Creatures of Habit Read online

  “And this is his girlfriend, Sarah.”

  Another trick. Her hair was in braids, her feet in leather strapped shoes. She wore Indian jewelry and carried a Frisbee.

  “And this is Cousin Sue and little Paul Jr.”

  Sue looked like the Thin White Hawk and Paul Jr. was a poor excuse of a papoose.

  “Come meet little Paul.”

  “How much do you weigh?” she asked loudly and pointed at Uncle Tim.

  “Caroline?” Her mother’s arms were around her now and steering her up onto the porch. “I’m sorry, Tim, who knows what gets into them.”

  “The devil, I guess,” her father said and shook his head. He glanced over at Mrs. Hopper when he said that, a sure sign that he knew something about what went on in her basement. She had the straps of her suit undone and they swung forward as she bent to rub lotion on her legs. There was a moment when she was looking right at Caroline, a moment when their eyes locked. It only takes a minute for her to put the devil in you. It can happen so fast nobody knows until it’s too late.

  NOW, IN THE black dark, Caroline was crouched down in the pine straw trying not to make a sound. She was looking for the devil, looking for a snipe. She felt something brush against her bare legs, leaves or snipe feathers or snakes or mosquitoes.

  “Our mosquitoes are so big,” her daddy was famous for saying, “they roll up your pants legs to bite you.”

  She swatted with her hand and moved her feet away from whatever was down there. She thought of Mrs. Hopper sitting up in a tree, a long black cape blowing around her and wild-eyed cats sitting on the limbs, and her leg jerked.

  “Will you stop?” Danny whispered, his voice still deep. “How are we gonna catch a snipe with you making all this noise?”

  “You talked,” she whispered. “I wasn’t talking.”

  “You were moving. Moved your feet and moved your hand.”

  She knew the expression on his face as if they were standing in broad daylight, his blue eyes glaring, the sharp bone of his jaw clenched so that the pale purple vein in his cheek could be traced as easily as if it had been put there with a ballpoint pen.

  “You let your hand off the bag and messed up the hole. Snipe ain’t coming unless it sees a big dark hole.”

  “YES SIR,” UNCLE TIM with the fat red face had said. “I myself bagged five big snipe one night. Nobody else ever bagged five.” Instead of standing behind their uncle and making faces, Danny had sat on the floor right by his feet, laughing and slapping his leg. Caroline wasn’t sure if Danny was pulling a trick or really liking Uncle Tim, and he wouldn’t even give her a sign to let her know. He said that he didn’t think he ought to have to eat at any children’s table with her; he wanted to do what the men were doing.

  “What’s a snipe anyways?” Caroline asked and waited, her face going warm while they all laughed.

  “She don’t know nothing,” Danny said. “She hasn’t even been to school. She doesn’t even know what a snipe is.” He rolled on his back and laughed his deep laugh. “Tell her, Uncle Tim. Tell her what a snipe is.”

  “All right.” Uncle Tim stared hard at Danny and then looked around the room. “A snipe, Miss Caroline, since you’re the only one here that don’t know, is a great big brown bird. Well, it’s so big you don’t even want to call it a bird. It’s more like an animal with great big wings.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said and turned to her, nodding with each word, his face flushed and short bangs cowlicked.

  NOW SHE LONGED for the yellow lamplight of the living room, the warm kitchen where her mother and the other women talked and handed plates back and forth over soapy water that filled the sink. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered and ran her hand through her hair just like she had seen Danny do earlier. She waited for him to respond, but he kept his vow of silence and simply pressed down on the toe of her shoe with his foot.

  “I said Jesus Christ, oh Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”

  “Call on somebody you know,” he whispered harshly, another thing he had learned at school.

  “MOON LOOKS RIGHT for sniping tonight,” Uncle Tim had said and Caroline went to peek out the window at the thin sliver of a moon just above the trees. It was the fairy-tale moon, or so she’d always heard, never heard of a snipe moon, but there it was, thin, white, and waiting. It sent a chill over her scalp.

  “Can’t snipe alone,” their father said, and Caroline froze, part of her wanting so bad to go; it was the same part of her that wanted to be in the first grade and have a book sack to carry. But then there was that other side, the school dungeon and Mrs. Hopper’s nighttime teeth and a big brown animal like a rhinoceros with wings.

  “Go with me, Dad,” Danny said. “Let’s me and you and Uncle Tim and Randy all go.”

  “Just the men, huh?” the girlfriend asked and came to stand beside Caroline. “Girls can bag a snipe as good as a man. Right?”

  Caroline nodded with her, this grown-up girl, so grown that she carried a purse and put stuff on her eyelids. She had unbraided her hair and now it waved like a princess’s almost to her waist.

  “She’s too young to go,” Danny said and pointed at Caroline. “Leave her out of it.”

  “Can’t be done,” Uncle Tim said and lit a cigar. “You see, you can’t hold both sides of the bag when the snipe flies in ’cause he’d knock your socks off. You got to have a person on each side.”

  “But you gotta have a strong person,” Danny said. “Like you.”

  “Can’t be done, son,” their father said and went to sit beside Uncle Tim. “You see, once you get to be a certain size, oh I’d say about Randy’s height, then you’re too big to go sniping because the snipe’ll see you there holding the bag. They’re smart, those snipe. They aren’t gonna come if they think somebody’s holding the bag.”

  “Yes sir, Danny,” Uncle Tim locked his hands behind his head and stretched his legs. “Take advantage of the fact that you’re just the right age for a snipe hunt. It’s one of those things you remember for the rest of your life, like catching a great big fish or hitting a home run.” Uncle Tim looked at their daddy and grinned. “A few other things.”

  “I’ve done those things,” Danny said, his face so serious. “Done both of those, caught a fish at camp and I hit home runs all the time.”

  “Well then, let’s get you out in the woods to bag a snipe.”

  “But Caroline hasn’t. She hasn’t caught a fish or hit a home run.”

  “But I can do it,” she had said suddenly, her heart beating faster and faster with the thought of it all.

  NOW IT SEEMED like she had been in the woods forever. A mosquito bit her on the leg and she let him, without slapping or saying a word. It just wasn’t a good night for snipe. Deep down she hoped one didn’t come. It was too hot and too dark; the snipe were going to fly into somebody else’s bag. Again, something rustled against her leg. She tried to think of something good—the big box of fireworks. She was going to eat a slice of watermelon and sit on the porch rail and watch those fireworks sizzle way up into the sky. She was ready to go.

  “They ain’t coming,” she whispered.

  “Not if you keep talking,” he said, but this time his voice was slower like he was getting tired of standing in one place, too. “This is the right spot,” their father had said. “Don’t move from this spot.”

  “I gotta pee,” she whispered, but he ignored her. “Danny? Danny, I really do gotta pee.”

  “Shhh, one’s coming.”

  She froze in place and sure enough she heard something way down the path, a rustling sound, and she imagined that big animal bird creeping along ready to suddenly fly up and into a hole just like they’d said. She could hear Danny breathing, her own heart beating up in those soft spots of her forehead. She couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I can’t wait. I gotta go.”

  “Go in your pants,” he said.

  “I can’t go in my pants. Mama’ll get me.”

  “I’ll get you if you don’
t shut up,” he whispered. “I’ll tell the principal you been bad, too. I’ll tell the witch to come get you. I’ll tell you a lot of things you don’t want to hear, okay?”

  Caroline swallowed hard, blinked back the tears and crouched forward to squeeze her legs together. “I can’t wait. I can’t hold it.”

  “Here.” He took her side of the bag. “Go over yonder and pull down your pants. Pee out there but be quiet.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I can’t, you big baby. I gotta hold the bag. How do we know that a snipe ain’t been watching this hole the whole time?”

  Caroline took a step away and moved her hands through the air to make sure there was nothing there. She eased down the zipper of her shorts.

  “I talked to the witch today,” she whispered. “She’s planning to pour cement all over her yard.”

  “Yeah right,” he said. “Go on now. You’re too close. Go away from here so the snipe don’t see you.”

  She took another step and then squatted, feet apart, pants around her knees and held forward. Now she couldn’t go. Something was tickling around her legs. She heard another rustling sound from in the woods, closer and closer.

  “I talked to her the day you put me in front of the firing squad, too,” she whispered, expecting him to tell her to shut up, but he was listening now. “She was right there in our yard and I never even heard her walk up. She’s the one untied me.”

  His silence scared her and she hurriedly—without going —pulled up and zipped her pants, relieved to take her side of the bag and feel him there beside her.

  “She said, ‘Oh my poor darling,’ not mean at all.”

  “She ain’t a witch,” he whispered now. “I lied about all that.”

  She nodded.

  “And I lied about first grade, nothing happens in first grade. Bunch of babies learn to say letters and crap.”

  “Really?” She turned now and stared at him, angry for the joke but so relieved she wanted to scream and dance.

  “But now I know something real that’s bad,” he said. “I swear to God.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered not really wanting to hear; she was hoping her dad would come running down the path but there was nothing beyond the darkness.

  “You gotta cross your heart and hope to die,” he said. “If you tell it I’ll kill you myself.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “Promise? Swear to God?”

  That was something else he’d learned at school and their mother had told him not to say it. Now he was waiting for her to say it.

  “Swear to God.”

  “Swear to God,” she whispered and waited.

  “Mama is about to make us leave.” He stared straight ahead. “I heard her tell Mrs. Hopper that as soon as school starts and you ain’t scared anymore that she’s gonna take us and move across town, maybe even to a new town. But that all depends on how we’re doing in school and how Dad is doing all by himself. She told Mrs. Hopper that she had had all she could take. She said she does not love him at all. She said the only good thing he ever did was have us.”

  Then, before Danny could say more, there was a rustling down on the path, a sudden sound like giant wings rushing forward. It seemed the sound was getting louder, closer, the trees closing in.

  “Shit, here it comes,” Danny whispered.

  Caroline froze to the sounds, unable to move, closer and closer, a rush of big brown wings, a head the size of a bear.

  “Snipe!” Danny called, his voice cracking with fear.

  It was coming; it was coming, racing up from the woods on its big long legs to jump in the bag, there, over there, out of the woods and right in the path. She straightened too fast and peed in her shorts. A warm stream ran down her leg and into her sneaker but she was too afraid to care. The snipe ducked back into the woods and it was quiet again; Danny was breathing hard.

  “I wet my . . .”

  “Shhhh!”

  There was silence and they waited again. Caroline moved closer to Danny. Now she couldn’t even run down the path to their house because the snipe was out there, just there and waiting to catch her and spread his big brown wings and fly away.

  “You stink,” Danny whispered. “Snipe ain’t coming because you stink.”

  But his voice had lost all anger now, and she knew he was scared, too. “I couldn’t help it.”

  She was about to tell him that he was nothing but a baby, too, when up from the bushes sprang a snipe as big as a man. Caroline jumped toward Danny, getting tangled in the sack and pulling both of them to the ground.

  “Daddy!” Caroline screamed as loud as she could, screaming and crying as a dim beam of light moved from side to side on the path and finally stopped on Danny’s pale face.

  “Can’t catch a snipe that way,” Uncle Tim said. “No sir, sure can’t.” And then they were all there, all the relatives laughing and stepping forward. Caroline ran forward and grabbed hold of her mother, momentarily forgetting that her pants were wet.

  “I almost had one,” Danny screamed. “He was right here, right at the bag, and Caroline had to go and pee in her pants and scare him off.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare it,” she said. “Really.”

  “Come on, now.” Caroline’s father took her hand and led her down the path. Her mother took her other hand.

  “We’ve still got the fireworks,” their mother said and patted Danny’s back, pushed him along. “And watermelon and homemade ice cream.”

  “And snipe,” Uncle Tim said. “We got ourselves a big bag of imaginary snipe.”

  Danny clasped his hands to his ears, his thin face mad and twisted up while he tried not to cry. “Stop! Stop doing this to me.”

  “It’s a joke, son,” their father said. “It’s just a joke we’ve been playing in this family for years. Besides, you’re one to talk about creeping around and playing tricks.”

  “You mean there wasn’t a snipe out there?” Caroline asked, and then turned to Danny. “What about all the other things?”

  “What things, baby?” her mother asked.

  “Lord, these clowns have been wanting to pull this trick every summer since Danny was born,” Aunt Patricia was telling Cousin Randy’s girlfriend.

  Uncle Tim reached out to shake hands but Danny turned and ran inside letting the screen door slam shut behind him.

  “Oh well, let’s start the fireworks,” Uncle Tim said. “That’ll bring the boy back out. Snipe hunt is supposed to be fun.”

  “But it wasn’t.” Caroline followed Danny into the house. She crept up the stairs and then eased open the door to his room. He was kneeling on the floor by his bed, the burlap bag still clenched in his fist. “Danny?” she called.

  “Get outta here.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “Don’t you think I got ears?” He turned toward her and in the thin strip of light from the doorway she could see his eyes and cheeks glistening. “It ain’t a damn bit funny. You can go tell them I said that, too. Go tell I said it ain’t a damn bit funny or a damn bit fair!”

  She waited and then tiptoed close to the window where she could see the first sky rocket soar up and over the pine trees, as high as the stars. He leaned against the windowsill, chin pressed in his hands, and watched the brief flares of light.

  “Don’t you sit those pee britches on my bed,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  She knelt beside him. His breath came in deep sighs as they watched the bright sizzling colors splash in the sky. They could hear their mother calling for them to come outside, but Caroline didn’t answer.

  “You stink.” He shook his head, sighed again.

  “I know it,” she said and then stayed quiet, relieved that he was talking to her at all.

  “That was a dumb joke.” He leaned close to the window and stared down at where their parents were standing side by side, their dad’s arm looped around their mother’s waist. “I can’t believe they tricked us like that.”
/>   “Danny?” She waited, wondering exactly what she was going to ask him, while her mother stood in the yard and twirled a sparkler round and round. “Is what you told me a trick?”

  He stared at his hands, then at the burlap bag for a long time before answering. Now Aunt Patricia and the cousins had sparklers and were writing their names in the sky.

  “I told you that you don’t have to be a scared baby if I’m there, right?”

  She nodded, wanting more from him but that was all he said. She held on to his sticky arm and he didn’t even push her away. So she inched even closer and rested her chin on the burlap sack, a wash of comfort leaving her drowsy and looking forward to the feel of clean cotton sheets, the buzzing conversation of the adults downstairs, and the pop and whine of fireworks that would continue throughout the night.

  Chickens

  THE HONEYMOON WAS over before it began. The sweep of bridal frenzy—a wave of white tulle and bone china and petits fours—receded leaving a litter of soggy napkins and a half-eaten cake.

  For Lisa the planning had been like a drug, each day upping the dosage, each dose successfully veiling any fears or doubts or anxieties about what she was about to do with the rest of her life. Her energy kicked in full force just as out-oftown relatives arrived; they came in carloads, moved into the Red Carpet Inn and Bell’s Econo Lodge. They toasted her, gave her gifts, wished her a long and happy life. She had never before received so much attention and now as she sat in the passenger seat, seeing Alan and the gold ring on his finger that matched her own, she was shocked. She had almost forgotten that he was a part of it all. It was her wedding. She planned it; her parents paid for it. She was hungover from too much excitement and too little sleep. The spinning world had slammed to a halt and thrown her for a loop. Her mind had not ventured beyond those moments in the church; she had not looked beyond the stained-glass windows she had studied her entire childhood when the sermons were too boring or too threatening to absorb. Noah, Jonah, Moses, Jesus. They were all there.

  But where was she?

  They had flown to Pennsylvania (a state she had never in her life visited), rented a car, and now here they were driving through the Poconos. This had been her idea (Alan vetoed her first choice of Niagara Falls) and now she knew she had made a terrible mistake. These mountains were not so great. They were no better than the mountains of western North Carolina or the Shenandoah Valley, where she had visited relatives every autumn when she was a kid. Now, looking at these foreign mountains depressed the hell out of her. Now, with mounting horror, she wondered what in the hell she had done.