Snow Angels

In time, effectively with no hope of having things as they used to be, Butch Parker brought himself to go out with other girls.  There was Betty, the girl suggested to him by Arm and Arm’s girl Toot, as they called her.  She was nice, Betty, a little large, but nice.  Betty went to a basketball game with Butch and Arm and Arm’s girl Toot, as they called her, and Butch felt funny walking into the glare of the gym with Betty clip-clopping behind him.  He felt funny sitting there with Betty, who smelled faintly like a horse’s saddle in a field of daisies, while Assface launched his famous rainmakers from beyond the three-point line, and Rene hopped and skipped daintily about in front of the appreciative home crowd, squeaking, “Go! Fight! Win!  Go! Fight! Win!”

Butch sat there trying to make Rene out to be not so hot, not such a dish, not the sweet angel she had been in the days when the two of them had been an item, while Arm slammed box after box of popcorn and bitched at the referees and at Assface’s rainmakers, his face red and sweating, kernels of corn spurting from his lips and sprinkling down on the white hair of the lady sitting in front of him.

After the game, Arm parked his car in the woods, and Arm’s girl Toot opened a twelve-pack and started passing beers around.  So the four of them sat in Arm’s Skylark, in the snowy woods, Arm and Toot in front, Butch and Betty in back, downing brews and trying to get a good station on the radio.  It was not long before Arm and Toot began to fool around in front, pawing at each other and giggling.  And then their heads merged into one and Butch heard the quiet smacking of their lips, like raindrops splatting into mud.  Butch and Betty sat stiffly in the backseat, stiffly drinking their beers.

The moon shined down through the naked branches, cold and blue on the snow, white on the hood and silver on Arm’s imported hood ornament of a nude woman.  The wind came in hard gusts and was gone.  Butch thought he heard the beating of his own heart—thump-thump, thump-thump, thumpity-thump.  He knew it was his heart, because his heart had a skip in it.

Hard as Butch tried, he could not even go to this secluded place in the dead woods, where the snow fell lonely into the clearings and the tree branches creaked coldly, not even out here, where reflected light was like breath, and not have the memory of Rene there with him.  The texture of her legs, the whiteness of her teeth, the cottony quality of her hair, the mintiness of her breath all hung on Butch’s every thought, his every word, even on his every void in between.

“Do you like to ski?” Betty said to Butch.

Caught off guard, Butch said he was unsure.  Then in animated tones, Betty recounted an elaborate history of her skiing, detailing one of the more memorable outings, where she went down the big hill for the first time and nearly crashed into a tree and once fell down and went spinning out of control through a crowd of people at the bottom of the hill.  Butch pictured Betty in earmuffs and skin-tight ski pants, spinning out of control, her legs and arms twirling like the blade of an electric saw, like a cartoon, her face cherry red and giggling.

“I like you,” Betty told Butch.  “I think you’re a really neat guy.”

And later that evening, when Arm pulled up in front of Betty’s big house, Butch Parker had his moves all planned.  He stepped into the street with Betty.  She looked up into Butch’s face, her own face as round and sweet as a friendly pie.  Their foggy breaths blew at each other.  A faint smell of Christmas, laced with the gassy exhaust percolating from Arm’s catalytic converter, hung in the air.  Without saying a word, Butch stretched his arms around Betty’s big body, his fingertips squeezing the ample flesh of her lower back, and pulled her to him.  A wave of warmth splashed over him as his lips connected with hers in the cold air.  It was a big kiss, for Butch, including much tongue.  Why?  Butch had no idea.  Perhaps it had something to do with his inkling he would never see Betty again, and his kiss served as part celebration, part gratitude, part so-long.  Beneath the warm stretch material of her undershirt and the lump of her belt, Betty’s flesh molded itself to Butch’s fingertips, like good dough.

“Thanks for the game,” Betty said, her black eyes glittering in the cold, kind universe.

“Like I really remember who won,” Butch said with a chuckle.

Betty chuckled, too.

“And the beer.”

“No problem,” Butch said.

“And good conversation.”

“If you say so.”

“Will I see you again?”

Butch dug down deep inside, searching for a reason to say yes, to want to say yes.  He dug and dug, and dug some more, filling his trusty pail with the crust of the earth.  He got as far as a mile into igneous when his tongue began to rub like chalk against the roof of his mouth, and his teeth ground sandily against his teeth.  If only he could have had a drink, just a glass of life-giving water, he might have continued, but the walls were too close, the air too thin, and he climbed back up, changed for what he had witnessed, but vowing not to tell Betty.

Butch chuckled again.

Betty chuckled, too.

“I’ll give a call,” Butch said, unable to stop the words from escaping.

“Do you know my number?”

“It’s in the book, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  Do you know my last name?”

“Of course,” Butch said with a chuckle, but he did not have a clue.

They stood there another minute, holding hands in the cold night.  Butch Parker looked hard into Betty’s sweet pie face, attempting to roll, fold, unfold, pat, rub, flip, toss and/or tenderize it into the face of Rene.  In the secret tendons of his fingertips, he pressed and unpressed Betty’s flesh, praying for a resurrection.  Butch opened himself up for a bolt from Heaven, a whisper from above, a message from his higher power, a word from his better self—anything, even a minimal grunt from the Paleolithic Age.  But nothing happened beyond the growling of Arm’s catalytic converter.

“Well, good night,” Betty said.  “I had a really good time.”

And then she rose on her tiptoes and gave Butch a small cool kiss on the cheek.  It might as well have been the kiss of death, as far as Butch was concerned.  She turned and walked up the driveway to her big house.  Butch wanted to call out to Betty, but his words made no sound from the screaming hole within.  How could Betty be so kind?  How could she be so calm?

When Butch got back in Arm’s car, Arm and Toot were hooting.

“How come you’re hooting?” Butch said.

“Hooting?  What hooting?” Arm said, the fringes of his wiry, knotted black hair glowing in the dashboard light.

“That hooting I heard.”

“I didn’t hear no hooting,” Toot said, turning around to look at Butch Parker in the back seat.

Her face was a plain white tetherball floating above the front seat—no eyes, nose or mouth that Butch could see.  Cigarette smoke escaped from her face, rolling and curling toward the backseat, spreading like time-lapse photography.

“Anymore beers up there?” Butch said.

Toot’s tetherball disappeared, then reappeared with a glinting can of beer.

“Bonanza,” she said.  “Three more.  Slightly cold but not quite.”

Butch cracked it open and took a swallow.  Lukewarm carbonation popped all around the inside of his mouth.

“So I suppose you and Betty got a hot date planned,” Arm said, giving another hoot.

“Cut it out, Arm,” Toot said, leaning into his shoulder.  Arm’s car swerved to the left.  “I think they’re cute together.  She’s a nice girl.”

When she said this, her hair briefly ballooned on all sides.

“How come you’re hooting when you guys were the ones who set this up?” Butch said.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think she’s really sweet,” Toot said.

“I think I hurt her feelings,” Butch said.

“We just thought you needed to get out,” Arm said.

“Out?  Of where?”

“How’d you hurt her feelings?” Toot said.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Arm said.

“What’d you say?” Toot said.  “Did you say something mean?”

“No big deal,” Arm said.  “Money back, guaranteed.  Hey, how about an iced tea, there, Toots?”

“I’m not sure,” Butch said.  “Perhaps it was what I didn’t say.”  He lit a smoke and blew out a cloud that crashed into Toot’s, merging and spreading like a layer of stratus through the car’s interior.  “She might’ve been expecting more.”

“More?” Toot said.

“You mean, like, you know what?” Arm said, hooting.

“I don’t know what,” Butch said, “but things weren’t smooth, not to me at least.”

“Don’t get so uptight,” Arm said.

“Yeah, I think everything went just fine,” Toot said.

They rode in silence down a country road and through the snowy trees.  Arm’s headlights fanned out over snow that lay on the road like powder.  Butch listened to the sound of Arm’s tires humming down the chilled road.  He leaned an elbow against the chilled back window and rested the back of his neck in the palm of a hand, thinking.  The next thing Butch knew, Toot was elbowing Arm in the head.

“Toot, what’s the deal?” Arm said.  Toot said nothing, just kept elbowing, flapping like a bat in Arm’s face.  “Get outta here, Toot.”

Arm swatted at her.

And then, suddenly, the rear of Arm’s car began to fishtail.  Arm tried to maintain control, despite the condition of his blood.

“Got her?” Butch said hopefully, sitting up and stretching his neck so that his head nearly touched the ceiling.

“I think she’s in trouble,” Arm said, his voice quavering.

The car continued to fishtail.  Arm’s hands were pasted to the wheel, his elbows thrust outward like an offensive lineman’s on a trap play.  For a good quarter mile, Arm and his fishtailing rear end sustained a healthy dialogue, a playful interlude of symmetrical questioning and answering, while Butch found himself thinking how nice it would be to feel what he was feeling every minute of his life, regardless of setting or situation, how it might even deliver him from the memory of his beloved.

“How we doing up there, buddy?” Butch said, neck stretched to the max, fingernails dug into the back of the front seat.

“Not too hot,” Arm said, now making up every question, guessing at every answer.

And then the lights swung all the way to the left of the road, slicing across the tree trunks, through the branches, along an old fence, then skipping across the road already traveled and into more trees, now some telephone poles, mailboxes, driveways, houses, trees, road, windows, parked cars, road, branches, field, road, roof, road, trees, road, trees, trees, bigger trees, trunks of trees, giant walls of bark.

“I’m proud of you,” Butch said to Arm.  “It was a hell of an effort.”

“And you know I love you, too,” Arm said.

“You guys!” Toot wailed, as the car spun off the road, tires skidding through gravel, and into the woods.  Brittle branches clacked against the windows and screeched along the sides of the car, while the tires bounced faithfully along a lumpy bed of roots and pine needles.  For those seconds, there were no opposites in Butch’s world—no up and down, left and right, high and low, good and evil, love and hate, man and woman; there were only the tendons of his jaws and braced elbows, the muscles in his neck and chest and the prickly blood crowning his skull.

A couple of hard clunks and ominous creaks later, Arm had managed to corral his Skylark to a reasonably crash-free stop.  When Butch opened his eyes, the ornament of the nude woman on Arm’s hood seemed poised for an ascension into the bright snowflakes that drifted down through the dark like moths.  The hood and the ornament seemed twice their actual sizes, wedged and glowing between two sycamore trunks.  The left headlight beam cut upward through the falling flakes, while the right beam shone downward into swampy ground.  Arm and Toot were frozen forward in their seats, Arm with his hands still firmly on the wheel, Toot with her nails dug into the dash above the glove box, the silhouettes of their round heads inches from the windshield, clumps of hair sticking out as though they had just awakened from a long slumber.

“How’s the view from up there?” Butch said.

“Spectacular,” Arm exhaled.

“Not too shabby from here, either,” Butch said.

Toot’s hair appeared to be vibrating in the light of the window.

“Arrrgh,” she groaned.  “Ggggarrrgh.”

“What’s a matter, Toot?” Arm said.

“G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g.”

“We’re gonna have to ticket you, is all,” Arm said.

“G-g-grr ... g-g-g-arrrgh,” Toot groaned, her nails still dug into the dash, puffed-out hair framed by the window light.

Arm pushed once on the gas pedal.  The tires screamed in place.

“Combination mud and snow,” Butch said.

“Astute observation, there, partner,” Arm said, again giving it the gas.  “Smells like a pickle.”

He tried rocking forward and backward.

“She’s only digging in worse,” Butch said.

Arm sat quietly for a moment, staring through the windshield.

“Got your boots on, Toot?” he said, not looking at her.

“You’re kidding,” Toot said.  “Where are we?”

“The South Pole,” Arm said, turning around to face Butch.  “Guess it’s you and me, buddy.”

“You’re not leaving me here,” Toot said.

“You gotta steer,” Arm said.

“How?”

Arm shook his head.

“Come on,” he said to Butch.

Butch pulled on his gloves and followed Arm out into the snow.

“Arrrgh,” Toot groaned as they sealed her off inside.

And as Toot rocked the car back and forth, spinning snowy mud into the shins of Butch and Arm, Butch kept an eye on the nude woman aspiring to ascend into the snowflakes.  She lunged upward a number of times, only to float downward with the snowflakes.  Because of her, Butch did not feel the cold, despite that he was clad only in tennis shoes, jeans, plaid shirt and a sleeveless down vest.  Butch did not feel the frosty mud splashing into his shins.  He did not feel his ears or his toes numbing up.

“If it gets, you know ... ” Arm said with a grunt, shoving on the bumper with all the brawn he could marshal, “I mean, you know ... bad?  You go for help.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Butch said.

Butch listened to the snow floating down onto the brittle branches and swampy ground, landing like the hem of a woman’s dress upon a wooden floor.

“It’s a long way to the nearest home,” Butch said.

“You just go on without me,” Arm said.

“What’re you talking about?  Where am I going?”

Arm made a limp sweeping motion with one hand in the general direction of the main road.

“Take Toot.  She’s a good girl.”

Butch and Arm shoved some more, but the tires only screamed in place, and the nude woman only thrust toward the darkness and floated back down with the snowflakes.

“Ah, bite me,” Arm said finally, taking his hands off the trunk and staggering toward the front of the car.

Butch watched him disappear in the darkness, then reappear in front of the disfigured headlight beams, like a haunted scarecrow staggering forth into the woods.

His silhouette advanced deeper into a thicket of spruce and poplar, swaying side to side.  Now and then, part of a hand, an elbow, a hip, grazed one of the broken headlight beams.  And then he was gone.  Toot was silent.  Butch removed his hands from the back of the car, spectral breath percolating from his mouth and nostrils, and peered into the woods a moment longer, then walked to the driver’s side window and lightly wrapped his knuckles against the plexiglass.  Toot’s white face appeared.

“I just wanna ask whether you saw anything,” Butch said.

Toot spoke, her lips moving, but the sound was muffled.  Butch made a motion for her to roll down the window.  Her face jerked backward.

“Forget it,” Butch said, waving her off, and headed toward the woods.

A few feet into his journey, he heard the window roll down.

“Hi, Butchie,” Toot said.

“What’s your problem?”

“Where’s my Arm?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”  Toot crinkled up her face and began to pout.  “Wanna come out and look with me?” Butch said.

“He’s dead.  I just know he’s dead,” Toot said, biting a thumbnail.  A teardrop twinkled at the corner of an eye.  “Do you need a beer?”  She peered around, jerking her head this way and that, like some kind of deranged doll.  “Does anybody need a beer!?”

“What were you doing back there?” Butch said, motioning with his head toward the road.

“Where?  What?  Was it something bad?”  Toot bit the back of a hand, her eyes bulging.  “I suppose everybody hates me, now.”

“I’m going to look,” Butch said.

“You go ahead and look,” Toot whispered seriously.  “Yes, you go ahead and look.”  Her eyes darted left and right.  “I’ve got beer if anybody needs one.”

And then her face sunk away and the window rolled shut.

Butch made his way between the headlights.  Snowflakes nearly saturated the air now, pelting his face like crocodile drops of frosted water.  He had just entered a deeper darkness when, up ahead, he spotted a lump on the ground, a lump unrelated to the natural terrain.  As he moved closer to the lump, he noticed it was breathing indistinctly, somewhat like a roast basting in an oven.  The lump appeared to resemble Arm, all right, lying in the fetal position and already shrouded in a thin layer of snow.

Gingerly, Butch tip-toed to the lump, his tennis shoes crunching on the thickening quilt of snow.  He leaned over and poked the lump with a finger.  The lump groaned but did not move.  Butch poked it again.

“Am I done yet?” the muffled voice of Arm said.

“It’s freezing out here,” Butch said.

“Don’t feel a thing, sport.”

Arm’s lips, from what Butch could tell, appeared to be swollen, though the light of the falling snow played tricks with the shapes of the branches and in the darkness below.

“We need your help back there,” Butch said, trying to keep from trembling.

“I told you.  Didn’t I tell you?” Arm said.  “You gotta go on without me.”

Again Arm flicked a hand toward the road above.

“We’re in big trouble if we don’t get out of here.”

“You can do it.  The bus is fortified, rigged with sheet metal.”

“We’ve been gone most of the night.  And I don’t know about you, but my folks can’t be too happy about this.”

“What, are they clairvoyant?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have happy folks, Butch?  I mean, normally,” Arm said, “on normal nights?”

“I suppose so,” Butch said, for a second sounding to himself as though he were a character in an old Christmas movie.  “No, I don’t know.  But you better give me your hand before you catch hypothermia.”

“My folks aren’t happy,” Arm, or the lump that signified Arm, said.

“Here, give me your hand.”

“Because they wanted to farm, but no one’ll let them anymore.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Of course I’m hurt.”

“Want me to get help?”

“How about it?  Can you?”

“Of course.  Where are you hurt?”

“Right here,” Arm said, limply poking his stomach.

“How?” Butch said.  “When?”

“I don’t remember.  It was too long ago.”

“I better go back and settle Toot.  She seemed worried.”

The lump groaned, squirming.  Butch wondered what kind of angel in the snow this could be, this angel without wings.  Perhaps a caterpillar angel.  A larval angel?  Pupal?

“You can stay, if you want,” Butch said, “but somebody’s gotta get your car back on the road.”

“And don’t forget about Toot,” Arm said.  “Give her my best, and make sure she follows your instructions, Butchie.  Tell her I said so.  Tell her Arm said that’s the way it’s gotta be.”

Butch shrugged and trudged back to the car.  He heard nothing from Toot as he approached in the light of the broken beams.  The car was silent, having stalled.  A wet layer of snow already covered the windows.  With the heel of a gloved hand, Butch wiped a hole in the snow on the driver’s side window.  Toot was asleep in the front seat.  The door was locked.  Butch removed the glove and wrapped his knuckles against the plexiglass.  Toot did not stir.  He wrapped again, harder.  Toot lay on her side, unmoving.  A song came in muffled tones from the radio.  Butch listened more closely and winced.  It was a song from his days with Rene.

“Hey Toot,” Butch shouted, wrapping on the plexiglass.  “Toot, Toot.”

His knuckles hurt.  He turned around, feeling with his tennis shoes for something to knock against the window, but within a three-yard radius, he found nothing but snow and soil.  So he reached for a dead branch on a tree and, white breath pluming from his mouth, snapped it off and reapproached the death vehicle.  With a burst of anger, he swatted the branch against the plexiglass, and suddenly Toot’s face was there.

“Toot!” Butch said, his heart pounding.

Toot rolled down the window to her nose.

“Butchie,” she said sweetly, “how’s it going?”

“Is there anything wrong with this picture?” Butch said.  Toot, her hair all puffed out and clumpy, looked around.  “Look closely now.”

“Yes?”

“Toot.”

“But this is so hard,” she said, scratching her clumpy hair.

“For one, we’re stuck out here in the middle of the woods,” Butch said.  “For another, Arm’s lying face down in the snow, talking nonsense.  For another, it’s way past our bedtime.  And for one more, the car’s stalled and you’ve got the lights on.”

“I told you it was hard,” Toot said, the heat from her face breezing into Butch’s.

“Move over,” Butch said.

“Where’re we going?” Toot said, scooting over a foot or so.

“You’ve gotta unlock the door first.”

“Oh,” she said, scooting back and unlocking the door, again releasing a temperate dose of heat into Butch’s face.

Butch got in and cranked the key.  Arm’s engine coughed and sputtered to life, as the bent beams of light genuflected briefly in the dark and rose again.  Toot said nothing, gazing straight ahead as though they might have been traveling down a highway.

Butch began to rock the car but did not feel much play.

“Can I help?” Toot said.

“Just tryin to get her rockin,” Butch said through grunts.

“That’s a good idea,” Toot said.  “Very clever.”

Butch gritted his teeth, pushing and pulling the car back and forth from reverse to drive.  The back tires screamed.  The snow fell silently, mockingly, blurring his vision through the windshield.

“Need a beer?” Toot said.  Butch ignored her.  “None left, anyway.”  She bent toward the floor on the passenger side and rummaged around.  She popped back up, fluffed up her hair in back.  “Nope.  I was right.”

Butch began to feel a transformation from within, a familiar surging of adrenaline.  He leaned into the windshield, grinding his teeth, huffing and puffing and slamming the gear shift up and down, willing something to happen, to give.  A mean blue cloud of smoke floated up past the front windows, smelling like gas and rubber.

“Slow down, Butchie,” Toot cried.  “You’re going to kill somebody.”

But Butch heard nothing.  Mud and snow, roots and soil, twigs, dirt crumbs, clods and rocks shot in all directions—cracking, crumbling under the car, twanging against the hubcaps, knocking against the tree trunks.  And then finally, like a whale lumbering up out of the water, the car broke free of the swamp’s grip, its nude woman ornament leaping upward in glory, headlights rising to the sky, then plunging back to level earth.

Still leaning forward, eyeballs nearly touching the windshield, Butch barreled through the narrow opening between the trees, cutting down bushes and branches, rear end fishtailing, tires growling like those of a haul truck.  Toot sat stiffly next to him, staring straight ahead.  Butch skidded to a stop by the place where Arm had been, but Arm was gone, having left a cocoon-like imprint in the snow.  Butch jumped out of the car and trotted around in a dark maze of dead trees, calling out Arm’s name.  He hopped back in the car and gunned it, wheeling sideways up a slope toward the road.  The car lurched; Toot ducked.  The car spun; Toot ducked.  The car hopped, bounced, plummeted; Toot ducked.  With his foot steady on the pedal, his face against the windshield, Butch steered Arm’s beast back onto the road, hitting the smooth paved road like a wild steer and swerving into the right lane.

“Hey,” Butch said, “what’s that up ahead?”

“I can’t look.”

It was Arm, waving his arms from the side of the road, as though directing a takeoff.  Butch hit the skids, fishtailing into the gravel on the road’s shoulder, causing Arm to dance in a crouched position, resembling a silent film comedian.  As Butch brought the Skylark to a stop, Arm sidestepped in front of the bumper, slammed the palms of his hands on the hood and felt his way to the driver’s side.

Butch rolled down the window.  Arm’s face appeared, lightly dusted with large flakes of snow.  Toot screamed.

“Bizarre,” Arm breathed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Butch said.

“Nothin, man,” Arm said.  “Just takin the scenic route.  Hi, Toot.”

“Look at his lips.  He’s been injured,” Toot said.  “Get in here right now.”

“Butch and I’ve already been through that,” Arm said, waving off Toot’s concern.  “Come on, Butchie.”  He flashed a wide grin.  “Move on over.”

“You okay to drive?”

“Well, look.”  Arm backed away and placed his fingertips on his chest.  “What do you think?”  His eyes were horror-movie wide.  He broke into a little soft-shoe on the side of the road.  Butch heard the balls of his feet tapping softly in the gravel.  “Well?  Did I tell you?”  Arm’s breath puffed out in little white clouds that rose toward the overcast.  Dumbstruck, Butch stared at Arm.  “What’s the matter?” Arm said.  “Let’s go.  Let’s go.”  He motioned with an arm down the middle of the road, as if ushering in the next act.  “Let’s go.”

Butch got out of the car and into the backseat.  Arm got in, dripping with snow, his hair matted to his head.

“Everybody okay?” he said.  “All set here?”

“We’re out of beer,” Toot said.

“If Butchie wasn’t such a fish back there,” Arm said.

On the way to Butch’s, just for old time’s sake, Arm drove by Rene’s home.  All the windows were dark.

She’s asleep behind one of those windows, Butch thought, while Arm’s radio crackled and fizzed.  She’s behind there somewhere, curled on a mattress, under a downy comforter.  He saw the hem of her nightie on her centerfold legs.  He touched a cotton strap of her nightie.  He sniffed her bony white shoulder.  But Butch felt too large for Rene’s bedroom, too bulky and dense, like a chronic poker player from the lodge, like a third-string tackle with undersized shoulder pads, like an unwanted King Kong.  Butch exhaled a prayer, as Arm drove unsteadily on, weaving slightly down the snowy side street.  Butch exhaled a silent prayer.  The words swirled in his head—words without shape, but words with sound, possibly color.  There was a feeling in Butch Parker’s head, like a waving.  This must be what praying is, a feeling in the head, like a song, but not a song.  Butch did not know.  He knew only that it was difficult to keep the prayer straight in his head.

But if only God knew how much Butch meant it.  If only God knew how happy He could make Butch.

If only God knew.