Heath Wilcock is 24 years old. He has a wife named Emily and a seventeen month old daughter named Juniper. He does improv comedy at The National Comedy Theatre on the weekends. He's also a student pursuing a degree in creative writing at Arizona State University. He is also an avid fine cheese connoisseur.
Spray it With Cold Water (August 20, 2011. Issue 30.)
There has been a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of our room. We've needed to wash this mound but we want something easier than picking up the pile and moving it to the washing machine. So instead, we began spraying water onto the clothes. At first, the top layer would soak up the drops of water from the spray bottle, but after a few days of spraying, the water gathered in the middle of the pile and made the air in our room moist. The laundry smelled like an over ripe banana—it was sweet and biting. After a few more days of spraying, the pile began to leak and it spread throughout the carpet in our room. The water in the carpet was hot and it made us stay on our bed. If we wanted to leave our room, it was two hops to the door—enough to feel it burn on the bottoms of our feet, but went away after a couple of steps on the dry side.
My wife ran out of clothes to wear. Don't take it from the pile I told her, wear some of my clothes, I have extra. I have nothing else, she said and she repeated it twice more, a total of three times—I have nothing else. When she pealed back an old blouse she used to wear, a small cloth creature crawled out from the pile and tumbled down the mound and fell on its front on the hot carpet. My wife screamed, thinking it was a rodent made of fur and blood, but she calmed down when I picked it up and laid it on our bed and said that it's made of our clothes. The clothed creature had a head made of a black argyle sock that had indentations for the eye sockets and mouth. The torso was made of a Body Glove t-shirt I haven't worn in years. The worn out holes from the t-shirt were on the creature's front—we could see inside but it was too dark to see how its chest moved up and down as it breathed. Its arms were made out of a leather woven belt that was probably left inside a pair of pant loops. It had two baby shoes for feet. Oh look at the shoes, my wife said, I remember those shoes and she cried but stopped after a couple of seconds. The creature's body was hot and we couldn't hold it. Let's spray it down with cold water I said. My wife cradled the creature and I sprayed it when she told me it was getting too hot. We sat on our bed for hours watching the t-shirt inflate when it took a breath. Its mouth moved and made the sound of cotton balls being rubbed together. I think it's not going to live long, my wife said and I started the washing machine. It was cold water and my wife lowered the creature into the machine bath. We watched our clothes separate into a sock, a shirt, a belt, and two baby shoes. We have nothing, my wife said, and she said it two more times—we have nothing.
Two Stories (May-ish, 2011. Issue 28.)
Bag of Towns
You don't know sad. I met this guy at a bar and he had this giant round green sack next to him. He tells me that he has to carry around this sack—he doesn't tell me why he has to carry it around, all he said was how he'd like to have a different job. I asked him what was in the sack and you don't have to believe me, but he tells me that it's filled with populated towns. I laughed so hard that I choked on a peanut that I had swallowed awhile ago. He told me that he can't be responsible with actual cities because his bag isn't able to hold it as yet—he says he needs to get a stronger sack or else he'd have skyscrapers ripping through. The skyscrapers thing made me lose it and I had to piss or it'd be on the floor getting soaked by peanut shells.
I ask him about these towns and he tells me they're older towns with telephone poles and windmills. He says he usually holds about four full towns a week in the sack. He tells me when the sack gets bumped he hears full grown adult screams and it bothers him because he says it takes a lot for an adult to scream that loud. He sings Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. He says it helps him feel lighter. He says he looks inside and sees tangles of human skin and animal hide, and imagines what had happened—he starts to cry when he tells me this. He tells me that he thinks one of the legs from a windmill punctured a cow in the stomach and a man suffocated to death because his head was lodged inside the punctured hole. He thinks the man fell headfirst from above—probably just gave up trying to hold on to a stop sign pole or maybe he lost his balance after so long of feeling vertigo. You want to know the funny thing? the man says, the cow actually lived because the man's head stopped the bleeding. The man starts to laugh after he tells me this and he actually slapped the green sack and I could have sworn that I heard a noise, something like a small tractor breaking a window to a house.
He tells me the surprising thing is, is that these townspeople still keep track of the days because when it comes to Sunday, he can hear people singing church hymns. He says they don't sing well but it's enough for him to walk slower on Sundays.
He tells me that sometimes when he places the sack down on the ground he can actually hear two men argue over property. Can you believe that? he tells me, I'm making mulch out of these towns and yet they still have more important things to worry about. The man opened up the sack and threw his beer glass inside. It shattered on what sounded like a rooftop. I asked him if he hurts these towns when he gets upset. He tells me he tries not to, but that it's so damn difficult. I told him I like to bang two hammers together in my garage when nothing seems to go the way I like it.
Now get this, the man actually tells me that I shouldn't bang two hammers together because he says it's dangerous. Can you believe that? This man has a sack full of barbed wire and scalps and he tells me that I should be careful? I got mad at him. I can't believe I did this, but I actually got up and started stomping on his green bag full of towns and it felt like I was stepping on strawberries.
Big Angela
Caged gorilla came to mind when I saw Angela inside the beetle pen. The beetle pen was a large chicken coop but with smaller wire diamond holes so beetles wouldn't escape. I turned the wooden latch and walked inside.
"I didn't tell anyone where you're at."
"Thanks," Angela said. She had a wide and tall forehead that showed thin skin strips when her bangs parted. Her bangs were so long that they'd hang in front of her glasses. She'd tilt her had back to see me and her bottom jaw was pushed more forward than her top and when she spoke her voice was clogged.
"How old are you?" I said and placed my backpack down. Small charcoal-shaped beetles ran towards the fence floorboard.
"Sixteen."
"Sixteen? How come you're not going to high school?"
"My dad won't let me."
"He won't let you?" I looked away from her to the beetles around my backpack. Six or seven huddled next to the base and moved their feelers.
"No," she said and pointed her mouth upwards and blew on her bangs.
"How come?"
"He wants me to make weight, to be the biggest he's ever seen," she said.
"To wrestle?" I said. My smile made my cheeks push up against the bottom of my eyelids. Her father was the wrestling coach at Cameron High School. Angela nodded and looked around the beetle pen. We were both sitting on a table. Her feet were flat on the ground. She pivoted them back and forth forming small worm mounds traced around her Reeboks. My toes only skimmed the top of the dirt.
"I don't know what's going to happen to me," Angela said and smacked her lips. It sounded like she talked with a banana in her mouth.
"I don't know. I think you'll be okay because you're not an adult. Adults get in bigger trouble."
"His hand was moving back and forth. I think. Was it moving?" she said.
"I think it was. I didn't notice his hand."
"I'm sure my dad will think it's great," she said and I remained looking at her. I didn't say anything. "It was a good pin down." she picked up a beetle and squished it with her thumb and forefinger.
"How long have you been coming here?"
"Awhile, I come when I feel small." Angela picked up another beetle, squeezed and watched the green curl out like the innards of a grape.
"It's okay to feel small."
"Not when I squeeze you." Angela picked up another beetle and slowly pinched the middle. The top of the head formed a crack and the insides looked like jam.
"What if his hand wasn't moving?" I said.
"I don't know. What happens next?" Angela made the table shake as she began to cry.
"I'm sure his hand was moving." I began to feel my guts sweat as small sirens sounded. Angela began to pick at her eyebrows and place them on her open tongue. She looked at the curls as she dropped them down—making her eyes cross.
***
Cameron, Arizona is a trading post for Indians to sell their jewelry. When you enter from both sides it says: CAMERON in all capital letters. My parents, Shea and Phil, are both small-time geologists. Not geologists that discover new rock and are interviewed—just geologists that have a hobby of collecting rocks and selling them. They think we have a neat selling point because we're not Indian. When they set up their stand and display the rocks they've collected they wear their cargo shorts and rock holster belts around their waists. They say it makes the rocks look like they were freshly picked.
Gorge Middle School is where I attend. The name dates back to when the Indians first had an established learning community settled inside the Cameron Canyon, but above the river—hence Gorge. The Indians were taught every Tuesday, but I guess days didn't matter, so every seventh day—or two days after corn husk day—which will make it Tuesday. I like it here. I think I like it here because there is rock for my parents. Rock becomes our bread and I've seen them both at times on their hands and knees in the front yard digging with their fingers trying to find bread.
There are five stands at the Cameron trading post. Three are rock stands, two of which are made into jewelry and the other one is my parents'—plain rocks. The other two stands are a beef jerky stand and a beetle stand. The beetle stand is a hit with tourists because they buy the little black bugs for their kids. The Indian in charge of the beetle stand ties a beetle by one of its back legs with a line of string. It makes for a small helicopter. I've seen kids bouncing up and down when they're handed the string. They sometimes wouldn't hold tight and the beetle would take flight with the string attached to its leg—a small helicopter with a rescue ladder.
I read a lot while my parents sold their rocks. I would sit in a foldout chair that had small basketball net cup holders on the arm rests. My eyes would skip a paragraph every time someone purchased a rock and my mom and dad shouted: sold! The staring would come after the reading. If the description hit me just right, it made me look up from the book and picture myself at that location. I would come out of it pretty quick: sold! And I'd be in my fold out chair looking up at the "passer through" holding his rock inside a clear plastic bag.
There was a local library that didn't sell any of the current literature, but it did have all of the old-time novels. I became interested in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. I thought of myself as Huck. I would put my feet up on the table and thought that Huck would do the same. If a kid wanted to fight, I would outwit him like Huck. Of course he would have done a better job. I didn't have the escape raft Huck had and my big black helper wasn't around. It started when an Indian kid wanted to fight me at school because he said I was staring at his girlfriend's butt. I didn't know I was staring at her butt. The landscape was illustrated in great detail and once I looked up to place myself there, her butt was in front of me. I didn't want to look at her butt; it was just the backdrop for the Mississippi Valley.
***
Angela was late to class when I first met her. The empty chair and desk next to me would be filled with a large potato-like figure. The skin on Angela's arms was tight. When she sat down, her upper-legs were so thick that her knees didn't touch each other. She didn't pay attention as Mrs. Aldridge taught. She would instead draw men wrestling.
"Hey." I walked up to her after class and raised my hand. She stopped and looked at me lifting her glasses with her cheek bones. "My name's Daniel." I said. She didn't reply back. "I was just was curious to know how come you live here?" Angela widened her eyes and began to pick at her eyebrows. She placed the eyebrow curls on her wide tongue and her eyes crossed.
***
"Do we know anybody else that lives here?" I said to my parents and walked inside our trailer. Both of my parents were sitting in the back room—their rock room. They were sitting close to each other on their wooden stools. My dad's left bare knee pressed against the inside of my mom's right inner thigh. They were both wearing their green cargo shorts. My mom was looking down at the desk quietly pushing her finger across the table—pushing rocks to one side, dividing them up into groups. My dad had a rock lifted in his left hand and with his other hand had a small paintbrush and was lightly waving it across the front of the stone. He was wearing a pair of glasses that had magnifying lenses. I dropped my backpack on the linoleum by the front door, walked back towards them and repeated myself.
"Yes, Daniel, we hear you," my dad said, his lips pressed together as he continued to look up at the rock he was holding in the sunlight. His voice was strained because he was stretching his neck.
"Do we?" I said. My dad put his head down and pulled off his glasses.
"I don't think so. Sweetie, do we know anybody yet?" my dad looked over at my mom.
My mom cupped the top of each rock pile with the palm of her hand. She didn't look up as she spoke.
"The town official said hi. Big guy. He's also the wrestling coach at Cameron High School. That's it. No one else that I know about—aha!" She picked up a rock from one pile and placed it into another. She smiled as she looked up at us. Her smiled straightened as she spoke. "I had twelve Gneiss stones and I was missing one. I just found it; it was in the wrong pile."
***
Angela and I walked side by side everyday after Mrs. Aldridge's English class. I would ask her questions but she would never reply or try to carry on a conversation. I liked Angela. I liked Angela because she was the only other white person at Gorge Middle School. I tried to be friends with the other students, but the kid whose girlfriend's butt I stared at didn't let me because he told the other Indian students what I did to his girlfriend's butt—saying I "stared right at her ass hoping to grab it."
"What do you do for fun?" I said to Angela. She shrugged her shoulders and blew her mouth upwards—lifting her bangs in front of her eyes. Angela and I would walk from the English classroom's door to the dirt road fork that separated us down different paths to our homes.
We were walking to the dirt fork on a Wednesday afternoon—half-day at school—when Angela reached over with her left arm and pulled me in close to her side. She stopped, grabbed me by both shoulders and turned me around. I faced Angela and she kissed me. Her tiny twin-sized mattress of a tongue filled my mouth and bulged my cheeks. She pulled her tongue out and looked down at me. I felt like a wooden post in her hands.
"You're nice for walking with me," she said. Big gal came to my mind and she let my shoulders go. She walked down her pathway towards her home and I walked down mine. When I entered inside my home I could see my parents down the hall. They were laughing and slapping each other's bare knees while holding up a rock between their faces.
***
Huck Finn would fight, wouldn't he? I felt like Huck Finn, but I didn't fight. I didn't know how to. The Indian whose girlfriend's butt I stared at was still mad—and I guess for weeks his anger continued to grow and now he wanted to fight me. I said, "I didn't mean to" many times. But I think his wanting to fight me was fueled more because I was not from Cameron. I think he was born here and I think his ancestors dated back to the first teaching at Gorge when it was held two days after corn husk day.
It was Friday—two days after Angela kissed me—that I got in a fight with the Indian. He didn't attend his classes, but instead made-out with his girlfriend and squeezed her butt outside on a bench by the open play field. He wore a baby blue shirt that looked like a long turquoise ring on a giant finger. "I said c'mere," he said and his girlfriend was rubbing his chest. "C'mere and take a good look at her ass," and he squeezed her butt and bit his lip.
"No. That's alright," I said and didn't look at him.
"You don't think it's a nice ass?" he slapped her butt and she let out a laugh.
"No. It's not that, it's—" he set me up. "She's your girlfriend, not mine," I said shaking my head with a smile—all a big misunderstanding.
"You bet she's with me," he said and swung his right leg over the bench out of a straddling position and stood up.
"Make him dirty Jason," his girlfriend said. "Make him eat the dirty ground."
Jason stuck his foot behind my heel as I walked backwards making me trip—landing flat on my butt.
"Get 'em Jason," his girlfriend was beside him yelling into his ear.
"Find your own girl ass to look at," Jason said and punched me on the nose. It knocked me on my back. I cupped my nose and didn't touch it—just placed a hand shell around it—too sensitive to touch. Jason grabbed my right shoulder and squeezed. His hand pressure made my body stiff as stone. I thought about joining my parent's rock business. They'd love to have me aboard and I'd be able to skip school and sell at the stand. My nose wouldn't hurt if I sold rocks. I heard shoes slap the ground. It was Angela running across the sidewalk next to the portables. She looked ugly as she ran. Her hair moved away from her forehead and her nostrils opened up wide. Her run looked like it was hurting her, like her knees would pop off like shirt buttons. Jason stood up and his girlfriend sidestepped away from him. I was lying on my back and looked up at Jason. Angela didn't slow down. She grabbed and lifted Jason up and continued to run. He was a passing baton in Angela's hands. She ran with him in her arms—he was straight up and down and very stiff. She ran a little ways past me when she tripped and fell on him. She began to punch him between his eyes and on his nose. It sounded wet and smooth, like a flat stone skipping even distances between each hit on the water. Her falling atop of Jason pushed him into the grass ground and with each punch I imagined a deeper imprint that looked like he fell from a tall building. His face became a gallon milk jug when all the air is squeezed out. Angela stood up and looked around. Students were walking to their next class and the talking grew louder among them. Jason's girlfriend was gone. Angela looked at me and backed away from the Indian's imprint.
***
"How long have you been eating your eyebrows?" I said as I patted my nose. It was big. It felt like it covered both of my cheeks.
"I don't know how long."
"Just when you're nervous?"
"Yeah and I think I'm running out." Angela said and I laughed. It made Angela smile—showing her bottom teeth.
"I think his hand was moving and I think you'll be fine," I said and blinked longer.
"Thanks." Angela began to shake the table again as she cried. The police cars turned off the paved road and were coming up the dirt one.
"You'll be fine. Just think that you're not an adult and you'll be fine. His hand was moving and you're only sixteen," I said.
The two police cars pulled up to the beetle pen and two thick Indian policemen stepped out. "Come on out of the pen," one of them said and walked around his open door. I got up and grabbed my backpack off the ground. I stepped out of the coop and when I was out I looked back at Angela, who was still sitting on the table.
"Young lady, come on out," the same policeman said and lifted his hand off the hood of the car and straightened his back. Angela stood up and walked to the pen door and stood in the doorway. It was unbelievable to watch when all the beetles stood still. "I'm going to ask one more time miss—" Angela dropped her head down and we saw the top of her crown. She looked up and grabbed hold of the inside doorway frame. She began to shake the entire coop—startling the beetles. The policemen shuffled their feet and backed away towards their car doors. Hundreds of tiny helicopters took flight and streamed out of the beetle coop, going underneath Angela's arms and into the air. The policemen were surrounded with beetles. They jumped inside their police cars and began pressing the horn three, four, five times trying to disperse them. I stood still and let them hit my nose. They continued to fly and the sky turned dark with beetle clouds.