* * *
Dizzy with nausea and possibly the early stages of heat stroke, Hector idled his Jeep up the driveway and parked it underneath the carport. He knew he was dehydrated because his tongue felt like a dead mouse inside his mouth. It tasted like one, too. The sun was ruthless during the summer, and he had spent the better part of the day in it, shriveling and bloating at the same time. What time is it? he wondered, looking to the clock in the dash but seeing nothing because he had already cut the vehicle’s power. Feels like two or three. Looking down, he glimpsed the dry, yellow puke on the floorboard and knew he would have to clean it up soon or risk the Jeep forever reeking of it.
The first thing he did after lumbering out of the Wrangler, however, wasn’t to rush to the shed and gather the cleaning supplies needed for the puke, but rather was to trip over to the side of the house and slake his thirst from the garden hose. The searing water went down his throat like liquid fire, but he didn’t mind; it served its purpose. While he slurped, he rested his forearm against the sill and peered through the kitchen window. He searched for his mother through the glare. She was in there somewhere, most likely hiding in some dark corner. He pressed his sweaty ear against the pane and heard the faint tinkling of the Steinway. Grunting, he turned the water off.
He trudged back to the Jeep, dragging the hose behind him. At the rear of the carport sat a small storage shed stocked with tools, a lawnmower, and various soaps and waxes, mostly for the Jeep—well, all for the Jeep. He dropped the hose, opened the door to the claustrophobic chamber, and briskly gathered the items he needed. He carried them back to the Jeep in a plastic bucket. Since he would need water, he returned to the house and twisted the spigot. He plodded back to the carport, filled the bucket, and dropped the hose—water still running—onto the gravel, opened the Jeep’s door, and poured half a bottle of car shine concentrate over the puke. While waiting for the chemicals to soak up the dried bile, he squatted in the shady driveway and leaned against his mother’s Monte Carlo. Closing his eyes, he tried to avoid thought.
A mosquito whined in his right ear and he swatted at it, smacking his jaw in the process. The blow jarred the gears in his head enough to make the agony flare up there again—mercilessly, as if the folds of his brain were rising up and pressing against the inside of his skull in hundreds of razor-sharp edges. His vision blurred, and from afar he sensed his body falling sideways. His back slid against the Monte Carlo’s burgundy door. I knocked myself out, he thought from somewhere outside his body. At the last second, he saved himself with his right hand. Pebbles bit into his palm. Of course, no one was there to witness any of this, and for that, Hector was grateful.
But he’ll know. Somehow Rusty’ll find out that I almost knocked myself out.
The puke was ready to be sponged up and disposed of, but Hector continued to lean there, his forearm resting in the gravel and his head against the Monte Carlo’s tire. Then the Jeep’s bumper—a black serpentine thing made of bent metal pipes—caught his eye. At first, he dismissed what he saw as chaff from the field, but when he went in for a closer look, he noticed that it was something else entirely. Although the coloring was wrong, it appeared to be some kind of squashed insect, like a dragonfly or a cicada. Whatever it was (or had been), it was black and hung loosely from the lowest bar of the bumper.
Curious, Hector side-scooted to the Jeep and peeled the object from the metal. It broke away like pine needles from a dead branch. In his hand, the mass disintegrated further into something resembling hair clippings, and when he brought it closer to his eyes, he noticed that it was exactly that: hair. They were too coarse to be his (Why would they be?) and were mixed with a flaky maroon powder that looked like rust. He rubbed the substance between his fingers and the dark red dander snowed down to the gravel. What the hell? Then he nodded, remembering. Probably from the coon. I hit that fucker pretty hard. But he wasn’t sure. Something about the hair didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt too right. He had never petted a raccoon before in his life, but he had petted many a dog.
No.
He couldn’t stop himself from wriggling his way underneath the vehicle. He didn’t even know he could fit under there anymore.
I couldn’t have. Could I? No…not even drunk would I—
More dark clumps in the Wrangler’s undercarriage. Dried slivers of flesh and matted hair caught in the sharp angles of the inner bumper, hanging like Spanish moss. Skin rolled around the axle like hair in curlers.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, SHIT! SHIT!! SHIT!!!"
Then:
"Ow!"
What the fuck was that?
A sharp pang flared in his lower back, like the jabbing of a dozen thick-bored syringes. He scooted out from under the Jeep and craned his head to see what had bitten him, but trying to see that part of his back was futile; he wasn’t thin or flexible enough for those kinds of maneuvers. But he did run his fingertips over the offending area until feeling a ring of bumps—scabs—etched into his flesh. At least ten of them that he could tell. He thought at once of the writhing raccoon and terror exploded in his guts. Fearing he was going to faint, he immediately began reassuring himself that it was nothing, that he was overreacting. Probably just skeeto bites, nothin’ to freak out about. As he grew calmer, he managed to put on a small grin for the world, a you-can’t-beat-me grin. But behind this façade of placidity, a gnawing sensation alarmed in his head. He just didn’t know what it was trying to warn him about.
For Hector’s sake, it was probably a good thing he couldn’t see or feel the dozens of red scratches that crisscrossed his back like a map of the nation’s rivers and streams. If he could, then maybe he would have freaked out. And he would have been justified in doing so. He didn’t know it yet, but something had torn him up last night, had used his back as a scratching post and then bit him. But then again, he had done some tearing up of his own.