Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

Behind that one a starry night.

Behind that one a clear June day.

Behind that one a forest.

Behind that one a castle wall.

Behind that one a blank white cloth, perhaps symbolizing a snowstorm, or the bleak perfection of paradise, or only an unfinished backdrop. He lets them fall back into place. The sun sets again.

He shouts. The dust shivers. He does it again.

He shivers too. It’s cold here.

He goes to a coat rack and takes down a shirt from one of its many wooden bulbs. It is a simple cotton shirt, no collar, no buttons, no pockets. Only sleeves. It fits him nicely, which makes him suspect it was an element of a larger, more complicated costume; there was no one here stayed fat long enough to star in any play. He smells his sleeves, and the shirt’s breast. First the smell of time, of stale air and busy microbes. Behind that a chalky smoke smell: skunk tobacco. Behind that, the cotton itself. Hints of the man or men who wore this before him. These were real people that lived here.

He takes an old black hat and smells inside it. Sharp sweat, hair clumped with filth. He fits it to his head. It shapes itself to serve his needs. It is creased and battered all over, as if it has been sat on many times.

He takes a black costume vest. It smells of corrupted skin, sores, and pus.

He takes a blue handkerchief in his fist and pushes his nose inside it. He breathes deeply. Of fresh history, of old Jew, of death, of abandonment, of hunger. He folds the cloth and puts it in his vest pocket. He tucks in a white fabric flower on the brim of his hat.

It’s warm here.

Rosie is overseeing the beginnings of a trench to drain rainwater. Fat Man touches her elbow. He tells her, “It’s all to be preserved.”

“Everything?”

“The whole playhouse. We’re keeping it just as it is. Everything stays.”

“Now you see why I trust you? A sensitive, delicate man.” She turns her back on him to watch the trench.

He wants to pull her elbow roughly. He wants to tell her there were people here before them and now they are dead. He wants her to mourn with him. He wants to make her smell the things he smelled. Of course she knows all about it. She knew before he did. He knows there is something terribly prurient about his new, borrowed costume, and the interest he’s taken in their absent corpses.

He has found something sacred. He plans to worship a while.

He walks away examining his black hands.

Fat Man and Little Boy don’t speak for two weeks, until all the builders are gone and they’ve moved into their cabin. It’s night and all their work is done. Fat Man has documented and preserved various artifacts in the playhouse-museum. Little Boy has swept a dozen cabins, cleaning away all traces of boot prints and masonry. They climb into bed together, each in his underwear. They share a bed because Rosie didn’t give anyone a second. Little Boy hogs the covers. Fat Man is too warm anyway—he kicks away what’s his.

Outside it is quiet. The fences are uprooted, the communal toilets smashed to bits and trucked away. The new outhouses stand like coffins wedged upright in the dirt, moon stencils casting moonlit crescents on their back walls. The trenches have been dug, draining into the stream nearby, their nadirs still an inch deep with rainwater. The destroyed cabins are burnt, and narrow stone paths conjoin those remaining. The abandoned foundations will erode and smooth in time, until they have become like the rest of the thinly-grassed muddy fields. The restored cabins are empty, except for theirs and the widow’s, which are so massive they still feel empty—or haunted. Grass seeds have been planted. The brothers must be careful not to let Rosie notice the way the grass springs up beneath their feet wherever they walk. Their cabin is circumscribed by such blades, glittering like silverfish as they waver. The leaves and needles of tall trees sound like crashing waves. Crickets rub their wings together.

As warmth rises from the earth and leaves the brothers’ bodies, they grow cold and colder.

“Little Boy?” says Fat Man.

“Yes?”

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” says Little Boy.

“You should know I told the widow you were thirteen.” A tickle of hot breath whispers across the back of Little Boy’s neck.

“She believed you?” He rolls onto his side, to face away from his brother. In the periphery of his vision, the square of fogged moonlight hovers around their window like a stench.

“That’s about how old you look.”

Little Boy sighs. Fat Man paws at his back. Little Boy shrugs off Fat Man violently.

“You didn’t like it when I said you were nine. How old do you want to be?”

Little Boy rolls to face his brother, with the unfortunate consequence that they grow closer. They breathe each other’s bitter breathing. “I’m supposed to be a baby. I’m only a few months old. I should be on my back in a crib, staring up at the ceiling and forgetting for the hundredth time how my toes taste. I should be wallowing in my own mess, and people should be feeding me.”

Fat Man touches Little Boy’s cheek. “I’m three days younger. You think I should be a baby too?”

Little Boy swats away his hand. “We agreed you would be the older brother now.”

“I didn’t know what I was in for.” Fat Man grasps Little Boy by the thin blond hair projecting from his upturned right temple, squeezes. “I didn’t know I was going to be dealing with a nasty little boy who disappears for weeks at a time when there’s work to be done. I didn’t know I was going to be your slave and permanent caretaker. As far as I can tell you’re not getting any older. Are you going to be like this forever? I made an effort to be a good little brother when it was my turn.” He pulls at Little Boy now with both arms, tries his best to force his brother closer. The boy thrashes, gnashes, claws.

“Fuck you,” Little Boy wails.

“Quiet,” rasps Fat Man, pinching together Little Boy’s cheeks to keep him from speaking. “When will you be my good little brother? When will you listen to me? When will you do as I tell you? Not because you fear me but because you see the wisdom of my requests?”

He wraps one arm around his brother, still squeezing shut his mouth with the other hand. Little Boy is buffeted by the waves of his bigger brother’s body—he is smothered, and he can feel all the oxygen leaving him in fits and starts, rushes and wheezes. Fat Man wraps the other arm around and squeezes him close. Little Boy smothers. He pulls his head out for air.

“Quiet,” hisses Little Boy, through flesh and flesh and flesh. “The widow.”

“The widow ,” growls Fat Man. He hugs his brother, smoothes his blond mess into place.

“You’re the one said you would spank me if I didn’t do as I was told.”

“You’re the one crying out for a beating, complaining about your age, claiming the right to wallow and drool. You are thirteen now, if I’m your elder brother. You are a teenage boy and growing if I’m a man.”

Little Boy begins to bawl his best baby impression. Fat Man pushes him away. Little Boy kicks viciously in the leaving.

“Go on, cry it out. Get up tomorrow ready to work.”

They look at each other across the wrinkled sheets. Fat Man wraps himself anew in the covers. Their warmth is still leaving their bodies, and they haven’t any wood to start a fire. So as they drowse they creep nearer. Until the boy is in the man’s hands again, and arms and arms and skin and skin and skin. Enough life between them to sweat—to drip, and kick the covers.

Little Boy beats the sun by an hour. He slips from the bed, gathers his clothing, and creeps through their cabin, stepping outside the door to change in the cold, dewy morning. Grass grows beneath his feet as he weaves between the new blue cabins. Sometimes weeds grow also: dandelions and clover.