Lullaby

Chapter 31

Amile outside of town, Helen pulls over to the side of the highway. She puts on the car's emergency flashers. Looking at nothing but her hands, her skintight calfskin driving gloves on the steering wheel, she says, «Get out.»

On the windshield, there are little contact lenses of water. It's starting to rain.

«Fine,» Oyster says, and jerks his car door open. He says, «Isn't this what people do with dogs they can't house-train?»

His face and hands are smeared red with blood. The devil's face. His shattered blond hair sticks up from his forehead, stiff and red as devil's horns. His red goatee. In all this red, his eyes are white. It's not the white of white flags, surrender. It's the white of hard-boiled eggs, crippled chickens in battery cages, factory farm misery and suffering and death.

«Just like Adam and Eve getting evicted from the Garden of Eden,» he says. Oyster stands on the gravel shoulder of the highway and leans down to look at Mona still in the backseat, and he says, «You coming, Eve?»

It's not about love, it's about control.

Behind Oyster, the sun's going down. Behind him is Russian thistle and Scotch broom and kudzu. Behind him, the whole world's a mess.

And Mona with the ruins of Western civilization braided into her hair, the bits of dream catcher and I Ching, she looks at her black fingernails in her lap and says, «Oyster, what you did is wrong.»

Oyster puts his hand into the car, reaching across the seat to her, his hand red and clotted, and he says, «Mulberry, despite all your herbal good intentions, this trip is not going to work.» He says, «Come with me.»

Mona sets her teeth together and snaps her face to look at him, saying, «You threw away my Indian crafts book.» She says, «That book was very important to me.»

Some people still think knowledge is power.

«Mulberry, honey,» Oyster says, and strokes her hair, the hair sticking to his bloody hand. He tucks a skein of hair behind her ear and says, «That book was fucked.»

«Fine,» says Mona, and she pulls away and folds her arms.

And Oyster says, «Fine.» And he slams the car door, his hand leaving a bloody print on the window.

His red hands raised at his sides, Oyster steps back from the car. Shaking his head, he says, «Forget about me. I'm just another one of God's alligators you can flush down the toilet.»

Helen shifts the car into drive. She touches some switch, and Oyster's door locks.

And from outside the locked car, muffled and fuzzy, Oyster yells, «You can flush me, but I'll just keep eating shit.» He shouts, «And I'll just keep growing.»

Helen puts on her turn signal and starts out into traffic.

«You can forget me,» Oyster yells. With his red yelling devil face, his teeth big and white, he yells, «But that doesn't mean I don't still exist.»

For whatever reason, the first gypsy moth that flew out a window in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1860 comes to mind.

And driving, Helen touches her eye with one finger, and when she puts her hand back on the steering wheel, the glove finger is a darker brown. Wet. And for better or for worse. For richer or poorer. This is her life.

Mona puts her face in both hands and starts to sob.

And counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 … , I turn on the radio.