his hands backward to the prize. Melissa has left. He is alone now. It didn’t matter what they bought here today. He was going to be alone. Had he not bought the stove, she would still be here. To fight one last time. Things going bad has been their theme for a long time. She’s happy now. He waits here in front of these grim bargain hunters, feels the woolly breath of the auctioneer. The auctioneer’s a cattle man; he eases livestock through the bottleneck. Joseph’s a pigeon. A crow. A mouse lying backwards on a post. The three older women in the front row brush the bins and sniff. A boy in a yellow cap steals a stubby knife then chews his food. Joseph tries to make a sad face so someone will cry, but no one does so he drops his head back. The highest roof he has ever seen. Shooting metal rafters and wide ribs of steel turn above him. He expects to see the moon here, trapped and rootless, in the night sky near a nest. It’s not that he wanted Melissa to stay. It’s that he knew that when she left he would want to die. A pale red cable is woven through the rafters in chaotic lines.