Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“What kind of stuff?”

I half-hoped she would mention what was in the air and we could embark on a deluded romance that would of course be a major mistake. I was for the moment in love with the idea of making such a mistake. Getting involved with Dawn was the easy way out. Not the easy way out of Edenburg, not out of anywhere, really; but with Dawn and a couple of squalling kids in a double-wide parked on my folks’ acreage, at least my problems would be completely defined. Dawn, however, was too smart for that.

She flashed her cheesy waitress grin, the same one she served with an order of chicken-fried steak and biscuits at Frederick’s, and said, “Can’t a girl keep none of her thoughts private?”

Sundays in Edenburg were deader than Saturday mornings. There was one car in the Piggly Wiggly lot that must have been left overnight, and the store windows gave back dull reflections of parking meters and empty sidewalks. Kids had managed to sling several pairs of sneakers over the cable supporting the traffic light at the corner of Ash and Main — a stiff wind blew, and the shoes kicked and heeled in a spooky gallows dance. It reminded me of a zombie movie where things looked normal, but half-eaten citizens lay on the floors inside the feed store and Walgreens.

Somebody with a strong arm could have heaved a baseball from one end of town to the other in maybe three throws, but it took me a long time to drive from my house on the east side to Doyle’s, which lay to the west, a mile beyond the city limits sign. I sat idling at the light by the Sunoco station. Wind snapped the blue-and-yellow flags strung between the pumps, scattering paper trash and grit across the concrete apron. I tried once again to resolve the problem I’d wrestled with most of the night. Sooner or later Dawn or one of her friends would tell Doyle, I figured. If I didn’t beat them to the punch, I’d lose his friendship. Yet telling him would be a betrayal of Dawn. The whole mess was so fucking high school, it made me want to puke. The light changed. I gunned the engine but didn’t put the car in gear and let it drop back down to an idle, resting my head on the seat and closing my eyes. Screw Doyle , I thought. I wasn’t going to tell him. We’d drive on over to Snade’s and sit on the front stoop with a couple of Buds and talk football.

A dairy van pulled up behind me and I rolled down the window and motioned for it to go around; but it just sat there. I peered back at the van. Its windshield was streaked with bird mess. I couldn’t make out the driver, though I detected movement inside the cab. I motioned again, and the van didn’t stir. It began to piss me off. I climbed out of the car and gestured like one of those guys who guide planes up to the terminal. Nothing. I was inclined to walk back and pound on the door, but the van looked to have acquired an air of menace. Beneath the streaks and gobs of bird shit, its windows were dark, as if they had been blacked out, and I had again a sense of agitated movement within. Horror movies about haunted vehicles flickered through my head. I got back into the car and peeled out, leaving the van stuck at a red light.

Doyle was standing atop a hillock in the field that adjoined his father’s property, wearing his letterman jacket, waist deep in brown weeds and grasses; grackles were circling above his head, a half dozen or so. I pulled onto the shoulder and got out and called to him, but he was facing in the opposite direction from me and the wind snatched my words away. I was about to cross the highway when the dairy van came whispering over the hill, going at a fair rate of speed. I flattened against the car, my heart doing a jab-step, and it rolled past me, continuing toward Taunton, disappearing over the next rise. Shaken, I walked to the edge of the field and called to Doyle again. One by one, the grackles dropped from the leaden sky, secreting themselves among the tall grasses, but Doyle gave no sign of having heard. I found a gap in the rusty wire fencing and went twenty or thirty feet into the field. There I stopped, made uneasy by the birds.

“Doyle!” I yelled.

He turned, his face expressionless and pale, and stared — it was like he didn’t recognize me for a second or two. Then he signaled me to come up to where he stood. I took pains to avoid places where I thought the grackles had gone to ground.

“Let’s go,” I said.

He surveyed the empty field with what seemed a measure of satisfaction, like a man contemplating the big house and swimming pool that he planned to build thereon. “Ain’t no rush,” he said. “Snade’s ain’t going nowhere.”

We stood for nearly a minute without speaking and then he said, “Think we might get some rain?”

“Who the fuck cares? Let’s go!”

“We can go. I just thought you might have something you wanted to get off your chest.”

I wasn’t afraid of Doyle — I had five inches and thirty pounds on him — but I expected he’d come at me hard. I backed off a pace and set myself. He chuckled and looked out over the field.

Perplexed by this behavior, I said, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

He smiled thinly. “That’s a fine question, coming from a guy who poked my girlfriend.”

“Did she tell you?”

“It don’t matter who told me. You got other business to worry about.”

He aimed a punch at my head but pulled it back the last second and laughed as, in avoiding the blow, I tripped on the uneven ground and went sprawling. He bent down, hands on his knees, grinning in my face.

“She’s a slut, man,” he said. “She puts on a real sweet act, but I’m surprised she hasn’t jumped you before now.”

I stared at him.

“Seriously,” he said.

“I thought you two were getting married?”

He snorted. “I’d sooner marry a toilet seat. All she’s ever been to me is a hump.”

A storm of grackles whirled above the hill behind which the dairy van had vanished, and that confusion in the sky reflected the confusion in my mind. I remembered how needy and tender Dawn had been. After what Doyle had said, I wanted to doubt her, to accept his view of her. and I did doubt her on and off for a while; but his lack of regard for her rubbed me the wrong way. For the first time I realized that we might not be friends forever, and I wondered if all my relationships would be so fragile.

Against my better judgment, I got caught up in the frenzy of Taunton Week. It was hard not to, what with the entire population of Edenburg telling us that we could win and offering tactical advice. GO PIRATES GO signs were in every shop window. Pep rallies were exercises in hysteria — one cheerleader broke an ankle going for an unprecedented triple somersault and was carted from the gym, still shaking her pompoms and exhorting the crowd. Even Carol, who’d been spreading lies about me all over school, kissed me on the mouth and told me to kill ’em. But along about midweek, reality set in when I watched a tape on Taunton’s All-State outside linebacker, a kid named Simpkins, number fifty-five. Coach Tuttle planned to use me on pass patterns going across the middle of the field, where Fifty-five would be waiting to saw me in half. My shoulder hadn’t completely healed, and I actually gave consideration to ramming it into a wall or a door, and knocking myself out of the game. On Thursday, after practice, I took a nap and dreamed about Fifty-five. He was standing over me, wearing a black uniform (Taunton wore special black unis for the Edenburg game), and was holding aloft my bloody left shoulder, arm attached, like a trophy.