what a peculiar state we’re in

ao3: peculiarstate

She had a solid sixty extra on her and that was a problem for him. He liked a little heft. He liked a good squeeze at the hip. He liked the idea that at any moment, if she really put her back into it, she could crush the air right from his lungs. There was a spread of calendars laid out across the bar, eight-packed and artificially tanned men in red fire helmets beaming up at him from glossy cardstock, and she was leaning her chin on his shoulder, pointing with a plastic fingernail at the 2006-2007 edition, saying, “Now this one’s a real treat, we got all kinda ethnic fellas inside. What’s your preference? Yellow, red, brown? Not easy gettin’ this one up the chain, tell you the truth. But we had to, see. There was an organization claiming dis-crim-in-ation, threatening a lawsuit if we didn’t—how did Elwood put it? Diversify. Not my preference, but I’m just the sales gal! Ain’t up to me to judge what dampens the drawers, now is it?” She smelled like milk and cherries. She bought him three shots and five beers and a tray of onion rings and he bought out her remaining stock of 2006-2007 hunky firemen calendars. All the colors of the rainbow, he thought, why not. Later on, after some asshole puked all over his shoes, she’d given him a pair of unflattering white sneakers from the trunk of her ’84 Datsun and then they’d gone back to her place, where he’d come thrillingly close to experiencing a full measure of erotic asphyxiation. Later still, as he slept, she’d snuck out of the apartment with most of her belongings jammed into a rolling suitcase and no apparent intention of ever returning.

The kid woke him up with her screaming. He stumbled into the room, half-convinced he was in a lucid dream. Milk and Cherries hadn’t said one word about a kid. The girl was gripping the bars of her crib, face red and wet with furious tears. There was a note pinned to her chest. i can’t do it anymore she’s wrong she’s got the devil in her her name’s hannah please take her i know your a good man and thank you for buying my calendars.

***

The shoes were a size too small, fucking figured. He’d get Sam to clean the chuck from his boots once everything was settled. But at present Sam was sitting in the backseat of the car, holding the kid on one knee and whining about it like a little bitch.

“Would you slow fucking down?” he said. “She’s squirming all over the place. Where are we even going?”

“Put her in the seatbelt.”

“That’s not safe.”

“Well then I guess you’re out of options.”

Sam shook his head; Dean clocked it in the rearview. “You just had to, didn’t you. Couldn’t hold off for one night. Goddamn chubby chaser. We were supposed to be in Bemidji tomorrow, Bobby’s waiting for us.”

“Woah there, Stanford. Not very PC of you. Make me regret telling you things.”

The girl had started up crying again.

“We have no idea how to take care of a baby, Dean. Why didn’t you call the cops?”

Dean pressed harder into the pedal, watched the speedometer creep past ninety. “Yeah, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just ask me the world’s stupidest fucking question.”

“Anonymous tip? You could’ve been gone way before they showed up. How long have you been doing this?”

The main issue was Dean didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t want to admit that he had no plan. “You read the note.”

Long beat of silence from Sam, more whimpering from the kid. Then Sam said shh shh shh and he said it’s okay, sweetie, you’re okay and the kid said mama, which was the first intelligible thing to come out of her mouth since Dean had lifted her from the crib.

“Oh, shit, Dean,” Sam said, suddenly sounding very afraid. “Dean. What are we gonna do?”

Dean veered over to the shoulder and put the car in park and climbed into the backseat next to Sam and the girl. He put a hand on his brother’s cheek and drew his face up. “Listen to me. We’ll figure it out. When have we ever not figured it out?”

Sam looked at him, unblinking, and then he nodded. “Okay.”

“I said, when have we ever not figured it out?”

“Never. We always have.”

Dean pinched Sam’s cheek. It left a red mark on his skin. “Goddamn right.”

He palmed the girl’s head of dark brown curls, thought he’d never in his life felt a thing so soft.

***

One a.m. when he pulled up to the Roadhouse, on the frayed edge of his last nerve. Blood pulsed at his temple, the nape of his neck. Once Dean had decided that their best course of action was to bring the kid to Ellen, Sam had relaxed a bit, and when Sam relaxed Hannah relaxed too. Before long they were both asleep and had remained so for the rest of the two-hour drive to Nebraska.

“We’re here,” Dean said loudly. Sam didn’t stir. He always slept heavier in the car. Dean reached back and jostled his knee. “Sam.”

The girl, who was sheltered between Sam’s gigantor body and the sticky leather of the backseat, poked her head up. She had crease marks on her forehead and chin and she was a little sweaty.

“Wake that kid up for me, will ya?” Dean said. Hannah giggled. Well, she wasn’t screaming, at least. She whacked Sam’s stomach with her tiny hand. Sam jolted upright, knocked his head against the door handle.

“Fuck,” he said. Hannah giggled again, and at that Sam seemed to come back to himself, seemed to remember where they were and exactly the shit Dean had gotten them into. “Oh. Hi.” He waved at Hannah, then threw a dirty look to Dean.

“You wanna go prep the gang?” Dean asked.

“I thought you called.”

“I did. Still.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I’ll stay here with her. You have a more delicate touch.”

Sam scoffed. “You just don’t wanna get ass-beat by Ellen. Coward.”

“Maybe,” Dean said with a shrug. “I just drove six hours on a barely healed hangover. Toss her up here.”

“Toss her?”

He made grabby hands at Sam. “Whatever. Give her to me.”

Sam sighed, took the girl in his arms and carried her outside of the car and around to the passenger seat. He set her down gently and crouched so they were at eye-level. “I’ll be right back, okay? This man is nice. He’s crazy, but he’s nice. I’ll be right back.” She let out a half-hearted whimper as he walked away.

Dean stared down at the girl. Hannah. “You gotta take a pee?” He thought about how easily she’d gone with him back at the apartment. He’d ripped the note off her pajama shirt, tucked it into his pocket because he figured it’d be evidence or something, somewhere far down the line when their involvement in this situation had been terminated. Then he’d reached down and grabbed the kid, expecting some sort of protest—he was a strange man in her room, after all—but she’d given none. Dean didn’t really wanna think about why that was. The crying hadn’t started until the three of them were in the car heading north on 35. “You use the toilet or what?”

“Mama,” the girl said.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said, and turned his attention back to the entrance of the Roadhouse.

Fifteen minutes later Sam leaned out the front door and gestured for them to come inside. Dean thought it’d be good to offer to let the girl walk, stretch her legs a bit, but as soon as he put her down on the gravel she lifted her arms toward him. “Up,” she said.

“It’s like twenty steps,” Dean said.

“Up.”

“If you say so, your highness.” He picked her up and set her on his hip. A dampness seeped into his shirt. “Naturally,” he muttered. He hadn’t thought to grab anything from the girl’s room before leaving the apartment. Not a change of clothes, not a bottle. Did kids this age still use bottles? He recalled some sort of ratty stuffed animal that had been in the crib with her. Maybe she’d like something to hold. He circled back to the car, grabbed one of the calendars he’d stashed in the trunk and handed it to her. She held it in front of her face, wide-eyed. The thing was practically bigger than she was.

“Mama,” she said.

The rollout laminate floor didn’t reach all the way to the back of the tent where he was sitting so his chair sunk down into mud and his shoes sunk down into mud. In his lap he held the Gideon Bible he’d taken from the motel room. Leather and gold, pages crisp like they’d never been turned. A mosquito landed on his arm and he watched it for a second before flicking it away, smear of blood left behind. He put it back into himself with his tongue. There was a piano going and a tambourine and the two played out of sync with each other. A woman with red hair down to her waist spoke into a microphone, jumble of syllables and fast-moving consonant sounds that did not gather to form words. Her hand was raised, her eyes closed, and around him everyone else seemed to understand perfectly. He closed his eyes and raised his hand as if this might be the key. He laid open the Bible, palm down flat on the page. He knew how to pray, or thought he did, thought maybe prayer was just an opening of oneself. He opened himself. In his mind he said Here I am. He’d read the story of Samuel, how he’d offered himself to Eli, and then to God, this way. Here I am. There was not much of him to give. The woman continued speaking her language and then she started singing and then everyone started singing. All sorts of songs, none the same. The clatter of so many voices and so many songs like nothing he’d ever heard. Beside him a man with red and blistered skin stuttered out On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross. Sam didn’t know any songs that felt worthy so he stayed silent and tried to hold himself open and tried to listen for a voice speaking back. He looked up at the ceiling of the tent, swarming with moths and mosquitoes.

Well, it’s more like he tells you he’s leaving and you think you must’ve misheard him. You say What? What?

But you didn’t mishear him.

Your brother says he got into Stanford and he didn’t know how to tell you and he didn’t mean to keep it a secret so long and he says Can you be there when I tell Dad? He says he’s leaving tonight. He asks you to drive him to the bus stop. He says Come with me.

That’s when you punch him.

You punch him and you expect him to punch back and he doesn’t. He just holds his cheek and looks and looks at you.

A little while later you’re there when he tells Dad but you don’t stand next to him. You stand next to Dad, so close your arms touch. You know your brother knows what it means.

There’s yelling. There was always yelling between the two of them but this is different. Your dad says horrible things you never dreamed you’d hear him say and you almost consider moving over to stand beside your brother. But then your brother says things equally horrible, maybe worse. He says I don’t know how to be happy here. I promise I tried. He cries like a child. You’ve never seen him cry like this. You’ve only heard, across years, his muffled whimpers in the middle of the night.

Later still he turns around at the door and his face is blotchy and his eyes find yours and they beg. Say something. Take my side. He gestures at you to come on. Come on Dean come on.

Their end of things was a white church on a mountain and down the trail a cabin still standing older than any living person on earth twice over. Once these had been places for tourists to visit and take pictures and shake their sunburned heads at the primitive ways of life which at the time had seemed to them unfathomable, untenable.

For long weeks they’d wandered aimless speaking hardly at all, silent agreement that they’d know it when they found it, wherever and whatever. This was not easy. They were strangers to living without purpose or plan or destination. Often, huddled shoulder to shoulder around a small smokeless fire off the main road, one or the other would lose the strength to go on. Full up of lament and self-pity and he into the unforgiving night would say we tried so hard and for nothing and for now what? They never allowed themselves to be weak at the same time. That was death, that was something they’d learned forever ago and so the other would lean in hard and say for us which was its own fortification against despair.