Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

At last, everything in the boy that might have been called inspiration, precocity, or sturdiness abandoned him. He dropped the walking staff and fled down the slick driveway in a frenzied panic, like a spooked child, overwhelmed with terror.

XI

The world was in thaw and overcast with gray silence, as if a hard exterior had dissolved to reveal a soft, damp pulp. Ralph stood in his front lawn, his hands in the pockets of his open pea coat, his eyes fixed on the dark house. He stood for a long time, before he finally went inside and stood in the kitchen. All the cabinet doors were open; all the shelves were empty. The kitchen table was missing, the counter tops clear, and the walls barren. Although the blinds remained on the windows, there were no curtains. Ralph, now only in a white tee-shirt and jeans, stood before the sink and gripped its edge, as if he feared he was about to fall over or vomit. Eventually, he stepped away and shuffled into another emptied room. He muttered to himself, or maybe to someone else, possibly recalling words or composing them.

“First, you taught me love, and now you taught me heartache,” he said several times, his voice no louder than a whisper, tender, and remorseful. “I feel like you died. This is death. Your leaving is death.”

Abruptly, he sat down in the center of the family room, on the carpet, and stared blankly. All his past rigidity vanished, as if his bones were soft and his muscles were loose and gelatinous beneath his skin. As darkness began to creep into the house, he continued to sit. After a while, he slouched further and further, until he was lying curled up on the floor. It was nighttime when he finally got up. In the kitchen, he turned on the light, walked straight to the counter, and began to open the drawers. He seemed as though he expected to find something, but the drawers were empty, save for a plastic tray that separated utensils. He lifted a roll of paper towels from the wall and pulled out the wooden dowel.

Outside, a floodlight, which was attached to the corner of the house, came on and shone upon the driveway. The station-wagon sat beneath a canopy of barren tree limbs. The cellar windows then lit up along the base of the house, and shortly Ralph appeared from around the back of the house. He carried the wooden dowel like a hammer. Despite the cold, he still wore only the tee-shirt. He strode swiftly toward the car and beat the back door an abrupt blow with the wooden dowel. He stepped back, stared steadily at the car, as if challenging it somehow, and then struck it a second time. His breath hung gray in the air before his mouth. He began to pant, short, quick, halting breaths. He stooped and placed his free hand on his knee. Panting, he stared at the back of the station-wagon. The floodlight shone all around him, overexposing him in artificial light, his flesh washed to the same pallor as his tee-shirt. When he beat the back door again, the dowel splintered in his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice; his attention was upon the car. Eventually, his breathing came under control, and he stood up straight, erect, with the rigidity of his other self. He took his car keys out of his pants pocket and stepped up to the back of the car. The keys remained in the lock as the hatch sprung open. He quickly pulled out a loose tire and let it drop to the ground, where it wobbled a few times, in a brief struggle with animation or life, and then collapsed all at once. The back of the car appeared empty, but Ralph pulled up the piece of floor panel that normally concealed the spare tire. No sooner, a bundle of blankets — bound in cords — began to flop as Ralph tugged it out of the tire compartment and let it drop onto the gravel driveway. He started to beat the moving mass with the dowel. The thing struggled all the more and began to screech. Ralph stepped back as the bundle twisted and flopped. Without a word, he watched the strange spectacle until the wrapped body eventually calmed down and the screeching ceased. Ralph was standing erect, composed, but his rigidity wasn’t as solid as it was brittle, ready to snap. As soon as the bundle became still, Ralph approached it, stepping slowly, then squatting, and placing his hand gently upon it. Save for its small, quick breaths, the body remained motionless as Ralph touched it. Apparently, he was feeling for the head because when he came to it, he began to unravel the blanket until a clump of hair was exposed. Even though the boy wasn’t moving, Ralph put his left hand upon the boy’s head, to steady it, to keep it still, while he raised his other hand, wielding the dowel like a hammer. When he swung, in an attempt to bring the dowel down upon the boy’s skull, the swift motion severed the already splintered rod, so Ralph was holding only a stub. His striking hand missed the back of the boy’s head and smashed into gravel. Undaunted, as if he’d expected the dowel suddenly to break, Ralph stood up and dropped the stub. His hand was bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. The boy wasn’t moving; perhaps he was still waiting for the blow. Perhaps he wasn’t waiting for anything. When Ralph went back to the car and took the tire iron out of the wheel compartment, as if he’d known all along where it was and that he would be using it at this precise moment — the boy, still mostly bundled, wormed and flopped his way beneath the car. Ralph — not looking at the boy, but at the back corner of the house, where the flood light shone sharp and white — reached down and grabbed the boy by the ankle, pulling him out from beneath the car, and dragging him along the gravel. All the while the boy screeched, but now the strange sound was almost mechanical, an involuntary reaction that had nothing to do with fear or pain, and Ralph — panting again, though he didn’t move like a panting man, but rather as if he, too, were mechanical — placed his knee upon the bundled form, so the boy was face down in the driveway as Ralph raised the tire iron — not actually looking at the back of the boy’s head, but at some indistinct space just above or beyond the boy’s head — but then, all at once, Ralph’s pants became deep and violent, so he was now gasping as his body began to tremble and his upraised hand became limp and dropped to his side. Ralph’s body appeared to be revolting against itself. His gasping gave way to heaving and heaving, until he heaved dry and harsh, and he heaved again, his face strained and awful, the veins at his temples like deep fractures in his skull, and now this time when he heaved, something inside his stomach became unsettled, and with his heaving, something — black and stringy and rancid — bubbled out of this throat and landed upon the gravel. Even so, he continued to heave, although there was nothing left inside of him, not even bile.

XII

There were three boys now, coming down the center of the street, with Ray in the lead and another boy, who was fatter and shorter, walking a girl’s bicycle with a pink frame and a white basket attached to the handlebars, and inside the basket sat a brown grocery bag, at which the third boy — the one who had abandoned Ray earlier — kept glancing, as though he feared the bag might fall out onto the pavement, and this boy was carrying a video camera strapped to his palm and aimed up the street, as the three of them walked, approaching a commotion of cars and a small pack of people standing on the sidewalk across from Kyle’s house. The boys drifted from the center of the road to the sidewalk, although the fat, short boy walked along the curb, pushing the bike beside him. When they came to the nearest police car, Ray looked at it, and the boy with the camera followed Ray’s gaze, so he was now filming the two policemen who stood near the back of the car. The boys stopped just behind the policemen and taped their backs. The two men didn’t turn around and see the boys, apparently not realizing that they were there. One of the men was drinking a cup of coffee and looking up at the house.