She had been up since three and had known from the first that the day was going to be a disaster. And she was right.
She’d started out by grabbing a tube of Ben-Gay instead of tooth-paste, cracking her hip against a dresser drawer and losing one of her new fake nails down the drain. But that was just the beginning.
She found mouse droppings on the kitchen cabinet, a quart of soured milk in the fridge, exactly four squares of toilet tissue left on the roll and a crimson rash running up her neck.
What she didn’t find was the mate to her one fuzzy house shoe, enough water pressure to wash the taste of Ben-Gay from her mouth or an extra roll of toilet paper.
She could have blamed her troubles on insomnia—three hours of half sleep and distressing dreams she couldn’t shake until she got up and looked through Brenda’s old scrapbook. But a bad night was nothing new for Molly O. She’d been living with insomnia for so long that it was as familiar as her cowlick, as comfortable as her faded chenille robe.
No, her problem was worse than a restless night, more serious than a rash. Her problem was Christmas. Christmas without Brenda. And while the photographs she had looked at earlier had soothed the sting of bad dreams, the images of Brenda would be with her for the rest of the day.
Brenda, hair the color of quince, face set in defiant scowl, posted
under a Christmas tree . . . a three-year-old sentry waiting up for
Sandra Claus
At first, Molly O had tried to turn Christmas off. Just think of December as another gray month, the last thirty-one days of the year, four long weeks in which her propane bill would double. But she couldn’t avoid the Christmas parade down Main Street, couldn’t ignore the plywood reindeer on the lawn at City Hall, couldn’t shut out the sounds of the Methodist carolers singing “Joy to the World.”
Brenda at ten, straw-thin legs crossed in a movie star pose, ankle-strap shoes too adult for her feet, head haloed in copper curls, mouth
painted sunburst coral with a tube of forbidden lipstick
But like a spoiled child demanding attention, Christmas insisted on having its own way.
Christmas was coming
—with its scent of pine needles and jingle of bells—and there was nothing Molly O could do to stop it. She couldn’t hide from it or get around it, but she had to find a way to get through it, so she devised another plan.
She would perform her own Christmas miracle to renew a joy-less heart.
Brenda at thirteen, hair by Clairol—raven black, eyelids shadowed
midnight blue, short leather skirt hugging her thighs as she climbs
into a pickup, flashing a woman’s smile at the grinning boy behind
the wheel
With renewed spirit and firm resolve, Molly O started her new campaign by dropping five dollars in the Salvation Army bucket, then taking a racing car set and two Dr. Seuss books to the fire-house for the Toys for Tots collection. She bought two trees from the Kiwanis lot, then pulled out cardboard boxes full of lights and ornaments.
She watched
Miracle on 34th Street,
addressed Christmas cards and made a pan of fudge. Then she sat down and cried.
Brenda at fifteen, cowboy booted, western suited, hair bleached,
teased and pomped, bottle of Coors in one hand, guitar in the other,
wedged between two slim-hipped musicians, standing beside a beat-up VW van with BRENDA B AND THE BAD AXE BOYS painted on
the side
Depressed by the sight of so much Christmas, Molly O loaded up everything and took it to the Honk where she spent three days decorating for Caney. She had pretended to enjoy it and forced herself to smile. But it didn’t work. The spirit she faked was left at the cafe like an apron she could slip in and out of. Here in her own trailer, there was nothing to suggest that Christmas was just days away. Nothing at all.
Brenda, hair the color of quince
a three-year-old sentry
waiting up for Sandra Claus
Bui Khanh emptied the closet quickly, but he had little to take—a windbreaker, three pairs of pants, a half dozen wrinkled shirts . . . ill-fitting castoffs from the Goodwill where he shopped.
He tossed everything into a paper sack, then scooped out the contents of a dresser drawer.
He had just stepped into the kitchen when he heard a car roll to a stop in the alley behind his apartment. He switched off the light, then slipped to the window.
He knew the police would come, but had hoped it would not be so soon, hoped he would already be gone.
He had seen the Houston police many times in the neighborhoods of Little Saigon. Big men with hard voices and hard eyes.
Once he had seen two of them with their guns drawn, yelling words he couldn’t understand at a Thai boy in front of the U Minh Import Shop.
Bui held his breath as he inched aside a stiff window shade.
The sight of a man standing ten feet away caused his knees to buckle. But when his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the alley, he recognized the familiarity of another Vietnamese face as the man staggered against the car, fumbled open his fly and relieved himself.
Bui backed away from the window and waited for his breathing to slow. He wanted to sit down and close his eyes, but he knew if he did, he would see again the woman with yellow hair.
He could not remember her car pulling out of the darkness and into the path of his own, did not remember the jolt of the wheel in his hand or the tearing of metal as the cars came to rest at the side of the road. But he would never forget the face of the woman with yellow hair as she stumbled from her car and started to shout.
Bui told her he would take her to a doctor and promised to pay the bill, but when he tried to wipe the blood from her hair, she grabbed his arm and screamed words he had never heard.
He tried to explain, told her he had no license and no insurance for the car. Then he gave her all the money in his pocket, but she kept shouting and pointing to her car.
Bui tried again to tell her, to make her understand, but he didn’t have enough American words. And when he heard the sound of distant sirens, the Vietnamese words came too fast and too loud. When he reached for her arm and begged her to listen, she scratched at his face and tore the collar of his shirt.
He wished he could have helped her, could have found the right words, but the woman was still shouting when he ran away. And now, standing in the empty kitchen, he knew wishing was too late.
The car in the alley was gone when he peeked through the window again, but he left the room in darkness as he felt his way to a corner cabinet, empty except for a heavy bag of rice. Working quickly, he untied the bag, then ran his hand deep inside and pulled out a thick leather pouch. He didn’t take time to open it.
He could tell from the heft of it that the money was still inside.
The kitchen held nothing else of value—no microwave or toaster, not even a coffeepot. Bui had made do with one blackened saucepan, three plastic glasses and a stack of plastic containers from the Cafe Lotus where he worked.
He had planned to buy nice dishes later, when Nguyet came—
white china bowls and teacups edged in gold. He would buy beautiful chopsticks made of ivory and a tray painted with red flowers, and Nguyet would prepare
rau ca2i xao-
and
co’m chiên vo’í sauciss,
not the canned fish and frozen pizzas he sometimes ate.
Nguyet wouldn’t like American food, not at first, but Bui would teach her the taste of fried chicken and baked apples. He would show her how Americans ate eggs with forks and explain why they wanted their tea with ice. She wouldn’t understand, not in the beginning, but he would help her and she would be all right. When she was with him again, everything would be all right.
The living room was even darker than the kitchen, but Bui didn’t need light to see where he was going. He had been there many times in the dark. And now, before he left, he would go there once more.
The shrine, on a rickety wooden table in a corner of the room, was small and plain. But when he lit the candle, the stone Buddha cast a giant shadow against the wall. Bui lit three sticks of incense over the candle flame, then stepped back and knelt on the floor.
He bowed his head and waved the incense three times toward the altar, then, with his hands pressed against his forehead, he prayed. He prayed for his ancestors, he prayed for Nguyet and he prayed for the woman with yellow hair.
C
ANEY LOWERED HIMSELF into the nearly full tub, eased into the steaming water little by little, letting the warmth spread over his belly, then up his chest, around his back, as he slipped down and down until he was submerged up to his chin. He leaned his head back against the cold enamel, closed his eyes and saw himself floating in a clear stream, carried along by the current, the sun on his face . . . his body light, drifting, free.
He liked being there, in that stream. Thought of how fine it would be to stay all day . . . forever. Because when he was there, he didn’t have to worry about the fry cook showing up or the ice maker shutting down, didn’t have to think about the roof that had been leaking for six months or the meat bill that was ninety days past due.
But Caney knew he didn’t have a chance, not a chance in hell. If he stayed in that stream, just drifted along, some disaster would spoil it, something would end it all.
He’d drift into a nest of snakes or get sucked down a hole or crash into a jagged boulder. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew it would all turn bad because that’s the way dreams worked.
He scooted himself up in the tub, reached to a shelf above his head and grabbed for his cigarettes. He was expecting to find a half pack of Camels; instead, he discovered a prickly pear cactus Molly O had adorned with sprigs of holly and sprinkled with plastic snow.
The thorn that pierced the pad of his thumb was just a little shorter than the one that ran under his fingernail, the one that caused him to yell.
When he jerked his hand down, he ripped the shelf loose and everything on it slid off and tumbled into the tub with him. A bottle of Prell, two rolls of Charmin and a half pack of Camels floated around him like bathtub toys.
“Jesus Christ,” he said as he surveyed the mess he was sitting in.
Plastic snowflakes and holly drifted across his belly, the Charmin settled to the bottom of the tub and dirt from the cactus pot turned the bathwater brown.
“Jesus Christ,” he repeated, then shook his head in disgust.
He couldn’t decide whether to drain the tub and start all over or just skip the whole thing. But he knew for certain that with or without a bath, he needed a smoke and it wouldn’t come from the soggy package floating between his ankles.
He wrapped his hands around the rubber grips on the sides of the tub, took a ragged breath and began to lift himself out of the water.
Great knots of muscle hardened like gristle as he started to rise.
Veins swelled into dark ridges, and thick ropes of tendons corded and bulged as he raised pound after pound of resisting bone, flesh, body.
Beads of sweat popped into rivulets that streamed in his eyes, and his skin purpled as the veins in his neck gorged to bursting.
And with his jaw clamped and lips stretched into a grimace, he made some sound of pain deep in his throat.
He quivered as he reached the last of it, as he strained to gain the final few inches. Then it was over.
With his arms fully extended, his weight in perfect balance, he hung in midair . . . back straight, head up, muscles rigid. And for a moment, for just one sweet moment, he was one of Louis L’Amour’s cowboys, gloved hands gripping the rails of a loading chute as he settled himself onto the back of a lean stallion. Flaw-less . . . except for his legs hanging heavy and still beneath him.
Then, with a practiced twist, Caney shifted his weight, slid his hips onto the side of the tub and reached for his wheelchair.
T
HE ONLY LIGHT in the cafe came from a neon beer sign in the front window. But Caney liked the faint red glow that veiled the stains on the ceiling and smoothed the cracks in the linoleum.
He rolled to a stop behind the counter and slid a pack of Camels out of the cigarette rack. With a book of matches he found in the windowsill, he lit his first smoke of the day as he watched the sky beginning to lighten in the east.
The wind was picking up, sudden gusts sailing paper cups and beer cans across the parking lot, lashing at the branches of a pine tree that towered over the cafe. When something heavy banged against the roof, Caney ducked his head, waiting for the sky to fall.
But it was the sound of the wind that got to him, the sound that raised goosebumps up the back of his neck.
When he was little, the sound of a howling wind would shake him from sleep and send him racing to the bed of his ancient great-aunt who believed nothing good came of bad weather.
“Night creatures ride on the wind, boy,” she would whisper as she settled him against her brittle hip and covered him with quilts that smelled of lavender talc.
But all that had changed. And so had Caney Paxton. He could no longer recall the scent of lavender . . . his legs had forgotten the magic of running . . . and he hadn’t been welcomed into a woman’s bed for a very long time.
When the wind started to whine around the door and through the heating vents, Caney decided to crank up the jukebox. If anyone could outwhine an Oklahoma windstorm, it was Merle Hag-gard singing about low-down women and low-life men.
Caney popped open the cash register and dug out a handful of quarters, then wheeled from behind the counter, heading for the jukebox, when the front door flew open.
A blast of wind howled as it swooped and swirled into the Honk, giving new life to the dark fears of Caney’s childhood, new voice to an aunt long dead . . . a voice that whispered against the rushing air.
Night creatures ride on the wind, boy.
Dizzy with dread, Caney whirled, his pulse pounding in his ears, his voice stunned to silence by the banshee that loomed in the doorway, her long dark cloak billowing around her. With her hair whipping at her face, her lips stretched into a B-movie grimace, the shrillness of her scream echoed inside the dim light of the Honk.