Wild and Wonderful, fiction by Tom Bennitt

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Rusty

You need good hands to run a machine like the con­tin­u­ous min­er. You got to know when to hold back and when to go deep. It’s the best-pay­ing job in the mine but also the hard­est, and I’m out of prac­tice. I haven’t worked under­ground in five years and for­got how hard it is just to walk down here. The tun­nel is less than five feet high, so I need to crouch. At least I’m not work­ing in those dog­holes where you crawl around like rats, and it’s bet­ter than strip min­ing work. That’s not even min­ing, just blow­ing up hill­sides and moun­tain­tops with dyna­mite: destroy­ing the land, flood­ing creeks and hol­lows. Down here I feel like a real min­er. Okay, that’s bull­shit. With two divorces and a bal­loon­ing mort­gage on a house nobody will buy, I’m here for the mon­ey. If that make me a greedy old red­neck, fine.

The con­tin­u­ous min­er is a scor­pi­on-on-wheels: long, low to the ground, and dan­ger­ous. It cuts the same amount of coal that ten or twen­ty men would cut with their pick axes and shov­els back in the old days, only faster. The rip­per head – a rotat­ing cylin­der on the front cov­ered with sharp steel tips, like fangs – spins around and gouges coal from the wall. But it’s tough sled­ding tonight. My hands feel stiff and heavy, and I’m push­ing the con­trols too hard. This seam is nar­row, so I’m cut­ting through a lot of rock and shale. The rip­per head is loud and throws up sparks when you cut through rock and gets qui­et when you’re deep in the coal. Tonight it’s loud as a chain­saw, until the machine dies and every­thing goes dark.

“Hold up!” Wild Man yells. He’s one of the roof bolters on our crew, which suits him because he’s got some loose bolts in his own roof. A large black man, his real name is Calvin but every­one calls him Wild Man.

“What hap­pened?”

“Tripped the gen­er­a­tor.”  Wild Man’s face is caked with soot. His new teeth glow like a string of pearls.

“Didn’t break the cable, did I?”

“It ain’t that bad, dog.”

I’d pushed the min­er too hard through the rock. It over­heat­ed and tripped the out­side gen­er­a­tor. Hap­pens all the time in small mines with old gen­er­a­tors. Jer­ry the elec­tri­cian should have us back on line in twen­ty min­utes. It wasn’t a major fuck­up, not like bust­ing the machine’s pow­er cable. If the cable gets caught between the rip­per head and the wall, it could shred. The cable alone costs about ten grand and I’ve seen guys get fired for shred­ding it.

Luke, anoth­er roof bolter, walks over. I tell him it was my fault.

“I could use a break any­how,” Luke says. He opens his tin of Copen­hagen, takes a fat pinch, and works it under his lip. “Man, I haven’t worked with you in years,” he says. “Thought you was retired.”

Luke reminds me of my old­est son. They both respect­ed their elders. Josh did things the right way and didn’t take short­cuts. He died in the mines three years ago. Methane gas explo­sion. Twen­ty-four years old. Can the world get any cru­el­er than that?

My oth­er son, Derek, is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He is cur­rent­ly doing five years in Moundsville, the state pen­i­ten­tiary, for cook­ing and sell­ing meth.

“I missed y’uns too much,” I say.

“How you doing, you know, health wise?”

“My doc­tor don’t want me work­ing down here, after the heart attack and all, but I passed the phys­i­cal. So here I am. And I can still run coal bet­ter than you turds.”

“You always did have the touch.”

“How’s Denise?” I ask.

“She’s been liv­ing in Pitts­burgh the last cou­ple months,” Luke says. “One of those tem­po­rary nurse jobs. Good mon­ey. She wants me to move up there.”

“You don’t want to be work­ing down here at my age. I’ve seen all the ups and downs. Right now coal’s in high demand and we’re all mak­ing mon­ey, but it won’t last.”
“Noth­ing else to do around here,” Wild Man says.

Our shift ends at mid­night. I made five cuts. Our tar­get is sev­en per shift, but five is enough to keep them off my ass, at least it used to be. I dri­ve home through the cen­ter of town. Dead qui­et. Only the whine of two crotch rock­ets burn­ing up Main Street. My truck slow­ly worms up White’s Hol­low Road.

My bull­dog Lucky greets me at the door. Tina is asleep on the couch, wear­ing only a Bön Jovi t‑shirt and box­ers. A piz­za box, can of Iron City, and bot­tle of Vicadin are on the cof­fee table. The tele­vi­sion is on – that same George Clooney movie she’d seen a hun­dred times.

As I watch her sleep, a strange thought hits me. As a life­long hunter – deer and wild turkey, most­ly – I always believed that men were born to hunt, that the male species was hard­wired to hunt, kill, and pro­vide. But the more I think about it, the more I real­ize it’s a crock of shit. All the women in my life were great hunters. They hunt­ed men, using all their skills and weapons  to snare them. And I got caught every time, like the dumb­est deer in the woods on open­ing day of buck season.

With Tina, things start­ed out hot, like they always do. She’d wear the tight­est jeans or skirt that would make her ass shake like a water bal­loon. But after she moved in, she just let her­self go. Now she sits on the couch all day, drinks beer and smokes weed and watch­es her soaps. Her clos­et is full of clothes she can no longer fit into. Of course, I’m not exact­ly the pic­ture of good health, either, not since the heart surgery that left a zip­per scar from my throat to the top of my stom­ach. We hard­ly fuck any­more, and I refuse to take any peck­er pills. Still, I’m too tired to be alone, too old to be trolling the bars.

Tina stirs awake as I sit down. “How was work?” she asks.

“Same shit, new day,” I say. “Can you turn that down?” In the movie, Clooney is seduc­ing some hot Ital­ian woman. “How many times you gonna watch that?”

“It don’t con­cern you.”

“If you like him so much, why don’t you go to Hol­ly­wood and fuck him?”
“Maybe I will. I’d rock his world.”

“He wouldn’t even let you suck him off.”

I duck to miss the beer can she throws at me.

“White trash moth­er­fuck­er,” she says. “You got a bro­ken dick and no more gov­ern­ment checks com­ing in. That’s a low bat­ting aver­age. You’re lucky I’m still here, and not out fuck­ing one of your min­er bud­dies. If you don’t watch your mouth, you’ll have to find some­one else to change your diapers.”

I feel a stir in my groin. That’s the most pas­sion­ate thing she has said to me in a long time.

 

On the way to work, I notice a new bill­board from the state board of tourism: pic­tures of peo­ple hik­ing and white­wa­ter raft­ing, then a panoram­ic shot of a moun­tain ridge at sun­set. Across the top, in big white let­ters, it reads “WEST VIRGINIA, WILD & WONDERFUL!” Well, at least it’s half true.

Cross­ing the Monon­ga­hela Riv­er Bridge, I glance down at the riv­er and think about my dad. When I was a kid we used to fish the Mon all the time, up at Brady’s Bend. Once, he grabbed me by the ankle and sub­merged me in the riv­er. “Now you’ll be invin­ci­ble,” he said. For a long time I believed him.

I pass the old hous­es crammed togeth­er on the bluff: bro­ken win­dows, bust­ed porch steps, rust­ed cars with no tires in the yard. The low bank of heavy clouds con­ceals the ridge tops. Patch­es of snow cov­er the hill­sides. The trees are skin­ny and crooked, like naked old men.

Back in the sev­en­ties, VISTA work­ers came here. Clean cut, bright-eyed young men in khakis and col­lar shirts who’d just grad­u­at­ed from Ivy League schools. They tried to sign peo­ple up for lit­er­a­cy and job-train­ing pro­grams and what­not, but after a few years they gave up and went home. Most every­one has giv­en up on this place, even those who stuck around.

As I pull into the mine entrance, things feel dif­fer­ent. Out of place. Sam the man­ag­er wad­dles out of the office trail­er and yells for me to come inside. Sam is a per­fect ass­hole. Since he made the switch from min­ing to man­age­ment, his loy­al­ty to the min­ers has dis­ap­peared. Now his head is so far up the mine owner’s ass, he needs a flash­light. There’s a younger guy in the office that I don’t recognize.

“Lar­ry, sit down,” Sam says. “You’re not doing a bad job, but we need six or sev­en cuts of coal per shift. That’s the quo­ta. That comes straight from the top, Mr. Lam­bert. He’s the one who writes our checks. You’re just not pulling your weight right now. This is Jamie, we brought him in to–“

“To take my job,” I say.

“That’s not true. Y’uns are going to split time oper­at­ing the min­er. You make one cut, then he makes the next. When you’re not run­ning the min­er, you’ll do some­thing else, like help bolt the roof or load the coal on the con­vey­er. We need an extra guy on the crew, and he’s got some expe­ri­ence. It’s just a lit­tle healthy competition.”

“Suit your­self. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, right Sam?”

“Just do your job and you’ll be fine.”

I scan this new kid from head to toe. He’s got spiky hair, acne-cov­ered cheeks, and two ear­rings in his right ear. “What’s your last name?” I ask.

“Bosco.”

I went to high school with his old man. He was a dick­head, too. “You get a note from your moth­er to be here?” I say.

“Don’t get too excit­ed and piss your pants, old timer.”

Once I leave the office, the fin­gers of my left hand start twitch­ing like they’re bat­tery-pow­ered. I think stress trig­gers it. Either way, it’s been hap­pen­ing more often late­ly. I ball my hand into a fist and slam it against my truck door to make it go away.

“Take it easy, dog,” Wild Man says, “We ain’t even start­ed workin’ yet.”

“They brought in a ringer to take my job.” I point out the new guy leav­ing the office trailer.

“Who, that kid?” he says. “He looks like he can’t even find a G‑spot.”

This whole shit show reminds me of those scabs who broke our pick­et lines in the eight­ies and took our jobs for three months while we went on strike. But that was back when the mines were union­ized. Now hard­ly any of them are. Lam­bert Coal sure as hell keeps the unions out. They have the worst safe­ty record in the state, and they aren’t too picky about who they hire – guys with no expe­ri­ence, drug addicts.

We jump on the elec­tric shut­tle cart that takes us a mile deep into the dusty, dark mine. When the shut­tle stops, the fore­man tells me I’m first on the min­er. I get sit­u­at­ed and start cut­ting the coal. The tremors in my left hand have stopped. I’m feel­ing good. The min­er is deep into the seam and run­ning smooth, but I’m care­ful not to go too fast. With­out too much rock or shale to bust through, I fin­ish the first cut in forty-five min­utes. Sol­id time. Then it’s the new kid’s turn. He starts right up, and he’s cut­ting faster than me. I can tell he has done this before.

“Watch and learn, old man!” he yells. I can bare­ly stand to watch him, the cocky lit­tle prick.

I have this recur­ring dream: I’m deep inside a coal mine when a methane gas explo­sion hits. The dream ends the same way every time, with me on fire and run­ning through a tunnel.

I’ve heard a few sto­ries of old-timers who com­mit­ted sui­cide – or tried to – under­ground. There was one guy who caused the roof to col­lapse on him. He did it by tak­ing out some bolts and lodg­ing a stick of dyna­mite into one of the holes, but he killed three oth­er min­ers in the process.

Still, as I watch the kid oper­ate the con­tin­u­ous min­er, part of me thinks I could pull it off with­out putting any­one else in dan­ger. That machine is so big and wide, the oper­a­tor can’t see noth­ing but what’s in front of him. When he backs it up, he’d run right over me. I’m a small guy. A two-ton machine run­ning over my weak chest would sure­ly kill me. Even bet­ter, peo­ple would call it an acci­dent. They’d say I tripped and fell and couldn’t get up in time. Nobody would ques­tion my man­hood or label me a cow­ard after I was dead. I’ve been slow­ly dying for years now. Why not fin­ish the job?

It wasn’t always like this. I remem­ber the good moments, like when me and Kel­ly went to Myr­tle Beach and rent­ed a house on stilts. It was a cold Octo­ber week­end and the beach was emp­ty. We sat on the porch, a blan­ket draped over us, lis­ten­ing to the waves break. Nine months lat­er, Josh was born. I remem­ber Christ­mas morn­ings when the boys were young, the way their faces would light up when they opened presents. The first time I took Josh hunt­ing up in the moun­tains – he was thir­teen – he killed a buck on the sec­ond day. The local paper pub­lished a pho­to of him with the deer on the back page of the sports section.

That was before Kel­ly left. I guess she got tired of being a moth­er and a wife. One day, she just up and quit. Left the divorce papers on the table, didn’t even fight for cus­tody. She fol­lowed a younger guy to Florida.

But those are just fad­ing mem­o­ries. Derek and I nev­er speak any­more. As for Tina, she’s a wild ani­mal: I would nev­er tame her. Some peo­ple nev­er learn from their own mis­takes. Like me. There’s noth­ing left for me here, and I’m fine with it.

I make sure the new kid doesn’t see me as I walk behind the machine. I study how far up and back it goes. I think about where to lie down. But I can’t go through with it. What if I some­how fuck it up and just injure myself real bad?

When I walk back around to check his progress, I notice that the pow­er cable is jammed between the rip­per head and the coal face. The cable is start­ing to tear. The new kid hasn’t seen it yet. I think about say­ing some­thing, but it’s not my prob­lem. Instead, I walk down to Sec­tion Two and check on Wild Man and the oth­er roof bolters. Wild Man is try­ing to drill a two-foot steel rod into the hole he’d made. The rod is cov­ered with hot glue and is sup­posed to bind onto the shale above the roof and sta­bi­lize it, but he can’t line it up right and the rod keeps get­ting stuck.

Sud­den­ly, things get qui­et. I look behind me. The con­tin­u­ous min­er has stopped run­ning. I walk back over and check it out.

“What hap­pened?” I ask the new kid try­ing to play dumb.

“No clue,” he says.

I exam­ine the cable. “Looks like the cable shredded.”

“How?”

“If I had to guess, it got stuck between the machine and the wall, and the rip­per head just ate right through it.”

The fore­man comes over from Sec­tion Three. “Damn son, that’s an expen­sive piece of equip­ment,” he says. “How’d this happen?”

“I didn’t see it,” the new kid says.

“How could you not see that? I think you need go back out­side and talk to the boss man. Lar­ry, you go ahead fin­ish up.”

It takes the elec­tri­cian half an hour to patch up the cable. Once I start run­ning the machine again, I don’t know what comes over me but I’m work­ing faster than ever. I make sev­en more cuts in five hours. Must be the adrenaline.

When the shift ends, I walk up to the office. I’m ready to tear Sam a new ass­hole, but he starts talk­ing first. “Lar­ry, I heard what you did for us tonight. I’m sor­ry I ever doubt­ed you.”

“You’re god­damn right.”

“I promise you that kid’s nev­er com­ing back. You’re the man from now on. In fact, I’ll give you a ten-per­cent raise.”

I rub my goa­tee. “I could prob­a­bly  stick around for that.”

Luke is wait­ing in the park­ing lot. “You saved us tonight. Hey, we’re head­ed to Sully’s Tav­ern. You up for a drink? First round’s on me.”

I’m all jacked up. Part of me wants to go down to the bar with the guys, but I’m also dog tired. “Maybe. I got to run home first.”

When I get home, my first clue is that Tina’s car is gone. Then I open the front door: the place is half-emp­ty. She moved out while I was at work. Her note on the kitchen table says “I’m leav­ing. Don’t know how long, I just need time to fig­ure some things out.” I look around the liv­ing room. She took all the furniture.

I can’t stay here tonight, so I jump in my truck and dri­ve down to Sully’s, won­der­ing if my lucky streak will continue.

bennittBorn and raised in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, I recent­ly com­plet­ed my MFA in Fic­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi, where I held a Grisham Fel­low­ship and was Co-Edi­tor of The Yalobusha Review. My cre­ative work has appeared in Bin­na­cle, Burnt Bridge, Twist­ed Tongue, Monon­ga­hela Review, Riv­er Walk Jour­nal, Fic­tion Writ­ers Review, and FACETS. My hon­ors and awards include a Push­cart Prize nom­i­na­tion, Final­ist for Glim­mer Train’s Very Short Fic­tion Con­test, Win­ner of the Cul­ver Short Fic­tion Prize, Run­ner-Up in the Mem­phis Mag­a­zineFic­tion Con­test, and a res­i­den­cy fel­low­ship at the Vir­ginia Cen­ter for the Cre­ative Arts. Cur­rent­ly, I live in Oxford with my wife and my dog and teach Writ­ing at Olé Miss. Next fall I will be start­ing a PhD in Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebraska.

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Distillation, sestina by Joe Samuel Starnes

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Rusty

Way back in ear­ly times
when we hunt­ed down on Knob Creek
track­ing the claw steps of wild turkey
we cher­ished the com­pa­ny of Old Grand-Dad
and tales of his friend Jim Beam
whom he called Old Crow.

He told of the squawk of Old Crow
who had lived in ear­ly times
when he was sim­ply called Jim Beam,
drink­ing the cool waters of Knob Creek.
He told us that his Old Grand-Dad
had a thin neck like a wild turkey.

The gob­bles of the wild turkey
had enchant­ed Old Crow
and as a boy his Old Grand-Dad
woke him at ear­ly times
on the banks of Knob Creek
to tell sto­ries to the child Jim Beam.

This man Jim Beam
grew up on dreams of wild turkey
that lived on Knob Creek
unable to fly like an old crow
even the famed poults of ear­ly times.
This was the sto­ry told by Old Grand-Dad.

But some­times Old Grand-Dad
con­fused the sto­ries of Jim Beam
and the tales from ear­ly times
became ram­blings about wild turkey.
We learned it was a black bird, not Old Crow
that drowned in the shoals of Knob Creek.

We dammed up Knob Creek.
We built a pine box for Old Grand-Dad.
We bar­be­cued a gristly old crow.
Nowhere to be seen is Jim Beam
or the fat­ted wild turkey
or the lost dreams of ear­ly times.

We will nev­er know the truth about Knob Creek in ear­ly times
only jake-legged Old Grand-Dad’s lies about wild turkey
and the friend inside his head, Jim Beam a.k.a. Old Crow.

starnesJoe Samuel "Sam" Starnes was born in Alaba­ma, grew up in Geor­gia, and has lived in the North­east since 2000. New­South Books pub­lished Fall Line, his sec­ond nov­el, in 2011 (view the online book trail­er). His first nov­el, Call­ing, was pub­lished in 2005. He has had jour­nal­ism appear in The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post and var­i­ous mag­a­zines, as well as essays, short sto­ries, and poems in lit­er­ary jour­nals. www​.joe​samuel​starnes​.com

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Whitetail, poem by Misty Marie Rae Skaggs

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Rusty

I scare easy.
Like a wob­ble-kneed fawn,
greed­i­ly gob­bling down
daisy heads
that grow abundant
in the steep, blind curve
of the one lane,
grav­el way home.
You come up on me, cool
as a cucumber
made salt pickle
on a sum­mer day.
And I may meet your eye
and you may feel enchanted.
but I’ll bolt,
buddy.
Turn pale, white
tail
and bounce through
a bri­ar bramble
barefoot.
There are only two car­di­nal directions -
Away from Kentucky
And back to Kentucky.

 

skaggsMisty Skag­gs, 29, cur­rently resides on her Mamaw’s couch way out at the end of Bear Town Ridge Road where she is slow­ly amass­ing a library of con­tem­po­rary fic­tion under the cof­fee table and per­fect­ing her but­ter­milk bis­cuits. Her gravy, how­ever, still tastes like wall­pa­per paste. She is cur­rently tak­ing the scenic route through high­er edu­ca­tion at More­head State Uni­ver­sity and hopes to com­plete her BFA in Cre­ative Writing…eventually. Misty won the Judy Rogers Award for Fic­tion with her sto­ry “Ham­burg­ers" and has had both poet­ry and prose pub­lished in Lime­stone and Inscape lit­er­ary jour­nals. Her short series of poems enti­tled “Hill­billy Haiku" will also be fea­tured in the upcom­ing edi­tion of New Madrid. She will be read­ing from her chap­book, Pre­scrip­tion Panes, at the Appalachi­an Stud­ies Con­fer­ence in Indi­ana, Penn­syl­va­nia in March. When she isn’t writ­ing, Misty enjoys tak­ing long, woodsy walks with her three cats and watch­ing Dirty Har­ry with her nine­ty six year old great-grandmother.

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Jaguar for Sale by Misti Rainwater-Lites

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Rusty

He fucked her hard from 11:11 p.m. to 12:17 a.m. It was the damn Via­gra. After he came on her tits he rolled over, fell asleep, snored like a god­damn bliz­zard or tor­na­do or old school wood­en roller coast­er. He snored like a sat­ed old man with crusty nasal pas­sages, that's what he snored like. She ran a hot bath, poured in some freesia bub­ble bath, closed her eyes as she soaked, thought about what she need­ed from Fam­i­ly Dol­lar. Cin­na­mon can­dle. Paper plates. Plas­tic spoons. Instant cof­fee. Mus­tard. Hot dog buns. Roach spray. Cough drops. Hair dye. Tweez­ers. Fuck­ing god, the man had a meaty penis. Long and thick, a real ana­con­da. She had sucked on it a cou­ple of times. “Don't stroke. Just suck,” he had instruct­ed the first time. She was a quick learner.

At 5:11 a.m. his alarm went off. She nev­er asked him why he set his alarm for 5:11 rather than 5:00 or 5:15. The man had his quirks. He only watched tele­vi­sion with the sound down. He liked to make the char­ac­ters say ridicu­lous things. One night they were watch­ing a black and white Bette Davis movie. She cracked up laugh­ing lis­ten­ing to him speak for Bette Davis and the lead actor. He gave Bette Davis a British accent and the lead actor a Texas accent.

“You are real­ly test­ing your lim­it with me, sir. I insist that you refrain from piss­ing in my mouth.”

“Oh hell, dar­lin', I thought my piss made you horny.”

“It does not make me horny, as you say. It makes me lose all respect for you. It's loath­some behav­ior and I tell you it must cease.”

“Come on, but­ter­cup. Piss is packed with protein.”

“I don't give a good god­damn what it's packed with. I don't want it in my mouth. Put it in the loo where it belongs or else pack your things and find a new place to hang your hat.”

“Shit. You're cute when you play hard­ball, baby doll.”

For break­fast she had six choco­late donuts and a glass of skim milk. She watched “Price is Right” with the sound turned up. She liked to hear the stu­pid cheer­ing. She enjoyed lis­ten­ing to the wheel spin. Her phone rang. She flipped it open.

“Hel­lo?”

“Becky, this is your mama. Why haven't you called?”

“I haven't had much to talk about. No news to report. I'm not preg­nant, I don't have can­cer and I still haven't won the lottery.”

“Your sis­ter just bought a new house in Muskogee.”

“Well that's won­der­ful. I thought she was in Tulsa.”

“Ger­ald got trans­ferred to Musko­gee. They got a pool in the back­yard. Five bed­rooms. Three bath­rooms. And she's preg­nant again. Baby's due on July 1st.”

“Damn. Ain't two kids enough?”

“You should be hap­py for your sis­ter, Becky. You're just jeal­ous 'cause you don't even have one.”

“Yeah. That's it. I'm jeal­ous. I want to spend my time changin' shit­ty dia­pers and posin' for pic­tures and pre­tendin' to be the god­damn East­er Bun­ny and Tooth Fairy and San­ta Claus.”

“Watch that mouth. How's Eddie? He still workin' at that pota­to chip factory?”

“Eddie is bet­ter than aver­age. I think it's fair to say he's hap­pi­er than a pig in shit or a lep­rechaun in clover or a Chris­t­ian in a casi­no. Yes. He still works at the pota­to chip fac­to­ry. I still stay home and paint my toe­nails and work cross­word puz­zles. I've got the Amer­i­can dream by its curly tail.”

“Must be nice. I'm workin' six­ty hour weeks at the call cen­ter, takin' esca­lat­ed calls from jerks who want to get away with max­in' out their cred­it cards and not makin' pay­ments for six months or longer. I'm still havin' migraines and major depres­sion. But I refuse to lay down and die.”

“With an atti­tude like that you can only win.”

“Oh when it comes to atti­tude I win the prize. I don't know what the prize is but I win it.”

“Mama, I got­ta go. Someone's at the door.”

“Bye.”

The Jaguar was Becky's dream car so when she loaded the gro­ceries into her Kia then spot­ted the dark green Jaguar for sale across the park­ing lot she felt like she had been dropped into a deli­cious dream. “$4,500 for a Jaguar? You've got to be fuckin' kid­din' me,” Becky mut­tered. She called the num­ber on the wind­shield right away. A man answered. He sound­ed like George Clooney.

“Is this George Clooney?” Becky asked.

“No. This is Oliv­er John­son. And who are you?”

“Um. I'm nobody impor­tant. My name is Becky Lake. I just hap­pened to notice the Jaguar for sale. What's wrong with it for it to be so cheap?”

“My youngest son took the car for a joy ride with­out my per­mis­sion. He drove it from Okla­homa City to Los Ange­les, didn't both­er chang­ing the oil, got stoned at one point and uri­nat­ed in the front seat. You can no longer detect the scent of urine but the car needs a new radi­a­tor and it has too many miles on it for my lik­ing. My son ruined that car for me. I want to get rid of it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Would you like to come take a look?”

“Yes.”

Becky made chick­en fried steak and mashed pota­toes for din­ner. Dessert was apple cob­bler. She poured hot sug­ary tea into Eddie's ice filled glass then sat down across from him at the scarred square table.

“We don't have that much mon­ey. Are you crazy?” Eddie said.

“Maybe I can work out a deal with the guy. He sound­ed real­ly anx­ious to get rid of the car. It's bad luck for him. It's a cloud of rain and thun­der hangin' over his head. He doesn't need the reminder in his garage that his son is an idiot.”

“You're gonna ask him if you can work some­thin' out and the next thing you know you will be on your knees with his dick in your mouth. No ma'am. You got a car, any­way. You just wan­na show off for your fam­i­ly. Who gives a rat's ass what your mama and sis­ter and cousins think? We don't need sta­tus sym­bols in our life. This is real good, baby. I love the bat­ter. You used the per­fect amount of gar­lic salt and black pep­per. I love you.”

“Don't you accuse me of bein' a whore then try to sweet talk me like that. You think I would suck strange dick for a damn car? You apol­o­gize to me right now or I'll toss out the cobbler.”

“Don't touch that cob­bler. Look. Baby. I'm sor­ry. You know I don't think you're a whore. But the whole sit­u­a­tion is lop­sided and pos­si­bly dan­ger­ous. And there just ain't no sense in it. We don't have the mon­ey for the damn car. What kind of deal could you work out? Pay him off in hun­dred dol­lar install­ments? Come on. Get sensible.”

“You can go with me. I just want to test dri­ve the thing. Think about it. Nev­er again in this life­time will we get the chance to dri­ve a Jaguar. Doesn't that turn you on at least a little?”

“The wind turns me on. Every­thing turns me on. But I could care less about dri­vin' a car I can­not afford to buy. I'd rather turn on some Con­way Twit­ty and screw you. Time is pre­cious. Let's try not to slaugh­ter it senselessly.”

That night they fucked in the usu­al way. Eddie on top. No words, just Becky's moans and whim­pers. Becky imag­ined her­self fuck­ing George Clooney on the heat­ed hood of the Jaguar. Becky won­dered what kind of penis George Clooney had. She won­dered if he took Via­gra. Becky squeezed her eyes shut tight and clenched Eddie's dick with her pussy mus­cles. She came with a shriek. She dug her long orange nails into Eddie's sweaty ass as she came. She glanced at the clock. It was 11:49 p.m.

 

ararMisti Rain­wa­ter-Lites is the cre­ator of sev­er­al mess­es, most of them in book form. Bull­shit Rodeo, a nov­el, will be avail­able from Epic Rites Press in July 2013. Fol­low Misti's spo­radic mad­ness at http://don­deestaeld­is­cochu­pacabra.blogspot​.com

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THE FINAL VICTORY OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN BELL HOOD, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, fiction by Thom Bassett

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Rusty

He kept the can­vas tourni­quet strap Canklin used to ampu­tate his right leg at Chicka­mau­ga beneath the mat­tress of the twins’ crib. Anna saw him at night, lean­ing on the crutch, kept from his days of com­mand, his right hand slipped through the crib slats, search­ing, stop­ping, his numb left hand laid on Otho’s round­ed, ris­ing and falling bel­ly, the arm ruined at Get­tys­burg hang­ing there slack over the top bar.

He told her every time that every­thing was fine, to go back to bed. “I’m with my boys,” the dis­graced ex-gen­er­al said every time. “You’re still not well, Anna. Go back to bed.” She wait­ed in the door­way until he slipped his hand from beneath the mat­tress to stand as straight as he could to look into the mir­ror hang­ing over the crib. “Good night.”

She was down­stairs in the kitchen with the oth­er one, try­ing to spoon some rice boiled to paste into him, when her hus­band trapped the wolves run­ning wild and fiery in his son’s head. The fever had burned for days, the child wail­ing until his throat gave out, when he real­ized what had to be done. He watched Otho’s scar­let­ed face, the child’s mouth wide, lips cracked, tongue white and foul-smelling, the dried snot bone yel­low on his cheek. Then he knew: Wolves could be penned like lambs. You just had to get them where they couldn’t escape. Wolves to the slaugh­ter, that’s what came next.

And there they were: the boy’s skull was like a caul­dron burned dry. He could hear the bones in it crack and split from the heat. He could hear the wolves snap and snarl inside his boy’s brain. Saw fur­rows high up inside the child’s skull from wolves leap­ing to escape the white flames that burned all the blood to the sur­face of the child’s skin. They were there and they were his.

The gen­er­al lis­tened. Anna was singing to the oth­er one. Be Thou my vision, Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me save that Thou art. He licked his dry lips and reached beneath the mat­tress. They were his now.

He held the can­vas strip in his teeth while he lift­ed the child’s head up. His hair was like scorched grass on the Texas plains he had chased Comanche over 20 years ago. He leaned awk­ward­ly to his left, dan­gling his usless arm that now had a use down by the child’s head. He tugged at it with his right hand until the child’s head rest­ed on his left wrist.

There was enough space between the bent neck and mat­tress to slide the strap through. He worked the strap over the pudgy throat and into the buck­le. Pulled the strap until the buck­le pressed into the child’s throat and lift­ed his chin. The boy’s eyes tight­ened, relaxed. He was still asleep.

He’d kept the screw key in his pock­et since the war end­ed. He took it out and slipped it into the thread­ed hole in the mid­dle of the buck­le. He turned it, low­er­ing the fit­ted hor­i­zon­tal bar set into the buck­le against the strap. He turned it more and the wolves scrab­bled furi­ous­ly for escape.

The day before he had asked Anna if she had ever seen a vic­tim of yel­low jack. She was from New Orleans, after all. But for once he was lucky, so he told her after she found the child that the fever could leave its vic­tims’ eyes bloody, their tongues black and swollen from their mouths.

“It was so fast.”

“I know.”

“We can’t let any­one see at the funer­al, John.”

“No one will come. They’re too much cow­ards to face me.”

He dreamed of wolves the morn­ing of the funer­al. Wolves pour­ing from the trench­es ring­ing Atlanta that burn­ing sum­mer of 1864, end­less wolves that swal­low end­less lines of can­non, end­less miles of trains, end­less wolves that kill and run on, Hood rid­ing among them, whole again, his per­fect com­mands like wind roar­ing in their ears and it was per­fect obedience.

His wife told them it was his grief that kept him home. She had found him before dawn, sit­ting in a bro­ken slat chair leaned against the open win­dow, rain flick­er­ing sil­ver, cool­ing his neck and face. I was dream­ing of him, he said. For a long time she held his head against still-sore breasts. The late morn­ing sun made the ground beneath his win­dow steam after she left for the church.

Thom Bas­sett is from South Car­oli­na but now lives in Rhode Island. He is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to "Dis­union," The New York Times' online series about the Civ­il War (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=%22thom+bassett%22). He also teach­es writ­ing, lit­er­a­ture, and human­i­ties cours­es at Bryant Uni­ver­si­ty and is at work on a novel.

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Christmas with Nola, fiction by Joey Dean Hale

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Rusty

Greg had been see­ing Nola for over a year and a half and he was pret­ty sure he loved her.  At least it felt like love with all the crazy sex and good times.  They were both twen­ty and friends with all the par­ty peo­ple though she seemed to make friends more eas­i­ly than he did and much of the time he felt as though some of those par­ty peo­ple would just as soon he dis­ap­pear so they could have Nola all to themselves.

Since she had migrat­ed to Wabash City from up north Greg had nev­er met her fam­i­ly but in Decem­ber ‘87 he agreed to ride up and spend the hol­i­days at her par­ents’ house.  He fig­ured all they knew about the guy shack­ing up with their daugh­ter was just that he was some long­haired broke-ass con­struc­tion work­er who grew up on a farm and was now laid-off for the win­ter so Greg thought it might be a good idea to pop in and change their impression.

The snow fell like feath­ers through­out their four hour trip and as they entered the east end of the north­ern Illi­nois town her Ford Escort seemed minute com­pared to the filthy white heaps plowed up twelve feet high on each cor­ner and freez­ing sol­id under the evening street­lights.  He’d pic­tured Chica­go but the pop­u­la­tion here equaled only a few hun­dred more than the largest town back in Stan­ford Coun­ty, with bars and cafes and stores on one side of the main drag and a dou­ble train track run­ning par­al­lel on the other.

She had nav­i­gat­ed the over­loaded car up the snowy high­ways and over the black ice slick­ing the bridges and now she slid per­fect­ly into a park­ing slot between a black Cadil­lac and a city pick­up adorned with a yel­low light and a wide iced-over snow­blade out front.

Nola kissed his cheek and said, “We’ll check in here first.”

He killed his beer, drop­ping the emp­ty bot­tle into a trash bar­rel buried halfway up in snow before fol­low­ing her into the bar and grill.  Coun­try music and the bel­lows of loud patrons leaked out the door of the old brick build­ing, out onto the frigid win­ter street.

“Nola!”  They all said and she laughed and whooped it up as Greg squeezed into an emp­ty space at the bar and ordered a drink.

Two uncles and three aunts kissed and hugged her tight­ly.  Cousins and nieces and nephews and then, “Oh, there he is,” some of them said and a tall pot-bel­lied gen­tle­man with slick black hair swag­gered in from a side-room con­tain­ing var­i­ous flash­ing and ring­ing gam­bling machines.  He wore black slacks and a black west­ern shirt with red ros­es embroi­dered on the pock­ets.  A turquoise bola and ostrich skin cow­boy boots.

“Could’ve sworn I heard my lit­tle Nola out here, but that can’t be right cause she nev­er comes to see her poor old dad­dy no more.”

“Tim­ber!”  She rushed to him and they embraced, danc­ing for a moment to the twangy song on the jukebox.

“How’s my girl?”

“How do I look?”  Nola removed her heavy wool coat and hung it over the back of a barstool while her boyfriend from out of town did not.  The bar was plen­ty warm but recent­ly sev­er­al warts had blos­somed across Greg’s fin­gers, tiny ten­der cau­li­flow­ers remain­ing bloody raw and aggra­vat­ing between each dig­it, so now he was reluc­tant to remove his black gloves and he didn’t want to look like a fool wear­ing gloves and no coat.

“You’re get­ting skin­ny, Baby Girl,” Tim­ber said.  “Don’t they have noth­ing to eat down there?”

Final­ly an uncle yelled, “Hey!  Who’s that young man there in the leather jacket?”

“Take off your coat and stay awhile,” an aunt cack­led and Greg smiled and meek­ly toast­ed them with his whiskey glass.

“Dad­dy, I want to intro­duce you to some­body.”  Nola tugged her father over for an intro­duc­tion.  “This is Greg.”

“Hands cold?”  Tim­ber twitched his thin mus­tache as if he smelled some­thing unpleasant.

“Not real­ly.”  Greg smiled and pulled off the leather gloves, but then quick­ly slid out of the jack­et and fum­bled the gloves into a pock­et so as to keep his hands busy and out of sight.  “Nice to final­ly meet you.”

“Call me Tim­ber.”  He lit a cig­a­rette and coughed deeply.  “So young man, just what are your inten­tions?”  And again the room erupt­ed with laugh­ter and already Greg wished he had stayed back home.

Some­one said, “Ol Timber’ll line him out.”

Her old man pat­ted him on the back.  “Any­thing you want in here, it’s tak­en care of.  You guys hungry?”

Nola said, “Thought we were all going over to Jackson’s for dinner?”

“That was the plan at one time, but some­time between when that plan was hatched and now, I seemed to have lost your moth­er.”  And again every­one yucked it up.

“She’s already over there,” one blond woman said.  “I’m Nola’s sis­ter Rhon­da, by the way.”  She smiled at Greg.

“How ya doing?” Greg said.  He thought she resem­bled Nola.  They were even dressed sim­i­lar, with black jeans and fringy boots, plen­ty of make-up and big blond hair-sprayed hair.

They fin­ished their drinks and drove down to Nola’s par­ents’ two-sto­ry house to unload their bags.  Nola said, “Me and you’ll be stay­ing in my old room.”

“That’s cool,” he said.  “Fig­ured I’d get stuck on the couch.”

“Oh no,” she said and smiled.

They rushed over to meet more fam­i­ly and friends at Jackson’s, anoth­er bar across town, dec­o­rat­ed with poin­set­tias and hol­ly and red and green rib­bons and bows.  A long buf­fet table ran down the mid­dle of the large room.  Some small­er groups of peo­ple sat at indi­vid­ual tables and booths though Nola’s fam­i­ly had arranged the long tables as if for a ban­quet.  Again Greg hov­ered over in a dark cor­ner of the bar, his jack­et draped over the back of the stool.

When Nola’s moth­er came over, a skele­ton of a woman, Greg stood and she hugged him, not warm­ly but rather as if attempt­ing to read his aura.  “I’m Del,” she said, snag­ging his hands in her boney clasp, burn­ing his thumb with her cig­a­rette.  He jerked back but did not escape her clutch­es and after she offered, “Sor­ry,” more as a for­mal­i­ty than an apol­o­gy, she inspect­ed his fin­gers.  “Boy, you do have a mess of warts, don’t you?”

Sur­prised and a lit­tle embar­rassed, he agreed.

She looked them over again.  “I see eleven, right?”

He had to cal­cu­late them him­self before say­ing, “Yeah, I think so.”

“You just wait right here.”  Del crept over to her place at the table and dug through her bag, even­tu­al­ly extract­ing a small change purse.  She sift­ed through the coins until she sort­ed out eleven pen­nies then returned.  “Here,” she said, press­ing the pen­nies into his palm.  “Now go out­side some­where and close your eyes and turn around three times, then throw those coins as far as you can.  But keep your eyes closed and don’t watch where they go.  And those warts will be gone in a cou­ple weeks.  I guar­an­tee it.”

He stared into her seri­ous blue eyes, won­der­ing if he was the tar­get of some fam­i­ly prank.

“Hur­ry back in,” Del said.

At least it was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get out­side.  He walked around the cor­ner of the build­ing and slung the pen­nies in the man­ner direct­ed.  Then he smoked half a joint before return­ing inside and tak­ing a seat beside Nola at one of the long tables.  A mug of beer foamed beside his plate full of fried chick­en, green beans, mashed pota­toes and brown gravy.  A bis­cuit on the side.

Nola rolled her eyes.  “My cousin Robyn already fixed you a plate from the buffet.”

He scanned the room and found the only woman there bet­ter look­ing than Nola smil­ing back at him.  She was about their age, with short blond hair and plen­ty of cleav­age to go around.  He smiled back and took a sip of his beer.

Nola’s fam­i­ly sucked their greasy fin­gers and ordered drink after drink, laugh­ing at end­less inside jokes.  Greg mere­ly grinned and nod­ded through­out the meal and when the wait­ress asked if he’d like anoth­er beer he leaned into her and asked, “Can I get a whiskey and Coke instead?”

“You sure can, Hon.”

Lat­er he leaned on the bar, drink­ing his drink and watch­ing Nola work the room.  He won­dered if she was relat­ed to all these guys she was hug­ging or if they were all friends from school or what.  Then he start­ed won­der­ing which ones she’d slept with.

One of Nola’s uncles trudged over with his tie loos­ened at the neck.  “What’s the name of that town you’re from again?”

“Wabash City,” Greg said.  “It’s about four hours south of here on the Lit­tle Wabash River.”

“Ain’t much to do there, is there?” the uncle said.

“Depends on what you like to do, I guess,” Greg said.

Nola’s cousin Robyn slipped up beside him.  “I say we blow this joint and hit some real bars.  What do you say, Greg?”

He said, “What­ev­er you and Nola want to do is cool with me.”

_____________

The next morn­ing found Greg naked in a strange upstairs bed­room of an unfa­mil­iar home, the cool north­ern Illi­nois air seep­ing in around the win­dow frames.

Rhon­da burst through the door and sat on the bed.  “Way to piss off the old man.”

“What hap­pened?”  Greg rubbed his eyes and tried to focus.  Nola sat up in bed beside him.

“The spare room was all fixed up for you to stay in,” Rhon­da said.  “But you slept in here with Daddy’s baby girl.  And now Timber’s not too hap­py.”  She laughed and punched him in the shoulder.

“We live togeth­er,” Nola said.

“That doesn’t mat­ter to him.  This is his house.’”

“You told me to sleep in here with you.”

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Nola told Greg.

“By the way, Stal­lion,” Rhon­da said.  “You didn’t by any chance smoke any dope down in the base­ment bath­room last night, did you?”

He sift­ed through the hazy footage of the film that was the night before — after leav­ing Jackson’s Bar he and Nola and her cousin Robyn and anoth­er cousin — Frankie or Fred­die or some­thing — had cruised around — hit­ting the bars in near­by Pon­ti­ac — or Fair­bury — or maybe some oth­er town — he met some of Nola’s old friends — a few hot girls — a cou­ple prep­py guys he had con­sid­ered punch­ing in the face — he pound­ed sev­er­al shots of bour­bon — and cheap tequi­la — then after last call they returned here to a full house — the fam­i­ly still drink­ing and smok­ing cig­a­rettes and yuck­ing it up — cousins and uncles and aunts and a neigh­bor or two — his eyes drawn to Robyn’s body like a mag­net — her funky hair — the laugh­ter danc­ing across those lips — her top unbut­toned just enough — a few more drinks — Robyn had caught him burn­ing a bowl in the base­ment bath­room and Greg had invit­ed her in — locked the door.  Had he propped her on the sink and nuz­zled her per­fumed neck?  He vague­ly remem­bered his hands under her shirt.  No bra.  Her tongue in his mouth.

“Must’ve been some­body else,” Greg said.

“I’ll bet it was Robyn smok­ing pot,” Rhon­da said.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Nola said.  “That lit­tle bitch was piss­ing me off last night anyway.”

Greg sat there naked beneath the cov­ers and said nothing.

After Rhon­da left the room Nola said, “I don’t care if you was get­ting high in the bath­room.  Just stay away from Robyn.  She’s a lit­tle whore.”

_____________

For the remain­der of his stay Greg tried to lay low.  A cou­ple times he slipped away to that tav­ern they’d gone into when they first arrived in town and no one but Nola even seemed to notice.  She’d track him down then sit at the bar for a cou­ple drinks before giv­ing him a ride back to her par­ents’ house.

On Christ­mas Day Greg watched from the side­lines as the fam­i­ly exchanged a mul­ti­tude of gifts, slurp­ing beer and wine, and since not one present was addressed to him he man­aged to avoid prac­ti­cal­ly any con­ver­sa­tion until Robyn smiled at him across the Christ­mas din­ner table and said, “Maybe I’ll just come down there and see you sometime.”

“What’s the hell’s that sup­posed to mean?” Nola said.  She sat her glass down and wine slopped over the rim and stained the white table cloth.

“I was just think­ing about com­ing down to vis­it you guys.”

“You lit­tle bitch.”  Nola scoot­ed back from the table and took her wine with her when she left the room.

Robyn made a face and shrugged her shoul­ders but every­one else stared at Greg until he excused him­self and went after Nola.

They had planned to stay the entire week but Nola decid­ed to pack the next day.  And so they drove back home qui­et­ly, this time the sun blind­ing against the flat icy white fields, dead stalks and stub­ble pro­trud­ing through the glare.  He awoke just as they crossed over the riv­er bridge into his own home­town.  Gigan­tic snowflakes con­tin­ued to fall, adding anoth­er lay­er to the pre­ex­ist­ing drifts, the streets packed slick from pre­vi­ous traf­fic, though now vehi­cles were scarce under the streetlights.

Nola slid to a stop in their dri­ve­way and flung open her door.   “Don’t wor­ry,” she said.  “You won’t ever have to go back.”

“Now what’s wrong?”

Greg fol­lowed her in the house, car­ry­ing his duf­fle bag, but Nola quick­ly dis­ap­peared into the bed­room.  He raised the ther­mo­stat until the fur­nace grind­ed into gear and the smell of gas sat­u­rat­ed the room.  He removed his boots and clicked on the tele­vi­sion, wait­ing for her to come out from the bed­room and ask if he had brought every­thing in from the car just so he could say some­thing smar­tass like, “Well, I car­ried in all my presents.”  But then she didn’t come out.

He want­ed to call his own par­ents but his phone had been tem­porar­i­ly dis­con­nect­ed.  Ice glazed the met­al frames of the win­dows and the worn tan car­pet felt cold against his sock feet.  He kicked back on the couch and cov­ered his legs with a blan­ket, won­der­ing what Nola’s fam­i­ly was talk­ing about right now.

 

Thirst at Beale - lighterJoey Dean Hale is a writer and musi­cian in the St. Louis area.  He received his MFA from South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty at Car­bon­dale and has pub­lished sto­ries in sev­er­al mag­a­zines, includ­ing Fried Chick­en & Cof­fee, Road­side Fic­tion, and Octave Mag­a­zine which also has his song “High Noon” post­ed online.  In Sep­tem­ber 2012 he was the fea­tured writer in Pen­du­line Press.  Hale’s sto­ry “Access Closed” is includ­ed in the 2013 Bib­liotekos Anthol­o­gy — Puz­zles of Faith and Pat­terns of Doubt.

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Marshmallows, fiction by Jacob Knabb

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Rusty

It all start­ed like this. We were in the kitchen microwav­ing marsh­mal­lows, watch­ing ‘em grow into big lumpy blobs before they explod­ed, when Jean­nie-Gaye came home. We were nuk­ing marsh­mal­lows because we had already run out of grapes.  Grapes were bet­ter for obvi­ous rea­sons. They’d shriv­el down like raisins, then poof up until their skins got shiny and – BOOM – the grape was gone and the insides of the microwave was coat­ed in mucus yel­low guts and we’d laugh at that and pre­tend to blow our noses onto each oth­er. I’ll admit it was pret­ty child­ish. Some­times I’d even scrape grape goober loose and smear it onto Lana’s neck. Lana and I were born exact­ly one year apart, a fact that led some to call us Irish Twins, even though we aren’t Irish. Lana’s marsh­mal­low made a real­ly fizzy noise when it blew up and we fell onto the good linoleum laugh­ing over it when sud­den­ly Jean­nie-Gaye stood over us. She crossed her arms and frowned. What is this obses­sion with the microwave you two have late­ly? You’re too old for this kind of shit and I don’t need more mess­es. Go out­side. There’re more gro­ceries to car­ry in.

It was kind of ear­ly in the after­noon for it to be that obvi­ous that Jean­nie-Gaye had been drink­ing and every­thing seemed fun­nier as I remem­ber it. Here was our mom­my, her lips were cracked and mat­ted in rusty-col­ored lip­stick, smelling like pep­per­mint and tal­cum pow­der and gin, home from Kroger’s. And of course she’d caught us blow­ing things up in the microwave again. I looked at Lana and she laughed, squint­ing her eyes like she does, the tears just rolling out at the cor­ners. Jean­nie-Gaye stomped off. I jumped to my feet and ran after her. She was mut­ter­ing shit­ty chil­dren. Because my life is what you’ve tak­en from me and near­ly tipped for­ward when she threw the screen door open. I rushed past her and out­side, leap­ing from the porch into the lawn.

It was Jan­u­ary cold: the oaks across the street all caked in old snow. The exhaust from the 4‑door BMW 535i that Maw­maw Adkins bought for dad­dy smelled almost sweet. I scooped four plas­tic bags with each hand and start­ed scoot­ing like a road­run­ner to keep them sta­ble, bang­ing Jean­nie-Gaye in the shin on the way back towards the house. She thought I did it on pur­pose and maybe I did. I made it into the kitchen before my face and neck were sting­ing too bad from the cold.

Lana was still on the floor by the microwave. I kind of hurled the bags at her and wad­dle stomped after them sumo-style.  She was laugh­ing again when I crouched over her with my face about an inch from hers, smil­ing. Jean­nie-Gaye must have crept up behind me and tapped my behind with the ball of her foot which pitched me for­ward. I guess it was bad luck, but I jumped to avoid crash­ing down on Lana and smacked into the space beneath the wall-mount­ed microwave.

I lay there for a sec­ond just try­ing to fig­ure what had hap­pened and then I stood back up. That was when Jean­nie-Gaye saw the blood. Lana start­ed cry­ing. I didn’t feel any­thing that unusu­al, maybe a small strip of pain where the top of my head had scraped across the under­side of the microwave. I ran my hand over my head and it was shin­ing red and wet. I felt it then, blood run­ning over my cheeks. It was qui­et for a moment and then Lana sprang up and ran into the fam­i­ly room to get Dad­dy. While she was gone, Jean­nie-Gaye pulled a dish­tow­el around my head and gripped me to her. Don’t cry, Randy. This is all just a freak accident.

I couldn’t remem­ber the last time Jean­nie-Gaye had hugged me and I start­ed to cry. Lana still rest­ed her head in Jeannie-Gaye’s lap some­times on Sun­day after­noons when Jean­nie-Gaye would come down for break­fast. I’d watch as Jean­nie-Gaye would run her fin­gers through Lana’s long brown hair, and talk with Dad­dy about strip min­ing and chem­i­cal run-off or some new store out by the Wal-Mart on Cor­ri­dor G. But she and I weren’t close like that and hadn’t been for some time and I most­ly just wished I could be any­where else but home.

Daddy’s face was lined from where he’d been asleep on the liv­ing room car­pet in front of the bigscreen. He clutched at me and then pulled back. I stopped cry­ing. Dad­dy said take the tow­el off his head so I can see how bad it is. Jean­nie-Gaye didn’t like that and told him it’s pret­ty grue­some, Kendal. You know that I’ve seen some blood in nurs­ing school so I’m telling you it’s gonna leave a scar you might be able to see through his hair. I start­ed cry­ing again and Dad­dy grabbed me away from Jean­nie-Gaye.  He guid­ed me across the linoleum and sat me down at the table. Jean­nie-Gaye talk­ing over his shoul­der all along about the nature of the injury, using med­ical ter­mi­nol­o­gy she’d learned in school. Daddy’s left eye drooped more than nor­mal, the lid twitch­ing. I think the adren­a­line must have fad­ed some by then because I start­ed to feel a burn­ing and it scared me.

The smell of Jeannie-Gaye’s drunk­en­ness. Dad­dy pulled the tow­el off and placed his hands firm­ly over my ears, tilt­ing my head for­ward to have a look. I felt real pain then for the first time, a stick­i­ness tin­gling into a sharp line. His hands trem­bled and he turned away. There was blood on his fin­gers. I remem­bered the sink was full of dish­es and won­dered who would have to wash them. Dad­dy said to Jean­nie-Gaye to go and start the car.

*****

Dad­dy had grown up with­out a father and that’s where our mon­ey came from. Paw­paw Adkins worked as a mechan­ic for Chessie Rail­roads and was elec­tro­cut­ed one day work­ing on a train. That was bad enough but it didn’t end there. To make a long sto­ry short, the con­duc­tor didn’t see Paw­paw lay­ing on the tracks. He start­ed the engine up and the train sawed Paw­paw in half when it rolled out. I know this because Lana and I researched our grandfather’s death one sum­mer. The sto­ry was grue­some and caught on in the local papers for a few months as the case played out. We went through every­thing we could find on micro­film at the Kanawha Coun­ty Pub­lic Library where Jean­nie-Gaye dropped us while she went drink­ing over in the Bad­lands. Maw­maw Adkins sued and it went to tri­al. Things got nasty. It came out that there were safe­ty vio­la­tions. Cor­rupt inspec­tors. The con­duc­tor had been drink­ing. In the end, they set­tled out of court and CSX paid out the nose to make it go away.

Dad­dy has the Sun­day issue of Charleston Dai­ly Mail framed and hang­ing over the fire­place in the liv­ing room. It’s an ear­ly one, a cov­er sto­ry. “Black­ened Mechan­ic Cut Down by Drunk­en Con­duc­tor.” Dad­dy was born six months lat­er. He got upset a few years back and took the frame down off the wall, opened it up and tore the paper in half, then re-framed the halves and hung them again and that’s how they are to this day.  That was his Christ­mas present to him­self, he said, then he and Jean­nie-Gaye drank a pitch­er of spiced cider and made out on the couch.

But Dad­dy got reli­gion and stopped drink­ing. He took to watch­ing the God chan­nel and mak­ing wheat­grass milk­shakes, dri­ving Maw­maw Adkins to her doctor’s appoint­ments and Church Cir­cle meet­ings. Jean­nie-Gaye took to drink­ing when she thought no one was look­ing, stow­ing bot­tles around the house, and meet­ing some girls from her High School class at the Moose Club on week­ends. Jean­nie-Gaye had always been an alco­holic, but she nev­er thought any­one knew that. Most nights we’d help Dad­dy car­ry her up to their bed­room. I’d hold the cur­tain back while he’d toss her into their four-post bed and we’d look at each oth­er and nev­er say any­thing. Lana’d take Jeannie-Gaye’s heels off and place them side-by-side at the foot of her van­i­ty. On week­ends, Dad­dy must have done it him­self since we’d already be asleep when she’d get home, though that year I’d start­ed stay­ing over with my new High School friends as many week­ends as pos­si­ble and so I wasn’t around for it either way.

*****

Jean­nie-Gaye and Lana had heaved the rest of the gro­ceries from the seats of the BMW and scat­tered them all over the dri­ve­way. When Dad­dy pulled out, some­thing popped beneath the tires. Lana looked back, shriek­ing about a 2‑liter of Cana­da Dry gush­ing foam in the driveway.

We were qui­et then and I closed my eyes and leaned against the car-door. Lana was exam­in­ing my slash. I tried to breathe in and out as even­ly as pos­si­ble because I felt peaked all of the sud­den. I kept feel­ing my cut while Lana watched. It was deep, and the out­er lay­er of skin kind of flapped on one side. It felt like a wet sun­burn. I real­ized that Dad­dy had been mum­bling to Jean­nie-Gaye in the front seat and I focused on his words as he told her that this had gone on long enough. Our fam­i­ly has become dis­solute and I am filled with dis­gust most of the time.  I feel like it’s com­ing out of my pores. Like I’m drown­ing in it. Moth­er thinks you need to go to rehab since our prayers have lit­tle effect on some­one as ded­i­cat­ed to sloth­ful­ness as yourself.

You’regonnamakeitchamphangintherekid Lana grunt­ed into my ear and it star­tled me. I pulled my hands away from my head, fling­ing blood onto the win­dow and the back of Kendal’s seat. Bile float­ed up into my throat, and I made a noise like a ptero­dactyl. Lana was grossed out and she moved to the oth­er side of the car. I tried to lis­ten to Dad­dy again but they weren’t talk­ing any more. Jean­nie-Gaye was crying.

*****

 Kendal gripped my hand as we crossed the hos­pi­tal park­ing lot. Jean­nie-Gaye slouched beside us in the wait­ing room while Kendal signed me in. She wasn’t cry­ing by then and all but refused to look at me. She snuck drinks from the flask she kept hid­den in her purse for emer­gen­cies. The blood had slowed and Lana scraped some off of my neck with her pinky nail. The peo­ple in the wait­ing room were star­ing because of all of the blood and some of them were mut­ter­ing. Jean­nie-Gaye glared at an elder­ly man across from her who was watch­ing us, and told him my fam­i­ly is not your con­cern, you decrepit old bas­tard. The room fell silent and I could sense every­one judg­ing us. Lana leaned clos­er and whis­pered in my ear some­times when I’m think­ing about lots of things at once, I real­ize I don’t know which side is my left and which is my right and it’s weird. I asked her how bad she thought it was. You’ve got a big cut, Randy. I asked her what does it look like? She sucked on her bot­tom lip, pop­ping it before she answered. Told me it looks like a smile down the cen­ter of your scalp. I’m pret­ty sure Jeannie-Gaye’s right. It’s gonna leave a big scar.

Jean­nie-Gaye glared at us and yelled you two stop whis­per­ing about me. The old man across from us stood then, loud­ly shak­ing the wrin­kles out of his jack­et before putting it on. He shuf­fled towards the nurs­es’ sta­tion, glar­ing back over his shoul­der as he went.

Jean­nie-Gaye zipped up her purse so hard I thought she must have torn it. Her eyes were going in and out of focus. Dad­dy came back with a skin­ny nurse. I was ashamed, because I knew the old man must have said some­thing to the nurs­es about Jean­nie-Gaye drink­ing in the hos­pi­tal. Dad­dy seemed ner­vous when the nurse exam­ined my gash. I hoped that they wouldn’t take us away from him since every­body in Boone Coun­ty knows about Jeannie-Gaye’s rep­u­ta­tion. The nurse told Dad­dy that she was going to get a room pre­pared right away. It’s a deep wound, Mr. Adkins. The soon­er we can get it cleaned out and have the doc­tor stitch it up the better.

Jean­nie-Gaye turned to the nurse and tensed to speak more clear­ly. If it is such a con­cern to you, then why didn’t you peo­ple alert the doc­tor at once? My son should nev­er have been left sit­ting here bleed­ing all over him­self like this! The nurse must’ve known Jean­nie-Gaye was going to lose it if she didn’t say some­thing to dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion so she start­ed back­ing away and apologizing.

Jean­nie-Gaye slammed her fists down and stood, tow­er­ing over the poor woman. This is not how I was taught to run an ER when I was a stu­dent at Gar­nett. There are some patients that are a pri­or­i­ty. He is your pri­or­i­ty! The nurse just stood there shocked and Jean­nie-Gaye lurched towards her. She wavered for a moment, near­ly falling back into her seat before steady­ing her­self, and she went right at Dad­dy who seemed to think she was try­ing to embrace him. Only she wasn’t. It was like he wasn’t even there and she slapped his hands away and stag­gered towards the row of green chairs across from us. Dad­dy start­ed after her, but she had got­ten her weight all going in the same direc­tion and was at the far end of the room by then and she start­ed to run, explod­ing through the dou­ble doors. The peo­ple in the wait­ing room watched us until Lana start­ed cry­ing and that made them turn away, pre­tend­ing nev­er to have been lis­ten­ing. The old man hadn’t returned. Dad­dy came back to my side and he and the skin­ny nurse stood me up and walked me to a small oper­at­ing room.

I sat there on a table under lights that made my skin look pur­ple while they cleaned my scalp and face, and then shaved the hair around the cut like an invert­ed Mohawk down the cen­ter of my head. The doc­tor came in while the nurs­es were fin­ish­ing up. He washed his hands with his back to us. Dad­dy stood look­ing on. The skin­ny nurse gave me two shots to numb my scalp but I couldn’t see her doing it. It took ten stitch­es on the inside of the cut and twen­ty-three more on the out­side to close it. I lay beneath a paper sheet, with a hole left for the doc­tor to work. The sheet glowed from a bright light above the table and I felt like I was float­ing. I kept try­ing to touch the stitch­es before they were fin­ished, so I could feel them, and the nurs­es had to restrain me, each one hold­ing a hand, the skin­ny nurse stroking my fore­arm while the doc­tor finished.

*****

It had warmed up enough to snow while we were in the hos­pi­tal and tiny flakes were falling all around us as we looked for the BMW. We were all shiv­er­ing and the snow was stick­ing to us before Kendal final­ly admit­ted what we all knew that Jeanie-Gaye had tak­en it. He took us back inside of the emer­gency room and said he would go and call Maw­maw Adkins. If your moth­er comes back you just try to keep her calm, aright?

I stretched across the seats with my head in Lana’s lap. Lana and I watched Dad­dy talk on the pay­phone and Lana scraped her fin­gers back and forth over my ban­dages. We fig­ured that Jean­nie-Gaye would be passed out in the bed by now. Lana said I don’t think this’ll ever end, Randy, not until she drinks her­self to death. I nod­ded, think­ing unless she kills some­one first. What was weird to me was that some­how I wasn’t mad at my moth­er even though I had every right to be. That was when I real­ized that Jean­nie-Gaye must have been hurt more than any­one I knew because I still loved her even still and that just couldn’t be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise. Love doesn’t just appear in peo­ple from nothing.

Dad­dy came back from the pay­phone and told us that Maw­maw Adkins would be there soon to get us. She’s going to take you kids over to her place for a few days while I fig­ure out what to do about your moth­er. I said I love you and Lana said I love you too, Dad­dy. But we both knew Dad­dy loved Jean­nie-Gaye too much to kick her out and I got scared all of a sud­den, the most scared I’d ever been. How could I love a moth­er like that? I don’t like to think about it, to be hon­est, but I do almost every day. Scars like mine don’t like to keep qui­et. And what I remem­ber the most about that day is the pan­ic I felt lay­ing there in that wait­ing room while my maw­maw got into her car and drove out to the hos­pi­tal to get us. I just couldn’t calm down inside. It was like I knew it would hap­pen all along and I’d been try­ing to stop it but couldn’t. I felt like a small­mouth bass left float­ing in a land-recla­ma­tion pond at HOBET with all of the coal ripped from the hill beneath me, like I was float­ing there in the water and could see a shad­ow loom­ing above the sur­face of some­one who was try­ing to get at me to devour me, like they were stand­ing there breath­ing in the last qui­et moments of my life before com­ing after me with a hook.

jacob_knabbJacob S. Knabb is the Senior Edi­tor of Curb­side Splen­dor Pub­lish­ing and has been known to take an author pho­to or two. His writ­ing has appeared or is forth­com­ing in Anoth­er Chica­go Mag­a­zine, The Col­lag­ist, Knee-Jerk, Every­day Genius, THE2NDHAND, & else­where. He lives in Chica­go with his bril­liant wife and two will­ful Chihuahuas.

 

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Wilfred, poem by Sandra Giedeman

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Rusty

He was proud of his blue tick hounds, his

six­ty acres of hills, hol­lows, creeks filled

with cop­per­heads and cottonmouths;

nights utter­ly still except when a smell or sound

riled the hounds from their sleep

to bay like old mourners.

 

My uncle read aloud Sun­day mornings

from the Book of Job in a nasal voice,

about hat­ing the night and wait­ing for day

only to find in the day that one wished for night,

about how we are here for a flick­er of time

then reflect­ed in no one’s eye.

 

My aunt had the cus­tom of hill peo­ple of keeping

framed pho­tographs of dead rel­a­tives in their coffins.

When my uncle died she got rid of his hounds, his

jew’s harp, said she was through with men

and their ways, but she kept his death pho­to displayed

on a lace doily in her liv­ing room.

 

headshots 002San­dra Giede­man grew up in St. Louis and moved to Cal­i­for­nia in her ‘20s. She’s been pub­lished in var­i­ous lit­er­ary jour­nals and was award­ed the Mud­fish Annu­al Poet­ry Prize by Charles Sim­ic.  She was own­er of Upchurch-Brown Book­sellers in Lagu­na Beach and past pres­i­dent of the Orange Coun­ty Chap­ter of PEN. She worked as edi­tor of var­i­ous trade mag­a­zines. She lives in San Clemente, Cal­i­for­nia with her husband.

 

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The Burial of the Dead, fiction by Murray Dunlap

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Rusty

They shaved his beard for the funer­al.  I can’t begin to under­stand why.  Who told them to do it?  He looked like pink-cheeked drag queen.  But the fun­ni­est thing was watch­ing my broth­ers squirm in that front pew.  The four biggest men the in this tiny church, and they shoved them all onto the front right pew.  The sons should sit togeth­er on the front row, a man in a suit said.  Who are these peo­ple mak­ing deci­sions?  They squirmed and sweat­ed.  Mas­sas­auga, Alaba­ma in August.  If there was air con­di­tion­ing, you couldn’t feel it.  One broth­er would lean for­ward when the oth­er leaned back because their shoul­ders were too broad to sit side by side.  Ren, the old­est, sat clos­est to the cen­ter aisle and mouthed the words cold beer three times through a blood red, exas­per­at­ed face.  I sat with the wife, ex wife, and mis­tress on the front left pew.  The wife, Celia, sobbed and some­times moaned into her end­less cleav­age.  The ex-wife, Joy, had Alzheimer’s and asked me four times, “Geor­gia, when is the movie going to start?”  The mis­tress, Loret­ta ‑my moth­er, sat as rigid and life­less as dad­dy.  I nev­er saw her blink.  I nev­er saw her cry.  When­ev­er Celia moaned, moth­er whis­pered stu­pid whore to no one. As far as awk­ward events go, daddy’s funer­al was world class.

The Rev­erend Macallan led us in a very short, very ordi­nary ser­vice.  He read from the bible about ash­es and dust, and the organ­ist played Lift High the Cross.  For a moment it seemed as if it could have been a nor­mal church ser­vice, any giv­en Sunday.

But then the rev­erend wiped his brow with a white hand­ker­chief and made more than one self-dep­re­cat­ing joke about his weight.  Appar­ent­ly there is a wine called Fat Bas­tard, and the rev­erend shared a bot­tle with Celia the night before.  So much for normal.

“We got to chuck­ling and raised a glass to fat bas­tards every­where,” he said. “We found it quite appro­pri­ate, as Ben­nett often called me a fat bas­tard, and it is also how I referred to him.”

“He went to Yale and I attend­ed Har­vard, so bit of good natured rib­bing was only nat­ur­al.”  The rev­erend winked at the con­gre­ga­tion, which got him a few laughs, but I’m absolute­ly cer­tain that at that moment, the rev­erend Macallan was look­ing at daddy’s wife.

“Stu­pid whore,” moth­er whispered.

Then daddy’s sis­ter, Eleanor, walked up the cen­ter aisle with an arm­ful of gold­en­rod.  Eleanor is tall, thin, and stun­ning.  She has a doc­tor­ate in psy­chol­o­gy and counselor’s easy, wel­com­ing face.  For as long as she can remem­ber, she has been told that she looks like Christie Brink­ley.  Eleanor devel­oped a dear me, aren’t you sweet rou­tine that we’re all sick of.  She placed the gold­en­rod on daddy’s chest, the tiny yel­low flow­ers tick­ling his shaven chin.  The church swished with the sounds of legs crossed and recrossed, arms crossed and uncrossed, uneasy hands rub­bing, fold­ing, and adjust­ing neck­ties.  Eleanor turned and faced us and gave an audi­ble sigh.

“As Bennett’s twin, I guess I some­how knew I would be doing this someday.”

Ren leaned back, which forced Bax­ter, the youngest, to lean for­ward.  Bax­ter scratched the back of his scalp through quar­ter-inch hair.  He adjust­ed his tie and coughed.  He tugged the thin blonde tri­an­gle of facial hair under his bot­tom lip and quick­ly searched the room with his eyes as if map­ping an escape.  Despite his black suit, he wore run­ning shoes.  New Bal­ance.  Bax­ter nev­er wore any­thing else.

“I am grate­ful that Bennett’s strug­gle was short and that his pain was lim­it­ed.  I am hap­py that he was not sub­ject­ed to the tor­tu­ous road so many alco­holics walk at their ends.  I am relieved that Ben­nett died with dig­ni­ty, and that he did not act out, that he did not give in to his old pen­chant for tantrums.”

Eleanor paused, glanc­ing up from her papers and scan­ning the room.  I won­dered if she could make out the look on our faces.  Who on earth was she talk­ing about?  Not our father.  Not the man who hired an acupunc­tur­ist to fly in from Seat­tle and heal his pain, only to laugh at the man’s effem­i­nate hands and offend him to the point of leav­ing unpaid.  Not the man who was pre­scribed a painkiller that induced hal­lu­ci­na­tions and imme­di­ate­ly mount­ed a dis­co ball over his bed and hired danc­ing strip­pers.  Cer­tain­ly not the man who packed a bag and moved into a hotel with the red head­ed Celia ‑one of the strip­pers and soon to be sec­ond wife- while his first wife, Joy, was at the hos­pi­tal giv­ing birth to Wal­lace, their sec­ond son.   Not the man who had been dying by a slow scotch-induced-sui­cide for years.

Wal­lace sat at the far end of the pew, lean­ing for­ward and gap­ing at Eleanor.  He had already removed his tie and used it to wipe sweat from his fore­head.  Then he pinched the cor­ners of his tremen­dous mous­tache and ground his teeth.  Like Ren, his face glowed red.

Between Wal­lace and Bax­ter sat Shane, the first born of the sec­ond mar­riage.   Shane leaned back with his arms spread out across the spine of the pew.  His head bobbed with sleep and then jerked back to atten­tion.  The Bud­dhist tat­too on his shoul­der of two fish swim­ming in an end­less cir­cle showed through his thin white shirt.  He grinned through a full red beard.

“We are all here because we loved Charles Ben­nett Porter, Jr.” Eleanor said, read­ing from her papers.  She stared at the typed words.

Then she looked up, took a deep breath, and chose to speak off the page.

We loved him in our own ways.  Ben­nett did not make it easy.”

Ren looked at me across the aisle and smiled.  He mouthed the words here we go.  Celia stared, her eyes wet and star­ry with val­i­um.  The rev­erend Macallan gripped his knees.

“Ben­nett was intel­li­gent, hand­some, and when we chose to be, extreme­ly charm­ing.  But if he was charm­ing in the last ten years, I missed it.  The days of our sum­mer sail­ing trips end­ed so very long ago.  The week­ends spent water ski­ing up on DogRiv­er, gone.  The only activ­i­ty Ben­nett main­tained to the end was hunt­ing.  He cre­at­ed a world of his own at the cab­in in Bar­lo.  But I believe what was once a sport for him became an out­let for anger.  A very brief and very rare moment of con­trol.  He was sen­si­tive and uncom­fort­able with emo­tion.  He chose to anes­thetize his feel­ings rather than process them.  Most of his choic­es were self-destruc­tive.  His wives may be able to say oth­er­wise, and I’ll let them speak for them­selves.  The same goes for his children.”

She looked at me and said, “All of them.”

“I hope you have all come to terms with the ways in which you were and were not con­nect­ed to Ben­nett.  We each have to find our own way to define the rela­tion­ship.  We each have to find our own way to remem­ber him, and our own way to let go.”

Moth­er leaned in and whis­pered, “No one came to get their head shrunk. Bitch.”

Joy leaned in and whis­pered, “When did Christie Brink­ley start act­ing?  She’s not bad, but I sure wish they’d put more action in the plot.”

“The real rea­son we are all here today is to mark the end of a bat­tle,” Eleanor con­tin­ued.  “A long dif­fi­cult bat­tle we all fought.  I, for one, am glad it’s over.  When Ben­nett and I were chil­dren, when we were home from board­ing schools in the sum­mer, I loved to run out­side on the very first morn­ing and gath­er arm­fuls for gold­en­rod.  I brought them into the house and filled vas­es in every room.  I twist­ed and tied the branch­es and made a wreath for the front door. By the time Ben­nett came down from his room, his eyes had turned red with aller­gies and swollen to the size of soft boiled eggs.  He had already sneezed a dozen times.  If she was sober enough, Mom would pull the tip of his nose and say, hel­lo Mr. Sneeze, let’s get you med­icat­ed.”

Eleanor walked down from the pul­pit and gen­tly pat­ted the gold­en­rod lying across Bennett’s chest.

“One last jab, broth­er,” she said. “One last jab.”

Then she returned to her seat.

No one else rose to speak.

We filed past Dad­dy sin­gle file for com­mu­nion.  Shane placed a bowl of rice and a pint of John­ny Walk­er inside the cas­ket, return­ing to his seat with­out tak­ing any wine or bread.  Celia dropped her wafer into her cleav­age.  With­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, the Rev­erend Macallan plucked it out.

When we were seat­ed again, the rev­erend con­clud­ed the ser­vice by pro­claim­ing, “My peace I give you.  My peace I leave you.”

Then he led us through the side door and along a brick path to the gravesite.  The broth­ers act­ed as pall bear­ers, lift­ing and guid­ing the pine cas­ket eas­i­ly on their shoul­ders.  I’ve been told that six men would nor­mal­ly be required, but that after one look, the rev­erend Macallan said, four titans such as these could lift the cas­ket if it were still inside the hearse.

A few pas­sages were read.  Each broth­er dropped a hand­ful of dirt onto the cas­ket.  Eleanor stood under the shade of a long-leaf pine and cried in silence.  Celia sobbed and moaned.  Moth­er repeat­ed, stu­pid whore, stu­pid whore, stu­pid whore.  Joy held my arm and smiled.  I looked through the trees and stared at the cop­pery bay, per­fect­ly still with­out wind.  I watched a pel­i­can glide a few feet above the sur­face, scan­ning the water for fish.  I watched the pel­i­can fly until she was out of sight, nev­er hav­ing spot­ted any­thing worth div­ing for.  The broth­ers shift­ed foot to foot, loos­en­ing ties and sweat­ing.  Four red­dened faces with nowhere to look.

Final­ly, the rev­erend Macallan said, “Amen.”  And then, “This fat bas­tard has nev­er been so hot.  Let us retreat to the shade.”

We fil­tered out of the grave­yard and moved under the pines next to the church.  A few plat­ters of fin­ger sand­wich­es and a bowl of pota­to sal­ad sat on a pic­nic table, just begin­ning to sour in the heat.  No one ate.  We all crowd­ed around the lemon­ade and cokes at anoth­er pic­nic table.  Who made these choic­es?  No cater­ing, no beer or wine.  Mon­ey wasn’t an issue, so why did this have to be so pathetic?

When we all had a cold drink in hand, we looked around at one anoth­er.  What could any­one say?

Celia looked up at me through bleary eyes and put out her hand. “I’m Celia.  How did you know Bennett?”

“He was my father,” I said.

Celia stared at me.  Not one mus­cle in her face moved.  When she final­ly blinked, a bead of sweat dropped from her chin into her cleav­age.  I guess all sorts of things must fall in there.

“I rather enjoyed the movie,” Joy said.

“Anoth­er day,” Shane said to Celia.  He took his moth­er by the arm and led her across the pine nee­dles to Bax­ter, where he jogged in place.  Eleanor asked Bax­ter, do you under­stand what obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der means? 

“Was that nec­es­sary?” Wal­lace asked.

“She asked,” I said.

“But today?”  Wal­lace waved away a fly.  “You don’t know this, but I’ve got big­ger fish to fry.  Have you been told about the will?  Of course not.  I’ll tell you.  Wait right here.”

As Daddy’s ille­git­i­mate child, I’d spent more than a healthy num­ber of nights won­der­ing about that will.  Won­der­ing if Charles Ben­nett Porter Jr. would stay true to tra­di­tion and leave me out, or if, just maybe, he could see clear to leave some­thing to his only daugh­ter.  I’d already been left out of the col­lege trust fund busi­ness, but that nev­er both­ered me.  Dad­dy would have been forced to tell Celia about me, and we’re talk­ing about a man who couldn’t come clean to his own sons about why he left Joy ‑whose real name is Joyce, by the way- for Celia in the first place.  Dad­dy was a boob man.  Plain and sim­ple.  Celia had strip­per boobs and white biki­nis.  Joy wore a giant one piece num­ber with the frilly skirt attached.   Back when Joy was giv­ing birth to Wal­lace, way before the Alzheimer’s, one cry­ing baby was a lit­tle too real for dad­dy.  Just the thought of two lit­tle scream­ing mon­sters made his lip quiver.  Celia took uppers and down­ers and loved a late night spent at the clubs.  Of course, Celia was ill-equipped to use birth con­trol with any mea­sure of accu­ra­cy.  Shane and Bax­ter were inevitable, but I was impos­si­ble to explain.  Moth­er had breasts like soda bread.  She also had an alley cat’s tem­per and claws to match.  By the time I was born, dad­dy didn’t have the ener­gy for anoth­er wife, anoth­er child.  And Celia had calmed down enough to play nurse­maid to daddy’s slow decline.

Mil­lions of dol­lars.  Of course I’d thought about it.  But dad­dy wasn’t exact­ly the kind of guy you just up and asked a thing like that.  No one knew what he had in mind.  No one but Wal­lace.  He’d gone to law school, passed the bar — bare­ly, and set up with a firm here in Mas­sas­auga.  He was the only one who hunt­ed with dad­dy.  They took week­end trips up to Bar­lo and killed ducks, doves, and deer.  At least they said they did.  None of the oth­er broth­ers grew into that sort of mold.  Ren was a pro­fes­sion­al bal­loon­ist, float­ing var­i­ous com­pa­ny logos over cor­po­rate par­ties, foot­ball games, and golf­ing tour­na­ments in his com­mer­cial hot air bal­loon.  Shane was a riv­er guide and con­ser­va­tion­ist.  He worked for an envi­ron­men­tal pro­gram devot­ed to sav­ing Alabama’s rivers.  He con­vert­ed to Bud­dhism.  Shane guid­ed chil­dren down the Caha­ba and taught them how acid rain kills water lilies, how lawn mow­er oil can end up in the gills of a rain­bow trout.  Bax­ter was still in col­lege.  He ran.  His grades were decent, but run­ning took top pri­or­i­ty.  He kept a shaved head, tan shoul­ders, and steel pis­ton calves year-round.  Bax­ter broke three hours in his first marathon.  He didn’t say much, but my god could that boy run.

Dad­dy didn’t con­nect well with any­one but Wal­lace, and even that rela­tion­ship was ten­u­ous.   Wal­lace went to the wrong law school, took the wrong offer from the wrong firm, and absolute­ly bought the wrong car ‑all accord­ing to dad­dy.  But Wal­lace ignored him, focus­ing on the mon­ey he intend­ed to inher­it.   I’m keep­ing the wheels greased, he was fond of say­ing, since no one else will.

I watched Wal­lace ‑we called him Wal­rus when we were kids- gath­er­ing the broth­ers, whis­per­ing in ears, and squeez­ing shoul­ders.  He kept his brow in a knot and point­ed an index fin­ger at one broth­er, then the next.  He tugged his mous­tache.  He was in full-on dic­ta­tor mode.  He said: you don’t know this, but… and the broth­ers rocked on their heels and lis­tened.  Shane sat down.  Ren made a fist.  Bax­ter jogged in place.

I decid­ed I would find out about the will soon enough, so I walked along a dirt path through the trees to the bay.  A lit­tle breeze had kicked up and tiny waves rolled onto the thin strip of sand.  I took off my shoes, stepped bare­foot into the course sand and shal­low water and closed my eyes.  The heat seemed to let up a bit with the breeze and the shade of the water­side pines.  I decid­ed to not think about the will and mon­ey for now.  I decid­ed that what­ev­er hap­pened would be fine.  That my job car­ing for the angel­ic, nine­ty-year-old Jane was a good one and that I would be opti­mistic about find­ing anoth­er kind woman to care for after Jane was gone.  That I would not fall apart when Jane was gone.  She was my infor­mal­ly adopt­ed grand­moth­er, and it would be hard.  But it was crit­i­cal that I hold it togeth­er.  My secret was not a ter­ri­ble one, I decid­ed, and that when my baby arrived I would do right by her, with or with­out daddy’s money.

I let the tiny waves lap against my ankles and the breeze cool my face.  I heard shout­ing behind me, but I kept my eyes closed.  I was doing my best to focus on my baby.  A lit­tle girl, I was sure.  I would name her Jane, of course, and I would pro­tect her from this freak-show cir­cus we called a family.

hike1 (2)Mur­ray Dunlap's work has appeared in about fifty mag­a­zines and jour­nals. His sto­ries have been nom­i­nat­ed for the Push­cart Prize three times, as well as to Best New Amer­i­can Voic­es once, and his first book, ‑an ear­ly draft of "Bas­tard Blue" (then called "Alaba­ma") was a final­ist for the Mau­rice Prize in Fic­tion. His first col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, "Bas­tard Blue," was pub­lished by Press 53 on June 7th, 2011 (the three year anniver­sary of a car wreck that very near­ly killed him…). The extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als Pam Hous­ton, Lau­ra Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

 

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Love and Hope, poem by William Taylor Jr.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Rusty

Baby we had such a good thing going
back before we ruined it
with all that talk
of promis­es and dreams

and all that oth­er pret­ty junk
that only served to break
our sil­ly hearts

love and hope nev­er brought us
noth­ing but pain

baby can we start again
I miss the way you laugh

this time we’ll not speak
of forever

let’s just fuck
and watch TV.
bill3William Tay­lor Jr. cur­rent­ly lives and writes in the Ten­der­loin neigh­bor­hood of San Fran­cis­co. His poems and sto­ries have been wide­ly pub­lished in lit­er­ary jour­nals world­wide, includ­ing Poesy, The Chi­ron Review and The New York Quar­ter­ly.  Among his pre­vi­ous poet­ry col­lec­tions are Words for Songs Nev­er Writ­ten (Cen­ten­ni­al Press 2007) and The Hunger Sea­son (Sun­ny­out­side, 2009).  An Age of Mon­sters (Epic Rites Press, 2011) is his first col­lec­tion of sto­ries.  Bro­ken When We Got Here, a book of new poems, is now avail­able from Epic Rites Press.

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