Joy Williams: Breaking and Entering

Without hanging up the receiver, Liberty put the phone beneath the cushion. She felt a certain diminishment. She looked at herself — breasts, belly, legs — in amazement. Still there. Although she felt that large portions of her had been carried off like so many mouthfuls. She could have been born in a dish.

Clem stood in the room with his eyes shut, dozing like a horse. Yes, she felt herself reduced, small, growing smaller. With a little more effort on the part of others and a bit of inattention on her own, she would be the size to climb upon her white dog’s back and ride away, ride madly away, in full career through the rest of life without stopping.

Everyone has their form of transport. She supposed the point was not to use it, not to use it as long as possible. Keep sending the taxi of robin’s egg blue away.

The phone emitted a frantic, muffled signal. She pushed the cushion to the floor and replaced the receiver. There was a moment of silence as though the thing were catching an outraged breath, and then it rang.

“Who is this!” a woman’s voice demanded when Liberty answered. In the background were shrieks, groans and laughter. “I was dialing Mr. Bobby. They haven’t stopped Mr. Bobby have they? Has someone murdered him! Why is it always the good who are cut down, why …”

It was Sally’s voice that Liberty recognized.

“Sally,” she said. “What’s the matter, Sally?”

“Liberty, is that you? I was just about to call you. I was calling Mr. Bobby for a little pick-me-up. They’ve eliminated the human intercessor, and now you don’t even have to ask for anything specific. The tapes just run on, and you’re able to tap in where fate will have you tap.”

“What’s all that noise?” There were wails followed by loud percussion.

“This is the night of the party at the Gator. It’s just the ol’ Gator bawling. It’s JJ’s homecoming party, remember I said? You’ve got to come over here right away.”

“I can’t Sally. I just can’t tonight.”

“Duane was in here with Teddy. They were looking for you. I think Duane wanted you to keep the little boy for a while or something. Give him to you? I was barbecuing the chicken wings, I couldn’t really follow it.”

“Give him to me? Duane can’t give me Teddy.”

“He was giving things away. He gave away his watch. He’s wild because his lady left him, I think.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t see them here now but the place is jammed. The Gator’s jumping like the old days.” She laughed. “Things will be out of control any minute.”

“Maybe they went home. I’ve got to call them.”

“I’ll hang up,” Sally said.

No one at Duane’s house answered the phone. Liberty let it ring. She paced back and forth, trailing the long cord of it. On the sofa, the paper doodle lay. There was the worm, proceeding zealously over the razor blade, with faith and will, increasingly in pieces. She paced, passing a mirror. She was sunburnt, her hair was tangled. She thought she looked alarming. She left the phone still ringing, tugged off her bathing suit and put on clean clothes. She pulled a brush through her hair. You can’t think straight when your head’s in tangles , Willie’s mother had said, long ago.

Willie had gone and entered someone’s life now. He had entered someone’s life because he couldn’t find his own anymore. He would have lived in her life, she realized, had she not lost hers as well. He had to live somewhere. They had lost their lives beneath the damaged trees years ago. She could still see the dappled light of that morning. It was the way she had seen everything since, stained and scattered.

She went outside and stood with Clem beneath the coolness of the banyan, feeling the sweat dry on her throat. In Duane’s house, the phone rang tirelessly. Far away on a connection that had been made, people were speaking, linked through other lines.

I read how he died , someone said. It said, ‘He yawned and then he died.’

The street was quiet, dark with trees. In the sky, a small plane droned overhead, its lights twinkling merrily, heading inland, away from the blankness of the Gulf. Sally’s old Volvo, one headlight out, turned a corner toward them.

“I thought I saw the oddest thing, but it was just your dog,” she called. “I came to get you. I figured if they weren’t here, they must be there, and I just missed seeing them. It seems like the whole town’s in the Gator tonight.” She pushed the door open for Liberty. “Look at the T-shirts JJ had made. Aren’t they great!” Sally’s T-shirt said SHIT HAPPENS. “He had a couple hundred made.”

“JJ has a lot of style,” Liberty said.

“He does. I could never fall for another guy. I was worrying about being autonomous, but I realize I’m really autonomous because I take care of him. It’s going to be a twenty-five-hour-day job which is great by me. I had too much idle time before. I was on the verge of being bored. Mr. Bobby says it is hip to serve. Mr. Bobby says just about everything on those tapes. You get to pick and choose. I’ve learned I’m the nursey type. See these hands …”—she held up her large hands, rimmed red with barbecue sauce—“… these hands are nurse’s hands.”

Clem had pushed his way into the backseat. Liberty sat in the front and shut the door.

“That dog makes me almost remember something,” Sally said. “It’s the funniest feeling. Could I brush his coat sometime?”

“He’s not shedding,” Liberty said. “He won’t leave hair in your car.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Sally said. “This old car, who cares. I’d just like to brush out his coat sometime.”

“All right,” Liberty said.

“Just brush it and brush it.” Sally sounded puzzled. She put the Volvo in gear and they creaked off.

T he Gator Bar was on the bay. In the near distance were mangrove islands white with cormorant droppings. The bar was small and dark and its parking lot was vast and dark. There were a number of yard boys’ trucks there, parked at carefree angles, battered big Dodges with rainbow decals, heaped with dead branches and yellowing fronds. In the bar, on a long stage at the rear, they were having a bathing suit contest. Scrawny yard boys strutted in tiny trunks. The place reeked of beer, barbecue, Sevin, and yard boy sweat. Two women crowded in behind Liberty and Sally, looked around in a pantomime of horror, and left.

“It’s just the way JJ likes it,” Sally yelled, “crowded and crazy.”

Next to the bar, in a little enclosure like a child’s playpen, JJ sat in a wheelchair surrounded by well-wishers. He was drinking beer with a straw.

Clem sat with his tail swept tightly around him so that it wouldn’t get stepped on. Two men and a woman sitting on nearby stools stared at him. The woman wore a white jumpsuit. From her earlobes hung the little hands of Barbie dolls, around her throat was a Ken head on a chain.

“I’m going to buy that dog a drink,” one of the men announced.

The other man snickered. “That year I was working in Corpus as an orderly?” he said. “I come out of the hospital one night, and in the parking lot was a dog like that lying beside a Trans Am and chewing on a human finger.”

“Dog like this one here?” the other man said.

He nodded. “Might have weighed a little less.”

The woman raised the Ken head and tapped it against her teeth. Ken’s mouth was set in a tiny smile. “A human finger,” she marveled. “Where would that have come from?”

“It could have come from anywheres,” the man from Corpus said.

“Maybe bit off in a fight or something,” the other man said. “Poor bastard comes running in with it wrapped in a handkerchief and he drops the sonofabitch.”