T. Johnson: Hold It 'Til It Hurts

Unexpected pockets of silence bubbled up through the clamoring waves below them, moments the whole convoy shifted gears at once, and they could momentarily hear the bees, or the wind leaning on the crab apple tree behind them, or Janice snapping her toes or, for Achilles, his own breathing and his heart, thumping away like a chopper.

“Hear that?” asked Janice in the sudden silence. She blushed, laughing awkwardly like someone who had just realized her slip was caught in her underwear.

Achilles nodded, and on the next silence he was ready, reaching for her hair with one hand while slipping the other behind her knee. She turned to face him, and delivered his first kiss in almost twelve months, her lips soft and silky, the chalky taste of lipstick making him inhale as sharply as he had at fifteen. He was just as nervous. In the past year he’d had sex only twice, and each time through a sheet, or it might as well have been because the women would either raise or lower their dresses, but never both. He’d regressed in Goddamnistan; even a shadow of cleavage had sparked conversation — symmetrical mountain peaks or two potatoes at the bottom of cotton sack or a pillow with a crease in the middle provoked a giggle fit.

He rolled on top of Janice as they wrestled out of their clothes. After the cool grass her breasts were hot, nipples rising to meet his fingers. He fished a condom out of his pocket, tore the edge of the packet off with his teeth, and handed it to her. She usually put the condom on, which was a source of much laughter and embarrassment in tenth grade. She tossed it aside. “Don’t need that anymore.”

Achilles didn’t understand.

“I’m pregnant. Dale.”

“How do you mean?” asked Achilles. Janice and Dale had married in eleventh grade and divorced the month after graduation. Dale kissing her hearts! Dale had a fucking stutter.

“No, this is good. I can’t get pregnant again.”

Achilles rolled onto his side.

“Come on Keelies. Don’t be mad. Are you mad?” Janice tried to turn his face toward her, but he shrugged her off. “I didn’t know if you were ever coming back. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not … mad.” He wasn’t, not really. It was just that pregnancy was so permanent. Now she’d always have a connection to Dale that would be stronger than her connection to him. Everything would be different, even her pussy.

“C’mon.” Her breasts swayed gently as she leaned over and grabbed his cock. “Moping isn’t sexy in a man.”

It was his first time without a condom, a new experience, like they’d somehow been joined beyond the body. Afterwards Achilles turned away, a knot tightening in his stomach when he realized Dale had done this first. “Did the condom break?”

She straddled him, her bemused expression melting as the implication dawned on her. “Oh Keelies.”

When Janice reached for his hand, he pushed her away, and she settled down behind him, spooning. The clouds were clumped together in the east, like someone had swept them into the corner. Above him, against the bright sky, the silhouette of a hundred little crab apples, small as cherries. His mother used to put peanut butter on celery and dot it with raisins. They’d pretend it was a flute, unless their father was around. It then became a knife or a sword. He thought of the strange, spicy foods his mother was cooking now. She said she wanted to eat what her sons had eaten, so he didn’t see the point in telling her they’d often eaten standard fare like spaghetti and beans-n-franks. He thought of the mail stacked on the table, the boxes in her bedroom, Troy’s envelope, the surprising appearance of a preacher at the funeral service, and the church programs piling up in his mother’s car. “Bingo!” she said whenever he asked about them. Whether that meant she was only going to church for the game, he didn’t know, didn’t want to ask, and felt embarrassed by his reluctance to push the topic. Did she think she was connecting to his father through prayer? She’d always seemed too lively for church and they’d never gone to services, so the idea spooked him. He thought of Teddy Ruxpin, his brother’s now-silent emissary, and of Stuttering Dale. Good for Dale. Achilles didn’t want a kid anyway, especially not with Janice. Every guy in town would tell it, “I could’ve been your daddy.”

But none of that would have really mattered, because Achilles and his son would have known the truth: they belonged to each other, permanently, undeniably. The quarry fell silent and Janice reached for his hand again. He let her take it.

Several days later, Achilles answered an out-of-area call on his cell phone hoping it would be his brother. Instead he heard Kyle Wages say, “I just saw Troy.”

“Where is he?” asked Achilles.

“I was on the bus, and he was gone by the time I got off and ran back.” Wages paused. “Where are you now?”

“Where’d you see him?”

“A church,” said Wages.

“A church?”

“They were handing out food.”

Achilles was puzzled but exhilarated, and started packing before he hung up. He accepted the sighting as gospel. He, Troy, Merriweather, Jackson, and Wages had spent two tours together in deserts and mountains, parting only to piss, and often not even then. After some hesitation he decided to bring the blue envelope, a vial his mother had filled with his father’s ashes, and the small swatch of Jackson’s uniform that had come off in his hand that day. Everything clicked into place as he packed his rucksack. Obviously Troy was looking for his birth parents. Why else would he be in New Orleans in a food line?

His mother insisted on walking him out to his car, where she gave him a small box the size of an eyeglass case and told him to wait to open it. She offered her usual advice and extracted the usual promises, lingering at the car instead of walking back to the house and waving from the porch. He remembered that his father would usually walk her back.

“It’s not like I’m shipping out.”

“I know. That’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m remembering the first day you went to school, and how you were ready to go even then. Not Troy. When his time came, he cried like … well, like Troy. He always whined a lot, not like you. You were always ready to go.”

“I’ll leave the envelope here.”

She shook her hands emphatically, waving the suggestion off. “No! No! No! That’s not it. It’s your right to take that. You have to live for the future, not for the past. And so you need to know that your father hadn’t lived here for almost a year. He moved out last May, two days before my birthday.” She paused as if to let that sink in. “Oh, you better believe we argued about it. But I finally won. He packed up his old duffle. I asked him to think of it as a gift to me. But none of it had anything to do with you or your brother.”

“You were getting divorced?”

“We hadn’t decided,” she said. “We were going to take this trip, then see.”

“Why tell me now?”

“So that you know no one’s perfect, and you know that nothing that happened is your fault.”

“Like what?”

“None of it. I just want you to be you. Not your father, not your brother, not worrying about taking care of anyone but yourself.”

Achilles was stunned. They’d called together, and even sent a photo of themselves gardening together, and when he’d last been home less than a year before, his father had been painting the house. The thought that they’d put on a show for him stung.

One hand on her arm and the other on her backpack, he walked his mother back to the porch, still cluttered with trash bags stuffed with decorations, and gave her another hug, slipping his hands under the ever-present burden. He respected her determination, but something still bothered him. Later he realized that she was doing some kind of penance. In the army, they ran with packs for conditioning and punishment, but unlike his mother, they unsaddled themselves at every available opportunity.