Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

The voice dipped and soared like something hunting in an endless sky over a secretly teeming field. Then it dropped. It became light, confident, intimate.

“Mr. Bobby loves you,” the voice said. “Mr. Bobby has heard it all and he still loves you, each and every one. Now if you want to help Mr. Bobby reach others, lonely as yourself, just send on a little something. It need not be cash. You all know where Mr. Bobby is … Don’t be frightened at the silence that will follow now. Mr. Bobby is just on the other side of it and you can reach him anytime.”

The man with one arm was standing midway between the store and the phone booth, squinting at her.

“Ain’t he something,” he called. “You can get hooked on Mr. Bobby.”

“I don’t believe I want to,” Liberty said. “There are too many hooks around as it is.”

“I like to think of him as just being a voice, you know, not attached to nothing. You wouldn’t want to swap that dog there for my deer, would you? I need me a dog out here.”

“No,” Liberty said.

“Deer’s name is Elfina. She’s survived three assassination attempts by asshole hunters. Sure you don’t want to swap? She’s lucky. She’ll bring you luck.”

The deer stood watching them from the cage, flicking its gnat-gnawed ears.

“What’s that dog’s name?”

“Clem.”

“Not much of a name there. Where you off to anyway?”

“We’re off for a swim.” It seemed unlikely. She started out of the booth.

“I can’t believe you ain’t moved by Mr. Bobby. Here, try another one. My treat. The number of your choice.” He removed a coin carefully from his pocket.

Liberty dropped the coin in, dialed. “Thirty-nine,” she said.

“A later one!” he crowed. “Mr. Bobby really hits his stride with the later ones!”

With a click, the voice began. “Wanting,” it said lazily. “You got Wanting and Loving here. You want what you don’t got, which is the definition of wanting, and you love your clean kitchen floor don’t you or you love your blow and you want that clean kitchen floor to be cleaner still and you want more blow, and Mr. Bobby is not going to be the one to pardon you this nasty wanting and false loving. You don’t call Mr. Bobby for pardon, do you, no you don’t. You call Mr. Bobby because you suspect he’s got the ways and means to your damaged and enfeebled heart, and you know that Mr. Bobby don’t want a thing, just what you want to give—”

“Lemme hear now!” the man cried. He used the empty space of his gone arm artfully. Liberty felt its weight as he pushed past and grabbed the receiver from her. His face was full of expectation.

Liberty and Clem walked along the path through palmetto scrub to Buttonwood Beach. It was a pretty path, but toilet paper dangled from branches and there were several abandoned campsites with their nests of charred stumps and blackened cans. It was quiet in the pine and palmetto wood and the path was empty now, though obviously well traveled. Ahead, the Gulf was like a window placed between the dusty thatch of palms. The Gulf seemed swollen the same color as the sky and the beach lightened and darkened as long waves fell upon it then drew back. Liberty stared toward the Pass almost a mile away. It was narrow but fast-running, and from where she stood the severance between the Keys was barely visible. They startled plovers and terns working the shore into flight as they moved along, but a great blue heron standing hunched near the Pass remained motionless. As they came closer to it, Liberty saw that it was emaciated, fishing line tangled around its neck and head. The pale blue monofilament lay like fine cracks across its beak, and dangled down its neck in the long feathers there. Small twigs were caught in the line’s snarled end, even a shard of dark shell. The heron turned slowly and fixed Liberty with its yellow eye, but still it did not move. Liberty stopped, then inched forward. The heron shifted weakly, dipping its head and raising one leg to claw briefly at its beak.

A smaller heron, a green one, zigzagged toward them, then alarmed, veered chattering away. The blue stood like sticks a child had carelessly arranged. She should pass it by, she knew, for she possessed nothing with which to free it, yet she pulled her sweatshirt off and held it only for an instant before she rushed the bird, throwing the shirt over its head, clutching at its wings, trying to enclose its length in her arms. Its beak felt like an iron striking her with heat, its long bones felt like brittle grasses. She smelled the nutty, parched smell of dying on it as it flailed at her, making hoarse, barking sounds. The shovel of its chest glistened and was hot beneath her hands. She pushed its wings back close to its body, dragging the sweatshirt away from its head to bind them, and pressed the bird as lightly as she could against the cold sand. She leaned against its breast which rose in scatterings, like pebbles being thrown, and began picking away at the line with her fingers. She looked at the flecks of darkness in the bird’s bright eyes and felt that the moment was already over, that she was remembering it, that this was the moment that there had been just before it had become hopeless. The baggy line dug painfully into her fingers as she tried to snap it, then it suddenly broke. The heron’s head struggled back, the feathers beneath the broken line’s turnings frayed and damp. She was able to unravel several feet of the line, but there was so much of it, webbed and snarled like the matter glimpsed in some dreadful drain. Suddenly, the heron lunged, bringing its beak up and across Liberty’s cheek, tearing out of her grasp. Her hand slipped over its slick back, and then, with a last surge of strength, it was flying, its legs dangling, nicking the water, its long neck extended, trailing still the crippling line. Liberty held her hand to her face. She expected blood but there was no blood. The heron flew to Long Key.

She remembered a poem she knew as a child about an injured hawk who was able to fly only in his dreams. The child in her remembered everything.

She felt sleepy with failure and watched the rolling waters of the Pass without enthusiasm. The mist of early morning was rising, and she could see the silver Ts of docks on the sheltered side of Long Key. A red boathouse glimmered on water that looked flat and wooden.

There were scratches on Liberty’s arms, embalmed by drying salt, and her lips tasted of salt. Clem lay in streamers of railroad vine close by. When she stood up, he rose and trotted toward her.

They stepped into the water, let the water suck them down. Liberty opened her eyes and saw the emptiness of the water moving her. She couldn’t see herself, but felt her limbs aching dully, her eyes burning. Her body held her back, she felt its stubborn weight. It’s all a misunderstanding, she thought, like almost everything. The speed of the water was terrific. Her shoulder ground against sand and then she was flung upward and floating in calm yet moving water curving toward Long Key. She wanted to fix on something, a tree, the way the land fell, something that would remind her of something else. It had not been too far a distance, but she felt somewhat ahead of her body. Her body seemed to be behind her, still holding hard to nothing in the quick water. This is remarkable, she thought, the air, the muted sun … Her body caught her with a jolt. She coughed and shaking the water from her eyes, she saw Clem already waiting for her on the shore.

Liberty climbed from the water and sat for a moment, catching her breath. She wore only a bathing suit and a pair of shorts. She took the shorts off and wrung the water from them. Her arms and face stung from the scratches the heron had made. She felt afraid, and it was not a belated fear of the bird’s fierce beak but of the moment that had brought it to be doomed on such a fine morning, the moment that is the fatal one, which lies close and cold next to each thing’s heart.