Claire Watkins - Battleborn

Magda touched her belly, then quickly moved her hand away. She considered the saltines for a moment, then opened the package. She took out a cracker and pressed the salted side against her tongue. “You can tell?” she asked, her mouth full.

Harris nodded. “What, twelve weeks or so?”

The question bored Magda, it seemed. She shrugged as though he’d asked whether she wanted to bust open a geode with a hammer and see what was inside.

Carrie Ann had taken a hundred pictures of herself at twelve weeks. Polaroids. The film had cost a fortune. She wanted to send them out to family, but, as with so many of her projects, she never got around to it. So for months the photos slid around the house like sheets of gypsum. After she lost the baby, when he couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore, he collected every last one, took them to work and, when no one was around, threw them into the incinerator.

He took the quartz into his own hand now and pointed it at Magda’s abdomen. “You want to tell me who did this to you?” He spit on the crystal and with his thumb buffed the spot where the saliva landed.

“It was my boyfriend,” she said. She snapped another cracker in half with her tongue. “But he only did it because I asked him to.”

Harris felt instantly sick. “Why’d he leave you then?”

“Because he’s a fucking momma’s boy. He’d just finished when we saw BLM coming. That ranger goes to Ronnie’s church. We’re not supposed to be together.” She smiled. “He said he’d come back for me.”

“Hell of a plan.”

“You think I don’t know that? He just took off.” She folded another cracker into her mouth.

“He could have killed you, hitting you like that.”

“What were we supposed to do? His mom was threatening to send him to Salt Lake to live with his grandma just for going out with me.”

“What about your folks?”

“Forget it.”

“Jesus,” Harris said softly.

“I tried him.” Magda laughed. “ La Virgen , too. Nothing.”

Harris decided to let the girl be a while. He turned on the AM jazz station and had his evening smoke on the porch. Through the screen door came Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Fats Waller, Artie Shaw. When he returned, Magda was biting into the last saltine in the sleeve. “Can we turn this off?” she said, and without waiting for an answer hit the power button on the radio.

Harris went to the pantry and brought out the whole box of saltines. He set it on the coffee table. “You want, you can take these with you.” She eyeballed the box. “I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “We got to get you home.”

“I know. It’s just… I’m still feeling a little sick.” She combed her fingers through her hair. “I wonder would the ride upset my stomach even worse, you think? Probably I should stay here, just for the night. If that’s okay with you, Bud.”

This was a lie, he knew, though her face gave up nothing. He didn’t like the prospect of explaining to the authorities why he was hiding a runaway. And there were her parents to consider. If he had a girl, he’d beat the living shit out of anyone who kept her overnight while he was looking for her. The county was full of men—fathers—who’d do the same or worse.

And yet he said nothing, only sat for a moment with his hands on his knees and then walked to the linen closet to get the girl a quilt and a clean pillowcase. He’d take her home. First thing in the morning. The girl smiled up at him as he handed her the linens. What was one night?

His sleep was fitful and often interrupted. He had to piss constantly these days and crossed the hall as quietly as he could, hoping the girl would not notice. When he did sleep he dreamed vile scenes of stomachs and fists, babies and blood. Once he woke sure he’d heard the throaty chafe of Magda’s voice at his bedroom door. Levántate . Around four a.m. he started to a faint knock, imagined. An erection strained against his shorts. It’d been some time since he was blessed with such and so he quietly took advantage. After, he slept soundly through the remaining nighttime hours.

Harris rose in the early violet of the morning, antsy with a feeling like digging on a fresh plot of land. He dressed in clean blue jeans, white cotton socks, boots and a fresh white T-shirt. He tucked an unopened pack of filterless Camels into his breast pocket, poured himself a mug of coffee and walked quietly through the living room to the porch, so as not to wake the girl.

Carrie Ann had been gone since the spring of 1991, having cleared her Kewpie dolls and floral china out of the curio cabinets, wrapped them in newspaper, married a state trooper she’d met in Fallon while she was—yes—staying at her sister’s. She’d long since moved with the man to Sacramento. Their miracle baby was almost sixteen. And still Harris accommodated her by smoking outside.

He’d stirred the shit a little when, a new bride, she forbade him from smoking in the house. He went on about a man’s home being his own and hadn’t he earned the right, but in truth he didn’t mind being shooed outdoors. He was even patient later, when she implied that his smoking—combined with his single glass of bourbon in the evening—was the reason they were having such a hell of a time conceiving again, that he ought to take better care of himself, and finally that he didn’t give a shit whether they made a baby or not. But it could not be said that Harris made things easy for his young wife. He never held Carrie Ann’s temper against her—in his head he forgave her before she even apologized—but just the same he never let on how it soothed him when she let off steam, that seeing her angry was effortless next to seeing her hurting. And where was the harm, he figured, in letting his hotheaded wife guilt herself into a steak dinner, a foot rub, a blow job?

Somewhere in their bickering Harris decided to cut back, to exercise a grown man’s discipline. But what was once discipline had over the years become mindless routine, four smokes a day: morning, after lunch, midafternoon and sundown. His cigarettes helped mark the passage of time, especially on days that seemed all sun and sky, when he scolded poor Milo just to hear the sound of his own voice. The dependable dwindling of his cigarette supply reassured him that he hadn’t been left out here, that eventually he would have to ride into town and things would still be there, that the world hadn’t stopped whirling.

Magda was awake now, and he could hear her shifting on the couch. He rubbed his cigarette out on the side of the Folgers can he kept on the porch and dropped the butt inside. In the living room, the sun was filtered through the yellowed paper window shades, lighting the room warmly. Harris let the screen door swing shut behind him. Magda’s lids lifted at the soft schwack .

She arched her back, stretching catlike. “Morning,” she said.

“Coffee?” he said.

She made a face and pulled the old quilt up under her arms. She’d slept in her clothes. “Mind if I shower?”

“We should get you back.”

“Come on, Bud. I reek.” She looked up at him, smiling sweetly. “You don’t want to ride in that cab with me.”

It had been a long time since a woman had tried to convince him of anything. “Be quick,” he said. “Hot water don’t last but twenty minutes. Pump leaks.” She shuffled down the hall, still wrapped in the quilt. He called down after her, “I apologize for the hard water.”

“It’s all right,” she said, poking her head out the bathroom door, her shoulders already naked. “We got hard water, too.”

Steam soon billowed from underneath the door, thickening the air in the hall. Water beaded on the metal doorknobs and hinges. Harris heard the squeak of her bare feet pivoting against the porcelain. From what he’d seen of her while she slept, it wasn’t difficult to imagine the rest. He busied himself cleaning the coffeemaker and filling Milo’s water dish, though the dog preferred to drink from the toilet.