F L A U N T
The woods are denser here. More ancient. At this time of night, the insects really roar. I’m outside on the sagging porch of the new house, smoking a spliff after another day of moving boxes, and I exhale my smoke into a sea of stars.
The peace doesn’t last long, however. I hear footsteps coming down the private gravel road that cuts up alongside our fixer-upper into the mountain. Then, a voice lifts into song, a hymn of some kind—warbling and cracking with a passion that tells me the singer believes himself to be totally alone.
I snuff my spliff out, so as not to embarrass him, and sink back against the chipping clapboard of the house, hoping to hold my last hit inside my chest until it becomes a ghost. But I hold the smoke in for too long—
I start coughing, and the shadow looks up at me—this sturdy young man, who continues singing, and smiling softly, not embarrassed at all.
The doorbell rings, and they want to welcome us to the neighborhood. The doorbell rings, and they just wanted to drop off an aluminum tray of honey-baked ham. The doorbell rings, and I don’t answer, and don’t answer, but it keeps ringing anyway.
The men wear flannels and blue jeans. The women wear long homemade skirts and bonnets. My pregnant wife, Maxine, and I haven’t met one with less than five children. “The other day, I met one that had thirteen,” she tells me.
“Well, the other day, I met one that had twenty-five,” I say, and she doesn’t even realize I’m kidding around.
I call them Pilgrims, Amish. NPCs from a video game about olden times. The cult that makes toys in the woods behind us—I call them so many names Maxine calls me: “Asshole.” She’s right to, obviously. It’s just they all appear so happy; so unbelievably happy; and no one on earth is that happy.
I don’t need more than the small glimpses the thick pines that surrounded their compound allow to understand they’re hiding something: their homes are too immaculate, their lawns too freshly mown, their grazing cows and sheep too proud.
Even the teenage girls wave at me—a caucasian, male, in his early-thirties—like they’ve never watched an episode of Law and Order: SVU before. Probably, they haven’t. Probably, they are kept in the dark, being prepared to be subservient teenage brides.
“If a teenage girl isn’t afraid of you, it doesn’t mean she’s in a cult,” says Maxine. But that’s always been her problem: Maxine sees the good in everyone, even me.
“Well, hon,” I say: “That’s where you’re wrong.”
The doorbell rings, and it’s been a while, so I answer, and they just want to see if I need any help around the house: they could mow the lawn, if I wanted; they could fix the gutters; they could even help me remove the distressed above ground pool in the backyard.
When I ask how much, they only shake their heads, and you can tell how badly they want to tweak their nipples when they say the words: “Totally free of charge.”
“I don’t get you,” Maxine says in bed that night. “Why not accept the help? You’re clearly stressing about fixing up the house in time.”
“And then what? Be forever indebted to their cause?” “What cause? They’re just good folks.”
“There’s always an underbelly, Maxine.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Then we should consider converting. Then we should consider drinking the adrenochrome or sacrificing the little lamb or whatever else we need to lead a life like theirs. And if they refuse us, then we should seriously consider letting them adopt our son.”
But even Maxine has her limits—she rolls over, flips off the light on her bed stand, her bulging belly heaving its disgust at me through the dark.
Juxtaposed against their goodness, I find, my bad joke lands much worse—like the attacks I level at them have really been leveled at her.
I go and try to smoke a spliff to calm myself down. But the spliff keeps turning to black tar heroin in my palm. I snuff it out, but know I shouldn’t go back inside, that I’d only start right back where I’d left off. Instead, I stand there, listening, hoping the young man might walk by, and I might experience his song differently this time.
A bullfrog starts lowing a song from the green witch’s vomit that fills the above ground in the backyard, and I long to join him. But in a million years, I know, I couldn’t stand to hear myself so vulnerable out loud.
I decide to start small: with the river rocks that surround the above ground. I load them into a five-gallon bucket and haul them across our yard, depositing them into the weedy place I imagine Maxine might one day arrange them around a lush garden.
Back and forth, back and forth, I compile my peace offering, my apology for how I’ve been acting, the sick streak inside my soul—until I hear this rattling sound, and I look down to discover a spring-loaded death trap glaring up at me: a diamond-headed serpent, not two feet from my boot, with glaring red eyes that freeze me there.
Even after the rattlesnake dissolves back into the river rocks, I can’t move. I stand there with my legs full of concrete dread as everything that surrounds me becomes a rattlesnake set to strike: the sticks and hoses, the oblong patches of dirt that scar the back- yard.
I look around the yard for help. I look over at the gravel road. There’s no one. I call to Maxine inside the house. I call louder, and louder. I shriek: For someone, anyone. Help me. Help., help, help—my voice cracking and warbling until I hear a soft voice say:
“Hey there, neighbor, looks like you could use some help.”
Stay up-to-date with exclusive events and content.
