Ashes Read online

  He blows smoke at me. “What’s it like to be dead?”

  I wish I could speak. I want to tell him, I want to tell them all. Being dead has taught me how to love. Being dead has shown me what is really important on this earth. Being dead has saved my life.

  “You poor schmuck. Ought to put a bullet in your head.” Juggles lets the cigarette dangle from his lips. He lights one of the others and flips it into my cage with his foot. “Here you go. Suck on that for a while.”

  I pick up the cigarette and touch its orange end. My skin sizzles and I stare at the wound as the smoke curls into my nose. I put the other end of the cigarette in my mouth. I cannot breathe so it does no good.

  “Why are you so mean to him?”

  It is she. Her voice comes like hammers, like needles of ice, like small kisses along my skin. She stands at the edge of the shadows, a shadow herself. I know that if my heart could beat it would go crazy.

  “I don’t mean nothing,” says Juggles. He exhales and squints against the smoke, then sits on a bale of straw. “Just having a little fun.”

  “Fun,” she says. “All you care about is fun.”

  “What else is there? None of us are going anywhere.”

  She steps from the darkness at the corner of the tent. The torchlight is golden on her face, flickering playfully among her chins. Her breath wheezes like the softest of summer winds. She is beautiful. My Fat Lady.

  The cigarette burns between my fingers. The fire reaches my flesh. I look down at the blisters, trying to remember what pain felt like. Juice leaks from the wounds and extinguishes the cigarette.

  “He shouldn’t be in a cage,” says the Fat Lady. “He’s no different from any of us.”

  “Except for that part about eating people.”

  “I wonder what his name is.”

  “You mean ‘was,’ don’t you? Everything’s in the past for him.”

  The Fat Lady squats near the cage. Her breasts swell with the effort, lush as moons. She stares at my face, into my eyes. I crush the cigarette in my hand and toss it to the ground.

  “He knows,” she says. “He can still feel. Just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. Whatever that virus was that caused this, it’s a hundred times worse than being dead.”

  “Hell, if I had arms, I’d give him a hug,” mocks Juggles.

  “You and your arms. You think you’re the only one that has troubles?” The Fat Lady wears lipstick, her mouth is a red gash against her pale, broad face. Her teeth are straight and healthy. I wish she would come closer.

  “Crying over that Murdermouth is like pissing in a river. At least he brings in a few paying customers.”

  The Fat Lady stares deeply into my eyes. I try to blink, to let her know I’m in here. She sees me. She sees me.

  “He’s more human than you’ll ever be,” the Fat Lady says, without turning her head.

  “Oh, yeah? Give us both a kiss and then tell me who loves you.” He has pulled a yellow ball from somewhere and tosses it back and forth between his feet. “Except you better kiss me first because you probably won’t have no lips left after him.”

  “He would never hurt me,” she says. She smiles at me. “Would you?”

  I try to think, try to make my mouth around the word. My throat. All my muscles are dumb, except for my tongue. I taste her perfume and sweat, the oil of her hair, the sex she had with someone.

  Voices spill from the tent flap. The barker is back, this time with only four people. Juggles hops to his feet, balances on one leg while saluting the group, then dances away. He doesn’t like the barker.

  “Hello, Princess Tiffany,” says the barker.

  The Fat Lady grins, rises slowly, groans with the effort of lifting her own weight. I love all of her.

  “For a limited time only, a special attraction,” shouts the barker in his money-making voice. “The world’s fattest woman and the bottomless Murdermouth, together again for the very first time.”

  The Fat Lady waves her hand at him, smiles once more at me, then waddles toward the opening in the tent. She waits for a moment, obliterating the bright lights beyond the tent walls, then enters the clamor and madness of the crowd.

  “Too bad,” says the barker. “A love for the ages.”

  “Goddamn, I’d pay double to see that,” says one of the group.

  “Quadruple,” says the barker. “Once for each chin.”

  The group laughs, then falls silent as all eyes turn to me.

  The barker beats on the cage with his stick. “Give them a show, freak.”

  I eat the finger again. It is shredded now and bits of dirt and straw stick to the knuckle. Two of the people, a man and a woman, hug each other. The woman makes a sound like her stomach is bad. Another man, the one who would pay double, says, “Do they really eat people?”

  “Faster than an alligator,” says my barker. “Why, this very one ingested my esteemed predecessor in three minutes flat. Nothing left but two pounds of bones and a shoe.”

  “Doesn’t look like much to me,” says the man. “I wouldn’t be afraid to take him on.”

  He calls to the man with him, who wobbles and smells of liquor and excrement. “What do you think? Ten-to-one odds.”

  “Maynard, he’d munch your ass so fast you’d be screaming ‘Mommy’ before you knew what was going on,” says the wobbling man.

  Maynard’s eyes narrow and he turns to the barker. “What do you say? I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Him and me, five minutes.”

  My barker points the stick toward the tent ceiling. “Five minutes. In the cage with that thing?”

  “I heard about these things,” says the man. “Don’t know if I believe it.”

  My mouth tastes his courage and his fear. He is salt and meat and brains and kidneys. He is one of them. I love him.

  He takes the stick from the barker and pokes me in the shoulder.

  “That’s not sporting,” says the barker. He looks at the man and woman, who have gone pale and taken several steps toward the door.

  Maynard rattles the stick against the bars and pokes me in the face. I hear a tearing sound. The woman screams and the man shouts beside her, then they run into the night. Organ notes trip across the sky, glittering wheels tilt, people laugh. The crowd is thinning for the night.

  Maynard fishes in his pocket and pulls out some bills. “What do you say?”

  “I don’t know if it’s legal,” says the barker.

  “What do you care? Plenty more where he came from.” Maynard breathes heavily. I smell poison spilling from inside him.

  “It ain’t like it’s murder,” says Maynard’s drunken companion.

  The barker looks around, takes the bills. “After the crowd’s gone. Come back after midnight and meet me by the duck-hunting gallery.”

  Maynard reaches the stick into the bars, rakes my disembodied finger out of the cage. He bends down and picks it up, sniffs it, and slides it into his pocket. “A little return on my investment,” he says.

  The barker takes the stick from Maynard and wipes it clean on his trouser leg. “Show’s over, folks,” he yells, as if addressing a packed house.

  “Midnight,” Maynard says to me. “Then it’s you and me, freak.”

  The wobbly man giggles as they leave the tent. The barker waits by the door for a moment, then disappears. I look into the torchlight, watching the flames do their slow dance. I wonder what the fire tastes like.

  The Fat Lady comes. She must have been hiding in the shadows again. She has changed her billowy costume for a large robe. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, her face barren of make-up.

  She sees me. She knows I can understand her. “I heard what they said.”

  I stick out my tongue. I can taste the torn place on my cheek. I grip the bars with my hands. Maybe tomorrow, I will eat my hands, then my arms. Then I can be like Juggles. Except you can’t dance when you’re dead.

  Or maybe I will eat and eat when the barker brings me the
bucket of chicken hearts. If I eat enough, I can be the World’s Fattest Murdermouth. I can be one of them. I will take money for the rides and pull the levers and sell cotton candy.

  If I could get out of this cage, I would show her what I could do. I would prove my love. If I could talk, I would tell her.

  The Fat Lady watches the tent flap. Somewhere a roadie is working on a piece of machinery, cursing in a foreign language. The smell of popcorn is no longer in the air. Now there is only cigarette smoke, cheap wine, leftover hot dogs. The big show is putting itself to bed for the night.

  “They’re going to kill you,” she whispers.

  I am already dead. I have tasted my own finger. I should be eating dirt instead. Once, I could feel the pounding of my heart.

  “You don’t deserve this.” Her eyes are dark. “You’re not a freak.”

  My barker says a freak is anybody that people will pay money to see.

  My tongue presses against my teeth. I can almost remember. They put me in a cage before I died. I had a name.

  The Fat Lady wraps her fingers around the metal catch. From somewhere she has produced a key. The lock falls open and she whips the chain free from the bars.

  “They’re coming,” she says. “Hurry.”

  I smell them before I see them. Maynard smells like Maynard, as if he is wearing his vital organs around his waist. The wobbling man reeks even worse of liquor. The barker has also been drinking. The three of them laugh like men swapping horses.

  I taste the straw in the air, the diesel exhaust, the smoke from the torches, the cigarette that Juggles gave me, my dead finger, the cold gun in Maynard’s pocket, the money my barker has spent.

  I taste and taste and taste and I am hungry.

  “Hey, get away from there,” yells the barker. He holds a wine bottle in one hand.

  The Fat Lady pulls on the bars. The front of the cage falls open. I can taste the dust.

  “Run,” says the Fat Lady.

  Running is like dancing. Maybe people will pay money to see me run.

  “What the hell?” says Maynard.

  I move forward, out of the cage. This is my tent. My name is on a sign outside. If I see the sign, I will know who I am. If I pay money, maybe I can see myself.

  “This ain’t part of the deal,” says Maynard. He draws the gun from his pocket. The silver barrel shines in the firelight.

  The Fat Lady turns and faces the three men.

  “I swear, I didn’t know anything about this,” says the barker.

  “Leave him alone,” says the Fat Lady.

  Maynard waves the gun. “Get out of the way.”

  This is my tent. I am the one they came to see. The Fat Lady blocks the way. I stare at her broad back, at the dark red robe, her long hair tumbling down her neck. She’s the only one who ever treated me like one of them.

  I jump forward, push her. The gun roars, spits a flash of fire from its end. She cries out. The bullet cuts a cold hole in my chest.

  I must die again, but at last she is in my arms.

  If my mouth could do more than murder, it would say words.

  I am sorry. I love you.

  They take her bones when I am finished.

  ###

  SUNG LI

  There's a story behind every glass eye.

  That's what Uncle Theodore says. He got his glass eye after a fight in the jungle. Said something called a "goop" got him with a piece of shrapnel. I asked him once and he told me that shrapnel was a jaggedy piece of metal. Anyway, he's the one who gave Sung Li to my Mom.

  If it's true what he said about glass eyes, then Sung Li has two stories. Her eyes aren't really glass, but I like to pretend anyway. Maybe she'll let me tell you her other story, the one you don't know about yet. But maybe not, since all you want to do is talk about what happened last night.

  Who's Sung Li? I already told that other police. But maybe they figured since you're a woman police, I'll tell the truth this time. So I'll tell you who Sung Li is, and maybe you'll believe me.

  She's the China doll that lives on the second shelf in that little showcase on the top of the stairs. She usually just lays there. Daddy says that's what girls are supposed to do, anyway. Lay there and look pretty. At least that's what he always told me on Mom's library nights. And Mom says if you handle Sung Li, the value will go down.

  Mom really loves that doll, maybe more than anything else in the showcase. Did you look yet? There's a silver tray that's got some writing on it under a picture of a sailboat. Up above that is an old book that's got cardboard poking through the corners and a little red ribbon tucked inside as a bookmark. There's some other things, too. Daddy's old bowling trophy, some dollars from where they don't know how to spell good, and that knife from Mexico that's made out of volcano stuff. But Sung Li is the main thing. All the rest is kind of placed around her like an afterthought.

  Mom taught me the word "afterthought." She sometimes even calls me that. Her Little Afterthought. She smiles when she says that, but it's one of those crooked smiles where one side of your face gets wrinkly.

  Except to put something inside, Mom only opens that showcase about once a month, when she takes one of those dusters that looks like the back end of a chicken. She runs that duster over the shelves and all that stuff in the showcase. I don't see why she bothers, because that old stuff in there just keeps making more dust. When the light's just right, when you hide behind the door and the sun is sneaking through that little crack between the hall and my bedroom, you can watch her. After she leaves, you can sit there and watch the little silver hairs spin and twirl and then settle down all over again.

  But mostly I watch Sung Li. You ought to go up and see her. Maybe you will, after I finish telling her story.

  She wears this little robe with flowers on it and she's got a cloth belt tied around her waist. The sleeves where her hands come out are really wide. She has tiny black shoes and pants that are the color of raw rice. But her frosty white face is what I really like to look at.

  Her cheeks go way up high under her eyes, and they're sharp like a naked bone. Her eyebrows are real skinny and rounded. She has a nose that's almost invisible, just a little nip of whatever it is they make plates out of. Her lips are bright red and shiny, almost like they're wet. I know it's all paint, but I like to pretend about things like that.

  She doesn't look much like me. Except for the eyes. Sometimes I'll look into those black glass eyes of hers, the eyes that seem to soak up whatever light hits them. Then I'll run into the bathroom down the hall, quick before I forget, and look in the mirror at my own eyes. And for just a second, or however long I can go without blinking, I can pretend that I'm pretty like Sung Li.

  You really think I'm pretty? Well, it's nice of you to say that, anyway. But I'm not pretty like Sung Li.

  At night in bed I wrap the blankets around me and think about Sung Li. I take off my pillowcases and put them on my arms and pretend they're big sleeves. I stick my lips out a little, like I'm waiting for a secret kiss. I pretend I'm sitting on the middle shelf and people look at me and like me because I am pretty and have good value.

  Maybe I wouldn't ever have learned Sung Li's story. But one day Daddy opened the case with his little key because he bought a carved gnome and wanted to put it in there. Mom was watching him, to make sure he didn't break anything. Daddy used to break things sometimes.

  No, I don't need a tissue. Everybody keeps telling me that it's okay to cry, and they give me candy bars. But why should I cry? Sung Li is going to be okay.

  Usually Mom sent me away whenever the case was opened. I think she was afraid I would pick up something and make its value go down. So I hid behind the door and looked through that crack near the hinges. I heard Daddy tell Mom that the gnome was a collector's item. It was an ugly old thing, with a thick beard and a sharp nose and a face that's all wrinkly like somebody who stayed in the bathtub too long. You can see it when you go up to look at Sung Li, if you want to.

  Daddy
took Sung Li out of the center space on the main shelf and put that knotty old gnome in her place. He put Sung Li on the bottom shelf and leaned her against my baby shoes. They're bronze now. They weren't bronze when I wore them.

  I knew Sung Li was mad about being moved, maybe just because Daddy had touched her. Her eyes burned with all that light they had soaked up over the years. But Daddy didn't notice, he just hummed his little hum and tilted his head back to make sure the gnome was centered on the shelf. Then he closed the door and I saw Mom hide the key under the showcase.

  After they were gone, I tiptoed to the case and felt under the bottom edge until I found the key. I heard the front door slam and then heard Daddy start his car and drive away, back to work or wherever he stayed all day until dark. Mom was messing with the laundry downstairs. I put the key in the lock and turned it. The whole front of the case opened up, and it squeaked like a door in a haunted house.

  I reached out to touch Sung Li, and my hand was trembling. She was so pretty, even when she was mad about being moved. Her lips were shining in the little bit of sunshine. Then I couldn't help myself, I had to feel her smooth skin, even if it meant her value would go down and Mom would be mad at me. I touched her secret lips and they were cold, cold like a popsicle, cold like the sidewalk in winter when you lay the back of your head against it.

  I felt her soft black hair that was smoothed behind her head. I touched her robe with all its folds and tiny stitches. I rubbed that little pinch of a nose. I picked her up.

  I thought she would be made out of that hard stuff they make plates out of. But only her head was. The rest must have been stuffed with rags or cotton or something like that. When I picked her up with my hand around her skinny waist, her head flopped over and banged against the bronze shoes. The showcase rattled and I was afraid Mom would hear it even over the noise of the washer.

  I quick put my hand around Sung Li's head. I felt a sharp pain. I pulled my fingers out from under her hair and there was blood on them. Her head had cracked.

  My heart must have skipped at least two beats. I was afraid Mom would be mad because Sung Li's value had gone down and Daddy would give me one of his special spankings. And I was afraid that Sung Li wouldn't love me after that.