Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

“You’re a film producer?”

“No, ad executive. Was, should say. Ever seen the commercial for Blastberry Crunch?”

“You mean the breakfast cereal? The one with the, oh, the giant talking berries?”

“Colonel Blastberry, right, and the Berry Patrol. That was my campaign. I wrote the jingle that played over ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’” He sang in a low baritone: “Colonel Blastberry, Colonel Blastberry, Colonel BlastBERRY, nutritious and brave!”

“So why are you doing this?”

“I was fired, is why. I’m stone broke, is why. I’m living in a camper, is why. My ex-wife is a bloodsucking vampire bat, is why.” Paris’s face contorted. “God, I don’t even live in a camper anymore!”

“What about your house? Why don’t you sell it?”

“I told you, I don’t live here. I’m house-sitting for friends. I gave Alison everything: the house, the car, the dogs. Were it legal for that sea hag to suck the very air from my lungs, believe me, she would.”

“I take it you’re angling for a film grant.”

Paris nodded. “Rented the video equipment, sunk the last of my savings into this set, these critters. Talking Custer’s last stand, here.”

“I don’t remember a duck,” Graham said, with a nod towards the slumbering mallard.

“That was my idea. Dillson Duck. He’s comic relief.” Paris shook his head. “He’s not working out.”

The hamster wandered over to the water dish and lapped the booze. It shook all over like a wet dog shaking itself dry.

“That’s the spirit, Sammy,” said Paris. “Hey, would you mind doing me a tiny favor before leaving with my camper and, y’know, the final shreds of my dignity?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m on the last scene, here. In this episode, BP built a popcorn machine.” Paris indicated the magnifying glass tied to a stick. “The machine caused some problems, but they’ve been resolved. So, now, the denouement . Good triumphs, evil is thwarted—”

“Evil? It’s popcorn.”

“What? I know it’s popcorn. It’s a metaphor .” Paris enunciated slowly, as though addressing the recipient of a frontal lobotomy. “The popcorn represents evil, metaphorically speaking.”

“Ah.”

“Music swells, harmony abounds, the riverside animals clasp hands in the spirit of friendship and love.” Paris stifled a belch. “All that crap. Fade to black.”

“What can I do?”

“Well, I’ve got to get these guys together in one shot. They need to be … frolicking .” He clapped his hands briskly. “So! Could you handle the camera while I motivate the talent?”

“I can handle that.”

Paris herded the animals around the popcorn with a pair of plastic spatulas. For the most part, they seemed resigned to their roles: Scholarly Old Frog burrowed into the white drift until only the green-black humps of its eyes were visible. Dillson Duck quacked morosely and went back to sleep. Turtle tucked his head into his shell and wouldn’t show himself for love nor money. Sammy—slightly intoxicated by now—became amorous with Marian Mouse; his advances coldly rebuffed, he bit her.

“We got some …”

“Yeah, I see.” Paris brushed a cluster of dark pellets off the popcorn.“Goddamn turd factories.” He opened a jar of peanut butter, dipped his finger, offered it to the rodents.

“So that’s how you make it look like they’re talking?”

“You bet. They love the stuff. Sticks to the roof of their mouths. Drives them bananas.”

Marian, BP, and Sammy sat around smacking their lips. It really did look as though they were having an animated, albeit distracted, conversation.

“That’s a wrap,” Paris said. They’d spent the better part of an hour, filled two video cassettes, killed the bottle of Bushmills. “Iron out the bugs in the editing room.”

Graham glanced out the window, moon hanging low and fat over the lake. “I’ve got to go.” He didn’t want to leave. The booze suffused him with a mellow glow, softening every angle, inspiring a pervasive goodwill towards all creatures great and small.

“Yes, we’ve both got business to attend to. Suppose I’d better head to the dump and gather the makings for a shanty.”

Paris hunted a cardboard box out from under the workbench, setting the animals inside.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re taking my home, remember? Their home, too.”

“But … you can’t abandon them.” Graham was horrified Paris would set the box out on the curb for tomorrow’s garbage pickup.

“They’re your responsibility.” “Relax,” said Paris. “Come with me.”

THE BACKYARD SLOPED DOWN to a thin stretch of sand along the lake’s shore. The sky held a livid pallor, the onset of dawn. Snow piled along the banks. Waves lapped the shoreline.

Paris walked down to the water. The animals congregated inside the box, preening, scratching the cardboard. Paris set the box in the sand, heeled off his shoes, removed his socks, rolled up his pantlegs. He tucked the dozing duck under his arm and waded into the lake.

“Cold,” he hissed through his teeth. He waded out until the water touched his knees, setting the duck down. “You’re free. Rejoin your mallard brethren.”

The duck swam towards Paris.

“No! Go away. You’re free, don’t you get it? Free!”

Paris trudged back to shore, leaving the duck to swim in aimless circles. He plucked Turtle and Scholarly Old Frog from the box.

“Boys, it’s high time you became men.”

Graham sat on a boulder near the water. He didn’t say anything— wasn’t his place to. Paris laid the animals down on the coarse sand. The frog hopped into the water, an inky blur lost amid waving strands of eelgrass. The turtle dipped a tentative foot into the water. Satisfied, it swam out into the lake. The dark convex of its shell cut a slow path through the water, starlight bent upon the dome.

Paris stretched out on the sand. Breath puffed from his mouth, white and vaporous. Graham stirred the toe of his boot through the sand in a figure-eight pattern.

“They’ll be okay, won’t they?”

“I don’t know,” said Graham. “Winter’s coming.”

A series of shrill squeaks arose from the box as Marian Mouse’s unsullied character was again challenged by a boorish Sammy Hamster.

Turtle’s shell described a lazy arc through the water, looping back

towards shore.

“Cuts people’s chests open. What he does for a living.”

“He who?”

“Guy sleeping with my wife. She’s a nurse, he’s a cardiovascular surgeon. Looks like John Travolta, and not Saturday Night Fever Travolta— Look Who’s Talking Travolta. It’s depressing.” Paris took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Sometimes I think about walking into the hospital, into the operating theater, punching him. Right in his swarthy face. I bet he wears gold chains under his OR scrubs—a lot of them. I think, y’know, like maybe it’ll solve something, right? Answer something. But then I think, hey, this is the way she wants it. She’s happier now, right? I know that.”

“Maybe you should be happy for her, then.”

“It’s just, I thought I’d be happy, too. I wanted to be free, unfettered. All I could think about. A fresh start, hey?”

“Sure,” Graham said. “Sure, I know.”

Sleeping away the daylight hours, Graham’s most persistent dream was one in which he repossesses a car, but, instead of driving to the impound lot, keeps driving. The car is a ’63 Corvette Stingray convertible, cobalt blue. Sitting behind the wheel, he senses his personality shift to that of the car itself: growling and aggressive, the loudest, meanest dog on the block. All the perceived shortcomings that haunt his waking self—a lack of true intellect, a feeling he could’ve done better—evaporate like water dripped on a searing engine block. The city of his dream is such as he’s never seen before: he drives dusty laneways strung with adobe huts where dusky-skinned children chase lean hens through open yards, past imposing Kashmiri towers bellying in the shape of onions at their peaks, greenwater canals clogged with sleek gondolas.