Pee On Water

MCGRADY’S SWEETHEART

She was bleeding, but got into bed. He pushed the extra pillows to their feet. The newspaper drifted to the floor. The futon sat on top of a massive rug they’d gotten at a tag sale. They felt a cold thing under the sheets and it was a nickel.

I don't have a tampon and I don't care, she said, if you don't care. She laughed and made a face. He put his hands on her shoulders. Bleed on these sheets, he said, you have fought so gallantly in the war. She shook off his hands. I'm not that gallant, she said, I ran from the enemy and tripped on a rock. Bullshit, he said, I heard the shot. He tried to tear the sheet with his teeth. Until the nurses come, he said, I’ll stay by. No, she shook her head, run while you still can, the enemy will be crowding the horizon any second. He looked out and the horizon was clear. The ground was all torn up from soldiers’ boots. The moon was behind a big fancy piece of cloud. I could never leave you bleeding, McGrady, thinking things that might be the last things you ever think.

What are you thinking now?

While you were in the trench with the boys, I was running free in the wide open. I thought, couldn’t we find another excuse? Sure I like my soldier’s outfit. What kid doesn’t dream up a uniform, real obstacle courses, of being scared? We need a war to sleep outside?

Wallace couldn’t stop the bleeding. He sat his back against a giant tree. His helmet had rolled off to some rocks. McGrady sprawled in his lap like an old mutt dog, and heavier. Wallace had lost track of their troop and his radio was acting up. He fiddled with the dial, got some music to calm McGrady, who was still talking last words. Of which there were a lot. At first he tried to remember them to tell McGrady’s sweetheart and family, but McGrady had lost so much blood as to now lose sense. Wallace held the soldier’s soft hands and gazed around at the wilderness, the grass’s lazy way of resting on other grass.

McGrady murmured at him, something about animals, how animals sleep as well. McGrady whispered, Blue fields have a say. Wallace decided to agree. I might want to go into tent design, McGrady confessed, maybe after the war. Wallace said tents were a growing field and inquired about potential designs, but McGrady clammed up, blood soaking the grey uniform, dripping into the dirt.

A lunacy permeated the scene. Flies fluttered about screaming. Leaves rustled in eerie agreement. Wallace chewed the same old gum he’d started the day with. His moustache tickled and he sneezed. He listened to the crickets’ chant, their limbs whirring incessant and enthused. He saw the sun had sunk low in the horizon, had had the sense to.

* * *

A mosquito landed on Wallace’s arm and his arm was around McGrady. They watched the mosquito position itself to draw blood. McGrady slapped it and killed it, slipping back unconscious. McGrady’s light eyes now shut, Wallace took another look on McGrady’s face. Rosy cheeks and a prominent, upturned nose that looked noble and snubbing, sandy, curly hair careless and stuck to a forehead cool with sweat, a switchblade scar on the chin; McGrady looked like some choir kid gone jazz. Wallace expected zonked-out soldiers to look serene, but McGrady’s lips were in a sneer. With fingers flaking of dried blood, Wallace nudged McGrady’s lips to make a more angelic mouth.

McGrady had shot the best, then Culler, quietly great, unconsciously great, then Lodi, for sheer persistence, almost by mistake Lodi as third, next Horowitz, then the rest all about the same, Wallace, Rogers, Serg. Van Creerie, Fitsky, Myles. Wallace had met McGrady at training. Watched as the soldier hopped the fence during morning sprints, and rolled a cigarette, tossing a dandelion in with the tobacco. He’d seen then McGrady had style, and admired that. With the only scissors in the Battery, Sergeant Van Creerie had done the boys all trim except for McGrady, who’d refused, walking around with a hairdo. Also the Mess Hall, McGrady could dance. Really really dance.

When they all shared pictures of their sweethearts, McGrady wouldn’t, said it was private. They could only imagine McGrady’s then, and Lodi said it must be a homely one, a nose that looked like ears, an eye with something swimming in there, a face victim, like the men in the ward. Wallace thought the opposite though, a sweetheart too beautiful to share, a cool, knowing nose, eyes that had depth, lips that looked nice. A figure that flattered clothing. A voice that glorified talking. If Wallace concentrated on it, he could conjure that voice, bold and melodic. It was best never to get the name of another soldier's sweetheart, the lying awake time was too wild, took a man's reality and twisted like an ankle.

They hadn’t been the slightest prepared. Horowitz was half-shaved when he saw something reflected in his bit of mirror. A bullet whizzed by, and with soap on his face, Horowitz dove into the brush and curled into a ball. He pretended he was dead. He listened to the skirmish, Lodi's cursing, insane laughter. With his eyes hard shut, it was a radio drama. He imagined he was with his sweetheart at the theater. An animal, rabbit maybe, ran flat into his side, but took no lingering moments with Horowitz, immediately scooted off.

After the enemy had up and quit, Horowitz heard the distant sounds of his troop reforming, yet chose to crawl the other direction. He kept low to the ground, dragging his feet through flowers and mud, a broken bottle, pausing at what looked like long johns, weeds, moss, miles of poison ivy, an ant hill of angry red ants, until finally he felt brave enough to stand. He stood, thought of Jeannie once more and limped off. His leg was not injured in any physical sense, but he thought to limp, a sudden blooming of alibi. After a few steps, the limp felt real. He ached for Jeannie, hot legs, funny ways, plus a fear about leaving the boys; it all got solid like gunk in his leg. He limped on. His politics were weak to start with. His honor strong, but on a break. Lagging and sorry-assed, he limped away. In the distance, he heard Wallace singing to what looked like McGrady, who was down, but Horowitz’s legs kept this game, walking. Through the woods meant Jeannie. Trains went to her, horses, wagons. A bullet brings a man away, why not to where someone was?

Horowitz only had one picture of his Jeannie, but it was top rail. The men had all sorts of perfectly lewd things to say about the hotdog she was holding, but Horowitz was a good sport. His sweetheart worked in an arsenal, building guns. Myles’s girl looked a dream, but he got huffy if a soldier took too long looking. Fitsky’s had very sensuous lips and right this minute was running a sock factory, so he claimed. The men pictured that home was swirling with girls, covered with it. In the bars, it was girls playing pool against girls. The beaches filled. In winter, sleds. Girls on skates. Snowball fights with girls.

Wallace didn’t have a sweetheart. He was the only one. He tried to imagine himself jogging with Fitsky’s sweetheart. Tossing socks to her in the factory. Cooking her all kinds of dinner. Wallace didn’t even have a wife who had died or a sweetheart who was mad. He said the reason he didn’t have a steady was he was an oversexed bachelor, that he had given more women ‘the time’ than he could count on both hands and feet. This was true. Wallace was nice-looking, confident, and came from a town of seven women to every man. In his town, they joked there was something feminine in the water. Recently, they’d found something in the well supply, but it wasn’t hormones or shampoo, just an unhealthy amount of metals, giving teeth a blue tint. But Wallace loved to talk sweethearts, while McGrady grew quiet when talk turned that way, as it often did in the evenings, causing Wallace to believe McGrady was the most lovesick of all, and Myles to think it was humbug, there was no sweetheart to start with.

Lodi and Rogers knew each other from before. They hung close together, compulsively making jokes. Wallace knew army men took on new habits. Men found themselves singing and whistling away, using all sorts of slang, praying, counting. Lodi was constantly putting caterpillars on men’s backs, wailing nonsense from pretended bad dreams. One time, Lodi made and wore a hat of flowers while Rogers laughed himself into a fit.

* * *

Beautiful, mutated, hungry for kisses, dripping slime. Wallace pictured McGrady’s Sweetheart shaving hairy thighs, fiddling with the clasp on a Tiffany’s bracelet. Loading up firearms, ruining a pie. So what if it was mutant as Lodi said, scaly skin, turkey neck. No one can tell a soldier who to love, only who to kill. With McGrady dying in his arms, he found such slogans easy to come up with. Trees are hard friends. Rocks don’t know shit. War doesn’t build character, it reveals it. That would look fine, sewn on some army banner in the Mess Hall, thought Wallace. Here was a brief moment in which Wallace felt he could compose any number of hit songs, haikus, or improvisational routines, but like moments, it ceased, crashing invisibly into the next.

Horowitz found railroad tracks and happily limped alongside. He’d shot, skinned, and ate a rabbit for breakfast. The railroad reminded him of a story of McGrady’s.

Back where McGrady called home, a new railroad line was hammered down and one part went deep in some woods. Neighborhood kids would scour the tracks for dead animals. Animals hadn’t yet gotten the hang of these trains, would occasionally freeze terrified when one came barreling by. Kids would bring these smashed possums home in a burlap bag, lay them out to marvel, tease the little sisters. One day McGrady goes and all alone and dead on the tracks is a squirrel, but wearing a tiny tuxedo. This part made the soldiers all laugh and Horowitz had to explain what a tuxedo looked like to Myles. Myles said, So, it was someone’s pet then? McGrady said, No, just a fancy ass squirrel. This got the boys wheeling. Myles said, Was it a doll? Life-like, done good? McGrady snorted, No, figure this squirrel came across a perfect-fit suit in the woods, looked good, felt right, and went about his life like that, in style.

Myles didn’t believe it. He went off at the mouth calling liar. Said McGrady’s Sweetheart was a phantom made-up one, and the well-dressed squirrel another hallucination. Wallace whistled. Myles jabbed his bayonet in McGrady's direction, wrathy and fit to be tied. McGrady just turned and grinned. Oh boy, McGrady said to Myles, You're the kind who can't trust the clouds to stay up. Always fearing they might fall and wreck your house. McGrady stopped to stare at the bayonet’s sharp tip, then continued. Now, I don't bluff Myles. But me and you are different kinds. You need to hold a piece of something to understand it. So, some luck ever understanding anything of mine. Myles let his bayonet down a little, his arm tired. McGrady went on, Go back to your tent and do whatever it is you do. Spare us your personality for a while, go on. Myles didn't budge, just sat there pouting. Van Creerie was taken with the story and often when they saw something strange or miraculous, he would say, Like a squirrel in a suit! And everyone would find themselves agreeing.

Alone with cold McGrady, no new blood, all dried, browned, Wallace missed the boys. The area around him was jokeless. His mind made nauseous connections and to keep calm, he strained to remember the sweetheart pictures. Every warm-blood in that troop would admit they’d spent too much time with those pictures. They got passed and passed around. Culler’s picture wasn’t even photographic. His was a drawing his sweetheart had done from the mirror. Lodi’s was taken at a fair and there was a phony backdrop of mountains painted behind her. Wallace could still picture Horowitz’s, standing in a summer dress, holding a hot dog, smiling to herself.

* * *

Jeannie looked at a picture of Horowitz and then set it down on her dresser. She closed her eyes and tried to remember Horowitz’s laugh, but the laugh that rang in her head was of her old school boyfriend, George. George had the greatest laugh, completely surprised like he hadn’t at all planned on laughing, hadn’t known what laughing was, and here he was, doing it, laughing! When George laughed it seemed that there was nothing else important, and hurrah for that, because it sounded like he was not anymore capable for anything else. When George laughed it made Jeannie laugh, which made George laugh, which made Jeannie, made George, Jeannie, George; so naturally Jeannie sought to make him laugh, dancing around, trying out voices, asking strangers peculiar things, and their times together were sure lively. At the orchestra once, George with his hiccups, but he couldn’t help it! Poor George! It was a recurring ailment of his, really. He would hold his throat with horror. But Horowitz! Who was more sincere than Horowitz? And smart? With a build that could carry Jeannie out from burning houses. Jeannie would set fire to a house just to have Horowitz carry her off! And Horowitz was the better kisser, had tons more tact. But if she were to remember who was the friendliest, the best at conversation with strangers, then it wasn’t George or Horowitz, it was that terrible rat of a man she went with one summer, who only wore knickerbockers in loud tweeds and wished her to part her hair on the opposite side of what was usual for her. He did excel at putting people at ease, though a temporary, formulaic ease. But if she could take different qualities from different men and arrive with a new man, this new man could not beat Horowitz. The mixing wouldn’t work. This new man would be some sociopath for sure, a problem man who lay on your breasts and couldn’t ever push himself off, whispering, adorable misfit whose shyness gave him hives, or a loudmouth advertiser for useless horseshit. Oh Horowitz, Jeannie said aloud, wherever you are, come home and I’ll make you a sandwich while you cry.

* * *

McGrady’s Sweetheart lived in a swamp, had grown gills, wore a necklace of fish eyes, killed boar, raccoons, stole bird eggs, baby crocs, ran screaming from porcupines, shivered in the night. Rode around on an alligator, counting its scales. Scientists camped out to research the creature. They pressed sweaty binoculars to their faces. They wrote in their journals, “McGrady’s Sweetheart demonstrates the variation possible in a species.”

McGrady was cold and unresponsive. Wallace’s legs were asleep, but he did not move. He knew it was time to dig a big hole and hug his losses, but he sat there bored and stunned. It was his fault. The wilderness breathed leaves, bugs, breezes. Nothing was anyone’s fault. The wilderness alluded to change. The wilderness was inhuman. Wallace stroked his moustache nervously. The wilderness was a place, was a force, covered the earth, and he was just a thing inside it. Humans warm and with skin, houses of uneven wood planks, the ground the bottom, the sky real high. Wallace put his hand on McGrady's face. Eyes closed, mouth closed, but a nose stays the same. Open and closed. A nose is like a statue, thought Wallace. A nose is most like clay. A nose is the sculpture of a face, thought Jeannie, staring hard at the picture of Horowitz. A nose is for fun. A face wants to say something forever and forms the nose, stuck forward, to present the rest of the face, thought Jeannie. Wallace nodded. A nose is defiant. Stubborn and undisputed, thought Jeannie, touching her own. Wallace settled back against his tree. It was grainy dark in the woods around him, the moon awake and glaring.

* * *

Fitsky skedaddled after a short skirmish with the enemy. Lodi and Rogers soon after. Myles saw Lodi leave, but when he objected, Lodi ran over and punched Myles black out, then ducked into the woods, trigger finger poised, looking for a country road. Van Creerie didn’t want to jump to conclusions. A lot can happen to a soldier, he said thoughtfully to Myles. It was down to Van Creerie, Myles, and Cullers. This sure wasn't the plan, said Van Creerie. One of them kept watch while the other two slept and like this they split the night in three. In daylight, they stretched their intuition and chose a direction. Their spirits swayed low, but then the sun would tease them between branches, or some deer would shyly glance their way. It was hard to resent the daytime, the weather just right. Plus, Myles didn’t want to return to his sweetheart. He’d had his fill of her recently.

The picture Myles claimed and showed, was in fact, not his real sweetheart. His sweetheart was bossy and rail-thin Belle, who wavered between delirious sentimentality, and an aggressive idea of how things should be. Instead, he showed a picture of his cousin Wendy, whom he'd always found attractive. It wasn’t rare for Wendy to have a lady bug walking the length of her finger. She was confident and strong like a very good song. He knew a girl like that was scarce as hens teeth. If he were to die in battle, he thought the ruined picture might be returned to his family, who would be sick with confusion, but somehow the gesture would make it to Wendy, and, well, she wouldn't be pleased either, but maybe at the funeral, she and he might have a secret, and a secret was alive, even when you weren’t.

* * *

The scientists collected hair. Found a small hut of sticks and vines and staked out in the bushes for hours, nibbling on clover until they saw an old deadbeat returning home, beard to his waist. They questioned him about the creature, rolled their eyes when he feigned ignorance, then walked sullenly back to camp. They sat around the fire that night telling wizard stories, eating scraps. Then the talk turned to introduced species, all the wildtypes of mutated organisms: heterozygous, homozygous, compound, genetic, spontaneous, induced. They had a brief but emotional debate on extraterrestrial life, causing each to scamper off to their own tent and lay awake thinking.

The next morning, the woman scientist Meriweather collected bits of hair and feathers, bitten leaves. When she tried piecing together all she had gathered, pinning the feathers to the ground and sketching out some possibilities, she ended up with a nonsense animal, a made-up thing, a scarecrow, a costume, and was embarrassed. She walked to the swamp and collected a sample, but the flies were thick so she did not linger.

* * *

What about walks, thought Jeannie. My legs like them sure, but this hike wouldn’t quit, thought Wallace. He looked at McGrady’s dirt-covered boots. And what about wars? he thought, what's wrong with them? Too dramatic I think, thought Jeannie as she put down her picture. She crawled into her bed wearing all her clothing. With one foot, she pulled the sock off the other. Her cat John Singer Sargent hopped onto the bed in a single deft motion. What’s good about cats? he thought, while she pet hers. She thought, To exist alongside, to be near them relaxed, calmly, sweetly, matter-of-fact. Wallace grinned and sat and waited. She petted John Singer and thought, What about bodies, houses, and grass? But she interrupted herself, How about families? She thought. He said, A good place to start. He ran his hand along the grass beside him, grabbed a few and pulled. He listened to the crickets chime and click their song. Now crickets, he asked, now what about them? She opened her window to listen. Natural collaborators in a close-knit community. He smiled and toyed with one of McGrady’s shirt buttons, then realized and stopped. He had an eager feeling in his chest, like it was striving to get away. Like he might pass his hand over his ribs and hear a xylophone. He felt his breath in his nose and said quietly, Then what about love, tell me, how’s that? Jeannie closed her eyes and ran a finger across her eyebrow. She said, Like having fun as a kid, feeling in common with the sky, a layer of varnish. Wallace found himself playing with McGrady's hair. Jeannie heard her sister knock on the door, but surprised herself by not moving a hair and holding her breath. Her sister called her name and waited. Jeannie waited. John Singer stretched a paw straight out in front of him and licked his leg. Jeannie waited until her sister padded down the hallway, then breathed out suddenly and wriggled into her sheets. And God, she whispered softly, how about him? Wallace looked around, moonlight outlining the trees. His heart beat amateurly. The crickets didn't quiet. The wind blew good and cold. God's not here, he thought, but everything else sure is.

* * *

Cullers went in a baffling fashion. Dead in a way Van Creerie and Myles didn’t know. They’d been living an experimental approach, making soap and foods from whatever they found, and probably it was one of these attempts at traditional living that did Cullers down, but Van Creerie and Myles couldn’t say. They spent a day burying him, deliberating over what to do with the hand-drawn sweetheart, eventually burying that too, though it seemed a waste, a smaller additional loss.

Van Creerie had been nominated Sergeant because of his great thick beard. He was billed as a community leader, a fitness expert. Really, Van Creerie had little experience besides cooking meat and coaching baseball. And he did both beautifully at training camp. Barbequed up some ribs and umpired a rec game. When making assignments, they’d given Van Creerie only eight men, since he had a dreamy manner unsuitable for war. His half-troop was back-up for Sergeant Rangeley’s men, many of whom had been injured and discharged.

Van Creerie couldn’t find the heart to make his men follow the strict rules they’d learned back at camp. To march like wooden soldiers. He felt warmly for these boys who grew candid around the campfire. He had misplaced his order papers and maps. He hadn’t known exactly where to direct his men, but figured he’d receive a sign. Maybe a telegraph man would approach them in the rain, dripping wet, mad as hell, telling them they were off their mark. Or a bird, with a message glued to his leg with gum. This outfit was supposed to be capable, so he’d submitted to his instincts, which led them into a very long camping trip. A retreat, he’d thought happily. Like had been forced on him in youth, in church.

Van Creerie and Myles were so far off track, it felt the only man they’d run into would be an old, ragged, rugged one, who did his living in the woods, and didn’t even know there was a war on. They’d run into one such the week before and Van Creerie had started up a recruitment speech, force of habit, then trailed off distractedly. All their bullets were spent in a target competition Van Creerie had won with controversy. They began to finally feel their vulnerability. If the enemy were to approach them, all they had were two equally dull pocketknives. Myles had lost his bayonet heaving it after a fish. They began to dream other options. First matter at hand was to remove any identifying mark on their uniforms. It wasn’t enough to rip off their badges. Van Creerie burnt parts of their clothes. Myles collected raspberries and made a dye.

* * *

Horowitz laughed for the first time since leaving his troop. He had just bought his train ticket when he saw the sign. Stan Brady’s Gentlemen and Ladies. It advertised a traveling act. A crude painting of a man in hat and tails surrounded by animals dressed in formal wear. He wanted to tell McGrady. He found himself walking to the address of the theater. What a story for Jeannie! he thought. He spent a small amount on a ticket and aimlessly wandered the town before the show.

It was a small town, not unlike his own. He found a church, a library and a pond full of mallard ducks. Hungry, exhausted, miles and miles from Jeannie, he began to regret his latest decision, and then an earlier decision, and all the other ones that had come before. His life seemed hinged together in a faulty, inexperienced way, allowing whims and fate to beat it thin, and now it felt like a doomed thing he carried around with him. The ducks laughed. He picked up a rock wanting to nail a duck, but this pond was the center of town, these ducks weren’t game. How had it gotten like this? Animals were now citizens, now performers too? The world was getting soft. He paced around the lake. The ducks laughed and laughed at him.

* * *

Stan Brady tried to calm his crew, but once one animal started squawking, the others couldn’t resist. His raccoon, typically well-behaved, got aggressive towards the rooster, who was a new addition. The ostrich, which had cost him a fortune, spent the whole show trying to escape its dress, clawing at it with grotesquely large legs. The audience was a small but riled bunch that found the chaos hilarious, much better than the original plan of organized dance and ventriloquist song. This wasn’t unusual. This work had its nights. After a bad show, Stan would lock up the animals and venture out for a drink. Once or twice he’d returned with a devastated feeling, pacing the cages past midnight. The raccoon staring with its bright marble eyes. In Stan’s hands, he’d held his rifle, but no animal knew that. Every time he’d ever thought of it, his raccoon would stare him down, and worst he ever did was free the misbehaving members of his crew. And who would call that bad. Animal is an animal and no nicer place to live than the world, sprawled and open, to live natural as an Indian. But who knew how training changed an animal. If somehow he had bred a desire to perform in these creatures.

This time, however, Stan’s nerves were shot. The audience laughed at all the wrong places. The dog crouched in an all too familiar way and Stan panicked. The rabbit was teething on a bit of oat stuck to Stan’s sock and he bent down to brush it away. It was a liquid anger, a foaming, shifting, lava anger, a hot spread across his face, and in a wild, uncharacteristic move, he grabbed his rabbit by its bowtie and threw it into the crowd.

* * *

Asleep against McGrady, Wallace was awakened by a loud blast that sounded so close to his ear, every muscle in him gave a start. Then he fell down again, head back to McGrady, this time with blood, this time dumb, dead, and for good. The enemy soldier shook. He threw his gun down and cowered. He had never shot a man before. He crawled over to Wallace, then crawled away. He picked up his gun and slowly walked back to get a better look at McGrady’s face. The enemy soldier admired McGrady’s proportions, pleasant, inevitable. A twisted instinct in him urged him to stay with the dead and dying, but that was twisted, stupid, he grabbed his gun and got the hell out of there.

The enemy soldier walked with a swagger, wearing Wallace’s helmet. In his head, he was boasting to his troop, who were setting up camp nearby. The already-dead soldier had looked pretty, like one of his sister’s girlfriends. He had always enjoyed that friend. The soldier he shot had looked stupid sleeping. At first, he’d thought it was two dead soldiers, but then one had snored and with a knee-jerk reaction he yanked the trigger. His body had known what. He’d had trouble in his first battle, all the noise and men flashing by, but a sleeping man, he knew what to do with a sleeping man.

* * *

The creature waded into the swamp and crouched in the water, muddying its feathers. The swamp was still and the creature was still inside it. Flies flew in clouds. The sun blazed on like something broken. There was a splash as the creature dove and caught a fish. The creature brought the struggling fish to its mouth and scaled it with its teeth. With the collar of the fish stuck in the creature’s mouth, the creature took a claw to the belly of the fish and tore upwards, towards the head. One claw forced through the bony portion between the fins. The other claw dug in and grabbed out the guts. With one claw of guts and the other with fish, the creature ate it all in a few bites, a crack each time a bone was chewed.