Blackbirds Read online

  FIVE

  Bug Light

  Miriam's been walking for a half-hour, and the thoughts that run through her mind have serious legs. Terrible thoughts jog swift laps.

  The man, the trucker, the Frankenstein. Louis. He is going to die in thirty days, at 7.25pm.

  And it is going to be a horrible scene. Miriam sees a lot of death play out on the stage inside her skull. Blood and broken glass and dead eyes form the backdrop to her mind. But it's rare that she sees murder. Suicide, yes. Health problems, all the time. Car accidents and other personal disasters, over and over again.

  But murder. That is a rare bird.

  In a month's time, Louis is going to say her name right before he dies. Worse, he looks at someone before the knife punches through his eye and into his brain, and then says her name. He sees her there. He's speaking to her.

  Miriam goes over it and over it in her head, and not once does it make sense.

  She cries out some hybrid of "fuck" and "shit"– she's not really sure – and punctuates it by picking up a hunk of broken asphalt from the shoulder and chucking it against the dead center of an exit sign. It clangs. Wobbles.

  And just past it, she sees the place: Swifty's Tavern.

  Neon beer signs glow bright against the storm-tossed, late-night sky. The bar is a bug light, and she is the fly (fat from feeding off death). She makes a bee-line for the place.

  Her mouth can taste it already.

  Inside, the bar is like the unholy child of a lumberjack and a biker wriggling free from some wretched womb. Dark wood. Animal heads. Chrome rims. Concrete floor.

  "An oasis," Miriam says out loud.

  The place isn't busy. A few truckers sit at a table, playing cards around a foamy pitcher. Bikers mill around a lone pool table toward the back. Flies orbit a mess of old cheese fries that have dried into a shellacked mound to the left of the door. Iron Butterfly growls from the jukebox. Inna Gadda Da BlahBlah, Baby.

  She sees the bar, its edges bordered with heavy gauge chain.

  It will be her home, she decides, until they evict her.

  She tells the bartender, who looks like a pile of uncooked Pillsbury dough stuffed into a dirty black T-shirt, that she needs a drink.

  "Fifteen minutes until close," he mumbles, and then adds: "Little girl."

  "Cut the 'little girl' shit, paleface. If I only have fifteen minutes, then I want whiskey. Your cheapest and shittiest. Think lighter fluid mixed with coyote piss. And you can put a shot glass down, but if you're amenable to it, then I'd damn sure like to pour my own."

  He stares at her for untold seconds, then finally shrugs. "Sure. Whatever."

  Paleface plunks down what might have once been a plastic jug for antifreeze, and from the look of the murky whiskey within, antifreeze might be the healthier choice. He waves away a haze of gnats. They're probably getting high off the vapors.

  He uncaps it. He leans back coughing, and rubs his eyes. The smell – or, really, the sensation – hits Miriam a few seconds later.

  "It feels like someone is pissing in my eyes," she says. "And up my nose."

  "Buddy of mine across the Tennessee border makes it. He uses old oil drums instead of oak barrels. He calls it bourbon, but I dunno."

  "And it's cheap?"

  "Nobody'll ever drink it. Whole jug'll go to you for five bucks, you want it."

  It smells like it'd burn barnacles off a boat hull; she can't imagine what it will do to her insides. She needs that. She needs to purge. She slaps down a five-spot, and then taps the bar.

  "Then all I need is the glass."

  Paleface thunks a shot glass next to the fiver, then grabs the money with a greasy hand.

  Miriam takes the antifreeze jug and tops off the glass. Liquid spills on the bar, and she's surprised it doesn't eat through the lacquer.

  She stares into the muddy whiskey. Flecks of something float at the top. But something else floats to the top, too: Louis. His face. Two ruined eyes. A mouth moaning her name.

  Suck it up, she tells herself. None of this is new. This is how it's been for eight years. She sees death everywhere. Everybody dies, just like everybody poops. This guy's no different than anybody else (except, a little voice says, the part where he gets stabbed in the eyes with a rusty fish-gutter and he says your name before getting his brain skewered), so why should she care? She doesn't care (she does), and to prove it, she drinks the shot. One gulp.

  It feels like firecrackers soaked in Drano going off in her throat and belly. She can feel it start to explode her liver. It is the worst thing she has ever put in her mouth.

  Perfect. She pours another.

  Paleface watches, amazed.

  She bangs back the second shot, and a creeping numbness starts to settle in. It fuzzes the edges. It takes those terrible thoughts running laps in her head and loops a piano wire around their necks. It drags them to the edge of a filthy kiddypool. It holds their heads underwater. They kick and thrash. They start to drown.

  One last thought wriggles free from the pack.

  She thinks of a Mylar balloon floating up over a highway.

  She shuts her eyes and pours another shot. Miriam doesn't hear the bar door open. Doesn't even notice when someone sits next to her.

  "You gonna drink that shot, or is this just foreplay?"

  Miriam looks up. He's got a boyish face. Oily black hair in a tangle, like a teepee made from raven wings. Clear eyes. A boomerang smile with a sharp edge.

  "I woo all my drinks," she responds.

  "You drink that one, I'll buy you another." He looks at the jug. "Or something that doesn't look like mop water."

  "Just let a girl die in peace."

  "C'mon," he says. "You're too pretty to leave for dead. Even with that black eye."

  She can't help it. Her heart skips a beat. She feels a tingling between her legs. He's got a pretty voice. Lyrical, almost, like he could sing the wings off an angel. But not feminine, either. A cocky, balls-to-the-wall confidence lives there. No Southern accent, to boot. He looks like bad news. That turns her on. She likes bad news. It starts to make her feel normal, whatever passes for normal where Miriam is concerned.

  Though – his face looks familiar. She just can't place it.

  He orders a beer from Paleface. Tips it back. But he watches her. Studies her.

  "What do you tell a girl with two black eyes?" she asks him.

  "Nothing you haven't told her twice already," he answers, whip-quick.

  "Way to blow the punch line," she says. "I thought I had one up on you."

  "Nope. Not me." That smile again. Sharp. Too sharp. So hot. Shit. "Besides, I only count one black eye on you."

  "Then maybe I haven't learned my lesson, yet."

  "My name's Ashley. Ashley Gaines."

  "Ashley's a girl's name."

  "That's what my dad would say before he'd beat my back with a belt." He says it, but the smile never leaves his face. In fact, it gets bigger, broader.

  Miriam's mouth forms an O. She winces and laughs. "Holy shit, dude. You know the punch line to my joke and then you come back with a knee-slapper about child abuse? You know what? Fine. When the apocalypse finally comes, I promise to let you live. My name's Miriam."

  "Miriam's an old lady's name."

  "Well, I do feel old."

  "I can make you feel young again."

  She rolls her eyes. "Oh, hell. You were doing so well."

  "Tell you what, how about this one?," he says, idly peeling the label from his sweat-slick beer. "I'm going to go to the Little Wrangler's room, paint the urinal a prettier shade of yellow. Then I'm going to preen in the mirror, because I want to look good for you. I'll wash my hands, of course. I'm dirty, but not that kind of dirty. When I'm done, I'll dry off, and then come back out here."

  "Thanks for the play-by-play. You gonna diddle your balls while you're in there?"

  He ignores her. "If you're still out here, then it's on. I'm going to hit on you like kids on a piñata. You'll laugh.
I'll laugh. You'll touch my hand. I'll touch your hip. And you'll come home with me."

  Ashley smirks, crumples up the wet label, and shoots it right into her shot glass.

  "Ass," she says.

  He gets up and strolls to the back.

  She watches his ass as he walks. Bony. Enough to grab hold of, though.

  She watches as he passes a trio of bikers hovering around the pool table. An old guy peers out from behind a curtain of feathered gray hair. Fella next to him is short and stocky, his whole body stacked like a pack of hot dogs. The last guy, looking like an extra from Thunderdome, is a living, biological mountain. Six-six, his big bones layered with a topography of muscle and fat. His treetrunk arms are home to a mess of ink: an old lady's face, a tree on fire, a bunch of skulls, a motorcycle on fire. He's a Fat Dude.

  Fat Dude is just about to shoot. Stick back. Giant melon head peering over it.

  Ashley pushes past him. His bony hip bumps the pool stick.

  The stick scrapes the table green and nudges the cue ball into the corner pocket.

  A scratch.

  Fat Dude turns on Ashley. If they were outside, he would block out the sun. The ground would tremble. Magma might belch up from the fractured earth.

  Ashley smiles. Fat Dude seethes. A fly – probably fattened from an earlier meal of floor-stuck cheese fries – is caught in the airspace between these two, then hurries it the fuck out of there.

  "You fuckin' prick," Fat Dude says. "You fucked my shot."

  Ashley just smiles that smile, and that's when Miriam knows they're in trouble.

  SIX

  Closing Time

  "So reshoot," Ashley says, eyes twinkling.

  "Can't do that," Fat Dude says, as if Ashley just suggested he fuck his own mother. "Rules are rules, asshole."

  The old biker with the curtain of hair – who Miriam can't help but think of as Gray Pubes – steps up behind Ashley. The other one, Hot Dog, comes in from the side, like one of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

  Paleface disappears behind the bar and doesn't emerge.

  Miriam takes that as another bad sign.

  "I'm sure your two friends here are happy to let you take the shot over," Ashley says.

  Gray Pubes shakes his head. Hot Dog mumbles something.

  "My friends don't fuck with the rules," Fat Dude says.

  Ashley just shrugs and says, "Okay. Fuck you."

  Fat Dude moves faster than Miriam would have thought possible. Gray Pubes twirls Ashley around like a top, and Fat Dude pulls the pool cue, horizontally, up under Ashley's chin. It's drawn tight against his windpipe.

  He hoists Ashley into the air like the Beanstalk Giant with Little Jack.

  "I'ma squeeze the dogshit outta you," Fat Dude thunders.

  Ashley's jaw works around a mouthful of gurgles and burbles as the back of his head is pressed into Fat Dude's copious muscle-tits. His legs start to kick. His lips go blue, and Miriam can't help but think back to Del Amico.

  Miriam knows she shouldn't get involved. Best thing would be to slink out of the bar with the antifreeze bourbon under her arm, never give a look back. Of course, she's never been the Queen of Good Decisions.

  She meanders over. She takes her time, and when she finally gets there, Ashley's lips have gone full purple, like two earthworms wrestling or making love.

  Miriam tugs on the hem of Fat Dude's leather jacket.

  "Excuse me," she says, mustering girlish politeness. "Giant man? May we speak?"

  He turns his tremendous skull toward her. She can practically hear the grinding of stone as the mountain pivots to regard the buzzing gnat at his side.

  "What's up?" he asks, like not much else is going on.

  Ashley's legs start to go limp.

  "That guy you're choking to death?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "He's my brother. He's… got problems. One, he's got bad manners. Two, his name is Ashley, and with a name like that, he might as well have a couple vaginas in his pocket, am I right? Three, he's at least half-retarded. Though I'm willing to put money on two-thirds retarded, if you're up for a friendly wager. Mom used to feed him lawn fertilizer when he was a kid, I think as some kind of retroactive abortion attempt."

  Ashley's eyes roll back in his head.

  "Now," she continues, "if you'd be so kind as to stop choking him and let me know what it is that you fine gentlemen are drinking, I think I have just enough cash to buy you another round before they close up shop for the night."

  "Oh yeah?" Fat Dude asks.

  Miriam offers up two fingers: a scout's honor, though it also looks like a proctologist's silent threat.

  Miriam can see the tectonic plates beneath the man's rubbery skin start to shift. The cue pulls away from Ashley's neck, and Ashley drops to his knees hard, gasping, wheezing, rubbing his throat.

  "Thanks so much," Miriam says.

  Fat Dude grunts in reply. "You should leash your brother. Get him a tard helmet."

  "I will consider that."

  "We're drinking beer. Coors Light. But I think we'd like some shots. Tequila."

  "Tequila, it is."

  "The good stuff, too. Not that cheap-ass cactus juice."

  Miriam gives him a thumbs-up, then offers her hand to Ashley. The gasps have stopped for the most part. He coughs once more. But he doesn't take her hand.

  He looks up at her and smiles. She sees it coming, but like with a car-wreck, she's powerless to stop it.

  Ashley punches Fat Dude in the groin.

  It doesn't do anything, of course, because Fat Dude's got balls made of basalt. Fat Dude doesn't even flinch. He does look a bit surprised, though.

  "Not cool," Fat Dude says.

  Then he swings a roundhouse fist at Ashley's face, which remains at crotch-level.

  Ashley, though, he's ready for it. He pulls his head back, and Fat Dude's boulder-fist whiffs through open air to connect with the corner of a two-seater bar table. Miriam sees the table break the first two fingers on Fat Dude's hand; they spring out like clothespins. She hears the break. Like someone splitting a branch over his knee.

  Fat Dude, to his credit, doesn't cry out. He just slowly brings his busted hand to his face, examining it the way a gorilla might regard a stapler, or an iPod.

  Chaos erupts.

  Gray Pubes wraps his hands around Ashley's neck, but Miriam's fast: She gives a nearby high-back chair a good kick, so the tippy-top of it drives right into the guy's gut. He doubles over. Ashley, meanwhile, shoulders into Hot Dog's stubby knees, and the guy goes down.

  Then: crack. A pool cue over Ashley's head. Fat Dude's left holding the broken half in his good hand. He laughs. This is fun for him.

  Before she means to be, Miriam's in the middle of it. A fist is thrown; she's not sure by whom. She feels the air current pass by her chin – a narrow miss. Ashley's up, eyes crossed, and then he's back down again as Fat Dude throws him, his shoulder against the two-seater, the table flipping up like a see-saw.

  Miriam sees a glint: Gray Pubes, clutching his nuts with one hand, draws a knife.

  Hot Dog's hands shove her forward.

  Fat Dude's raising the busted pool cue above Ashley's skull.

  It's all happening so fast and, yet, so slow. She's dull at her edges. Half-drunk, frankly.

  Time to end it. Time for Momma's Little Life Saver.

  Miriam reaches in her pocket as Gray Pubes advances on her. She sidesteps Hot Dog. Fat Dude bellows something, and his fingers – even the broken, crooked ones – curl tight around his weapon. Miriam's hand finds what she's looking for. She has it out. And she's using it.

  It's pepper spray. Fine grain. Shoots in a stream, not in a fog. Good for dogs, bears, and Fat Dudes.

  She whips it around wildly. The stream hits Fat Dude's eyes, and he howls, swatting at the stream like somehow that'll help. A blade swishes through air and she blasts Gray Pubes, too. Hot Dog makes a play, grabbing her wrist with his hand –

  A baby deer on wobbl
y legs runs out into the middle of the road and stops there, standing in the darkness, framed by the bright circle of a motorcycle headlight. Hot Dog's too busy kissing some old tattooed chick with a volcanic archipelago of cold sores around her mouth to see, and by the time he extracts his tongue from her snaggletoothed maw, it's too late. He turns the bike, just missing the deer's little white flicking tail. Tire catches gravel. The bike skids, then flips. Hot Dog isn't wearing a helmet. Face meets road. Gravel and asphalt form a belt sander. It takes half his face off like it wasn't more than ground beef. Eye tumbles from shattered socket. Rag-doll body folds end over end, his spine bowing, then snapping. The chick flies overhead like some confused superhero, her arms pinwheeling. She cries out. The baby deer runs into the brush.