Joy Williams: Breaking and Entering

“It was a biological curiosity, I’m not saying it was a spiritual curiosity.”

“Perfluorocarbons,” Charlie said.

“It resembled mother’s milk. Course it wasn’t mother’s milk at all.” Mr. Bobby finished his drink. “This is some night, isn’t it? This is my night off.” He dandled the baby and whispered, “You ain’t ever, ever going to see.”

“I’m sure advances will be made,” Charlie said.

“I thought we already cleared that misconception up. No reason the blind should see. You blinder than this. No reason you should see either.” Swiftly he plucked the baby from the slant board and lowered it down to Clem. The baby’s feet scrabbled against Clem’s skull. “You want this, don’t you, honey,” Mr. Bobby sang as the baby made little fretful cries. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that you people are questioning the right this child has to this animal.”

“You’re upset,” Charlie said. “I can understand that.”

“Don’t you humor me, you redneck son of a bitch,” Mr. Bobby said.

“We’d better be moving along,” Charlie said, “much as we would love to linger here.”

“That be fine, that be fine, but you just leave that box right here.”

“You’re living in a world of unreal objects, man,” Charlie said.

“This blood right here,” Mr. Bobby said, nodding at Clem. “This baby food, he be Box.”

“His name’s Clem,” Charlie said. “He doesn’t stay here.”

“I’m the one who’s naming. I name this and I name that.”

“But as all we who wish otherwise well know,” Charlie said, “naming something doesn’t make it yours.”

“For example,” Mr. Bobby said, “I name you a Man in Deep Trouble.”

“Nah,” Charlie said.

“Oh, yes. I name your past hopeless, your present an excrescence and your future dismal. No, my boy, the future ain’t gonna lift her skirts for you.” He shook a cigarette from a pack and offered it to Charlie.

“Why, thanks,” Charlie said.

“I done passed my judgment,” Mr. Bobby said.

“Oh, come on, man,” Charlie said.

Mr. Bobby lit the cigarette from a bright little package of matches. “You’re just a little flame,” he said, “and when it’s over for you, you just add your little flame to the big flame. It’s not that you feed the big flame, oh my, no, the big flame don’t need feeding, it’s just that your little light ain’t separate no more. Isn’t that nice?” He blew the match out.

“Bye, now,” Charlie said.

“Good-bye,” Mr. Bobby said. He waved the baby’s closed fist at them.

Charlie and Liberty walked out the door with Clem. Liberty could not believe that Mr. Bobby was not following them, waving the baby like a gun. Outside, the bay was smelling poorly and wheezing against the seawall. A yard boy with large, bare feet stood in a phone booth. “Ahh, honey,” he was saying into the receiver. His eyes were fixed, rather glassily, on his remarkable feet.

“What an episode, what an episode,” Charlie said. “That guy’s been coming in regular the last few nights. He’s alarming, but he never really does anything, you know. Brings that poor little baby in.” He shook his head. “Can’t choose our fans though, right?” he said to Clem. He took a deep breath. “So this is the world as seen when sober! What’s that awful smell? Is it that unfortunate body of water? I never knew it smelled like that. Why, that’s odious. Closest smell to that is skinned nutrias in the bayou when I was a little boy.”

Liberty stroked Clem’s head. “I think that was Mr. Bobby,” she said. “The voice who gives advice over the telephone. The presence on the other side of lonely silence.”

“You know his name? You are acquainted with some strange cases.”

“I know, I know,” she said softly. “There’s something wrong with me.”

“No, doll, no. You just have to open up.”

“You never got Mr. Bobby sometime when you were trying to call me? People have.”

“I got a woman once who said ‘what number,’ and I thought I had dialed the bookie so I put ten on Beach-Nut in the eighth. Horse came in, too, a real long shot, but I never got a cent.” He hugged her. “Forget him,” he said. “He’s just someone with a new con.”

“People call him,” Liberty said. “People need him.”

“That guy! People are weak vessels all right.”

A playful breeze pushed against them from the bay. It raised their shirts and their hair.

“Feel that spanking breeze,” Charlie said. “And look at that moon. I point out the moon in all its phases a lot. Can you get used to that? It takes my mind off real estate.”

There was a big red moon, full as a blood-filled tick, hanging overhead.

“Nice moon,” he said. “Nice moon.”

It was clear to Liberty that it was a somewhat alarming-looking moon.

“That moon influences only the feckless and the confused, actually,” Charlie said. “Doesn’t have a thing to do with us.”

“Please just drive me home so I can find Teddy,” Liberty said. When she found him, she thought, she would take him out of the hated house and up into the tree, the untouched tree, nothing cut or broken there. But even as she imagined the ascent into the rustling darkness, she knew they could not stay there, be there. Mustn’t climb the tree, or be a part of the shadows, mustn’t put one’s shape into the wrong, waiting, cradling, carriage …

“We’re on our way, but what’s this ‘home’? Our home’s not built yet, but I see it as languorously asymmetrical. Lots of galleries. No greasy windows for us. And there’ll be a garden, of course. Bright and beautiful and not too big, but big enough for a touch of the gloomy, which will add to its charms. But that’s a long way off still. We travel first. Tonight we all camp out in the car, eat Jelly Nellys, tickle and sing. Travel. There’s nothing like it. This becomes that. I love travel.”

Men and women thronged out of the Gator. Two half-naked yard boys with Mohawk haircuts flung themselves into a truck from which ladders hung haphazardly. These yard boys loved plants but they loved to get drunk too. Plants liked to be danced around and talked to, but they deeply disapproved of idle drunkenness. The yard boys would have some explaining to do in the morning! They would have more to worry about than butt rot, slugs, snails, orangedogs and pickle worms. Their plants would be furious. The orchids were the real problem, they were so moody and neurotic. Real hysterics, orchids … The yard boys looked at Clem sheepishly.

Mr. Bobby stood at the door, holding the baby over his head like a waiter holding a tray.

“I don’t know why that man is so vexed at me,” Charlie said. “I’m a bitty bit black. Those Cajun kings had lots of wives.”

The parking lot was as full as the bar had been. More cars and motorcycles were arriving by the moment to replace those that screeched forth into the moon-fixed night. A cement truck lumbered up, its mixer turning, the driver leaping out, hitching up his trousers, giving a tug to his nuts, ready to go and make a few toasts to JJ and perserverance. He went around the truck to help his lady down, a fat woman with a pretty face who leaned against the huge bumper while she put on her high-heeled shoes. They both patted the truck as they left, as though it were a sweet-tempered Clydesdale horse, and high-stepped nimbly into the bar, avoiding the beer cans, lost lace hankies, the little puddles of vomit and engine oil.

“Oh, how that goopy loves to turn,” Charlie said as they passed the somberly rotating thing. “Doesn’t want to settle down yet … Look, you can see the flukes of my Caddy from here.”

Liberty could, indeed, see a conspicuous car. All licentious thrust, sweep and hunker, from a distance the Cadillac looked as though it had wings. Their headlights swinging like things in orbit, cars moved around the parking lot’s peripheries. Closer, the sight of Charlie’s car seemed to come in hard, lopsided glimpses as though she had begun to blink. The hump of trunk. Raised runnels of the roof. Wide whitewalls. A man standing. It was Duane standing. Tilted toward the Cadillac, his head bowed meditatively.