Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

He looks to Little Boy for help. Little Boy, however, is waiting by the door, as if none of this is happening, as if it will quite soon be settled.

Rosie says, “My husband is a good man. He doesn’t need to steal anything because he has everything he could want in life. He would never do that. If you search him, I’ll assault you both, and pull you down by your ears, and stomp on your heads, and make fools of us all until one of you manages to arrest me.” She smiles at them. “Do you want to do that, boys? To fight me and to lock me up? A woman? Here and now?”

They are still holding Fat Man’s hands.

She says, “Is that what you want?”

They are squeezing Fat Man’s hands. Can’t they feel the spark? They long to beat him down, he knows it. But do they know the cause? His crime? No one knows his crime. Not even Little Boy, who still waits at the door. Other customers are leaving the store, walking around this strange confusion of bodies, averting their eyes.

The guards release Fat Man’s hands. They look at their own hands—checking for ink stains, for signs of what they’ve touched.

“That’s what I thought,” says Rosie. She puts their purchases back in the bags, loads them onto Fat Man, and leads him out by his sleeve.

As his family rounds the corner, as Rosie mutters and smooths their daughter’s hair, Fat Man looks over his shoulder. He sees that the fat guard has followed.

The guard had to run to catch up. He is all out of breath; his shirt is coming untucked. His right hand is a fist but there is nothing of his former anger in him. His sunglasses fell off while he was running. His eyes are not unkind.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You dropped this.” He opens his fist. There is a small rubber ball, orange, a toy for Little Boy, resting on his pink palm like a pearl in a clam.

Fat Man takes the ball and flings it into the street. It bounces off a taxi’s hood into the sun’s glare. “That’s not mine,” he lies. “You’ve wasted both your time and mine.”

Little Boy pours sand over Fat Man, asleep. “Come on Magnolia,” he coaxes, whispering. “Help me bury him good.”

Rosie, reading, says, “Make sure to leave him air holes.”

Little Boy pats a layer down on Fat Man’s chest. Maggie practices writing her name in the layer. Little Boy does Fat Man’s gut. Maggie starts to build a castle on it, dumping her plastic bucket on the soft apex. The tower crumbles as he exhales a snore.

There are children running on the beach, kicking up jets of sand behind them. There are mothers holding sobbing babies.

Little Boy wants to lie down with his brother. They don’t do that anymore. He buries him instead.

There are waves licking the shore. There is driftwood. There are women laying out to tan. There are men rubbing them down with sun lotion. There is the sun. It’s quiet here.

Maggie stands with arms hanging limp at her sides, fists dangling at their ends, squinting up into the sky.

“Don’t do that,” says Little Boy, waving for her attention. “You’ll kill your eyes.”

The next day, the same beach. Rosie rubs down Fat Man with sun lotion, his skin like sheets beneath her hands. Folds and swirl, give and sway. The beach is mostly empty today. People don’t look at the fat man. They don’t want to see her rub the oil into him. The children are off playing.

Fat Man says, “It’s been a long time since I asked you if I was really what you wanted.”

“You always ask me this.”

“I’m not always on the lam when I ask you.”

Rosie sighs. “Are you my dream boat? The man I always hoped I’d be with someday? No. That was my first husband. He was my soul mate. It didn’t make me happy. I’ve told you all this. I’ve told you how I begged him not to go to war. I’ve told you how, when I heard that he was dead, I was as relieved as I was miserable. Sometimes the perfect thing is the wrong thing.”

“But do I make you happy?”

“You don’t make me happy,” says Rosie. “Nobody makes anybody happy. That’s not how it works.”

“What makes people happy then?”

“Nothing does. They feel about the same from the beginning to the end, regardless of what happens to them and who they meet. We only cause little fluctuations in each other, I think. I have always been mostly unhappy and afraid. Sometimes you give me happy fluctuations. Sometimes sad ones. I’m grateful for both.” She squirts a blob of sunscreen on his chest and he rubs it in. “I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I guess. I never thought I could get pregnant, or we wouldn’t have done what we did. But I don’t regret it either. We have a wonderful daughter.”

“I’m going to go float on the water a while,” says Fat Man.

“Stand up first,” says Rosie. “Let me do your legs.”

Fat Man floating on the ocean.

Fat Man in his red-and-white striped circus tent shorts, nose plug, goggles, skin shiny from sunscreen. Arms floating limp beside him. Legs kicking lazy, just enough.

Fat Man staring at the sun. The clear sky seems to waver. Only the motion of his body on the surface of the water. He bobs and sways.

Were his gun here, if he could bring it along to the beach, he would load it however he could. He would put rocks in the chambers, or snail shells, or pearls.

It’s warm here.

He weeps inside his goggles.

It’s very warm.

Little Boy sees a Japanese girl in a checkered swimsuit. She lays out on her towel, soaking up sun.

He goes to her.

She is flanked by handsome white men reclining in folding chairs, under matching umbrellas, one in sunglasses, the other without. The one without has his eyes closed. The other one might. Little Boy squats by the girl.

Little Boy says, “Hello, my name is Matthew. Did you know that you’re beautiful?”

“Thank you.”

“Do people tell you so often? They should.”

“They do.”

“So you don’t care when I say it, because you’ve gotten used to it already and it doesn’t mean anything now.”

“I guess so,” says the Japanese woman in the checkered swimsuit.

“So what if I said you were amazingly beautiful?” says Little Boy. “What if I said you were the most stunning woman I’d ever seen?”

“Thank you again.”

“What if I told you you look like a nurse?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to relax here. How about you go play?”

“Don’t you want to kiss him on the cheek?” says one of the handsome men—the one on the left. He pushes his sunglasses down his nose so Little Boy can see how blue his eyes are.

“He’s been really nice to you,” says the other handsome man, whose eyes are also very blue.

The Japanese girl sighs. “Okay, kid. C’mere.”

She sits upright. Her wet breast touches to his stomach. Her lips graze his cheek.

Little Boy blushes deeply. “That was nice.”

“Uh oh,” says the handsome man on the right.

Fat Man’s hand jerks Little Boy’s shoulder. “Where is Maggie? Where is your cousin?”

Little Boy cowers. He scans the beach and begins to weep. “I don’t know.”

“You have one job,” says Fat Man. He slaps Little Boy across his cheek. “You have one job. You watch your cousin.”

“We’ll find her, I promise. I’m always the hider. She’s no good at hiding.”

“She’s with your aunt,” says Fat Man. “We already found her. You were lucky.”

The handsome men say, at the same time, in the same voice, “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

The Japanese girl in the bathing suit lies down and closes her eyes. Both handsome men extend their hands.

“Able?” says Fat Man. “Baker?”

“Don’t leave us hanging,” they say, together.