Ravenous

by Ronald Robertson

One night when I was twelve years old, I woke up to the sound of a large truck moving past my bedroom window. Through my blinds I saw my uncle Mickey towing a cement mixer into his backyard. He had a small boy with him, and the two of them spent the rest of the night covering the grass with a thick layer of concrete. The morning brought the sound of clanging metal and my mother cursing. I looked outside and saw the boy, a giant hammer in his hand, pounding a metal shape into the cement. He seemed not to notice my mother and Mickey screaming on either side of him. My mother hollered in her house robe and slippers, her bonnet swaying with her words, while Mickey faced her barefoot in shredded boxers, his flesh-toned prosthetic leg contrasting with the darkness of his skin. Their animated limbs flung inches above the boy’s hammer, and, for a few brave and futile minutes, Mickey matched my mother’s volume, though like all of us, he eventually succumbed to her sheer vocal power. When my mother finally exhausted herself, she stormed back into the house with an exasperated roar. A few minutes later the earthy aroma of weed filtered into my room. When I looked back outside the boy was staring at me. He seemed to be winking. I closed the blinds. My mother was watching me from the doorway: “G’on and meet your cousin.”

Mickey was my mother’s baby brother. He lived next door in the house they grew up in and my mother felt should have been hers. Mickey had driven fuel trucks in Afghanistan. He said it was like driving a bomb. Sometimes he’d look down and the steering wheel would be a ticking clock. It exploded three weeks before he was due to come home, taking his leg and most of his mind. He rarely slept. People generally avoided him. During any lull in conversation, a slow tic’ tic’ tic’ would trickle from his mouth.

It was the middle of summer, and I walked towards Mickey and the boy through shimmering waves of heat. From up close the boy was effeminate, with long eyelashes and lithe, delicate limbs. His hair hung over his face in limp curls. He was shirtless, his skin oil-slick dark. “What up lil nigga!” Mickey exclaimed as I approached, “This supposed to be my boy, Willie.” He waved his hand to get the boy’s attention. “Look here boy- this your cousin, Jamie.” Willie paused his hammering and turned towards me. His left eye was missing; the lid hung over the socket like a loose curtain. I felt Mickey’s hand clamp down on my shoulder; his gravelly voice floated into my ear: “What you know about dogs, lil nigga?”

*

Mickey had decided to raise fighting dogs. We were building a kennel. Even then, we knew our bodies only by their usefulness.<P I found another hammer and crouched next to Willie. His strikes were made at a slight angle. Willie stopped and pointed at the slanted ring: “H-he aint put em’ in s-s-straight.” I nodded and walked to another. I struck it, and soon our sounds blended together. We worked from sunup to sundown, Mickey’s voice like a metronome: “Watch what I tell y’all, watch what I tell y’all, them other boys don’t do shit right, don’t do shit right, watch what I tell y’all…” We built a massive structure, separated into three sections: two ten-foot training areas and a long holding pen spanning the length. We covered the training areas with a tin roof but left the pen open. “Make the skin tough, boy!” We ran heavy metal chains through the rings Willie and I had straightened. “Make the chest big as a ma’fucka!” After a few days, Willie started waiting for me in the morning before starting to work. When he got a cup of water, he’d bring me one too. We developed a physical language. He lingered. We touched. A tap for attention, a punch of encouragement, a shove of affection. Our language did not allow for emotions that were not so easily transferred.

I never asked about the eye; neither of us enquired as to why Mickey was our only option for a “father.” There were no words for these things.

*

One morning, a man arrived in a battered pick-up truck and unloaded six puppies. We collared them and attached each to a chain, far enough apart that they couldn’t reach each other, close enough that they’d try. And then we raised them like children.

That is to say, with the knowledge that eventually they would be maimed, killed, or driven mad, that we kicked and slapped and cursed them, that we hardened them against any coming viciousness, that we gave them all that bloomed and thorned within us. We fed them vitamins but kept them hungry, threw scraps just beyond their reach and watched them lunge and leave skin in the chains.

One day a dog snapped at Mickey. He kicked it with the metal leg and it fell limp. Willie and I buried it behind the fence. We felt its skull in our hands.

And when Mickey felt they were ready, we loaded two of the fiercest into the back of his truck. With a solemn nod, he and Willie drove away without me. I stood in the driveway long after they had gone. It was cold, not yet winter but most things had died. The “orchard” of stunted Satsumas my mother had crammed into our small backyard stood bare and sickly. A grey sky sagged behind it. I knew it was my mother that had drawn the line, that had forbidden them to take me. But it had also been an unspoken relief. Mickey and Willie knew I was different. The way I flinched when a gut was torn, when the blast of Mickey’s pistol stopped a pained wheezing. Often, at the worst of it, Willie squeezed my shoulder, told the softness I kept for him and Mickey that it was ok, go inside—into the pink home where I tasted the earthy musk of weed in the food my mother made because she knew how I thrashed in the night.

By the time they returned I was asleep in the kennel, curled against one of the dogs. Mickey backed the truck into the yard and staggered out in a cloud of smoke. He stumbled into the house and slammed the door behind him. I walked around to the passenger side and opened Willie’s door. I realized then how quiet the truck was, the lack of movement in the bed. Willie stared straight ahead. I put my hand on his knee. I reached over to unbuckle his seat belt; he stiffened and slapped my hand away, finished unbuckling it himself. We walked to the back of the truck together, opened the gate. There were two large trash bags in the bed. We took them behind the back fence. We carried them against our chests.

*

Years passed in this way. Mounds of buried dogs grew behind the fence like disease. And one day I counted the graves. My hand raised towards them, my finger pointed at each in turn, and in my gaping mouth were words that, had they been spoken, may have condemned that mutilated soil, may have given voice to the breaking within Willie and me, to the coldness of each dog’s silenced throat; but I was not equipped to explain those things, and so stood in frozen stupor, paralyzed before a number that grew and grew and grew; so Willie grabbed my fingers, placed them where the eye should be. And I stood on the edge of silence. And I felt the echo of a hollow growl.

Mickey couldn’t breed dogs faster than he was losing them. It seemed things would be over soon. Sometimes Mickey took a chair behind the fence, stared into the trees for hours. He screamed in the middle of the night. Eventually Willie came to stay with us. We ate together. We slept side by side under the rhythmic air of my ceiling fan, our limbs almost touching. I grew used to his thin body jumping awake throughout the night.

Mickey tried to get his act together. He stopped drinking, stopped taking the dogs out to fight. Our shovels rusted against the back fence. Every day, Willie and I began to notice more things about the dogs. Patterns in the fur. Moods. Personalities. Mickey started going for long walks in the woods. Sometimes he took a tent with him. Once, he didn’t come back for two days. Willie and I were sleeping when the first of six shots rang out.

*

Mickey apologized while he helped us bury the dogs. He knew the pain we felt, but his instructions had been clear. A few days ago, he met God in the forest. Seizing the opportunity to air his grievances, he quickly explained to God how God had repeatedly fucked him. Of course, God concurred with Mickey’s assessment. He promised to make good on all that past misfortune, so long as Mickey followed orders. So Mickey shot all his dogs except one.

Mickey shoveled dirt at a furious pace. “Boy God is gooooooooooooooooooooooood! Watch what I tell you! A dog aint no killer, oh no, aint meant to be no killer, not really, meant to be friendly friendly …God said you gots to get you a wolf Mickey! Bring me a wolf dog Jesus! Bring me my wolf dog!” And when the dogs were buried, Mickey led us deeper into the woods, the surviving bitch following obediently. At the center of a small clearing, he fell to his knees. Slowly, carefully, he dug into the soft earth. When he had created a small hole, he buried a single dollar bill and a picture of Willie’s mother (“Cause she was angry as a bitch and bit like a motherfucker!”). He placed a drop of some foul-smelling liquid on top and hammered a six-foot stake four feet into the earth. He chained the dog to the stake and kissed it on the nose. It trembled, but did not whine.

The moon lit the clearing like a stage. We watched from an old deer stand through the scope of Mickey’s rifle, ready to shoot dead anything other than Mickey’s promised wolf. We held our breaths, the only sound Mickey’s soft “tic,tic,tic… tic,tic,tic…tic- I battled nausea, saw little other than the chained bitch and heard little other than the whine she had not given. I amused Willie when I grabbed the rifle from him – Mickey too – though I only used the scope to narrow my view, to focus on the empty tree line and dark woods beyond. But soon that darkness became shadow, then form, and the wolf materialized as if called, its red-tinted fur almost black. My shoulder fused to Willie’s. The three of us sat in quiet awe – the cast-off, the crippled, the sightless – as if awaiting the brutal, healing hand of God. Mickey put his arm around Willie. I felt Willie’s body pulled away from me and cradled into his father’s chest. I offered Willie the rifle but his eyes were closed; he was smiling.

II.

I have this dream. Willie and I are walking behind the fence. There are no mounds. Instead, there are rows and rows of strawberries. Every so often we pick one and eat it. Willie notices something: a little bundle of red fur, curled up into a ball. A wolf pup. Hurt though, something in its paw. Willie gently picks it up and we carry it home. Nurse it back to health. Name it something. Ringo. Star. Sport. But one sad day we realize we can’t keep him. We have to do the right thing. So, like two little white kids in a Disney movie, we take Sport behind the fence and motion towards the forest. But poor Sport doesn’t understand. He looks at the trees and then back at us. He sheds a wolf pup tear. We can’t mean that, can we? Not there! He takes a couple steps towards us, but we scream through our sobs: “Git boy! Git!” And at the crescendo of our grief, a pack of regal red wolves emerges from the forest. Suddenly Sport knows where he belongs. He puffs out his chest and begins to walk towards them. But then he pauses, turns to give us one last look, and Mickey comes out of nowhere, punts him into the sky.

*

The first batch turned out badly. There were six and only one survived. Mickey saw that as the weight of God. The lone puppy was sickly, close to death. We watched him nurse for seven days and then Mickey finished the mother. After that we stayed with him night and day. “Don’t ever leave him alone, no,” Mickey said. “Stay away too long and he won’t know you anymore.” So every day and every night, the three of us huddled together in the kennel, unshowered and bathed in our scents. We fed him from a bottle and later on tender strands of meat, massaged his stomach with our fingers to help his stools pass. We looked into his blind, blue eyes and tried to see that promise, prayed for some sign of it, what the sharpness of his milk-teeth foretold. And as if understanding our need, he grew quickly. His legs became little trunks, his paws sturdy and his neck thick. We bought a bigger chain. His fur lightened, a brown closer to his mother’s than the red we hoped for, but fine stripes of scarlet in the coat. And one night, in Willie’s arms, he let loose a tentative, high-pitched howl, and the three of us followed suit, howling until we choked with laughter. In the morning, we noticed his eyes had turned a pale gold.

We barely trained him. We let him jump against our chests and sent him tumbling end over end against the concrete. When he snapped his teeth, we gripped his jaw in our hands and pressed our weight upon him. We put cardboard around the pen and threw mice inside. Later rabbits. Once a bird. The other dogs had been clumsy in their hunting, but his was a graceful quickness, a slippery movement. His bones melted together when he pounced, his body an extension of the snapping jaw. Mickey was ecstatic. He’d pull Willie and me into his sides and sniff our hair: “OoooohWheeeee y’all smell like money!” And at the end of each day, he’d grab the little beast and snarl into his face, work him into a frenzy, “Killa,” he’d christen, “Killa, Killa, Killa.”

And though Mickey would have denied it to the death of him, we all knew Killa was Willie’s dog. It was the way they watched each other. The language of tongue clicks and whistles that seemed to develop organically between them. And one day Willie removed Killa’s chain. Mickey stormed across the yard: “Boy what the fuck you think you doing?! You done lost your goddamn mind?!” But he quieted upon reaching Willie. Something about that heavy chain hanging loose in Willie’s hands, swaying a few inches above the concrete. Mickey surveyed the boy and the dog in front of him, raised his hand to make a point and thought better of it. He walked back inside the house. Willie and Killa remained motionless long after he had gone, the thick chain swinging between them.

The first night they took Killa away, he was barely eleven months old. I stood in the driveway for hours. Though my mother’s permission was no longer needed, I still had never attended a fight. Like Willie’s missing eye, this was never mentioned. When they finally returned, Mickey staggered out of the cab in his usual cloud of smoke, but this time he slammed three bulging McDonalds bags into my chest. He knelt down and put his nose inches from my own. “God.” he whispered. He reached into the crotch of his jeans and pulled out a wad of cash. He placed it softly on the bags. “God,” he whispered again, and stumbled into the house.

*

Money is cheap redemption. By then we were adolescents, freshly cynical and equally disillusioned. We walked slowly through the mall just to hear the soundtrack of the kiosks: You like Diamonds big man!? Come here, my friend!” I bought earrings so massive they stretched my lobes. Willie put gold caps over his canines, the color of Killa’s eyes. We bought horses and chickens and an old man to keep them; cutlasses with drip-wet paint and little kids to scrape the mud off the rims. Tattoos spread across our skin like cancer: verses, crosses, doves, praying hands. We were beginning to look like men. Our limbs lengthened and the fat dripped from our faces. Our cheeks became angular planes. Willie let his hair grow and his slightly angled eyes and thin features made him appear almost wolf-like. He was only inches shorter than me, but his muscles were rounder and more apparent, whereas mine were lean, ropy. As a small allowance to my mother, I rocked a standard bald fade. I was cute; Willie was handsome. We envied and complemented each other, played ferocious games of basketball for the sake of testing our new bodies. New scents now reached us. Jasmine. Shea Butter. Baby Powder. (Had they always been women?) And that musk underneath, bare like a stripped secret. Taunting us. Calling us. We salivated at the thought of leaking flesh, of strawberries slightly out of season, sank our teeth into tender necks and hovered over spasming guts, became beasts of sweat slicked skin, cramped legs and braced hands in the rank seats of our rocking cars; the entirety of our want, thrust blood-hot and bursting to wither and weep within them. And in the midst of that frantic celebration, hounded by the premature destruction of our most “promising” – the athletes and the valedictorians and the prodigy preachers – and not foolish enough to think ourselves any better, aware that our cutlasses had the outline of chariot-wheeled hearses and our gravel driveways sounded like cracking teeth, Willie and I met Clarice.

*

She moved into a two-story house in the back of our neighborhood. Her father had played for the Saints in the nineties and her mother had been a JET beauty of the week. She was quiet. Almost as quiet as Willie. I caught her gaze a couple of times, but never held it. Sometimes in the afternoon a BMW or a Lexus would enter the neighborhood and slink up her driveway. Some schoolboy would ring the door and she’d hop in the car. Willie and I would sit on Mickey’s porch with Killa and stare at them as they exited the neighborhood. I imagined picking her up in the cutlass, her hand on my leg, the slight vibration of the frame moving the baby hairs on her temple. None of the boys lasted long. I imagined her bored. Picking them out of her teeth.

One evening, while watching a silver Mercedes ascend her driveway, Willie placed two fingers gently against my elbow and motioned to his Cutlass. We got in and Killa climbed into the back. Willie drove to the entrance of the neighborhood and cut the lights. We sat smoking in the darkness, shirtless, the shadow from the flame dancing lightly on our breasts. I reached back and scratched Killa behind the ear. Soon a pair of bubble lights approached us. Willie maneuvered the Cutlass to block the road. Willie and I took our time getting out. The lights were so bright I could barely see Clarice in the passenger seat. The boy rolled down his window. “Get out the fucking road!” There was bass to his voice. Authority. I walked closer; Clarice slowly became more visible. Some kind of t-shirt. Wide hoops hanging on either side of her neck. Lips slowly peeking from the shadow, almost a grin. Heavy-lidded eyes, cautious, teasing. I bent down in front of the boy’s window. His letterman jacket strained against his shoulders. “What the fuck you want nigga?” Small droplets of spit flew into my face. He had pretty green eyes. Flecks of brown. His throat bulged. God, it was a nice car. There were little lines of blue light along the doors, matching piping on the seats. I put my finger to his lips. “Shhhhhhhh.” She was staring at me. What was that look? I felt naked, unsteady. My stomach sank into itself. I stood up. Without a word, I walked back towards the Cutlass. A door opened behind me. “Ay nigga! Where the FUCK you think you going?” A sharp glint of gold shone in front of me, like the moon on an unsheathed blade. Willie and I finished things quickly.

After that day, we tore up anyone that came near her. And I ask myself why I paid so little attention to how Willie looked at her, fought for her; had we become so intertwined that my want was his and his was mine? But he did nothing as I sent so many gifts to her house that on some days she could barely make it through the door, enough roses for her to plant a field. She never called. Saw me in public and gave little more than a glance. One day her mother phoned mine. She informed her that, contrary to how things may work in our household, her daughter, Clarice McCay, could not be bought. The neighborhood listened intently as Mrs. McCay deafeningly realized the gravity of her mistake. Of course, Clarice McCay was forbidden to see me. Of course, she was in my arms the next day.

*

She told me that she hated her classmates, her school, her father and his decade old luxury cars, her mother now more product than face, that she hated herself for hating them. She told me she was angry, always angry, that sometimes she dreamed of burning everything to the ground; that she carved fine lines into the skin of her right thigh and screamed into her pillow at night. I told her my mother looked at Willie like she was looking at Mickey’s missing leg. I told her about the mounds behind the fence, the first dogs against our chests and later the unsteady weight of the wheelbarrow. How a bark is like a baby’s cry and how Killa never barked. I told her about the screaming mob I’d never seen and the cash that rained from the sky, the feeling of my raw throat yelling. How Killa never seemed to hear it, how his hackles rose gracefully, as if a breeze were gathering them together; how his lips quivered above his blade-sharp teeth; how his muscles moved within his fur; how his jaws closed around scores of dogs, their shoulders, their stomachs, and once head-on, sinking deep into the nose. So different than the dog she knew. The one that cuddled up beside her. The gentle giant, almost up to her waist when sitting, mostly resting by her feet, licking her hand.

And one beautiful evening, when the air was still but not heavy and Willie and I were leaning against the doors of his cutlass, Clarice walked towards us. Willie turned his missing eye away (as he did for no one else), looking into the distance as if the path she took were more interesting than her arrival. Clarice knelt in the grass and pulled Killa’s face against her own; she roughed the fur under his neck. Without looking up, she addressed the two of us: “I want to see it. I want to see Killa fight.”

*

Deep enough in the woods to kill the sound. The air crisp enough to justify my arm around her. We stood on the edge of a large wooden pit, eighteen feet on each side with walls two feet high. Killa’s opponent was a Rottweiler with a bulging chest, magnificent arms. It barked viciously, straining against the heavy metal chain that its owner held. Behind us, a tall, emaciated man stoked the crowd, reaching over heads to collect money, coordinating the chaos as if he had multiple sets of arms. Willie knelt in the arena beside Killa, his hands behind his back, his lips inches away from the dog’s ear. I asked Clarice if she wanted to move closer; she quickly nodded.

 The referee raised his hands for silence. Killa and the Rottweiler were led behind two parallel lines fourteen feet apart. Mickey stood behind Killa with a firm grip on his collar and Willie stood just outside the pit. I thought of the hares we had thrown into the kennel. The little left behind. Clarice’s teeth playfully bit into my ear. Lantern-lit, her skin was the shade of shelled pecans. Her lashes were longer than Willie’s. Her eyes the shape of almonds.

The referee threw down his arms. The dogs slammed together, their jaws contorting to reach shifting shoulders, struggling to find purchase in the dirt. Killa bit only air, unable to stretch around the Rottweiler’s bulky frame. The Rottweiler pushed Killa backwards, forced his neck sideways. Not at all like the “training” I had seen. There was no grace here, no chase and sudden silence. The kennel was a temple to death’s calm inevitability; the pit was a ravenous frenzy for survival. Mickey was screaming, jumping up and raising violent clouds of dust. Willie was still, but his eye was wide with worry. I felt Clarice moving closer to the pit. Bile rose in my throat. I reached for her arm but fell forward; we stood feet from the snarling dogs. The crowd was deafening. Killa stumbled. His back legs slipped and the Rottweiler was on him, snapping at the sides of his face, its entire body given to the bite, but Killa was more comfortable in movement, gave his shoulder but stretched just enough to bite clean through the Rottweiler’s ear. The dog squealed and jumped away. The referee immediately blew his whistle and the owners rushed to bring their dogs back behind their respective lines.

“What’s happening?” Clarice asked.

Something was wrong with Killa. He turned away from Mickey, barely tolerated Willie touching him. A thick line of blood ran from his shoulder. Every so often he rubbed his nose into the dirt, gagged. The Rottweiler seemed to have forgotten the bite. His barks exploded in red mists of spit, the dangling ear dripping blood into his mouth.

My mouth was dry, my tongue heavy. I spoke slowly, trying to appear unshaken: “Since the Rott turned away, when his owner lets it go, it has to charge Killa. If it doesn’t then the fight is over.”

Willie kept trying to examine the shoulder, but Killa kept snapping at his hands. Mickey slapped Willie away and pulled hard on Killa’s collar, forcing him behind the line. Killa’s breathing was irregular, his eyes manic. The referee brought his hands up for silence. When he threw them down, only the Rottweiler rushed forward. Killa slinked low to the ground. “GETUP!!!” Mickey screamed, “GETUP!!!” Killa’s shoulder shed a river of blood. His body tilted sideways, as if he couldn’t quite hold himself up. The Rottweiler cleared the pit in seconds, a blur of teeth and claws shredding air. Killa fell to the ground, shot his entire body underneath the Rottweiler and exploded upwards; his jaw swelling along the curve of the dog’s belly like a drawn breath. And from our collective silence there arose a frightened yelp, torn in half as Killa ripped out the dog’s throat.

The crowd erupted. Killa slumped over the body beneath him as if confused. Willie jumped into the pit. Clarice’s lips pressed into mine; her tongue entered my mouth. My body felt cold, wet. She bit my bottom lip. I inhaled the scent of her neck (even now the smoke of burning lilac); her throat molded to laughter, her shrieks like blood drenched howls. Through strands of her hair, I saw Willie catch Killa as he fell. Mickey stared down at the two of them in disbelief. The owner of the Rottweiler walked towards it; the dog’s legs twitched in the dirt as it bled out, suffocated. The owner took out his pistol, shot it in the head. I could no longer find myself. The emaciated man frantically distributed cash among a sea of hands. Clarice pulled me into the trees, pushed me against a hard trunk. Her face was unrecognizable, contorted. And I knew she had seen only the moment of victory, the electricity of final, absolute power, not the stumbling Killa, not Willie holding him to his chest, turning in a small circle, looking for us, looking for me. And when I opened my mouth to tell her, she kissed me. And when I lifted my arm to point behind her, she interlaced her fingers with mine and pinned my hand to the tree; she pressed her breasts into my side, her eyes alight with flame.

That was the night I left them.

III.

I heard Willie howled in the night, that he bought a black Charger and drove it so fast he rattled the windows in the neighborhood, that there were more dogs now, bigger dogs, that somewhere Mickey had a freezer of jizz. I heard Willie took over the kennel, that he’d been running the show anyway. That Mickey bought a gold leg and hated to get it dirty, stopped going outside, not even for the fights. I heard Willie married Clarice. I heard they bought the house across the street. I heard she was pregnant. I heard they lost it. I heard Willie ate with his dogs. I heard he wrestled with them. I heard he fucked them. I heard he let them off the leash and they ran through the woods silently. I heard he smiled when the other dogs became meat. And I heard that when time was up, Mickey walked into an intersection with an orange cap and a rifle and offered freedom to all who would receive it (and that the police quickly proved him an amateur). This last thing I heard from my mother, four days after it happened, or yesterday, when she told me to bring my black ass home.

You should know, I now carry these things: degrees; bank accounts; an apartment (by choice); a career; friends that say things like pedigree; women; a “beautiful” city; a car that costs too much to drive; money burning a hole in my pocket; a paper-weight credit card; lines of coke as long as my arm; and mounds, mounds growing without number. Still, I said yes.

The drive takes the better part of the day. A large moon guides the last few miles, subtly illuminating acres of nameless crops. The ground is otherwise flat, billboards the only marks of distance. And behind me, invisible in the rearview, is the elsewhere life that has not followed me here, that waits, looks at me pityingly, already judging this middle of nowhere not-even-town and the sparkling lights of its chemical plants belching fire. And when the car is suddenly enveloped in forest, that elsewhere life questions the dirt roads splitting the tree line every few miles, as if inquiring of past lovers, stories I have not told that call out as I pass.

Soon gas stations dot the sides of the road, single family farms, a Walmart, small restaurants, the churches, the school, and a lonely mile behind it, another unmarked road. I turn onto it and drive between rows of houses, small but nicely kept. Though the sun set long ago, the owners are outside, on the porches, by the fences. Their eyes follow the car, straining to see through the tinted windows. When I pull into my mother’s driveway I get out and lean against the door. Willie’s house is dark. The Charger is parked innocently in the driveway. Cement steps lead up to a screened front door. I wait for shadows in front of the windows but none appear.

The key is where my mother always hid it. I let myself in and pause in the doorway. The once cavernous living room is a tiny cave. The antennae on the TV stick out embarrassingly from the bulky back. I enter the kitchen. The things that eluded my memory clamor for attention: the coffee mug ashtrays, the twenty dishtowels flung across the room, the line of votive candles on the windowsill and behind them the view of barren trees. I linger there, imagining the grass under my bare feet, staring into the woods and refusing to acknowledge the kennel to the left of me or the faded pink house behind. But then I smell my mother’s earthy musk, her cardamon and clove. The closest she’s been in a decade.

She wears a light green house dress with a rip at the neck and her hair is cut like a helmet. She’s barefoot with an ace bandage around her ankle. She wears no bra and her uneven breasts are prominent beneath the fabric. She is used to living alone. Her nostrils flare like smoke catching; she places her hands against her stomach, leans back as if to bring me into focus, “Well, goddamn…” She holds her arms wide. Our bodies are dutiful, but awkward together; in that way the embrace is familiar.

“Welcome home Mr. Stranger. You must be tired.”

“It wasn’t too bad a drive.”

“Yeah. Not too far.”

She considers the length of my limbs, rotates my hands and presses her thumbs into my soft palms. The first time I called her after leaving, only an hour from the house, she shouted herself hoarse. Later she became a cold silence, a tentative reaching, a passive-aggressive resignation. What was the tone in her voice now? Pride? Triumph? “Let me see you! Let me see you! Turn around! Turn around!” And all I had planned to tell her, all I rehearsed in the car is suddenly irrelevant. She is joyous, blind to any scar not physical, my survival merely the trial she allowed. Her eyes roam my shoes, my pants, my shirt, undressing me, not just of my clothing, but of my fat and new flesh. Recarving, until I stand before her recognizable. Childlike. Prodigal.

“You been eating well.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Got somebody else feeding you now, huh?”

“No ma’am, nothing like that.”

“Little lady up there or something-

“No ma’am, you already –

“-must be something to keep you from coming –

“Momma I don’t want to –

“I made spaghetti. You still like spaghetti?”

We sit and eat.

“Work been treating you well?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“They should. All the time they got you working.”

“I’m sorry about Mickey.”

“Mickey died a long time ago. You never knew Mickey.”

“…Yes ma’am.”

“That’s what happens when folks go away. My brother went away when he was eighteen years old.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“How old are you again?”

“C’mon momma.”

“…just aint seen you in a while.”

I taste now, the BBQ sauce that’s out of place in the dish, the overcooked pasta. Still, I finish the plate and get another. She hands me a glass of milk, tries a smile but it comes out like a question: Have you missed this place? As if I had been borne away. As if someone had taken me, prevented my return. As if I could not have wanted fearless nights, respectability, pills that made her weed laced slumbers seem like shallow naps, white-voiced black girls taking Pomeranians on midnight strolls, the joy of fetch and cuddling. As if she had not allowed the growl of half-starved beasts. And the forgiveness I brought for her, concealed as a sharpened blade (the fact that I need nothing from her, that I never have and therefore was never deprived, never hurt) is now blunt, harmless. Her smile deflects any blow. As I have “succeeded,” so has she. My watch, my car, the apartment she has never seen and the job that excuses me from her life are only her vindication.

I gulp down the milk and she gets another, warming it in the microwave. The low drone of the air conditioner hums a threadbare breeze. The sound of the wax tablecloth against my nails is like a scratched record. I do miss this place. And the fact dirties me. When I finish, she takes the dishes and puts them in the fridge. “I’ll get them tomorrow. I put sheets on your bed. There’s towels in the bathroom.” She turns off the light as she leaves the kitchen. Soon the smell of weed replaces her.

I light a cigarette at the table, reach inside my jacket and pull out a half-pint of E&J. I drink slowly. The cheap liquor tastes like butterscotch and propane. I haven’t had anything other than single malt in years. I finish the bottle. After about an hour, I hear the roar of Willie’s Charger. After a few more it returns. A door slams in the distance and a few minutes later I hear the creak of Mickey’s gate opening. It doesn’t shut. And I know from where he’s standing, Willie can see the light in the kitchen. I know he passed my car in the driveway. I walk to the back door and place my hand on the handle, my face inches from the closed blinds. There is silence outside. Footsteps approach. I turn off the light, hurry to my room.

*

Mickey took the eye. My mother doesn’t know how it happened; but she knows it was an accident. She told me the first night Willie left Mickey’s to stay with us. Dried blood was caked around his nose. His bottom lip was a busted plum. She had washed his face gently. She whispered this to me after tucking him into my bed. We sat with the lights off in the living room. Her smoke curled around our heads. It was the only explanation she ever offered me.

*

It takes me sixteen hours and the Charger leaving again to complete the short walk to Willie’s house. Clarice opens the door. She wears a tank top and basketball shorts rolled into a soft band at her waist. Her hair is wrapped in an emerald scarf that haloes her head. Her stomach is flat, but her face is rounder than I remember. Her neck tapers down to a fuller frame. The light behind her obscures her expression.

I know I reek of strange places and strange people, the elsewhere life that has not followed me here, that waits, looks at me dispassionately. I resist the thought that she could cradle me, even now.

“Clarice, I-”

“C’mon inside, Jamie.”

We sit on a couch in their living room. I stare at the thin straps of her tank top, not the width of a finger. She pulls a pack of Swishers from her waistband and gently slices into the cylinder with a small pen knife. She empties the tobacco and fills the tube from a small tray of crumbled flower, licks it closed and hands me a lighter. When I exhale, she turns my face towards hers. Her touch is a crackling flame.

“Explain it to me,” she says.

And again, there is that feeling, as if they had witnessed something different than I had. And once again we are in the bed of the truck, the woods rushing by, grabbing the sides so as not to fly out. Willie uses one hand to clutch Killa against his chest. His eye finds me. And there is something he tries to say, desperately, and for a second his gaze screams above the wind. Mickey drunkenly bursts into an emergency room, Killa in his arms, screaming for help, even though Willie and I know Killa is already dead, had died in Willie’s arms when he screamed across the bed of the truck and I shut my ears to his howl. Clarice fights against going home. Throws fists against my chest and claws my face. I push her bodily out of the truck. (The way she looked at me…) And the rest? How I took only the little that remained of me; how I ran as if running from my own consciousness, from uncountable beasts, from the hungry prophecy in that hollow eye; how when I started my car, hours before morning while Willie slept fitfully in my bed with the dirt from Killa’s fresh grave still on his skin, the misfiring engine was six blasts from a rusted gun?

“I haven’t had McDonalds in years,” I say.

“W-where the f-f-f-fuck you been, n-n-nigga?” But she has not spoken.

Gold flashes in the doorway. Wille is shirtless and wears jeans cut just above the knee. White strands of frayed fabric hang over legs scarred by scratching and teething dogs. He walks towards us, slaps his hand against the crown of my head, hard, and then cradles it, pulls my forehead against his abdomen; my nostrils fill with the scents of sweat and grass, tobacco and pecans. He sits on the floor between Clarice’s legs, sucks his teeth. He gently takes the joint from my fingers and hits it. He leans back against Clarice when he exhales; her hands rest in the thick black curls of his chest, clasped together, her arms like a loose collar.

“Y-you w-w-wanna see t-the dogs?” he asks.

*

We enter Mickey’s yard in silence. In the distance is the kennel and the shadowy forms of unfamiliar dogs. The fencing is new. There’s a tarp over the pen. Willie whistles a sharp note and all of the dogs sit up, completely still. He walks into the center of the pen and I follow. He points to a burly pit with a slight blue tint to its coat. “Gotti,” he says, and moving clockwise: “Cujo; Jesus; Ramsey; Buddha; Mickey.” He looks at me; I shake my head to say he doesn’t need to repeat himself. He leaves the kennel and heads towards the back fence. I hurry after him. The ground behind the fence is flat and overrun with weeds and wildflowers. The stalks grow past our knees. The desolate place I imagined is covered by new growth. Willie walks forward about twenty feet and stands before a patch of wildflowers; I stand behind him:

“Th-that’s K-k-k”

“Willie, I-”

His fist collides with my jaw. Something is knocked loose. He hits me again. Again. I hold up my hands, take a few steps back. He charges me. The crown of his head spears my stomach. He lifts me off the ground. My lungs empty and won’t fill. The back of my head slams into the earth. My eyes blink away blood. “WHATTHEFUCKWILLIE!” He grabs my collar and pulls me towards him, slams his fist into my nose, my eye. He is a red shadow, barely in focus, dripping fat wet drops of salt and metal in between blows. And then I hear it, his wailing, his curdled howl. And I look into his twisted snarl, his snot dripping nose, his flayed flesh, and feel, somehow, only need of him, sickening, pathetic need – I am halved – and in his hollow eye I see all he has carried for me. For hadn’t I squeezed his shoulder like he had long ago squeezed mine? Hadn’t I said: It’s ok Willie, you stay here and I will leave you. Yes, you keep the blood-stained pit, the throats ravaged by sound, the amber eyes and the scent of raw and desperate breaking, my mother and her kiln-like warmth, Mickey and the fire tearing through him, fresh mounds barking like jubilant dogs, a thousand rusty shovels shoved down their throats–

My hands shoot forward on their own accord, collide with his chin, feel his teeth clap together. I send a fist into the empty eye, a knee into his crotch. Roll him over and prop myself up on his shoulders, bring my fists down until my knuckles are numb and my biceps failing. And he lets me, even as the breaking flesh begins to show lakes and rivers of red. He raises his arms to either side of my head, throws them around the back of my neck. And the broken face in front of me is laughing, the gold tooth is winking and there is joy in the swollen eye. And we are our sobs. We are our grasping. Ravenous. Ravenous. Ravenous. Frenzied, wild, and home.