Trouble Parts

There’s a hill, a lonely hill, in the middle of cornfields and forest patches. During the winter it’s covered with snow and in the summer, a green flowerless meadow. There are dandelions and weeds—some of which grow quite tall, knee to mid-thigh. Rain falls on the hill, wind mats and whips the high grass tangling the plant life, making it look as though the hill has just woken from sleep.

It’s nothing more than a hill, really, much like other hills; birds fly over it, moles and ants tunnel beneath it. But at the top there is a fifteen-by-fifteen-by-eight, insulated gray cinderblock building with no windows and a combination-locked rusted iron door. It’s a typical combination lock, stainless steel with a black face and white numbers. It’s in this building that, over the years, Eli Richards keeps various parts of himself.

Trouble parts. The parts he finds it easier to get along without. Sometimes he keeps them there for years. The box is big enough to give the fleshy hunks room to grow as Eli grows. The part may have transgressed or caused Eli discomfort or maybe social awkwardness, and so the box is dark and cloistered away from the outside world as to allow the offending part space for reflection, to see the error of its ways in hopes that it might one day recouple with Eli.

He stores his hands in the box to seek penance, to keep from going blind, as his mother tells him he will if he continues touching himself after she barges into his adolescent room at the peak of his climax, which because of Eli’s surprise, spurts not into the waiting sock but onto the medium pile carpet at his feet.

His mother supervises Eli’s use of the rug cleaner and says things like, Lying brings damnation, believe me, impure thoughts bring damnation, I love you, I know best.

So he removes his hands.

He finds it difficult to live without his hands, masturbation aside—though a very large aside—there are simple tasks like drinking water from a glass, or opening doors with knobs, or attempting to smoke his first cigarette behind the high school with his friends. All of these things are less enjoyable without his hands. Eli thinks it might be easier to lock up his genitals, but can’t quite bear the thought of them alone in the dark.

At times he forgets his hands are no longer there, and when he attempts things like sports he fails in miserable fashion. Bats don’t swing without hands, footballs require hands for throwing and catching. He crashes during his driving exam, unable to replicate the proper ten and two formation or even turn the wheel in correct hand-over-hand fashion.

The answers on how to avoid damnation are hard to find without his hands; it is difficult to leaf through the tissue-thin pages with stumps. His parents drive him, comfort him, assure him one day he’ll do all the things he wants to do, all without hands. You’re just too idle, his mother says. Idle hands, his father trails off without conviction. Wouldn’t want you roasting in the fires of eternal suffering, his mother reasons. His father stares out the car window at fifty-feet tall half-naked billboard men and women.

Eli fantasizes of touching himself, of touching others, of others touching him.

Some nights he goes to the hill and sits with his back against the pitted cinderblock trying to bargain with his appendages, telling them if he lets them out he will become a carpenter or mechanic, he’ll take up knitting or sculpting, maybe piano if they are so inclined. He could keep them busy if only they agree to stop with the constant pawing and fondling. He threatens them with Hell and damnation. What will make you stop? His hands never answer. On his knees, Eli squeezes his eyes, shuts out starlight, presses his stumps to his chest, and prays to what he thinks is his maker, asking for the answers his hands refuse to give.

Life happens, there is school, extracurriculars, and even though he cannot play football or swing a baseball bat, he runs on the track team. His parents attend his meets, cheer him on. They are proud of their son for his sacrifices and his determination.

Eli’s father, who ran in college, tells Eli exciting stories of traveling to other cities with his teammates. Once he talks about a teammate, Stephen, until Eli’s mother appears, and the story stops. When his mother exits the room, Eli’s father wonders aloud but to himself, What is Stephen doing now? Right this very minute?

In college, people enter Eli’s life they touch him and love him and convince him to reconnect with his hands. With Eli’s instructions, the people work the dial on the lock after watching him struggle with his stumps.

Start slow at first, they say, maybe try out the index and thumb. The index and thumb are the most important.

Even the menial crab-like operation of pinching elates Eli. In time his hands are once again whole and Eli touches those who waxed poetic on the power of touch and the importance of fingerprints and the subtleties of character revealed by handshakes.

Eli’s newly reattached hands touch another boy, Nicholas, and Nicholas touches Eli back. They run their hands over thin lips and hardening nipples and pale thighs and the heads of swollen circumcised members.

It is sexual and sometimes it is not. It is sometimes not because with Nicholas, Eli finds it doesn’t have to be.

Eli has forgotten what warm skin and wet hair and condensing water glasses feel like on his palms, and experiences these things anew. He revels in tacky dough stuck between his fingers while making homemade pizza and the frustrating tingling pain of sleep needles in his fingertips after readjusting his arm from under Nicholas’s body.

On his twenty-first birthday he tells his parents he loves Nicholas.

This isn’t you, his mother says. Who is this person? she asks. This boy will take you straight to hell.

Does he run? asks Eli’s father, but no one hears.

Do you want to burn? asks his mother. Why are you doing this to us? Come back to us. We can fix you.

Is he broken? asks Eli’s father, but no one hears.

Eli tries to explain, he holds his hands to his mother’s face and demonstrates his ability to touch and grab. I can hold you, he says, and locks on to her shoulders. Look what I can do with my hands, aren’t you happy? Aren’t you overjoyed at what your son can do with his hands? His mother squirms like an eel out of Eli’s grasp.

Eli reaches to Nicholas who takes the hand, and then Eli reaches his other hand to his parents.

His mother does not move, and so neither does his father.

Eli screams, and says things that become hard to take back. He says unspeakable things. He burns the bridge, douses it in gasoline and kerosene and wires it with dynamite and sets off a chain reaction, then shows how his hands know ten and two, how they can operate the steering wheel to a tee.

Weeks go by and months go by and the thought of what he’s done makes him feel ill. It’s the taste of his tongue, he thinks. His tongue is causing the queasy feeling. It’s dirty, covered in muck and dirt and hate. He treks to the hill, to his concrete box with the iron door and combination lock, and rips out his tongue by the root and places it inside on the concrete floor. He feels better, like ripping off a hangnail feels better. His tongue is bigger than he imagined.

Communication without speech is at first easy. Caressing, handholding, fucking, smiling, making love, sitting in silence, these are the simple things. Though Eli must be careful never to open his mouth too wide, for fear of the grotesquery lurking just behind his teeth. When Nicholas sees this he cringes, shies away.

Sometimes, late at night, Eli’s father phones. He whispers apologies to Eli, who can only mumble in return.

Won’t you talk to me son? Please, won’t you talk to me? I understand.

And then Eli hears his mother’s sleep voice and a ruffle of covers and the line goes dead.

Eli finds new ways to express his love for Nicholas. He writes letters. Though, when Nicholas is angry he rips them to shreds. Eli tries to enfold Nicholas, to remind him of the hands to which he reintroduced Eli. This works for a while.

One day, after a year of pacification and redirection, Nicholas begs and pleads for Eli to revisit the box with new intensity. It’s not fair to me, he says. I never asked for this. Why are you punishing me?

But when Eli becomes reacquainted with his tongue the slimy taste lingers; faint memories of what it was once like to speak. His sentences are manic and wild and run-on they are unfiltered and hurtful or overly sentimental and inappropriate. Everything he’s wished he could say over the last year, he says. The hate slips away from his tongue, the ball of nausea leaves his gut, and he thinks this is what love is. This is the way to get Nicholas to love him.

Nicholas leaves. He doesn’t want to hear what Eli has to say.

Eli has all of his parts, but wants none of them. Which one is making that feeling? he wonders. Which one has to go? He cracks open his chest and examines his insides. They smell of bile and fecal matter. Palming his heart, watching it circulate his blood, feeling the pulse resonate through his arm he begins to wrench it from his center mass, but stops before the arteries separate and pats it back into place.

Without ears, he thinks, I won’t have to hear the horrible things people say.

It’s a bit of work digging out the tiny bones and tissues but he manages to finally hook the cochlea with a bit of stick and then peels the outer ears from his skull. He thinks he doesn’t look horrible without ears; his hair is long enough to cover the semicircular holes.

He cannot hear political pundits on television, or street corner preachers sending passersby to hell. He cannot hear the compliments of a young street food vendor, or the whir of summer cicadas, or the dialogue of the television shows he used to watch with Nicholas. In time even the memories of noise fade; the starchy sound of crisp sheets, the tick of teeth during a hard kiss, conversations good and bad.

Eli returns to his parents. He shows up on their doorstep, speaks to them, though he is unsure of the volume of his voice and at times his mother looks embarrassed and his father concerned.

His father hugs him. His mother heats leftovers in the oven; they put sheets on the guest bed. Eli cannot hear the words they speak. He doesn’t hear her say she told him so. He doesn’t hear that she prayed for his relationship with Nicholas to end so Eli might step back onto their path, come back into their lives. He does not hear his father crying just out of sight. He doesn’t hear his mother talk about cure camps. They can fix you there, she says.

He doesn’t hear a word.

Eli begins to pick up lip reading. He catches words like lonely and happy and frustrated from his father. Phrases like, more like you, and, just not strong enough, and, I love you, and only twenty-two-years-old.

Eli spends much time with his father they go on long drives. His father talks the entire time. Sometimes Eli pays attention, trying to understand what his father is saying, and sometimes he stares out the window and lets his father talk about Stephen and Eli’s mother and what if.

The long drives with his father make interpreting words formed by his parents’ lips easier.

One night, he catches what he thinks is, We would like you to have some chicken thighs, from his mother.

Eli is confused; he cocks his head instead of nodding. He’s worried his mother has had a stroke.

We’re having pork chops, he yells.

His mother gives him a worried and embarrassed look, though no one is around.

His father scribbles on a piece of paper, she would like you to get re-baptized.

Eli doesn’t respond. His father looks anxious. Eli wants his father to come to his defense as he so often has during the car rides.

Tell her, Eli yells.

His mother looks confused. Eli stares at his father, pleading with him.

Tell her, he says again.

His fathers lips move, Could you pass the salt?

So he goes back to the box and with ginger care pushes the cochlea and small bones back into place, connecting them with the proper nerves. He presses the cartilaginous outer ears against his head and feels an uncomfortable pressure caused by the suction from his palms. Birdsong and the twilight leg rubbings of giant black crickets surge over him like a lava flow, hot and fierce and overwhelming.

The sound swell crushes him he falls to his knees. Wave after wave of words pound into his head.

Don’t touch yourself God’s watching I wish I was strong like you you’ll burn why are you doing this to us? I think I love him I loved him I hate you she doesn’t mean it I didn’t ask for this I’m leaving it’s wrong for us to love you we want you to get re-baptized I’m leaving you you’ll burn there are camps we can fix you I’m leaving I didn’t ask for this why are you doing this to us? I hate you can you pass the salt?

Between his knees in the dirt there’s a rock, all quartz and feldspar and mica. It’s heavy in his palm, and sharp. He uses its edge to open his head and take his brain into his hands. He leaves it in the room like he’s left all his other parts, and, replacing his skullcap, leaves and locks the door.

Now Eli can’t remember the combination to the lock, and those who might’ve once known the three numbers are long gone. Muscle memory guides him home. A vacant, somewhat surprised look dominates his face as his parents attempt apologies in their own ways. There are more leftovers and fresh sheets. Plans are made for the coming Sunday. Eli at first sits without moving. Then shakes his head from side to side. This motion sets a frown on his mother’s face. He mimics the frown. He tries another motion, a head-lolling nod, and his mother smiles. He smiles. More hugs. You’re going to be all right, she tells him.

His mother is on the phone. Saved, she says. He’s saved.

The words go in and out, they mean nothing. He still can’t hear his father crying just out of sight.

At times, Eli grows restless, though without a brain he doesn’t understand why. Late at night something forces him to climb the hill with the concrete box at the top. The something is different than the muscle memory that brought him home. Maybe some leftover synapses in the cranial cavity, some small amount of gray matter that gives fleeting glimpses of memory, send jolts of information that make light seem to move at a snail’s pace.

The night is clear, the Milky Way lowers like a helmet over the hill and becomes a space sieve, letting through only light. Dead light, the light from stars that have nebulaezed or supernovaed. Light that has traveled to Earth where its origins are confused and forgotten with that of our own star. The light reflects off bodies and animals and mountains and seas, and then continues on to eyes across the universe, to all things that have eyes, or ways to interpret light.

All around him, stars are dying. The life on the stars’ orbiting planets ceasing to exist, and somewhere something watches Eli’s light fading dimmer and dimmer until it finally blinks out.