Padgett Powell - Aliens of Affection - Stories

“To the Hank show?”

“No, into the sinkhole .”

Scarliotti started the uncontrollable heaving laugh again at this, and the girl reluctantly stroked the shaved side of his head to calm him. At first she barely touched it, but she began to like the moist bristly feel of Scarliotti’s wounded head.

Scarliotti woke up and looked out the window and saw a dog and a turtle. The dog appeared to be licking the turtle.

“Ballhoggey wollock dube city, man. Your dog,” he said to the girl, “is licking that turtle in its face. That turtle can bite, man. You better get your dog away from that turtle, man. That dog is, unnaturally friendly, man. I don’t want to even go into salmonella. That turtle can kill your dog from here to Sunday. It dudn’ have to bite him, man. I don’t want that turtle to bite your dog, man. On the tongue like that. I think I’d start, like, crying. I’d cry like a son of a bitch if we had to get that turtle off your dog’s tongue. Your dog’s tongue would look like a…shoe tongue. It would be blue and red. Your dog would be hollering and tears coming out of its eyes. That turtle would be squinting and biting down hard, man. I don’t want it. I don’t.

“You better get your dog, man. We’d have to kill that turtle to get it off. If it didn’ cut your dog’s tongue off first, man. Shit. Take a bite out of it like cheese. This round scallop space, like. God. Get your dog, man. I have an appointment somewhere. What time is it? I think this damn Fruit of the Loom underwear is for shit. You see this guy walking around in his underwear with his kid, going to pee, and then popping out this fresh pair of miniature BVD’s for the kid just like his, and they walk down the hall real slow in the same stupid tight pants look like panties? Get your dog, man.

“Shit. Fucking turtle. What’s it doing here, man? I mean, your dog’s not even supposed — What time is it? Get the bastard, will you? I can’t move my…legs. I don’t know when it happened. Last twenty minutes after I dogged you. I’d get him myself. That dog is…not trained or what? Did you train him? People shouldn’t let their dogs go anarchy, man. Dogs need government. Dogs are senators in their hearts when they’re trained. They have, like white hair and deep voices. And do right. Your dog is going to get bit, man. Get your dog. Please get your dog. This position I’m in, I don’t know how I got in it. It dudn’ make sense.

“Do you ever think about J.E.B. Stuart? His name wasn’t Jeb, it’s initials of J. E. B. He had a orange feather in a white hat and was, like, good. Won. Fast, smart, all that, took no survivors; well, I don’t know about that. Kind of kind you want on your side, like that. Man. It’s hard to talk, say things right. If you don’t get your dog I’m going to shoot — you. No, myself. Claim your dog out there. The window is dirty as shit. I pay a lot of money for this trailer, you think they’d wash the goddamn window. No, you wouldn’t. You know they wouldn’t wash the goddamn window. I’d shoot the turtle, but the window, they wouldn’t fix it so they wouldn’t wash it, would they? I’d shoot your fucking dog before I’d shoot the turtle. That turtle idn’ doing shit but getting licked in the face and taking it.”

The girl said, “I don’t have a dog.”

“Well, somebody does,” Scarliotti said. “Somebody sure as hell does.”

WAYNE THIS MORNING BEGINS unpacking a box of clay tiles for the HoJo roof in Scottsdale, Arizona, he’s supposed to repair. The first seven tiles are broken and that is enough. He is last seen leaving the convenience store across the street with a twelve-pack under his arm, getting nimbly into his car. The carton of tiles is left open, its four top flaps at angles suggesting a funnel.

Wayne’s car leaves a fine invisible trail of rust very near the color of the clay tiles. A bloodhound trained in Detroit could track the car, a 1968 Impala. A crime team could locate hairs matching Wayne’s along the trail of rust, blond and about seven inches long and not clean. Dental records, were Wayne found in demise, would be of little use identifying him owing to the extremely rapid rate of deterioration — equivalent to dentonic meltdown — of Wayne’s mouth. Wayne looks as if he has driven into a swarm of flies as he flies down the highway smiling and drinking and tossing his hair and tossing cans in the desert and forgetting roof tiles and roofs and HoJos, except for renting a room in one with a blonde, but he saw no blondes when he looked around after opening the carton of broken tiles to see if anyone was sympathetic and saw instead the convenience store and that was enough. Wayne is Wayne and Wayne is gone. Stone.

Wayne, in a mirror of his motel room, the name of which he does not know (the motel), the room number of which he’d have to find the key to know, or open and look at the door, too bright a thing to do, Wayne looks at his teeth. He wishes they were like Legos. He could snap them out and snap in new ones, snugly into tight, clean holes, white and firm and solid. The holes in these he has are black with green or yellow edges and not clean, firm, tight holes like in Legos, which hold the Legos together snap-like. These teeth are rotten to hell. How they got this way is about how his liver got its way: a thing that mysteriously, suddenly, but not really, hurts. The teeth, the mirror, his right side, changing all the fun things he likes to do or he’ll die is a shame. “It’s a shame,” he almost says, looking at his teeth and drinking of a cold beer, but he doesn’t say “It’s a shame,” he laughs and looks in the cooler at the foot of the bed for that beer. And it’s there. He is, after all, the most lucky of men, at 10:30 in the morning in the Arizona desert. The bed, he notices, is not even disturbed; he slept on top of it, like a big cat. The maid will only have to plump it and tuck it a bit. He did not get his money’s worth here. But he has a cold Coors and the motel management isn’t Pakistani, so he’s not going to get under the covers now just to mess the bed up. He’s going to get in his car and get some cigarettes and chips and more beer and drive into the worthless future and enjoy the shit out of it.

The white thighs of his wife, who was not really ugly, white like Boy-ar-dee noodles, which he really got off on, occur to him and give him a little momentary woody. That’s what cigarettes and more beer are good against, errant and unfair woodies at 10:30 in the morning. Woodies out of the blue with no help in sight. He could wait for the maid… right. He could instead fire up the Impala, 357 loud cubic inches, and get the goddamn beer. That is the manly, sane thing to do. Felicia was ugly. So is the desert.

It doesn’t have any trees. This cactus shit and mesquite shit is shit. Felicia was shit-for-brains and the desert is shit-for-trees. It does not look like rain — what else is new, in the desert. It doesn’t look like anything, in the desert. When things don’t look like anything, drive through them. And don’t try it alone: have help. Have Coors, Winstons, Doritos, cardboard coasters placed under your icy mug by a woman in tight polyester shorts at happy hour, a woman who will say “Sure, sugar” when you ask for jukebox change. Apropos of her shorts, you will say, looking now no lower than her forehead, “I’m from Texas.” “That right?” “I haven’t seen a tree in a month.” It’s not going well. What else is new. Play the jukebox and don’t play what you think she’d like. Play what you like, but you won’t know anything on it, so play whatever the hell you want to. You are a free man. Play what you don’t like, if you like. Go back to the bar and get her to fill your mug, or get her to give you a new icy mug, and say, “I played stuff I don’t know if I like it. They, you know, they have different songs as far as areas.” She takes your money, smiling. “What else is new in the desert,” you say to her butt, and she says “What?” stopping and looking at you from the register. “Nothing.”