Reptile House Read online

  Billy the Boy crawled on the ground. He reached and swam and groped amongst bottles and bills, chips and heels, cards, cords, glass and thighs and parts he wasn’t supposed to touch yet.

  He called out, “Super Crab, Super Crab, come here, boy.”

  Billy planned to be a huge man someday, six-foot-ten and three hundred pounds of pure, good, unadulterated Bill. He would walk through town and it would move aside. Their dad was small and mean, a little mean dog on a long chain, and they moved aside. He never worked a full day; though his office had papers in piles, no business was transacted there. He kept a diary in the front room, locked, which Paddy Jr. would inherit along with the key around Dad’s neck. The seven stayed clear of the front room on the first of the month, when rent was due, and when the bottle was empty by the couch. They took the back hall to the fire escape. He sang in the shower. Nobody starts out mean. Everyone is born clean and good, a little pink baby with a smile in a carriage and fresh skin and pink lungs to cry out with. Once a cow died in the creek on Dad’s father’s farm. Before the men came for the carcass the brothers played a game with the cow. Oldest to youngest they ran and jumped and bounced off the spongy cow into the water. Dad was last. By his turn the cow was deflated. He fell in the cow and was pulled out by his brothers. He smiled whenever he told this story.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Tommy said to the guys who had him now.

  Billy crawled toward Tommy’s voice and found him in the dark.

  “Better have his parachute ready,” said a bad voice with bad laughter. Two guys had Tommy hogtied at the arms and legs. A third man had Tommy’s belt buckle, laughing and barking. The guys staggered with Tommy under all his thrashing. Billy pulled on the leg-man nearest the ledge.

  “He won’t even die,” said the hand-man.

  “He’ll die,” said the leg-man, and pushed Billy off him. “Get him off me.”

  “No, I heard of a guy who fell from six thousand feet and lived,” said a hand-man.

  “You’re high,” said the leg-man.

  “Guinness Book. Look it up, shithead. Landed in a cornfield,” said the hand-man, then the swinging got synchronized. “Broke every bone, but lived.”

  “There must have been a tree or something he fell on,” said the belt-man, who was holding off Billy with a free hand.

  “Watch it, kid,” said the Queen. She was on the hand-man peeling his fingers.

  “Hey, get this kid, get him off me.”

  “There was no fucking tree, look it up,” said the hand-man. He shoved the Queen. “Hey, get this girl off me. She’s impeding our work.”

  Now the Queen was on the edge tugging Billy, who was tugging the leg-man who swatted Billy like a fly.

  “Billy!” called Tommy.

  “Look, he’s smiling.”

  “Get this kid off me. That’s not smiling.”

  Someone lifted Billy, kicking and biting, from behind.

  “Tommy!” called Billy.

  “Man-who-fell-to-earth, it was a special on TV,” said the hand-man. “Jerry somebody, a postal worker. Broke every bone.”

  “Freaked the cows,” said the belt-man, who must have weighed a thousand pounds, ten thousand pounds.

  People were laughing, watching the show, and rolling around.

  “I bet that postman guy goes to church now.”

  “Someone get this kid. I mean it.”

  “Paddy! Sean! Teddy!” called Billy. They would be pulling their coats on as they ran for the door.

  “Shit.”

  “Hey, easy, easy,” said the Queen on the arm of the leg-man, who pushed her off. She fell on the La-Z-Boy.

  “My back hurts,” said hand-man. “I’m done here.”

  “We’re not done,” said the leg-man. “Not even.”

  “Alan! Matty!” called Billy, their boots stomping three flights down to the Lincoln sidewalk with the flag and a net for circus jumpers.

  “Swing him higher,” the leg-man said, “I hate this little smiling shit.”

  “Hey don’t, hey don’t, hey don’t!” said the voice of the Queen, dusty and sooty. Then Billy fell.

  A satellite circling within earth’s gravity is falling the whole time.

  He fell for an hour, equals forty boys back-to-back, or twelve girls with some pleasure.

  The air was nice. The snow slapped his chin.

  A fly is the lowest thing always repenting.

  A siren for a meteor a mile wide crossing into Polish gibberish.

  “Billy!”

  “Rose!”

  The rocket blasted past the blue ambulance stairwells.

  Mother would cry, don’t cry. Dad will be dead in two years, I promise.

  The snow will be one hundred feet deep, I promise, silky like flour.

  Brothers with nets, yes.

  Flowers, yes.

  Dragon girls, yes.

  The headline: Miracle Boy.

  No cornfield or cow.

  Super Bill, Sweet William.

  Out of my way.

  No Name Creek

  On the way to the truck Ben prayed his prayer in case it might help: please, God, whoever you are, last day of moose season and the freezer’s empty.

  “Ready, little brother!” said Boak and revved her.

  “Ready,” said Ben.

  Ben slammed the passenger door. Fine. Fine. Shit-kickers on the dash. The water boiled in the thermos for later. The yard needed raking but would wait.

  Boak floored her.

  Ben: groggy and sluggish. Map in pocket. The rifle in the jump seat. A bluebird day for raking.

  A slap hard to the meat of the thigh.

  “Wake up, little brother!”

  “Just drive on,“ said Ben. He rubbed his leg.

  The sun came up over the bar, then firehouse, then the truck turned. At the T, Ben goodbyed Boak and Sue’s, a little blue house still sleeping with the mailbox open and the front door closed. Once it had just been Sue. Sue at the T this, Sue at the T that, the new gal in town, and no Boak whatsoever. When Ben still had a chance.

  “What?” said Boak.

  “Nothing,” said Ben.

  “You were always a mumbler.” Boak bit at cake from some bake sale.

  “I said nothing at all,” said Ben.

  The truck missiled out of town.

  Boak chewed, crumbs fell, and Ben wiped them to the floor.

  “Some bull is ready to end his days!”

  Boak yelled it with the cold windows down.

  A hunt is a tiresome thing. A moose is big and unaccommodating: fifteen-hundred pounds, tall as a shed roof, well-hidden as needed. He likes to browse and chew and sleep and gnaw and live.

  They drove the morning with no success, drove, bumped, groused, walked, drove on farther, turned, bumped again, groused again, slogged, aimed, reloaded, and cursed their luck. They saw cows galore in the willow browse, and their calves too, so easy for the taking by the despicable. At Crooked Creek it was grouse, more grouse, and a mateless swan. At Puritan nothing, a porcupine. Dry Creek, rabbits, got one with the truck, didn’t notice. Ermine Creek, birds and birds, seagulls, but why? The sea is far away from here. Why bother asking, who cared? A fox, but Boak missed and laughed. At Heartbreak Creek, nothing, a yearling bull with velvet horns, and they let him go by the book. Washout Creek, nothing. Goodbye, nothing. Winston Churchill, nothing.

  “Damn it to hell,” howled Boak when granddaddy bull popped in the alder on Doubleback. But the shot was high and that’s why they call it hunting.

  They drove north and gassed up at noon. Ben found a penny in the men’s room. Boak found the man with the bull in the flatbed and made friends at the pump.

  “Nice one,” said Boak.

  “Lung shot,” said the man.

  “Help us out?” said Boak. “Last day.”

  The man swiped his map from the dash and tapped with his finger on what looked like nothing. He made an X with a pen and circled it.

  “Can’t miss there,” the man sa
id. “It’s a regular zoo.”

  “What’s it called?” Boak said.

  “I never heard. She’s too little for naming,” the man said.

  “All right,” Boak said.

  “You boys try it,” the man said, and he and the bull turned south.

  Ben watched Boak and the man with the bull on the flatbed from the Coke machine. There was the big glass window. The Coke machine was empty. Ben waited hand on hips, nose to glass.

  Boak: good-natured face, balding with ball cap, goatee, shit-kickers, Wranglers, knife on the hip.

  Please, God, whoever you are.

  Then Ben and Boak were driving again, looking for moose.

  In the north the sky was clear. A bluebird day for driving. The road was empty: trees and trees and a yellow dashed line. A few trucks passed and saluted with hands. The boys saluted back and Ben counted vehicles, each of them going by, for miles.

  “One,” said Ben.

  They swallowed cold coffee from the station. Styrofoam squeaked beneath Ben’s boots. Sinatra sang on the tape deck. The truck rumbled warm and sleepy and the yellow leaves fluttered and smoothed the pavement, which was a conveyer running to its end. Ben sang along with Frank until Boak pinched them both off with his fingers on the dial.

  “Can’t Miss Creek,” Boak said. “Zoo Creek.”

  Trees and trees. “Two,” Ben said as a semi passed.

  “Granddaddy Creek,” Boak said. “I like the sound of that.”

  A hill passed.

  “Nice Guy Creek,” Boak chimed. “Gas Up Creek.”

  A dozer passed aimed west.

  “Three,” Ben said, getting sleepy.

  The sky. A dull sky.

  “No Name Creek,” said Boak. “That’s what, that’s what.”

  The road twisted and straightened. Trees and more trees, a house, a barn. A gas station boarded up, a culvert crushed by something even bigger. A fire engine sped south without the siren and waved.

  “Four,” said Ben.

  “Last Day Creek. Where’s My Moose Creek. I Got Mine Creek,” said Boak and laughed. “Ha ha ha.”

  Once at Mother’s, Ben drank milk from a glass and it was delicious and cold. But before the last swallow, he felt a thing on his tongue: a shave of glass long as a nail. Ben showed the glass to mother. She shook her head and made batter for morning. Ben kept the glass on his sill by the jar with the lucky pennies.

  “Five,” said Ben at a Harley whizzing up and by.

  Once, Boak kicked a baby pool out of his way.

  “How Bout Lunch Creek,” said Boak.

  Ben grabbed the sack of deviled ham and Swiss from the back. They drove north and chewed like twins: twin mouths, twin noses, with exact matching rotation. The hands rose from the elbow with the same angle and thrust.

  Hills and trees, lakes and birds, hills and lakes. A bird alone. A flock. A flock and an eagle on a phone line sagging. Can the caller on the phone hear eagle’s claws? Hills and hills. A bag of trash in the ditch.

  “I Gotta Piss Creek,” said Boak.

  They pissed twin arcs at some pleasant-looking birch. They drove on. The road bent toward the mountains parting swarms of black spruce up the slope.

  “Makes me think of winter,” Ben said to the high white.

  “Of course. It’s October, little brother. What kind of dope needs whitish mountains to tell him that?”

  The peaks jabbed at the sky and the sky just sat there and took it.

  The station man’s creek ran up the rusted rail line to the Pass. Parallel the rails, the truck growled in low up the road that was really no road at all: just two lines of dirt in the brush that kept going. The cliffs climbed and made the day end early. The truck bumped and dragged and stalled and revved and wallowed in mud pits between. A moose ran by while they fussed with the winch. They passed many signs of life, all long dead: a locomotive off the tracks and in the trees, a cedar tank dripping rain at the rivets; a station house with a coffee can roof and a sign that said MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

  “Mine Your Own Business Creek,” said Boak. “Mine your own business. Mine. Your. Own. Business.”

  They passed a handcar on a side rail toting green bottles. They passed a pallet with black punky cordwood, leather boots unmatched and tongueless hanging from a clothesline across the back deck of a caboose, trees chewed down, a beaver lodge built, lump coal in a pile, logs stacked and tarped, a ball of rebar big as an outhouse and twisted like some kid’s joke. More coal. More rabbits. More trees. More Boak. He rolled down his window and spit.

  “We aren’t idiots!” he yelled to the Pass.

  The rifle jumped off the jump seat any number of times. Ben righted it again and again until he wedged it between the seat and the bag of deviled ham and swiss. The road curved up and up and on along the railroad tracks. Another station house came and went in poor condition: its canned roof was caved and the walls were unreadable. The creek wagged and zagged by the boys like a friend. The eagles circled and swooped as was right for them to do. The eagles sat in treetops and snags when their wings got tired and watched the tiny truck driving. The headlights off. The sun was so west that the boulder, when it came, spread in the road as big as any blue whale. The boulder had tumbled from that cliff, five-hundred feet down. The crack in the mountain was just so wide, very narrow in fact, with no room for boulders rolling on and on and on. The boulder had flattened the rails like a penny. The boulder would sit for a million years. The rails would rust. The boulder had jumped from the cliff and flattened the rails on a day no one saw and no one remembered. The rest was just guessing.

  “I guess it’s a bluebird day for walking,” said Boak.

  “I guess it is,” said Ben.

  The truck shuddered dead at the boulder. The boys shouldered their gear and got walking.

  A Pass is a big cut that doesn’t end where it looks to. It just goes over the other side. They walked by a shot-up Ford with a fridge door leaning on the headlight. By a tree with one leaf left. By a bush turned red. By a bush with berries. By berries in shit.

  Ben thought this:

  Mountain: tall, rude or greedy on occasion, made of stone thrust up from elsewhere, terrible, sad, OK, invincible. Useful for poems.

  Cliff: rock like a fence.

  Rabbit: a small edible mammal, plentiful, friendly reputation, big families.

  Magpie: a clever bird, black and blue, steals dinner if able and doesn’t care.

  They walked and walked. Once, Ben was called to jury duty and heard this story: A man was gone three years and his wife wanted the insurance money paid. He was last seen on the ferry from Skagway in a mask, tank, and fins. Now what about that? Now what about that?

  They kept walking and whistled.

  “That scuba man was not for sure dead, I’m sure.”

  “What?” said Boak.

  “Nothing,” said Ben.

  Trees: tall, usually unselfish, of variety and kindliness, carbon, sometimes terrible, sweet sad, appearing invincible to some but vulnerable to axes, old age, lack of sustenance, fire. Useful in cold.

  “What were you saying?” said Boak.

  “Nothing, that scuba-man trial.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Boak.

  Heat rises and cold sinks. The cold sank.

  Hand: a necessary appendage.

  They passed by a butte and by a gorge with a waterfall with no name either. They heard hooves pounding, branches snapping. Ben ducked, Boak fired, but the game was safe, gone in the darkening trees.

  They passed by a rusting wheelbarrow, pouring nothing out sideways, looking like a crab.

  Bear: top of the chain so will eat you or part. Good for stories at gatherings and postcards.

  “Goddamn It Creek,” said Boak in blue gunsmoke. They walked.

  Boak: puckered when sweating, long strides like no tomorrow, gloves always deep in butt pockets, shaft on shoulder, straight like a Roman, half step forward like a queen gets to lead.

  Poem: a set of words
put together to say something that can’t be said. Ben once slid one in Sue’s mailbox in his best pretty longhand, but Ben’s longhand and Boak’s longhand were perfect twins.

  Mix-up: a mess that causes the wrong or undesired result, brought about by fear or happiness or love or an absent mind or poor penmanship.

  Sue: pretty, sweet, nice, sets her chin on her knuckles while listening. Gap-toothed. Holds her head while laughing hard.

  Mix-up: a terrible mess brought about by poems. Boak won that one too. Boak always won.

  “Wins what?” said Boak.

  “Nothing,” said Ben.

  “How the world is declining,” Boak said. They shook their heads at injustice. The brothers walked on, sweated and walked. They heard gunfire the next drainage over and walked faster.

  Leg: a necessary appendage, needing another.

  When the boys were young they played charades with friends. First, they did presidents and movie stars, like everyone, and the notable people in town. But as years passed and the boys grew, they took on greater challenges: a barn door, the kitchen sink, the curtain in the bedroom. The boys progressed to trees by species and cloud formations and diseases of the body and mind. Boak stopped there, but Ben aspired higher: to local geologic formations. He would stretch his arms, stand or squat, tuck his head or throw it back, fling a leg, turn the wrist depending on necessity and art. He peaked like Granite Peak and Castle Mountain. He lounged into Lazy Mountain, thundering into Pioneer Peak, a spitting image of Gunsight. He crescendoed into Denali, greatest challenge in a few continents.

  They passed by a helicopter between some trees. One rotor was ripped off.

  “Some crash,” said Ben. “I’d love to get her home.”

  “Get her flying again,” said Boak.

  They considered with hands on hips.

  Then Boak aimed, fired, and made a fresh wound in the sheet-metal tail. He handed the rifle to Ben who blew away the remains of the windows. They squatted and drank their tea by a huge old ribcage. They wiped their mouths on their sleeves. The sun sank. In the ties, they found the femur to match to the ribcage.

  “Gigantic.”

  It had snapped in half long before, between steel wheel and steel rail.