Tom Piccirilli: November Mourns

Elfie wasn’t quite giving him her usual devastating smile, but at least she wasn’t scowling. That familiar, rough tickle started working through his chest. His breathing became ragged and he rubbed his fingertips together, trying to shake off the electrical tingle. These had once been the signs of his affection, and he felt a barely contained sorrow making a grab for his heart.

Sparks scattered, framing her contours as she glided toward him with a calculated thrift of motion. Hips swinging just enough to make him groan. She wore a stylish heavy sweater that didn’t conceal any of her natural curves, with her shoulder-length blond hair rising and fanning wildly in the wind.

Her face remained thin and sharp, but in a way that worked. It made you want to run your palms along the angle of her nose, the jut of her chin. Elfie had eyes that weren’t entirely fierce but made you think they could easily fill with anger, and you’d do whatever it took to keep that from happening. She squinted when she smiled and really threw everything into it when she laughed, her whole body shuddering, hand on her belly trying to hold it in. She guffawed, low and resonant, none of the silly little-girl snigger that made you wonder if it was all an act, what she might really be after.

They’d made love the night before he’d been arrested. Lying in bed in her trailer out behind her parents’ house, listening to the willows swipe at the roof, the metal ringing with a strained note that never let up for a second. Her mama doing the dishes with a fixed regularity, the plates slapping down hard in the sink. Silverware clattering on the porcelain as she took one fork, one spoon, one knife after the other, and rinsed them, dried them, stuck them back in the drawer.

The heavy aroma of low country gullah chicken and hobo bread slid into the trailer’s open window, just over his head, and made his stomach rumble. Elfie moved her hand slowly over his stomach, gently scratching through his moist pubis, dipping into the sweat and smoothing the wetness along his thigh. Five minutes later he’d been busted.

Now he could barely control the urge to haul her forward into his arms, hide his face against her neck.

She reached out to brush her fingers through his hair but stopped short, as if his new flecks of gray might be catching.

“Hey, Elfie.”

And there it was, the smile that opened him wide. His breath caught and he could only stare-at the perfect teeth, the way she cocked her chin, and how she hit that pose in the moonlight. With an awful clarity he knew she would always symbolize this emotion, the one too intense to have a name.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again,” she said.

“Were you hoping for or against?”

Her lips remained fixed in that modest smirk, but he saw her stiffen. There were some things he shouldn’t ask because he didn’t really want to know the answer. Waiting to see where they stood only broadened the breach within him.

“I’m not sure.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I have missed you though.”

It was nice of her to say it anyhow. He wanted to believe, as the lust began to do a slow crawl through his guts, and was again surprised at how weak prison had made him in some ways.

She took his hand and drew him farther from the others until they reached an outcropping of rock perched above the river. He kept seeing a pale hand gesturing to him from the corner of his eye, and he had to force himself not to turn. Maybe he’d totally flipped over the edge on C-Block, or maybe coming home again had done it. You didn’t need much of a push.

Elfie rubbed her thumb over his knuckles-the nail a dusty blue of glitter-back and forth like settling a baby, the same as she’d always done in school after he’d been brawling. He wondered who she’d dated while he was gone, what new loves, regrets, and heartaches she’d found. He looked back and scanned the gathering to see if any guy was watching intently, somebody pouting, ready to yank a squirrel killer.22 from his pocket and come charging. But there was no one.

“Have you been all right?” he asked, and hoped it didn’t sound too dull.

But the way her face closed up, it must’ve. She held back her questions, her lasting dismay. Her thumb kept brushing over his knuckles, like she was trying to get into his skin and down into his blood. He didn’t know what the proper response was supposed to be.

“Yes, I’ve been fine,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

The wind continued to heave and abate. Elfie nodded, her hair tangling under her chin, until she slipped it back behind her ears. It kept coiling, flowing toward his throat. You could find your paranoia anywhere.

“I’m working at my father’s bait and tackle shop. I do his accounts and the books for a couple of other stores nearby. Chuckie Eagleclaw’s art gallery, Bardley Serret’s Rock Museum, and the Craftsman and Leather.”

Shad almost said, You were always good with numbers, but managed to stop himself in time. It was something her father had told her from the start, because he never had anything important to say. Shad had watched Elf go to her pa and admit she was pregnant, asking for his help, and had heard the man say right then and there, You should go to that banking school in Washatabe County, you always were good with numbers.

Elfie started talking about Chuckie’s books and how you could beat the IRS, but Shad could barely hear her. Mags’s pale hand kept distracting him.

“I kept your letters,” she said. “They were lovely. You write beautifully.”

“I kept yours for a few months too.”

It stopped her. “Only a few months?”

“Well, somebody filched them.”

She gave a sidelong glance. It was a natural enough reaction, this kind of fear, thinking there was somebody out there who’d read your mail, knew your home address. “Really?”

“It’s what guys in the joint do. They’re bored. I read a lot of novels and used the envelopes as bookmarks. I’d reread your letters every couple of days, but eventually someone got around to stealing the books.”

“Did you know who did it?” she asked.

“Sure. A guy they called Tushie Kline. He was always nosing around my bunk. Tush liked to cause little difficulties where he could. Inconveniences really, general annoyances. Nothing big, just the kind of crap that would ruin your afternoon.”

She grew more interested, leaning in now, maybe a touch excited as her eyes grew more serious, hoping to hear about a shiv in the jugular. “Did you do anything about it?”

“Like what?”

“Did you hurt him?”

This was the part where he could really push the story if he wanted, throw in all kinds of nasty action. Hanging somebody in the shower stalls with the elastic from their own underwear, setting them on fire and locking the cell door. Making a gun with a twelve-penny nail, a steel tube, and a rubber band.

But he decided his time as a conversation piece was over. “I taught him how to read.”

She drew her chin back like he’d slapped her. “What?”

“Tush always stole books and tore them up, flushed them down the john. He hated them because he was illiterate, like everybody in his family, and he lashed out.”

“That sounds familiar,” she said.

Half the county did the same thing. Kept their kids home from school because they thought it was a waste of time. Put them to work on the farm or hauling moon by the time they were eleven or twelve. The best runners were about fourteen years old-young, stupid, and juiced with immortality. Almost everybody had a relation who had died before hitting sixteen. Rolling over down an embankment, broadsiding a semi, head-on into a tree and rupturing the gas tank.