OPEN MOUTH, MORE FOOD: July 2010

I am very excited to share this next story because I was bewildered when I first heard it in my creative writing class in the fall of 2008. It was read aloud and I swear I held my breath the whole time the author , a young man, name unknown still, had the stage. It was read so naturally as if he has inhaled and exhaled every word many times before, perhaps just to himself and in his mind. I am still very determined to find out his name. No luck yet but I do hope that he is writing novels and on his way to a fine establishment for his craft.

***Note: none of the story is edited other than one small typo when he repeats the same word and a couple of spelling errors.

Hands

This is where the pack house used to be, right at the edge of the woods, right where I'm standing. Last summer me and Art built a fort in here after Hurrican Hugo split it open like the belly of a fish and no one used it anymore. We were terrorizing the place, trying to pound nails into the floorboards with only one smack, sending golden sawdust out of a million termite holes. When we knocked a hornet's next out of the rafters Art's little brother, Caleb got bit and Art sent him cause he wouldnt shut up and stop crying all ready. Off he went softer and softer till we couldn't hear him. Then we had the quiet forst noises all around us and the hot fields out beyond the window. Sunlight fell inside. There were place in the rood where the tin had blown off, it was perfect for sunlight to fall right through and shine on everything dusty in the air. And I said, the Devil's beating his wife. Mom says that when it's raining but you can see the sunlight pushing through it and that's what it looked like.

Art was pissing out the window when I saw his gandaddy, SB's truck roraring over the fields, dragging a long red cloud of dust behind it. He pulled up and yelled at Art, saying if we all coulnd't play then none of us was gonna play. He's the biggest man alive just in the way he is. Blubber face was on the seat behind him. So Art crawled out of the fort and got in the truck. They drove off with me standing in the knocked-out doorway and the big empitness creeping up from the woods. The was all last summer when we stayed for two month and Art and me became best friend; and by the end of the visit they all said I sounded just like a little southern boy.

From the back of Manna's house looks all beautiful with the shady trees around it, like an island set down in the dry fields. You can't tell it's rotting and leave of paint are peeling off into the gardens all grown over since she got sick. And the first thing I do when we come visit is go through the old rooms each with that mystery smell like attic wood I remember again. I can see the three little white sheds in the back yard and the pump-house and our station wagon with the tailgate down. And the rows of tobacco that go all the way down to the branch. And there's no wind in them at all, but here in the pines it's still cool with the morning in them.

I'm always scared to look real deep into the woods, or let it get to quiet like something's listening to me. Art said a black man got burned alive in his cabin back there, he was drunk and his cabin burned down. And sometimes, Art says, you can hear him singing. I don't ever want to hear that. Even though we never found anything when we went looking for his ashes. People become ghosts before they die; I'd always though it came after. They start wandering out of their lives. That's why Manna's always looking out the window over the rusty garden and the fallen grape arbor and everything else. I think she's looking into heaven. At first I thought she was watching her trees. She likes to talk about the trees and how the trees around the house got there and how our family got there and the white oak outside her window is about as big as the sky so she's got a right to be proud. They planted it when they built the house. She's told me that story about amillion times. My great grandma put down the avenue of pecans from the highway, the white oak and a swamp chestnut and another kind I don't remember, and two magnolias and loblollies around the out-buildings. Yesterday I glided up to her beside in her wheelchair and asker her to tell me about the trees, but she was so tired. She wanted quiet mom said. *

It's like you can breath again to finally make it out of the woods, and there's Art leaning against the side of the hog-pen smiling. Mom says he's got an elfin complexion. And it's true, he's got quick eyes that flick down the road, and that's when I see Caleb wandering back to their granddaddy's farm. Nothing new and different. He turns and sees me, but Art yells, go on and the big cement silo put a shadow on him as he passes the two tractor ports and the line of metal sheds on the other side. You can't see their tiny farmhouse from here cause the road does a bend behind another line of sheds that block their tiny farmhouse.

I can hear all the hogs shuffling around in there before we climb up on the wall and really smell them. We're balance beaming to the end and Art hollers back, don't fall in. He's got his arms spread out like jesus on the wall at church yesterday morning. I'd forgotten it was Sunday; when I woke up and mom had my shirt and tie laid out on the bed. We sat up in the balcony. And the other children kept looking back to see who we were. Mom was crying during the sermon. She had a tissue balled up in her hand. Out the window there were two ment fighting across the street. The minister raised his voice, but you could still hear them shouting and everyone tried not to look. Mom didn'nt. She didn't turn my head away either.

It smells so bad, I say. My arms are out too. The hogs are all watching us in a huddle on the far side. All those nervous hooves go tap tap on the concrete. There's a drain hole in the corner where all their shit drizzles out into a pond.

Ain't got to far now, he says. I'm trying not to breathe.

Yup, I gasp.

The little one over there looks jsut like Caleb, he says.

Yup, I say.

C'mon jump down, he says.

There is a little island of crab grass to stand on where a log goes across the bubbling slipper pool. you might mistake it for a vat of hominy if you'd lost your sense of smell. But there's perfect place for a fort on the other side with its in moat of hog shit. But halfway across Art's foot goes slip and my heart slips too. In he goes. I've never seen him look so scared like now. He's sinking up the his waist and I nearly fall in, too, sitting down and pulling him up. Then we got his belly over the log. We're going back quick and art is saying Goddamn Goddamn Goddamn all the way across the pen wall again. Then we're off as soon as our feet hit the ground, running our fastest.

The spigot on the side of this old shed is just a pipe sticking out of the ground with a hose curled around it. The grass there is green and lush from drinking up the cold water that fizzes out all day. If I were a frog I'd sit right here in the shadegrass and soak up the mist and hunt those black crickets in there. You can find a rainbow here some times at evening when the sun's almost down.

Art is spraying off his blue jeans and steps out of his sneakers and floods them out too. I'm on the look out for SB. And he comes around the corner just like I knew he would, and I feel a ton of bricks slide off a shelf inside me. It only takes him about a second to figure out why Art's hosing hog shit out of his pants. He booms, Goddamn it I told you to stay outta there, or osmething like that. I don't even hear what kind of lie Art's making up, cause I'm watching SB's big hands slip out of his pockets and hang there at his waist. But he doesn't give Art a whipping like I thought he would. He just goes on down and slides open the shed door, and disappears in the dark. There's just a shadow now hanging in the doorway. We can hear him messing around. I picture him in that grey light that slides through the cobwebs covering the window. It's all machine guts in that old shed. There's a motorbike in there that won't ride, and soup can filled with nails, chains lying around, saws, and wrenches, and nothing where anyone can find it besides SB. I once saw a family opossums coming out of the back where the tin siding curls up like the corner of a photgraph.

With him out of earshot we're all smiles and nods and snickers. Well fuck you granddaddy, Art whispers. He says it like granddiddy. Then we hear the screen door way up at the house bang and Art's uncle, Clay, is coming down the streps. Art says, c'mon, with his wet jeans and bare feet. Off we go skipping up the gravel on the drive. Art's hot that old iron bar out from where it was flung under the juniper bush. He's saying, Clay, what can you do with this old bar? Clay looks like the man made out of car tires on the TV commercials, and he looks at you as thought you just spit on his shoe. He's the kind of person you want to do anything for. Clay bends that bar right and half.

Whoohoo, we yell. Art jumps about a foot in the air. I doo too. But Clay isn't even impressed with himself. He just looks at us.

How did you get all wet? He asks.

Water-fight, Art says. Then he looks at me for the first time and I hate it. All the blood in my body is rushing somewhere. That's what it feels like, like a big trout is swishing its tail in there.

Why ain't he wet, Clay says.

He got away, Art smiles. Art asks him what he's doing and Clay tells us how the tractor broke down and the fields hands are waiting for him out in the field. He calls them niggers. Then goes off with his big arms and his baseball cap turned backwards. We jump up the steps and inside.

The first thing you notice about their house, besides the air conditioning, is that it always smells like baked beans and macaroni. Margie, Art's grandma, isn't here, or else she'd call out, who's that now? or what's all that noise? She always laughs at whatever I say, and always says, bless me, look at you. And she might make her voice sound mean, but that's just the way she talks sometimes. Mostly her voice floats around like a birdsonf. Except when Art mouths off. We were all out on the porch steps one time with Art's mama sitting right there when are gave her some mouth. His mama got up and said she'd take care of him, but Margie said oh no, I know hot to show him his manners. Art had run off inside and Margie went right in after him. I was left there not saying anything hoping no one would look at me, wondering why art had to go and do that.

We go back in the playroom, I'm setting up checkerboard while Art's changing his pants. First thing I see is Art doesn't wear any underwear. I say, you don't wear underwear, Art.

He says, Hell no.

You got one of those uncircumsized penises, I say. Art's dick looks like it's holding it's breath in, and I remember how Art told me once his cousin, Gracey, made Caleb take of his pants right here in the playroom; she made him take off his pants cause she wanted to play with it. I told Art, That's molesting. Caleb should have called the cops. Next time he should call the cops, I said.

Now finally Art sits down. Chinese checkers, I shout,

Art says, me Chinese, me play joke, me go pee pee in your coke.

He ebats me in about two turns. Just like that. So I get up to take a look at those pictures hanging on tthe wall. They've been looking at me this whole time I figure iti's my turn. It's big old Clay and his wife on their wedding day. Ain't she pretty, Art says. Clay's got a big smile on his face, bbut I can tell it's hurting him pretty bad to smile like that. Ain't she? Art says. But i'm tired of looking at those pictures. I just nod my head. I ask Art if that story Margie told us about him is true.

Which one, he says.

You know, I say, the one about the baby deer. Art puts his nose ina scrunch. But I know he knows, because hw as right there when Margie told us how clay this one time found a baby fawn out when he was plowing in one of the fields.

Remember last year we were out on the porch and MArgie said he found one, out cutting the field. He took it int he the tractor with him?

Nope, Art says. Then silence over us, and I remember when I heard that story imaginging it was a field of winter that went as far as you could see, just soft and waving and endless. And clay in the tractor, not even disturbing anything. He was plowing the field, but I couldn't see the ground up earth beneath him or the cut stubble. I couldn't hear the loud drone of the motor following the tractor the way it does. He came across the little fawn nestled down in the waves, way out in the middle. He cut off the mottor and got down. The mama deer has deserted it, or maybe she hidden her there or maybe she'd been shot. Clay picked up the little baby. He plosed the whole field with the fawn lying there on his lap.

The only fawn I've ever seen had white spots on it. That was back home in the park we camped at on lake Michigan. Mom and me went on a walk and dad was sleeping. And Robert and Justing, my brothers, missed it too, cause they were fishing and wouldn't let me come, so mom and me saw the fawn alone. We almost got close enough to touch him before he ran off. So how oculd a fawn lay there in the tractor with Clay and not scare to death? He finished plowing off that field leaving a circle of wheat where the fawn's next was and then laid it back down. Margie sais, oh you wouldn't think it but Clay got a big heart for little critters. I thought, yeah right. And I got jealous, even right now thinking about it. I went looking for my own fawn on the way home after Art and Margie went into the house for supper. I kept coming to a bend in the road and my heart would go crazy, but there never was one waiting for me.

I want ot watch TV, I say.

You always want to watch TC, Art says. We're standing at the kitchen counter drinking Mellow Yellow in those little glasses they use for whiskey.

Ah, one more for the road, I say.

How about you pouring up another round for an old cowboy friend, says Art. Then he cocks his eye just like Clint Eastwood would do. We sit on the brown sofa in the dark living room, and Art cuts on the TC.

I say, see, Art, all people talk like Northerners on the television.

Don't sound liek it to me, he says. Then I think about all the differences between Northerners and Southerners. When I went hunting with my cousin Juni once he told me that up north they only count the points on one antler of a deer. In the south they count both sides. His cigarette bobbed up and down. See, he said, sometimes a buck's got no more points on one side than the other. That's why it's best to count both sides. So there's no mistake. That seemed right to me too. Another thing that's different about the south is lunch is called dinner and dinner is called supper and I always say yes ma'am and yes sir. Once when I forgot Art's mama said yes, what? in front of everyone in the line at the Burger King. Art said that was cause she was all ready upsey; he said his parts were fight; they were always fighting.

Someone is knocking on the screen dooe. Two knocks, bam bam.

Son, is your Granddaddy selling cigarettes? Ablack man is there, one of the hands. He doesn't open the door, just learns forward, arm over his knee with one foot up on the step. Mom told me not to call them that. Don't call them hands, she said. I asker her why. She said it sounded low. I remeber the first time I heard Art talking about hands doing this and that. I was pictures loose hands roaming around without bodies. And once, one night, when Art slept over at Manna's house, my uncle told us this ghost story about a severed hand that woke up and skittered over the dry leaves where it first got cut off, and crawled though the lady's window and killed her. I tried not thinking about it, but after Art fell asleep I crawled in bed with him where it felt safe. He woke up in the morning laughing, saying, you were scared, weren't you. I said I must have been sleep walking. It was a stupid thing to come up with, but it was the only thing left to say. That's the problem with lying: usually there is only one stupid thing left to say and if you don't say it right then anyone can tell you're making it up. Art winked at me.

Now, Art says, after getting two bright packs of cigarettes from the cabinet, don't go smoking them all at once.

I beg your pardon, the man says.

We;;, Art says, I seen y'all smoking a whole mess of them at a time just fooling. Two in your nose, two in your mouth. You're just gonna waste them like that. The man laughs a little and hands art some money. Then he's gone back towards the fields, smacking the cigarettes against his palm in the sunlight. Art yells after him, the tractor still broke? the man turns and nods. It's true, Art says, I seen them. They smoke a whole mess at once. He puts the money in a tin box in the cabinet.

I wouldn't have believed it if he just told me, but Art really does have a gas pump in his yard and they got a golf cart he can ride wherever he wants. The pump is by the long tractor port that goes down to the silo all covered in vines. There must be about a hundred snakes living inside that silo. All the different tractors are underneath the dome waiting their turn. Art drives the golf cart up to the pump and starts pumping the gas. There's a stray cat crouching in the long grass off to the side. Yesterday we saw a green tree frog in there but I lost him. I looking for him again, pushing my fingers through the grass. The grass is saying, there' a green frog in here somewhere if you just look hard enough. Behind me I hear Art say, that old frog again. He says it like ageen. I go sit down in the driver's seat and put my hands on the wheel like I'm flying down the road, but Art finished up and says, slide Clyde. I move over. Then he hops in, throws it into gear and puts the pedal to the metal. Scram cat, he yells. Eat dust, you old bastard. And then we're cruising down the road with the tobacco fields on both sides. Just two walls of green leaves, if you look right you can see all the way down each row only for a second. It's like those cartoon books where you flip the pages and a picture plays out. Except here it's all the same, just deep green rows and I like it better than those books.

Art likes to keep secrets. He gives me one of his just-you-wait-and-see grins when I ask him where we're headed. I don't mind. I like surprises. Then he slams on the brakes. We skid to a stop and a cloud dust catches up and gets in my eyes. The farm hands are down one row, squatting below the tobacco plants, still and motionless like black statues. We don't have any water to take them like sometimes, so I'm wondering why we stopped. The tractor is out there sunk down still in the sunlight. I look to see if Clay's around, but he isn't there.

Soldiers dismount, Art commands. We get down. Hut two thissaway, he says. It seems about a million degrees hotter out here. The soil is soft and deep like ash; it's like it's been burned over and over by the sun. It gets in my sneakers like I knew it would as we walk along with big leafy plants tickling my arms. Those heavy leave are thick and wrinkled like green skin; just like the skin of a fig right when you pluck it from a tree. Out here among the leaves its like I'm floating on a wide green lake. I like to blur my vision. The smell of the fresh tobacco makes my eyes water anyway. I just let them run. All the colors melt in the sky. I always wanted to be in those stories. I wish I could talk to snimals. I feel a breeze pick up over the fields and I see all the hands rising to catch a part of the cool air coming. I wonder where that breeze came from and how many folks out int he fields have stopped working and stood up to catch it.

Then here we are, looking up at them. This man has a t-shirt wrapped around his hat. i think if I were working out here I'd be just about naker it's so hot, but they're all wearing pants and some of them have on long sleeved shirts. This one young girls asks Art if his grandmamma send him out with water.

Naw, he says, but we'll go get some ine a minute. First, I got a joke to tell yall. Then Art tells them the one about the man who sneaks out of work to see his girlfriend, and his boss is all ready at her house. It's not his best joke. They think it's sort of funny though. Maybe they think it's funny that me and Art came all the way out here to tell it. Then the pretty girl who asked us about the water has taken the tired look off her face. I can see the dust has caught the sweat stains on her sides. It looks like two gold shadows dripping beneath her arms. She's wearing a red and white striped tank-top and she asks us our names. I feel my face going red and my mind starts talking at me and won't let me think straight. I'm worried I might say something else, not my name, but something stupid. But Art does all the talking, cool and easy.

Well ain't y'all some handsome boys. And then Art winks and starts asking them if they seen the dude who lights cigarettes in his nose. Every time she raises her arms to block the sun, my belly goes right up with them. The sunlight feels like it's tingling inside me light it's coming in every time I breathe. Then she twists around to swat the man who keeps poking at her, and my belly twists up, too. Now Art is nudging me, saying, c'mon man, let's get these folks some water. And we turn back.

WE're sitting under the porch waiting for the ice-cubes to freeze. No point in bringing them water that ain't cold, Art says. So we're sitting underr that shade. I'm rocking back and forth on the little chair, brushing my feet over the sandy floor. I can hear the cows moaning and moaning off in the pasture. Just when you think they're tired of pushing out those sad songs a new one starts up, a little higher at first, but then sliding down low. We go over to the fence. There's a bathrub. I've seen it there before, but I don't go. Art comes back and we climb up a rung or two on the gate and lean there, watching the field. Old rusty cars lie out there bogged down. A few salt licks are scattered around. I'd never seen saltlick before last summer when Art showed

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I'm heartbroken. I lost the last page.