Fat Man and Little Boy (10 page)

She stands again and pushes back her chair so hard it falls, bouncing off the left jade pillar and clattering on the stage. She approaches the fore. Hands in fists. Quiver-chinned.

“Monsieur Blanc.”

The grotesque is erected.

“Your wife married you for your money. Knowing that, she wonders if you might not waste it all on destroying better men.”

He is a gargoyle trembling.

“That's quite enough,” speaks Mr. Bruce.

“Leave a mourning husband be, you shrew,” says Mr. Rousseau.

“Albert,” says the Medium, her voice a bottled girl again, “I thought you would pay me more attention were I pregnant, and I convinced myself I was, but I wasn't. Now that I'm gone, you should treat your wife better. And get your fucking feet off of the table.”

Handsome Albert grunts. Francine taps the ground with her heels.

The medium coughs into her hands. So much wet comes out of her mouth, hanging in strings and ribbons from her hands. She is shaking her hands, and some hits the audience, and some now are standing to leave, tripping over others' feet, excusing themselves, all harrumph-harrumphing.

Fat Man feels a fart like the sun inside him. He tries to hold himself shut.

The medium wipes the rest of the wet on her robes, leaving vertical streaks. She sniffs back more. “Mr. Bruce,” she says, and both the thin one and the short one stand to show themselves. “Your father asks you to remember your prayers.”

The medium settles on Fat Man and Little Boy as if at the end of a long journey. Goosebumps form thick as shingles on them. She kneels at the fore, offering a hand to the audience.

“Fat Man. Little Boy. Come here. Let me see you.”

Fat Man looks to Little Boy.

“Don't be shy,” says the medium.

Little Boy takes to his feet. He pulls up Fat Man by hand and elbow.

Francine bites her lip. “Don't go up there,” she whispers, in English, so both the boys can understand. “She'll tell awful lies about you.”

“It's just a show,” says Fat Man.

“She'll say it either way,” says Little Boy.

They walk the aisle. Fat Man hoists Little Boy onto the stage and pulls himself up after, huffing and puffing. He wipes his head dry with his sleeve. No one can see the manic way he clenches his fat sphincter to keep the gas giant inside.

“My name is Matthew,” says Fat Man, in French.

“I'm John,” says Little Boy, in English.

“Are you sure it's not the other way around?” asks the medium, who weaves between French and English now and for the rest of her time on the stage, assuming each accent with only the slightest slurring transition, then returning, so that everyone who cares to follow can do so. Little Boy and Fat Man look to each other and wonder if the medium is right—they wonder if they've switched.

“I mean he's John,” says Fat Man.

“And he's Matthew.”

“Oh well then that's different,” says the medium. She prods the Fat Man's gut. “Women, guard your wombs. This man and this boy are haunted, haunted by tens of thousands. They killed them all, ladies.” She stomps the stage. “Now those people and children follow them wherever they go, jostling for a chance to be born again near them, whether as infants or livestock or rot. Do you want a ghost in your belly?” She sculpts a gut like a dome in the air before her own gut to demonstrate the concept. “If not, then leave—their collected haunts worm their way up inside you even now, and will soon demand nutrition from your unknowing bodies, which will give and give, indiscriminate. You and your daughters. Lucky Rosie, lucky barren Rosie. I see them coax your flesh but they cannot. They all speak to me at once. A gibbering chorus. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“It's not true,” says Fat Man. He shifts on his feet, fighting back the gut-buster. “I don't know what you mean.”

Little Boy stares out at the crowd, arms hanging from his sides like streamers.

“I told you she was a liar,” shrills Barbara Trudeau, the daughter-killer.

The medium spits, “These readings are for entertainment purposes
only
!”

“Who the hell are you?” says Fat Man.

“Did they kill Marie Blanc?” shouts Mr. Bruce.

“Was the fat one in cahoots with her lover?” shouts Mr. Rousseau.

Mr. Bruce yells, “What about Laurel?”

The medium circles the brother bombs, sizing them up. Little Boy trembles, and scratches himself, and—unaware of what his hands do—pulls at the foreskin of his penis through his trousers with one restless hand, squirming, as young boys sometimes do.

“Who am I?” says the medium. “Who are you? Do maggots form in the flesh of your victims with terrible speed? Do infants pour from every womb you see, unfinished, rushing to be near you? Does the food on your fork sprout mold before it reaches your lips? Do spiders crawl from inside dead bodies? Do you dream at night of mosquitoes devouring your flesh? Do you LIVE in SHAME and FEAR of EVERYTHING AROUND YOU?” She rears up, claws hoisted over her head. “Do you wake up sometimes
soaked
in your own mess and piss, flailing for something to break your fall, screeching like a goddamn harpy?”

Little Boy sobs—a snot bubble growing from his nose. “Yes,” he cries, “yes I do.”

“Shut up,” says Fat Man, not to Little Boy, but to the audience, which is silent. He holds his arms out like wings, displaying his bloated body. He feels his entrails roil inside him like hot tar.

“I want to die every day and I'm not even sure why,” says Little Boy.

“Does the guilt bring you pleasure,” hisses the medium, who fairly gyrates on the stage. “Does it, to know what you've done to them, the lives you destroyed, you took for your own, and their fascination, and the way they suck and clutch your fingers?”

“I don't know.”

“You are fat with them,” she says, jabbing Fat Man's belly.

“I'm fat with food,” says Fat Man. He squeezes his carriage in his arms. The blood is rushing. His heart burns. He is sure to explode. “I eat too much.”

“You hardly eat at all, most days,” says the medium. “I know you eat what you can get, I know, but your fat comes from the children. They're lining your insides, like good soldiers throwing themselves on a grenade,
wave after wave
.”

Fat Man looks down at his body. “They can't be.”

Little Boy falls down on his ass for no obvious reason. The audience is mystified, but cannot speak, cannot look away. He wails like a newborn. “Leave us alone,” he pleads. “Leave us alone. I am Matthew. I sweep the floors clean, and kill no one. Please ma'am, my brother is the killer.”

“Not me,” bawls Fat Man, rocking on his heels, stumbling back against the table. “It isn't so. Not me.”

“Come clean,” calls Mr. Bruce.

The table rattles beneath his fat, shaking hands.

“I'm going to explode. I'm going to explode.” Fat Man's sphincter flutters, pulses. There is such a force inside him.

The medium pulls the feather needle from between her eyes. She holds the point up, gesturing at the ceiling, which is painted thickly with cherubim and other naked things. She wrenches the needle, once, twice, showing the audience. They murmur or remember to breathe.

She marches on Fat Man. He lurches around the table, collides with one jade pillar, upending it. The ugly stacked pillar faces put their ears to the ground, and sway forward and back, listening to the thrum of spirit medium and Fat Man, Little Boy's shoes scraping the boards of the stage.

Fat Man pants, and feels the cold, itching rivulets of saltwater running down his peaks and valleys. He holds out his black burnt palms. “I'll explode! You don't want to see! You don't want to be here! I'm sorry!”

He chokes down vomit.

The medium plunges the needle in between his eyes. It scrapes the bone. He raises up his hands as if to lift the ceiling.

The gas he's been holding explodes from his body, hot and sulfur, wet, like a failing machine, like a rhinoceros goring a hog. He screams. Deflates. His arms fall to his sides. He falls too, and lands on his ass. A simple, sad expression spreads like grape jelly over his face.

A bead of blood rolls down his nose.

He can hear Little Boy's piss trickling down his pant leg and onto the wooden stage.

“Are you ashamed of what you have done?” demands the Oriental spirit medium. Much of the audience is leaving. The short policeman and the thin one walk against the outflow, truncheons at hand.

“Yes I am ashamed,” says Fat Man, hoarsely. “I am ashamed. Yes I am ashamed, yes I am ashamed.”

“See what I see,” says the medium. “Know what I know.”

She's retrieved her box from the table. They are swimming in the eggy fumes of Fat Man's explosion—the air is hot, and seems to warp and bend around them.

“Touch the wooden box with me,” she says. “Hold it as I hold it.”

She proffers the box, kneeling beside him.

“Are you Japanese?” says Fat Man.

“I am.”

“You survived,” he says.

“I did.”

Fat Man reaches for the box.

It's cold. The grain is smooth.

THE BROTHERS GO HOME

Fat Man and Little Boy wake up on the stage, spent and alone. Fat Man has had another wet dream, as the stain crusting the front and inner thighs of his slacks testifies. Little Boy merely wet himself.

Fat Man, sitting up, finds a handwritten note at rest on his gut.

It reads:

we are sorry for what the medium has done to you, and any shame it brings. we tried to wake you, but could not. instead we thought it best to let you rest. we will clean the stage in your absence. please leave the building at your earliest convenience. francine says she'll be waiting for you with warm soup.

signed,

the management

Fat Man folds the note and puts it in his pocket.

“You smell awful,” says Little Boy.

“Well you're a bed of fucking wildflowers,” says Fat Man. “You're a goddamn spice rack. You're a basket of scented soaps and rare cosmetic treatments.”

“I get it,” says Little Boy, rubbing his arm where a bruise is forming—he doesn't know why there is a bruise.

“You're a goddamn Parisian perfume counter.”

“I get it! At least I didn't fart on stage.”

Fat Man goes backstage and Little Boy follows. The samurai costumes hang from a rack on wheels, on wire hangers. The robes are very light and cool to the touch. Their swords are sheathed and piled on the floor. The table and jade pillars like ugly stacked heads are behind the piano, an upright with yellowing keys and cigarette burns, and ash around its base. Someone left his hat on top of it.

They find the medium's dressing room, but she will not answer no matter how they knock. Fat Man shouts into the keyhole, then kneels and peers, cold in his come.

Little Boy leans against the wall and sucks his fingernail. He says, “She's not there or she's not answering. Knock down the door or let's go.”

“I'll knock
you
down,” says Fat Man.

They leave, holding hands.

In the lobby there is a table. The marshal's white stone head is balanced upside down, the bald top sanded flat so it can stand on what's left. He is painted in spatters, the colors of the flag. He seems panicked. He watches the brother bombs go.

It's night. Neither can say how late, but they can see the moon and the stars, and there are few people out. It's quiet. They hear the distant burble of some body of water, one they never heard before. Someone's horse wanders the street, alone, no saddle, shoes heavy and muffled with accumulated mud. Little Boy watches for the horse as they walk. He would like to see it. He would like to touch its mane.

“We have to leave town,” says Fat Man. “I can't face Francine after that. She must hate me.”

“Is she going to be okay?” says Little Boy.

“If she hasn't left Albert yet she never will.”

“That wasn't what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Little Boy says, “I worry about her. Do you think Albert hits her?”

Fat Man shakes his head. Albert has many failings. That isn't likely one.

“I'll give Jacques our week's notice tomorrow,” he says.

Little Boy says, “I want to go home.”

“What home?”

“America.”

“You wouldn't like it there.”

Little Boy hears the horse or he believes he does. It is distant now, and now more gone, drifting toward the dirt roads and disused lots at the city's outer edge. Little Boy will not be allowed to touch the horse's mane. He will not get to watch it breathe. The mud is shaking loose from its hooves. Its footsteps are more crisp and clear than ever, though they are very far away.

“We'll live out in the country,” says Fat Man. “There are too many people here.”

“Is there work for you in the country?”

“Should be something. If not, we'll eat squirrels.”

Francine and Albert are fighting so loud Fat Man and Little Boy decide to wait outside the house. They sit beneath the window, legs folded, eyes closed.

Little Boy says, “What are they fighting about?” He rubs his ears to keep them warm.

Fat Man says, “He's angry she's pregnant.”

“So he worked it out.”

“He thinks it can't be his kid.”

“Why not?”

“I think he uses something called the withdrawal method.”

“What's that?”

“It's when you take it out before you finish. She's explaining that pre-ejaculate has sperm in it too.”

“I don't know what that means,” says Little Boy, looking up at the stars, breathing little chalk clouds.

“Then how do I know?”

“We're supposed to know all the same things?”

“I thought we did,” says Fat Man. “We're brothers.”

“Not anymore,” says Little Boy. “I mean, not about being brothers, but about knowing. You know French now.”

“You really don't?”

“Not so much. Some foods, mostly. Greetings, goodbyes. We're more different now than we used to be.”

“Now she's asking him why he doesn't take her to get an abortion the way he does with everyone else,” says Fat Man.

“Well why doesn't he?”

“Suppose she dies. How would that look?”

“That's not what he's saying, is it?”

“No. He says he doesn't want to put her through all that.”

“So they'll have the babies?”

“One more reason to leave,” says Fat Man.

“Imagine those eyes. Staring up at you as if you made the world and everything good,” says Little Boy.

“When really you destroyed it.”