Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

— It’s not a shopping cart, she said.

— I’m just asking you. I don’t know.

— Go open the truck and pull down the ramp.

— What if I yell?

— Then the cops will come here and take my animal from me.

Even as I walked to the rear of the truck’s cabin I looked back at Anchorage. It’s head was as big as my chest.

— I think that other lady was looking for this, I said again.

— Anchorage isn’t hers to have.

— Is she yours?

— She’s our father’s.

— You mean God?

— Mine and AnnEstelle’s.

— AnnEstelle is that loud woman.

— AnnEstelle is my sister. I’m Fane.

She touched the cow near the hind legs to urge it up the ramp. Anchorage walked two feet closer to the truck, which was nearly enough.

Over the top of the McDonald’s I could see that police lights had arrived. They were red and flashing, from the ground and up into the sky.

— I have a family, I said as an excuse to go. We still had two hours of driving till Virginia. It was 9:00 PM. Why’d they hold the rally so late?

— It’s only a stopover for those kids. This isn’t their last destination. But my sister heard they were here, so she had to come on out and get them started.

— Will the cops arrest AnnEstelle?

— They’ll bring her back home to me anyhow. In a few hours.

She went up to the head of the monster. That’s what Anchorage was to me. If I’d seen it on a deserted strip of land I’d have shot the devil down. Fane brushed its ears which made Anchorage pull back. Fane whispered, or more like hummed, into the side of Anchorage’s face. I felt like there was dirt in my nose; so grainy that I squeezed my nostrils together, but that only drove the muddy smell up behind my eyes.

I didn’t actually touch the skin, but held my hand an inch away from it then scanned my palm along the wealthy body. That was pretty close for me. I wouldn’t have bothered for any better, but I noticed this discolored patch, a circle little bigger than my fist, between a pair of ribs. I touched this and when I did yelped so loud I bet the Grand Tetons heard me.

— Shut up! Did she clip you?

— Your cow is made of plastic, I said. Did you know that?

She laughed even before reaching me which made my face flush; I put my hands over my mouth less out of surprise than a need to conceal my shame. I didn’t know what else to say to her; there was a fist-sized black plastic cap in the cow’s side.

— That’s what I mean, I said when she stood next to me. I snapped one knuckle against the little plastic disk. Then Fane unscrewed it.

It came out of the animal like a gas cap from a car. I moved my hands from my mouth to cover my eyes because I thought blood or the acids of four stomachs would shoot out. She said, — Don’t be scared.

With the top pulled out, this eighty thousand pound mammal stood calmly in the parking lot; there was an open tunnel leading inside.

— Did you do that to her? I asked.

— I didn’t, but I would have.

— Don’t you like Anchorage?

— I love our animals.

— How many do you have?

— Six more Holsteins. Two sow.

— Do they all have that plastic tube in them?

— Of course not. The other cows produce milk fine. Anchorage is the one who can’t. It was to help her. We can put a hand in there to make sure she’s digesting her food. We thought that might be the problem.

— Let me put my hand in there?

— What do you think is going to happen?

I felt an urge toward honesty. — Magic?

I should have been wearing a long glove before putting my hand in there, that’s what Fane told me. I took off my jacket, rolled the sleeve. The way this worked was to push my hand through the opening. There were a few inches of plastic like the inside of a straw. When my arm went in to the elbow I’d reached a wet stomach; I rubbed my fingers against the walls. I wanted to find a bar of gold inside.

— AnnEstelle does that as a trick sometimes. When she’s causing a stir in front of restaurants. She pulls a doll’s head the size of a baseball out of Anchorage’s stomach and she waves it at the people watching. It’s to make them think about what they’re eating.

— Does it work?

— It makes people vomit.

— Right into their laps? I asked. Disgusted, but excited to imagine that.

— Then I have to come get Anchorage because the police usually collect my sister.

I tried to reach deeper into the cow. I wanted to touch the other side of her wide stomach just so I’d know it was there. Without grazing that far point my hand only felt like it was floating in humid weather.

— How long have you been cleaning up after her?

— I can’t remember when I didn’t.

When living in Ithaca only I suffered my messes. An unwashed body or the brass-band argument I had with a Wegman’s supermarket manager about sneaking one box of soda crackers down my pants.

— AnnEstelle apologizes all the time, Fane explained.

— Is that good enough for you?

— Depends on what she put me through the day before.

Nabisase was probably waiting at the car with arms crossed and very little confidence in me. I have the keys, I thought. I should go and let her in.

Our car entered the city limits of Lumpkin, Virginia, at one in the morning with the four of us asleep inside. I certainly wasn’t driving, just keeping the steering wheel warm. Our seven-hour trip had lasted ten. At least, while our eyes were closed, there were fewer complications to life.

When settlers were first tracking across the American Midwest they’d discard big furniture like dressers or great wooden headboards when their horses were near death. When settlers stopped believing they’d reach their destination the littered frontier trails became furniture showrooms. Other travelers following after must have wondered why’d they leave this here and not twenty yards farther; why not ten miles back? What reason?

This was sort of how we reached Lumpkin. Like many explorers before us we stopped when our vehicle went off the plotted path.

Luckily I was in the slow lane of I-81 so we just listed right onto the grassy shoulder. The new white car was one of those rounded models with no real corners or edges and must have looked like a giant commode from far away. I woke when the bumpy earth shook our car. As I drove over to the actual interstate exit I felt like everyone in the world was asleep but me.

— That was dangerous, my sister whispered.

Lumpkin was an acorn-shaped town of 20,000. The only hotels were just off the interstate at the rounded bottom end. It was the Comfort Inn for the Miss Innocence contestants and two family members. A relaxed, two-story affair shaped like the letter U. While my family registered at the front desk I pack-muled the suitcases and gowns into the lobby.

Pageant rules stipulated that I stay in a different hotel. Fathers were the only men allowed. They were very serious about keeping virtue in the Miss Innocence pageant. So much so that they wanted my sister to sign a contract.

Nabisase might have liked Mom to read it over, but Mom was carrying Grandma to the elevator because she couldn’t walk on her own.

Grandma took a squashing at that McDonald’s riot. Underfoot as my arm was in a cow. Her hip popped audibly when she tried to walk from the car into the Comfort Inn.

I suggested a hospital, but Grandma wanted the pain. Used it.

— If we had not been making stops I would not be harmed, she’d said in the last stretch before Lumpkin.

— Let us reach town so the granddaughter can get to bed.

To atone Mom hefted Grandma from the car into the Comfort Inn and to the elevator and their room. We fastened my grandmother to my mother’s back by using my jacket like a tourniquet; tied together at the middle.