unlaced her boots, unclasped her workdress, pulled it over her head, and hung it from a tree branch. The water was still and gray, and the moon was in it white as a bone, and my mother stepped into the water. I gasped. She turned back and put her hand over my mouth. “Don’t wreck it, Pony.” And then I watched my mother from the banks of the black mud as she walked into the reservoir and then did a shallow dive. Would she be sucked down? Would her skin dissolve? Was this where all life began? Since when did my mother wear nothing under her workdress? Where was her white underwear? Her beige bra? A starless sky. To it, my mother let out a cry. It was happiness. She cut through the water. I agreed with my father. I had never seen anyone quite so alive.
I begged her to teach me how to swim.
IT IS TRAPS’S TRUCK, not ours, that backs sharply into the unfinished driveway and fills my body with dread. A reversal meant to awe me. Traps knows I am watching from my bedroom window, the curtain drawn to one side. B E Y O N D. He shuts down his fog lights and pulls in all the darkness around us. My father gets out of the truck. His bowed head, his slow steps. This tells me everything I need to know.
In the territory, the boys are dragging tires, cabinets, wood pallets, whatever they can find to burn, to the graveyard. They have cans of lighter fluid in their back jean pockets and cigarettes in their mouths. They are wearing fingerless gloves, Yamaha vests, and scarves around their heads, tied into bandannas. It is ten below. They grip their handlebars and hold their bodies high off their dirt bikes and pedal hard. They cannot believe muscle has to rip in order to grow. They have playing cards in their wheels that go tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic. They want the territory to show up on a satellite. They want the bonfire to be photographed from space. The boys think about space the way some boys think about girlfriends. They get stomach cramps thinking about space.
In their headphones, the boys listen to asteroids blazing through the atmosphere toward them. Later tonight, they will trade their cassettes by the bonfire while the leather of their running shoes melts.
“Which one are you listening to?”
“Maxell!”
“Oh, that one is killer!”
“You?”
“Memorex.”
I don’t want to tell the boys the asteroid’s approach is the sound of the tape running, and the sound of its impact the tape coming to its end and then clicking off. I don’t want to tell them their tapes are blank tapes, and Deep Space Tapes is a fraudulent business run by the older, smarter brother of Peter Fox St. John, and they should just hit up the Lending Library and check out the Gregorian chants. They’re in the devotional section.
SEVEN THINGS shortly before 10:00 P.M.:
1 The boys of the territory have the same shaved hairstyle as monks. Monks are their own deep space tape. Correlation.
2 There are a million asteroids on a crash course with the earth. This is not the kind of thing you tell a boy whose running shoes are on fire.
3 I put on my mother’s perfume, and I do this exactly the way she would have. I spray my wrists and then I run my wrists up under my hair, and, in that instant, I become a woman.
4 At night, I reliably think about death. I have no aunts, no uncles, no siblings, no grandparents, and when my mother and father are gone, I will be the last Fontaine living in the Last House. Urgent.
5 The reservoir is the result of an asteroidal event, which the astrophysicists also call an impact event. A person could organize her timeline into impact events. This is one approach to understanding a life.
6 While asteroids are, in their own catastrophic way, totally romantic, what the boys of the territory want most is a girl rolling off them saying, That was fucking amazing.
7 Tonight, that girl will be Lana. Lana Barbara California as she will come to call herself.
“YOU NEED ME,” Traps tells The Heavy when they come through our front door, bringing with them the bitter air. On our small cement porch, we have a partial telephone, a broken fridge, and a large piece of chipboard with an 88 painted on it. My mother used to trim my nails on our front porch. I would lie on the cement and she would hold my feet in her lap, and she was radiant. The men kick the ice from their boots and push the door closed. Traps refuses to go home to his wife, Debra Marie, should something come up. He makes a “no way” sign with his hands and calls her on speed dial.
Debra Marie has just suffered what the territory calls its worst tragedy in nearly twenty years. The women of the territory talk about it and how she has not cried once. Not broken down once. Not mentioned her dead child once. The women can’t even tan. They can’t drink their coffee. It’s hideous. It’s cruel. The women feel a weight in their chests, heavy as bronze. Debra Marie, oh, Debra Marie. Poor Debra Marie. It wasn’t her fault. Was it?
After the final resting, when we were leaving the Banquet Hall, even through the commotion, I overheard the men of the territory talking to Debra Marie. They hulked before the black square, which stood in place of the portrait, a bouquet on either side of it, under three floor lamps, and they kept their sunglasses on and did not know what to do with their large arms, like bouncers with nothing left to guard.
“Noble Debra Marie.”
“Noble.”
“If you were a man, that’s what we’d call you, Debra Marie.”
“Noble.”
“Your nickname would be Noble.”
“Yeah, Noble.”
“Noble.”
“HE NEEDS ME.” Traps tells this to Debra Marie over the telephone. Quickly, not wanting to tie up the line. I can see Debra Marie on the other end. Her plain hair arrangements, her purposeful body. She would iron her indoor tracksuit but never put it on. “He has only the one truck. Unlike us. The single vehicle.” Traps adjusts himself and looks for cigarettes. “You have your own truck. Unlike the Fontaine mother, you have your own truck. And it’s fully loaded.” Then he pauses to listen and says, “Okay, okay, almost fully loaded,” and he lights a cigarette, one of my mother’s cigarettes. “She’ll be back. Nowhere to go.” And he glances for The Heavy, to share this small encouragement, but The Heavy has left the room. “Pony was the last to see her.”
And then Traps turns his eyes on me, and lets them go soft and pleading on my mouth. My supple, athletic mouth. I can see him working out the timeline in his head. Two nights until Saturday night. Two nights until I walk the side of the north highway in my button-down and pencil skirt with my perfect waistline-to-ass ratio. A 0.8.
THE SECRET OF PONY DARLENE FONTAINE
THREE MONTHS AGO. Nighttime. When the men of the territory were going to and then leaving Drink-Mart, clusters of them smelling medicinal and exhaling turbines of smoke, clapping each other hard on the shoulder, on the back, a half hug here and there, then dispersing into their trucks to one-eye it home and fall asleep on their wives in their nightdresses, I walked the shoulder of the highway in my white button-down and black pencil skirt. I had a plan. This was step one. I carried a clipboard and waved down the trucks, knowing only one of them would come to a full stop. All of the passing territory men called out, “Pony.” They rolled down their windows. “Pony Darlene Fontaine.” Reaching out with a lotioned hand, I introduced myself as The Complaint Department and asked the men the question I was desperate to be asked, “What is troubling you?” Then I gave them my card with my toll-free number, 1-800-OH-MY-GOD, should they wish to discuss their troubles further.
The men laughed. No one complains here. That is not the territory’s way. Complaint is a form of self-degradation. Hardship is a matter of perception. The men quoted the Leader. The men were missing teeth. They were missing fingers. They were missing testicles. They had slipped disks. They ate the tendons of animals. The organs of animals. They carved them up and gave thanks. Thank you for your meat. They delivered their babies. Their babies became teenagers. Men hunting women. Women hunting men. Men hunting animals. That is how it goes here, Pony Darlene, the men called