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excerpted from I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone by DAREN DEAN, out in DECEMBER from Cowboy Jamboree Press!
THE NIGHT SWIMMER
by Daren Dean
So I was eleven years old, and still hadn't learned how to swim. Despite my terror of the water, swimming was all I could think about because I lived with my mom and her trucker boyfriend in the Blue Star Motel and there was a pool not more than twenty feet from our room. Mom said, it was so much more than a motel! She was right too. It was a restaurant on one end and had a bar in the back. People came and went at the Blue Star, eating, drinking, sleeping, and whatever—if you know what I mean. I was old enough to know about men and women, but what I really wanted to learn how to do was dive into the deep end of the pool, swim underwater, and open my eyes and see in the pure chlorine where the world would slow down and let me catch my breath as the saying goes. I know it might sound crazy, but I had this idea in my head that I would swim underwater at night for the first time and see the world in slow motion with the lights around the pool flickering off the water and somehow I would discover how to breathe down there and then I’d never have to hold my breath again.
The owner, Tom Kline, had even allowed us to move the generic-looking motel furniture out for heavy flea market furniture that didn't necessarily look any better, but it felt like our own. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal since I had a room all to myself. Mom worked at the Blue Star as a waitress, bartender in the lounge, and maid. She'd sign people in too when necessary, take their money when Rita was out nursing a hangover, and hand them the key on an orange diamond-shaped chain that said, if anything, "This place is not what you think it is, or on second thought ..."
I'd been a mostly silent witness as my mom left a trail of men across the Show Me State and out west too. She couldn't seem to hold onto a man and I began to wonder if it was some inability of hers to be head-over-heels about a man even after they'd made it. I wasn't like one of those little shit-for-brains kids who sat around with his thumb up his ass wondering if his mommy and daddy got divorced because of him. Hell, I knew it wasn't my goddamn fault. I couldn't even remember my mom and real dad being married, but there was a double-exposed picture of us sitting on a bright blue and red blanket with my mentally handicapped, half-sister, the picture as fractured as everything our family was soon to become. The world out of focus and nonsensical like time itself had dropped a hit of acid and gotten seriously baked.
I'd watch her and Bear with a sense of dread waiting for the big ass breakup, but just when it started to seem imminent Bear would have to haul a load of bricks or something to New York or Ohio for J.T. Harris Trucking. He'd take off in his blue Kenworth with his 8-tracks of Waylon Jennings, Easy Rider magazines, and a fresh supply of speed. Looking back on it now, him leaving on such a regular basis probably extended their relationship by months. He was wearing a pair of Wrangler jeans with his name stenciled on his belt, cowboy boots, a western-style shirt with snaps, and a floppy hillbilly hat when he hit the road that day. I waved and gave him the universal sign for Trucker, honk your horn and he obliged. I shot him the bird but he smiled because he knew I didn't mean it. Fuck you too, good buddy!
When the men came to clean out the pool and prepare it for the summer guests, I went out there to watch. I didn't know how yet, but this was the summer I was going to learn to swim if it killed me. I was excited and terrified by the prospect all at once. It was the twin Anderson brothers with red hair down to their asses that were "commissioned" (as Tom Kline liked to put it) to do the work like some kind of fucking horror show. Those feral Andersons reminded me of animals that ran out of the woods in front of your screeching tires on Route HH. They had pale, freckled hides, and even after they took their shirts off their pasty Alfred Hitchcock skin refused to burn.
It was hard to imagine the pool would ever look halfway decent. There was a foot of mud down there clogging the drain but it didn't deter the Andersons. And, yes, they had names beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. I don't why or what it is but a special brand of madness overtakes parents who are about to have twins and makes them name their twin boys Jesse and James Anderson. I didn't know which was which, but it didn't seem to matter since they were found under the same cabbage leaf. One of them jumped down into the pool with a white bucket and a rope attached to the handle. One of them red-headed sons-of-bitches scooped, a Marlboro red drooped out the side of his face, and the other Anderson tugged out the bucket and dumped it in a wheel barrel. They went on this way for quite some time.
"Hey, why don't you go pull your pud?" one of the Andersons snickered to the other one.
"I already did that," I shouted back at them from behind the relative safety of the fence. I hadn't been riding with a trucker and hanging out, during the day anyway, at a bar for nothing. "I was thinking about your sister the whole time." I knew this would piss them off because their sister Angie was the only good person to ever come out of their family even counting their old granny.
"Go ahead and take that picture then," one of them said.
"What picture?"
"The picture that lasts longer," the other one grimaced and started coughing from smoking too much.
"I'm going to learn to swim this year," I said, changing the subject with what I hoped was panache.
"You gotta be all of nine years old and still don't know how to swim! Now that's a damn shame. What are you? Some kind of pussy?"
They looked at each other and laughed and I swear it was like that Stephen King movie with the little girls on the trikes coming down the hall.
"I'm eleven," I informed them. "I know that's kind of old for not knowing how to swin, but Dennis Smith promised to teach me."
"That piece of shit," the ugliest Anderson said. "Why he'll drown you before he teaches you to swim."
"Damn straight," James said. "You listen to Jesse here. That tub of goo will kill you."
"I thought you were Jesse?" I said.
"Well," he said. "I might be." Then they started passing a roach between the two of them and making a big to-do about taking a hit off of it. Ever so often they'd stop what they were doing and take a snort off a little brown bottle of Rush as the traffic whizzed by on Highway 54. I knew Dennis wouldn't try to kill me, but then I started to wonder maybe they were right.
"Here," Jesse held out the brown bottle to me. "Try this kid. It will knock your dick in the dirt. It gots airplane glue beat all to hell."
I shrugged and took a big show-off hit off it. I thought I went to heaven for a minute and shook hands with Saint Peter. The next thing I know those freaks were laughing and handed me their joint. I was surprised to find myself down in the pool with them.
"How was Jesus?" They both started giggling again and coughing up lungs.
"Man, I got to get out of here." I struggled out of the pool, climbing the aluminum ladder, the sound of their laughter chasing me all the way up into the world again. "Next time I come by this pool I want to see it looking good and ready for business."
"Kiss my ass, kid."
I went down to the lounge called "The Attic" or "Attica" as some had started to call it lately. It was on the ground floor so I never knew why it was called that. Irony, I guess, but Tom didn't seem like the irony type if you know what I mean. He was part business man and part professional wrestler. He had a tattoo on his forearm that said in loopy prose, "I don't give a shit!" It was his favorite saying that might mean he just didn't want to hear what you were saying. The weekend bartender, Linda, offered me a Graveyard as soon as I hit the door. She was six feet tall with her oxblood, knee-high boots on but there was something about her I always thought was pretty special. She knew my drink for one, but bartenders always know that before they know your name. It was the afternoon so nobody gave three shits if I was in there playing Space Invaders or pinball. Besides learning to swim, I was going to beat Billy Boy's pinball record.
"Dennis here?"
"He's at AA today, Sweetie," Linda said. "He's trying to clean up his act."
"You're messing with me," I said.
"I'm just telling you what God knows," Linda winked.
Tugboat, another drunk at the bar, snorted at the idea Dennis could ever straighten up.
"I'm looking for him," I said. "He's going to teach me to swim this summer."
"Yeah?" she said. "I wouldn't count on it." The way she said it made me wonder about the disappointment of adults although I couldn't have put it like that exactly. Why did she stay with someone who couldn't get his act together? It didn't make sense to me until I got older and knew more about men and women first hand.
I sat on my stool knocking my glass back and forth between my hands as it hydroplaned on the bar like I'd seen Wiener do a thousand times when he was deep in thought. He spent every free minute he could find in the bar and now that he was laid off from the brick factory that was pretty much from open 'til close. Every time a pretty woman walked by the bar he dug at his crotch, but either didn't know he was doing it or just plain didn't care. He just looked like a wiener.
"This one's going to break a lot of hearts one day," Linda said over my shoulder. I turned to look and it was Mom dressed in jeans and an embarrasing multi-colored shirt that said in fat, bloopy letters THE ATTIC LOUNGE.
"Yep," she said. "Probably so. You know you ain't supposed to be in here."
"I'm just drinking this Graveyard Linda gave me," I said.
"I told you he had a huge crush on you," Mom sat down a round tray of clean glasses on the bar.
"Mom!" I said. I'd never said it out loud, but I guess it wasn't much of a secret.
A couple of truckers walked in and went straight for the shuffle board game against the wall. One of them whistled with his fingers at Linda to let her know they wanted two PBRs.
Linda had long chestnut hair and stood about six feet tall in her high heels. All the men loved her. Dennis was her boyfriend and he was about four inches shorter than her but he wasn't exactly a little guy. He liked to say her legs were so long they went clean up and made an ass of themselves. I'd never seen Dennis sober for extended periods of time. I wasn't sure how a guy who worked at a bar was supposed to kick the drinking habit. I knew it wasn't going to take this time either. He'd tried AA before, hypnotism, jogging, disco dancing, and even being a Born Again Jesus-loving Christian which lasted all of two weeks, but he told me one day that the reason nothing worked was that he just plain and simple loved drinking. At the same time, he had to make Linda happy so she wouldn't leave his fat ass. Dennis didn't want to choose between Linda and alcohol so he did both. Bear called him the Heartbreak Kid because everything he did turned to shit.
"Goddamn jerk," Dennis walked in. His blonde hair hit at about his shoulders and there was something kind of like a young lion about him that was just about to get his full mane. He had a lazy eye and again I wondered how it was Linda and him got together.
"What happened, baby?" Linda asked.
"I ran into that cock-knocker Bobby Ray Claymore at the Take-A-Break," he growled and sat down on the stool next to mine. "How you doing, Killer? Get any today?" He ruffled my hair. "I was just coming out here from AA. Bobby Ray's enough to start me drinking again."
"What did he want?" Linda asked.
"Guess."
"Shit," Linda whispered as she poured another draft for Tugboat.
Bobby Ray Claymore and Linda were married for seven years. I'd heard the story so many times before I could tell like it was one of my own. It was typical small town bullshit story. They were happy the first year or so, but then Bobby Ray started hitting the bottle hard, followed by hitting Linda harder . . . and he was even taller than her. He was a big dude like a professional wrestler. He had his own bail bond business. If one of his customers tried to skip out of town on him he'd go down to the Projects and pickup Boogie and together they'd go find this young Moses who made off for the promised land, throw him in the trunk of his Plymouth Fury III, drive the future Defendant back to Audrain county and throw him in the pokey to stand trial. Bobby Ray was a bad ass. Dennis was tough but he wasn't even in the same league by comparison. If Dennis was regular guy tough, Bobby Ray was horrorshow evil.
The light from the daylight banged through the doors of the lounge and blinded everyone for a second. It was none other than Bobby Ray and Boogie looking like pissed-off zombies out for bad brains. I saw Dennis spin around like he might go for a gun if he'd had one.
"Well, well, well . . ." Bobby Ray patted the bulge in his jacket under his left armpit like he had a little angry midget riding shotgun up there. Dennis jutted his jaw toward Bobby Ray who always looked bigger in person than I remembered him. Instead of saying anything else Bobby Ray took a seat by the pool table with Boogie. The two men talked quietly between themselves and Boogie smiling the whole time like he was starring in a commercial for Ultrabrite toothpaste. I could see a dark gothic shadow spreading over Dennis and his future headstone. They got up and left just like that after staring holes into the back of Dennis's head. When he got up to take a piss, and Linda was busy with Wiener, I swiped his pack of Kools and a green Bic lighter. I was becoming a regular clepto. I'd already stolen his shark's tooth necklace. I don't know why. It was really cool and he had left it out at the pool. I could never hope to be as cool as Dennis so I thought his shark tooth might give me some luck.
A few days past and I was at the pool by myself in the shallow end. I knew Dennis would show up because he was always working for Tom Kline just like my mom. Other guests, mostly mom types and their little kids, would come to the pool. Some of the kids had ear plugs or flippers and other pieces of diving gear even though they stayed in the shallow end. I waited until everyone had come and gone just shivering well into the evening hours. Mom appeared at the lip of the pool with a towel and a change of clothes.
"Why don't you dry off and put these on? It’s dark out here. You ain’t allowed to swim at night."
"I'm waiting for Dennis," I said. "He promised to teach me to swim."
It's not that I was a total idiot, but I knew somehow if someone was going to teach me it would be Dennis. I knew he had problems what with Linda and Bobby Ray and his drinking. He had been in and out of jail to for first one dumb thing and then another, but I considered him a good friend all the same.
"Come down to the kitchen and Harry Lee will fix you a tenderloin sandwich for Christ's sake," Mom stumbled a bit unsteadily back to the room.
I was in the pool for the next four days in a row. Dennis had disappeared. Bear even came back and asked me if I thought Dennis was Aquaman. Until one day he did show up in a pair of red swim trunks with white stripes going down the sides. He lit a Kool and drank an Olympia until he jumped in feet first without spilling a drop of beer. I could almost taste the menthol. He was big-boned and a likeable guy but he was known to take advantage of people. Since I didn't have any money or older sisters I didn't hold none of that against him. Besides Mom had loaned him money and he kind of thought of her as an older sister.
"What's up, Killer?" his cigarette flopping when he talked. He held up the line that separated the shallow from the deep end and stood there squinting at the blue smoke. "You ready to learn to swim today?" He was walking on the little ledge around the deep end.
"I've been trying," I said.
"Don't look so guilty," Dennis sucked hard on the Kool and then gave it an expert flick over the fence. "I had a pack of Kools that just up and disappeared. Would you believe it?"
"I don't know" I said. "It's just embarrassing not being able to swim yet."
"Don't sweat it."
"You hiding out from Bobby Ray and Boogie?"
"No," Dennis said. "Who the hell told you that? I ain't afraid of them two . . . but on the other hand I ain't looking for them either." He nodded at me. "You know what I'm saying?"
"I like the way you talk to me," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Like I'm a grownup instead of a kid," I said. "I hate it when people talk to me like I'm a stupid kid."
"Well," he sipped his beer. "You're smarter than most people twice your age here at the ole Blue Star. Now, I'm going to teach you to swim. It's the easiest thing in the world."
"You going to hold onto me and dunk me like they all do?"
"Why would I want to touch your ugly ass?" he said. "I'm just going to tell you how to do it and let you swim or drown like my dad taught me. He took me fishing in his bass boat out on Missouri river by Jeff City one summer. When we got out to the middle of the river I could see the bridge and the capitol up on the bluffs. He made like we run out of gas and told me it was time to swim or die. Then, he picked my husky ass up by the scruff of the neck and threw me out in the river. Swim or drown, Dennis! SWIM OR DIE!"
"Bullshit," I said.
He pretended not to notice I said bullshit. "I started flailing around and went under the water and do you know what I saw?"
I shook my head.
"The biggest fucking catfish you ever seen," he said. "He was as big as a Volkswagon! He started talking to me. What are you doing down here? Why are you bothering me? Son of Adam, you belong up above the water and not down below. Just swim on my back and I will take your husky ass to safety."
"And then what happened?"
"Wrong question," Dennis said.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I learned to swim," he laughed. "I'm right here in front of you so obviously I learned to swim. But what I never told anyone about was talking to that fucking catfish. It was really talking to me, you know?"
"Uh uh," I said. “Right.”
"It was the Devil talking to me!"
"You mean, Jesus," I said.
"Don't tell me what I mean," Dennis said. "It was the goddamn Devil. He turned himself into a giant catfsih and saved me so I could grow up and know some happiness and sadness in life before he royally fucked me over. The Devil is such a sick bastard."
The mimosa tree by the side of the pool caught my attention as a hot summer breeze shook it. It's weird pink flowers looking like something out of a science fiction movie. A cowbird was sitting in it like he was listening in on us and making that weird water dripping sound like they do.
Dennis told me to swim like a dog. He cupped his hands and told me to try it and, low and behold, he was right. I couldn't believe how easy it was. Dennis told me to try it on the deep end side. He said he wouldn't touch me or save me either because he didn't want to waste a good beer. So I kind of pushed off into the deep end and I swam across like Mark Spitz. Okay, so it was really just a dog paddle but I did it by myself. I doggy paddled over to Dennis and he splashed me in the face but I didn't let it bother me because I could save myself now.
"Good job, Killer," Dennis finished his beer and crushed it in his hand before tossing it toward the trash can against the chainlink fence. It clattered near the trash can. "You want to hear something funny?"
"What is it?"
"I really don't know how to swim," he said.
"What?" I flipped my hair back and the excess water flew from it.
"No shit," he said. "I've never been able to swim. I'm afraid of the water too, but I wanted to see you learn since it was eating you up so bad."
"What the hell? What if I'd gone under? You mean I would have drowned?"
"You might of," he said. "Yeah, I guess so." He laughed and hauled himself out of the water. It dripped off him like a waterfall when he got out. I was speechless, but at the same time it was funny. I'd learned how to swim from someone who didn't know the first thing about it. "I knew you could do it."
"How did you know?"
"I'm just telling you what God knows," he slipped his feet into flip flops and made off to his old Dodge pickup.
It was the last time I ever saw Dennis alive.
A couple of weeks later he was found floating in the Blue Star pool by an old couple who were staying overnight. My mom and aunt decided I needed Jesus and they sent me on a camping trip with the Royal Rangers at the Assemblies of God church so I was gone when it happened. We prayed away a retarded boy's deaf and dumb spirit and a bunch of them boys spoke in tongues. I’d never heard anything like it, but I wanted to learn more about the Holy Ghost. Maybe I could learn how to walk on water next! We built a big bonfire and the preacher stood on the embers of the fire as he preached to us at night. Us boys kept thinking he might catch on fire so we couldn’t help but pay attention to all of his talk about Jesus coming back in the sky just in the nick of time to save us from the fiery death of Revelation. I heard all about Dennis when I came back. He was just floating in the pool as dead as could be they said. Some said it was suicide, but Linda and the barflies in Attica thought Bobby Ray and Boogie just made it look like an accident. The cops didn't look into it because Dennis had a history of being on the bad side of the law. It was just like he said about the Devil coming back for him.
I snuck out of the room one night and sat down on a lounge chair looking into the black water. Nobody wanted to swim after what had happened and I couldn’t blame them either. The stars reflecting off the surface like a mirror for the universe. I wondered if maybe Dennis hadn't just gotten too tight one night and went to talking to that giant catfish about life and how it wasn’t always so perfect. Maybe he took the Devil's advice one too many times. I kept picturing him trying to learn to dog paddle in the deep end at midnight. The cowbirds making that dripping sound while he thrashed around. Him drowning and nobody hearing it over the loud music at the bar. Maybe we were alike and he had the same idea I’d had about slowing the world down underwater and breathing deep breaths of pure chlorine like holy water for the people who drove up and down Highway 54 looking for something they couldn’t quite name and never expecting to find the meanness that was just under the surface where you least expected it. I took out the pack of Kools and green Bic lighter I'd swiped from Dennis, smoked his last cigarette, and flicked the dead butt into the deep end. I figured it was the Devil called him home and I wondered if I wasn’t heading for the sort of fate. We were both afraid of the deep water and drawn to it at the same time.
THE NIGHT SWIMMER
by Daren Dean
So I was eleven years old, and still hadn't learned how to swim. Despite my terror of the water, swimming was all I could think about because I lived with my mom and her trucker boyfriend in the Blue Star Motel and there was a pool not more than twenty feet from our room. Mom said, it was so much more than a motel! She was right too. It was a restaurant on one end and had a bar in the back. People came and went at the Blue Star, eating, drinking, sleeping, and whatever—if you know what I mean. I was old enough to know about men and women, but what I really wanted to learn how to do was dive into the deep end of the pool, swim underwater, and open my eyes and see in the pure chlorine where the world would slow down and let me catch my breath as the saying goes. I know it might sound crazy, but I had this idea in my head that I would swim underwater at night for the first time and see the world in slow motion with the lights around the pool flickering off the water and somehow I would discover how to breathe down there and then I’d never have to hold my breath again.
The owner, Tom Kline, had even allowed us to move the generic-looking motel furniture out for heavy flea market furniture that didn't necessarily look any better, but it felt like our own. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal since I had a room all to myself. Mom worked at the Blue Star as a waitress, bartender in the lounge, and maid. She'd sign people in too when necessary, take their money when Rita was out nursing a hangover, and hand them the key on an orange diamond-shaped chain that said, if anything, "This place is not what you think it is, or on second thought ..."
I'd been a mostly silent witness as my mom left a trail of men across the Show Me State and out west too. She couldn't seem to hold onto a man and I began to wonder if it was some inability of hers to be head-over-heels about a man even after they'd made it. I wasn't like one of those little shit-for-brains kids who sat around with his thumb up his ass wondering if his mommy and daddy got divorced because of him. Hell, I knew it wasn't my goddamn fault. I couldn't even remember my mom and real dad being married, but there was a double-exposed picture of us sitting on a bright blue and red blanket with my mentally handicapped, half-sister, the picture as fractured as everything our family was soon to become. The world out of focus and nonsensical like time itself had dropped a hit of acid and gotten seriously baked.
I'd watch her and Bear with a sense of dread waiting for the big ass breakup, but just when it started to seem imminent Bear would have to haul a load of bricks or something to New York or Ohio for J.T. Harris Trucking. He'd take off in his blue Kenworth with his 8-tracks of Waylon Jennings, Easy Rider magazines, and a fresh supply of speed. Looking back on it now, him leaving on such a regular basis probably extended their relationship by months. He was wearing a pair of Wrangler jeans with his name stenciled on his belt, cowboy boots, a western-style shirt with snaps, and a floppy hillbilly hat when he hit the road that day. I waved and gave him the universal sign for Trucker, honk your horn and he obliged. I shot him the bird but he smiled because he knew I didn't mean it. Fuck you too, good buddy!
When the men came to clean out the pool and prepare it for the summer guests, I went out there to watch. I didn't know how yet, but this was the summer I was going to learn to swim if it killed me. I was excited and terrified by the prospect all at once. It was the twin Anderson brothers with red hair down to their asses that were "commissioned" (as Tom Kline liked to put it) to do the work like some kind of fucking horror show. Those feral Andersons reminded me of animals that ran out of the woods in front of your screeching tires on Route HH. They had pale, freckled hides, and even after they took their shirts off their pasty Alfred Hitchcock skin refused to burn.
It was hard to imagine the pool would ever look halfway decent. There was a foot of mud down there clogging the drain but it didn't deter the Andersons. And, yes, they had names beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. I don't why or what it is but a special brand of madness overtakes parents who are about to have twins and makes them name their twin boys Jesse and James Anderson. I didn't know which was which, but it didn't seem to matter since they were found under the same cabbage leaf. One of them jumped down into the pool with a white bucket and a rope attached to the handle. One of them red-headed sons-of-bitches scooped, a Marlboro red drooped out the side of his face, and the other Anderson tugged out the bucket and dumped it in a wheel barrel. They went on this way for quite some time.
"Hey, why don't you go pull your pud?" one of the Andersons snickered to the other one.
"I already did that," I shouted back at them from behind the relative safety of the fence. I hadn't been riding with a trucker and hanging out, during the day anyway, at a bar for nothing. "I was thinking about your sister the whole time." I knew this would piss them off because their sister Angie was the only good person to ever come out of their family even counting their old granny.
"Go ahead and take that picture then," one of them said.
"What picture?"
"The picture that lasts longer," the other one grimaced and started coughing from smoking too much.
"I'm going to learn to swim this year," I said, changing the subject with what I hoped was panache.
"You gotta be all of nine years old and still don't know how to swim! Now that's a damn shame. What are you? Some kind of pussy?"
They looked at each other and laughed and I swear it was like that Stephen King movie with the little girls on the trikes coming down the hall.
"I'm eleven," I informed them. "I know that's kind of old for not knowing how to swin, but Dennis Smith promised to teach me."
"That piece of shit," the ugliest Anderson said. "Why he'll drown you before he teaches you to swim."
"Damn straight," James said. "You listen to Jesse here. That tub of goo will kill you."
"I thought you were Jesse?" I said.
"Well," he said. "I might be." Then they started passing a roach between the two of them and making a big to-do about taking a hit off of it. Ever so often they'd stop what they were doing and take a snort off a little brown bottle of Rush as the traffic whizzed by on Highway 54. I knew Dennis wouldn't try to kill me, but then I started to wonder maybe they were right.
"Here," Jesse held out the brown bottle to me. "Try this kid. It will knock your dick in the dirt. It gots airplane glue beat all to hell."
I shrugged and took a big show-off hit off it. I thought I went to heaven for a minute and shook hands with Saint Peter. The next thing I know those freaks were laughing and handed me their joint. I was surprised to find myself down in the pool with them.
"How was Jesus?" They both started giggling again and coughing up lungs.
"Man, I got to get out of here." I struggled out of the pool, climbing the aluminum ladder, the sound of their laughter chasing me all the way up into the world again. "Next time I come by this pool I want to see it looking good and ready for business."
"Kiss my ass, kid."
I went down to the lounge called "The Attic" or "Attica" as some had started to call it lately. It was on the ground floor so I never knew why it was called that. Irony, I guess, but Tom didn't seem like the irony type if you know what I mean. He was part business man and part professional wrestler. He had a tattoo on his forearm that said in loopy prose, "I don't give a shit!" It was his favorite saying that might mean he just didn't want to hear what you were saying. The weekend bartender, Linda, offered me a Graveyard as soon as I hit the door. She was six feet tall with her oxblood, knee-high boots on but there was something about her I always thought was pretty special. She knew my drink for one, but bartenders always know that before they know your name. It was the afternoon so nobody gave three shits if I was in there playing Space Invaders or pinball. Besides learning to swim, I was going to beat Billy Boy's pinball record.
"Dennis here?"
"He's at AA today, Sweetie," Linda said. "He's trying to clean up his act."
"You're messing with me," I said.
"I'm just telling you what God knows," Linda winked.
Tugboat, another drunk at the bar, snorted at the idea Dennis could ever straighten up.
"I'm looking for him," I said. "He's going to teach me to swim this summer."
"Yeah?" she said. "I wouldn't count on it." The way she said it made me wonder about the disappointment of adults although I couldn't have put it like that exactly. Why did she stay with someone who couldn't get his act together? It didn't make sense to me until I got older and knew more about men and women first hand.
I sat on my stool knocking my glass back and forth between my hands as it hydroplaned on the bar like I'd seen Wiener do a thousand times when he was deep in thought. He spent every free minute he could find in the bar and now that he was laid off from the brick factory that was pretty much from open 'til close. Every time a pretty woman walked by the bar he dug at his crotch, but either didn't know he was doing it or just plain didn't care. He just looked like a wiener.
"This one's going to break a lot of hearts one day," Linda said over my shoulder. I turned to look and it was Mom dressed in jeans and an embarrasing multi-colored shirt that said in fat, bloopy letters THE ATTIC LOUNGE.
"Yep," she said. "Probably so. You know you ain't supposed to be in here."
"I'm just drinking this Graveyard Linda gave me," I said.
"I told you he had a huge crush on you," Mom sat down a round tray of clean glasses on the bar.
"Mom!" I said. I'd never said it out loud, but I guess it wasn't much of a secret.
A couple of truckers walked in and went straight for the shuffle board game against the wall. One of them whistled with his fingers at Linda to let her know they wanted two PBRs.
Linda had long chestnut hair and stood about six feet tall in her high heels. All the men loved her. Dennis was her boyfriend and he was about four inches shorter than her but he wasn't exactly a little guy. He liked to say her legs were so long they went clean up and made an ass of themselves. I'd never seen Dennis sober for extended periods of time. I wasn't sure how a guy who worked at a bar was supposed to kick the drinking habit. I knew it wasn't going to take this time either. He'd tried AA before, hypnotism, jogging, disco dancing, and even being a Born Again Jesus-loving Christian which lasted all of two weeks, but he told me one day that the reason nothing worked was that he just plain and simple loved drinking. At the same time, he had to make Linda happy so she wouldn't leave his fat ass. Dennis didn't want to choose between Linda and alcohol so he did both. Bear called him the Heartbreak Kid because everything he did turned to shit.
"Goddamn jerk," Dennis walked in. His blonde hair hit at about his shoulders and there was something kind of like a young lion about him that was just about to get his full mane. He had a lazy eye and again I wondered how it was Linda and him got together.
"What happened, baby?" Linda asked.
"I ran into that cock-knocker Bobby Ray Claymore at the Take-A-Break," he growled and sat down on the stool next to mine. "How you doing, Killer? Get any today?" He ruffled my hair. "I was just coming out here from AA. Bobby Ray's enough to start me drinking again."
"What did he want?" Linda asked.
"Guess."
"Shit," Linda whispered as she poured another draft for Tugboat.
Bobby Ray Claymore and Linda were married for seven years. I'd heard the story so many times before I could tell like it was one of my own. It was typical small town bullshit story. They were happy the first year or so, but then Bobby Ray started hitting the bottle hard, followed by hitting Linda harder . . . and he was even taller than her. He was a big dude like a professional wrestler. He had his own bail bond business. If one of his customers tried to skip out of town on him he'd go down to the Projects and pickup Boogie and together they'd go find this young Moses who made off for the promised land, throw him in the trunk of his Plymouth Fury III, drive the future Defendant back to Audrain county and throw him in the pokey to stand trial. Bobby Ray was a bad ass. Dennis was tough but he wasn't even in the same league by comparison. If Dennis was regular guy tough, Bobby Ray was horrorshow evil.
The light from the daylight banged through the doors of the lounge and blinded everyone for a second. It was none other than Bobby Ray and Boogie looking like pissed-off zombies out for bad brains. I saw Dennis spin around like he might go for a gun if he'd had one.
"Well, well, well . . ." Bobby Ray patted the bulge in his jacket under his left armpit like he had a little angry midget riding shotgun up there. Dennis jutted his jaw toward Bobby Ray who always looked bigger in person than I remembered him. Instead of saying anything else Bobby Ray took a seat by the pool table with Boogie. The two men talked quietly between themselves and Boogie smiling the whole time like he was starring in a commercial for Ultrabrite toothpaste. I could see a dark gothic shadow spreading over Dennis and his future headstone. They got up and left just like that after staring holes into the back of Dennis's head. When he got up to take a piss, and Linda was busy with Wiener, I swiped his pack of Kools and a green Bic lighter. I was becoming a regular clepto. I'd already stolen his shark's tooth necklace. I don't know why. It was really cool and he had left it out at the pool. I could never hope to be as cool as Dennis so I thought his shark tooth might give me some luck.
A few days past and I was at the pool by myself in the shallow end. I knew Dennis would show up because he was always working for Tom Kline just like my mom. Other guests, mostly mom types and their little kids, would come to the pool. Some of the kids had ear plugs or flippers and other pieces of diving gear even though they stayed in the shallow end. I waited until everyone had come and gone just shivering well into the evening hours. Mom appeared at the lip of the pool with a towel and a change of clothes.
"Why don't you dry off and put these on? It’s dark out here. You ain’t allowed to swim at night."
"I'm waiting for Dennis," I said. "He promised to teach me to swim."
It's not that I was a total idiot, but I knew somehow if someone was going to teach me it would be Dennis. I knew he had problems what with Linda and Bobby Ray and his drinking. He had been in and out of jail to for first one dumb thing and then another, but I considered him a good friend all the same.
"Come down to the kitchen and Harry Lee will fix you a tenderloin sandwich for Christ's sake," Mom stumbled a bit unsteadily back to the room.
I was in the pool for the next four days in a row. Dennis had disappeared. Bear even came back and asked me if I thought Dennis was Aquaman. Until one day he did show up in a pair of red swim trunks with white stripes going down the sides. He lit a Kool and drank an Olympia until he jumped in feet first without spilling a drop of beer. I could almost taste the menthol. He was big-boned and a likeable guy but he was known to take advantage of people. Since I didn't have any money or older sisters I didn't hold none of that against him. Besides Mom had loaned him money and he kind of thought of her as an older sister.
"What's up, Killer?" his cigarette flopping when he talked. He held up the line that separated the shallow from the deep end and stood there squinting at the blue smoke. "You ready to learn to swim today?" He was walking on the little ledge around the deep end.
"I've been trying," I said.
"Don't look so guilty," Dennis sucked hard on the Kool and then gave it an expert flick over the fence. "I had a pack of Kools that just up and disappeared. Would you believe it?"
"I don't know" I said. "It's just embarrassing not being able to swim yet."
"Don't sweat it."
"You hiding out from Bobby Ray and Boogie?"
"No," Dennis said. "Who the hell told you that? I ain't afraid of them two . . . but on the other hand I ain't looking for them either." He nodded at me. "You know what I'm saying?"
"I like the way you talk to me," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Like I'm a grownup instead of a kid," I said. "I hate it when people talk to me like I'm a stupid kid."
"Well," he sipped his beer. "You're smarter than most people twice your age here at the ole Blue Star. Now, I'm going to teach you to swim. It's the easiest thing in the world."
"You going to hold onto me and dunk me like they all do?"
"Why would I want to touch your ugly ass?" he said. "I'm just going to tell you how to do it and let you swim or drown like my dad taught me. He took me fishing in his bass boat out on Missouri river by Jeff City one summer. When we got out to the middle of the river I could see the bridge and the capitol up on the bluffs. He made like we run out of gas and told me it was time to swim or die. Then, he picked my husky ass up by the scruff of the neck and threw me out in the river. Swim or drown, Dennis! SWIM OR DIE!"
"Bullshit," I said.
He pretended not to notice I said bullshit. "I started flailing around and went under the water and do you know what I saw?"
I shook my head.
"The biggest fucking catfish you ever seen," he said. "He was as big as a Volkswagon! He started talking to me. What are you doing down here? Why are you bothering me? Son of Adam, you belong up above the water and not down below. Just swim on my back and I will take your husky ass to safety."
"And then what happened?"
"Wrong question," Dennis said.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I learned to swim," he laughed. "I'm right here in front of you so obviously I learned to swim. But what I never told anyone about was talking to that fucking catfish. It was really talking to me, you know?"
"Uh uh," I said. “Right.”
"It was the Devil talking to me!"
"You mean, Jesus," I said.
"Don't tell me what I mean," Dennis said. "It was the goddamn Devil. He turned himself into a giant catfsih and saved me so I could grow up and know some happiness and sadness in life before he royally fucked me over. The Devil is such a sick bastard."
The mimosa tree by the side of the pool caught my attention as a hot summer breeze shook it. It's weird pink flowers looking like something out of a science fiction movie. A cowbird was sitting in it like he was listening in on us and making that weird water dripping sound like they do.
Dennis told me to swim like a dog. He cupped his hands and told me to try it and, low and behold, he was right. I couldn't believe how easy it was. Dennis told me to try it on the deep end side. He said he wouldn't touch me or save me either because he didn't want to waste a good beer. So I kind of pushed off into the deep end and I swam across like Mark Spitz. Okay, so it was really just a dog paddle but I did it by myself. I doggy paddled over to Dennis and he splashed me in the face but I didn't let it bother me because I could save myself now.
"Good job, Killer," Dennis finished his beer and crushed it in his hand before tossing it toward the trash can against the chainlink fence. It clattered near the trash can. "You want to hear something funny?"
"What is it?"
"I really don't know how to swim," he said.
"What?" I flipped my hair back and the excess water flew from it.
"No shit," he said. "I've never been able to swim. I'm afraid of the water too, but I wanted to see you learn since it was eating you up so bad."
"What the hell? What if I'd gone under? You mean I would have drowned?"
"You might of," he said. "Yeah, I guess so." He laughed and hauled himself out of the water. It dripped off him like a waterfall when he got out. I was speechless, but at the same time it was funny. I'd learned how to swim from someone who didn't know the first thing about it. "I knew you could do it."
"How did you know?"
"I'm just telling you what God knows," he slipped his feet into flip flops and made off to his old Dodge pickup.
It was the last time I ever saw Dennis alive.
A couple of weeks later he was found floating in the Blue Star pool by an old couple who were staying overnight. My mom and aunt decided I needed Jesus and they sent me on a camping trip with the Royal Rangers at the Assemblies of God church so I was gone when it happened. We prayed away a retarded boy's deaf and dumb spirit and a bunch of them boys spoke in tongues. I’d never heard anything like it, but I wanted to learn more about the Holy Ghost. Maybe I could learn how to walk on water next! We built a big bonfire and the preacher stood on the embers of the fire as he preached to us at night. Us boys kept thinking he might catch on fire so we couldn’t help but pay attention to all of his talk about Jesus coming back in the sky just in the nick of time to save us from the fiery death of Revelation. I heard all about Dennis when I came back. He was just floating in the pool as dead as could be they said. Some said it was suicide, but Linda and the barflies in Attica thought Bobby Ray and Boogie just made it look like an accident. The cops didn't look into it because Dennis had a history of being on the bad side of the law. It was just like he said about the Devil coming back for him.
I snuck out of the room one night and sat down on a lounge chair looking into the black water. Nobody wanted to swim after what had happened and I couldn’t blame them either. The stars reflecting off the surface like a mirror for the universe. I wondered if maybe Dennis hadn't just gotten too tight one night and went to talking to that giant catfish about life and how it wasn’t always so perfect. Maybe he took the Devil's advice one too many times. I kept picturing him trying to learn to dog paddle in the deep end at midnight. The cowbirds making that dripping sound while he thrashed around. Him drowning and nobody hearing it over the loud music at the bar. Maybe we were alike and he had the same idea I’d had about slowing the world down underwater and breathing deep breaths of pure chlorine like holy water for the people who drove up and down Highway 54 looking for something they couldn’t quite name and never expecting to find the meanness that was just under the surface where you least expected it. I took out the pack of Kools and green Bic lighter I'd swiped from Dennis, smoked his last cigarette, and flicked the dead butt into the deep end. I figured it was the Devil called him home and I wondered if I wasn’t heading for the sort of fate. We were both afraid of the deep water and drawn to it at the same time.
excerpted from INA-BABY, a Love Story in Reverse by BENJAMIN DREVLOW, out now from Cowboy Jamboree Press
SOMETIMES MY BABY LOVES ME SO HARD
Back in the early years, the years before it stopped being the early years, my baby, she’d come home two, three times a week drunk and horny for tussle. She’d toss my sleeping ass out of bed. What I mean is my baby’d hoist the mattress up like a human forklift (she’s got some killer thighs, boy) until—me, already on the edge—I’d take a tumble. A rude fucking awakening is what I’m saying.
This one night I end up catch my head on the corner of the nightstand on the way down. And then I’m spritzing blood like shook-up champagne and sprawled out on the floor, gushing all over my grandma’s afghan and my mother’s quilt. Trying to disentangle myself from all that while cursing my lungs out: Owie-Jesus-Christ-What-the-Fuck, Baby?
But there she goes—letting loose those fists of hers, pounding and pounding on my afghan head like she’s drumming out the intro to Eye of the Tiger.
Wake up, asshole. I love you!
One more knuckle rap to my afghan mouth—leaving me with a nice little split lip to throw in with the shiner, and it’s, I’m home, motherfucker. I. Told. You. To. Wakethefuckup!
My baby gets to loving me sometimes like that and she can’t even help herself. There ain’t much else for me to do but tuck in my elbows, curl up, and ride out my ass whooping like a man. Or until she turns on herself.
Or sometimes, I’ll be so fucking tired that I’ll end up bucking her off my back without knowing what I’m doing. Toss off the covers. And there I am pouncing on her before she has time to land one more ever-loving right hook to the back of my head. Honestly, things are all kind of fuzzy and fucked up, me still shaking off sleep spots and all the while pinning her flailing wrists and torso to the carpet. What am I even doing? I’m thinking. What’s going through my goddamn mind?
This isn’t going to end well. That’s what’s going through my goddamn mind. Not for her, what I’m saying. It’s not going to end well for me, what I’m trying to say.
Because, shit, I’m mostly a pussy and a crybaby when it comes right down to things. Man or woman—I’ve never swung on anybody in my entire life. Hell, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to an S & M fantasy, and all this tussling under the covers ain’t even sexual.
But it is.
Get off me, she yells between bucking and squirming. Like a big sea swordfish you and about three paid fishing pros managed to wrestle onto the boat. But she ain’t quite ready to be your dinner yet.
She hawks up snot and saliva all over my face, which I must admit, the taste of whiskey and tobacco along with the rubbing of her hips struggling to buck free this all tickles my loins in ways I’m not proud to admit to. A pang, an itch you try your best not to itch, but you can’t not itch it. I shudder for a second, I take a breath, and try to wake myself up, shake the thought from my head. But it won’t shake and it doesn’t make me stop or let go of her wrists.
It’s her head-butt that makes me let go. Get the fuck off me, she hollers and spits in my face once more for good measure.
Then it’s her turn.
You want me? she says and starts slapping her face with both palms of her hands. I’m yours.
Give her a little booze and get her riled up—my baby can do one heck of a Mike Tyson impersonation.
I try to tell her to quit messing around. To go sleep it off before she wakes up everybody in the neighborhood. But she’s in it to stay.
Stop yelling at me, she says, and the palm slaps turn to clenched fists. Somebody’s gonna call the cops and I’m gonna start in on the crying.
Going after her own face like Iron Mike on the speed bag—one dull girlie smack after another: Thwap…Thwap…Thwap….
You wanna kill yourself, now? she asks me and stops for a second to shake it off. How about now? Pow! Right uppercut to the kisser—mine this time, not hers.
Whew boy, I’ll tell you this much—thick, dark tufts of hair tossed all over her face, fists a flailing, and still time to throw one my way. This is why I love my baby—how she goes straight for the kill. No dicking around with petty youdon’tlovemes. No IhateyouIhateyous. No jabs, no hooks. Nothing but the haymakers, windmills, and uppercuts.
How about now? she asks, almost snarling, and grabs a stolen restaurant fork out of her purse and starts in on puncturing her inner thigh.
Goddamn her thighs! Like Goodyears—over inflated by a minimum 10 psi.
But that’s my cue, and now it’s my turn to dance.
I grab her giant red purse from off the carpet next to her and make a big show of dumping it out high in the air for her to see like I’m six years old again and fittin to build me my Lego-Land masterpiece. And through the small pile of change, tampons, lighters, cigarettes, and girlie pills, I find just what I’m looking for. Aha! I whip out that box cutter she stole from me last month and hold it up in front of my face (my light-saber!). Click, click, click goes the box cutter. Flash my pearly whites just a bit and let my eyes go cross in the dark reflection off the blade.
Ha! I can play this little game, too! I’m not even bothering with the wrists. I’m going straight for the brachial—like a pro. I’m up in my armpit and I’m sawing me some skin and bone. I don’t even flinch when her fork comes zinging past, an inch away from my nose, and embeds in the drywall behind me—doinggg! She could whip out a can of gasoline and a zippo for all I care. I’m in the zone, my blood’s a flowin’ and I’m a goin to the bone.
Except she doesn’t—doesn’t even pull out my pills or my noose. Not her style. Just body blows and head shots and the occasional foreign object—nothing illegal or lethal. And now she’s given up on that, too. She just stops it all. With a small whimper, she throws in the towel. Almost a whisper, she says, No… no… stop.
And because I’m always a sucker for my baby, I hesitate. I look down at the blood dripping from the inside of my arm onto my grandma’s afghan at my feet. Then up—I see her body go limp and in slow-mo, take a dive face first onto the mattress now lying on the floor.
What a woman, this one.
There she lies, my baby, just a crying her muffled cries, nearly inaudible into the mattress, saying over and over, It’s over, you win. It’s over, you win.
How do two people who love each other like crazy end up here? Well, shit, it happens the way it always happens.
My Ina-Baby, she’s fresh out of a long-term relationship, dumped him to come to school to learn to write with sad bastards like me. Then one day before you know it she’s sitting on the far end of the bench seat of my Bronco and she’s pouring all my SURGE! out the window—glug, glug, glug!—making a big old puddle of things out in the parking garage.
Why so sad, silly drunken bear? she wants to know.
I want to tell her my brother killed himself when I was kid. I burned my old man’s house down after that. I was trying to keep warm and whacking off all night to nudie mags, yadda yadda yadda. Cassic sad bastard story. You know the old country song, surely everybody knows that goddamn chorus by now.
But I don’t say any of that.
You just dumped out the last of my will to live, I say.
To which this one, she responds in kind—takes me by the hand, kisses each finger at the knuckle, plays the snake charmer with each bitten hangnail and bloodied cuticle on each swollen and infected finger tip, then smiles a vicious smile. I don’t want to be your mother, your father, your brother, your big sister. I’m not here to save you.
She puts both hands around my ears and pulls my face in for a hard kiss. But instead she goes straight for the lip of my left ear, clamps down on the tip for all she’s got, her chompers sharp and honed. She rips and pulls like a twenty-pound Beagle on a rubber Frisbee, then let’s out a grrrrrr. Tearing skin, then flesh.
She’s a powerful one, my baby.
She snarls once more, naughty and coy. Then it’s one more tug and one more rip, and there it goes—what feels like my entire ear—out of her mouth and out through the passenger window she hawks it—petooey, bleck, goo!—and there it splats out onto parking garage concrete, along with the puddle of SURGE!, every car freshener I’ve ever owned, and any other woman I’ve ever thought about loving. Any thought of going back to the miserable life I’ve lived til now. Everything I lived for in my Bronco—until this evening, this love-fiend beagle from hell.
Do what you want to your wrists and throat… she says, licking the blood from off my ear onto her index finger and then painting the blood on my arm and neck.
The same goes for your brain stem and frontal lobe…, she says. My path to suicide now anointed with my own blood.
Finally, she reaches out and snatches me by the nape of my neck like she’s about to scold me, her little puppy. I don’t want your love, she says, and kisses my bloody ear. I just want to love you.
And there you have it—the last drips of my bachelor life recycled down my tongue, tonsils, and throat. Dripping to the pit of my writhing, rumbling, bumbling, stumbling stomach, until eventually some months later, this hot young thing, now mine, passes out on that mattress still lying on the floor and snores her snotty, muffled snores the rest of the night until she wakes early the next morning to ask where all the blood came from, why my head’s pounding, and what on earth did you do to yourself this time?
This is where it begins.
SOMETIMES MY BABY LOVES ME SO HARD
Back in the early years, the years before it stopped being the early years, my baby, she’d come home two, three times a week drunk and horny for tussle. She’d toss my sleeping ass out of bed. What I mean is my baby’d hoist the mattress up like a human forklift (she’s got some killer thighs, boy) until—me, already on the edge—I’d take a tumble. A rude fucking awakening is what I’m saying.
This one night I end up catch my head on the corner of the nightstand on the way down. And then I’m spritzing blood like shook-up champagne and sprawled out on the floor, gushing all over my grandma’s afghan and my mother’s quilt. Trying to disentangle myself from all that while cursing my lungs out: Owie-Jesus-Christ-What-the-Fuck, Baby?
But there she goes—letting loose those fists of hers, pounding and pounding on my afghan head like she’s drumming out the intro to Eye of the Tiger.
Wake up, asshole. I love you!
One more knuckle rap to my afghan mouth—leaving me with a nice little split lip to throw in with the shiner, and it’s, I’m home, motherfucker. I. Told. You. To. Wakethefuckup!
My baby gets to loving me sometimes like that and she can’t even help herself. There ain’t much else for me to do but tuck in my elbows, curl up, and ride out my ass whooping like a man. Or until she turns on herself.
Or sometimes, I’ll be so fucking tired that I’ll end up bucking her off my back without knowing what I’m doing. Toss off the covers. And there I am pouncing on her before she has time to land one more ever-loving right hook to the back of my head. Honestly, things are all kind of fuzzy and fucked up, me still shaking off sleep spots and all the while pinning her flailing wrists and torso to the carpet. What am I even doing? I’m thinking. What’s going through my goddamn mind?
This isn’t going to end well. That’s what’s going through my goddamn mind. Not for her, what I’m saying. It’s not going to end well for me, what I’m trying to say.
Because, shit, I’m mostly a pussy and a crybaby when it comes right down to things. Man or woman—I’ve never swung on anybody in my entire life. Hell, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to an S & M fantasy, and all this tussling under the covers ain’t even sexual.
But it is.
Get off me, she yells between bucking and squirming. Like a big sea swordfish you and about three paid fishing pros managed to wrestle onto the boat. But she ain’t quite ready to be your dinner yet.
She hawks up snot and saliva all over my face, which I must admit, the taste of whiskey and tobacco along with the rubbing of her hips struggling to buck free this all tickles my loins in ways I’m not proud to admit to. A pang, an itch you try your best not to itch, but you can’t not itch it. I shudder for a second, I take a breath, and try to wake myself up, shake the thought from my head. But it won’t shake and it doesn’t make me stop or let go of her wrists.
It’s her head-butt that makes me let go. Get the fuck off me, she hollers and spits in my face once more for good measure.
Then it’s her turn.
You want me? she says and starts slapping her face with both palms of her hands. I’m yours.
Give her a little booze and get her riled up—my baby can do one heck of a Mike Tyson impersonation.
I try to tell her to quit messing around. To go sleep it off before she wakes up everybody in the neighborhood. But she’s in it to stay.
Stop yelling at me, she says, and the palm slaps turn to clenched fists. Somebody’s gonna call the cops and I’m gonna start in on the crying.
Going after her own face like Iron Mike on the speed bag—one dull girlie smack after another: Thwap…Thwap…Thwap….
You wanna kill yourself, now? she asks me and stops for a second to shake it off. How about now? Pow! Right uppercut to the kisser—mine this time, not hers.
Whew boy, I’ll tell you this much—thick, dark tufts of hair tossed all over her face, fists a flailing, and still time to throw one my way. This is why I love my baby—how she goes straight for the kill. No dicking around with petty youdon’tlovemes. No IhateyouIhateyous. No jabs, no hooks. Nothing but the haymakers, windmills, and uppercuts.
How about now? she asks, almost snarling, and grabs a stolen restaurant fork out of her purse and starts in on puncturing her inner thigh.
Goddamn her thighs! Like Goodyears—over inflated by a minimum 10 psi.
But that’s my cue, and now it’s my turn to dance.
I grab her giant red purse from off the carpet next to her and make a big show of dumping it out high in the air for her to see like I’m six years old again and fittin to build me my Lego-Land masterpiece. And through the small pile of change, tampons, lighters, cigarettes, and girlie pills, I find just what I’m looking for. Aha! I whip out that box cutter she stole from me last month and hold it up in front of my face (my light-saber!). Click, click, click goes the box cutter. Flash my pearly whites just a bit and let my eyes go cross in the dark reflection off the blade.
Ha! I can play this little game, too! I’m not even bothering with the wrists. I’m going straight for the brachial—like a pro. I’m up in my armpit and I’m sawing me some skin and bone. I don’t even flinch when her fork comes zinging past, an inch away from my nose, and embeds in the drywall behind me—doinggg! She could whip out a can of gasoline and a zippo for all I care. I’m in the zone, my blood’s a flowin’ and I’m a goin to the bone.
Except she doesn’t—doesn’t even pull out my pills or my noose. Not her style. Just body blows and head shots and the occasional foreign object—nothing illegal or lethal. And now she’s given up on that, too. She just stops it all. With a small whimper, she throws in the towel. Almost a whisper, she says, No… no… stop.
And because I’m always a sucker for my baby, I hesitate. I look down at the blood dripping from the inside of my arm onto my grandma’s afghan at my feet. Then up—I see her body go limp and in slow-mo, take a dive face first onto the mattress now lying on the floor.
What a woman, this one.
There she lies, my baby, just a crying her muffled cries, nearly inaudible into the mattress, saying over and over, It’s over, you win. It’s over, you win.
How do two people who love each other like crazy end up here? Well, shit, it happens the way it always happens.
My Ina-Baby, she’s fresh out of a long-term relationship, dumped him to come to school to learn to write with sad bastards like me. Then one day before you know it she’s sitting on the far end of the bench seat of my Bronco and she’s pouring all my SURGE! out the window—glug, glug, glug!—making a big old puddle of things out in the parking garage.
Why so sad, silly drunken bear? she wants to know.
I want to tell her my brother killed himself when I was kid. I burned my old man’s house down after that. I was trying to keep warm and whacking off all night to nudie mags, yadda yadda yadda. Cassic sad bastard story. You know the old country song, surely everybody knows that goddamn chorus by now.
But I don’t say any of that.
You just dumped out the last of my will to live, I say.
To which this one, she responds in kind—takes me by the hand, kisses each finger at the knuckle, plays the snake charmer with each bitten hangnail and bloodied cuticle on each swollen and infected finger tip, then smiles a vicious smile. I don’t want to be your mother, your father, your brother, your big sister. I’m not here to save you.
She puts both hands around my ears and pulls my face in for a hard kiss. But instead she goes straight for the lip of my left ear, clamps down on the tip for all she’s got, her chompers sharp and honed. She rips and pulls like a twenty-pound Beagle on a rubber Frisbee, then let’s out a grrrrrr. Tearing skin, then flesh.
She’s a powerful one, my baby.
She snarls once more, naughty and coy. Then it’s one more tug and one more rip, and there it goes—what feels like my entire ear—out of her mouth and out through the passenger window she hawks it—petooey, bleck, goo!—and there it splats out onto parking garage concrete, along with the puddle of SURGE!, every car freshener I’ve ever owned, and any other woman I’ve ever thought about loving. Any thought of going back to the miserable life I’ve lived til now. Everything I lived for in my Bronco—until this evening, this love-fiend beagle from hell.
Do what you want to your wrists and throat… she says, licking the blood from off my ear onto her index finger and then painting the blood on my arm and neck.
The same goes for your brain stem and frontal lobe…, she says. My path to suicide now anointed with my own blood.
Finally, she reaches out and snatches me by the nape of my neck like she’s about to scold me, her little puppy. I don’t want your love, she says, and kisses my bloody ear. I just want to love you.
And there you have it—the last drips of my bachelor life recycled down my tongue, tonsils, and throat. Dripping to the pit of my writhing, rumbling, bumbling, stumbling stomach, until eventually some months later, this hot young thing, now mine, passes out on that mattress still lying on the floor and snores her snotty, muffled snores the rest of the night until she wakes early the next morning to ask where all the blood came from, why my head’s pounding, and what on earth did you do to yourself this time?
This is where it begins.
excerpted from Adam Van Winkle's Hardway Juice, a new novella from CJ Press! Out Now!
About the book: A local wrestling legend comes home as the independent circuit swings through a small Texas town one Saturday night in the Fall of 1997 in this novella. Paul wants to go to the matches if he can get past his drunk stepdad. Lisa wants to leave town altogether but her dad is dying to take her to the show. A week of anxiety and hope and despair and debauchery follows the teens, townsfolk, wrestlers and all to the high school gymnasium where worlds collide and there can only be blood.
“Gonna go to see the wrestling little queer says.” Paul’s stepdad was drunk and it wasn’t the watery-eyed stare into space beer drunk. It was the narrowed-pupil snake eyes whiskey drunk. When he picked on Paul the most. “Bet you never tried to put a move on that pretty little brunette.” He was talking about Lisa.
Paul’s cheeks were hot but he just couldn’t muster anything to say.
Fact was Lisa had asked him to kiss her. He had felt under her shirt when she placed his hands there. But just that once. When he tried to kiss Lisa the next day she stopped him. And she never asked him to again. Never mentioned it again. Paul felt that she liked it when they had, but she didn’t seem to want anymore.
Paul fantasized about it all the time. Masturbated to it regular. But he’d never say any of that to his stepdad. It wouldn’t shut him up and it might get Lisa in trouble if that prick told her dad.
“S’what I thought,” Paul’s stepdad said when Paul made no reply, and left it there.
In his room Paul turns on the TV. It was Monday and that meant wrestling on TV tonight. He could lose himself in some new prime time action.
When he wasn’t watching the weekly wrestling shows, he’d cycle through his payperview tapes. He’d bought them for ninety-nine cents a piece from the used rentals bin at All-Star Video Rental when he stayed with his dad the summer before. When he brought them home, Paul bought a used VCR from the church yard sale, the same place he bought his wood-consoled TV the year before. They’d been on constant loop since.
He knew all the matches. All the moves. He’d watch the tapes so much he started to see when the wrestlers talked to each other, working out moves during the match. He could see when wrestlers feigned good combat by rubbing their foreheads against taped fingers, razor blades hidden in the tape. He watched so much he was becoming a master of the craft, he imagined.
Tonight he could maybe wait for his stepdad to pass out and sneak out to the gas station to visit his mom for free food.
She’d give him some anytime she worked. Pizza pockets, burritos, fried potatoes, stuffed jalapeños—she could fry any of ‘em up for Paul when she worked. Problem was, if his stepdad knew what he was doing he’d stop Paul. Tell him not to go bothering his mama at work. She had money to make and didn’t need to feed Paul’s fat ass while she was doing it, he’d say. At least that was his reaction the first time he found out.
Paul knew his mom didn’t mind, but he didn’t like to push stuff with his stepdad, and if he pushed on this his mom might get in trouble too.
Paul knew he could wait his stepdad out. He never really bothered Paul when Paul stayed in his room watching TV, watching wrestling. Paul’s stepdad only worked three days a week at the most, doing part time construction. Days like this when he didn’t work, he started drinking in the morning. He’d be passed out by the time the Monday night show was over. Then Paul could ride his bike up the road to the gas station. Visit with his mom a little bit, and bring a couple of pizza pockets back to his room to rewatch Wrestlemania VII. It’d be a nice little night, and, on Saturday he’d get to see the Snake live.
Life was okay when Paul could think like this, just focus on his pleasure, things that made him feel happy like pizza pockets and wrestling, look past all the moments in between.
About the book: A local wrestling legend comes home as the independent circuit swings through a small Texas town one Saturday night in the Fall of 1997 in this novella. Paul wants to go to the matches if he can get past his drunk stepdad. Lisa wants to leave town altogether but her dad is dying to take her to the show. A week of anxiety and hope and despair and debauchery follows the teens, townsfolk, wrestlers and all to the high school gymnasium where worlds collide and there can only be blood.
“Gonna go to see the wrestling little queer says.” Paul’s stepdad was drunk and it wasn’t the watery-eyed stare into space beer drunk. It was the narrowed-pupil snake eyes whiskey drunk. When he picked on Paul the most. “Bet you never tried to put a move on that pretty little brunette.” He was talking about Lisa.
Paul’s cheeks were hot but he just couldn’t muster anything to say.
Fact was Lisa had asked him to kiss her. He had felt under her shirt when she placed his hands there. But just that once. When he tried to kiss Lisa the next day she stopped him. And she never asked him to again. Never mentioned it again. Paul felt that she liked it when they had, but she didn’t seem to want anymore.
Paul fantasized about it all the time. Masturbated to it regular. But he’d never say any of that to his stepdad. It wouldn’t shut him up and it might get Lisa in trouble if that prick told her dad.
“S’what I thought,” Paul’s stepdad said when Paul made no reply, and left it there.
In his room Paul turns on the TV. It was Monday and that meant wrestling on TV tonight. He could lose himself in some new prime time action.
When he wasn’t watching the weekly wrestling shows, he’d cycle through his payperview tapes. He’d bought them for ninety-nine cents a piece from the used rentals bin at All-Star Video Rental when he stayed with his dad the summer before. When he brought them home, Paul bought a used VCR from the church yard sale, the same place he bought his wood-consoled TV the year before. They’d been on constant loop since.
He knew all the matches. All the moves. He’d watch the tapes so much he started to see when the wrestlers talked to each other, working out moves during the match. He could see when wrestlers feigned good combat by rubbing their foreheads against taped fingers, razor blades hidden in the tape. He watched so much he was becoming a master of the craft, he imagined.
Tonight he could maybe wait for his stepdad to pass out and sneak out to the gas station to visit his mom for free food.
She’d give him some anytime she worked. Pizza pockets, burritos, fried potatoes, stuffed jalapeños—she could fry any of ‘em up for Paul when she worked. Problem was, if his stepdad knew what he was doing he’d stop Paul. Tell him not to go bothering his mama at work. She had money to make and didn’t need to feed Paul’s fat ass while she was doing it, he’d say. At least that was his reaction the first time he found out.
Paul knew his mom didn’t mind, but he didn’t like to push stuff with his stepdad, and if he pushed on this his mom might get in trouble too.
Paul knew he could wait his stepdad out. He never really bothered Paul when Paul stayed in his room watching TV, watching wrestling. Paul’s stepdad only worked three days a week at the most, doing part time construction. Days like this when he didn’t work, he started drinking in the morning. He’d be passed out by the time the Monday night show was over. Then Paul could ride his bike up the road to the gas station. Visit with his mom a little bit, and bring a couple of pizza pockets back to his room to rewatch Wrestlemania VII. It’d be a nice little night, and, on Saturday he’d get to see the Snake live.
Life was okay when Paul could think like this, just focus on his pleasure, things that made him feel happy like pizza pockets and wrestling, look past all the moments in between.
DYSPHORIA IS HERE!!! (more an e-reader? Kindle e-book here!) A New Novel from the incomparable Sheldon Lee Compton and Cowboy Jamboree Press What can you save with a Mason jar? Money? A life? When Paul heads back to Red Knife, Kentucky for his father's funeral, his visit turns into an extended stay and a search for the people and places that made his dad so dysphoric about life. What he finds is years of tumult and abuse and shame, all centered on one day, long ago, and an accident at an abandoned mine tipple. The hauntings of the past become all too real for Paul, and, as he comes to grips with his father's death, his own life is endangered... A new Appalachian gothic from Sheldon Lee Compton, the man Donald Ray Pollock has called "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.” MORE ON SHELDON LEE COMPTON & DYSPHORIA: "Sheldon Lee Compton is the definition of what Faulkner meant when he described the closeness between the short story writer and the poet." - David Joy, author of The Weight of This World “Sheldon Lee Compton is one of the new young breed of Kentucky writers–talented, fearless, and strong–bringing us word from the hills." - Chris Offutt, author of My Father the Pornographer “A fierce and lyrical writer who, in his depiction of contemporary Appalachian life, is equal parts uncompromising and compassionate." - K. L. Cook, author of Love Songs for the Quarantined “Sheldon Lee Compton is a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.” - Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time "Compton is an author whose art imitates life. A writer who understands the importance of portraying beauty and brutality in literature. A novelist who appreciates the elasticity of the defining line between right and wrong." - Matthew J. Hall in PANK "Sheldon spins the hard and raw of his native soil into his characters, creating lives that are immediately poignant and real." - Kari Nguyen "Sheldon Lee Compton is like a living, breathing John Cougar Mellencamp song (minus guitars and hand claps) but with much better stories." - Brian Alan Ellis, author of Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty "Compton articulates the real hardscrabble world of contemporary Kentucky Appalachia he so intimately understands, writing with a stark and powerful but emotionally subtle voice." - Charles Dodd White, author of Sinners of Sanction County "It's a damn hard world, but Compton still finds beauty and humanity in the hardness." - David S. Atkinson, author of Apocalypse All Time "An Appalachian writer of consequence and influence." - April Bradley, editor at SmokeLong Quarterly "We hear his characters in a way that brings them closer, that localizes them within our head, not just visually but audiovisually—it works to give each man, woman, child or teenager an incredibly substantive presence." - Michelle Bailat-Jones in Necessary Fiction “No sooner had I read ‘His hands were two leather balls folded in his lap,’ the pool called 'Red Knife,’ and Larry's back with its ‘dinner-plate shoulder blades,’ than I was hooked on Sheldon Lee Compton's Dysphoria: An Appalachian Gothic. The rhythms of its speech, word choices, depicted events, and sensory observations are a trip back home. The description of an old bedroom as having the ‘scent of deep body odor’ captures a memory of Appalachian lifestyle I know in my bones. Combined with the most believable characters and a harrowing plot, this is evocation of the heart's experience of Appalachia at its best.” - Ron Houchin, author of The Man Who Saws Us in Half “Dysphoria is ugly and gothic and morally questionable the way the best gothic writing should be, but then there’s this innocence, these moments of tenderness and beauty, this intent to do good almost as much as bad. I think that’s what makes me squirm the most. That these are real people, not headlines or punchlines. Often they are boys and men who can’t fully escape being boys, but they’ve got real good and real bad in their heart, often doing the wrong thing in the name the right thing and vice versa. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it mostly makes them fester and boil over, the scab never fully crusting over. Time and Sheldon Lee Compton don’t let anyone off easy, and that’s just it, what makes Dysphoria timeless and never more relevant. It’s that deadly mix of Old Testament Vengeance, Original Sin, and Murphy’s Law lurking around the corner of every action and reaction that makes you turn each page with one eye open and the other half-shut with a wince. And yet, with every page there’s Compton, ever the wide-eyed witness to all of it, and not just them. Us too.” -Benjamin Drevlow, author of Bend with the Knees "When a reader steps into the pages of a Compton story, the reader must maneuver through sharp edges, and wade in the mud of Sheldon's honest and poetic world in order to reach the reality of Sheldon's people, his characters. He's digging deep into the realness of his skin, a place most authors are scared to go to. Dysphoria: An Appalachian Gothic is Sheldon's masterpiece thus far. This book is like putting a revolver in to your mouth and pulling the trigger. Each bullet plugging the brain with honesty, pain, grit, fear, and truth." -Frank Reardon, author of Interstate Chokehold SCROLL DOWN FOR EXCERPT! Excerpted from
DYSPHORIA an Appalachian Gothic novel by Sheldon Lee Compton (available from CJ Press here) DYSPHORIA- (def) a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. Paul sat on the river bank with his knees pulled up to just below his chin. His dad squatted beside him, bent over an inflatable raft, inhaling and then exhaling in large bursts. The raft hardly moved, its thick blue and white wrinkles expanding only occasionally and then dying again, flat and collapsed. The raft was hardly a raft at all. It was more like a balloon. Along the river to the left of Paul and directly in front of his dad larger rafts negotiated the rapids, bought maybe in Wyoming and shipped here. They zipped past, full of laughing people, paddling people moving ahead while together he and his dad watched blue and white wrinkles grow large, disappear. When the job was complete, Paul stood beside the raft. Roughly six feet in length and about three feet wide, it would seat two people. There were no paddles, just the raft. After a minute to see that it didn't deflate, they pushed it to the edge of the water, scraping rocks and pebbles along the bottom. After the raft hit the water, held back with his dad's large grip, Paul thought then it would have been better if they had just picked the raft up. But he didn't say anything and instead eased carefully through the water and crawled into the raft in front of his dad, who had taken a seat in the back, one leg draped over the edge, anchoring the fifteen pound vessel with toes dug into the rocky riverbed. No words, no conversation, as the two pushed ahead their combined weight and started across the water. Within seconds, a larger raft swept in from behind them carrying a man and two small boys, all wearing helmets, all wielding paddles, looking at Paul and his dad and the blue and white raft. They were laughing hard and they were laughing at Paul and his dad and the raft. They pushed ahead, and Paul couldn't see his dad behind him, but he knew what was in his eyes, blue determination. The trip had been planned quickly after Paul returned from vacation with a set of cousins rarely heard from in Florida. His dad had sent Paul with his cousins, saying he couldn't afford a vacation, but if he wanted to go and stay for a couple weeks, it was fine by him. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and, when Paul returned, he spoke often of the things they had done. Fishing and strawberry picking and shooting basketball with the ocean twenty feet away. Two days after he returned, his dad bought this raft, and now here they were floating down the Big Sandy with the trees whipping past and the sky moving slower overhead and his dad tense and determined behind him. The entire situation made Paul feel as if he couldn’t gather air into his lugs. But, after a time, it was easy to forget with the way the river stretched out ahead of them, starting to turn from the muddy color that collected near the banks to the clear white-capped sections they were beginning to navigate. Paul didn't mention paddles, and saw no real reason to. His dad shifted from side to side, guiding the raft just to the left and right of rocks, hitting just the pocket of stream to keep them far enough away from the bank and moving ahead. Further ahead, more rafts passed, canoes, families, friends, laughing. Pointing. His dad bought the raft for ten dollars at a bait shop on the drive up. He was uncomfortable then, going into the shop and buying the raft. Paul could see it on his face. And he seemed uncomfortable now, spearing this way and that way, guiding the raft through the water. And before long, they were passing one of the custom-made rafts. No more laughing and pointing. Just stares. Paul didn't even look in their direction. He was focused on what was ahead, a clearing. Other families rested in the clearing, backsides in the sand of the riverbank, their arms wrapped lazily around legs, heads hanging down, beaten by the short interval of rapids he and his dad had just cleared without paddles in a ten-dollar plastic raft found hanging above the display of nightcrawlers in a dusty cardboard box at Denver's Bait and Tackle Shop. As the two swung into the clearing, Paul pulled at the sides, bringing the raft into a spot where the water was calm and tossed out, hanging the crook of his elbow onto the raft while his dad raised slowly and stepped into the water beside him. They walked onto the bank, pulling the raft behind them, and examined the men and boys drenched and banged up all along the bank. It was only then, when they were standing on the bank, Paul's dad stuck out his chest and nearly folded into the sand and rocks underfoot. He bent low, holding himself up with two large hands across his shaking kneecaps. Water dripped slowly from the tip of his nose and his hair hung in thick, black clumps over his eyes. And Paul stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and then around his waist and then around him, holding him close enough to feel his heartbeat against his own chest. "Let go of me," his dad said. Paul stepped back slowly. "We made it," he said and tried a smile. He was still holding to his dad’s elbow. "Let go of me." He let his arm drop and watched his father stalk off up the bank, past the fathers and sons without looking up. None of the sons and none of the fathers offered to help him deflate the raft and fold it under his arm. It was nearly dark before he finished, and he walked very slowly back to the car. [Current Cowboy Jamboree call for Fiction and Non]
SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE ARE CLOSED-"Henry Chinaski is a Friend of Mine"-- Fall 2019 open call for grit lit stories and essays and art: We love ham on rye and we want good grit lit, be it in the vein of Father Bukowski or not. Deadline is September 7, 2019. Check out our back issues or look at CJ Press' book list to see the kind of stuff we dig. As always, our Jobbers page is open to rolling subs. Submit to cowboyjamboree@gmail.com. |
Introducing JOBBERS. It's our first rolling submission and acceptance publication a couple of tabs over. As of December 2018 we are open for submissions all the time. Here we want grit lit, fiction or non, about the carny world of wrestling. Jake the Snake, Bruiser Brody, Ricky Steamboat, the von Erich brothers, Rick Rude, Dusty Rhodes, ya know? We plan on creatively showcasing prose on the Jobbers tab, and if all goes to plan, we'll have material for a Jobbers anthology late in 2019.
Our 2018 PUSHCART NOMINEES.
Congratulations and Good Luck!
From Issue 3.2 (Spring 2018):
Benjamin Drevlow, "Rusty, the Jesus Years"
Sheldon Lee Compton, "Remodeling"
C.W. Accetta, "Quik-Mart"
From Issue 4.1 (Fall 2018):
Jay Halsey, "Hard and Harder"
Amy Wilson, "Confessions of a Lovesick Garage Sale Queen: a Faux Memoir"
Kirk Lake, "Low Expectations"
Congratulations and Good Luck!
From Issue 3.2 (Spring 2018):
Benjamin Drevlow, "Rusty, the Jesus Years"
Sheldon Lee Compton, "Remodeling"
C.W. Accetta, "Quik-Mart"
From Issue 4.1 (Fall 2018):
Jay Halsey, "Hard and Harder"
Amy Wilson, "Confessions of a Lovesick Garage Sale Queen: a Faux Memoir"
Kirk Lake, "Low Expectations"
Our Magazine Style and Purpose
It's in the title.
COWBOY [kou-boi] (def.)
1. American plains animal herder who tends cows
2. one who is reckless or ignores risk, i.e. "cowboy attitude"
3. tradesman with questionable or atypical practices, i.e. "cowboy plumbing"
4. fast or careless driver on the highway, i.e. "slow down, cowboy"
5. slang for "outlaw"
JAMBOREE [jam-buh-ree] (def.)
1. a large celebration or party, typically boisterous
2. a carousel of noisy merrymaking
Follow us on Twitter @CowboyJamboree @gritvanwinkle and like us on Facebook
All original art by Adam Van Winkle unless otherwise noted.
It's in the title.
COWBOY [kou-boi] (def.)
1. American plains animal herder who tends cows
2. one who is reckless or ignores risk, i.e. "cowboy attitude"
3. tradesman with questionable or atypical practices, i.e. "cowboy plumbing"
4. fast or careless driver on the highway, i.e. "slow down, cowboy"
5. slang for "outlaw"
JAMBOREE [jam-buh-ree] (def.)
1. a large celebration or party, typically boisterous
2. a carousel of noisy merrymaking
Follow us on Twitter @CowboyJamboree @gritvanwinkle and like us on Facebook
All original art by Adam Van Winkle unless otherwise noted.