Lonely Larry, poem by Frank Reardon

LONELY LARRY

Every­day Lar­ry walks into the lum­ber yard
with his head down due to years of bad posture.
His hair, fake or not, looks like a blond toupee,
and he twid­dles his fin­gers in mad circles
when he speaks. Mona, the cashier,
calls him "Lone­ly Lar­ry." She says it whenever
he leaves the room. "Lone­ly Lar­ry, poor-poor,
Lone­ly Lar­ry." Dur­ing the day Lar­ry is a lumber
mer­chan­dis­er and he takes his job very seriously
even if his cor­duroy pants are pulled up over
his bel­ly but­ton. He looks like a giant Weeble
most days, and he's a mas­sive bil­low­ing shit-talker
from years of love lost, every­day. While fas­ten­ing the Velcro
straps on his gray sneak­ers, Lar­ry likes to remind
me of his youth, how in his 20s he was a ladies' man,
a sure-fire chick mag­net. He says it was
all due to his over-use of cologne and gold chains.
I find it hard to believe, espe­cial­ly since his work apron
has his name paint­ed on it with large pur­ple letters
and bedaz­zled sil­ver rhine­stones, though he's done
a great job con­vinc­ing him­self of his prowess. When­ev­er Kayla,
the woman with the per­fect ass, the woman who can
speak per­fect French, says "hi," Larry's
fake deep voice turns high-pitched and nasally.
He's 60, but when­ev­er that French painting
struts by with her big black boots he turns
into him­self:  qui­et, ner­vous, per­vert­ed, the shy lit­tle boy.
At night Lar­ry is a quiz show genius, a Game Show Network
lunatic. Sit­ting in his father's old leather recliner,
he tries to solve puz­zles on The Wheel of Fortune
while suck­ing root beer from a straw. "Buy a vowel!"
he shouts as he twists off the top of an Oreo
so he can lick the cream filling.
"Why won't she buy a fuck­ing vow­el!?" he asks
his pur­ple and yel­low canary sit­ting in its brass cage,
but the bird nev­er replies, it just sits
on a perch rapid­ly mov­ing its head and chirp­ing a song.
Poor-poor Lone­ly Lar­ry, the game shows are over
and the sym­pho­ny has got­ten so cruel
with night songs that Lar­ry must go under his bed
and pull out the old box with the frayed card­board cover.
Inside: ancient com­ic books that he had saved since
he was a child. And with teeth clenched upon bot­tom lip,
he savors each action packed square,
each crime fighter's hero­ic action, each word floating
inside its car­toon bub­ble. The hands are weak, the sweat
is real, the fore­bod­ing feel­ing in the dark pulls
at lost eyes and sur­rounds him with panic.
Soon Lar­ry will climb into bed. "Got­ta get up at 4 a.m.
and do it all over again," he'll whis­per to himself.
It's the same thing each day and night, the perfect
hell on earth, reliv­ed day after day and night after night.
The per­fect assas­sin with the per­fect bullet,
inch­ing clos­er and clos­er by the sec­ond until it bur­rows in us all
and plants the great seed of denial.

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Meth Labs in West Virginia?! You're Kidding.

meth-labBy Nick Kepler

Usu­al­ly, when Jen­nifer McQuer­rey Rhyne's truck pulls up to a prop­er­ty, it's the first time neigh­bors have seen any activ­i­ty there in weeks.

Even though the decals on her hulk­ing Taco­ma read "www​.wvmeth​cleanup​.com"—lit­er­al­ly spelling out why she is there—she becomes a mag­net for any­one look­ing for infor­ma­tion about the for­mer pro­pri­etors of the meth cook sites she cleans for a liv­ing. Along with a bevy of shady char­ac­ters, the busi­ness offers a win­dow into the chang­ing drug habits of rur­al, white America.

When I join her for a day on the job in Decem­ber, Jen­nifer is stand­ing out­side a ground-floor apart­ment in Clarks­burg, West Vir­ginia. Though she hasn't suit­ed up yet, her two asso­ciates, Heath Bar­nett and Joe MuQuerrey—her father—are already dressed head-to-toe in white chem­i­cal haz­ard suits, their faces buried in gas masks. They haul fur­ni­ture from the apart­ment into the bed of Jennifer's truck. The door is ajar to reveal the checker­board tile in the kitchen. Jen­nifer waits for the moth­er of the build­ing own­er to arrive with pay­ment for the job. More.

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The World Made Straight

ronrashpic

FCAC is still kick­ing. Lots of con­tent com­ing, but for right now there's this review by Tir­dad Der­akhshani of the film The World Made Straight based on the superla­tive nov­el by Ron Rash.

'Geog­ra­phy is des­tiny," Leonard Shuler (Noah Wyle) says in a voice-over at the start of the somber Appalachi­an tragedy The World Made Straight. As he speaks, the cam­era takes us across an over­grown piece of moun­tain in Madi­son Coun­ty, N.C., cut along one side by a two-lane road, the oth­er by a dirt-col­ored river.

For Mid­west­ern­ers, that means wide spaces; open vis­tas; pos­si­bil­i­ty, says Leonard. For his neigh­bors, who live their lives in the over­grown fields, mud­dy streams, and rough back roads of Appalachia, the world is lim­it­ed, stifling.

More?

While you're at it, check out the review of Rash's latest in the NYT.

Ron Rash occu­pies an odd place in the pan­theon of great Amer­i­can writ­ers, and you’d bet­ter believe he belongs there. He gets rap­tur­ous reviews that don’t mean to con­de­scend but almost always call him a South­ern or Appalachi­an writer, and Mr. Rash has said he can hear the silent, dis­mis­sive “just” in those descrip­tions. He also baf­fles any­one who thinks that great tal­ent ought to be accom­pa­nied by great ambi­tion. Mr. Rash has plant­ed him­self at West­ern Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty and elud­ed the lime­light that his work absolute­ly warrants.

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Final Girl on Appalachia

H/t to Pank.

Why I Stay

Final Girl

Three brown tires are on the bank of the riv­er, like shells would be on the beach of anoth­er place. This is not that place.

It is hard to deny some of the beau­ty of Appalachia: rolling roads, haze on the fields, morn­ing-green hills, hors­es. Oth­er beau­ty is tricky. You have to train your eye—or, you have to have a cer­tain eye already.

I don’t believe the bro­ken-down bus mars the sun­set. I think it makes it, morn­ing glo­ry twist­ing around the rims. Poke­ber­ries stain the farm­house pur­ple; we threw them against its side. There is a kind of beau­ty in giv­ing up. There is a sort of joy in why the hell not.

After all, there are cans in the weeds. Bones in the woods. Burned-out sheds in the shad­ows. So: low to the ground, by cig­a­rette butts, I glue on the wall hand-paint­ed leaves.

Read on:

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Moving Mountains Tragedy 2014: Stunning Court Denial of Appalachian Health Crisis

acheThe only thing stun­ning about this is the years-long denial. From Huff­in­g­ton Post's Jeff Big­gers.

In a breath­tak­ing but large­ly over­looked rul­ing this week, a fed­er­al judge agreed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers may dis­re­gard stud­ies on the health impacts of moun­tain­top removal min­ing in its per­mit­ting process, only two weeks after Gold­man Prize Award-win­ning activist Maria Gun­noe wrote an impas­sioned plea to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to renew with­drawn fund­ing for US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey research on strip min­ing oper­a­tions and redou­ble fed­er­al action to address the decades-old human­i­tar­i­an disaster.

The prophet­ic call for imme­di­ate fed­er­al action by Gun­noe, a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er for the West Vir­ginia-based Ohio Val­ley Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion and a long-time wit­ness to the tragedy of moun­tain­top removal, has nev­er been so time­ly. "Appalachi­an cit­i­zens are the casu­al­ties of a silent "war on peo­ple" who live where coal is extract­ed," Gun­noe wrote the pres­i­dent. "Cit­i­zens of all ages are dying for the coal industry's bot­tom line."

More.

 

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Oldest European Fort Found in the Appalachians

Credit: University of Michigan

Cred­it: Uni­ver­si­ty of Michigan

The remains of the ear­li­est Euro­pean fort in the inte­ri­or of what is now the Unit­ed States have been dis­cov­ered by a team of archae­ol­o­gists, pro­vid­ing new insight into the start of the U.S. colo­nial era and the all-too-human rea­sons spoil­ing Span­ish dreams of gold and glory.

Span­ish Cap­tain Juan Par­do and his men built Fort San Juan in the foothills of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains in 1567, near­ly 20 years before Sir Wal­ter Raleigh’s “lost colony” at Roanoke and 40 years before the Jamestown set­tle­ment estab­lished England’s pres­ence in the region.

Fort San Juan and six oth­ers that togeth­er stretched from coastal South Car­oli­na into east­ern Ten­nessee were occu­pied for less than 18 months before theN­ative Amer­i­cans destroyed them, killing all but one of the Span­ish sol­diers who manned the gar­risons,” said Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan archae­ol­o­gist Robin Beck. More.

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An Open Letter to the Baby Deer I Nearly Hit Tonight by Dena Rash Guzman

The mist cold and thick, I had the high beams switched off
so the bril­liance wouldn’t chan­nel in and blind me—
the switch­back roads wind through the woods past
hous­es built by peo­ple with wag­ons drawn along
by beasts with four legs just like you still have.
It was close. I would say you came out of nowhere
but that’s a lie. You came out of the woods, your home.
These woods have been home to baby deer long before
I came and will be long after I break free these surly bonds.

I can say with cer­ti­tude that I was dri­ving care­ful­ly tonight.
When your eyes and fur came before me I did the thing—
I slammed on my brakes. The road lit bright red in back
of my car, a Ger­man num­ber. It han­dles well in stress
like beasts with four legs just like you still have.
Inch­es from your shell-shocked lit­tle face,
I stopped. Your moth­er came after you, rearing
as I would have. Her life with us here must be difficult,
all her nights most like­ly fraught by ances­tral memories
of wolf packs hunt­ing her herd. She might be a sin­gle mom.

guzmanDena Rash Guz­man is a Las Vegas born poet and essay­ist. She now lives in a riv­er gorge out­side Port­land, OR and is the founder of Lust­ed Road Hon­ey Co. & Hum­ble­bee Pol­li­na­tor Con­ser­va­to­ry.  She is the author of Life Cycle—Poems, Dog On A Chain Press 2013. www​.denarashguz​man​.com

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But Pat Boone Never Lived in Bessemer, essay by Terry Barr

On the night before I entered 7th grade, my across-the-street, 9th grade neigh­bor Joe, while we were enjoy­ing spareribs at our family’s annu­al Labor Day pic­nic, gave me this advice:

Be care­ful tomor­row. You nev­er know who’s car­ry­ing a switchblade.”

I grew up in the switch­blade era. I’d hear talk at home about beer brawls in the rougher sec­tions of town where com­bat­ants would pull switch-blade knives on each oth­er and fight it out, often to the death. In fact, Joe’s family’s handy-man–Elijah who had conked red hair and car­ried his own ladder—was mur­dered in a switch­blade fight. I knew Eli­jah. He was friend­ly enough, but my senses—or was it my grandmother’s voice—warned me to not hang around him too long, as I did with the var­i­ous oth­er maids and yard men of our cir­cle of friends. I was only ten when reports of the inci­dent made their way through our neigh­bor­hood hot­lines, the usu­al after­noon phone ses­sions where my moth­er and grand­moth­er and all their friends might tie up the lines for lit­er­al­ly hours.

“What does a switch­blade look like,” I asked Joe. At that moment, I felt as threat­ened by a switch­blade as I was by the cot­ton­mouths that my par­ents told me slith­ered in and near the creek down the street from my house. 

Nev­er mind what they look like,” Joe cau­tioned. “Just keep close to the lock­ers and nev­er get in the way of a ninth-grad­er, or any­one else for that mat­ter. You nev­er know who’s been left-behind.” 

I couldn’t enjoy the rest of my sup­per that night and refused the home­made vanil­la ice cream altogether.

It’s OK” my Dad­dy said lat­er. “Joe’s Mom for­got to put sug­ar in it again.”

So there I stood: My first day at Besse­mer Jr. High in these switch­blade times. The front entrance doors opened garage-door wide and I thronged in with my new class­mates. The main office lurked just to the right of this entrance, which didn’t real­ly assure me that any “hood” wouldn’t try to sneak in a dan­ger­ous weapon. Because, I noticed in my first breath­tak­ing moment of junior high, the office had no win­dows, on the door or else­where. And nei­ther on this day or any oth­er in my expe­ri­ence there did the principal–Mr. Camp, whose lar­ynx had been crushed, report­ed­ly, in some for­eign war—nor the assis­tant principal—Mr. David­son, a red-haired and, I’d been warned, hot-head­ed man—ever stand in the front door­way to frisk the entrants. Joe told me that if you ever got caught with a switch­blade, you were auto­mat­i­cal­ly expelled. I won­dered how, if they weren’t check­ing at the door, our school guardians could ever catch any­one with that ven­omous weapon. I con­sid­ered my chances of sur­viv­ing that year fifty-fifty at best.

I hadn’t been in school for a week when I saw my first fight, the first in what seemed an every-oth­er-day occur­rence. Once, Rus­sell Aldrich tore a hunk of Don Griffis’s hair out of the side of his head. Hav­ing a bald spot in sev­enth grade is maybe a badge of hon­or. It cer­tain­ly didn’t hurt Don’s suc­cess with the girls. And then, a giant of a ninth grad­er, Biff Wyatt, allowed him­self to be pum­meled into sub­mis­sion by a wiry kid named Bob­by Ray Led­bet­ter. I saw Biff on the ground, strug­gling to cast off Bob­by Ray’s “bulk,” his face a red rib­bon of strain and shame. Most of these fights were set up dur­ing school hours and then enact­ed just after the 3:00 bell, behind the school and just beneath the gym­na­si­um win­dow. On any giv­en week there might be a fea­ture event three or four days straight; nev­er was there a week with few­er than two.

Maybe the strangest and scari­est of these for me occurred on a cold, cloudy after­noon in ear­ly Decem­ber when, as I was walk­ing up the hill to my Mom’s car, I saw Bruce Dun­can, the first Black kid who’d ever spo­ken to me in ele­men­tary school, walk­ing among a crowd of white boys. When I reached our car, they passed me, head­ing across the street and under the rail­road viaduct. A few min­utes lat­er, our car passed, and in a vacant lot I saw Bruce, entan­gled on the ground with one of the boys. The oth­ers were gath­ered in a semi-cir­cle watch­ing, cheer­ing, or so it seemed to me since our win­dows were rolled up as we passed. We turned the next cor­ner, out of sight, but I kept think­ing of that scene and how as they passed me on their way to the bat­tle, they seemed like they were going over to someone’s house for a game of foot­ball in the front yard.

I didn’t see any­one with a switch­blade dur­ing that grap­pling moment. Nor did I see one over the next few months of school, though like those snakes that I nev­er saw either, I just knew that someone’s switch­blade was out there, some­where, wait­ing for me.

Edu­ca­tion is a fun­ny expe­ri­ence. Not every­thing you see will edu­cate you in the way that your guid­ing elders intend, and just when you’re dis­tract­ed enough from real or unre­al fears, some­one aris­es to impart a valu­able les­son. Such was the case with my edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence in the face of Pat Boone’s immor­tal art film, The Cross and the Switch­blade.

In my 7th grade year, I came home straight from school every day, and after a light snack, imme­di­ate­ly tack­led my home­work. I was allowed to pause for a game of foot­ball with friends in my own front yard, but I could not watch TV until every last bit of my geom­e­try, com­po­si­tion, or sci­ence home­work lay exhaust­ed in my note­books. In my leisure time I read biogra­phies of famous Amer­i­cans; Ray Brad­bury sto­ries; Bat­man comics; and the Sports Page of The Birm­ing­ham News, our after­noon paper. While I didn’t always eat my veg­eta­bles at din­ner (steamed cau­li­flower smells exact­ly like sewage), I gen­er­al­ly obeyed my par­ents’ every com­mand: I always asked per­mis­sion to go to a friend’s house; took out the garbage after sup­per; raked every leaf I could see in ear­ly fall. I was no cause for wor­ry or alarm. 

And I didn’t need help from a born-again Chris­t­ian crooner-turned-auteur. 

Yet, as part of a Methodist Youth Fel­low­ship expe­ri­ence, one win­ter Fri­day night, my church friends and I packed into Birmingham’s Empire The­ater to take in Pat Boone’s per­son­al epic. Munch­ing my high­ly-salt­ed pop­corn, over the next nine­ty-five min­utes I watched Pat take on and con­vert a switch­blade-wield­ing gang. For all of those min­utes, as I observed his white bucks, his plas­tic bro­mides, and his strange­ly combed hair, I just knew that he would be sliced to rib­bons, pack­aged up, and deliv­ered to the near­est 4‑H club­house by my junior high peers: Hol­lis Todd who wore no under­pants (I know, because he made no secret of it when he stood at the uri­nal next to me); Phillip Barnes, who was rivaled in uncouth­ness only by Hol­lis’ sis­ter Judy (who report­ed­ly staged many fights her­self with girls and guys); and Wayne Whit­lock, a six foot one, eighth-grad­er, who could scale the ten-foot wall on the obsta­cle course using only one arm. 

I remem­ber rid­ing home that night with my best friend Jim­bo in the back seat of his Mother’s sta­tion wag­on. WSGN-AM, “The Big 610,” was fol­low­ing up “Crim­son and Clover” with “Honky Tonk Women.” 

What did ya’ll think of the movie?” Jimbo’s Mom cheer­ful­ly and opti­misti­cal­ly asked.

Oh, it was OK,” we respond­ed in uni­son which, if you under­stand teenage lin­go, trans­lat­ed into: “It was beyond stu­pid, and thanks a lot for ruin­ing anoth­er week­end night on this crap when we could have been at a par­ty, attempt­ing to kiss a girl or something.”

I thought it was real­ly inspi­ra­tional,” she replied, hope­ful­ly. “You can take a lot of com­fort and learn a lot of lessons from these movies!”

Sigh. No one but an adult would believe that Pat Boone could turn the hearts and minds of my hood­ish peers who wouldn’t even need the switch­blades that I was sure they owned, but nev­er saw in those ear­ly months of school. 

How­ev­er, I did see the Reid broth­ers, Saul and Paul, who were as dis­tinct as fra­ter­nal twins can be.

Saul was six­teen when he re-entered the sev­enth grade. He had tat­toos on both arms—faded-green 1969-era tat­toos that I thought only cab dri­vers and fill­ing sta­tion atten­dants dared. And Saul’s mus­cles, so clear­ly defined that in semi-flex they rip­pled to such an extent that even class princess Ren­nie Robin­son expressed won­der at them. These mus­cles seemed to dis­count Saul’s need­ing a switch­blade to keep us puny junior high pawns in our places. So full of swag­ger, with greased hair flip­ping up both in front and back, Saul held us all in con­tempt, and we held him in abject fear, com­plete and stu­pe­fy­ing ter­ror, but also with a strange and mes­mer­iz­ing respect. For Saul, among oth­er feats of scholas­tic dar­ing, told every­one that Fri­days were his day off, and after a few weeks, most teach­ers just skipped his name dur­ing Fri­day roll call. On the oth­er days, instead of answer­ing “Here,” or “Present,” Saul had his own cul­tur­al sig­ni­fi­er: “Account­ed for.” And in some way that I didn’t yet under­stand, he cer­tain­ly was.

Truth­ful­ly, if you were smart, you did want Saul account­ed for. Dur­ing the first week of school, after hav­ing been exposed to Saul for maybe three days, I was sit­ting on the bleach­ers dur­ing gym class with my good friend Randy Manzel­la. Wait­ing for Coach Brew­er to appear and so inform us of the remark­able feats of ath­let­ic prowess that we would be attempt­ing this school year, Randy and I didn’t account for Saul, who had slow­ly and imper­cep­ti­bly crept clos­er to our row. Randy was no doubt fill­ing my ears with yet anoth­er hor­ror sto­ry he had heard about gym class–about boys pop­ping your exposed rear with wet tow­els, or steal­ing your clothes as you show­ered. We vowed right then and there nev­er to show­er in gym class, and I sup­pose our false brava­do set us up for Saul.

So sit­ting there, believ­ing that our great­est prob­lem con­cerned not appear­ing naked in the show­ers, we allowed Saul—that undu­lat­ing cottonmouth—to strike. Except that Randy, God Bless him, wore thick glass­es with wide black frames, and even Saul had a code. So it was I and I alone who qual­i­fied as Saul’s prey. Up until this very moment, Saul and I had nev­er spo­ken or even exchanged looks, or at least he had nev­er caught me look­ing at him. Of course, every­one looked at Saul, just like every­one stares hyp­not­i­cal­ly at the rep­tile pit in the zoo, won­der­ing just what prey con­tin­ues to wrig­gle in that par­tic­u­lar viper’s throat. 

So con­sid­er me the hamster.

Hey, Can­dy-Ass!”

His voice con­veyed no trace of anger, vit­ri­ol, or, class-envy. His tone sound­ed the same pitch and inflec­tion as all those “Account­ed for’s” we heard that year. Yet, the words them­selves clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed his menace.

That’s my spot, and if you don’t get up by the time I count to ten, you’re gonna get it.”

And Saul showed me his flexed arm, which had extend­ed from it at its the very end, not the switch-blade that had recent­ly haunt­ed my days and nights, but a mas­sive, scarred fist. Dis­play­ing this prize, he began counting.

Each of us has a par­tic­u­lar expe­ri­ence that gives spe­cial, per­son­al mean­ing to the phrase “Words failed me.” This, of course, was mine.

By this point–“three, four…” Randy and the entire Manzel­la fam­i­ly had set sail for their native Sici­ly. Actu­al­ly, since he was the smartest kid in our class, Randy, with the encour­ag­ing words, “You bet­ter move,” slid off his seat and found anoth­er, maybe five rows below us. Yet, hyp­no­tized by Saul’s viper­ous arm, I couldn’t.

And so I won­dered: Would a cross, at this late moment, make any dif­fer­ence at all? Would I stand a chance against the demon of my ado­les­cence had I Pat Boone’s smooth, sil­ver-tongued deliv­ery or his plas­ticine comb-over instead of my own frozen lar­ynx and Beatle-bangs?

Good old Pat!

Would he ever be able to account for a view­er like me, the prod­uct of a mixed Protes­tant-Jew­ish family–a fam­i­ly who def­i­nite­ly did not own a cross? 

I had seen cross­es and actu­al­ly touched a few in my time. My Dad worked in a jew­el­ry store, and I had my first sum­mer job there, just before this school year start­ed. The store, Stan­dard Jew­el­ry Com­pa­ny, was in my Dad’s fam­i­ly, so we were Jew­ish jew­el­ers though no fam­i­ly name adorned any store sign­post. And not only did we sell cross­es, but cru­ci­fix­es, and oth­er jew­eled Chris­t­ian icons too. I knew that ordi­nary cross­es were off-lim­its to me, but once I did ask Dad to get me a surfer’s cross. My favorite male TV stars wore them, and so I assumed that girls would think they were cool. That these cool tal­is­mans also looked like the Ger­man Iron Cross escaped me then. Nev­er­the­less, Dad got me the cross, which I then prompt­ly gave to the girl-of-my-dreams, Joe’s sis­ter Mary Jane, who just as prompt­ly hand­ed it off to her lit­tle sis­ter. Did this mean that I was going steady with a nine-year old named Mar­garet Lou?

But even if I hadn’t giv­en it away, Saul wouldn’t have been impressed by it. Maybe I could have told him about the leg­end of the surfer’s cross and the sto­ry of my unre­quit­ed love for the beau­ti­ful blonde-haired girl whom I watched in secret every day from my liv­ing room win­dow. Maybe he was a clos­et­ed Jan and Dean surf-rock fan, for wasn’t my sto­ry the stuff of every 60’s teenage pop song? Maybe hear­ing my trag­ic lament, he would take pity on me or be so bored that he’d for­get he was count­ing my fate.

These thoughts, though seem­ing­ly end­less, had got­ten us to the count of sev­en. My arm, Saul’s intend­ed tar­get, was already begin­ning to ache.

But that’s when the Pat Boone mir­a­cle happened.

Saul had just count­ed “eight,” when the gym office door opened. Out from this inner sanc­tum strolled not a man in white bucks, but one in black cleats: Coach Bil­ly “Bomber” Brew­er, who was also an itin­er­ant Bap­tist preach­er. As the year went on, many guys in gym class would come to accuse “Bomber” of cheat­ing, as he would call invis­i­ble fouls or inter­fer­ence when­ev­er he had, or lost, the ball dur­ing the innu­mer­able foot­ball and bas­ket­ball games that com­posed most of our gym peri­ods that year. On this day, how­ev­er, the gym grew qui­et, not so much because he was stand­ing there, but because of what he had in his hand: A three-foot long, sol­id wood board, which, sup­pos­ed­ly, he had named “The Lit­tle Bomber,” after himself.

To this day I’ve nev­er fig­ured out how he knew what was tran­spir­ing nine­ty feet from his office with­out being able to see through those plas­ter walls. I sup­pose he knew that he had to account for Saul even­tu­al­ly and not let more than a cou­ple of min­utes go by with­out check­ing off his presence.

What­ev­er the case, Coach Brew­er walked straight to us, nev­er waver­ing, nev­er look­ing elsewhere.

Saul, get down here right now and grab those ankles!”

Saul, fist still poised above my already-winc­ing arm, had no excuse, no recourse.

So he com­plied. He descend­ed the bleach­ers, walked right up to Coach, and bent over, grab­bing those ankles in front of the entire gym class, God, and Pat Boone. Then “The Lit­tle Bomber” went to work. Three loud whacks that echoed like Bible thumps through­out the gym. To his cred­it, Saul held firm, and when Coach said “Get up, and go back to your seat,” Saul did. But first, he extend­ed his hand to “Bomber” and said, “Hey! They were good ‘uns.”

Saul left me alone after that. Oh, he might occa­sion­al­ly speak in my direction: 

You’re fat, you know that?”

Of course, I did. 

The only oth­er encounter we had occurred dur­ing our class spelling bee tri­als. Since I was one of the cham­pi­on class spellers, our teacher often allowed me to call out the words in prac­tice ses­sions. On one par­tic­u­lar after­noon, as I was antic­i­pat­ing which words those stand­ing in line were bound to get, I saw Saul wait­ing his turn. My eyes skipped down the page to see the word he would be forced to spell.

When his turn came, I looked him in the eye and called it out:

CONVERSION, Saul.”

Con­ver­sion.” He looked puz­zled for a moment. Our eyes met again, and then he started:

C‑O-N-V-E-R-…

I wait­ed, won­der­ing. And hoping.

S‑I-O‑N.”

That’s right,” I confirmed.

Saul nei­ther smiled nor nod­ded. He mere­ly took his place in the back of the line, wait­ing for his next word, or for the bell, or for some­thing else that I would nev­er under­stand. I won­dered whether he was proud of him­self, and if that pride might trans­late into some­thing greater if he could just spell the next word cor­rect­ly. I tried glanc­ing down the list as my class­mates strug­gled through “con­ver­sant” and “con­vo­lut­ed.” But I didn’t have a chance to see what would hap­pen, for the bell for last peri­od rang then, and we were off to the greater glo­ries of Read­ing Lab or Machine Shop which is where I lost Saul each day. On this day, and this day only, I was actu­al­ly a bit sad. 

He nev­er con­vert­ed, by the way. Maybe in part because his broth­er Paul had recon­sti­tut­ed him­self by Saul’s stan­dards into a “nor­mal” student—meaning one who want­ed to stick it out at least until high school. 

And yes, before school offi­cial­ly released us for the sum­mer, I saw Saul’s switch­blade. It was dur­ing sci­ence class. He had wait­ed and wait­ed, and final­ly, to impress Ren­nie Robin­son, he brought it out, switched it open, and then, after maybe ten sec­onds, care­ful­ly closed it and returned it to his front left pock­et. It was all rather anti-cli­mat­ic, for by that point in the year, I had already expe­ri­enced too much. I had even giv­en a girl a box of can­dy for Valentine’s Day: Deb­bie Pat­ter­son who was rail-skin­ny and had the longest, wavi­est blond hair I had ever seen, and who claimed to be part Cherokee.

See how crooked my nose is? Just like an Indian!”

Two days after I gave her the can­dy she broke up with me because “I nev­er called her.”

It real­ly didn’t mat­ter so much to me because at least I had one girl­friend in sev­enth grade.

Besides, when Saul showed me that men­ac­ing switch­blade, he also did some­thing else that he had nev­er done before.

He called me by my name.

SWITCH

“That’s how you open it, Terry.”

Saul didn’t make it to the end of that school year. He turned sev­en­teen in April and so, as he pledged he would, he left us behind, jour­ney­ing out into the Dam­as­cus of his life: A cross­roads of glit­ter­ing switch­blade fame, a per­pet­u­al small-town rebellion.

It might make a nice, Hol­ly­wood end­ing if I said I nev­er heard from or saw him again. That way I could leave him paint­ed as defi­ant, plagued, and maybe even repen­tant, in an adult and reha­bil­i­tat­ed life.

But I did see him again. It was three or four years lat­er, my high school years. Shop­ping for Christ­mas at our local mall with my moth­er and broth­er, I looked up and com­ing out of WT Grant’s, I saw a man and a woman push­ing a baby stroller. The woman was a bleached blonde, a lit­tle heavy, but that could have been the after-effects of her preg­nan­cy. I had nev­er seen her before. But some­thing looked famil­iar about the guy. He looked… would “belea­guered” be the right word? “Haunt­ed?” I watched them for a minute as they strolled clos­er. And then I knew it was Saul. He had gained some weight. He had “set­tled,” so to speak. 

I imag­ined this lit­tle fam­i­ly tak­ing their pur­chase from Grant’s or Super‑X Drugs home, and gath­er­ing that night in front of their Motoro­la watch­ing “The Movie of the Week.” Maybe they’re eat­ing burg­ers or Din­ty Moore Stew. Maybe they have a beer or two and remem­ber to give the baby his bot­tle. And maybe they keep the knives they cut their burg­ers with safe­ly out of the baby’s reach. I’d like to think so anyway.

I saw anoth­er movie unfold in those few moments, but I didn’t stare too long. For I had seen cross­es and switch­blades in my small Alaba­ma town. And I had sur­vived them all. 

Photo Terry BarrTer­ry Barr lives in Greenville, South Car­oli­na, with his wife and two daugh­ters. A native of Besse­mer, Alaba­ma, he grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­te­val­lo in 1979 and went on to earn a Ph.D in Eng­lish at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee in 1986.

He is cur­rent­ly Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Pres­by­ter­ian Col­lege in Clin­ton, South Car­oli­na, where he teach­es cours­es in Mod­ern Nov­el, Film Stud­ies, and Cre­ative Writ­ing. He has had schol­ar­ly essays pub­lished in South­ern Jew­ish His­to­ry, The Qui­et Voic­es: Rab­bis in the Black Civ­il Rights Era, Stud­ies in Pop­u­lar Cul­ture, and has cre­ative essays pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary Review, The Bat­tered Suit­case, and moon­Shine review. He is work­ing on a col­lec­tion of essays about grow­ing up in Alaba­ma and his jour­ney from being Chris­t­ian to Jew­ish and to mar­ry­ing an Iran­ian émigré.

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Texas Never Whispers, by C.L. Bledsoe

The clos­er it got to Joey’s dad’s birth­day, the more agi­tat­ed he became, and with noth­ing worth­while to do when he wasn’t at work – which was less and less often since Jer­ry had been cut­ting his hours – he spent his time lift­ing weights. So when Chy­na rolled in, mid­dle of the night, and flashed a let­ter post­marked from Texas with his and Chyna’s names on it, he want­ed no part of it.

“It’s noth­ing bad, I’m sure,” she said. “Prob­a­bly say­ing he’s sor­ry he missed your birth­days and isn’t around.” She smelled like per­fume and Marl­boro Lights and took a long drag on a Route 44 Cher­ry Dr. Pep­per from Sonic.

“Shouldn’t be in prison, then,” Joey said, glar­ing at the TV

Chy­na didn’t answer that; she just start­ed in from the top, read­ing it to Joey while he sulled but lis­tened – he wasn’t far enough gone in his anger to ignore his feal­ty to his sister.

The let­ter start­ed, like she’d pre­dict­ed, with apolo­gies, and then moved to ques­tions. It asked about Joey’s life, how he was doing in school, whether he was doing any­thing stupid.

“How’d he get our address?”

“He used to live here, stu­pid,” she said. “And I wrote to him.”

Joey was stunned. “Why in hell would you do that?”

“He’s our father.” Her voice was soft, vulnerable. 

“Is he?”

She con­tin­ued read­ing. Joey’s anger caused him to miss the imme­di­ate bits that fol­lowed, but he tuned back in as his father, appar­ent­ly in answer to a ques­tion of Chyna’s, described his life.

“It’s bor­ing here; that’s the main thing. You can read or play cards or some­thing, but it’s the same every day. There’s some real hard fellers here, but long as you got friends, you’ll do all right. The food is no good, but you get used to it. I ain’t nev­er been messed with, to answer your ques­tion. What I miss most is see­ing you two and your mom­ma and not being in prison.”

“You asked him if he’d ever been messed with?” Joey said.

“I was curious.” 

He went on to describe his cell and his dai­ly rou­tine, as per Chyna’s questions. 

“I got old, here,” he said. The impli­ca­tion was that he shouldn’t have. 

Joey could pic­ture it as she read; the nar­row cell, the exer­cise yard. The images in his head were col­ored by movies he’d seen: Brubak­er, with its death row that was lit­tle more than a series of box­es; Robert Red­ford dig­ging hole after hole. He saw his father as the vague mem­o­ry he had; a bone-thin frame, taut with mus­cle. The man in Joey’s head was always tan and grin­ning. He prob­a­bly wouldn’t be tan any­more, Joey fig­ured. And he sure as hell wouldn’t be smiling. 

“I’m going to write him back,” Chy­na said, break­ing Joey’s rever­ie. “Want me to say anything?”

Joey con­sid­ered it. “Tell him not to wor­ry about not being here. I don’t miss him.”

* * *

Joey didn’t see Tom­my stand­ing in the door­way watch­ing him work out, though Joey had worked him­self into such a state of exhaus­tion, he could bare­ly reg­is­ter what was right in front of him. Joey fin­ished his rep. and sat up on the weight bench.

“You train­ing for some­thing?” Tom­my barked.

“No sir,” Joey said. He wiped sweat off with a thread­bare towel.

“Come on and make a run with me.” 

“Can I take a show­er first?”

“I’d rather you did.”

 

They drove out by the munic­i­pal air­port, in the tan­gle of bare­ly grav­eled roads, pulled off into a grot­to Joey’d nev­er known exist­ed. Tom­my killed the engine and pulled up to a trail­er hid­den amongst some weeds.

“Don’t say a fuck­ing word,” Tom­my said. 

They got out and Tom­my hand­ed Joey a duf­fle bag from the trunk. They went to the door and stood there with­out knock­ing. Joey heard foot­steps mov­ing through the brush, and some­body came around the side of the trail­er, but all Joey could make out was the twin bar­rels of a shot­gun amongst leaves. 

Tom­my grabbed the bag and set it down by the trail­er door. He stepped back and Joey went with him. Anoth­er bag flopped by their feet. Tom­my nudged Joey who picked it up. They went back to the car, Tom­my cranked it and revved it a few times, and backed out all the way back to the road before turn­ing around.

“Know what’d hap­pen if you knocked on that door?” Tom­my asked.

“Dou­ble-dog dare me,” Joey said.

Tom­my laughed a lit­tle. “Hun­gry,” he said and they went into town for some­thing to eat.

* * *

After that, Tom­my was bring­ing him along all the time. 

“You don’t ever ask nobody their name,” Tom­my said. “Don’t ask no ques­tions or they’ll think you’re a narc.” 

Joey took it all in. At first, it was most­ly just him rid­ing along. A cou­ple times, Tom­my took Joey with on longer trips; they’d end up trad­ing joints in some tweaker’s house while he read from the bible about the end of the world, eat­ing can after can of baked beans; or, they’d stand in some guy’s kitchen while his bat­tered-look­ing wife chased around kids who already talked back to her because they saw their dad­dy do it, trad­ing shots. It was like that, Joey real­ized; you had to spend time with them. His expe­ri­ences with pot smok­ers had been the same, but he’d thought they were just lone­ly losers; turned out, you had to put in time, let them get to know you, or they got suspicious. 

“Any­thing hap­pens to him,” Joey’s mom, KT, said after one trip. “I’ll nev­er for­give you.”

“I know,” Tom­my said, a sim­ple state­ment of fact. 

Joey had known his mom and Tom­my sold weed and some­times meth for years; peo­ple were always com­ing by, or Tom­my was always off on some errand for days at a time. Joey had assumed it was most­ly weed they were sell­ing, and maybe it had been, but these days, Tom­my seemed to want to step it up. He didn’t offer an expla­na­tion, and Joey knew bet­ter than to ask for one. 

It was sur­re­al for Joey – one minute, he’d be out in the sticks shoot­ing cans for tar­get prac­tice with some guy who’d just as soon stick an ice pick through Joey’s eye as see him, and the next, Tom­my would drop him off at school, and Joey would be sit­ting in some class try­ing not to fall asleep. He smoked plen­ty of pot and drank, but Tom­my only let him try meth one time – Joey was pret­ty sure it was because of KT. But this one time, they’d been out at a dealer’s house, and he’d insist­ed that Joey join them in sam­pling the wares. Tom­my tried to make a joke about it, but the guy got wide-eyed and weird, so Joey had to do it. Tom­my kept eying him as Joey lit the pipe like he’d seen so many oth­ers do and hit it. 

It was kind of the oppo­site of pot; where­as mar­i­jua­na made Joey feel spa­cy and dis­tant, meth made him feel present, very fuck­ing present, and clear-head­ed in a decep­tive way. 

He didn’t sleep the next day, or the one after that. He stayed out with Tom­my, and when he was final­ly made to go to school, he cut class­es and jogged around the school, grind­ing his teeth and work­ing out weird the­o­ries in his head. When he final­ly crashed, he slept a sol­id day and a half.

 

From time to time, the old guys would stare at Joey for a while and then get this know­ing look on their faces. The first time it’d hap­pened, Joey thought he was about to get raped. But then the guy had point­ed at him and asked his name. Then he’d start­ed talk­ing about Joey’s dad.

As far as Joey knew, his dad ran guns. Some of KT’s old­est friends would ref­er­ence him, but they hard­ly ever came to the house. The weird thing about them was when they did, they’d actu­al­ly talk to Joey and Chy­na, back when she was around, any­way. They’d ask how the kids were doing in school, the stan­dard bull­shit. Joey’d asked Chy­na about it one time, and she’d explained they were friends of Joey’s dad. He didn’t know how to feel about it.

But the way these guys talked, it was like Joey’s dad was a leg­end, instead of some guy rot­ting in a Texas prison. They’d tell sto­ries about fights he’d got­ten into, peo­ple he’d screwed over or who tried to screw him over. Joey had nev­er real­ly thought of him as a per­son, but here he was, liv­ing on in the tat­tered mem­o­ries of a bunch of tweakers. 

After they’d left that one’s house, Tom­my had been antsy in the car. 

“You remem­ber your dad?” he asked.

“Not real­ly,” Joey said.

Tom­my grunt­ed. “Good man,” he said, which shocked Joey. 

“You knew him?” 

Tom­my laughed. “We came up togeth­er. He was always smart, smarter than me.” It was the most he’d ever real­ly heard Tom­my say.

“Were you friends?” 

Tom­my grunt­ed. “He told me to take care of you and your mom­ma,” he final­ly said. Joey sat, stunned, the rest of the ride home. He want­ed to ask Tom­my ques­tions, but couldn’t think of a one. Lat­er, as he lay abed, try­ing to sleep, he made a list in his head that he knew he’d nev­er ask:

1. If he was smart, why was he in prison?

2. Does he know you’re fuck­ing his wife?

3. Did you run guns with him?

4. What’s the dif­fer­ence between manslaugh­ter and murder?

* * *

Joey was upstairs, work­ing out again. This time, it was his mom stand­ing in the door­way when he looked up. 

“Know what today is,” she said. 

“Tues­day,” Joey said, wip­ing him­self off and start­ing in on curls. 

She came in and sat on the bed. “Chyna’s been writ­ing to him. Said he wrote to you.” Joey didn’t answer. “Wrote to me, too.” She let it slip out so he could’ve ignored it, but it hit him like a slap to the face. 

“What’d he say?” Joey said, try­ing to sound nonchalant. 

“Said to make sure you don’t end up like him.”

Joey laughed. “In prison?”

“Sell­ing.” Again, it was a sim­ple state­ment that car­ried mas­sive weight. 

“Talk to Tom­my. He’s the one always tak­ing me along.”

“I have. Way he fig­ures it, and I don’t dis­agree, is you want to do it.”

“I guess I’m learn­ing a thing or two.”

“I guess you are.” Joey switched arms and start­ed curl­ing with that one as she con­tin­ued. “You don’t have to, though.”

“What else am I going to do?”

She nod­ded and rose but didn’t leave.

“Does it both­er you? That you’re out and he’s not?” He didn’t make eye con­tact, just let it lie.

“It does,” she said. “But he for­gave me. I did what I had to do for you kids.” 

Joey thought of a few things to add to that, but he let it go and focused on his exer­cis­es. A moment lat­er he felt a cool hand on his shoul­der and looked up into his mother’s sunken eyes. Her face was wrin­kled, the skin slack. She was near­ly tooth­less, though her hair still had traces of black amongst the gray. There was a squir­re­li­ness about her eyes, but in the cen­ters, they were calm. She smiled and he did his best to soft­en his face.

* * *

Joey rode to school with Chy­na when Tom­my didn’t drop him off. And almost every day, he rode home with her. 

“Come and go for a ride with me,” she said when he met her at her car.

“Yeah, I was going to.”

“No, I mean…just get in, dumbass.”

She took him up Rab­bit Road and turned off east on the some­what paved road that took them, even­tu­al­ly, out to the munic­i­pal air­port and the tan­gle of grav­el roads that cir­cled it.

“Clint asked me to mar­ry me,” she said, apro­pos of nothing. 

Joey laughed before he could stop him­self and she reached over and smacked him, hard.

“Sor­ry,” Joey said. “So what did you say?”

“I told him I’d think about it.”

Joey looked at her. “Yeah? And what did you think?”

She shrugged, which was a lit­tle trou­bling, because she had this way of lying on the wheel and steer­ing with her shoul­ders, so when she shrugged, the car veered to the side. 

“Real­ly?”

“Yeah, I mean, I real­ly like Clint.”

Joey looked straight ahead. “Why?” He final­ly asked.

She punched him again. “Nev­er­mind.”

“No, I’m seri­ous. Why do you like him so much?”

She glared at him until she real­ized he was being seri­ous and then slack­ened up. “I don’t know. He’s nice. He respects me.”

“Does he?”

“More than Tom­my and KT.”

“Okay. So what do you get out of mar­ry­ing him? I mean, what does that do for you?”

“Not every­thing is about what you can get out of some­body.” Joey didn’t answer. He set­tled back into the seat and watched the trail­ers and trees move by. “You can come vis­it,” she added.

He laughed again. “I’m doing okay.”

She looked at him. “You’ve been going out with Tom­my. KT told me.”

He shrugged. “Got to learn a trade.”

It was her turn to laugh. “So you can end up like dad?”

“Least I won’t be leav­ing a fam­i­ly behind. But at least I can count on you to write me letters.”

* * *

Joey was on a run with Tom­my, hang­ing out at the house of a guy they’d dealt with a cou­ple times, just drink­ing beers and bull­shit­ting, when the phone rang. The guy’s wife answered and then turned to the tweaker.

“Bil­ly, they’re ask­ing for some­body named Tommy.”

Tom­my and Joey both looked up like that cat that had caught the canary. 

“You give some­body this num­ber?” The guy asked.

“Hell, I don’t even know this num­ber,” Tom­my said.

The guy took the phone and demand­ed to know who it was, but clear­ly wasn’t get­ting anywhere. 

“Hell, it’s for you,” he said and hand­ed it to Tom­my. “Won’t tell me shit.”

“Yeah?” Tom­my said. He had a con­fused look on his face and didn’t speak again except to say. “Yeah, I get it.” Then he hung up and went back over by Joey.

“Well? Who was it?”

“Wrong num­ber,” Tom­my said, pulling on his beer.

The tweak­er looked at him, mean as a snake, and then laughed loud. They talked some more, and about five min­utes lat­er, there was a knock on the door. The wife went and answered it and cried out as some­one shoved her aside. Joey didn’t real­ize Tom­my wasn’t beside him any­more until he saw him wrestling with the tweak­er, who was try­ing to pull out a hand­gun from a draw­er by the sink. There were two guys at the door, and they bee­lined for Tom­my. One of them hit the tweaker’s hand hard, which was half in the draw­er, and he yelped. Tom­my stepped out of the way, hands raised, while the two took the tweak­er to the door. His wife was on the floor, and one of them knelt and helped her up.

“We’re sor­ry, Dar­la,” he said.

“Yeah, just call me and tell me where to get what’s left of him.” 

They closed the door behind them. 

“Want us to wait with you?” Tom­my asked.

She sat at the kitchen table. “Yeah, hell, y’all hun­gry? I got some squir­rel and dumplings.”

“Shit yeah,” Tom­my said. 

While she was heat­ing it up in a big pot on the stove, Joey nudged Tommy. 

“What did they say on the phone?” 

“Said somebody’s going to come knock on the door and ask for Jack. Said to let them take him, oth­er­wise, they take everybody.”

“Did you know who it was?”

“If I did, I don’t want to.”

 

They each fin­ished two help­ings of squir­rel and dumplings with some cats-head bis­cuits on the side before the phone rang. Tom­my looked over at Dar­la, and she gave a ‘go ahead’ motion. He answered and said, “All right.” And hung up.

“Said we can pick him up at Big Eddy Bridge. Want us to go get him?”

“I got the kids com­ing in from school any minute,” Dar­la said. 

When they drove out, they found him in the mid­dle of the con­crete, bruised and bloody. They were halfway back to town before they real­ized he was miss­ing a finger.

“What did you do?” Tom­my asked.

But he kept scream­ing until they dropped him off at the emer­gency room. 

“Must’ve owed some­body mon­ey,” Tom­my said. 

* * *

After they went home, Joey went up to his room and thought about every­thing and then went and knocked on KT and Tommy’s bed­room door. Tom­my hollered from inside, and Joey told him that he want­ed to talk. There was a lot of grum­bling before Tom­my opened the door.

“What in hell do you want?”

“I want to do more, sir.”

“Well clean the damn house, then.”

“No, with the…you know…what we’ve been doing.”

“Shit.” Tom­my shook his head and turned and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Chy­na grad­u­at­ed, and Joey was sur­prised when KT and Tom­my actu­al­ly showed up for it and sat beside KT’s moth­er awkwardly. 

“I’m sur­prised you grad­u­at­ed,” the kids’ grand­moth­er said to Chy­na. She turned to Joey. “Think you can hold out two more years?”

“Yes ma’am,” Joey said because it was what she want­ed to hear. 

Clint came with them when they went out for din­ner at The Cat­fish Hole restau­rant, on Grandmother’s dime, of course. She nib­bled on one piece of fish while the rest of them gulped down hush­pup­pies, French fries, and piece after piece of fried cat­fish. Tom­my burped loud­ly and pushed his plate away, knock­ing over his sweet tea, which deep­ened Grandmother’s scowl. 

Chy­na cleared her throat. “Clint asked me to mar­ry him,” she said, glanc­ing at him. He smiled and took her hand. 

“You knocked up?” Tom­my asked.

Grand­moth­er gasped. 

“No,” Chy­na said. “Don’t be a pig.”

Tom­my eyed Clint. “You whipped or something?”

Clint shook his head slow­ly. “No sir. I love Chyna.”

Tom­my grinned, and KT elbowed him hard.

“And what do you do for a liv­ing, young man?” Grand­moth­er asked. 

He explained his work for a propane com­pa­ny. It wasn’t that inter­est­ing, so Joey and Tom­my both zoned out. They both tuned in when Grand­moth­er laughed at some­thing Clint had said. 

“He’s quit a catch, Chy­na,” she added. Chy­na squeezed Clint’s hand. Tom­my and Joey exchanged looks, frankly too shocked to respond. 

The plan was that the cou­ple would move to a house Clint’s grand­par­ents had lived in

a lit­tle town called Shirley up in the moun­tains to the cen­ter of the state. 

“Shirley?” KT said. “Who’s she?”

 

Joey rode up with Chy­na and Clint to help her get moved in that week­end, try­ing not to flinch when Clint raced up the hills and around the tight curves. When they got to the town, he wasn’t impressed.

“Hell, ain’t noth­ing here but bears and a Son­ic,” Joey said. 

Clint laughed. “You’re not far wrong.”

The thing that annoyed Joey about Clint was that he was all right. After they unloaded Clint’s truck, he took Chy­na and Joey to Son­ic for lunch. They drove back that after­noon with an air of easy camaraderie. 

When they dropped Joey off at the house, there was a let­ter from Joey’s dad lying on his pillow.

* * *

Joey stared at it for a few sec­onds and then sat on his bed and ignored it for a few more. He start­ed for the door to go down­stairs, but he was tired from the heady day and caught him­self. He grabbed the let­ter and ripped it open and scanned it. 

“They set a date,” it began. “I’m out of appeals.” The tone was sober with a cou­ple of attempt­ed jokes, even. “I’d like you to be here, since you’re my son,” he said. “But I under­stand if you can’t.”

He read the let­ter over three or four times and dropped it. He could hear a hum of music down­stairs from KT and Tommy’s room. He went back over to the door­jamb and punched the wood, hard. Then again. Then again until his hand, not the wood, splin­tered. He went back down­stairs and knocked on his mom’s bed­room door with his left hand. When she opened it, he held up the already swelling hand. 

* * *

“I’m not going,” Joey said. He was on the phone with Chy­na, pac­ing across the scuffed linoleum in the kitchen. 

“He asked,” Chy­na said. “It’s his last request.”

“So?” Joey said. “Hell, he doesn’t even know who I am. I could send some­body else, and he wouldn’t know.”

Chy­na didn’t answer that. “I would go,” she final­ly said. 

“So go.” 

“He asked you.”

“Oh well.”

“You know,” Chy­na said. “If you hate him that much, you should go just to see him fry.”

Joey didn’t have an answer for that. They end­ed the call soon after, each agi­tat­ed, though with­out a spe­cif­ic focus for it. He went up to his room, closed the door, and went over to the book­case against the wall beside the door, squat­ted down, and pulled the bot­tom out. He paused and lis­tened, and when he was sat­is­fied, he reached in and dug out a cig­ar box and sat with his back against the door. Inside, there was a let­ter and a pho­to­graph and some oth­er trin­kets. The let­ter was dat­ed about five years ago. The paper of the enve­lope had gone yel­low, and the let­ter inside as well. He opened it care­ful­ly, being espe­cial­ly gen­tle with the folds, which were tear­ing on the edges. He read over it and then fold­ed it and put it back in the enve­lope. The pic­ture was of a man hold­ing a baby. For the first time, he could see him­self in the man’s face. He stared at it a long time and then put it back with the let­ter. There were oth­er things – a base­ball card he’d thought would be valu­able some­day, some lit­tle toys he’d held onto for some reason. 

He put it all back in the box, added this new let­ter to it, and put the box back under the book­case and pushed it back against the wall. The let­ter had said it would hap­pen over the sum­mer. Joey didn’t know why it was such short notice; maybe his dad couldn’t decide to send the letter. 

* * *

Tom­my drove out to the house of the tweak­er they’d tak­en to the hos­pi­tal just a cou­ple weeks before. 

“You going to Texas?” Tom­my asked.

“I don’t think so,” Joey said.

Tom­my made a noise. “Why not?” He final­ly said.

Joey shrugged. “Why would I?”

“He’s going to be dead for­ev­er. He’s only going to be alive a lit­tle while longer. You can hate him as long as you want, but this is your only time to see him,” Tom­my said.

Joey was stunned silent as they pulled up to the house and got out. Tom­my went and banged on the door and grunt­ed some­thing, and Dar­la, the wife, opened it and let them in. Joey noticed she wouldn’t look them in the eye, but he was so focused on oth­er things, he wasn’t real­ly pay­ing attention.

Bil­ly, the tweak­er, was out back in his shed, appar­ent­ly. Dar­la led them through the house and point­ed them to a squat, square build­ing still show­ing its insu­la­tion. Tom­my glanced back at the house, which caused Joey to. The glass door was closed behind him. 

“Run and try that, qui­et-like,” Tom­my said.

Joey tried the door and showed Tom­my that it was locked. Dar­la had pulled the blinds closed as well.

“All right,” Tom­my said. “Something’s up. He’s watch­ing us, I figure.”

He knocked on the door. 

“Come in,” Bil­ly said. 

Tom­my nod­ded to the side and Joey stepped clear of the door. Tom­my pushed it open and stepped to his left a moment lat­er, lin­ger­ing in the door­way just a sec­ond. A gun­shot rang out. Tom­my pulled his hand­gun out and ran to the side just as a shot blast­ed through the wall where he’d been. Joey high-tailed it the oth­er way. Tom­my found a win­dow and peeked in. He glanced at Joey, who was lying on the ground about fif­teen feet away, strode up to the win­dow, and fired sev­er­al times, then ducked back away from the wall. There was no answer­ing shots, but a sound from the house made them both turn. Dar­la came bust­ing out, scream­ing, shot­gun in hand, run­ning for Tom­my. She didn’t make it, because Joey tack­led her before she’d cov­ered half the lawn. Tom­my dis­ap­peared into the shed, and one shot rang out. Joey rose and trained the shot­gun on Dar­la, who got to her feet and crossed her arms. Tom­my emerged a moment later.

“Where is it?” he asked. Dar­la just sneered. He slapped her, good, across the face, and she fell to the grass. 

“It’s gone!” she said. “He smoked it all! Why do you think he did this?”

Tom­my put his gun to her fore­head. She looked scared but didn’t cry until he took it away. 

“When you tell the pigs about who did this, you want to think about that boy in there. Think real good, you hear?”

“I hear you,” she said, on her knees.

Tom­my went back into the house. Joey fol­lowed, still hold­ing the shotgun.

* * *

After that, the busi­ness dried up for a while. The famil­iar smell of weed began ema­nat­ing from Tom­my and KT’s bed­room. The week of the exe­cu­tion came, and Joey was spend­ing much of his time in his room when Chy­na came to vis­it. She tapped on the door. When Joey didn’t answer, she pushed it open. He was on the floor, sketching.

“You haven’t drawn in a long time,” she said.

He looked up at her. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Vis­it­ing. Can I see?”

He passed one up to her. She stud­ied it. “You doing super­heroes again?”

“It’s from a dream I had,” he said. 

She car­ried it over to the bed. “Tell me about it.”

He sat up on his elbows and relat­ed the dream, all about an alien plan­et or maybe it was in the future after soci­ety col­lapsed. There were these war­riors who joust­ed but with cars. That’s what he was drawing. 

“Cool. Did you do any more?” 

He showed her a cou­ple oth­ers he’d done of the jousters and a pro­tag­o­nist he hadn’t worked out a sto­ry for. 

She set them on the bed, and he kept draw­ing. “So it’s tomor­row,” she said, after a while. He didn’t answer. “I was think­ing of dri­ving down.” Still, the only answer he gave was the scratch of pen­cil on paper. “So you wan­na ride down with me?” He paused, but still didn’t speak. 

“I don’t want to see it,” he said and kept sketching.

“You don’t have to. Just ride with me.”

He fin­ished and set the pen­cil down. “First time I would have seen him in ten years would be when he dies.”

“Just ride along so I have some­body to talk to,” she said.

He sighed and shook his head. 

* * *

They left that after­noon after Joey packed some clothes, pen­cils, and paper. The plan was to dri­ve it in one day, crash in a cheap motel, and Joey would hang out while Chy­na went to the thing. They joked and lis­tened to music and made fun of signs the way they used to, before things got tough; Joey start­ed to feel like him­self again.

That night, in the motel, they ate piz­za and didn’t even turn on the TV. Joey woke in the mid­dle of the night when Chy­na threw a shoe at him to make him stop snor­ing, but even that felt right to Joey. The next morn­ing, she asked if he would go with her. He’d known she would but hoped he was wrong.

“I don’t want to see it,” he said.

“Because you hate him or because you’re afraid you don’t hate him?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, she added, “It’s a chance to see some­one die.”

“I’ve already seen that,” he said. He told her about the tweaker. 

“Oh Joey,” Chy­na said and grabbed him in a hug. Some­how, he end­ed up in the car try­ing to think of excus­es not to get out all the way to the prison. 

There were a hand­ful of pro­tes­tors out­side, which real­ly shocked him. When Chy­na parked, he hopped out and went over to them, with her fol­low­ing and try­ing to stop him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

An elder­ly nun with sad eyes explained that they were protest­ing the death penalty.

“That’s my father in there,” he said.

“I’m so sor­ry, my son,” she said.

“He killed 37 peo­ple.” She just stared for a moment. “But it was manslaugh­ter not mur­der because he was just involved in the killing. Like he helped oth­er peo­ple kill. They couldn’t pin them all on him.”

“Come on, Joey,” Chy­na said.

“It must be hard hav­ing a man like that for a father,” the woman said. The oth­er pro­tes­tors were gath­er­ing around him and her, now. 

Joey shrugged. “He’s been in prison most of my life, I guess.”

The woman pat­ted him on the arm and called out, “This boy is the son of Lucas New­carter!” Peo­ple start­ed notic­ing, then. “How can you mur­der this man while his son watches?”

“No,” Joey said. “He should die. He’s a bad man!” 

“They’re mak­ing an orphan! Will that bring back the dead?”

Chy­na dragged Joey away to the build­ing. “Bitch,” she said.

A man guid­ed them to met­al fold­ing seats in a lit­tle room fac­ing a big win­dow. There were a cou­ple oth­er peo­ple there, but not many. 

“You know, I think you were right,” Chy­na said. “He made his bed, and he has to lie in it.”

They brought him out and led him to the chair. It was kind of far away, but he saw them and smiled a lit­tle. Joey smiled back, pure­ly by instinct. They put him in the chair and strapped him in, said some words, and pulled a big elab­o­rate switch, and he was dead. 

“Well,” Chy­na said, “I guess that’s it.”

But Joey was cry­ing, hard. He didn’t know why and he didn’t know how to stop.

 

clbledsoe200x288CL Bled­soe is the author of five nov­els includ­ing the young adult nov­el Sun­light, the nov­els Last Stand in Zom­bi­etown and $7.50/hr + Curs­es; four poet­ry col­lec­tions: Rice­land, _____(Want/Need), Anthem, and Leap Year; and a short sto­ry col­lec­tion called Nam­ing the Ani­mals. A poet­ry chap­book, Good­bye to Noise, is avail­able online at www​.righthand​point​ing​.com/​b​l​e​d​soe. Anoth­er, The Man Who Killed Him­self in My Bath­room, is avail­able at http://​ten​page​spress​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​0​8​/​0​1​/​t​h​e​-​m​a​n​-​w​h​o​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​h​i​m​s​e​l​f​-​i​n​-​m​y​-​b​a​t​h​r​o​o​m​-​b​y​-​c​l​-​b​l​e​d​s​oe/. He’s been nom­i­nat­ed for the Push­cart Prize 10 times, had 2 sto­ries select­ed as Notable Sto­ries by Sto­ry South's Mil­lion Writ­ers Award and 2 oth­ers nom­i­nat­ed, and has been nom­i­nat­ed for Best of the Net twice. He’s also had a flash sto­ry select­ed for the long list of Wigleaf’s 50 Best Flash Sto­ries award. He blogs at Mur­der Your Dar­lings, http://​clbled​soe​.blogspot​.com.  Bled­soe reviews reg­u­lar­ly for Rain Taxi, Coal Hill Review, Prick of the Spin­dle, Mon­key Bicy­cle, Book Slut, The Hollins Crit­ic, The Arkansas Review, Amer­i­can Book Review, The Pedestal Mag­a­zine, and else­where. Bled­soe lives with his wife and daugh­ter in Maryland.

 

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Toluene, by Max Sheridan

This guy I knew, he thought he could make his shit high stick­ing toluene up his ass. Some peo­ple know more than one guy like that. I fig­ure you talk to enough of them you’ll hear just about any­thing twice.

You stick toluene up your ass and you will not get high. I know you will not get high because of the warn­ings on the mark­ers. They tell you every­thing. They tell you not to eat it or inhale it or sniff it or any­thing. But there is not one warn­ing on any of those mark­ers about insert­ing toluene into your rec­tal ori­fice. Means no one but that guy I knew ever thought of doing that. He invent­ed that and if he sent a let­ter, said he’d just stuck a water­mel­on-fla­vored mark­er up his ass and got high as a kite, you can bet they would write some­thing to that effect on the pack­age and ruin it for all of us. WARNING: DO NOT INSERT THIS MARKER INTO YOUR RECTAL ORIFICE. IT MAY CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE

I tried sniff­ing toluene. I’ve licked it. I’ve steamed it. I’ve glued it into peb­bles and smoked it. I stole a gross of toluene mark­ers from the high school art clos­et in Fort Dodge once and ate a whole damn box.

They blame the IQ gap on that, which means I walk into a store and the fat guy behind the counter is twen­ty years old­er than me and he’s smarter than me because I huffed toluene and he didn’t. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly believe that claim. Why can’t he stop me steal­ing Chee­tos then? Why is he so damn fat? 

Hon­est­ly, I’ve had it with Armand Assante. You ever had that ten­sion in your jaw where it feels like you’re walk­ing around with a bank safe strapped to your head with a red-assed baboon sit­ting on top, jump­ing on your head? That’s what it’s like to be sick of Armand Assante and not be able to do any­thing about it. 

You might say, Well, hell, at least you don’t have to see Assante when you turn on the TV. He’s so bad he’ll nev­er fea­ture in a movie marathon.

That’s worse actu­al­ly, when you don’t see him, because you can only imag­ine him. 

Years back I sent let­ters, some pret­ty bad ones. I shat into an enve­lope once and removed the turd and out­lined the stain with toluene. I sent let­ters like that to Armand Assante out of a PO box in Waukomis and nev­er heard back. 

That was a lie. The first time I got some­thing from Assante that said: Dear Mr. Gre­gor Mendel, although Mr. Assante doesn’t have the time to answer all his fan mail per­son­al­ly, he reads every let­ter. He wish­es to thank you for your kind words. 

And I’d just sent him my shit. 

After that I didn’t hear back. 

There ain’t no use cry­ing. Ain’t no use laugh­ing either. I laughed at a cop one time and got cit­ed for pol­lut­ing God’s cre­ation. That was in Pon­ca City, Pon­ca Lake Park, and I’d pissed into the water after clos­ing time and he’d seen me. He said there’s peo­ple fish­ing and swim­ming. Hell, he said, there’s peo­ple wash­ing, splash­ing, cavort­ing in that water and I’d just relieved myself like a pack ani­mal. Me, I don’t know how I’d got all the way out there to Pon­ca City if I hadn’t been huff­ing. When I asked that offi­cer for a ride back to Enid he should have had an idea of my posi­tion vis-à-vis self-inflict­ed brain impair­ment, how many years I’d been prac­tic­ing. He agreed to dri­ve me back up the road to where his part­ner was wait­ing in a police truck and they ripped up the tick­et and got their boots dirty on me. I’ve nev­er been back to Pon­ca City. I’ve nev­er crossed Route 35 since. 

Besides that guy who tries to get his shit high, I got a cousin who sniffs mark­ers. Ron­dell isn’t a Negro but he gets called a Negro all the time because of his name, even when he’s there with you and you can see he’s white as shit. 

Rondell’s worked ten years at Bear­ing Rub­ber and Hydraulic coil­ing hose with­out fuck­ing him­self up yet. That’s because Rondell’s per­ma­nent­ly ele­vat­ed. You want to know what Rondell’s on every day he shows up for a shift? Just open up your util­i­ty draw­er and pick out any­thing in a bot­tle that smells like bad news. White­out, rub­ber cement, sil­ver pol­ish, the fumes from crazy glue. Paint thin­ner. I’ve seen Ron­dell snort the blue soap off of Bril­lo pads. Heavy-duty one-way tick­et. You ever want to see a man with­out a con­science, and I mean lit­er­al­ly with­out because it’s been replaced by pure chem­i­cal fumes, just call Ron­dell. He’s got what you’d call devo­tion, long-haul endurance. He can fill his whole damn med­i­cine cab­i­net at The Home Depot.

Me and Ron­dell, we got into trou­ble one night before I changed my name. This was hard­ly a month after they’d let me out of high school and we’d just gone through half a box of San­ford glit­ter high­lighters Rondell’d stole from the Save-A-Lot and Ron­dell got this yen to steal kung fu robes. 

That’s the thing about toluene. You do it steady enough, you sus­tain that feel­ing, and your san­er oxy­gen starves. All you’ve got left are the shit-ass crazy molecules.

It was one of those vel­vety ear­ly sum­mer Okla­homa evenings and I knew it wasn’t going to get any bet­ter than this. We were sit­ting there lis­ten­ing to Slay­er, get­ting our ass­es kicked at Don­key Kong on Rondell’s Cole­co­V­i­sion, and we decid­ed to run out to the Cono­co for a breather.

They knew us there at the Cono­co but they watched us any­way. Prob­a­bly if they didn’t and the cam­eras caught them breath­ing out their mouths while we was fill­ing up on Slim Jims and Chef Boyardee and half-price Con­way Twit­ty tapes they’d get their own ass­es fired. Any­way, we had mon­ey tonight. Ron­dell did. He had a job.

Ron­dell poured him­self a Frozen Dr. Pep­per big­ger than his hands and let it ice the fumes in his head a while. He called this “beez­ing.” While Ron­dell beezed, I won­dered what the fuck I’d do with myself if I wait­ed five years and let myself become Ron­dell. Ron­dell had quite the ego and I was sure he hadn’t even been laid yet. I’d at least got­ten my fin­gers dirty. 

Ron­dell had one of his moments of clar­i­ty, what had got him the nick­name the Glue Bud­dha at Bearing’s. He said we ought to steal those kung fu robes and show up at the M&M Bar wear­ing them. We’d order a round or two in our robes and then put them right back. As if break­ing into a kung fu dojo wasn’t bad enough, Ron­dell thought we’d just mosey on in again and return what we’d stolen. Get it all on cam­era case they missed us the first time around. Take a show­er maybe, eat a can of tuna. That’s how fucked up Ron­dell was.

I said, “That makes not one bit of sense, Ron­dell. Even if you plain stole them, what would be the point?”

Rondell’s beez­ing some­times gave him this look you might con­fuse for clear, point­ed think­ing. If you ask me, he just looks like he’s about to be hit by a car but don’t know it. 

He said, “You ever stolen from a black belt before, Clyde?” 

“I sure as hell haven’t.”

“You think it’ll make them black belts mad?”

“You bet.”

“You think they’ll beat the shit out of us then? If they catch us?”

“I sure as hell hope not.”

We huffed the rest of those high­lighters in Rondell’s Bar­racu­da. If I had to give Ron­dell any points, it would be there. That car kills. The mag wheels and tooled leather are enough to make you for­get who’s doing the dri­ving. We cased the dojo for prob­a­bly just a lit­tle too long. It was obvi­ous no one was inside, and who hits a dojo any­way? Nobody. Rondell.

Ron­dell said, “You know this dude?”

I knew Bridge Jack­son well enough to stay far clear of him. I swear Jack­son could beat you up with his stare alone. He was one tough Negro and I respect­ed him and wouldn’t ever have thought about steal­ing his robes if I hadn’t been junk­ing my mind on high­lighters since dinnertime. 

We parked way down the road and around the cor­ner so you couldn’t even see Jackson’s dojo from there. Ron­dell had a roll of plas­tic garbage bags in the trunk. He always did. If he wasn’t mak­ing a mess, he was pre­pared to clean one up. This time they came in handy. 

There was a street­lamp mak­ing a pret­ty big splash out front. We passed under it and cut left to the unlit side of the build­ing. We went over to where Ron­dell imag­ined the bath­rooms were. 

I put a foot up on Rondell’s chick­en shoul­der and held him like a bowl­ing ball under the ears and he got me up as far as the tran­som and that was all I need­ed. I slid right through, and most of my fear steamed off right there. The alarm was the big if and Jack­son didn’t have one. I dropped down head­first onto my wrists and rolled onto a soft can­vas bag. Even in the dark­ness I could see Rondell’s bath­room was the equip­ment closet. 

I got up and tried the door. It was locked from the out­side. I called out to Ron­dell and the big dum­my said to try the lights. I knew bet­ter and wait­ed for my eyes to adjust. I kept my voice down.

“You dropped me into the equip­ment room,” I said.

“That’s bet­ter than the bath­rooms,” Ron­dell said. “You found those robes yet?”

I’d hadn’t found any­thing yet but spar­ring gloves and a spar­ring mitt. I’d found cakes of toi­let soap and plen­ty of roach killer and some mats on a util­i­ty shelf. I zipped open the bag I’d rolled onto and laid my hands on a lady’s wig. Under the wig were lady’s under­things and two short pil­lows and under the pil­lows was more mon­ey than they had at Lib­er­ty Fed­er­al for sure, stacked in crisp Hol­ly­wood bricks and rub­ber-band­ed. It smelled bet­ter than but­ter­milk waf­fles cooking. 

“Throw ‘em up and get on out,” Ron­dell said.

I hadn’t made any noise for a while, I guess, and Ron­dell must not have liked that. No one could see him where he was but so what.

I threw a brick of Bridge Jackson’s mon­ey out the win­dow and Ron­dell shut up. I threw out anoth­er five bricks, stuffed a few more into my pants pock­ets, front and back, and packed the bag back up. I’d just had my first clear thought of the evening. If we stole only this much, it would look like an inside job. They’d think it was one of Bridge Jackson’s stu­dents or helpers that had got greedy, or his broth­er Bar­ry, a mean son-of-a-bitch and a nat­ur­al midget. I test­ed the met­al shelves. 

“All clear?” 

But Ron­dell wasn’t answer­ing. I called out again. Then I shut right up. 

I’ve learned since that betray­al will always catch you dumb. In anoth­er world where I wasn’t trapped in Bridge Jackson’s equip­ment clos­et, I’d have said that Ron­dell didn’t know any bet­ter, that he’d beezed away all the sense he’d ever own. But I could see that crack of light under the door now, which meant Rondell’d seen a hell of a lot more than me and he’d left me flat on my ass. 

Qui­et as I could, I made a go at climb­ing Jackson’s shelves. I felt like a one-armed mon­key. When my head came back out the tran­som, there he was, past­ed to the wall like a win­dow jumper with sec­ond thoughts. We had a moment of mutu­al under­stand­ing then, Ron­dell and me, but I still won’t tell you that Ron­dell gave a good god­damn and wasn’t most­ly frozen into place like a pos­sum in a dump­ster. He told me to get the hell down and he held out his chick­en arms. As my shoes slith­ered up and over the win­dow sill the light in the clos­et popped on and a mean midget voice barked out at the soles of my feet. That voice was crazy as they come with rage.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

A good beeze can last you the whole night if your brain cells are used to it. I told Ron­dell to stash the mon­ey in the trunk, in his tool box. Ron­dell said ok but when we got to the M&M Bar he want­ed to take one brick inside.

“I’m break­ing one of them bills,” he said.

“That’s not a good idea,” I said.

“I’m break­ing the first hundred.”

“You do that and Jackson’ll sure find out.”

“They break them every week at the One Stop.” 

Ron­dell was right. Most pay­checks are spent that way in Enid when Fri­day rolls around and you’re the king of the whole damn plan­et. It’s only when you’re lying in bed on Sun­day with a bro­ken fin­ger and no med­ical insur­ance, no food in the fridge and noth­ing in the bank, that you remem­ber you work for that mon­ey. I let Ron­dell car­ry in that brick but I had him promise me he’d peel it in the bath­room, in a stall.

Right away Ron­dell ordered us a plate of bour­bon and beer chasers. He called us over two old­er ladies to help us out. Now, I was sexed up as usu­al but I could see that these two women I might think twice about stop­ping to look at out of sheer curios­i­ty. Sad to say, they were eying us up the same way. 

One of them had stringy mop hair and dark mas­cara that had run but she didn’t know it. She had thin thin lips. The oth­er one was chub­by. Names went around. I excused myself polite­ly and left them there to get to know Ron­dell and see what a fool he was so they’d leave us alone and we could get home.

I ordered a bot­tle of beer at the bar and I didn’t even get ID’d. I nursed that long­neck like a pro, mak­ing occa­sion­al relaxed eye con­tact with a bet­ter look­ing catch sit­ting in the shad­ows at the crook of the L being bored by her date. I said I was sexed up. Now I felt skit­tish. I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey, want­i­ng some­thing to hap­pen but not know­ing how to make it happen. 

She was look­ing at me reg­u­lar now and her date wasn’t blind to this. He was a big one and I could tell he’d nev­er huffed a thing in his life. I won­dered if he’d already giv­en up on lay­ing her that night and would beat it out of me like those cops in Pon­ca City had. The creep­er next to me knew. He’d already start­ed scoot­ing his stool over towards the cash reg­is­ter. I was this close to send­ing her over a drink.

A Negro midget with a shot­gun might be the fun­ni­est thing you see in your whole damn life but hell if you’re going to laugh if you actu­al­ly hap­pen to see one in a crowd­ed bar tak­ing aim at you. Bar­ry must have been coked up sil­ly bust­ing into the M&M try­ing to set­tle up scores with buck­shot. God­damn. I looked every­where for Ron­dell, but it seemed Rondell’d made him­self scarce.

The bar­tender had his counter rag out now and he was clean­ing his hands. I hadn’t fig­ured he was yel­low on account of his size but the boy’d already cleaned them about nine times. Out the cor­ner of my eye I saw that creep­er on the barstool again. His creep­ing had almost got­ten him to the cash reg­is­ter. I wished I could have told him to stop that, that if there’s one thing in this world would make Bar­ry more shit-ass crazy than he already was it was an obvi­ous get-away creep. 

Then I got mad myself. Here I was bare­ly a month out of high school and I had to shoul­der men like Ron­dell and this creep­er, teach them how to behave like men. I’d lost my ROTC inter­view because I was high on Cono­co reg­u­lar and I wasn’t going to become a marine in this life­time. It was a straight dot­ted line from Don­key Kong and Slay­er to a case-a-day habit and a crap pen­sion after a forty-year run at Bearing’s that would seem like one very bad month. I could see it all, that this was the best it was ever going to get, and I was so mad at the world I would have fin­gered Ron­dell right then and there if he wasn’t in the toi­lets padding his crotch with bar napkins. 

I said, “Bar­ry, I don’t know what you want but we two are going to take this thing outside.”

Her eyes were still on me. I knew they were and it felt like this was too easy, being a man. I was clear-head­ed and mean as gaso­line and ready for the Lord Jesus Christ to knock my ass all the way to China. 

I eased off my stool. I winked at her and watched her just about melt under the fear and ten­sion. Even her date wasn’t much of a man any­more that I could see. I winked at him too. I took my time get­ting over to where Bar­ry was. 

Bar­ry and Ron­dell. Which of them two had a deep­er brain fry on that night is idle spec­u­la­tion, but I’d prob­a­bly have to give Ron­dell the edge for the kung fu attack he’d been plan­ning in the toi­let that whole time. He was still hum­ming from that plat­ter of bour­bon and the resid­u­als of his king-sized beeze and I guess he just mixed up his skills. He flew out of the bath­rooms on kill mode with a toi­let paper head­band and blew right up to Bar­ry, but instead of knock­ing the shot­gun out of Barry’s hands, he pick­abacked that lit­tle man using his shot­gun for reins. I swear it was a moment in the his­to­ry of mankind. I’d nev­er seen any­thing half as dumb as Ron­dell and his beezed-out brain cells, so it was anoth­er sec­ond maybe longer before I even real­ized that that midget and his sin­gle-bar­rel Snake Charmer .410 were head­ed straight at me.

What do you feel when you’re star­ing down the bar­rel of an oiled shot­gun? You feel like your body, your heart and lungs and pret­ty much every­thing you are that you can’t see, is inside you and that it is out­side you, on the walls and on the floor and ceil­ing, at the very same time. That you are bleed­ing to death as you breathe. That in your joints instead of mar­row you’ve got trapped cordite and you can already smell it start­ing to uncurl and sit on the air. What you feel is that you are two places at once and none too good. I put every­thing I had into keep­ing my eyes open so I could watch that sono­fabitch cham­ber catch fire and blow my sad ass away.

Kaboom!

Bar­ry missed me by two fat ass­es. He hit the creeper’s stool instead and blew out the top two rungs and a lit­tle chunk of his coward’s ass. 

Soon as that hap­pened the M&M jumped back to life. I mean they were all scram­bling for a place to stay alive in. Even she was. It was just instinct. She’d dropped into a back­woods squat and now she let out a scream that wouldn’t come. It was like she’d just fall­en twen­ty sto­ries in a dead ele­va­tor and her stom­ach was on back­wards and still five floors up. I don’t think I’d felt a damn thing but my heart jump a beat. 

That gun went off two more times and when the smoke cleared I could see Rondell’d been burned bad. He’d had his eye­brows singed right off and his nose was peeled raw so that he looked dif­fer­ent, almost like a sun­burned baby. He’d dropped a steam­ing load that was just now rolling out his pant cuffs. Bar­ry him­self was down, blood trick­ling from his shiny black fore­head. The shot­gun had skit­tered across the wood floor and for a moment no one could find it.

Ron­dell was still lost in his kung fu daze and I thought they were going to have to slap him to shut him up. He was that fucked up, and I guess he nev­er real­ly recov­ered. You’d hear lat­er on at Bearing’s about how Rondell’d burst out into the same rou­tine at ran­dom, in the super­mar­ket even. For now he just kept whip­ping up the air with his chops and side­ways kicks, maybe until the police came.

Me, I knew those stacks of hun­dreds in Rondell’s trunk were at least a hun­dred deep and I grabbed her by the wrist and we made for the Bar­racu­da and took that mon­ey and hopped on the first Grey­hound bus that wasn’t Kansas-bound. 

I changed my name. I stopped send­ing Armand Assante shit in the mail and I stopped huff­ing and after the red marks on her wrist healed over we had a lit­tle baby girl that I kept when she left me with three months paid up on a vinyl-sided house that was no con­do but no god­damn trail­er either.

 

Author Photo_Max SheridanMax Sheri­dan lives and writes in Nicosia, Cyprus. He wrote fea­tures for the Cyprus Mail for a few years—until he was forced to chal­lenge the film crit­ic, a noto­ri­ous wind­bag, to a duel. Some of his recent short sto­ries have appeared in DIAGRAM Mag­a­zine, the Atti­cus Review, the Writ­ing Dis­or­der, and most recent­ly, Thuglit. His lat­est nov­el, Dil­lo, is look­ing for a home. He keeps his work here: www​.maxsh​eri​dan​lit​.com.

 

 

 

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