Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

The sun grinned down. What up, homes?

Hatch removed the water pistol from inside his jacket pocket, shielded his eyes, and sighted along the barrel. Curled his finger around the trigger and gently squeezed. The sun steamed from the blast of cool liquid, trembled, but remained lodged on the rooftop. Frowned down into Hatch’s face and spewed sharp angles of light in retaliation. Hatch drew back, defeated.

A small figure moved in the hollow of an autumn afternoon. Jacket, a backward apron; sleeves tied around his waist. The sun waited, half-swallowed by the horizon. But he walked quietly, drawing reassurance into himself with each step, his sneaky shadow slithering along behind him.

II

Cosmo squats behind the hedge, claws dangling at his groin like wicked catcher’s mitts. The dome of his head visible above the green edge, a half-risen half-fallen sun. His hair crinkled and greasy like fried bacon. The sky brightens. Sunlight darts inside the hedge. Dungarees ignite, boots glisten. A rat scuttles through the grass, unaware.

In one movement, Cosmo crashes through the hedge, lands, froglike, and levels a claw. The rat is still and lumpy, a sack of loose rocks. Cosmo rubs his claws with joy. The rodent recovers and rushes for the grass. Too late.

Cosmo snatches up his prey, cranes his neck, and begins lowering the rat headfirst into his mouth. The rat’s front feet pedal in air. Buckteeth snap at Cosmo’s lips. But the front feet and the buckteeth and the head disappear inside Cosmo’s mouth, a fuzzy sword. A gurgling sound announces its descent. The butt wiggles. The hind feet stroke Cosmo’s cheeks. The tail whips.

Cosmo blinks, hard, squaring his mouth. The feet twitch a little. Cosmo brings both claws to his mouth and forces the rat inside, its tail gyrating between his lips. He sucks it up like a string of spaghetti, throat pregnant.

Carpet, coffee table, chairs, love seats, paintings, couch, and walls — all submerged in the liquid glow of television, which thins out, a few blue-white strands, ghostly ripples, the farther it travels from the source.

How come those Indians don’t pull out they arrows? Hatch asks. Is they chicken?

Nawl, Cosmo says. If they pull out they arrows, then those cowboys will come back to life.

If Cosmo regurgitates the rat, will it come back to life?

He scratches away spittle with a bladed fingernail, long, sharp, and shiny in the sunlight. Continues to squat, awaiting birth.

III

A thick fuzzy night. Coming out of the hot street, made hotter by a golden low-hanging moon and hundreds of blazing streetlamps. Hatch pushed the door open with his fingertips, the water pistol tight in his other hand. He entered and closed the door behind him. Wide-eyed in the darkness. Mamma was usually home to greet him when he made it in from school. On rare occasions Cosmo would arrive before her. At the far end of the room, French doors, open just enough for one to edge through sideways. A sliver of slanted light, a thin line of carpet luminous. The jacket still tight about his waist, Hatch pushed his keys deep inside his pocket, then wrapped both hands around the water pistol and walked toward the beacon of light. The dark put a hand against his back and shoved. He fell heavy to the floor, hammer to anvil, chin-first, pistol still in hand, the weapon plowing a short path through the carpet, raking up fibers. He shut his eyes against the pain. Spun his head and laid his jowl against the plush springy softness of the carpet. Shook inside as if some strange force were gathering.

Sometimes you just irritate the shit out of me. Cosmo started round.

Hatch raised his head and flicked open his eyes. Something stepped into the edge of his vision in the angle of light. He didn’t move. Followed the something with his eyes. Blinked in details. Old-man shoes. Sharply pointed. With whorls of perforation. Baggy pants with fine creases. Knee-length blazer. Silk polka-dot tie. Fedora. Hatch’s body trembled with something it could not let out.

Yo! In front of him now, glaring down.

The pistol was ice between his palms.

Yo!

I’m all right!

I didn’t ask if you was all right.

So.

Say what?

He didn’t say anything.

Did you say something?

Nawl.

Cosmo flexed his soles, stretching the leather, talons threatening to burst out. I didn’t think so. He threw the door wide. Shadows fled. Hatch waited until he was absolutely certain that Cosmo had quit the room, then squeezed his eyes tight.

IV

That’s why I say, Mamma said, her voice a whisper, only what you have in your stomach is yours. She placed her spoon on the edge of her saucer and raised her cup to her lips, her face a smooth round tab of caramel candy.

What can you do? Dad said, head as bald as the chicken drumstick in his fist, torso constricted in a tight sports shirt, arms strong, with pronounced veins. What can you do?

They were seated next to one another at the long dining table, framed within the long window behind them, night pressing against the light within, the faraway rush and hum of occasional cars. On the opposite side, Cosmo sat beside Hatch, stretching out first one leg and then the other and feeling inside each trouser pocket. The smell of meat bent in the air, and Cosmo’s cologne snapped in and out of Hatch’s nostrils like a sporadic cloud of gnats.

Mamma glared at Hatch over the edge of her cup. He placed the water pistol on his lap, sat back. Cosmo was fussing with his tie, straightening it, smoothing out the wrinkles. Mamma threw her eyes in his direction. What’s wrong? A hundred-dollar bill slip in there?

Cosmo grinned. No, ma’am.

Well then.

Cosmo picked up his fork and started in on his dinner.

Hatch mumbled grace — God good. God great. Let us thank him for food and men — and lifted his fork. The plates and cups and utensils were white from constant scrubbing. He studied his distorted reflection.

Poor man. To spend all those years in jail. And for nothing. Mamma sipped steaming liquid. Hatch admired the rhythm of her throat. Dad opened his mouth to admit corn bread. Cosmo did not look up from his plate. A splash of light from the small chandelier above the dinner table gave his hair an even greasier appearance. Mamma lowered her cup to the saucer. An innocent man. But God will tell.

Cosmo fumbled his fork.

God will tell.

Cosmo raised his head and stared fixedly, straight past Dad’s shoulder and through the window.

Mamma took a cigarette — smoking was her only vice — from her pack on the table. Lit up, drew long and deep, blew out a stream of smoke. Such was her sustenance, for she put their hunger before her own, waited for her men to eat before she forked her fill. She wanted her men healthy and strong, and daily prepared each a tall cold glass of sulfur and water, filmed over with cod-liver oil, and watched and waited until each drained it in her monitoring presence. Now he’s back with his family.

Cosmo stared straight ahead — out the window? at a precise location in the black distance?

Mamma drew on the cigarette, blew the smoke through her nose like a bull. Hatch considered applauding the miracle but decided against it. She set the cigarette on the lip of her saucer. And they gave him money. Millions of dollars. But what he had to endure! His eye poked out! Wit a red-hot poker!

Cosmo sat, transfixed.

Mamma took a sip of coffee — what Hatch had been waiting for, that rhythm; he had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming in delight — and lowered her cup to the saucer. But see, God will tell. They been tryin to put that company back to right. But they never will. Never will. Mamma shook her head in righteous satisfaction.