FETCH
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
HANK STANDS WITH one foot planted a step in front of his other, all his weight balanced on that behind foot. He crouches down on his rear leg, squatting low on that behind leg, his knee bent, his torso, shoulders, and head all twisted and pulled back to the farthest point from the toe of his forward foot. At the moment he exhales, Hank’s rear leg explodes straight, that hip flexing to throw his whole body forward. His torso twists to throw one shoulder forward. His shoulder throws his elbow. His elbow throws his wrist. All of that one arm swings in a curve, cracking fast as a bullwhip. His every muscle snaps that one hand forward, and at the point where Hank should fall onto his face, his hand releases the ball. A tennis ball, bright yellow, flying fast as a gunshot, the ball flies until almost disappearing into the blue sky, following a yellow arc as high as the sun.
Hank throws with his entire body, the way a man’s supposed to throw. Jenny’s Labrador retriever bounds after the tennis ball, a black smear shooting toward the horizon, dodging between the tombstones, then bounding back, tail wagging, and drops the ball at my feet.
How I throw a ball, I only use my fingers. Maybe my wrist, a little—I have skinny wrists. Nobody ever taught me any better, so my throw bounces off the first row of tombstones, ricocheting off a mausoleum, rolling through the grass, and disappearing behind somebody’s grave marker while Hank grins at his feet and shakes his head from side to side, saying, “Good throw, loser.” From deep down in his chest, Hank hawks a wad and spits a fat throat oyster into the grass between my bare feet.
Jenny’s dog only stands there, part black Lab, part stupid, looking at Jenny. Jenny looking at Hank. Hank looking at me and saying, “What’re you waiting for, boy, go fetch.” Hank jerks his head at where the tennis ball has vanished, lost among the headstones. Hank talks to me the same way Jenny talks to her dog.
Jenny twists a strand of her long hair between the fingers of one hand, looking behind us to where Hank’s car sits in the empty parking lot. The sunlight shining through her skirt, no slip underneath, the light outlining her legs all the way up to her panties, she says, “Go ahead. We’ll wait. I swear.”
Written on the close-up tombstones, no dates come any newer than 1930-something. Just guessing, my throw landed around the 1880s. Hank’s throw went all the way back to the stupid Pilgrims on the stupid Mayflower.
With my first step, I feel wet against the bottom of my bare foot, some ooze, sticky and still warm. Hank’s spit smears under my heel, between my toes, so I drag my foot on the grass to wipe it. Behind me, Jenny laughs while I drag that foot up the slope toward the first row of graves. Bouquets of plastic roses stick in the ground. Little American flags twitch in the breeze. The black Lab runs ahead, sniffing at the dead brown spots in the grass, then adding its piss. The tennis ball isn’t behind the row of 1870s graves. Behind the 1860s: more nothing. Names of dead folks stretch away from me in every direction. Beloved husbands. Cherished wives. Adored mothers and fathers. The names stretch as far as I can see, getting pissed on by Jenny’s dog; this army of dead folks lies just under the ground.
With my next step, the ground explodes, the mowed grass geysers with landmines of cold water, hosing my jeans and shirt. A booby trap of sheer freezing cold. The underground lawn sprinklers drive sprays of water, blasting my eyes shut, washing my hair flat. Cold water hits from every direction. From behind me comes laughter, Hank and Jenny laughing so hard they fall into each other for support, their clothes wet and sticking to Jenny’s tits and molded over the shadow of her bush. They fall to the grass, still hugging, and their laughter stops as their wet mouths come together.
Here’s the dead pissing back on us. The ice-cold way death can hit you in the noontime of a sunny day just when you’d never expect it.
Jenny’s stupid Labrador barks and snaps at a jet of water, biting the sprinkler head next to me. Just as fast, the automatic sprinklers drop back into the ground. My T-shirt drips. Water runs down my face from the soaked mop of my hair. Sopping wet, my jeans feel stiff and heavy as concrete.
Not two graves away, the ball sits behind a tombstone. Pointing my finger, I tell the dog, “Fetch,” and he runs over, sniffs the tennis ball, growls at it, then runs back without it. Walking over, I pick up the yellow fuzz, wet from the sprinklers. Stupid dog.
When I turn to throw the ball back to Jenny, the grass sloping down below me is empty. Beyond that, the parking lot spreads, empty. No Hank or Jenny. No car. All that’s left is a puddle of black oil dripped out of Hank’s engine pan and two trails of their wet footprints walking out and stopping where the car was parked.
In one huge throw, every skinny muscle the length of my arm whips, heaving the ball downhill to the spot where Hank’s spit wet the grass. I tell the dog, “Fetch,” and it only looks at me. Still dragging one foot, I start back downhill, until my toes feel warm again. This time, dog piss. Where I stand, the grass feels coarse. Dead. When I look up, the ball sits next to me, as if it’s rolled uphill. Where I can see, the cemetery looks empty except for thousands of names carved in stone.
Throwing the ball, again, down the long slope, I tell the dog, “Fetch.” The dog just looks at me, but in the distance the ball rolls closer and closer. Returning to me. Rolling up the slope. Defying gravity. Rolling uphill.
One of my feet is burning, the scratches and bunions of my bare foot stinging with dog piss. My other foot, the toes are webbed with Hank’s foaming, gray spit. My shoes: in the backseat of his car. Gone. Me, dumped here to babysit her stupid pooch while Jenny’s run off.
Walking back through the graves, I drag one foot to wipe it clean on the grass. With the next step, I drag the other foot. Dragging each foot, I leave a trail of flattened skid marks in the lawn all the way to the empty parking lot.
This tennis ball—now the dog won’t go near it. In the parking lot, I stand next to the pool of dripped crankcase oil, and I throw the ball, again, chucking it hard as I’m able. The ball rolls back, spiraling around me, forcing me to keep turning to watch it, the yellow ball circling me until my head’s spinning, dizzy. When the ball stops at my foot, I throw it again. Rolling back to me, this time the ball takes a detour, rolling against the grade, breaking that Law of Gravity. The ball circles in the pool of Hank’s crankcase oil, soaking up the black muck. Stained black, the tennis ball rolls within kicking distance of my bare foot. Looping, jumping, doubling back on itself, the ball leaves a trail of black across the gray concrete; then it stops. A black tennis ball, round as the period at the end of a sentence. A dot at the bottom of an exclamation point.
The stupid black Lab shakes, too close, spraying me with dog water from its sopping fur. The stink of wet dog and spatters of mud stick everywhere on my jeans and T-shirt.
The ball’s oily, black trail forms letters, those letters spelling words across the concrete parking lot, writing the sentence: “Please help me!”
The ball returns to the puddle of engine oil, soaking its fuzz with black, then rolling, writing in big, loopy handwriting: “We need to rescue her.”
As I reach to pick it up, just squatting down to grab the tennis ball, it bounces a few steps away. I take a step, and the ball bounces again, reaching the edge of the parking lot. As I follow, it bounces, coming to a complete stop as if glued to the road, leading me out of the cemetery. I follow, the blacktop burning hot and sharp under my bare feet, hopping from one foot to the other. The ball leads, bouncing a row of black dots down the road ahead of me like the twin tracks of Jenny and Hank’s footprints, leading nowhere. The black Lab follows. A sheriff’s patrol car cruises past, not slowing. At the stop sign where the cemetery road meets the county road, the ball stops, waiting for me to catch up.
With each bounce, it leaves less oil. Me, I’m not feeling much, I’m so pulled forward by this vision of the impossible. The ball stops bouncing, stuck in one spot now. A car trails us, crawling along at the same speed. The horn honks, and I turn to see Hank behind the wheel; Jenny sits beside him in the front seat. Rolling down the shotgun window, Jenny leans her head out, her long hair hanging down the outside of the car door, and she says, “Are you crazy? Are you high?” With one arm, Jenny reaches into the backseat, then reaches out the car window, holding my shoes in her hand. She says, “For crying out loud, just look at your feet….”
With each step, my raw feet leave behind a little more red—blood—my footprints stamped in blood on the pavement, marking my path all the way from the cemetery parking lot. Stopped in this one spot, I’m standing in a puddle of my own red juice, not feeling the sharp gravel and broken glass on the roadside.
One bounce ahead of me, the tennis ball waits.
Sitting behind the steering wheel, Hank twists one shoulder backward, hooking his arm over the seat back and pinching the tab of the door lock between two fingers. Pulling up the tab, he reaches down and yanks the handle to throw open the door, saying, “Get in the car.” He says, “Get in the fucking car, now.”
Jenny swings her hand, dropping my tennis shoes so they fly halfway to where I stand, flapping down in the roadside gravel. Their tongues and laces hang out, tangled.
Standing here, my feet dark as hooves or church shoes, so coated with dried blood and dust, all I can do is point at the dirty tennis ball … fat, black houseflies circling me … except the ball only sits there, not moving, not leading me anywhere, stopped along the edge of the blacktop where the pigweeds grow.
Hank punches the middle of his steering wheel, blasting me with a gigantic honk. A second honk comes so loud it echoes back from the nowhere over the horizon. All the flat sugar beet fields, the crops all around me and their car, filled with Hank’s loud horn. Under the car hood the engine revs, the pushrods banging and cams knocking, and Jenny leans out her shotgun window, saying, “Don’t make him pissed off.” She says, “Just get in the car.”
A flash of black jumps past my legs, and the stupid Labrador jumps in the door Hank holds open. With his twisted-around arm, Hank yanks the door shut and cranks the steering wheel hard to one side. Flipping a big U-turn, his beater car tears off. Gravel rattling inside the wheel wells. Jenny’s one hand still trailing out her open window. After them, Hank’s tires leave twin smoking tracks of burned rubber. That stink.
Watching them go, I bend over to pick up my shoes. It’s right then when—pock—something slams into the back of my head. Rubbing my scalp with one hand, I turn to look at what hit me, and already the stupid tennis ball is on the move, bouncing down the road in the opposite direction from Hank’s car.
Kneeling down, knotting my shoes, I yell, “Wait!” Only the ball keeps going.
Running after it, I yell, “Hold up!” And the ball keeps bouncing, bouncing, big jumps right in line with the road. At the stop sign for Fisher Road, mid-jump, at the highest point in one bounce, the ball cuts to the right. Turning the corner in midair, and bouncing down Fisher, me still trucking along behind. Down Fisher, past the junkyard where it turns into Millers Road, there the ball turns left onto Turner Road and starts going upriver, parallel to the bank of Skinners Creek. Staying out of the trees, the oil-soaked, dust-packed tennis ball really flies along, puffing up a little cloud of dirt every time it smacks down in the road.
Where two old wheel ruts leave the road and run through the weeds, the ball turns right, rolling now. The ball rolls along the dried mud of one rut, swerving to go around the worst puddles and potholes. My shoelaces dangle and whip against my ankles. Me panting, shuffling along after the ball, losing sight of it in the tall grass. Catching sight of it when it bounces, bouncing in one place until I find it there. I follow, and the houseflies follow me. Then, rolling along the rut, the ball leads me into the cottonwood trees that grow along the creekside.
Nobody’s standing in line to give me any scholarship. Not after my three big fat D grades Mr. Lockard handed me in algebra, geometry, and physics. But I’m almost sure no ball should be able to roll uphill, not forever. No tennis ball can stop perfectly still in one place, then start up bouncing off by itself. It’s an impossibility, how this ball comes flying out of nowhere, socking me in the forehead to grab my attention anytime I even look away.
One step into the trees, I need to stop and let my eyes adjust. Just that one little wait, and—pow—I have dirty tennis ball stamped on my face. My forehead feeling greasy and smelling like motor oil. Both my hands raise up by reflex, swatting at air the way you’d fight off a hornet too fast to see. I’m waving away nothing but air, and the tennis ball is already jumping out ahead of me, the thumping, thudding sound going off through the woods.
Going all the way to the creek bank, the ball leaps out ahead, then stops. In the mud between two forked roots of a cottonwood tree, it rolls to a standstill. As I catch up, it makes a little bounce, not knee high. It makes a second bounce, this time waist high. The ball bounces shoulder high, head high, always landing in the same exact spot, and with every landing it pushes itself deeper into the mud. Bouncing higher than I could reach, up around the leaves of the tree, the ball clears away a little hole, there, between the roots.
The sounds of birds, the magpies, stop. Silence. No mosquitoes or buzz of deer flies. Nothing makes any sound except this ball and my heartbeat in my chest. Both thudding faster and faster.
Another bounce, and the ball clinks against metal. Not a sharp sound, more a clank, like hitting a home run off the gutter of old Mr. Lloyd’s house, or skipping a rock off the roof of a car parked on Lovers Lane. The ball hits dirt, hard as if it’s pulled with a magnet, stops, and rolls to one side. And deep in the hole it’s dug, a little brass shines out. The metal of something buried. The brass lid of a canning jar, printed Mason, same as your mom would put up tomatoes in for the winter.
No ball has to tell me more. I dig, my hands clawing away the mud, my fingers slippery around the buried glass outsides of the jar. The tennis ball waiting, I kneel there and pull this dirty jar out from the sucking mud, big around as a blue-ribbon turnip. The glass so smeared with mud I can’t see what feels so heavy inside.
Using spit, spit and my T-shirt still wet from the graveyard sprinklers, I wipe. The lid stuck on, tight, swollen with rust and crud. I spit and wipe until something gold is looking back from inside the glass: gold coins, showing the heads of dead presidents and flying eagles. The same as you’d find if you followed a stupid leprechaun to the base of a rainbow—if you believed that crap—here’s a quart jar filled with gold coins packed so tight together they don’t rattle. They don’t roll. All they do is shine as bright as the alloy wheels I’m going to buy to blow Hank’s crap-burner car off the road. Bright as the diamond ring I’ll take Jenny to buy at the Crossroad Mall. Right here in my two hands—and, pow.
The bright gold replaced with shooting stars. The smell of motor oil.
The next smell, my own nose collapsed and filling with blood. Busted.
The tennis ball blasts against my face, bouncing angry as a hornet. Slugging me, the ball flies in my face while I fight it back with the heavy jar, shielding my eyes, my arm muscles burning from the gold’s weight. Blood runs down from my nose, sputtered out by my yelling. Twisting one foot in the slick mud, I launch over the creek bank. Same as Cub Scouts teaches you to do in a wasp attack, I splash into the water and wade out to over my head.
From underwater, between me and the sky, the ball floats on the surface of the creek. Waiting. The heavy jar of gold coins holds me tight to the rocks on the creek bed, but rolling it along, my chest full of my breath, I work my way upstream. The current carries the tennis ball downstream while the gold anchors me, cut off from the sun and air. Working my way into the shallows, the moment my breath gives out and the ball’s nowhere to be seen, I pop my head up for a gasp. One big breath and I duck back under. The ball’s floating, bobbing, maybe a half mile downstream, hard to tell because it looks so oily black on the deep water, but the ball’s following the trail of my nose blood, tracking me in the direction of the current.
When my new air gives out, I stand up half out of the water and wade to shore, hauling the gold and making as little splash and noise as possible. Sniffing the blood back up my busted nose. One look backward over my shoulder, and already the ball’s swimming, slow as a paddling mallard, against the current, coming after me.
Another Sir Isaac Newton impossibility.
With both my arms wrapped around that jar full of gold, I scramble up the creekside, the water squishing in my shoes, and I take off running through the woods.
With my every running step, mud slides under my shoes. The jar swings me sideways, almost off balance, spinning me when I jerk too far the other way. My chest aches, my ribcage feels caved in. With every landing I just about fall on my face, grabbing the jar so tight that if I fell, the glass would bust and stab straight into my eyes and heart. I’d bleed right to death, slipped here facedown in a puddle of mud and gold and broken glass. From behind, the tennis ball shoots through the leaves, snapping twigs and branches, whistling the same whiz-bang noise as a bullet ripping through the Vietnam jungle next to somebody’s head in some television war movie.
Maybe one good bounce before the ball catches me, I duck low. There, the rotted trunk of a cottonwood has busted and fallen, and I stuff the heavy jar deep into the boggy center of the roots, the mud cave where the tree’s pulled out from the ground on one side. The gold, my gold, hidden. The ball probably doesn’t see because it keeps after me as I run faster, jumping and crashing my way through blackberry vines and saplings, stomping up sprays of muddy water until I hit the gravel of Turner Road. My shoes chew up the gravel, my every long jump shakes the water from my clothes. The cemetery sprinkler water replaced by dog piss replaced by Skinners Creek replaced by me sweating, the legs of my jeans rub me, the denim stiff with stuck-on dust. Me, panting so hard I’m ready to blow both lungs out my mouth, turned inside out, my innards puked out like pink bubble-gum bubbles.
Midway between one running step and the next, the moment both my legs are stretched out, one in front and the other in back of me, in midair, something slams me in the back. Stumbling forward, I recover, but this something smacks me again, square in my backbone between my shoulder blades. Just as hard, arching my back, something hits me, a third go-round. It hits the back of my head, hard as a foul ball or a bunt in softball. Fast as a line drive fresh off the sweet spot of a Louisville Slugger, slamming you dead-on, this something hits me another time. The stink of crankcase oil. Shooting stars and comets swimming in my eyes, I pitch forward, still on my feet, running full tilt.
I’m winded, sucking air, and blinded with sweat; my feet tangle together, the something wings me one more time, beaning the top of my skull, and I go down. The bare skin of my elbows plow the gravel. My knees and face dive into the dust of my landing. My teeth grit together with the dirt in my mouth, and my eyes squeeze shut. The mystery something punches my ribs, slugs my kidneys as I squirm on the road. This something bounces, hard, to break my arms. It keeps bouncing, piledriving its massive impact, drilling me in my gut, slugging my ears while I curl tight to protect my nuts.
Past the moment I could still walk back and show the ball where the gold’s hidden, almost to the total black of being knocked out, I’m pounded. Beat on. Until a gigantic honk wakes me up. A second honk saves me, so loud it echoes back from the nowhere over the horizon, all the bottomland cottonwoods and tall weeds all around me filled with Hank’s loud car horn. Hank’s whitewall tires skid to a stop.
Jenny’s voice says, “Don’t make him pissed off.” She says, “Just get in the car.”
I pop open my eyes, glued with blood and dust, and the ball just sits next to me in the road. Hank’s pulled up, idling his engine. Under the car hood the engine revs, the pushrods banging and cams knocking.
Looking up at Jenny, I spit blood. Pink drool leaks out, running down my chin, and my tongue can feel my chipped teeth. One eye almost swelled shut, I say, “Jenny?” I say, “Will you marry me?”
The filthy tennis ball, waiting. Jenny’s dog, panting in the backseat of the car. The jar filled with gold, hidden where only I can find it.
My ears glow hot and raw. My lips split and bleeding, I say, “If I can beat Hank Richardson just one game in tennis, will you marry me?”
Spitting blood, I say, “If I lose, I’ll buy you a car. I swear.” I say, “Brand-new with electric windows, power steering, a stereo, the works …”
The tennis ball sits, nested in the gravel, listening. Behind his steering wheel, Hank shakes his head side to side. “Deal,” Hank says. “Hell, yeah, she’ll marry you.”
Sitting shotgun, her face framed in the car window, Jenny says, “It’s your funeral.” She says, “Now climb in.”
Getting to my feet, standing, I stoop over and grab the tennis ball. For now, just something rubber filled with air. Not alive, in my hand the ball just feels wet with the creek water, soft with a layer of gravel dust. We drive to the tennis courts behind the high school, where nobody plays and the white lines look faded. The chain-link fences flake red rust, they were built so long ago. Weeds grow through the cracked concrete, and the tennis net sags in the middle.
Jenny flips a quarter, and Hanks gets to serve first.
His racquet whacks the ball, faster than I can see, into a corner where I could never reach, and Hank gets the first point. The same with his second point. The same with the whole first game.
When the serve comes to me, I hold the tennis ball close by my lips and whisper my deal. My bargain. If the ball helps me win the match—to win Jenny—I’ll help with the gold. But if I lose to Hank, it can pound me dead and I’ll never tell where the gold is hidden.
“Serve, already!” Hank yells. He says, “Stop kissing the damned ball….”
My first serve drills Hank, ka-pow, in his nuts. My second takes out his left eye. Hank returns my third serve, fast and low, but the tennis ball slows to almost a stop and bounces right in front of me. With my every serve, the ball flies faster than I could ever hit it and knocks another tooth out of Hank’s stupid mouth. Any returns, the ball swerves to me, slows, and bounces where I can hit it back.
No surprise, but I win.
Even crippled as I look, Hank looks worse, his eyes almost swollen shut. His knuckles puffed up and scabbed over. Hank’s limping from so many drives straight to his crotch. Jenny helps him lie down in the backseat of his car so she can drive him home.
I tell her, “Even if I won, you don’t have to go out with me….”
And Jenny says, “Good.”
I ask if it would make any difference if I was rich. Really super rich.
And Jenny says, “Are you?”
Sitting alone on the cracked tennis court, the ball looks red, stained with Hank’s blood. It rolls, making looping blood-red handwriting that reads, “Forget her.”
I wait and wait, then shake my head. “No. I’m not rich.”
After they drive away, I pick up the tennis ball and head back toward Skinners Creek. From under the roots of the downed cottonwood tree, I lift out the Mason jar heavy with gold coins. Carrying the jar, I drop the ball. As it rolls away, I follow. Rolling uphill, violating every law of gravity, the ball rolls all afternoon. Rolling through weeds and sand, the ball rolls into the twilight. All this time, I follow behind, lugging that jar of gold treasure. Down Turner Road, down Millers Road, north along the old highway, then westbound along dirt roads with no name.
A bump rides the horizon, the sun setting behind it. As we get closer, the bump grows into a lump. A shack. From closer up, the shack is a house sitting in a nest of paint curls peeled off its wood by the weather and fallen to make a ring around its brick foundation. The same way dead skin peels off a sunburn. The bare wood siding curves and warps. On the roof, the tar paper shingles buckle and ripple. Stapled to the front door, a sheet of yellow-color paper says, “Condemned.”
The yellow paper, turned more yellow by the sunset. The gold in the Mason jar, shining even deeper gold in the yellow light.
The tennis ball rolls up the road, up the dirt driveway. It bounces up the brick steps, hitting the front door with a hollow sound. Bouncing off the porch, the ball beats the door again. From inside the house come footsteps, creaking and echoing on bare wood. From behind the closed door, the “Condemned” sign, a voice says, “Hello?”
A witch voice, cracked and brittle as the warped wood siding. A voice faint as the faded colors of paint flaked on the ground.
I knock, saying, “I have a delivery, I think….”
The jar of gold, stretching my arm muscles into thin wire, into my bones almost breaking.
The tennis ball bounces off the door, again, beating one drumbeat.
The witch’s voice says, “Go away, please.”
The ball bounces against the wood door, only now the sound is metal. A clack of metal. A clank. Across the bottom of the door stretches a slot framed in gold-colored metal with the word “Letters” written under it.
Crouching down, then kneeling, I unscrew the Mason jar. Twisting off the cap, I put the lip of the jar against the “Letters” slot and tip the jar, shaking it to loosen up the coins inside. Kneeling there on the front porch, I pour the gold through the slot in the door. The coins rattle and ring, tumbling inside and rolling across the bare floor. A jackpot spilling out where I can’t see. When the glass jar is empty, I leave it on the porch and start down the steps. Behind me, the doorknob pops, the snap of a lock turning, a deadbolt sliding open. The hinges creak, and a crack of inside darkness appears along one edge of the frame.
From that inside darkness, the witch voice says, “My husband’s coin collection …”
The tennis ball, sticky with Hank’s blood, coated with dirt, rolls along at my heels, following me the way Jenny’s dog follows her. Tagging along the way I used to follow Jenny.
The witch voice says, “How did you find them?”
From the porch, the voice says, “Did you know my husband?”
The voice shouts, “Who are you?”
But me, I only keep walking away.