The Lonely Polygamist (11 page)

He paused. For a second it seemed to occur to him the song might not be appropriate for the occasion, but then he continued on, his voice filling the room like it was no more than a coat closet. Trish had never heard Golden sing before, had always assumed him to be tone-deaf. She’d sat next to him at church, where he’d always mumbled the hymns, as most of the men did, rolled the words in his mouth like used-up chewing gum they didn’t know how to get rid of. But now, after a whispery first line, his voice grew full and sweet.

Later, after Golden had gone to make arrangements with the funeral home, Nola and Rose-of-Sharon came in, eyes bright with tears, and they wept as they admired the baby and told Trish how beautiful he was. Beverly led them in a prayer and then all four sister-wives sat together on the bed, holding hands and clutching each other for comfort. Trish loved them then as much as she had ever loved her own kin, her own blood.

Once they were gone, she eased herself into a prone position, wincing at the pain between her legs, and closed her eyes. In the coming weeks and months she would feel the weight of this loss, would sit in her bathtub late at night, her nipples sore, her tender breasts engorged with milk, and wonder how much hurt a person could withstand—but not now. Now the wind scoured the windows with dust, the house creaked, and she settled into sleep, contented, her little boy at her side.

T
HE BOY WAITS AT THE WINDOW. HE HAS GROWN TIRED OF SCRUTINIZING
himself in the mirror and is now back at his post on the old ceramic radiator, stiff-backed and still as if sitting for a portrait, taking in the view: river, fields, road, ostrich, neighbors’ house, crow, water tower, and in the far distance the floating blue mountains so familiar and remote his brain no longer registers their existence.

If you were to ask the boy what he is waiting for, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. He is waiting for a meteor strike, a tornado, a full-scale zombie invasion, anything to rescue him from this room, this house, these people.

He scans the length of the twisting river and, sure enough, there next to the boulder that looks like a giant snail two young mermaids cavort in the shallow water, silver scales glinting and breasts a-bobbing, playfully tugging on each other’s long red hair. “Dear me,” says the boy in an English accent. “Now what do we have here.” The mermaids squeal deliciously and slap their tail fins on the water.

Lately, women of the nude and semi-nude variety have been insinuating themselves into the boy’s consciousness at every opportunity; just about anywhere he looks there are well-oiled bikini chicks winking at him from behind bushes, tall Amazon ladies in leather bustiers making little growling noises at him while they sharpen their spears. If he hears music, even organ music at church, here come the gyrating belly dancers, and if there is water in the vicinity? Bring on the mermaids.

His erection, which was making a nuisance of itself even before the mermaids showed up, is now operating at full capacity, making it hard for him to think. He sighs, shifts his leg around on the radiator. This boy, he doesn’t know what to do with these minute-by-minute bodily assaults, these crazed thoughts: he is at a loss. Even though he has some idea that with a little hands-on manipulation he could achieve temporary relief, he is careful not to touch himself. Which is odd, because if he is known for anything it is his lack of restraint; he is a liar, a loudmouth, a thief, an instigator, a Peeping Tom, a crybaby, a snoop. But in this most private aspect of his life, one that no one will ever see or know about, he shows the self-discipline of an anchorite. He understands what sex is, at least in theoretical terms, and though he is fascinated by its dark and manifold mysteries, it also freaks him out. Which probably has something to do with his growing suspicion that sex is behind everything, that it is what drives adults to act in strange, unpredictable ways, that it lurks in places it should not belong, in church sermons and evening meals and daily family prayer, that it is responsible for the unreasonable number of brothers and sisters he has, and is therefore responsible in some way for the state of his confusing and miserable life.

Or it may just be that he refuses to touch himself because of the possibility that an invisible Jesus Christ, with His mournful eyes and weirdly girlish eyelashes, is somewhere in this room, right now, spying on him.

So how does the boy seek relief? He blurts out swear words and sings dirty song lyrics he has overheard from the bad kids at school. He imagines in fine detail the suffering and total destruction of his enemies. He plays grabass with his siblings in highly inappropriate ways. He tries on his sisters’ underwear.

In church they instruct the youngsters that in order to free themselves from bad thoughts they should recite a scripture or sing a hymn. The boy doesn’t understand scripture, and though he has heard hymns his entire life, he has a hard time remembering them.

Now let us hmm-hmm in the day of salvation
, he sings.
No longer deranged on the earth need we roam
.

This is the best he can do. It doesn’t help at all.

Downstairs somebody yells something and there is a burst of laughter, like when someone delivers a zinger on TV. They are laughing at him, he knows they are. They are calling him a fag and a pervert, which in the boy’s estimation would make them fifty percent correct.

The house is quiet again. The mermaids have gone. He has nothing to do, so he sits at the window. He watches. He waits. For something, anything, to happen.

O
N HIS BIKE NOW, HAULING BUTT DOWN WATER SOCKET ROAD, RUSTY
was making a break for it. He had spent all that time looking out the window, distracted by the humping cows and the mermaids and Raymond the Ostrich, and not realizing that escape was at hand: all you had to do was open the window, push off the screen, slide down the old copper gutter, jump down two roof levels, drop ten feet to the top of the detached garage, and from there you were home free. No one had seen him, not even Louise with her great all-seeing bubble-eyes, and in less than a minute he was on his bike, which he had snuck out of the garage, and pedaling down the long driveway thinking,
I am in very big trouble
.

Even worse, he didn’t have any shoes on. His high tops, which were honestly just as sorry and worn out as his underwear, were with all the other shoes in the box by the front door because Aunt Beverly had a no-shoes-in-the-house policy, which meant if somebody important like Neil Armstrong or Jesus ever decided to stop by they would have to remove their shoes and place them in the shoe box, no exceptions. It wasn’t a big deal for some people who were lucky enough to have regular-smelling feet, but Rusty had been born with foot-odor complications, which caused certain people to gag when he entered the room, or to ask him why his feet smelled like hot garbage.

So because of Aunt Beverly’s shoe policy, here he was pedaling down the street in his tube socks like a retard. Where was he going? He didn’t know. He had thought about going home and asking his mother to allow him to stay there, he would tell her all the terrible things Aunt Beverly and her a-hole kids were perpetrating on him, but he had already tried that twice now and it hadn’t worked. Today, he decided, he would pedal until he got so far out into the desert nobody could ever find him, except for maybe a bunch of illegal Mexican bandits who had got lost on their way to Las Vegas and formed their own civilization by constructing adobe forts and eating lizards and he would surprise them because of his silent-walking ability, and they would look at him suspiciously and say,
Cómo estás?
and because he had paid attention in Spanish class at school he would say,
Bueno, gracias. Cómo estás bien?
and they would all start jumping up saying,
O mi Dios!,
deeply impressed because not only was he a guy with excellent silent-walking ability, he also spoke their difficult language as well, and they would start asking him questions, most of which he couldn’t understand because they spoke even faster than Mrs. Burdick at school, but he would hold up his hand and say,
Sí, Sí, mi nombre llamo Rusty,
and they would fall down and practically worship him and his BMX racer because they’d never seen a person riding such a technological bike and he would be their king.

He would show them how to make fire, and how to get free Dr Peppers from the vending machine in front of Platt’s Market in town, and in return they would do his bidding, which would include kidnapping Parley and tying him to a juniper tree and practicing some Mexican torture techniques on his genitals, after which he would look Parley in his face and say,
Who’s the faggety-fag now, Señor Muchacho?

Of course, his father and Aunt Beverly would come out to his desert stronghold and beg him for mercy, asking him to come home, the family needed him, they were falling apart without him, especially his mother, who hadn’t eaten a bite of food since his disappearance, and the Mexicans would terrify Aunt Beverly with their sharp spears and painted faces but Rusty would hold out his hand and say,
Please, gentlemen,
and the Mexicans would back away, and with great sadness he would inform them in artistic Spanish that he had to go home because his mother, his
señorita mamacita
, was dying of sadness without him, he hoped they would understand, and as he rode away on his bike they would cry their Mexican eyes out and do some mariachi singing and trumpet-playing and shout,
Adiós, amigo Rusty! Adiós!

It was about at this point that he forgot to watch where he was going and ended up skidding into the irrigation ditch. His front tire bit into the soft sand at the bottom of the ditch and Rusty went over the handlebars and landed not in the soft sand of the ditch but on the other side where there were rocks and stickers and pieces of broken beer bottles.
Ahrrg
, what a gyp! Look at this: he’d scraped the dookie out of his elbow and there were rocks and glass stuck in his palms and his front tire was all bent up, plus he had bit his tongue. Heck yes, he cried. He jammed his hands into his eyes and did some serious howling.

He was so busy howling he didn’t hear the truck pull up.

“Oh wow,” somebody said. “You okay, kid?”

He stopped howling and said, “Uh?” There was a guy with his arm hanging out the window of an old green pickup, a young guy with a weird adam’s apple and red beard that wasn’t really a beard at all but about thirty-five curly red whiskers sticking out of his face. His forehead was so sunburned his skin was peeling off like wallpaper. What an idiot.

“You need a ride home?” the guy said.

Rusty hiccupped and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He didn’t need a ride from some sunburned idiot with a sorry red beard. Then he thought about walking all the way back to Old House, dragging his mangled bike and possibly dying from thirst or being ambushed by Mexican bandits.

“Can’t go home,” he said with a sniff. He explained he was running away from his cruel parents who had locked him in his room for nothing more than being curious and having an inquisitional mind, and if he went home now with a busted bike and blood on his shirt there’s no doubt that his mother, an extremely evil and unfriendly person named Beverly, would whip the snot out of him with her liontamer’s bullwhip, and his father would come home and scream the kind of cuss words that Rusty would rather not repeat out loud.

“Well, uh,” the guy said. “I don’t know what I can do about that, but yeah, I think I can probably fix that bike.”

The guy helped him off the ground and put his bike in the back of the pickup, which was filled with trash and wire and rusty tools and a coyote pelt that looked like it had been taken off a coyote not all that long ago. When they got in the pickup the guy shuddered like a ghost had touched him.

“It’s my feet,” Rusty said. “You’ll get used to it.”

They drove for a mile or two, then turned off on a dirt road so full of potholes and boulders they spent more time driving next to the road than on it. The guy didn’t say anything, didn’t look at Rusty, or even try explaining where they were going, just held his index finger up close to his nose. There was nothing but cedar trees and red-rock cliffs, and just when Rusty became certain the guy was taking him out into the boonies so he could murder him in some freaky way that would end up in the newspaper, they came over a rise where two silver-painted Quonset huts sat side by side like igloos on Mars.

Maybe this was a secret military installation where this mysterious sunburned guy was experimenting with ultra-secret death ray isotopes and was going to use Rusty as a human guinea pig? Or maybe he wanted Rusty as his trusted loyal henchman, which wouldn’t be so bad either.

“Home sweet home,” the guy said, and made a girly little laugh. He led Rusty into one of the huts, which was decorated something like a house: rugs on the cement floor, an easy chair next to a table with a ham radio, a cowhide couch, an enormous Frigidaire that hummed and shuddered.

The guy washed Rusty’s hands and arm in a utility sink and put iodine on his scrapes and a gauze bandage on his elbow.

“I was wondering what your name was?” he said.

“Lance,” Rusty said.

“Lance,” the guy said. “That’s a, uh, pretty good name. Yeah. My name’s June Haymaker.”

Rusty snorked, which was, for once, appropriate.

“A lot of people don’t know that June’s a man’s name,” June said, looking wounded by the snork. “You know there was a general, in the Civil War, named June? Definitely a, uh, masculine name.”

“I have a sister named June,” Rusty lied. “She’s three and a half.”

June put away the bandages and iodine, slamming some cupboards in the process, and then led Rusty out to the other Quonset hut, which he called his shop. The shop was filled with tools and machines and shelves stacked with boxes of rusty screws and bolts. Fluorescent lights hung from chains made everything, including June’s peeling face, look pale green.

June put the bent bike tire in a bench clamp and yanked on it with a wrench. He said, “I’ve seen you riding your bike before, I think. On Water Socket Road. You live in one of the houses? By the river?

“No,” Rusty said. Even though everybody in the valley knew that the Richardses were a polygamist family, and that anybody who didn’t know could tell he was a plyg kid just by looking at his crappy shirt, Rusty, along with his brothers and sisters, had been taught from day one never to talk to strangers about their family situation, never to mention they had more than one mother and more brothers and sisters than any normal person should be allowed to have. They weren’t supposed to lie, their parents and teachers taught them, they just weren’t supposed to tell the truth either. You figure it out.

They were reminded often there were people out there who did not understand their lifestyle and wanted to do them harm. Rusty figured a weirdo with a name like June had to be one of these people.

“So, uh,” June said. “You’re from one of the plyg families?”

“Yeah,” Rusty sighed. Seriously, what was the use anyway? “My dad’s Golden. He builds houses and stuff. Most people around here know him.”

June nodded and finished straightening the spokes with a pair of pliers. Once he had the wheel all fixed and back on the bike, and the chain and sprockets greased, he said, “You, uh, hungry, Lance? I keep a mini-fridge out here with, you know, snacks. If you want. Then I’ll drive you back home.”

“I could maybe eat something,” Rusty said. Locked away in the Tower he had gone without lunch, which was bad enough, and now it was getting close to dinner and he was ready to start fainting at any moment. June brought two cans of Pepsi, Slim Jims, a sleeve of crackers, and a box of Ding Dongs to the workbench, all of which Rusty put away while making little murmurs of appreciation. Instead of shoving the last Ding Dong into his mouth as he had the others, he savored it, really making sure he tasted it, knowing that as Aunt Beverly’s prisoner he would not be enjoying dessert for a very long time. Once the food was gone and he had a minute to consider things, he decided June Haymaker wasn’t too bad after all, even with his screwy name and out-of-control Adam’s apple.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” Rusty said. “You building something?”

“Actually,” June said, “I’m…yes. Building something. Yeah. Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”

Rusty pointed at June’s head. “I was thinking maybe you should wear a hat, though. A hat helps with the sunburn.”

“Oh?” June said, pointing to his own face. “Yeah? This? No. Not sunburn. I had a little accident. Nothing, you know, serious. I should put some lotion on it.” He looked around as if searching for lotion, but there was only a grease gun and a can of Lava soap. “Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Before I take you home I’ll show you something, though. Real quick.” June rummaged around in some drawers and came back with what looked like a cardboard paper towel tube with a string hanging out of it. They went outside, where the sun was down and the sky was purple and pink and the red cliffs in the distance looked like they were on fire.

June dragged some kind of welded metal contraption out from under a tarp and set it up so that a metal pipe, about three feet long and sitting on a base of plate steel, was pointing straight into the dark sky. He took a lighter from his pocket, lit the string on the cardboard tube, which began to spit sparks and was, Rusty realized, a fuse. A fuse. Which meant that the cardboard tube thing was some kind of
bomb
.

“Okay,” June said, dropping the bomb into the pipe. “Back up a little why don’t we.”

You didn’t have to tell Rusty—he was already hauling his fat butt around the back of the pickup, hands over his head. He heard a noise that went
thoonk
and then a loud hissing and he looked up to see a flash that seemed to break apart into a thousand pieces overhead. It took him a moment to figure out that it wasn’t a bomb but fireworks, like the Fourth of July. Not the rinky-dink fireworks you buy at the roadside stands but the real ones they set off at the rodeo grounds. This one exploded not all that high above them with a bang that Rusty felt in his chest, and shot off fat orange and yellow sparks that lit up everything and trailed down in slow arcs until they landed on top of the Quonset huts and bounced on the ground and one of them landed in June’s hair, so that he had to smack himself with his palms to keep his head from going up in flames. Once he was sure his scalp was out of fire danger, he looked at Rusty and said, “Oh boy. You like that? I make them. Yeah. Fireworks. For a hobby.”

Rusty said that he liked it very much and would like to see a few more, please. June said, “Oh, yeah, maybe another time. We need to get you home.” He gave his smoking head one more whack. “Before your parents. Before they get worried.”

A SAFE RETURN

On the ride back home, Rusty imagined he could hear bloodhounds baying in the darkness and helicopters crisscrossing the night sky searching for him with their powerful spotlights and there was his family at home with a dozen police cars parked out front, wringing their hands and talking to the television cameras,
We’ll do anything to get him back, anything, a two-hundred-dollar reward for his safe return, why don’t we go ahead and make it two-fifty, we’ll do whatever it takes, we just want him back,
while his father ran through the willows in the river bottom all muddied and worried-looking, shouting,
Rusty! Rusteeeeee!

But when they pulled up in front of Old House it was so quiet it looked like nobody was home and Rusty remembered that his father was not even around, but still in Nevada building a home for old fogies where he would hardly notice if Rusty disappeared and was found murdered and decapitated out in the desert by some lonely freako like June here.