Marci ate 34 Twinkies in 10 minutes, hardly a world record, but plenty good enough to win the Goose Creek county fair competition and its cash purse of 175 dollars. She rolled the sweat-thin dollars into a tight tube and stashed that in the back pocket of her Wranglers. She dropped the Twinkie-shaped trophy onto a cage occupied by an orange rooster, then vomited a spray of yellow long and loud enough to startle all the caged fowl into a fury of feathers and crowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The money could sustain her living in the backseat of her Bronco. She was newly on her own since she\u2019d freed herself from her ass-face boyfriend Jimmy three days ago after a ten-year sentence of suffering. He was a magician, and she\u2019d been his assistant on stage donning a sequined leotard with too much cleavage. It had been fun in those early years, the gasps of the crowd, the flashes of fiery conjuration on stage, but she\u2019d quickly learned why magicians never revealed the workings of their tricks. Under the cape was just another weirdo creep starved for attention. She\u2019d escaped that finally, and now she and her goat Elwood\u2014who was all she loved in the world\u2014could make their own lives elsewhere. Maybe they\u2019d start a little farm like her daddy, but they\u2019d do better than her daddy, who\u2019d been a mean prick and a terrible business man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once she quit puking, she\u2019d return to Elwood\u2019s stall with some fresh oats and a Milky Way bar because those were his favorites, then she\u2019d drink herself crocked with a bit of the cash. She\u2019d start with High Lifes and move on to gin until Jimmy blurred away into nothing. That\u2019d be his best magic trick to date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou robbed me,\u201d a voice called from behind her. She turned from her puking to face Buchanan and his horseshoe mustache. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou eat Twinkies like a pussy,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI woulda won.\u201d He had come in second, at a pathetic twenty-six Twinkies. \u201cA man\u2019s throat just don\u2019t open like that. It\u2019s an unfair advantage of the sexes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She puked again, without turning, hoping to splash a few drops on Buchanan\u2019s fancy red cowboy boots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cChrist,\u201d he said, a gag catching in his throat, \u201cyou can\u2019t even hold \u2018em. Don\u2019t even appreciate \u2018em. A goddamn waste of Twinkie on you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHave at them,\u201d she said, nodding at the yellow mash between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI come bearing a message from Mr. James the Magestick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care a rat\u2019s ass about what Jimmy has to say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou wanna be hearing this.\u201d He ran forked fingers over his mustache. \u201cBut I might not feel like telling you nothing, seeing how you cheated me outta what I deserved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFine. Whatever,\u201d she said, wiping the puke from her lips. \u201cYou win, Buchanan.\u201d She grabbed his hand and rattled it around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He yanked his hand from her wet grip. \u201cYou better take this seriously, missy. It\u2019s about your goat.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She pivoted back to the proud orange cock clucking inside his cage, and she snatched up the gold-painted trophy. \u201cHere then. Crown yourself the rightful king of Twinkies. Now say what you gotta say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He held the trophy in one arm like a baby, cradling the plastic trinket she would\u2019ve left with the cocks. \u201cHe\u2019s got it. Your goat, that is. He said he won\u2019t be giving it back for no less than one hundred dollars of your winnings, restitution for that fine assistant uniform you vandalized upon quitting him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re lying.\u201d She had torn it, split the leotard right down the middle immediately after their last performance, after he\u2019d jammed bleating Elwood into a tiny box and pretended to stab swords through him. She and Elwood had walked away in only her underwear, a pool of ragged sequins at her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI assure you I would not fabricate such a serious affair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat asshead,\u201d Marci said. She brushed past Buchanan\u2019s shoulder, but she felt a tug on her jeans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot so fast, missy.\u201d He\u2019d knuckle-hooked her beltloop. \u201cThis plaque here reads Marci Freehan, and that sure ain\u2019t me, sure does not ring like Buchanan S. Wilhelm.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFlathead screwdriver\u2019ll pop that sucker right off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd then the winner shall be anonymous? I don\u2019t think so. I require official record.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHell, Buchanan, what do you want me to do about it? Engrave it with my big toenail?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Wranglers weren\u2019t so well made, she would\u2019ve busted out of his knuckle grip and bolted. He couldn\u2019t run her down in his stupid red boots. Yet she was caught in the grip of another man\u2019s busted-up pride. Assface Jimmy had been similarly offended when they misspelled James the Majestick<\/em> in sparkle-star font on the \u201978 Ford\u2019s custom paintjob. He\u2019d threatened to set the autobody shop on fire by sparking a tiny fireball from his palm, a chintzy trick using projectile flash paper. They refunded him, and from that day Jimmy leaned into the misspelling, claimed it added a touch of mystery to his title. The Twinkies threatened to riot up her esophagus once again, but nothing seemed left inside her. She pulled the roll of bills from her pocket and held a twenty out to Buchanan. \u201cGo get your trophy named right,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019ll take ten more, I figure,\u201d he said, still holding her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She peeled off another bill, and he released her. At her back, she heard him yip and howl, boisterous as those caged cocks. She skittered off through the sow barn, rows of stinking shit and snout snuffling. Next came the sheep puffed to the brim for tomorrow\u2019s shearing competition, and finally the goats. They brayed at her. They climbed their fences to ogle her with their bugged-out yellow eyes, those rectangular pupils that made them seem otherworldly. They were accusing her for Elwood\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She scoured the vacant stall for any kind of evidence, but faced only the chorus of guilting goats. Her phone buzzed and she found a picture from Jimmy, a close-up of Elwood, the snowy fur circling his yellow, pleading eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She pulled the roll of Twinkie-winning bills and counted out exactly one hundred dollars, Jimmy\u2019s ransom. She slid that into the back of her underwear, where she was plenty sweaty and the bills would emerge smelling like swamp ass. Then she reached into her grooming bucket and fished out her hoof-trimming shears. They\u2019d do a nice job scraping up Jimmy\u2019s truck\u2019s fancy-ass paintjob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On her way out, Nancy blocked her path with those giant tits of hers flopping loose in a camouflage tank top. Her meaty arms formed triangles at her sides. Hay jutted from her short curly hair, as if she\u2019d just come from screwing in the bales, as she was well-known to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy said, \u201cStall rent, kiddo. Time to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPerfect timing. I just had some luck with Twinkies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI witnessed it, baby.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI kept wondering, while I was eating, who\u2019s paying for these Twinkies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re last year\u2019s that didn\u2019t get deep-fried and sold.\u201d Nancy snorted snot into the back of her throat. \u201cFried & Dyed donated them from their filthy-ass food truck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marci flipped through the crinkled bills. \u201cThey say enough preservatives to last a century. Twinkies never die. I can already feel my body getting younger. I might live forever.\u201d Really, she felt like she might puke again. If she did, Nancy would make her clean every stall, every manure mound from every mewling mammal. Marci pressed a fist to her lips to steady the rising bile. \u201cHow much?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow much you win?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNever enough.\u201d She cast her eyes to her Twinkie-splattered shoes and tried to make her face look pathetic enough to inspire charity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCount out what you got.\u201d Nancy stood stone like. A nearby sheep snaked its tongue against her elbow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marci counted aloud each bill that wasn\u2019t hidden in her underwear, and when she reached the grand total, she proffered it with a piteous smile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThink I run a poorhouse, kiddo? Think just because you\u2019re a pretty face I\u2019ll forget what a stall is worth?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They stared at each other then, for such long seconds it made the ransom money feel bulgingly obvious through her jeans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy shot a chin at her stall and said, \u201cWhere\u2019s that gorgeous goat of yours?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBest not be accusing me of running loose stalls,\u201d Nancy said. \u201cThink I\u2019d let someone steal your goat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho would have the balls to fuck with you?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoddamn right.\u201d Nancy clapped Marci\u2019s cheeks, dropped her tough-bitch show now that Marci had supplicated amply. Nancy snatched the offered money and began to walk away on those thick legs atop those steel-toed shit-kickers, so strong Marci considered telling her about Jimmy\u2019s goat-napping. Nancy would delight in beating the piss out of asshat Jimmy. But the situation required some delicacy, for Elwood was at stake. Plus, Marci\u2019s daddy said no Freehan ever needed help from no one. Amen and forevermore. All this, and just maybe she didn\u2019t want to see Jimmy get too banged up. Those ten years together\u2014her his lovely assistant, her his Amazon in the sheets, her his dream goddess, as he liked to say\u2014had given him a slice of her heart to also hold ransom. Maybe more like a crumb at this point. Soon less than that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once Nancy strutted into the darkening night outside the barn-light glow, Marci examined the hoof-trimming shears. The blades crunched together, rusty from the South Carolina air\u2019s hot breath. She knew Phyllis over at the horse barn kept a bench grinder. She could sharpen her blade and maybe also shave off the last crumble of affection she held for Jimmy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marci passed through the barn housing the prize-winning farmers\u2019 largest anomalies: behemoth, warty pumpkins and watermelon\u2019s plump as a tire and strawberries ripe and red as angry fists. She paused to puke once more against the green 4-H barn full of sagging kid pottery and always enough paintings of cats to wallpaper a trailer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her gut was settling by the time she stumbled upon Phyllis\u2019s stall. Marci never liked horses. Their haunches and ropey muscles seemed poised for maiming, all just waiting for you to creep behind them so they could kick a hoof through your skull. Marci slid past their swishing tails and twitchy ears and wet-marble eyes big as avocado pits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marci whispered a \u201cfuck you\u201d to the farting, chuffing horses, and then flipped on the grinder switch. It whirred a deafening buzz. She touched the hoof-trimmer blades to the grinder gingerly, like a teenager\u2019s first kiss. And just like the awkward teenager she\u2019d been\u2014when at fourteen and wearing a mouth full of barbed-wire braces she\u2019d clunked against Sparky Greenberg\u2019s mouth and made his gums weep blood and his little boner against her hip shrunk away and he cried like a baby, tattling blood into his open palm\u2014the shears whined too loud, and her grip loosened. The grind wheel flung the shears past her right ear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She snapped off the grinder. Blathering, flapping, whinnying lips replaced the mechanical clamor. She followed the equine complaints in the dark. She peered into loudest beast\u2019s stall and spotted a glinting that shouldn\u2019t have been. She couldn\u2019t help thinking of Jimmy\u2019s gruesome trick of shoving swords through Elwood\u2019s boxed body. The shears had lodged into a horse\u2019s ass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMother fuck,\u201d Marci hissed at the barn door, and then she jumped back when a hoof thunder-cracked against it. This horse seemed especially feral. His shock of gray tail flagellated the darkness. She tried to reach over the gate to retrieve her shears, but the beast was too tall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She hated to confront that horse, but had no choice. She hopped the gate and squeezed in next to the muscled monster. She bit her cheek not to scream as the horse viced her between stall walls and its demonic lungs, big as blimps, seething, painfully sucking all the fairground air into those blackhole nostrils. She was almost sure the shears couldn\u2019t possibly hurt a horse this massive. But from those great lungs spilled a whine that reminded her of Elwood as a kid when he got skunked and how he\u2019d whimpered, and she and Jimmy had scrubbed for hours with dish soap until his coat was soft as silk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She gentled her hand up the horse\u2019s haunches, and her fingertips found blade, still just a tad too far for her to pluck. She knew how to mount a horse, of course. She\u2019d grown up on her daddy\u2019s farm, and even if he couldn\u2019t afford horses, the neighbors let her ride their shithead draft horse Glider, who\u2019d bucked her off seven times to the great amusement of every spectating adult. This horse would be her first in nearly twenty years. She boosted herself atop the giant, mounting him backward. She gripped the shears embedded deeply. She tore off that band-aid. The beast\u2019s hindquarters reared, hoofing the walls like rifle shots. She managed to rodeo-ride until it calmed enough for her to tumble into the hay bed. A hoof stomped inches from her nose. The ground pulsed like a thunderous heart. She scrambled through a clomping gauntlet and up over the gate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The horse was still bucking and bitching, and she caught herself pitying this demonic creature. He was a living thing, after all, certainly worth more mercy than her daddy or Jimmy or really any man she\u2019d ever known. She reached into her underwear. Jimmy didn\u2019t deserve her money or even her ass sweat. All he needed were these sharpened shears. She slipped the ransom money under the bench grinder, along with a note: Some cash to patch up your horse. Sorry<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n James the Majestick\u2019s \u201978 Ford pickup with its sparkle-font paint and gold rims should\u2019ve been easy to spot amongst the animal trailers and pop-ups and rusty vans. She made three laps through the lanes, got sick of the catcalling from the group of men drinking Tecates and listening to polka. The women wearing cowboy hats over their ponytails and tipping shots were even worse. They all recognized her as James the Majestick\u2019s assistant, and they begged her to flash her fantastic cleavage like she did on stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The visitor parking lot was twice as big, thinning out a bit now that the Gravitron and Scrambler and Roll-O-Plane had stilled and their purple-orange-green lights had winked to sleep. She couldn\u2019t find Jimmy\u2019s truck there either. She texted him, Where the fuck you at?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He took too long responding, and she kicked gravel into a Mustang\u2019s passenger door. Walking out on Jimmy\u2019s act had exhilarated her, warmed her whole body with delicious revenge. He\u2019d been claiming for years that he could sense them on the verge of a big break. He was destined to honor the world with his dark arts. Meanwhile, she\u2019d suffered the waiting. No one deserved ten years watching rough drafts of magic tricks, picking up scattered card decks and bleaching swallowed swords and chucking dead bunnies into fast-food dumpsters. When she quit, it slipped out like an ancient, cramping belch held back far too long: I\u2019m leaving you<\/em>, she\u2019d muttered on stage. As soon as she said it, bricks slipped off her shoulders. She didn\u2019t need to know where she\u2019d live\u2014in the back of her Bronco\u2014or how she\u2019d eat\u2014leftover corndogs and funnel cakes\u2014or that she was unemployed since she couldn\u2019t exactly quit him and keep her shift at James the Majestick\u2019s Magic Supply Emporium. She had loaded Elwood into her Bronco and rolled down all the windows and hauled ass down country roads, shouting her freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She reached into her pocket to find a text from Jimmy: At our spot. Come and find me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For a moment, she thought he meant their rental house, the slumping queen mattress that smelled like vanilla because Jimmy sprinkled it once a week like the fucking pope blessing a bakery. But their house would be too obvious. Jimmy was in performance mode. He was surely hiding somewhere on the fairgrounds. He\u2019d been doing magic shows here since he\u2019d found her as a high-schooler milling around the animal barns. His glitter and glitz against her chicken shit and grit. She was his greatest transformation, he\u2019d told her while he was cutting a deeper cleavage line into her leotard and bedazzling tiny stars on her fringe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She trudged back toward the blinking-out fairgrounds. She was losing patience in tandem with each light flicking off. She crossed through the gates and into the shutdown fairgrounds now lit like a graveyard, save for one circle of spotlights. It had to be the tractor display, the shined and waxed new John Deere models. It had been their spot, she supposed, the place where they\u2019d first groped each other, crammed inside the cab of a big red combine ten years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She shouted Elwood\u2019s name at big knobby wheels and thresher teeth. Like an incantation, Jimmy emerged. He was wearing his magician\u2019s silk top hat and the sparkly midnight-blue smoking jacket that matched his truck. His white-gloved hand held a rope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt would be in your best interest to halt, dearest, an interest that\u2019s always been an interest of mine.\u201d His hands were lifting the rope, white fist, tight grip. \u201cI\u2019m holding all the cards and pulling all strings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was near enough to see the triangle he meticulously sculpted under his lower lip. She had the urge to shave his lip clean with the rusty hoof-trimming shears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow, now, dearest, or you\u2019ll force my magic,\u201d he cautioned, both hands drawn, rope tugging through the crook of his thumb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She tapped the shears against her forehead, and his eyebrows rose into the brim of that ridiculous top hat. Jimmy panicked, hopped back. He wriggled the sleeves of his blue smoking jacket and threw something. A puff plumed and quickly blew thin in the breeze. He shouted, \u201cSha-zooka!\u201d his signature phrase, and even though she\u2019d heard it ten thousand times, him practicing in the bathroom mirror, suited up and sparkling next to the toilet paper and tampons, this time it slipped a sliver of shock up her spine. The rope went limp. He whipped a lasso-like circle in the air. Elwood was gone. He\u2019d disappeared her goat. She tackled him to the ground, pressing the rusty blades against his neck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow now now, dearest. Calm down, dearest,\u201d he said through a pinched throat. \u201cOnly I can reverse a magic this strong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have a dick tip\u2019s worth of magic.\u201d She tightened her thighs, pinching his ribs. \u201cGive me Elwood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s a goat, Marci. Just a goat,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am a person. Your fate. Our forever.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n With each claim the blood inside her bubbled. She dimpled the blade deeper into this throat. \u201cTen fucking years. What was I thinking?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t mean that. You\u2019re not thinking straight.\u201d He was getting hard underneath her, and that pissed her off worse than any of this. So she lifted the shears from his neck, raised them high, and drove them at his crotch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jimmy jerk-rolled at the last second, and the shears sunk into dirt. And thank God, because who had time to deal with police and hospitals and broken dicks? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re insane, dearest. Completely and utterly immigrated to the lunatic abyss,\u201d he said, scrambling to stand. \u201cYou\u2019ll never find Elwood without me. Only I know the realm of his exile.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYeah, well, I suppose you don\u2019t need balls to show me.\u201d She snipped at the night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI offered a reasonable ransom, did I not?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re miles past me owing you anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He dipped down to retrieve his stupid top hat, flicked it atop his balding scalp. \u201cYou don\u2019t have it?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He picked up the rope and spun it to form spirals in the air. His lasso geometry was a bit beautiful. She hated Jimmy even though she acknowledged that his hands were wonders, able to invent a trick out of just about anything, a broomstick, book of matches, stack of dirty dishes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDearest,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019ve always been so terrible with finances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot near as bad as you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRemember the knockoff Avon box you were going to resell? The off-brand Tupperware? Or, consider your darling Elwood who might as well devour dollar bills for lunch.\u201d He spun and spun that rope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI never said shit about all the props you burned through, all those poor bunnies. I didn\u2019t blink when you bought the entire volume of Magic for Dummies<\/em> and then Expert Magician<\/em> and then Magician Monthly<\/em>, or when you quit your good fucking programming job to buy the store.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe difference, dearest, is commitment and focus. I was always following my true path. Whereas you are lost, but, fear not, my path is bright enough for you to join.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe only way I\u2019ll follow you is if we\u2019re going to Elwood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen let us go, you and I, to the realm of the banished,\u201d he said and flung his cape and spun on his heel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They wove through the placid fairground tents, barns like crypts and tombs. His cape shimmered now and then. Behind the hoedown tent that would bustle with Stetson hats and gingham dresses tomorrow, past the trailers stowing the precious kegs of piss-thin domestic beer, and farther still through a wooded area where brambles tugged her ankles, Jimmy\u2019s cape glimmered on, a juvenile cry for attention. But Elwood was worth it. Elwood was everything she had left. Jimmy finally stopped in a clearing where the moon illuminated every blade of grass save for a rectangle of black that Jimmy stood over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat is a grave but an act of earth transference?\u201d Jimmy said, doing his magician voice she so despised. \u201cWhat is a hole in the earth but an opportunity for transcendence?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf he\u2019s in there\u2026\u201d Her grip on the shears tightened against the sickening plummet in her gut that made her want to fall on her knees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEach body, man and animal, merely a corpse awaiting its mortal transmutation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She couldn\u2019t decide whether to succumb to another bout of Twinkie purging or to play a game of pin-the-shears-on-the-shimmery-cape. She imagined Jimmy slitting Elwood\u2019s throat as he bleated to the stars, Jimmy offering his sacrifice to the muses of magicianhood, so that he might earn his big break and escape this podunk fair circuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you killed my goat, Jimmy, I\u2019ll never forgive you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He swung to face her, and he wore moon-sparkling tears that jeweled his cheekbones. \u201cKill Elwood? My God, dearest, you think me possible of such violence? He\u2019s over by the tree.\u201d He pointed, and sure enough, there was Elwood munching the bark off a birch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She rushed to her goat, ran her fingers down his ribcage and up his neck checking for injury, until her fingers reached the silky wattles and no sign of hurt. She hugged his boxy skull to her face, kissed his ears. Elwood bored of the inspection and resumed teething bark. She turned to thank Jimmy or stab him or she didn\u2019t exactly know what, but he was nowhere. The trees whistled. Her feet crunched leaves. Elwood munched on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJimmy?\u201d she tried against the lonely moonlight. No answer. And maybe Jimmy had finally pulled off real magic and eviscerated himself. It would be the kindest death she could imagine for him. Success in his craft finally and totally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo long, Jimmy,\u201d she said and tugged at Elwood\u2019s rope, but a gnarled knot bound him. She picked at the knot\u2019s knuckles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy persist?\u201d Jimmy\u2019s invisible spirit suddenly said. \u201cHow could I possibly go on?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His disembodied voice seemed to halo around her. She tugged harder, likely worsening the knot. In her struggling, the shears thudded next to her feet. She cursed herself for forgetting, and then she snipped the rope in two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCome back to me, Marci,\u201d his sick soul whined from the moonlight. \u201cJust come back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEat shit, Jimmy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you won\u2019t, then bid me farewell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere the hell are you?\u201d she said, bolstered now by Elwood\u2019s freed rope wrapped around her wrist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the depths of my despair. I am halved. My lovely assistant is leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She fumbled toward the voice, and it led her to that black rectangle in the ground. A dark void. A white-gloved hand popped from the shadows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat the hell are you doing down there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWaiting for passion to pull me out. Take me back, Marci. Revive me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would take only a word, a tug of his wrist, a peck on the lips, and she could be sleeping on their sunken mattress that reeked of vanilla rather than cramped in the Bronco\u2019s back seat. No magic was needed to resume that ten-year sentence of cohabitation and annoyance in trade for mild comfort and convenience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFuck off, Jimmy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The white glove retracted into shadow. Jimmy said nothing, and the trees whistled once again. Elwood bleated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen how about a final trick?\u201d he finally said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m sick of tricks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019ll like this one. It encompasses the purity of disappearance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m working on here,\u201d she said, leaning over the hole, yet even hovering over, she saw only blackness. \u201cI\u2019m leaving you and taking Elwood and we won\u2019t see you again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPlease, dearest. Just this one last time. Just once more and I\u2019ll release you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She began walking, but stopped when his voice boomed, bad as years ago, the time he snapped the rabbit\u2019s neck right in front of her when she said she had to go to her dad\u2019s funeral instead of help him with his act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ll haunt you. Stalk you. Leave without helping me disappear, and I\u2019ll appear everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She trudged back to the hole\u2019s border, leaned her face over so that Jimmy could see her expression by moonlight. Elwood gobbled some weeds at the hole\u2019s edge and sent earth crumbling through the dark. \u201cFine then, James the Majestick, how might I assist?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBury me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut I do, dearest. It\u2019s the greatest trick there is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou want to practice an escape?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI want to disappear at the hands of my dearest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jimmy always had a plan, and surely this was another. But she liked that she\u2019d get to dirty his costume, and maybe he\u2019d choke on some dirt. She found the shovel near the hole and a mound. She dipped the spade and cascaded dirt in a shushing sound. She\u2019d loved him once. She had to have. As she shoveled, she tried to conjure instances. There was the time Jimmy had hand-picked her a bouquet of wildflowers, a burst of yellow goldenrod and purple lilac and snowy Queen Anne\u2019s lace. But even then, Jimmy had put the bouquet into his practice the next morning, popping them from his cuffs and then setting them ablaze. Other times, he\u2019d rubbed her feet, her shoulders, kneaded her palms, but that always served as the precursor to fucking. Jimmy acted with condition, as gaudily obvious as his stupid cape. She heaped more dirt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She kept up this game of chicken and shoveled on, flinging earth in a flurry that elicited a huff from Elwood. If the dirt pile was any indication, there was still plenty of hole left. She dipped the shovel spade into the hole, fishing for his silken top hat. The shovel dangled undisturbed. Even though she couldn\u2019t find him with certainty, she raised the shovel, tensed her biceps, her whole body a drawn bow, a spring, the hinge on a trap door. But perhaps this was exactly what he wanted\u2014his blood on her hands. Put spade through top hat and skull or bury him alive, both put her in prison, locked in by Jimmy forever. This was the illusion\u2019s true endgame, a cage shaped like retribution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marci chucked the shovel into the dirt pile. She reached into her underwear, and she materialized a single dollar bill, sweat dampened and soft. Here was the price of her freedom. She flicked it into the black square at her feet where the inconsequential fluttering disappeared and, ta-da, she\u2019d performed her first and final solo trick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dustin M. Hoffman<\/strong> is the author of the story collections One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist<\/em>, No Good for Digging<\/em>, and the forthcoming Such a Good Man<\/em>. He painted houses for ten years in Michigan and now teaches creative writing at Winthrop University. His stories have appeared in Gulf Coast<\/em>, Ninth Letter<\/em>, and One Story<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marci ate 34 Twinkies in 10 minutes, hardly a world record, but plenty good enough to win the Goose Creek county fair competition and its cash purse of 175 dollars. She rolled the sweat-thin dollars into a tight tube and stashed that in the back pocket of her Wranglers. She dropped the Twinkie-shaped trophy onto … <\/p>\n
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