Mark Doten - The Infernal

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leave the pipe at home. Rotate what’s absent: pipe, hat, beard, glasses. Then when the time seems right, leave off two items. Just ignore the thumping from here forward, Michael will be thumping like crazy now, in his desperation he’ll try wildly to thump you to your defeat. So forget the thumping! I’m telling you, rotation is the key. Beard, snap-brim hat CTE, NDS-V 0#FK U R0 SEPLHXR00XA6MTUXHTFA1FWC P8M7CK0 8

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until at last the day arrives. If you follow these simple instructions, well, there’s going to be a meal waiting. A full meal. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Green beans with french-fried onions. Apple rings. Creamed cauliflower. Sweet gherkins. Heat-and-serve rolls. I’ll be at the head of the table carving the ham, your mother serving up the sides, Michael pouring glasses of red or white wine. And you’ll take off the last piece of your costume. And at last you’ll find your place at our table.”

I watched the last patrons of the Gallant Arms handing tickets to the waitress, who exchanged them for elegant black coats and furs.

“Dad, let me help you,” I said.

“Son, please. I just told you. There’s going to be a meal. Just you wait. I’ll make up for everything—”

“I wanna come with you.”

“I know I’ve made mistakes. You just sit tight. We’ll work this out, whatever happens.”

“But I want to go, too.”

“You what?

“I wanna go with you.”

“You mean to find your mother? Tonight?”

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“If you want to help, in all honesty, the best thing would be for you to let me do my work.”

“But what about a coat? It’ll be so cold on that mountain.”

“All honesty, best thing right now is how about you shut your mouth.”

“Dad—”

“Sure, a coat would be nice, but I’m a little short right now. What the hell, I’ll be fine.”

“Let me bring you some money. I could give you three hundred dollars.”

“Son, please. Yes, there are all sorts of risks. Exposure, frostbite, and so on.”

“Four hundred, even. That would get you a real nice coat.”

“Enough.”

“But Dad!”

“Put a fucking cork in it!”

“But—”

“Shut your mouth! This is a business, and we’re speaking on a business line. What are you trying to do, bankrupt this place?”

“Listen, Dad, I’ve got a knife now — I’ve got a really great pocketkni SE0W RXQP BSCRSBC

could help! Come on, Dad, please.”

“Killing your mother. Every word out of your mouth. Killing her.”

“But—”

A pause. “We’re finished here, son.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, just think next time.”

“I know.”

“Think before you speak.”

I heard the wind howl, the door of the Gallant Arms banging — by the time I thought to check the monitor he was gone, the restaurant empty, tables back at the center of the room and chairs turned upside down on top of them. In the wingback chair behind the counter, the old man held the phone and watched me, he switched the phone to his shoulder, removed both gloves, folded them and placed them on the counter; then, still holding my gaze, he twisted and with a jerk of his arm — of his whole body — swept the pyramid of napkins to the floor, casting his head back and throwing wide his jaw, as though about to release a tremendous roar.

Jenny watched me from the hallway. “Are you guys still going out, or what?”

I hung up.

“Jenny! Well, Jenny, we’re still in process, a little. I have to consult with my wife.”

“Because if you’re not going out, I should just go home.”

There was no sound from upstairs. And the lights were off. With the sun down, you could see that the lights were off up there, or at least the doors were shut tight. From down here, looking up the stairs, it was black as could be.

And nothing in the monitor, I realized: the static was gone, restaurant gone, it was all black.

“I’m sorry about that language earlier.”

“It’s OK.”

“The n-word! Don’t either of us try saying it, right?”

“I guess.”

I told her that what I’d said earlier hadn’t been meant to give her the impression I thought that it was an OK word to use. It was just that there was a special space between my wife and me sometimes when she used the n-word, a space that didn’t belong to me, but which I was invited into for a moment, if Jenny could follow what I was saying.

“When Shawna calls you a nigger,” Jenny said.

“Ha ha ha! What? Oh my god! Jenny! Ha ha ha. Open the freezer and grab me some cubes, would you. Lord, Jenny, I need a drink,” I said.

“Can you please take me home? Unless you’re drunk. I can call my mother if I need to.”

“Call your mother? What are you even talking about?”

I told her to give me a hand up. But when she did, she ended up falling on the couch at my side.

I told her it was OK. It was fine, it was my fault — the leg was giving me a little trouble, I needed to rewrap it.

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. And she stood.

I grabbed her wrist. “First, though,” I said, “I want to hear you say it again.”

“Say what?”

“I’ll take you home. Don’t need to rewrap. Just you need to, I want you to, you know.” I paused. “The word.”

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“You could tell my wife,” I said, “but I don’t know how much sympathy you’d get once she’s heard you’d used that word right here in my house. But apparently it’s a word you like. So go ahead and say it.”

Her wrist felt so tiny to me — and yet so complete. The bones, the nerves and blood — everything packed in and pounding in her wrist, like her arm was one densely packed and obstructed vein.

She did it. Said nigger. She said it three more times

And I did just like I’d said. I let her go.

What happened next was a big shift. And if I’d been worried — worried that she would tell her father or Shawna — all that went away. Because after I let go, she just sort of crumpled. She apologized for what she’d said, tears in her eyes. And I apologized — for teasing her, I said. Hadn’t she ever been teased before?

I leaned on her a little as we made our way to the car. “The leg slips a little in the snow,” I said.

On the street, the headlights cut through snow that was coming down harder than I’d realized. But all in all, it was OK. Even if the odds now of a nice dinner weren’t great, Shawna and I could still have something, a moment together, that would reorient things. I asked Jenny how, as a girl, she felt about this anniversary business. Told her I was glad she was my babysitter. Good babysitting is so important. A girl, I said, I can only have a girl babysitting, of course I’d never trust a man to babysit, I think we’d all have to question the motives of a man who said he was babysitting, didn’t she agree?

“I’m really not following,” she said.

The next corner our headlights crashed through the snow a little crooked, and she screamed.

When you’ve seen shit like I’ve seen, I said, there’s no time for these social forms. These niceties. I told her I saw things in Iraq. But I didn’t understand them, and I did not care to comment on them. Let me break it down: a country in which a little girl was found decapitated with a dog’s head sewn onto her neck. Sectarian violence , I forget which fucking tribe was sewing dogs’ heads onto which other fucking tribe, point is, it’s something you can’t get , because you can’t get that and still be a person, you know? And here’s something else I can’t get: what happened to Michael. I mean, I understand the chain of events. He lost an arm to an IED. He killed himself. But what the fuck? Like my therapist says, I can’t process it, I have real feelings and I can’t process them , it takes time to process these feelings , the therapist says, which are very real. I wanted to tell her some more feelings , that Michael could have killed a little girl, or a little girl could have killed Michael, and you could have sewn Michael’s head on a dog’s body, or the girl’s head on Michael’s, you could have sewn up every dead body with every other dead body into a rotten ball of the sewn-up dead that would just grow and grow, and it would still be the same, it would be something I can’t get , and where do you think all that sectarian violence comes from? How do you think it gets its start? Do you think it just happens someday or do you think it’s the things that people say — things like nigger —that get it all started?