�Karen. Karen, you fucking cunt! Get your ass back here!�
�Fuck off,� she yells back.
He�s standing in the corridor outside their apartment. Karen struts away. A fly buzzes past Darren�s left ear. He fans air.
�Fuck sakes.�
Mr Ferguson in #8 opens his door as wide as the chain-lock will permit.
�Mind your own fucking business ya old queer.�
Ferguson�s grey-haired, shrivelled head disappears. He goes back to watching television, darning his socks.
Darren ducks inside, scooping up Tiffany�their ten-month old. He stands in the centre of their small apartment, holding his daughter, thinking. A few flies hover. Two fly in a triangle around the single bulb dangling from the ceiling in the living room. A steady, numbing rhythm. Darren watches the flies for a second then turns towards the door. He bolts out with Tiffany in his arms. Scrambles down the corridor.
Karen�s halfway to the bus stop. He�s in boxers, slippers, black rock T. It�s minus ten degrees. Pavement slicked with ice. Clear and cold. His breath clouds as he screams at Karen to wait. She says something back at him over her right shoulder. Tiffany�also underdressed�stares blankly, her small, frail body bobbing, jostling on Darren�s shoulder.
Inside the bus shelter he pulls even with her. Karen�s sucking on a butt. She�s doing her best to ignore him now, anxious.
�Don�t just fucking walk away from me. You know I hate that! Fuck sakes.�
A woman in her mid forties feigns interest in an advertisement slicked behind glass in the shelter. A man in his fifties strolls outside to the sidewalk, head bowed; something fascinating on the pavement. Tiffany droops her head onto her daddy�s shoulder, blotting out the ruckus.
Karen rears her back to Darren, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. She eyes up the street for the bus.
Darren�s getting really worked up now. He paces in the small enclosure, two steps one way, one and a half the other. Cramped quarters. The woman in her mid forties slips out to the street as well.
�You can�t just fuck off to work again. I�ve had it with this.�
He�s pointing at something with his right hand, gesturing, left arm wrapped around his daughter.
�I spend all fucking day cleaning up Tiff�s shitty diapers, feeding her formula, doing fucking laundry. I�ve had it. Not today.�
Karen stubs her butt with her boot. She wheels to face him.
�It�s what we got arranged just now.�
�It�s a shitty fucking arrangement then,� he spits back.
Tiffany mewls on his shoulder, shivers, snotty nose pressed into greasy hair.
�I can�t wait for you to get off your ass and get a job. You can�t fucking hold one. You get a job and I�ll go back to minding the baby.�
Karen gives him a crooked grin.
Here comes more of the vitriol spilling over, boiling over.
�Listen you dumb cunt.�
That word again.
�Listen to what I say. I say what�s what around here, not fucking you!�
His face is the colour of a Valentine. Veins in his neck bold, bright, distended. Right index finger rigid, jammed cock-like into her face.
�I�m not staying home doing fuck all all day. Looking after the baby while you�re out working your shit job!�
Karen says nothing. She knows it makes him angrier. She lights up. Flicks a dead match on the concrete.
Another on their way to work arrives to wait for the bus. She, too, keeps a distance, minds the gap.
Tiffany doesn�t make a sound. Not a peep.
Darren�s coming unstuck. He�s out of things to say for the moment. He seethes stupidly in one corner of the shelter. Sweats despite the cold. Beads of it on his nose, his upper lip.
**
Karen works at the Bi-Way. She stocks shelves. Cheap shit�household items, bathroom stuff, crappy kids� toys. She steals when she can. A bit here and there. A four-dollar doll for Tiffany. The head came off it last week. She makes eight something an hour. No benefits. Forty hours a week, sometimes more when she covers for one of the part-timers on Saturdays. She been at it three months now. Her first job in four years. Back then it was a pizza parlour thing. All that time Darren always managed at something.
She doesn�t like the Bi-Way job. Doesn�t really dislike it either. Better than spending days with Darren. Nights are bad enough. Although he usually just pisses off to the pub when she gets home. Pushes the baby into her arms and vanishes. Or to his cousin Reggie�s. They sit around watching truck-pulls on TV, drinking shit American beer. Or watching one of Reggie�s pornos. He�s got a collection. Darren comes home afterward buzzed on weak beer, forcing his fat dick into the small of Karen�s back, groping her engorged breasts. She lets him have it once in a while. If the baby�s not bothered. Or she doesn�t. Mumbles �fuck off,� and rolls away, tugging at the covers, desperate for sleep. He calls her a cunt and jerks off in the washroom. He�s got magazines. Can�t afford video tapes, never mind a VCR.
Darren worked most recently for Third Sector, sorting through recyclables in an old warehouse on Victoria Avenue North, the sort that always go up in flames eventually. That lasted ten months. Till four and a half months ago. Till not too long after the baby was on the scene. He worked separating plastics from aluminum from glass. Different types of paper once in a while. He hated it. Every minute of it. Only windfall was picking through discarded magazines. Those the guys on the trucks didn�t pilfer. He found half a dozen skin mags that way. Old stuff; 1970s soft-lighted Penthouses. They were good enough for him. Chicks with weird, oblong, 70s breasts. Scraped the crap off the magazines and took them home. Stashed them behind the toilet. Karen reads them once in while on the shitter. Makes fun of him for it. When they were in better humour, she�d ape him jerking off. Darren let her do it. Anything sexual. Sometimes she let him read the stories to her in bed; ridiculous tales. Let him fuck her, indulging whatever unoriginal fantasy came to his meagre mind. But that was a rare occurrence. Now a distant memory. History.
**
It comes to him suddenly.
�I spend more time with Tiff than you do and more fucking time with her than you do at work. It�s not fucking right and I can�t stand another fucking minute.�
He shifts the baby from arm to arm. Tiffany sputters a bit and then sags in against him. Trying to keep warm.
Karen�s getting restless. Her left leg twitches, a slight spasm. Darren�s made fun of it before. Called her �gimpy�. Right now there�s nothing funny about it. She�s aware of the stares of the others at the bus stop. People she sees every morning. Others on their way to work. She�s said �hi� in the past; remarked on the weather. Had a brief conversation with the guy in his fifties. If Darren knew about that, there�d be fireworks.
She looks again for the bus, desperate for its arrival. Darren leans in closer. The gears in his head churning, burning oil.
�It�s not fair and it�s not right for a man. I feel like a fucking failure �cause you gotta go out and earn a bit of dough. I still got Unemployment coming in. At least for another month. It�s almost enough and then I�ll go get a lousy job. Maybe me at the fuckin Bi-Way. Keep you happy. Get you back with the baby where you belong.�
He spins away from her again, speeding on adrenaline. Glares at the woman outside the shelter. She returns his look, condemning him with her eyes, pleading with him with her eyes to realise that he is making an ass of himself and of his wife in public. It doesn�t work.
�You fuck off too, bitch.�
He doesn�t say it loudly, but loud enough.
Karen sees the bus approaching at last. She starts to step out of the corner of the shelter. Darren trots over, boxing her in.
�Where the fuck you think you�re off to?�
Tiffany whimpers a little, sneezes, snot clogged in her nostrils now smearing her lips.
�I got work Darren. Lemme out.�
She sounds desperate now, exhausted, exasperated. Her left leg throbs.
�Fuck you do.�
He puts his left hand on her shoulder, wrapping his wiry fingers around her orange coat. It�s padded for winter but she can feel the pressure of his digits.
�You�re not going to work today. You�re coming home with me.�
She looks at him, the first hint of tears rising at the corners of her eyes.
The bus slows, breaks and idles at the curb. The other three duck up the steps, out of the cold, away from Darren and Karen.
Karen pulls away, ripping her arm from his grasp. But he reaches out and catches her again just so. Tiffany sneezes: more snot on her lips, drooling into her mouth.
�You come home with me, cunt.�
As he says it he squeezes as hard as he possibly can, feeling his fingers boring into Karen�s flaccid muscle, touching bone. She squeals. Looks him in the eye. The bus pulls away. He holds her in that spot, hurting her. Tears come from her eyes. He gives one last hard push with his thumb and fingers, then lets her go. She collapses to the pavement, on her knees, and then is up again quickly.
�You fucker,� is all she says.
Darren stands there, triumphant, lingering on the sidewalk.
Karen scrabbles away. She limps with her bum left leg. Breaks into a hectic, sloppy run, away from him, from her daughter. She can�t catch the bus. She�ll be late for work. She�ll loose her job. Her arm aches. Tomorrow a purple bruise the size of a dollar coin will mark her. It�ll change colour over the coming days. Purple, blue, black.
**
Back inside the apartment, Darren wipes snot from Tiffany�s face on the hem of his black rock T. He stares at the two flies still orbiting the light fixture.
�Fucking cunt,� he says, referring to his wife, not to his daughter.
He parks Tiffany on the floor and gropes for the TV converter. She starts wailing. He ignores it. A fly lands on his knee. He surfs then stops. On screen something eerie on the Discovery Channel: grasshoppers up close. He shivers. The fly leaves his knee.
Darren averts his eyes from the television to a window, looking out on the grey, mid-winter street. There he sees a cloudy formation, something blurred at its edges. It comes closer. Right at him. He sits there, his heart hardened, watching the apparition approaching. The sun is blotted out. Black sky. A shadow falls across him. He can�t see anything but the dark mass. The sun and earth and moon cannot be seen. Locusts. They fill the sky, the trees, the telephone wires, the street, consuming everything in sight. Strange, in mid-February. They knock away glass, pouring through Darren�s window, filling the apartment and all of the apartments in the building and all of the buildings on the block. He has never seen anything like this before. Not even on TV. He thinks of Karen scurrying away from him. Wonders if the locusts are after her as well, consuming her. Or if she is free, let go.
The wind picks up, driving more locusts into Darren�s living room. He just sits there, idle, letting them writhe and crawl over him. Stunned into silence. Then he claws at his eyes, trying to rid himself of the pests. He screams inwardly, his voice blotted out by the humming of locusts� wings. He considers his actions from this morning. His wrong-doing. His transgression. His hardened heart. But it doesn�t move him. Not a millimetre. He calls out again, shouting, shunning the locusts. The insects retreat, the sun returning, the light and the sky. The television burbles once more. He sits and stews for a moment, his ears ringing.
A minute later, Darren jerks up on the couch. His head aches. He eyeballs the TV. A Pharaoh�s tomb being pillaged on the Discovery Channel. He looks over at Tiffany. She is silent, occupying herself. He looks at his arms; scratches at bites and abrasions that aren�t there. Brushes away unseen locusts from his black rock T. Goes for a piss.
Tiffany mucks in the corner. Her headless doll untouched. Cockroach turds all around her naked, blackened feet. A few mouse turds too. She picks up one, rolling it between thumb and forefinger as if it was a Rice Crispie. She toes a littered beer cap on the scratched hardwood. Makes a clucking noise, typical of babies her age. Monosyllables. Her first word might be ball. Might be truck. Might be cunt.
THE CLASH
RAYMOND CARVER
