Joy Williams: Breaking and Entering

“Hey, Duane, hey man, what are you doing?” Charlie said. “Man, you are pissing on my car! ”

Industrious as an ant, Duane continued to empty himself. He hummed a little, snarled, shook his head, dealing with various faithless, unreliable, cheating phantoms in his mind. Oh, he had them where he wanted them now … they weren’t going to get out of this … He had them in his mind . They weren’t going nowhere . The piss raced puddling down the fender, winked like any mirage, and then vanished into the marl. He grunted and stumbled sideways as Charlie pushed him.

“This is my car! ” Charlie yelled. Duane lurched backward, zipping up, fumbling with his shirt, as Charlie swatted irritably at him.

Duane looked confused, then his face turned empty and he propelled himself forward, striking Charlie’s body flatly with his own, his arms not windmilling out but folded cocked, close to his sides. Liberty heard a soft sound.

When Duane drew back, Charlie stared at him.

“Oh, shit,” Duane said.

Charlie looked preoccupied.

“I stabbed you, man,” Duane said.

Charlie moved his hand slowly in front of his stomach, not touching it. He buttoned his jacket up. He touched his jaw, throat, chest, thoughtfully.

“Ahh, shit,” Duane said. He wiped the blade of the knife on his knee and a rusty streak appeared on his faded jeans. Charlie watched this and a smile flickered uncertainly across his face. Then he frowned.

Liberty pulled at the car door, which was locked.

“I knew I shouldn’t be carrying this shit around,” Duane said. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s a big mistake for a guy like me to carry a knife around as a matter of course. This is hardly a knife, it’s just a fish knife, you know. I ain’t never stabbed anybody before, you got to believe that. You might think I have, but I haven’t. I wouldn’t hurt you, man. I forgot this was your car. This is a new car of yours, right? I just forgot to recognize it. I thought it was some smartass’s car.”

Duane chattered away.

“Where are the keys, Charlie,” Liberty said.

“I was some drunk but now I’m sober. Wow,” Duane said, “this can really sober you up.”

“It’s not locked, doll, the door’s just jammed. Go around and slide over and you can open it from the inside.”

Liberty quickly did this.

“You can get out, but you can’t get in,” Charlie said. “A token of our times. Move over now, doll, I’ll drive. I know where to go.” He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and continued to stare at Duane as he eased himself into the seat. Duane tossed the knife underhand onto the floor mat at Charlie’s feet, then raised his hands in an odd gesture of surrender and innocence. Charlie pulled the door shut, coughed, winced, and started the motor. It caught, rattled, then died. He started it again.

“That engine’s tired,” Duane said. “What’s it got on it? One hundred fifteen? One hundred twenty-five? You got blowby, man. The state should pay you for the oil you’re going to be laying on the road.”

Charlie sat very straight, sweating, his jacket buttoned up. He eased the big car forward.

“You should have that looked at,” Duane called.

“Feculent little bastard,” Charlie said. “Get me a beer, Liberty. Ol’ Charlie needs a beer. There’s a cooler in the back.”

The backseat was full of things. Blankets and pillows and books, a lantern, cartons taped shut, a red ice chest tipped on top of everything. Everything had been prepared for a trip. A change of venue , Liberty thought. The words pressed gibbering through her mind. She later would think that nothing seemed to be missing there. Nothing unusual . Her hands moved around the bottles and picked up shards of ice. She ran them across Charlie’s lips.

“You can’t drink anything,” she said, her voice trembling. “You’ve been stabbed. You mustn’t drink.”

He sucked on a piece of ice.

“Imagine me trying to quit drinking today,” Charlie said.

“Where are you cut? Is it deep?”

“I don’t know anything about the human body. Kidneys, pancreas, liver, intestines, who knows where all that stuff is … It’s just a scratch. ‘ ’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man …’ Mercutio. Romeo and Juliet . Isn’t that something? My head’s clear as a bell.”

They moved with majestic slowness down the highway, passing a motel which had a pink neon flamingo with a curved neck rising from the roof. The flamingo’s pink stomach said NO VACANCY. Outside a lighting store where all the lamps were lit, two bums slept on flattened cardboard.

“We’re driving too slow,” Liberty said. “Let me do the gas.” The hospital was miles away.

The Cadillac slowed further. “I’m looking for something,” Charlie said. He looked at her and smiled, his eyes blurred and dark. “Now, be calm,” he said. “My daddy always said, Be calm. He said it when we were all sitting around in the trailer while a hurricane was picking up pieces of Bayou Teche and setting them down in Bayou Louise. The whole affair put our trailer in the treetops, broke my momma’s jaw and almost drowned me, but my drunk daddy didn’t get a scratch.”

“Don’t talk,” she said, putting her arm around his hunched shoulders.

“This isn’t the desert. Or maybe it is. Could be my desert, my desolate outside, my never-never … Here it is, this is what I was looking for. I knew it was here.”

It was an unmanned car wash, twinkling and flashing with beckoning lights in the pale night. Charlie turned in, eased the car around a corner, deftly locked the front wheels into a set of tracks, and turned off the engine.

“What are you doing?” Liberty cried. “There isn’t time for this …”

The tunnel was a dripping spectacle ahead.

“I’ve just got to get that guy’s piss off my car, doll. Dog’d understand that. Piss on what’s yours cannot be tolerated. You know, in King Lear , three dogs are named. Their names are Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart. This is true.” He reached slowly for his wallet, pulled out a bill and lay it on the tongue of a squat machine. The tongue tugged the bill backward between thin lips. “Five bucks, but it’s worth it,” Charlie said. “This place does a thorough job.”

The big car inched forward. Liberty sat rigidly, not looking back because she would then see what wasn’t there. Clem was not in the car.

She tried to place him behind her, tried to fix, hold, imagine him there, but she could not. She could only imagine a prom cummerbund of red widening, hidden beneath Charlie’s coat — blood welling slowly from a gash, like something living, once imprisoned, not yet aware it was no longer enslaved to running the same dark, concealed circuits.

“Out of the vague, lazy web of life into the chute, hey doll,” Charlie said.

Water pounded against the car and its windows darkened. A ball of colored rags humped up the Cadillac’s hood and floated heavily against the windshield, writhing there for an instant before it slipped upward and disappeared. There was a whooshing roar and pummel, and a spray of warm water fell upon her bare knee. She twisted the triangular vent-window shut.

Soap blew at them in rattling beads.

“I’ve got everything right here with me,” Charlie said. “I really moved out today. It’s funny, I didn’t leave a paper clip behind, I swept that room clean, I wiped it down with an old wet shirt. Everything’s whole and just behind me. Files are complete, photographs in order, every cap has got a bottle, every sock a mate, all the pencils are sharpened. Nothing is broken, everything’s full, books in their jackets. It’s all here, it all works except for me. Oh, doll, I’m sorry, I feel weak as puppy water. It was a bad sign, a cancerous impulse, trying to start over, change my life, clean everything up. I’ve always been a clean person, though. My body’s clean, almost hairless except for my head. I could have been a clean old man with a little raked yard, oil cloth on the table always wiped, a small, well-groomed pullet as a pet. What do you think? The gift is inexplicable, isn’t it … I mean, what are you supposed to do with the damned thing …” Brushes churned against the glass. Charlie coughed. “I think the little bastard killed me,” he said.