Creatures Here Below, page 1
Creatures Here Below
A Novel
O. H. Bennett
for Pamela and Lillian,
for Bettina and Regina,
for mothers and daughters
MASON
Most of the blood was Mason’s. It caused his ripped shirt sleeve to cling to his upper arm. Small drops landed on the white leather toe of his right sneaker. Mason turned the key and pushed the door open. He tried to do everything softly. He held his hand under his elbow to catch the drips and moved silently through the dark house. He slipped into the downstairs bathroom, easing the door shut with his shoulder before pulling the chain on the light over the sink. Instantly a face appeared in front of him, a dark, narrow, and closed face with brooding eyes, and tiny dots of blood sprayed from hairline to chin. That blood would belong to that brother who grinned too much, who talked too much.
Mason removed his shirt. The cut on his upper arm seeped vivid red, but it wasn’t deep. He lowered his arm under the faucet and let water wash over it. He dabbed at the wound with a dry section of his balled-up shirt, dampened another part of the shirt and wiped the blood from his face. He avoided looking at his reflection except for the length of time it took to make certain his face was clean.
He couldn’t recall how it had happened, exactly. They’d been behind Teddy’s Billiards shooting craps, several men, old and young hunched in a circle passing bottles and dice. The brother who talked too much, a friend of Spider’s, had made a joke. Mason couldn’t remember the joke. He tried while wiping the blood from the toe of his shoe. Something about missing fathers and bastards. But the brother had eyed Mason specifically following the punch line. Mason guessed someone had told the brother the Pony story; after years and years, that still got laughs. Mason shoved the ruined shirt deep into the wastebasket beside the sink. The next thing he recalled was the crap shooters howling and cursing and the brother who talked too much scrambling up from their circle. The blade appeared in the brother’s hand as quick as snap your fingers, but Mason moved in on him instantly, not giving him a moment to set. He drove his fists in with all his weight behind them, once, twice, and a glancing blow the third time. The faces around him were shocked at his speed. The upper arm cut had been inflicted on Mason’s first stroke and he had not been aware of it until walking home. The brother who talked too much had a mouth of blood and torn lips and said from on his knees that he would be coming after Mason so he’d better watch his back. Mason said, “Bullshit talk got you in trouble in the first place.”
The pain from the cut did not bother him, and now that he’d cleaned it, it no longer concerned him. The knuckles of both hands hurt a bit, but he dismissed that pain too. He reached up to pull the light’s chain and hesitated. He regarded himself without comment, saw his bare, small, but muscular and virtually hairless chest. He had not enjoyed the fight but he was pumped up from it, as if on a slight buzz. It had all happened so fast, and had been so unexpected. Mason was embarrassed now, much more angry with himself than with a stranger who had made a dumb joke. His heart was just now settling behind his ribs. “Damn,” he whispered and turned out the light.
He listened in the dark for the time it took his eyes to adjust. He listened for footsteps and voices just as when he was a boy craning an ear toward his door for the harsh whispers from his mother’s and stepfather’s bedroom. Mason felt glad for the silence and, in the darkness, relieved that for once his mother did not lie in wait for his return. No ambush, no flurry of questions asked too quickly to expect answers. And no lies from him. But Gail’s presence still loomed in every corner of the big boarding house. She no longer had to confront him with her accusations; he knew everything she would say, just like he knew in the very heat of their arguing that they shared a common painful, unspoken agreement about the irrecoverable spiral that was his life.
Once adjusted to the shadows, Mason noticed a dim light from the baby’s room. Sometimes Jackie left a lamp on all night for Cole, who’d shown signs of distrusting the dark. Mason crept by the stairwell that led to his bedroom and followed the light. The girl, Jackie, was in the nursery breastfeeding her baby, something Mason thought she’d given up. They sat in Gail’s rocker within the yellowshaded lamplight. Jackie had one leg up with the heel of her foot in the seat of the chair. The other leg stretched in front of her. Her right breast was only partially covered by her white terry cloth robe. Cole suckled the left. She sat, a disinterested, weary Madonna, gazing with fixed eyes not at her baby but at the wall a hand’s length from her face. Mason stared from the doorway. Cole’s light skin contrasted against Jackie’s, which looked almost golden in that light.
“Does that taste good, ole King Cole?” Mason took a short step into the room.
Jackie’s start registered only in her eyes and only briefly. She looked back at Mason without bothering to cover herself. “Did you come down here bare-chested to breastfeed my boy, Mase?”
Mason didn’t say anything. He thought he smiled at her comment. He didn’t take his eyes from her.
She said something about Cole, about how this was the only way she could get him to shut up. She certainly didn’t seem to mind Mason’s attention.
Mason told himself she was not all that sexy. She was such a tiny woman; even with a baby at her chest, she looked like a girl. But he found something alluring about her then, in the yellowish light, holding Cole, showing a smooth run of skin that rose with her breasts and flattened into the black spot of her navel.
Mason said, “Cover up.”
“You cover up,” she said. She leaned back, starting the rocker into motion. Cole’s mouth came off her breast, then found it again. “God, hurry up, boy. Draining me dry every which way. Did he wake you up? Why did you come down?”
“I ain’t been up yet. Just got in.”
“Without a shirt? It ain’t that hot out—” Then Jackie noticed the cut on his arm. “What happened to you?”
“She had long nails and a mean disposition.”
“I guess so,” Jackie said, evidently playing along. “She must have been a freak. Is that the type of girl you like? I never see you with nobody, Mase. What type of girl do you like?”
Mason sensed he should leave his mother’s newest boarders be. He did not like Jackie, really. She was too loud and too fast, and she didn’t seem to be much of a mother. Mason’s mother had let everyone vote whether they wanted Jackie and the baby living there, inflicting all the noise and the smells and the hassles of an infant on them. Mason had voted yes. He believed that living in a nice home would be the first break Cole had ever received in his young life. But Jackie was always stepping out, roping everybody in the boardinghouse into babysitting at one time or another. Mason figured he spent more time with the baby than Jackie did, and he’d never seen Cole’s father. Poor ole King Cole, he said to himself.
Jackie was saying, “—that’s what the appeal is all about. Men like titty cause they remember back to when they was Cole’s age, and they made chew toys outta their mamas. They feel all safe, and warm, and well fed. You ain’t took your eyes off it once. You asked Cole what it taste like. Come find out for your own self.” She stood long enough to return Cole to his crib, then leaned back in the rocker. She smiled at Mason while easing her robe off her shoulders. Her dark nipples pointed directly at him.
He felt heat rise in his chest, felt not the least bit the sting in his cut arm. He realized she was daring him, playing a game, but the ball was in his court and he couldn’t move. He saw she was frowning at him now. He suddenly grew tight; the small room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, seemed to be closing down around them. He smelled the odor from the plastic hamper near the crib, and from his own body; he smelled Jackie and the baby, a fleshy, sour, suffocating cloud.
He wanted to drop to his knees in front of her, push his face into her chest. He saw himself do it, how her arms would wrap about his head. But more than that, he wanted to breathe and found he couldn’t.
Jackie straightened up in the rocker. Her feet came flat to the floor and she pulled her robe together, holding the lapels tightly in one hand. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I can—” he began and stepped to her. He grabbed at her as she tried to pull away from him. The rocking chair lurched violently back, nearly spilling. Mason was trying to open her robe, not seeing that the moment had passed.
“Stop it, damn it,” Jackie said.
He let go instantly. He slapped his hands down on the chair arms to stop the rocker from tipping over. Then he took a step back.
Jackie’s angry frown turned into a grin. “You’re wack,” she said. “Didn’t mean to rile you up so, Mase.” She started laughing. She laughed at his confusion, his inability to take her dare, at the way he stood there stupidly in front of her.
He tried to think of something to say, but no quick retort came to mind. His hands closed into tight fists and Jackie stopped laughing.
“Hey, Mason,” she said softly, “We’re just teasin’ with each other, right?”
He nodded almost imperceptibly and stepped out of the room. In the hallway, he found he could breathe again. For the second time within one hour, he was forced to puzzle out his reactions. First the fight and now this, and both had left him feeling much the same. As he climbed the stairs to his room, he thought he heard Jackie snickering behind him.
On his bed, he undressed to his shorts, kicking his sneakers across the room. He turned on the bed stand lamp, then turned it off. Thoughts of Jackie were brief, but the feeling of humiliation lingered. It was not Jackie’s breasts he saw in his mind, but her wide mouth stretched open with laughter. Beside Jackie, he saw the grinning face of the brother who talked too much as he jabbered away to the circle of intent crap shooters. Mason’s embarrassment heated his neck and the sides of his face. “Pony,” he said and found it peculiar that the name had issued from his lips before it had formed in his brain. When he had thoughts of his father these days, every memory, every emotion they evoked surged in him as fresh and cutting as the day they were made. He slammed an elbow into the headboard behind him and jumped from the bed.
He went to the bathroom. Moonlight came through the translucent window and he relieved himself, not flushing to avoid waking anyone, and splashed cool water on his face without turning on a light. Just as he reached for the door to leave it opened and the light came on.
His mother, Gail, looked up at him from his chin level. Her eyes were partially lidded and she wore a black hair net. “Oh, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said.
Mason said, “Just finished.”
“When did you get in?” This was asked reflexively; surely, they were both too tired for answers.
He did not want her to notice his cut. And he certainly didn’t feel up to offering explanations, which she never listened to anyway. He said, “It’s humid. Hard to sleep,” hoping any sound from him would suffice.
Her eyes opened alertly. They roved over him while he waited for her to step aside. She said, “Uh, huh,” without opening her mouth and went past him into the bathroom.
Mason shut and locked the door to his room. He flicked on the light then scooted under his bed. He slipped a hand into a rent in the thin cloth covering the underside of the box spring, then wormed himself back out from under the bed holding a small, brown sack. He found confidence in its weight in his hands, heavy for such a small, personal thing. He stuck his right hand in the wrinkled sack, then shook the sack away so that only the gun remained in his hand. He turned the gun over and over, held its barrel up near his left cheek, and looked one way and then the other like an assassin trying to determine which way his quarry had run. Then he held it straight out in front of him in both hands, elbows locked, aiming down the .38’s sights at his closed door. He pressed his lips together and released them, making soft pow, pow sounds. The gun gave him a feeling of control in a way he did not understand. Already, visions formed in his mind: Pony in a room with him, and the gun hovering between them clutched in his hands, a bright spit of fire at the barrel’s tip, and an end to the hate.
ANNIE
Miss Annie Gant woke gripped by pain in her left leg. The leg felt as if it was petrifying from her knee, hardening into a crooked column of stone beneath the sheets. The old woman clenched her teeth against the pain, digging with bony fingers into the blanket at her neck. She fought against the desire to cry out. A whimper escaped before she pushed her face into her pillow. She told herself to hold on. This pain had come before and she had fought through it. She wanted to ask God to help her be quiet, but feared removing her face from the safety of the pillow. She wanted to ask God for relief so she would not wake anyone, but Miss Annie was too afraid even to breathe. She wanted to disturb no one. No one must rush to her in the middle of the night as if she were the baby.
Long, tortuous moments passed and she silently struggled in the dark. She could feel blood finally begin to flow back into her limb, feel the relief of veins, once like the twisting hairs through marble, as they swelled again, returning life to her leg. She let out her breath and with lips moving against the fabric of the pillowcase, whispered thanks to God for allowing her to keep quiet. She heard her prayer answered with an inquisitive whine. A wet, black nose shoved toward her face.
“Shh, Sarrie girl, don’t wake nobody. I’m all right now. Everything’s all better. It’s going away. I feel it letting go.”
Annie considered Sarrie the most loyal of all her dogs and she was therefore her favorite. Annie could feel Sarrie’s warm breath, see worry in the brow that dipped over large, opaque eyes. Behind her, she felt Digger jump up on the bed. She thought he too worried about her. But the terrier, being the most brazen of them all, probably just wanted the opportunity to obtain a soft resting place. He settled himself at her back. The others slept or waited patiently for their mistress to rise. They surrounded the bed, some huddled together, others quite independent, covering the floor like piles of clothes on laundry day.
Though the room was still dark, Annie could make out the hands of her bedroom clock. It was too early to climb from bed and start the day, yet she knew she would not go back to sleep. Death had showed her how he would take her: by locking up her joints, drying up her limbs until he reached her heart and she would turn into the ash she came from. While everyone else in the house slept, Annie waited for the first hint of morning to come through the blinds. Her pain slowly subsided and she hoped this morning she would be allowed to help fix breakfast. She held on to that thought for the rest of the dark hours remaining.
The house where Annie boarded was as old as she was, and it too had creaks and complaints. Upstairs in the hallway, and especially in Annie’s room, the floor slanted noticeably, showing the uneven way the big house had settled through the long decades. The floorboards curved like an old woman’s spine and they could tell her who walked over them by the pitch of their complaint.
In time, she heard the hallway floorboards and the shuffling of feet. She heard the toilet flush, then spray from the shower. That would be Tyler or Gail—probably Tyler from the way the boards creaked. Jackie rarely came upstairs and Mason did not get up this early. Mason would sleep til noon if Gail let him. But Mason was gone, she had to remind herself. How could she forget that?
On that early September morning, Annie had slipped down the stairs while the house remained full of shadows and every lamp and knick-knack on every end table and shelf sat perfectly still in the darkness. Everything sleeps except my dogs, she thought. Annie had heard them howling outside and had crept from bed to see what had disturbed them. She saw them on the floor and the chairs of the porch, curled into their sleep. When she turned from the window, she noticed the shapeless mass of the duffel bag by the front door. She eyed it for a moment but could arrive at no decision on it, so she dragged it to the meager light at the window. Men’s clothes, briefs, T-shirts, a pair of jeans, and something else that startled her curious hands so that she first snatched them back out of the bag. Then she sent her hands back in, found the gun, and brought it out into the dim light, which gleamed on its nickel body. To Annie it seemed heavy, a somber weight appropriate for its ugly and sinister function. She dropped it back in the bag and wiped her hands on her nightgown as if something viral from it might cling to her skin. She knew instantly this would belong to Mason, not Tyler, and she whispered his name in the dark.
Annie headed toward the stairs, to go up to Mason’s room, but then on a hunch went to the baby’s room instead. He sat by pale yellow lamplight in the rocker, bouncing Cole on his lap and whispering nonsense to him. The baby would smile and reach toward Mason’s face.
Annie said, “I didn’t hear no crying. You didn’t wake him this early just to play with him, did you?”
“Cole, tell Miss Annie you weren’t asleep at all,” Mason said turning the baby toward Annie. “’Miss Annie, I was just laying there,”’ Mason said, adopting a baby voice. “’Eyes wide open, staring through them jailhouse crib bars, checking things out for my own self.’”
Annie remembered taking time that morning to look at the Mason no one else ever saw, the unhurried, unagitated Mason, smiling at Jackie’s baby as if he were the proud father. He hugged the baby to his chest. To Annie, the teen appeared not too much older than the baby. Although momentarily subdued, flickers of his usual intensity showed in his pale brown eyes. He smiled up at her.
“I hope he goes to sleep now,” he said.
“Is that why the duffel’s in the front room?” Annie asked. “You going to check things out for your own self? I done looked in it already.”
