Little Thing

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_11/crutchfield1.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Little Thing wants to know, “When is it our firework,” and Linda says, “Patience.”

Little Thing is planted hard on my lap and her bathing suit will leave wet butt prints on my dress.  I kept her busy for two hours, while they planned their poor failed party.  I wore a dress in case we need convenience.

Little Thing wants to know, “When is it our firework,” and Harris says, “Calm.”

We turned circles while they prepared their tiny sandwiches and metal buckets full with ice and beer.  I let Little Thing think I was the first to fall in the grass.

“Fireworks go Kaboom but it’s not scary,” she said.

“How will you swim with no bathing suit,” she said.

“Naked,” I whispered.

Harris stopped lighting citronella to say Little Thing looked like candy, to nibble her feet and to look at me with laugh lines.

I tired her out and we’re watching fireworks on the dock where no one has come to celebrate and no one will.   Linda has given up and sliced a piece of her homemade tart, eats it smooshed on the back of her fork.   She’s let Little Thing ravage the cookie plate.   Harris only has a Solo cup and hasn’t thought about eating so I haven’t.

Fireworks explode on all sides, but the left side is winning.   Each boathouse has a matching house behind it, and each has an American flag.   Harris drives that truck so people won’t think Linda has money for nice things.  A speedboat full of boys yells classic rock at us, and this time I’m ready.

They tell me I don’t have to babysit anymore, that no one’s coming, and a firework from the left turns into lightning bugs that hover then dart in separate directions.   I’ve never seen one like that.

I tell them I have nothing else to do.

I brought a firework from Alabama for Little Thing, one that pressed against my chest and Harris’ before he took it.   He doesn’t know how we’ll launch it.

Linda stretches her thin legs farther than necessary.

She says, “Little Thing has tired you out enough.”

Harris leans over his knees to tell me, “We’ll still pay you.”

Linda’s teeth are set low in overzealous gums.   A firework on the right looks like any old firework, but then breaks into even smaller grains.

“My fun friends are my college friends,” I say.  “I don’t want to go back to my parents just yet, if you don’t mind.”

And he knows.   He hands me a beer.   I wore a dress in case Harris finds me in the bathroom and we don’t have much time.

Linda wants to know what the fireworks are doing to the lake, if the fish will eat ash and die, if people didn’t come because the lake was too long a drive.

Little Thing wants to know, “When is it our firework,” and they finally give in, head to the table to a make a makeshift stand among the uneaten dip.

It has to launch up and out, Harris says.   Or else it’ll head straight for those kids out there.

In the kitchen, the fruit basket is never empty, herbs grow in pots on the window, and a framed photo of a whole trout gapes at you from a frying pan.   We can pretend to fetch ice, and I’ll stretch my legs wondering what Harris feels like if you’re long and thin.   Linda might win in the study, but I’ll win on the couch.   I’ll win on the dock.

A few legal fireworks make a lot of boring noise.   Little Thing opens and closes my hand.   There’s a box in their bedroom labeled Linda’s Shit that still has her maternity clothes.

I’m prepared now.   I wasn’t ready last month in the truck when Harris said it must be killing me to live with my parents in the summer.   There was something that I think was whiskey on his breath when he slid me down on the seat, and soon he was saying, “You’re killing me.”   I thought I might have.   But his shoulders moved.   And he pushed off me.   The parking brake was up and the truck had moved its nose to the middle of my street.

Harris would have done the killing.   My jeans were still stuck on my shoes.

They light the wick.   Little Thing stands and wants to help.

“Sorry,” I say.   “Too dangerous.   Blow your hand off dangerous.”

She swallows air, pops her hand over her mouth like she’s seen in movies, and I’m laughing when she takes off.   I stop laughing when she’s halfway to the makeshift firework stand, and her animal yell makes Linda jump.   My firework falls off the table, lands stake-first in the grass.

Harris shouts and runs to meet his daughter, lifts her in the air, and it looks like a dance routine, until he loses his footing.   They fall, and my firework slams into the air.

It misses them, misses Linda, misses everything.   It nicks a leaf as it goes straight up and keeps going until we see it burst.

It’s a yolk in sky.   It’s red, now white, now purple that’s supposed to be blue.   Ash is on their roof, not in the lake, and Little Thing’s shouting, Daddy, that’s the prettiest.

His arms tremble until Linda takes her from him.

In the driveway next door, a group of preteens circle a legal firework.   The tube stands between them shooting white bulbs a foot above its white flame.   They don’t turn when I put on my shoes or when I start the car or when I watch them in the rearview and drive home.

The Chemistry of Ink

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_11/crutchfield2.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Becker calls me inside for aloe.   Now that the circus has a stationary home, he works outside all day.   Shutters.   Porch slats.   Tents.   On breaks, he’ll push a nail through his thinner skin.

Becker is always shirtless, and tattoos don’t take kindly to sunburn.   He calls me for aloe.   He calls me Mouse Girl.

The World’s Fattest Woman wouldn’t approve of me in Becker’s room.   I’m too young to run away with the circus, she says.   Even if I’m shrinking, I haven’t shrunk enough, not even to midget-size.   And it makes me less noticeable, the opposite of freak show intention.

I pool lotion in my palm.   Becker calls me Quarter-Pint, calls me Ink Stain.

Some of his tattoos are pillowing, like they’ve been yeasted and left to rise.   He says these are the newer ones, something about air in the ink, sun.   I like the 3D of it.   When I’ve rubbed his skin before, I’ve been disappointed by the smoothness of the images.   Now, the flowers around the sparrow have fat petals.   The hula girl fills her coconuts.

I tell him I don’t know where I would put a tattoo, what it would be.   I’m afraid of that permanence.

He laughs.   “Sometimes I forget how old you are, Nail Hole.”

By this, he means how young.

Becker doesn’t go by the Tattooed Man.   It’s not that impressively freakish nowadays.   He’s been looking for more nerve in his act, drives nails through his nose, tattoos himself publicly.

I ask, if he wore shirts, what they’d look like.

He doesn’t have tattoos that mimic photographs, no portrait of his mother, one eye bulging when he flexes.   His are cartoons, symbols of faces and bodies, and when he flexes, coy fish wag their tails.   But they can’t get to the wave that spirals around his elbow.   The tiger stripes on his face are starting to turn green, need touch-up.   The tattoos on his face hurt the most.

I told the World’s Fattest Woman the show could start with me and end with her.   She said this was cliche, and if I live next door, it’s not really running away.

“Uniform shirts,” Becker says.   “Things with stitching.”   He pulls me onto his chest, which isn’t dry yet.   “Now hush.”

He’s thought about stitching his mouth shut for the act. He’s figured out which rusty-looking threads to use, which barbed needles, but he still can’t get sewing to look masculine.

“Maybe the sparrow doesn’t puff out because it’s a cover-up,” he says.

It covers a tightrope girl.   He doesn’t understand the chemistry of ink, of skin.

“Permanence, Bottle Cap?   Really?” he says.   “Hush.”

If I keep shrinking, I’ll come up to his belly-button.   If I keep shrinking, I can nap on his chest.   I can be the size of his favorites, women with dots for eyes, women he didn’t quite cover up.   If I keep shrinking, I can nudge the coy fish tails.   I can yell, “Swim, swim.   You’ll get there.”

Blue Hour

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_11/crutchfield3.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

His body is at the window again. The rest of him is somewhere else, somewhere she isn’t.   On a pirate ship, waiting on a taxi, lost inside a cigar box.

To anyone outside, this glass must be black, and no one down there can see her.   Not the women in leather jackets or the men pulling open diner doors.   Until his body grows bored and finds bed again, she can stare.   She can think her stupid, obvious thoughts.

Those people down there, they live on this street.

Those people down there, they breathe without thinking.

He thinks the blanket snaked around his ankles in the morning, the fitted sheets no longer fitting, are caused by their early a.m. sex, when she wakes with him clumsy inside her, when her eyes locate his face, then his body, her own, and when she’s never sure about her responsibility in waking him.   But she normally doesn’t have to.   By the middle he’ll be awake and they’ll be laughing, by the end he’ll be collapsed and soft on top of her.   It’s the only time with him she feels permitted to laugh.

But she checks.   The sheets stay intact each time.   It’s when he’s asleep again.   It’s his body’s fight to get out of bed.  She’ll still let him think panther, though, when he pats her on the head in the late morning and asks, “We still friends?”  He doesn’t know he presses his hands into her face or that she presses back.

People in this apartment, they’re sleeping.

People in this apartment, they’re awake.

Her apartment, it’s on this street

She puts her forehead on the glass.   Everything is blue under yellow streetlights, something about January and gray buildings    She runs her fingers along his ribs, counts them like sheep.   His skin lies about January, an accurate August, and she decides, yes, he’s dreaming of pirate ships.

Her name, it’s Emily.

Below them, a tiny man holds the door for a tiny woman.   It’s a man from the building, a man who’s always holding the door for women, a man who’s body-scraping looks she pretends away.

These people, they are actually large.

The man couldn’t possibly see her from that far down, and the glass is black, but she pulls her friend’s arms around her to hide her chest.

That man, he’s lifting his eyes to her.

That man, he is smiling at her.

That man, he is winking at her.

She is a woman.   Her name is Emily.