Blow Fly

102

JAY HEARS ABOUT his mutant brother on the radio. He isn't sure how he feels about it as he sweats inside the fishing shack, his head bleary, his beauty not quite what it was even a week ago. He faults Bev for this, for everything. The more often she goes to the mainland, the more often the beer supply is replenished. Jay used to go weeks, a month, without a beer. Of late, the refrigerator is never empty.

Resisting alcohol has always been a challenge for him, ever since he began tasting fine wines as a boy in France, wines that are for the gods, his father would say. As a free man with complete mastery of his life, Jay sipped, savored and enjoyed in moderation. Now he is held hostage by cheap beer. Since Bev's last shopping expedition, he has been drinking a case a day.

"I guess I'm gonna have to make another run," Bev says, her eyes fixed on his Adam's apple bobbing as he tilts a can straight up and drains it.

"Yeah, you do that." Beer trickles down his bare chest.

"Whatever you want."

"Fuck you. It's all about what you want." He steps closer to her, his face menacing. "I'm falling apart!" he yells at her as he crumples a beer can and hurls it across the room. "It's your fucking fault! How could anybody be holed up in here with a stupid cow like you and not have to drink his fucking brains out!"

He grabs another beer out of the refrigerator and pushes the door shut with his bare foot. Bev doesn't react. She resists the smile she feels inside. Nothing gives her more satisfaction than to see Jay out of control, confused and headed for hurting himself. At last she has found a way to get him back, and now that his monster brother is on the loose, Jay's going to get worse and do something, so she needs to keep up her guard. Her self-defense is to keep him drunk. She doesn't know why she didn't think of it a long time ago, but beer was scarce when she went to the mainland no more than once every four or six weeks.

Suddenly, his demands became once a month, twice a month, and each time she returned with cases of beer and was amazed by how much more he was drinking. Until lately, she had never seen him drunk. When he is drunk, he doesn't resist her advances, and she wipes him down with a wet towel as he sinks into unconsciousness. The next morning, he has no memory of what she did, of how she satisfied her own pleasure in creative ways, since he couldn't perform and wouldn't have, were he sober.

She watches him fumble with the radio, searching through static for the latest news updates, well on his way to being drunk again. As long as she's known him, he's had no body fat, his perfectly defined body a constant source of envy and humiliation for her. This will change quickly. It is inevitable. He'll get fat around his waist, and his pride will suffocate beneath puffiness and flab no matter how many push-ups and sit-ups and crunches he does. Maybe his perfect face won't look so good, either. Wouldn't that be something if he got so ugly-as ugly as he thinks she is-that she didn't want him anymore.

What was that story in the Bible? Samson-the mighty, beautiful Samson-gave in to what's-her-name, and she cut off his magical hair, or something. He lost all his strength.

"You stupid bitch!" Jay calls out. "Why are you just standing here, staring? My brother's on his way here if he isn't already here. He'd figure out where I'd be. He always has."

"I hear twins think like that, are real tuned-in to each other." The word twin is a deliberate scorpion sting. "He won't hurt you. He won't hurt me. You forget I've met him before. Why, I think he likes me because I can get beyond his looks."

"He doesn't like anybody." Jay gives up on the radio and angrily turns it off. "You don't live in the real world. I've got to find him first before he does something stupid, sees some woman and does her, leaving his damn bite marks all over her and smashing her head."

"You ever watched him do it?" she casually asks.

"Go get the boat ready, Bev."

She can't remember the last time he said her name. It is rich, like melted butter.

Then he spoils the moment by adding, "It's your goddamn fault about the arm. Wouldn't have happened if you'd brought me some pups."

Since she returned from her errand-running on the mainland, all he's done is complain that she didn't bring gator bait, not the least bit grateful for what she did bring him.

She stares at the empty mattress by the wall.

"You got plenty of gator bait," she said the other day. "More than you know what to do with these days."

She convinced him that baiting a gator hook with human flesh would work just fine, maybe even better. Jay could have his fun with a reptile that was longer than he was tall. He'd watch it thrashing until he got bored, then shoot it in the head. Outlaw hunter that he is, he never keeps what he catches. He'd cut the nylon rope and watch the reptile slide into the water. Then he'd motor back to the shack.

This time it didn't work that way. All he vaguely remembers is baiting the hook and stringing it up over the thick branch of a cypress tree, and then hearing another boat not far away, someone else hunting gators or maybe gigging frogs. Jay got the hell out of there, the hook still baited and dangling from the yellow nylon line. He should have cut it down. He made a big mistake but won't admit it. She suspects there was no other hunter out there. Jay was hearing things and he didn't think straight. Had he, it would have entered his mind that when another hunter found the caught gator, the bait either would have been found hanging out of its jaws or discovered in its guts when the gator was field-dressed.

"Do what I say, damn it. Get the boat ready," he orders her. "So I can deal with him."

"And how do you think you'll do that?" Bev asks calmly, placated and pleased by the craziness in front of her.

"I already told you. He'll find me," Jay says, his head beginning to throb. "He can't live without me. He can't even die without me."