Jack of Hearts
10-23-2011, 12:50 AM
The torrent of rain come down upon them as though dropped from the sky like glass beads and when the glass fell it shattered into clear and minute fountains, explosions of water against the grey porchwood or the brim of his hat or his shoulders. His face in still wonder. Her face between the cracked door and the frame was pale and tired and in her eyes was not the light of recognition but the dark deadness of trying to make sense of the unlit figure, so rough in his coarse clothing and the cruelty of the rain. Gaping at her amongst the falling glass. Not at first. Then light on her face, then pulling him from the storm into her and wrapping her arms over his wet body clutching so tight and kissing the every inch of his cheek, the unshaven stubble, like a holy relic recovered from a land of shadow.
He dreamed of some kind of interpretation of emptiness and when he woke up he could scarcely remember it. He was awake now and the white and blue floral pattern of the wallpaper pressed into his eyes. The bed was sodden with the wetness from his clothes, damp, uncomfortable. There was a slight warble coming through the walls, like where old loose flesh sticks as though his grandfather were alive again hollering for water on his deathbed. He listened for awhile afterward.
Coming down the steps and the sound of his boots on wood knowing the way for certain and the sounds of his boots and never thinking there would be a return. Beyond the threshold of the livingroom there was a meager figure of a boy. The boy was perched near the fireplace for warmth. The boy was looking up at him.
Hey, he said.
Hey, the boy said.
You’re getting big.
Yeah.
Jeremy moved across the living room, around the patterned sofa, and sat near the hearth.
You ain’t missed me much, he said.
Probably got used to it.
Probably.
Where’d you go?
Nowhere important, he said.
Why’s your face all beat up?
Just trouble, that’s all, he said.
A girl?
Often so. Who’s that talkin this morning? Heard a strange voice.
I ain’t heard no voice.
I said I heard a voice.
Jeremy, were you livin a life of sin?
Don't know. I ain't believe that stuff.
Pop’s in the kitchen.
Jeremy looked toward the door frame and gave no expression but the green in his eyes shrank away from the pupil. The boy watched him eagerly and fearfully and closed his body away from the doorway. Jeremy stood up and smoothed his shirt and his jeans. He walked out of the overcast glow of the living room to the dark purple early morning unlit kitchen. It smelled like coffee. It was too quiet where his mother would have been making breakfast.
Jeremy sat at the small round table and scarcely recognized the spectacled man infront of him, the man who carried weight around the middle, who once exuded power but now exuded increments of effort about himself. Even in the bad the hair was thinner and grayer.
Jeremy glanced sideways at the cold metal in the sink where no water was running.
Things are different now. I can’t belt you. I oughta kick you the hell out of here and into the street.
Yessir.
Why come back anyways?
Lonely, I guess.
What happened to your face?
It was my own fault.
That ain’t what I asked you.
Ain’t it obvious I got beat.
Now ain’t the time to be a wise ***. Your mother’s almost done gettin ready for church.
Morning was defrosting the air.
Lately it had been getting worse cause we weren’t always together. When we left out of here we weren’t thinking real about it, like we would be together every waking moment but when you runaway from one place you gotta set up in another and we got jobs and I was working more and more and she was alone most the night. I got in around eleven.
Antonia was real set on broadin our horizons and when we first got to the city she pulled me around to art exhibits. Swear to god in shadow of the gallery beneath multicolored class windows she tugged me forward by the hand and pointed. This is art she said. Looked just like a goddamn vaccuum cleaner to me but the way the sunlight spilled across it through those windows made it look different. They didn’t mean for it to happen that way I could tell but it reminded me of Mom vaccuuming in the morning next to the windows, the blinds down and patterns falling across the machine, her arms, her face in shadows. Antonia’s in shadows in gallery, is what I remember. Her hair was so dark, and her face was nothing but a void. Then I knew she was angry with me because looking at the goddamn vaccuum cleaner there on the floor wrong and I told her I still don’t get it. She said there’s a lot you don’t get.
She was the other time at the bar I should of known. At first in the poorly lit gloom we were all chuckles because we had done it. Run off and no one could stop us being together and some evenings we remembered that and celebrated it better than others. We would drink until our heads spun and spun on lust like two wind-set candles eye each other, carress each other lightly, invisibly and stoke the fire. And the crowd would say crude things like buddy you are getting laid just close the deal they would whisper to me or catch the bartender saying that chick is hot as hell goddamn.
And he was right because her body made me hungry every time and I always got my fill, played games at delaying it to make it burn hotter that hunger, but she always gave me my fill and it wasn’t the beer that kept me drunk the entire time.
Them boys at the bar one night. Hadn’t seen ‘em before, not anywhere. Antonia invited them cause she met em where she was a waitress- I was bucking hay and had to take the truck out of the city every day to get to work and Antonia walked to a restaurant a few blocks from our appartment. They eyed me like a mongrel and her like a piece of meat and she said these are my friends and gave some names. Before I knew what was what I was coming down the hallway to our door, our door, the one with new age symbols on the front that Antonia told me meant flourishing and fertility and I said that junk is complete horse**** and pissed her off when she put them on there, golden stickers on a white door.
And then I hope the door and everything is dark and muggy and smells like sweaty bodies and the three of them are on the couch and their feasting on her naked flesh, on her neck.
I busted the taller’s one’s nose and caught the other across the jaw but really when one got ahold of me it was over. They worked me the hardest I ever been beat and Antonia screaming stop you’ll kill him and even when I was down and out they kicked until everything went black.
Now when I came to Antonia was wearing her bathrobe and dabbing at my face with cold waschloth. Her hair fell against my cheeks and she said what was I thinking just attacking people like that. She was crying. When I got up and fell out of there, she was crying and asking me where I was going and without malice or hate or regret but wonder I turned around and looked her one last time, the appeal of her leg sneaking away from her robe.
In the pews they listen to the priest speak Latin. Children in the row ahead are covertly smacking each other and attempting to make one another cry out. Jeremy’s father waits for the cue and the knee rest comes down. They fall to their knees, except Jeremy, who already has his hands cupped, facing each other. His father sees him focused and not heeding.
“Ain’t you remember or what,” he says as he pulls him by his shoulder to kneel.
In the fold of his hands he’s looking at the image of Antonia; through the slits of his fingers he can see a puff of gray smoke escaping an extinguished candle.
He dreamed of some kind of interpretation of emptiness and when he woke up he could scarcely remember it. He was awake now and the white and blue floral pattern of the wallpaper pressed into his eyes. The bed was sodden with the wetness from his clothes, damp, uncomfortable. There was a slight warble coming through the walls, like where old loose flesh sticks as though his grandfather were alive again hollering for water on his deathbed. He listened for awhile afterward.
Coming down the steps and the sound of his boots on wood knowing the way for certain and the sounds of his boots and never thinking there would be a return. Beyond the threshold of the livingroom there was a meager figure of a boy. The boy was perched near the fireplace for warmth. The boy was looking up at him.
Hey, he said.
Hey, the boy said.
You’re getting big.
Yeah.
Jeremy moved across the living room, around the patterned sofa, and sat near the hearth.
You ain’t missed me much, he said.
Probably got used to it.
Probably.
Where’d you go?
Nowhere important, he said.
Why’s your face all beat up?
Just trouble, that’s all, he said.
A girl?
Often so. Who’s that talkin this morning? Heard a strange voice.
I ain’t heard no voice.
I said I heard a voice.
Jeremy, were you livin a life of sin?
Don't know. I ain't believe that stuff.
Pop’s in the kitchen.
Jeremy looked toward the door frame and gave no expression but the green in his eyes shrank away from the pupil. The boy watched him eagerly and fearfully and closed his body away from the doorway. Jeremy stood up and smoothed his shirt and his jeans. He walked out of the overcast glow of the living room to the dark purple early morning unlit kitchen. It smelled like coffee. It was too quiet where his mother would have been making breakfast.
Jeremy sat at the small round table and scarcely recognized the spectacled man infront of him, the man who carried weight around the middle, who once exuded power but now exuded increments of effort about himself. Even in the bad the hair was thinner and grayer.
Jeremy glanced sideways at the cold metal in the sink where no water was running.
Things are different now. I can’t belt you. I oughta kick you the hell out of here and into the street.
Yessir.
Why come back anyways?
Lonely, I guess.
What happened to your face?
It was my own fault.
That ain’t what I asked you.
Ain’t it obvious I got beat.
Now ain’t the time to be a wise ***. Your mother’s almost done gettin ready for church.
Morning was defrosting the air.
Lately it had been getting worse cause we weren’t always together. When we left out of here we weren’t thinking real about it, like we would be together every waking moment but when you runaway from one place you gotta set up in another and we got jobs and I was working more and more and she was alone most the night. I got in around eleven.
Antonia was real set on broadin our horizons and when we first got to the city she pulled me around to art exhibits. Swear to god in shadow of the gallery beneath multicolored class windows she tugged me forward by the hand and pointed. This is art she said. Looked just like a goddamn vaccuum cleaner to me but the way the sunlight spilled across it through those windows made it look different. They didn’t mean for it to happen that way I could tell but it reminded me of Mom vaccuuming in the morning next to the windows, the blinds down and patterns falling across the machine, her arms, her face in shadows. Antonia’s in shadows in gallery, is what I remember. Her hair was so dark, and her face was nothing but a void. Then I knew she was angry with me because looking at the goddamn vaccuum cleaner there on the floor wrong and I told her I still don’t get it. She said there’s a lot you don’t get.
She was the other time at the bar I should of known. At first in the poorly lit gloom we were all chuckles because we had done it. Run off and no one could stop us being together and some evenings we remembered that and celebrated it better than others. We would drink until our heads spun and spun on lust like two wind-set candles eye each other, carress each other lightly, invisibly and stoke the fire. And the crowd would say crude things like buddy you are getting laid just close the deal they would whisper to me or catch the bartender saying that chick is hot as hell goddamn.
And he was right because her body made me hungry every time and I always got my fill, played games at delaying it to make it burn hotter that hunger, but she always gave me my fill and it wasn’t the beer that kept me drunk the entire time.
Them boys at the bar one night. Hadn’t seen ‘em before, not anywhere. Antonia invited them cause she met em where she was a waitress- I was bucking hay and had to take the truck out of the city every day to get to work and Antonia walked to a restaurant a few blocks from our appartment. They eyed me like a mongrel and her like a piece of meat and she said these are my friends and gave some names. Before I knew what was what I was coming down the hallway to our door, our door, the one with new age symbols on the front that Antonia told me meant flourishing and fertility and I said that junk is complete horse**** and pissed her off when she put them on there, golden stickers on a white door.
And then I hope the door and everything is dark and muggy and smells like sweaty bodies and the three of them are on the couch and their feasting on her naked flesh, on her neck.
I busted the taller’s one’s nose and caught the other across the jaw but really when one got ahold of me it was over. They worked me the hardest I ever been beat and Antonia screaming stop you’ll kill him and even when I was down and out they kicked until everything went black.
Now when I came to Antonia was wearing her bathrobe and dabbing at my face with cold waschloth. Her hair fell against my cheeks and she said what was I thinking just attacking people like that. She was crying. When I got up and fell out of there, she was crying and asking me where I was going and without malice or hate or regret but wonder I turned around and looked her one last time, the appeal of her leg sneaking away from her robe.
In the pews they listen to the priest speak Latin. Children in the row ahead are covertly smacking each other and attempting to make one another cry out. Jeremy’s father waits for the cue and the knee rest comes down. They fall to their knees, except Jeremy, who already has his hands cupped, facing each other. His father sees him focused and not heeding.
“Ain’t you remember or what,” he says as he pulls him by his shoulder to kneel.
In the fold of his hands he’s looking at the image of Antonia; through the slits of his fingers he can see a puff of gray smoke escaping an extinguished candle.