The Wicked Day

“The Wicked Day”



He stands wearing a frown from the front porch, watching the January white and drizzle pelt the sides of his mother's broken-down Ford. His stare darts between her and the street. He hopes they won't see her—they being some faceless super-entity, too big and blank and dumb to understand the nuances of his situation—this being the third time she's snuck out trying to fix the carburetor.

He sniffs sharply, alerting her to his presence.

“Mum.”

She looks up.

“Mum, come on inside. I can get Steve to fix it later.”

His mother raises her white right hand, which would be beautiful if it isn't lacking a glove or a mitt, and waves him off. Then she raises her eyes to the navy-blue cup of stars above them, and he sees inside of them a faint, fatal glimmer. Her eyelashes flutter under the snowflakes that begin to melt on them. Her son never talks to her like that. Certainly he's the prince—but who is the Queen around here, hmm? The corners of her ancient pretty mouth lift slightly. Not you, baby.

“You'll catch your death, Mum,” he says. A warm snake slides down his throat as he rubs his arms. “I ain't asking you again.”

And the lines drawn around her mouth flicker again.

Not you.

She is even smaller than he is, a bony woman of four-foot eleven, so he has no problems picking her up and carrying her back into the house. He's never been sure if this is necessarily a good thing—what is strange is the way she limps when he picks her up, as if she's an offending kitten being picked up by the scruff of its neck. There's a vulgar innocence about her that reveals more of her age than her naivete—he's heard that people revert back to their childhood in their old age. But she is just too young to be nearing that, he thinks, too young and too overworked and just about everything else she's too unready for. Plus, it's three in the morning and seventeen below zero. So naturally she has every right to limp in his arms.

Not you.

He shakes his head as he winds up the stairs, setting his mother to bed amidst stacks of boxes and old bedsprings. Ain't that the damn truth.

xXx




There is a soft melody playing, because all fond memories are supposed to have a soft, forgettable melody—preferably something that sounds like all the others. Frankie Avalon, Frank Sinatra, the Everly Brothers, or Ricky Martin. It's his mother's record player, wound up so she can't hear him from downstairs.

His sister, Karen, is in the living room, staring with an interested stupor at Sean Connery's bleedin' British carcass. He hates James Bond; his mother thinks James Bond degrades women; so naturally Karen is obsessed with James Bond. She's seen Dr. No, Thunderball, Goldfinger, and Casino Royale ten times—each. If he goes up into her room, he can pull seven books off her shelf at random and honest-to-God bet that all seven are written by Ian Fleming.

“The hell you doing up this late?” he says.

Karen's still watching.

He saunters in and switches the knob to the late night show. Karen snaps her head around and bitches. He ignores her. Her frustration leaves nothing more than tiny red little scratches on his arms. He's okay with that. She goes upstairs and slams the door. Sighing, he stretches himself out on the couch, kicking away a stack of magazines with his heel.

He laughs out loud at the late night show. That guy just threw a tomahawk at the silhouette’s pretty parts. When he's laughing, he doesn't notice all the things that are falling apart, like the roof leaking or the lights flickering or the shower that doesn't turn on all the way or the scratches Karen's left on him or his mother's weathering. When he laughs, he can shake the tremble that threatens to uproot him. When he's laughing, he almost doesn't notice the blood that's been on the floor for three weeks.

His father's picture has fallen on the floor. His mother had taken the shards of glass and stabbed her wrists with them.

He laughs and he laughs and he laughs with the beer bottle glued to his hand. He laughs until his throat cracks with it. (That's what the beer is for, he thinks.) For now, he can still pretend not to notice that his father's picture has fallen and that a dry blot of red stains the floor.

Then, when his laughter subsides with the January wind, the emptiness greets him like an old friend: it slings one arm around his shoulder as a chill raises the tender nerves on the back of his neck.

xXx


The first time he sees a kid writhing in the street is the very next day. He's walking too far on the wrong side of town—more smashed than a nail—and at first he barely gives notice. The snow has fallen outside of the curb in black lines, so the banks have almost completely covered him. His cockerspaniel, who his mother calls Kayla, trots faithfully beside him, her wet black nose erect to the sky. He chuckles every now and then, saying Good girl as she stops to piss on every fire hydrant on the way home. He wishes in a drunken bliss he could do that—with the cold fucking freezing his balls off—just lift his leg and boom. Done.

Then he sees the kid.

The kid gives a small groan. He glances left; he glances right. Like approaching a dead body, he runs up and kicks his rib with the side of his steel-toe boot. The kid whines harder. The sky is cold and hard, and it lays upon the kid's twisted face like white steel.

He goes to the nearest signpost and ties Kayla to it, petting her head. His heels click in the snow as he turns the kid onto his front side.

A pool of dark red grows from someplace—the liver, he thinks. The kid whimpers. He knows that's a bad place to get hit.

The kid chokes out his story. They stabbed him an' ran, 'cause he has no money on him...he smells a thief.

“Thief or not,” he says, “you're gonna kick it if you don't get help fast.”

The kid smiles, laughs, and squirts the pouch of red juice right in his face.

xXx


He bites his lips, daring himself not to fucking breathe... he finds his dog spread in two thick red dashes across the road.


xXx


He doesn't know how to break the news, so he sits his mother down at the kitchen table and takes her hands in his.

“I'm getting remarried,” his mother says. He blinks. Sparkling droplets run down her ashen face and spill salt onto her lap. She smiles. She's so happy she's getting remarried to another stiff. She thinks herself unworthy of anything more; and all her son can do is fruitlessly search and destroy the cause of her pain. Search and destroy. Search and destroy. Search and destroy.

He says her name this time. Myrtle.

They keep coming despite her smiling face, and there isn't a thing he can do about it. It is locked in the shining past, which he is not part of. It is an old memory that plays endless games with her mind, her health, her being. It has stolen his mother—and it is the memory that he, as the hand of the dagger, must root out and expunge.

“Isn't that wonderful?” Myrtle says.

He smiles at her and says yes, and then he goes halfway up the stairs before curling up into himself and heaving dry bits of memory from his cheery mouth.


xXx