Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

After a while, Cosmo puts the book aside, then slips beneath the covers. Squirms on his belly, reptilelike, to get comfortable. Imprisoned in shoe boxes under the bed, rats squeak like heels on a basketball court.

His room is sorely neglected. The garage is his domain, where he spends most of the night on a queen-sized mattress on a patch of floor clean of oil stains and gasoline. Space arranged in an order he works hard to maintain. Something about the colors and their careful placement suggests motion. Dozens of stacks of aviation books and technical magazines. Engines in various stages of repair. Mechanical refuse from the neighbors’ trash and yards. On the regular he invites Hatch into his world, his secrets. Kodaks of a woman with two assholes. A six-tittied dwarf. A man with a big fat titty where his dick should be. And other wonders: A glow-in-the-dark penis. A crystal vagina. Aluminum condoms. Specimens in fluid-filled mason jars. He offers these revelations with a straight face, hot sunshine pouring through the high single window. Hatch aims through the glass and shoots down flying saucers with his water gun.

Want to hear something? Cosmo asks.

What?

This one time, I ate a whole bar of scented soap. For the heck of it.

What happened?

For a whole week, my turds come out white and smellin like expensive perfume.

Seven o’clock. Hatch rushes to his door, parts it a little. Cosmo approaches from down the hall, underclothing tucked against his side, suit trailing behind his shoulder, old-man shoes untied, genitals swinging.

Fully dressed an hour later. Breakfast on the table. He eats in one minute flat.

Gon choke to death one day, Mamma says. Eatin like somebody crazy.

Yes’m. He kisses her cheek. Leather satchel in hand, clean dungarees folded over his arm, he rushes out to greet the new day. Walks bent forward, like somebody pushing through slanting snow.

If you gon be a pilot, how come you tinkering with that lil-bitty engine?

Cosmo cracked his knuckles, popping one at a time. Look, I ain’t gon be no pilot. That’s a lawn-mower engine. And, those there, Volkswagen. I’m studying power-plant mechanics. I overhaul air-cooled engines. He went on, sounding like one of his books.

Hatch kept his distance. Drew his water pistol and considered firing.

Cosmo looked him in the face, grinning at the threat, liquid danger. Opened his arms and gestured, expansively, his smile wide. These are machines for living.

Ain’t you gon be a pilot?

I never said that.

What did you say?

Cosmo frowned into the bowl of his hat. I’m gon be a mechanic, a power-plant mechanic. See, they got this program at school that’ll low me to get both my power-plant license and my body license.

You got five schools offering you scholarships, Mamma said.

Cosmo snapped the brim of his hat.

Dad looked steadily at him, pulling his silver-streaked goatee with long strokes of his fist.

I like to fix things.

Where you go last night?

Ma’am?

Are you deaf now too? Where did you go last night?

Nowhere.

Nowhere?

Drivin.

Drivin where?

Just drivin. Nowhere in particular.

Nowhere in particular smelling like cigarette smoke?

Cosmo keeps his eyes lowered, fedora in hand.

I don’t know what path you’re on, but I’ll tell you this: don’t swap horses in the middle of the stream.

The room shines with the shimmering of the street. Cosmo stands rigid, lean face in shadow, following with a blank look his pacing father. Though he maintains an appetite, eats his meals in greedy helpings, he has a polelike appearance, skinny arms, narrow shoulders, and no hips or buttocks. And that hungry-ass face. The only thing big on him is his hands. He looks like some mechanical figure from one of his aviation books.

I don’t understand why the boy so skinny. Look like somebody over in Africa.

Dad quickens his pace. Hatch’s skin grows warm with fear and excitement. Dad halts and looks Cosmo straight in the face. They are watching each other, separate nightscapes of parked vehicles and moving traffic flowing across each face.

Cosmo.

Yes, sir.

Either shit or get off the pot.

IX

You know where babies come from? Cosmo’s feet make no sound on the garage floor.

Uh-huh.

Where?

Out they navel.

True. And don’t let nobody tell you different.

It was a lot like sighting through a hole made by your thumb and forefinger, the metal door lock cold against your brow:

Dad lay facedown on the bed, arms around his pillow. The blankets heaved powerfully. Soft morning light painted on the shaded window. His scalp glowed with the strength of the approaching day. Mamma put her cheek on his shoulder.

I’m an angel, she said. I could dance on the head of a pin.

Hatch crawls into the bedroom and hides at the back of the closet with the door slightly ajar. A wedge of vision. Mamma rushes out of the bathroom, fully dressed. Halts before the full-length mirror, body shaking with the shock of the sudden stop. Screws her tam down well over her forehead, checks her bangs. Straightens out the things in her purse, lifts coat from the bed. Exits, buttocks seesawing.

Sargent, how come you ain’t dressed for church?

I don’t think I can make it today.

Sargent.

I am perfectly serious. Sincere. My joints are stiff. He demonstrates.

Sargent, please stop actin a fool. We gon be late. Don’t spoil my one day of the week.

You don’t understand. My joints are stiff. From the cold.

Mamma stands there with something flickering hot behind her eyes. She spins on her heels and quits the house, door slamming behind.

The batter hits a pop fly into center field. The camera tracks another player as he moves into position, glove at the ready.

I hope he misses it, Hatch says.

Why?

They always catch it. Why can’t they miss sometime?

Cosmo rises from his seat next to Hatch, his audience his rundown collection of engines. In his brother, Hatch sees a prophecy of his physical-self-to-be. Mamma has dressed them like twins for church. Tall skinny Cosmo and short plump Hatch, his ventriloquist dummy.

Rest assured, Cosmo says. He flicks off the television, baseball in permanent flight. Anything you think of has happened.

What?

Anything you imagine in your brain has happened, sometime, somewhere.

Anything?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

A woman of biblical proportions, Sistah Turner turns her back to the class and begins to chalk a lesson on the blackboard. Cosmo, in a low voice: Look at that fine ho! Hatch and fellow students double over in their seats with laughter. Sistah Turner spins. Scans the class. Cosmo casts a few mean looks to silence would-be traitors.

Sistah Turner summons the students to her desk for punishment, one by one. Sign your name on her licking stick, then assume the position. Discipline, Sistah Turner says. Say it. Hatch says it. Sistah Turner’s hard paddle works on his soft butt. Later, when he arrives home, he rushes to the john, shuts and locks the door, slips down his draws, and cranes his neck, trying to see if his name is emblazoned on his behind.

Much weeping and wailing. Hatch, bottom tender, watches Cosmo angrily, contemplates betrayal. Cosmo sits with his eyes firmly shut, tightening in and out of dreams.

After class, Mamma takes her sons into a dark corner and tests for recalcitrance, extending one thin knuckle before each boy’s forehead and letting it hover there, humming, seeking the necessary evidence in their eyes. She raps the guilty party with the knuckle, force and number of raps fitting the crime.

They follow Mamma into the church, her white ruffled dress billowing about her legs, waves. They glide down the red thickly carpeted aisle. Hatch steps carefully, afraid his feet will sink into the raging floor. He stumbles. Recovers his balance. A classic delinquent, Cosmo whispers to Hatch: Satan fell. The greatest disaster in the history of world aviation.