The Mouth

Etta opened her front door and stood there in the doorway, looking. She did this every morning, and she made sure to dress accordingly in a morning gown and men's dress shoes and something hand knit on her head. It amused her endlessly- it was a great way to start your day, she'd say to her other aged friends. They would look askance, down or around the room, having learned nothing since high school about dealing with awkward statements. Fine women all, thought Etta; but not forthright in the right way. They were always forthright in the wrong way, dependably; they would offer nasty casseroles and tell sympathetic stories about whatever the conversation was tut-tutting that day. Her friends were practiced and veteran in these ways, which was great when someone died but left them speechless when Etta made her pronouncements. It was a shame, she thought.

There was a listener in the group. Her name was Jackson, "as in Michael" was her standard response when asked if it was a family name or her hyphen name or what it meant. "Jackson doesn't mean anything, it's a name" she said whenever asked, and she'd get cross if someone didn't accept that answer as the full one. Etta liked Jackson and vice versa. Jackson sat with her eyes on Etta when Etta made her pronouncements, and she had gained Jackson's friendship by holding still for the whole spiel: "everyone should dress like a crazy person on a daily basis," Etta half-bellowed, adjusting for the deafness of the audience. "People are wary of you right away. You can do what you like with that feeling, like make nice with some neighbor's boy or take some body's trash cans back in for them. It confuses them- it's a hoot. watch the faces when you do it. Pure entertainment."

"Etta you're not being nice, doing that. That's pretty...I was going to say snide, but that's not it. Manipulative, there you go. You're terrible." Jackson said this when everyone else was checking their feet or their Rummy scores.

"True, but I always think that doing the favor for them cancels out the bad intention- the ill will, if you like. I don't like that phrase, but since I don't know any other that fits- there it is. You can just talk to folks instead, but dressed like that makes me feel like I've gotten the jump on things. Like I put the day on notice."  Jackson laughed, and the ladies at the table laughed with a one-second delay, following her lead. She came to Etta's house in the morning when they weren't at the YMCA for their aquacise and their card table. Jackson took her life, and the lives of others, in her own nubbled hands when she drove over. This was almost every day. "People wander in, have you noticed that? People just wander to your doors or sometimes right in your windshield. In your sight, I mean- as if you weren't on the road. I realize that the podestreens"- Etta also liked when Jackson mispronounced words, because it was inexplicable, and she liked the inexplicable things in life- "yes, I know they have the right of way. Or we have to yield that to them. They get to walk wherever, to be specific." Jackson sighed and shook her head for less than a second. "But Etta! What is wrong with some of them? Why would they walk in front of an oldie behind the wheel of a large car? I'm a stereotype! Right there people should be careful." Etta laughed and laughed, and Jackson shone a smile back and didn't take offence.

This morning Etta didn't stand around silently challenging neighborhood acquaintances to remark on her hat, as per her usual. There was a giant sinkhole right in front of her house, in the street, so thorough that she could practically see seeping up from it the smoke from the bomb that must have put it there. It was a Bugs Bunny image, but a compelling one, and she ran in to call Jackson before her friend drove over and straight into it, yelling at out her window to alarmist, arm-waving podestreens that they should just clear a place for her the whole way. She caught her on the third ring, and started talking right away.

"Jackson, you have to not come to the front of the house this morning, or probably not the afternoon either. There is an enormous mouth in the street."

Jackson took this in her placid way, but Etta couldn't figure out if it was the compressed type of Jackson who would give some lip service to the notion of not coming and then come to right there, travelling five miles per hour faster than usual or if it was placid because of her poor sleep habits and lack of a quality cup of coffee. "Ok, honey, I'll not come to the front of your house. Because of a mouth. You said mouth, right?"

"Yes, right, don't come to the front. Let me check the alley in back." Etta put the phone down and went to look at the disappointing pot holes in the paving behind her garage. "The back is fine. But this hole-"

"Oh, it's a hole." Jackson's voice was still maddeningly placid.

"Yes, it's a big damn hole, and I saw not one but two cars just get swallowed. The first was just parked there- I'm serious, don't come to the front, Jackson- and the second was some dummy who drove up to it like he was on a dare. One should not fuck with nature's mouths. One should recognize them for what they are, dummy dum dum." She sighed. "They got him out by throwing some rope someone had in there to the dummy and he just grabbed hold, and they pulled."

"It's a nice neighborhood you have there." Jackson was compressed, so Etta let her get off the phone so she could come over. "Not the front, and be careful in the back, because who knows?"

Jackson was careful, for once. She came in the kitchen door, almost silently. "Did you see it?" Etta asked.

"Not yet. Give me the tour, then." Etta walked Jackson to the front, and then they both stood there in the door jamb, mouths barely ajar so that a sidewalk observer might think they both had taken a bite of something simultaneously and then stopped chewing. "That's a mouth, yes. It cannot be described any other way. And nature's mouths should not be ignored, like you say" Jackson whispered, needlessly. "What to do, though?"

Etta had thought about this. "It's getting bigger, Jack. It's gotten rounder, and smokier-"

"I don't see any smoke, darling-"

"Look for longer. Don't let your eyes get unfocused and trick you or anything, but just keep them lasering at that mouth for an hour and you'll see smoke. Anyway- it's bigger, it's widening so that it's creeping closer to the other side of the road, because there are more cars there. Look: It came to the curb on this side, and now it's lost interest. Sidewalk holds no interest for our Mouth."

"It's looking for cars, then." Jackson tilted one hip out like a cool kid.

"Yes, that's it I think. I can't see it wanting people, anyway- it's just pulling in the cars, and so far it doesn't really go for people, unless they're just idiots who can't comprehend it."

"I don't know what one could misinterpret."

"Me neither" Etta agreed. Then they went into the kitchen to make coffee, which she never drank more than a half-cup but which her friend would chug like a record-holding career drinker. It always reminded her of pitchers of light beer for $5 on weekdays.

"Let's watch the news. Did you watch any? We should just take a look, maybe there's some scientist explaining everything for us" Jackson said after two mug fulls. They moved to the parlor, which had the front windows facing the street-now-hole and the television. They turned it on, and, after a moment, Etta said "holy shit" in a stage whisper.

There were mouths everywhere, in every area of the city: downtown was the worst, and there had been the most cars consumed by a three-to-one margin compared to everywhere else. The north side was also a Daliesque hell scape of pits and disappeared cars and people not understanding, staying too close and getting sucked in because they just couldn't believe this weird new road feature was doing what it was doing. One of the more profound stories was of a deliver truck packed with new refrigerators and clothes dryers- that one was on the West side, and that hole had just opened beneath the truck, full-sized and apparently ravenous, grabbing and holding the whole thing as if it were a doomed cruise ship. The two deliverers were taken down with it, since they'd had little to no time to forge a plan of escape. There were rescuers at the scene, dangling a rope ladder from an adjacent tree and yelling downward, since their ambulance had been swallowed, too.

The ladies ran to the front of the house for another, now adrenalised look: their hole had widened, and deepened, and there were no cars anywhere near it. That morning the street had been parked out, but either the owners were canny enough to identify an approaching force of nature and moved their own cars, or the mouth had taken them. It came right up to the sidewalk, which it had left almost entirely unmoved. There was one square that had a wee upward tilt, so small that it could easily have been caused by the previous evenings' pre-crater hard rain. Etta took it upon herself to walk right up to the edge. Her friend ran back to the pantry, took the ladder from it and jogged back up to the front door. She waited. Etta stood there, looking into it and then looking around, and then looking into it.

"There's no more cars, and I don't really want to wrestle with alternate routes at my age" she said. Jackson sighed and went kitchenward again. Etta stood. A WGN helicopter went by, and she waved at it with a serious expression on her face. Jackson came out the front door, carefully letting her leg hang back so the screen door wouldn't bang (because she hated the sound.) She had the coffeemaker, still steamy, in her hands.

"Here." she said.

Etta took it and heaved it into the hole all in one motion. It made a lovely arc, and the cord twirled around above it so that for a second, at it's height, it looked like art.  "I don't think that's enough."

Jackson went back and forth, taking anything electrical she could find, any technology, to bring to Etta: her iron ("I have no idea why I have this thing in the first place,") her straightening iron ("ok, good, I can't help but burn my face any time I try to use it anyway, I know it's strange what with the design being safe and compressed, but I do it,") the computer that Etta's son-in-law had brought and lovingly installed that she used all of once a day to check the weather ("uh-huh.") By and by there was nothing left to pitch: Etta's house was as bare as it had been when she and her husband had set themselves up in it, when one just waited for water to boil rather than using a microwave and they only had a radio to listen to because they could afford neither the television nor the floor space to put it on. Etta had shooed her friend back when she'd appeared with the old radio. "It still works on a few stations."

Jackson turned around, saying "and it was yours," meaning it belonged to Etta and her departed. There were things that nature's prerogative would have to forgive.

Nothing happened for a long while. They went back in eventually. They'd both thought there would be some sign, some tic of noise from the earth, but there was nothing so they turned and walked back into the house, where they sat down in the front room. It was dim in the room since the sun had gone westward, and warm, and so the two friends ended up dozing, sagging toward each other on the dusty chintz sofa. They were woken by chopper sounds, closer and louder than they'd been before, and more consistent. The ladies sat up- slowly, decrinkling themselves- and stood. They looked at each other before they went to the door.

"This had better be good" said Jackson. Etta nodded.

Outside there were two helicopters hovering close to the hole. The first thing the women did was wave at them, arms all the way above their heads and back as if they were each the President of the United States. It was a fitting gesture: the day was saved, because their ministrations had coaxed the mouth into closing. It was clamping itself shut and making the expected ticking noises, which satisfied Etta and relived Jackson. Then they went back inside and turned on the  old radio, which was glad to be of service, and heard: all around the city  people had seen footage taken from the first news copter of Etta chucking things up and in, and Jackson enthusiastically finding new appliances, running into the house and back tirelessly, stronger than many half her age. The populace had taken the hint, and things were disappearing into the mouths of the city. There was even some nervous tittering from a TV anchor about them not having jobs if no one had televisions to watch.

"Yours didn't have a mouth, did it? When you left?"

Jackson stretched. "No, but I think I'll go home just the same. I have some donations I can think of right in my basement. It's like they've been waiting down there, I never use them, but today I can let them go."

Etta smiled and stretched herself. "Well I'll see you in two days, then. Promise me you'll drive safe, maniac." It was the same thing Etta said to Jackson every Tuesday, but this time they went back and stood in the doorway, walking there calmly and silently. They stood and watched.