Rag Read online

  I called the number from the flyer. The voice asked Do you like animals? And I said Sure. Such a cheerful voice. I felt very calm, writing down the directions. Long drive. No one there in the room. The plastic smock hung up, the mask. The jugs of chemicals and the directions taped to the green wall. It was clear-cut. Nights. Confidential. No vacation days. I waited for the delivery and there was a man for that, too, I learned, he had something covering his face every time I saw him. The crates, one at a time. The first time it was a dog so skinny I could see its heart beating beneath the skin of its belly. It just wanted me to hold it. I held it. The man said from behind his face mask You got it? and I nodded, mouth hidden behind my own mask, and he showed me the bottle I was supposed to put the needles in and I took that and the dog and carried them inside.

  There’s something about being in charge of something. Doing what you’re told but also doing more than that. Having heart. Looking them in the eye.

  Those needles, those bags, they translate one thing into another. I hate to see them go, their heads on my thigh, doing that thing they do when they take their last breath, shuddering, their world of feeling shrinking down to this tiny bubble of relief or giving in or whatever it is before that, too, disappears. I let them lie on me for a while. I go on petting them, saying things. The heat goes very quickly and that’s one thing they taught me. How to look at people and think of heat. Even the worst son of a bitch is warm somewhere on his body and that’s what lets you know he’s alive. I open the bag, I clean up, I close the bag, I open the door and I go to my car and it’s getting light outside. And as I start the car I feel that heat blooming inside me, the spot on my thigh where I let them lie, pulsing with new blood.

  Sometimes I make a barking sound and my brother doesn’t know what I’m doing. This gets me every time. He just doesn’t know what it is to bark. Or to cry. When he cries he does it so loud that even with the bedroom door closed I can hear him.

  An animal does its best. Anticipates your needs. Lies down. Keeps still. They can drink but they can’t eat, these dogs. I don’t know where the teeth go, who takes them out, exactly why. A muzzle would be easier. Or nothing at all—they wouldn’t bite—except it’s a liability, maybe. Maybe, if they could bite, their bites would be poison, the same poison I put into them, and then it would be me in a bag. I look up the sign for “muzzle” in my ASL dictionary. A hand clawed over the face. It scares me. I wait for my brother to make this sign, by accident, in passing, for no reason. He doesn’t, of course, he’s probably never signed it in his life. How many signs go unshaped by us? He doesn’t even say as much as he could say. No one does. It must cost money to remove the teeth. It’s someone’s job, to do it, the way mine is using the needles, the way the other man’s job is to move the bags. I wonder how many of us there are. How big this operation is. Each man in his room, on his route, taking the phone calls, making a mess, cleaning it up. Could be women are involved, too. But the voices on the phone are men’s voices. The hands on the bags are a man’s hands. The face in the mirror is my face. Every evening. Every workday shaving as if for a date.

  The job doesn’t stop with me, though the living stops, the animals stop. Something else happens, I’m sure. Some measurement. Some data put to use. There’s a goal that isn’t shared with me, an origin, a backstory. I’m just this one room in this one building on the outside of town where there is nothing for a very long time except road and dead grass and this table and these needles and these liquids and these bodies, one of which is mine, and I push the needles in and in and in.

  It’s no surprise that they die. Not even the first time. They come to me so close to it already. The liquids come in different colors, different dosages. Do they make it happen faster? Or slower? Last month I asked the voice on the phone Is it working? I’d been doing it for about eight weeks by then. Dozens of dogs. The voice was silent, but in an amused way, like I’d said something funny. You’re doing great, the voice said finally. You’re a natural, Francis. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I hung up the phone and turned to the Doberman on the table, its chin against the steel, its brown eyes half-mast. You’d think the room would smell like dog but it doesn’t. The chemicals are too strong. I rubbed its head. Put my nose in its fur. Breathed.

  It’s shivering. It trusts me so much at this point, it trusts that this, what we’re doing, is its life. So it doesn’t even try to move or beg me with its eyes to do something different. I put the needle down. It’s not like there are cameras here, someone supervising, someone breathing down my neck. There is no gun to my head. I take the animal in my arms. I named him Bunny because of his long ears. Brown and ugly. Those lips wrinkled where the front teeth should be. I take him and I open the door and I put him on the ground. You can run, I say. It’s warm outside. There’s a little wind and in the dark, somewhere, the road. You’ll find it, I say. He sits up at my feet, struggling, blinking, nose trying to smell something new. Trying to remember walking. Legs shaking. We take our time. I’m holding the door open, this heavy green door, metal, always cold. If he can hear something it’s beyond me. There aren’t any cars that come this way. Just us. Deciding. His breathing, loud. Eventually he takes a step forward. That’s it, I say, casually, no pressure either way. He doesn’t have to go. Doesn’t have to do anything. It’s just an idea I had. Bunny walks crooked, with his back up, like something is hurting his paws, like he can’t really see where he is going. He moves out beyond the circle of light and after that I assume he’s gone.

  But later I find him by the side of the road. Didn’t make it across. He was alone when it happened and that’s how I know I messed up. I grip the steering wheel. Make a noise I have never heard before. But I’m not going to go mental. I learned my lesson. Freedom after a certain point is a mistake.

  I have to drag Bunny back inside. So that no one will guess what I did. I prop the bag against the wall and lock the door again.

  The needles rattle in my bag. One full dose and they’re done. No convulsions. No knowledge. Just the eyes turning to glass. My brother is asleep on the couch, the blanket half slipped from his hip. Shirt rucked up so I can see the bare skin of his back, its sprinkle of acne. I think, Now I can be good to him. I know how. My hand on his side. For an animal, being toothless is a way of being dead. For a human, being deaf is a way of being an animal that is toothless. I didn’t start it. I’m somewhere toward the end of the line. When the animals come to me they have already been somewhere worse before. Maybe it starts with being born. I could keep feeding him words with my hands, let him take the meat that is the stupid conversation we have every day. Drag along. I stroke his hip. He moans in his sleep. Shh, I say. Shh.

  THE BROTHER

  GIRLS OVERRUN the house like rabbits, or maggots, or weeds. Bianca, Veronica, Angelica, Janine. He calls them by the wrong names on purpose, reaching out blindly, Biancaveronicaangelicajanine whichever one you are come here a minute. He butts their flat stomachs. They crawl over him like puppies. We are always out of diet soda. Which is what I drink, or drank before all these girls pushed in with their elbows and their shrieking and their Victoria’s Secret body wash smell. Even if I’m in another room, another house, another city, I can see him making up to them, those girls, their faces spangled with makeup, his fingers walking up their hip bones. They share the same cigarette, lying beside the pool, hands flicking ash, each mouth waiting its turn to embrace the lip-glossed butt. The smoke they blow rises, converges. My brother will jump from the nest of towels and cannonball into the water, spraying the girls, who shriek, their bodies curling like pill bugs. One by one he pulls them into the pool. Their legs grow together under the water.

  So he likes women, my dad says to my stepmom. I don’t see how that’s a problem.

  The one I want is Bianca, the small one, the one with an overbite and the prettiest hair. I don’t want her because she is good-looking, though they are all good-looking. I want her because she seems to like him the most: she looks at him longest, l
aughs the loudest, wears the most provocative clothes. She is a link in a chain I want to see busted, and I don’t want to wait for him to do the damage himself. Why should I? The hearts my brother will break are, for now, unbroken, and I want to break hers first.

  The girls stand in line at the stove while my stepmother forks French toast onto their plates. They are wearing terry shorts in neon colors, tank tops, plastic bracelets. My dad looks at their thighs while he chews. My brother is at the end of the line, whispering to the girl in front of him. She giggles. They take their plates into the den and eat, draped over the couch. I can see through the doorway that he has two of them on his lap. They watch cartoons. The one I like is sitting on the floor between his knees; I can see her foot, curved around the side of the couch.

  What are you looking at? my stepmother asks.

  What are you looking at? I echo. My father slaps my elbow off the table.

  Knock it off, he says. I press my fork into my French toast, squeezing the syrup through the holes in the bread.

  Aren’t you eating, Anita? my father asks my stepmother. She’s drinking coffee. Her plate is empty. On the counter is an egg carton full of cracked shells.

  There wasn’t any bread left.

  My dad snorts. Buy two loaves the next time. You know we have teenagers in the house.

  I didn’t know the girls would be staying over.

  Really, Anita. Get with the program, my dad says, his eyes following mine into the den. My brother with his lap full of ass. My stepmother bangs her cup on the table.

  We’re not even related. His mother married my dad when we were ten. People look at us and don’t think, Brothers. Friends, maybe. Or just boys standing next to each other by accident.

  My brother resists a hierarchy; it’s against their religion, he says, their spiritual beliefs. There is no best girl. They’re all about equality. Free love. Like hippies, he says. You mean like Charles Manson, I reply. Whatever, he says, and I can tell he has no idea who I’m talking about.

  I’m in the hallway, listening, when Bianca breaks ranks on the equality shit; she wants him to go to a concert with her, just her, for her birthday.

  Just for one night, she says, standing between his knees at the end of his bed.

  My brother sighs. That wouldn’t really be cool.

  Why not?

  Because it wouldn’t, like, be fair.

  It’s just one night.

  How about I get us all tickets? Front row! And dinner afterward, Olive Garden. Salad and breadsticks for all my bitches.

  I can see, through the slit in the door, Bianca trying to take her hands out of his; he tugs her in for a kiss, but she turns her head.

  Maybe I should have someone else take me.

  He smiles his beautiful smile. What? You got four people to take you already, girl, dang!

  She looks at him out of the corner of her eye and cracks.

  You’re such a pig, she says.

  Come here, he says, and kisses her.

  They are free. Free to tell him to kiss their ass, to stop fucking around. What is he, a prince? But they don’t want to break up. They want to paint each other’s nails, then paint his nails. He isn’t callous or rude or a fuckup or an asshole; he likes them all. He gets them little presents, silver charms and sexy T-shirts with words like HOT BUNNY MAMA dripping over the chest. Girls fall for all kinds of tricks. Is it his James Dean hair? His skinny six-pack? The little gap between his front teeth? If you ask him about the girls, he holds his hands up like you have a gun on him: absolutely innocent.

  After the girls leave I slip into my brother’s room, sit on his bedspread, wait for him to finish taking a piss. When he sees me he shakes his head.

  Why are you always, like, lurking, he says, and I get up so he can sit down.

  I heard you arguing with one of the groupies, I say. She want to jump ship?

  Naw, he says.

  Sounds like she was pissed.

  He shrugs. Not really.

  I start flipping imaginary hair over my shoulder. You should like me best, I say, in a high-pitched voice, rolling my eyes up.

  I do, baby, he croons back, and kicks my ankle. I embrace him, hard, an arm locked around his head.

  Enough, he says into my stomach, shoving at my hips. I turn away, thumb through a skateboard magazine, push over a small stack of CDs with my foot. Tugging his algebra quiz from a textbook, I read the red ink: 68, a D+. I smirk.

  What’d you get? he asks, defensive, almost afraid. He doesn’t like it when I smile.

  Sixty-eight, I whisper. Duh.

  We have the same teachers, take the same tests. I know the mistakes he would make. We both write with our left hand. He’s looking at me, wondering what it means; it doesn’t mean anything. He can go fuck himself. I drop the test on the desk and make a sound like a bomb dropping; when it hits it explodes. He lies back on his bed, one knee up, trying to act cool.

  Better luck next time, I say, and depart. I close the door and stand outside it. He gets on the phone. I listen.

  The boardwalk, he says, and I can hear, faint but distinct, the shriek of their combined Hell yes! I know his hand is slipped under the waistband of his shorts; I slip mine down, too. I smile when he smiles. Their sandals slap the steps. He opens the front door. From my spot in the hall I can see the shadows of their breasts on the wall. They use the bathroom, grab snacks, yelp when the dog licks their knees; then they are gone. My brother’s car shoots down the street, hair streaming from its windows. They could die, I consider. He drives too fast. But then I would die, too, so I cancel that wish. Let them live! I sing to myself. My stepmom looks up from her talk show.

  What, Kenneth?

  Nothing, I say, and grin.

  They come home, full of beer, half asleep. I’m pulling on Bianca’s hair, both hands deep in the hot blond sheet of it. She just goes on wiping peanut butter off of a knife and onto a piece of bread. One girl is petting the cat with her toes and the other two are slung over the back of the couch, all legs and ass, and my brother is looking at me.

  What’s your deal? he says.

  I just look at him as I touch the girl’s hair, combing, combing.

  Seriously, man, stop it.

  You stop it, I say.

  No, you, he says, blinking. I’m not doing anything.

  I look at him like, Oh? The girl presses the sandwich together, takes a bite. My hands slip through the bottom of her hair into space. She turns to my brother, chews, pins her hip to the counter.

  C’mere, he says, flipping me off with one hand while reeling her in with the other. The kiss he gives her smacks through the room, hits me in the mouth.

  I take boxers from the pile at the foot of his bed; I take shirts, jeans, socks, and fold them into my own dresser, pulling them on at night, sitting in the dark in his favorite jacket. Their perfume rises from the fabric, having been smeared into it by their glossy heads, their restless arms. I don’t want to take the jacket off. So I leave it on.

  I’m fucking Bianca in the kitchen. It’s dark and her back is pressed against the doorknob of the pantry. It’s hurting her. In fact technically I am raping her, but she isn’t trying to get me to stop, she’s just hoping I’ll hurry up. I watch the kitchen clock and time myself—they did it for eight minutes and thirty-six seconds the last time. So at 2:42 I come. We can hear the other girls in his room, laughing.

  Close your eyes, I tell the girl, the one I want, the one I am fucking the way my brother fucks.

  No, she says.

  I put my hand over her face.

  Jesus Christ, she says. Cut it out, Kenneth.

  The other girls make excited yips. I know they are all in a heap on his bed and he is slowly peeling their clothes from their bronze skin. They go breathless, like lights turning down.

  You keep drinking my Diet Cokes, I say to the girl.

  Sorry, she says, rolling her eyes.

  Aren’t you going to do anything? Scream or anything?

 
She yawns. Not right now, she says.

  You don’t care?

  I’m drunk, she says. I thought you were Mike.

  You did?

  She giggles.

  I press the girl’s waist beneath my palms. He’s going to dump you someday, I say.

  So? she says.

  I stare. My brother and I are endangered; we are nearly extinct.

  I withdraw. She wipes her thigh with a paper towel, tosses the towel onto the counter, then goes down the hall, opens his door, closes it. I listen for their voices: my brother says something and she laughs. I hold the paper towel in my hand and laugh, too, the way he does, but quietly, a whisper, my eyes wide in the dark.

  JURY

  THE COURTHOUSE smelled like mold. Martin sat with the heel of his hand over his mouth as the lawyers went through the prospective jurors one by one, dozens of them, himself in the last row. The air conditioner was broken. Shuffling feet, fans of paper, the suffocating stink of a hundred wet dress shirts. He was squeezed between a fat man and the wall; he felt nauseated. The hands on the clock wouldn’t budge. He fell asleep for a few seconds. One of the lawyers asked him what he thought about the death penalty. He shrugged. He had nothing against it. The crime involved a young girl. Did he have children? Daughters? He thought of Quinn, on her last visit from school, sleeping in the backseat on the way home from the airport, fighting the flu. Her cheeks had been so pink, hot to the touch, just like they had been when she was little. She was often sick and she so rarely visited. He said, My children are grown. The prosecutor smiled. He was not dismissed that day, nor the next, nor the one after that. The trial would last four weeks. They would pay him twenty dollars a day for his time. He loosened his collar and sighed.