I.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Kellogg had to deliver lunch. When her
order came in, Kellogg tried to beg off. No doing. Laura Mae and her gossipy
mouth made it impossible to trade. He'd heave the container of chicken and
dumplings, soup beans and greens or country fried steak, wishing he had
five spare minutes to add some special sauce before heading across the street
and into her shop. Today was meatloaf and Friday. People whispered wherever
he went, excluding Fava, the only person in town willing to forget things.
When he pushed through LM Antique's door, it slammed against the wall. Laura
Mae grabbed her chest like the sound had ripped through and left a gaping
hole. She took her purse from underneath the counter and with her squinty
pig eyes on him, she pressed her mouth up against the new girl's ear. Whatever
Laura Mae said made JoJo turn her twigged out and fried purple hair in his
direction, her gaze falling and sticking to his crotch. Kellogg felt his
sausage shift and start to plump up. Stupid dog, he thought. Stupid bitches,
too. He dropped the Styrofoam on the counter, raked the money into his hand
and turned his sneakers to leave. He squeaked as he walked away.
II.
Whenever the interior of his Chevette got dusty, Kellogg wiped it down while
he drove home. He used diaper wipes and folded them in half after every
pass. The ashtray was jammed full of thick little squares. White noise filled
his ears given the radio didn't work, but he liked that sound better than
silence. Passing the Gas Stop at the corner of Maple and Main, he tossed
his index finger up like every one else in town when he spotted Daugherty.
Daugherty found interest all of a sudden in his greasy fingernails. Kellogg
thought about using a different finger. He so wanted out of this town; he
had a bag packed, sitting at the top of his stairs next to the linen closet.
The overcast skies and leafless trees bordering his drive home went unnoticed.
Kellogg saw blue skies and mountains in his daydreams. The road home he
knew inside out. At home, he wiped the steering wheel clean with another
baby wipe and emptied the ashtray into his hand. His shoulders slumped the
closer he got to the house. The screen door sagged where it had come loose
at the top when a blizzard blew through last winter and dumped too much
wet snow on the aging wood; it slammed against the house when the wind blew
right, sounding exactly like a shotgun blast every time it did, making him
jump startle tense up. An echo of the sound he'd heard from his bed the
night his grandmother stumbled and crawled her way into her vegetable garden,
weeded the cabbages and blew her fucking head off. On the landing, he eyed
the suitcase, he kicked it. His room had always been at the end of the hall,
until she died. Now, he stepped to the right, went into the master bedroom
and lay fully clothed on the fraying quilt, staring at the ceiling, thinking
of JoJo and her purple hair, thinking about what it would be like to know
her. Working with Laura Mae, Kellogg knew she'd tell his story, his grandmother's
lies. Would JoJo believe her? Of course she would. And how can a person
disprove something so… so personal as the wild imaginings of his grandmother's
twisted musings? His heart shrank every time the door slammed.
III.
Some
things a person is forced into; that's what Kellogg thinks. By the time
he snuck back across the yard, through his grandmother's overgrown garden
and passed the hayfield, the moon was halfway through its night ride. His
breath burst from his mouth in white plumes, as if he were a dragon made
of ice, exhaling brimstone. He couldn't leave. This was all he knew, all
he'd ever know. He didn't know how to live anywhere else. The corncrib sat
at the back of the field, beyond the fence to keep the cows, the chickens
burrowing inside to keep warm. When he opened the door, he was surprised
at the lack of odors. It was too cold. Things need heat to smell right.
The chickens, dumb as they were, seemed to know enough to be scared. The
sound of his belt buckle coming loose started them squawking. He yanked
his legs out of his pants--his breath blossomed around his head, a dragon's
mane--and wrapped his talons around the neck of the nearest chicken. The
rest took to beating their wings, flapping wilding in the confines of the
corncrib, screaming. Kellogg pushed in and got his fit. He imagined JoJo's
purple hair was in his hands the whole time. Finally, he arched his neck,
the fires of hell rolling out of his mouth on the flight of his roar. When
he was done, the chicken was dead, strangled. Back in his kitchen, he boiled
water to singe the feathers to make it easier to pluck.
IV.
Kellogg
thought about calling in to work when the alarm went off Monday morning,
but then he'd have to make up an excuse and Fava'd know he was lying. So
he pushed himself out of bed, dragged his clothes on and with some water
splashed through his hair, a quick brush of paste across his teeth, he went
to work. At ten thirty he had to answer the phone because Fava was changing
light bulbs in the bathrooms. It was Laura Mae; she of course, like every
one else did when he had to answer the phone, asked for Fava. Kellogg explained
that she was busy and if he could take her order; she huffed but told him
what she wanted. Two hours later, he carried the warm container into her
shop. JoJo was dusting candlesticks, but when he walked by, she stopped
him, smiling at him--Laura Mae asked me to ask you about your grandmother.
Said it was a story I had to hear but wanted you to tell me--Kellogg dropped
the food, chicken gravy splashing onto the top of his sneakers. He thought
about wrapping his hands around her throat and forcing the words back into
her mouth and down into her stomach until she couldn't speak ever again.
She said his name, her tone quizzical, and it sounded wrong, out loud and
in the air. He could hear Laura Mae snickering. The buds in his mouth could
taste his hate, seasoned with shame. He turned on his heel, slamming the
door so hard as he left that paint chips scattered.
V.
The
wind was blowing just right when Kellogg pulled his Chevette into the gravel
beside his grandmother's house. Her house, the only thing she'd ever given
him and that only because if she hadn't it would have looked bad on her.
He could still hear the scorn in her voice--All this, free and clear, for
you. How's that for reward of a life well spent?--thinking about the day
she made her will. That afternoon she'd planted the cabbages. He stared
at her garden as he wiped off the steering wheel, the front door blasting
out its shotgun song. He felt his heart shrink. He stormed inside, ripped
up the stairs and found the gun where he'd stored it in the now never used
linen closet. The note his grandmother had left for the police was in the
closet, too. He felt his heart shrink. In it she'd told all his secrets,
all his bad things. He flew back downstairs, the gun tight in his grip,
tried to get the wind to circulate inside him. After his bad things, she
embellished, got fancy and in that note were all the things she thought
him capable of, all the things she could create in her mind ended up in
her scratchy scrawl to get what she needed: attention. That note was the
lock and key on the possibility of anyone ever loving him; that note was
the ball and chain to the whispers, the snickers and immobilizing isolation;
that note was the hero's sword thrust deep inside his brimstone breathing.
He felt his heart shrink. She hadn't mentioned what she'd done, her secrets
hers to carry to her grave, six feet of dirt burying them, a blanket of
green sod--good grass to hide beneath. Kellogg kicked at the weeds in her
garden. The wind was right today, persistent: he felt his heart shrink twice
as he crossed the hayfield. Inside the corncrib, he pumped the gun and blasted
the closest chicken. Chaos exploded: feathers squawking flying into walls
beating wings, scattered and noisy, clucking whipping the air dust and shit.
It took six shells to kill four chickens. He felt his heart shrink. Feathers
and shit, dust and blood slid or floated to the ground, as did Kellogg.
The cold couldn't hide the stink. He stuck the gun in his mouth, the barrel
hot against his lips, ripe with gunpowder. He fingered the trigger, but
his head rocked back and forth, shaking, saying no. Kellogg begged himself,
he cried. Like a big fat baby, he cried. Like the first time his grandmother
had found him here, with his dick in one hand a girly magazine in the other,
he cried, he begged. She'd just kicked him, called him disgusting names,
made him kill the chicken, pluck it, eat it for dinner. He'd wrung its neck,
but it wasn't the chicken's he saw as he did the deed. His teeth rattled
against the steel. That night, she made coleslaw with radishes and celery,
knowing he hated it, forcing him to eat everything. He shook. He couldn't
do it. He couldn't do anything… until… the wind blew just right… and he
felt his heart shrink.
© 2006
Tomi Shaw