“Any questions before we start?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she says, raising the camera. “Tell me your name.”
“My name is Hollis Bragg.”
“Where are you from?”
“Coopersville, West Virginia.”
“Why did you agree to this interview?”
Rosita pulls off her T-shirt, exposing the sweat stains on her bra and the stubble under her arms. I’m struggling to get my own shirt off. If I think too much, I won’t continue. I manage to pull the fabric over the great hump of my back and wiggle like a snake shedding its skin. Now, all my most malformed parts are naked. Back forever crooked forward, forcing my stomach into permanent lines, flesh left sagging from being unable to perform even modest exercise. Caroline is the last woman to have seen me like this, and while we developed a familiarity, I never gained true confidence. Her touch moved over these hidden places, but never healed as they lingered.
Rosita begins to work on the clasp of her bra, but I raise a hand to stop her.
“I agreed because I wanted people to see me,” I say.
Rosita looks uneasy. Maybe I’m the first to stop her. She seems to be waiting for something profound to follow. Should I rise and close the distance, wrap my arms around her and pull her close? Is she wondering what it would feel like to grasp shoulders so sloping, to find a man perpetually bent bending lower to meld into her? Would she feel more whole against me? All are questions I’d ask if I lived in a body like hers. I already know the other side of the equation. Every wholesome body I’ve touched has only made me feel more twisted. That’s the true pain of my relationship with Angela that I never wanted to acknowledge. As much as her body pleased me and offered me pleasure, I was both lustful and envious of it. I desired to be as complete as her as much as I desired to touch her. It’s one of my most shameful secrets. One I know I can’t repeat if I’m lucky enough to have the next woman.
“I wanted people to see even if they don’t want to look. Even if they don’t want to consider the possibility of it. I’ve done things. I made music. I was loved by a woman.”
I slide my pants down. My legs are thick from the work of carrying the rest of me, covered in so much hair I look caught in transformation into some beast. They’re the furry legs of a satyr.
Rosita raises the camera to snap a few pictures. Her hands are trembling.
“Do you hate your body, Hollis?” she asks.
“I think people made me hate it.”
“Has anyone ever loved it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe them. Not until they left.”
“Do you love it now?”
“No, but only because it’s the reason I’ve rejected most things.”
There might be more, but that confession is the extent of the poetry in me. Rosita takes a few more pictures.
* * *
• • •
After my clothes are back on, we sit in the kitchen booth and burn Rosita’s cigarettes. I’m getting hooked after the chain-smoking sessions these last few days but assure Rosita I’m the sort who can always buy a pack, smoke a few and toss them without much thought. Rosita warns me she used to say the same thing.
Outside, a few crows cackle from the bare limbs of the oaks.
“I haven’t heard the chickens in a while,” I say.
“What chickens?” she asks.
I tell her about the fighting cocks and my suspicion of their death, either dehydrated or poisoned from drinking the water before people were warned. I think about all those dead birds. The field full of dirty white feathers, wings spread wide like fallen angels as the farmer walks across his property picking them up with a gloved hand and shoving them inside a Hefty bag.
“I don’t know anything about chickens,” Rosita says. “Were they white?”
“Some of them,” I say. “He raised all types. Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks, even a big rooster so dark his eyes were black.”
I stare outside as if expecting the birds to come scratching in the dust of the yard.
“I’m going to see her concert,” I say.
“What are you gonna tell her?”
“I have no idea. Before it’s over, I’ll probably have fucked things up for you. The money, I mean. I can’t help that.”
Rosita nods. If she’s bothered, it’s well hidden.
“Will you go with me?” I ask.
“To the concert?”
“I’ll need some moral support being out in public.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Thank you. I owe you a lot for this time.”
Rosita shakes her head. “You’re the one with all the hospitality. I know that wasn’t easy after what I did.”
A splatter hits the roof before I can reply. I cock my head and place a finger to my lips. “Listen.”
Outside, a soft pattering begins. A crack of thunder follows and we both turn to the window. It’s raining. Not a hard downpour, still more mist than precipitation, but I lurch toward the door.
“Get a bucket or something,” I say.
The door swings wide, slams into the side of the house as I trip and fall down the few porch steps. I sprawl on the grass, eyes wide open to the sky. I’m not injured, but Rosita comes out to help me stand. Clods of grass and dirt stick against my back as if growing from a small mountain, then wash away as the rain increases. I turn my face up toward the sky and laugh.
Rosita makes two more trips inside for a total of seven receptacles. I never leave the yard. Just stand looking up into the rain with my shirt off until Rosita goes inside a final time and returns with a camera. Some of the last frames of her time in Coopersville are these images. Photos of me shirtless, hands held out to catch the drops, skin slick as the rain runs off the waterfall of my back.
THE LOVERS
Angela and I didn’t speak about our night together for days. I noticed the occasional glance, moments heavy with unstated tension, but was too fearful to be the first to engage. The act had altered me so completely that I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t equally changed. I tried to tell myself only physical connections were made, but knew it was something deeper. My body no longer felt like my own after her touch. The old perception of inhabiting a damaged vessel faded into moments of uncommon pride. I still loathed my physique but took solace in the idea that she’d found pleasure there. Before that night with Angela, love was an abstract concept. At best, I thought the world gave you a few animal instincts and you tried to satisfy them. She tested that belief.