KEEP YR EYE ON THE MOON
by Tom Andes
The title of the story comes from a note the poet Frank Stanford left his friend Ralph Adamo before Stanford flew home to Arkansas, where he died a day or two later by suicide. He was 29. Ralph was one of my teachers when I was an undergrad at Loyola University New Orleans and introduced me and a bunch of my friends in the English Department to Stanford’s poetry. We passed around lovingly worn Lost Roads first editions that Ralph was kind (or foolish) enough to loan us. Miraculously, he always (I think) got them back.
I’ve taken obvious liberties with this, transplanting Stanford from Fayetteville to Oxford, Mississippi and renaming him.
After they moved back to Oxford, Simon and Jillian were renting a two-bedroom on North Lamarr where a couple of poets had lived and that had been a legendary party house when Simon was in grad school. Jillian’s sister Penny was renting the second bedroom. Simon was trying to stay clean. Ron Paul yard signs were up all over town, but the primaries were long since over, and the race had come down to those final two candidates, history in the making, or so people said—the stakes for America couldn’t be clearer: Jillian’s parents said stuff like that—but without denying the importance of the moment, Simon thought they were all full of shit.
“We don’t need a president,” he said, “we need a benevolent dictator. People can’t be trusted with democratic rule, anyway. People are idiots, and they always make the wrong choices—like studying goddamn poetry in grad school.”
Jillian’s face soured. It was so easy to get under her skin. They were in the living room, unloading books they’d thrown into boxes before packing their U-Haul and leaving Hayes Valley, their neighborhood in San Francisco, in the dead of night, a decision they’d made and followed through on in less than a week. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but he blamed her for bringing them back to a town he’d just as soon have left behind in a haze of half-remembered nights shooting pool at Proud Larry’s and arguing about Ezra Pound with friends who were gone, who’d moved on from the writing program at the university to one underpaid academic position or another.
“You don’t think it’s important,” she said, “a Black man being president for the first time in history? You don’t think that matters?” And he felt both disappointed and satisfied that she’d taken the bait, and that she was going to argue with him.
“I’m not saying it’s not important,” Simon said. “I didn’t say that did I? No, I’m just saying it’s not going to change anything. We’re still screwed as a society and as a species. People are stupid, and poetry doesn’t matter.”
He was holding a copy of Farrell Stokes’s The Moon Rolls Like a Lopped off Head Across the Battleground, one of the original Vanished Pathways Press editions, long since out of print. It must’ve weighed ten pounds, one of the longest poems in the English language, but Simon might’ve brained himself with it, for all the good it did, poetry. Stokes was a famous suicide and apart from Faulkner, the best thing Oxford, Mississippi had ever produced, and they didn’t teach him at the university, which showed you what those people knew, the kind of stuffed shirts who got real jobs in academia.
Jillian sighed. “That’s nice,” she said, “a great attitude you’ve got there.”
He knew he should let it go, but he couldn’t.
“Is anything going to change?” he said. “Do you really think anything’s going to be different if Barack Obama or any other Black man wins this election?”
“It’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?”
She was in a red skirt and a black tank top, and she’d cut her hair in a pixie cut all the hipster girls in San Francisco wore that year. Simon would’ve laid down in traffic to be worthy of her, but he was enraged at what she’d made their life by dragging them back to where she was from. They were close to her people, her family, and that proximity to her mom and her sister felt like a snare around his neck.
“John McCain?” He was laughing, enjoying the fight. He was—he knew it—a terrible person. “Sarah Palin? Shouldn’t you be happy if they win, since there’ll finally be a woman in the White House?”
“What am I supposed to do with all these?” She kicked the box of books she was shelving. “I told you we should’ve gotten rid of a bunch of this stuff before we hauled it back. There’s no room for all this crap.”
And that was his fault, too. He was the one with the boxes full of books, chapbooks, poetry anthologies, the useless dead weight he’d accumulated during four years of grad school and dragged halfway across the country and back.
“Great.” He crossed the room, grabbed the box. “We’ll throw it out. We’ll donate it.”
“Stop.” Jillian took it back from him. “That stuff’s mostly mine, anyway.”
“You want to throw it out,” Simon said. “We can throw it out.”
Jillian set the box on the table. She pulled out a book of journalism about the tech industry, a collection she’d had an essay in, and shelved it above the stereo. “I guess you’re right, nothing’s going to change if he wins, not with all these stupid corporations in charge of everything, anyway.”
“Of course, I’m right.” But Simon didn’t feel good about her conceding the point. It felt like he was choking, like vines were twisting around his neck. He had to get out of the house, so he could breathe.
“Where are you going?”
He was halfway out the door.
“Out.”
“Simon?”
And he could hear the question in her voice, just like all those nights in San Francisco when he’d stormed out of the studio they’d shared, sometimes going to visit friends, sometimes just walking the streets, barhopping, with his phone turned off or sometimes—usually—ignoring Jillian’s frantic texts and calls.
And he was—yeah, he knew it—a piece of shit.
Boy, did he ever know that.
And if he ever forgot, well, Jillian would remind him.
He was standing in the doorway, the room filled with late summer light, and he had a momentary feeling of being outside himself. What did any of this matter, anyway, his rage, her tears? People lived entire lives, had careers, kids, and died, without any of the crap Jillian and Simon had built their worlds around. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
Jillian wiped her cheeks.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t have you disappearing, not here. Not anymore.”
And Simon felt himself coming back down to earth, his feet planted on their porch, with Duncan, the cat they’d named for the great Bay Area poet and friend of Jack Spicer’s, Robert Duncan, winding around his ankles. When they’d started dating, she’d been so present, so together, like she could take care of everything, make it okay, an anchor holding him in place.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m just going for a walk. Relax.”
And he grabbed his denim jacket off the hook by the door, left her standing there with tears rolling down her cheeks, nodding, but like she didn’t believe him, like she would never believe anything he said again.
***
Jillian’s sister Penny worked at the bookstore downtown. Simon had lived in San Francisco and had friends who’d worked at Green Apple, but Square Books was the best bookstore he’d been to, four buildings on the town square, a world of books with sunlight shining on varnished hardwood, comfy chairs tucked into alcoves where a person could hide and read.
The place was closing when he walked through, Penny sitting on a stool behind the counter, adding up receipts on a calculator. Simon grabbed a paperback from the bins in front, something by Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness, the kind of crap he never read, prose, but he wanted something in his pocket, something he could read while he sat and got his head straight.
As if they needed any more damn books in their house. She was right about that.
She was right—he knew this—about everything.
“I’m bringing my stuff over after I finish my shift.” Penny took his dollar bill.
“Yeah?” Simon had forgotten she was there, never mind that she was moving in with them. Maybe it was denial. She had a shy way of smiling, like someone was going to hit her, and she was flinching. She was a townie, and she’d never left Oxford, never finished at the university, not like Jillian and all her high-achieving, snooty friends who’d gone to the law school. Penny had gotten knocked up, dropped out, and the kid was a holy terror, with multiple disorders and diagnoses. He lived with his dad, sometimes with Jillian and Penny’s parents.
And now, after her last trip to rehab, Penny had visitation privileges again, so the kid would be staying with Simon and Jillian sometimes, too.
“What time?” Simon knew he should relay this information to Jillian, knew also that he wouldn’t, and not even because he wasn’t sure he wanted Penny and her psychotic kid living in their second bedroom, which—of course—had been their mother’s idea, too. But if he texted Jillian, it let her off the hook, let her feel like everything was okay, and it wasn’t.
Piece of shit that he was, he wanted to let her twist.
“I don’t know, 7:30, 8:00?” Penny was moving stacks of books on the counter, her nails bitten down to the quick, scabs on the backs of her hands like she’d been in a fight. She smelled like cigarette smoke, Old Holborn rolling tobacco. Something severe was in her face, like she was weathered, and it made Simon think of a shrunken head. “I have to grab dinner, once I get out of here.”
“Come over,” Simon said, “and we’ll order a pizza or something.”
And yeah, he’d catch a ration of shit for that, too. And of course—again—she would be right: they didn’t have the money to order a pizza or eat in restaurants. Jillian had an interview for an entry-level position at the press at the university, so they might have something coming in by the end of the month, but Simon wasn’t going to have a paycheck till classes started at the community college in the fall, and till then, it was going to be pasta, beans, and rice.
“I’ll check with Kurt,” Penny said.
Kurt was the current boyfriend, not the child’s father. He was 58, which was two years more than twice Penny’s age.
“Hey,” Simon said, “do you know if they’re hiring here?”
Penny shrugged. She had a tongue ring, and it rattled around in her mouth, Penny clutching the barbell between her teeth.
“You want me to give the manager your number?”
“Sure,” Simon said, “thanks.”
He pocketed his book. He wanted to go. Seven years of school—four in college, then three for a terminal degree—and he was going to end up stocking shelves at a bookstore for not much better than minimum wage.
But they needed the money. And hell, it would be a nice place to work.
“Here’s his number,” Penny said, “You can call him, too.”
She’d written the guy’s name—Skip—on a scrap of receipt paper beside a number with a 662 Area Code.
“He pay your insurance?” Simon said. That was the issue with the community college and the university: they had part-time, adjunct positions, which didn’t pay for shit and had no benefits.
“If you’re full-time, yeah.”
“Cool.” Simon pocketed the slip of receipt paper. He wondered how many of the books on the shelves had belonged to him or his friends, how many new students in the program would buy those same books, then sell them back to the bookstore like Simon and his friends had done three years ago when he’d left town.
He wondered how many of those graduates would wash up back here three years after they finished, out of options, hustling classes at the local universities.
Probably not many, but not many of them would be stupid enough to marry an Oxford girl, either.
“See you later.” Penny finger waved as the door closed, and Simon started down the street toward Rowan Oak with the sun setting over the confederate statue in the Square and his book in his pocket, not sure where he was going, only that it wouldn’t be far enough away.
***
It was a quarter of ten and full dark by the time he got home, every light burning in the house, Penny’s boyfriend’s Subaru parked out front with cardboard boxes in the back.
“You didn’t tell me Penny was coming tonight,” Jillian said, starting in on him as soon as he came in the door, and Simon felt a little frisson of satisfaction. Good. If she wanted her sister to move in with them, fine, but it wasn’t up to him to play go-between.
“I’m not your secretary.”
“Where did you go?” Jillian followed him into the kitchen. Pizza boxes were scattered on the counter. Simon grabbed the last slice of peperoni. Through the paper-thin walls the stereo in Penny’s room was playing heavy metal, something sludgy, Pantera or crap like that, Penny and Kurt talking in low voices. He took a bite of pizza, the muscles in his jaw aching from grinding his teeth all day, Duncan winding around his ankles like the cat was hoping a piece of meat would fall off the pie and into its mouth. Green glass glinted in the recycling bin, a beer bottle, Rolling Rock, Heineken.
“I didn’t go out drinking, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He finished the slice, tossed the crust back in the empty box, and started in on the veggie supreme.
“Why did you tell them we were going to order pizza?” Jillian lowered her voice the way she did when she talked about money, indignation making her tone sharp. “I keep telling you, we can’t afford to eat out all the time, not until at least one of us gets a job.”
“Then what the hell did you want to move back here for?” Simon’s mouth was dry, and he swallowed the pizza without tasting it, hardly chewing, slippery chunks of roasted bell pepper and artichoke sliding down his throat, oil on his lips. “You’re the one who kept telling me how cheap everything was going to be.”
“Because.” Jillian grabbed her hair like she was going to pull it out. “You were going to kill yourself if we stayed in San Francisco. And because I’m sick and tired of being the one who has to take care of goddamn everything.”
She’d escalated, her voice rising to a yell, that music still pounding, then Penny and Kurt were talking again. Jesus, we’re supposed to be the functional ones.
Jillian kicked the table, a hand-me-down from her parents.
“Goddammit,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Simon said, but he’d said those words so many times, it didn’t feel like they meant anything, not even to him. “It’s all my fault, I know.”
“Stop it.”
Outside the cicadas were singing, and Simon felt like he was inside and outside his body at the same time. All day, he’d felt like he was on the verge of exploding, so uncomfortable in his own skin he might’ve clawed it off. Now he was in this room with Jillian, like her yelling at him had brought him back to himself, and he wanted to go to her, to hold her, to let her anchor him, hold him down to this place.
“Where did you go just now,” Jillian said, “anyway?”
Simon could feel himself deciding something, but he wasn’t sure what.
Where did he go?
“Just out walking,” he said. He’d walked out the trail into the woods behind Rowan Oak, where there was a dry, sandy creek bed, which was the one place in town he felt like he could be alone. “I walked around and sat and read for a while. I needed to get my head straight.”
He’d tried to write a poem, scribbling in the margins of that Algren book, which he hadn’t been able to read more than a few pages of, but nothing would come, not even a few simple lines. Ever since they’d come back here, six weeks that felt like a lifetime, when he’d tried to turn to poetry, he’d found a blank space inside himself.
“Penny said you saw her at the bookstore.”
“Yeah.”
“You could’ve texted, told me she was coming.”
Jesus, she wouldn’t let up, would she?
The kitchen lights were off, Jillian’s face pale, her teeth shining in the moonlight coming in the windows. He hadn’t been able to write one simple line about the moon, like Stokes had put in every damn poem.
But what did poetry matter, anyway?
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you, Jillian. She’s not my sister. I figured you two would talk to each other.”
Jillian folded her arms. “You don’t need to be like that.”
“No, really, Jillian, you’re right. I failed. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
He tossed the crust back in the box, wiped crumbs from his lips.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I—” and she glanced over her shoulder at the wall between the kitchen and Penny’s room— “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, not if she’s partying again. Not if she’s hanging out with Kurt. Jesus, I hope she’s not using.”
And Simon knew better than to say it, but hadn’t it been Jillian’s mom’s idea that Penny moved in with them in the first place?
“I don’t know, Jillian,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, what do you want to do? How else are we supposed to pay for this place?”
And in that, again, she was right, and he was still the biggest piece of shit in the world.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake devoting my life to poetry and taking this stupid degree. I’m a failure. I fucked it all up.”
As if the degree wasn’t bad enough, he’d had a teaching stipend, but it was 19K, so he’d taken out loans. He’d borrowed against a future he didn’t have.
“I don’t want to hear you feeling sorry for yourself,” Jillian said. “That’s not going to pay the bills.”
When he reached for her, she was stiff, hugging herself, and she pulled away from him. He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned against him, her breath warm in the crook of his neck. She smelled of sweat. When he tried to kiss her mouth, she turned her head.
“I can’t,” she said, “not tonight. The press called. They want me to interview first thing in the morning.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” He didn’t mind rejection, but it still smarted. But that’s what marriage—partnership—was: not getting what you wanted.
“I don’t know.” Jillian glanced over her shoulder at Penny’s wall. “It’s entry-level bullshit, and even if I get this, we’re not going to be able to afford this place unless we rent her that room, not on my salary.”
“I’ll have classes in the fall.”
He was still wearing his jacket, and he reached in the pocket, felt for the crumpled piece of paper with Skip’s number at the bookstore.
“I don’t want to have to borrow any more money from my mom,” Jillian said.
“I can ask at the bookstore,” Simon said, “see if they’re hiring.”
That was as much of a promise as he could make.
“Whatever you can do, Simon,” Jillian said, “would be great.”
Feeling that same need, he reached for her again, but she put her hands up like the chick in a horror movie. He pulled her closer, pressing against her, her thighs white in the moonlight, Simon’s hands moving up her skirt, his fingers reaching under her cotton panties.
“Stop.” She was stiff as a statue against him.
“It’s been weeks.”
“Some of us don’t get to sleep till noon.”
She was exasperated. She left Simon in the kitchen, the water running in the bathroom while she brushed her teeth, and when he came out to the living room, their light was off.
***
It was true: he hadn’t been sleeping at night. Like the character in that famous Hemingway story, he couldn’t bring himself to go to bed until dawn.
Now he was sitting in the living room, working on his laptop. He’d been corresponding with a guy in New Orleans, an old buddy of Stokes’s, another poet, who Stokes had been visiting before he’d shot himself. Stokes had left the guy what was effectively his suicide note: Keep yr eye on the moon, yr poetry.
It was like a poem itself, mysterious, elegiac, fragmentary, yet like all Stokes’s work, it might’ve been part of a larger, never-to-be-completed whole.
Penny’s door opened, and she and Kurt tiptoed out, taking exaggerated care to walk into the kitchen, like a pair of Christmas elves. Music was coming from Penny’s room, and for Jillian’s sake, Simon should tell her to turn it down. But Penny was Jillian’s sister, not his, and he hadn’t asked for this situation.
At least she’d changed the music, and it was Mazzy Star, something Jillian liked.
“Hey.”
When he looked up, they were standing in front of him, Penny in jeans and a black tee shirt, Kurt in a grungy pair of Dockers and an overcoat, and their eyes were glinting with a familiar kind of mischief that hit Simon in the gut. They were wobbling, their eyes glassy, both stifling a case of the giggles, and if Simon didn’t know what they were holding, he knew they were both high.
Maybe it was weed, which he’d smelled earlier, coming from under her door.
“What’s up?” Simon closed his laptop. That Algren book was on the arm of his chair, a blurb by Hemingway on the cover comparing Algren to a boxer who could hit fast and hard and knock you out, as if literature were a boxing match.
“Did you finish the pizza?” Penny was whispering, leaning toward him, then Kurt pulled her down onto the couch.
“You want a beer,” Kurt said, “brother?” He passed Simon an open bottle of Rolling Rock, and Simon raised it to his mouth and drank half of it, setting it on the table beside him before it computed that he’d thrown away six weeks of grudging sobriety.
“We have the munchies,” Penny said.
She glanced at the bottle, but what did he expect, that his sobriety should matter to her?
Or maybe she wanted this, that they should ruin her sister’s life together.
“No shit.” Simon burped. He felt a tremor of terror in his gut.
“You mind if we join you?” Kurt said.
Simon took another sip of Rolling Rock, relief washing through him on a cellular level, like the molecules in his body could relax. And Christ, it had been a hell of a six weeks, with the move, Jillian mad at him, being back in Oxford.
He felt like Clint Eastwood chugging the bottle of whiskey before he shoots up the bar at the end of Unforgiven.
“Go ahead,” Simon said. Like they hadn’t joined him already.
“Right on.” Kurt had his arm around Penny. Dude had been an old man when Simon was in grad school. Kurt had worked at the bookstore. Now he was what, pushing 60? He’d been fired for a reason Simon couldn’t remember.
Simon felt satisfied, gloating. Good choice, Jillian, having your sister move in with us.
“What’re you up to?” Penny said.
“Working on something,” Simon said.
He meant it as a hint: leave me alone.
“Right on.” Penny grabbed Kurt’s thigh. “I’ve gotta take a piss.”
And she got up and crossed the room.
“I’ve had a thing for that chick since she was thirteen,” Kurt said, and Simon blinked, but the guy might’ve had tears in his eyes. He was burly, in an overcoat that was all wrong for the summer weather, with a goatee, crooked teeth, and his head shaved down to stubble. “I remember when she and Jillian used to come in the bookstore with their mom, like 15 years ago. I knew even back then there was something special about her, yessir.”
“You would’ve been what,” Simon said, “45?”
“About,” Kurt said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Simon said.
“Love,” Kurt said, his mouth a black hole between the wiry gray hairs in his beard, a sour, musty smell coming off him, so those boxes in his car started to compute. “I’m talking about love. I’m saying I’ve loved that girl since she was thirteen.”
When Penny came back, she dropped into Kurt’s lap.
“I was just telling Simon I’ve been in love with you since you were an itty-bitty thing.”
Penny slapped his arm. “Don’t go getting all sentimental on me.”
Was it too late to kick them out?
“Where are you staying?” Simon finished his beer.
Kurt gave Penny a look, shifting on the couch, but it had the air of theater, like they’d rehearsed this.
“We were going to ask you about that,” he said.
“He’s been sleeping in his car,” Penny said. “They kicked him out of his place in Springdale. He might need to stay with me, but it’ll just be for a couple weeks.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Talk to Jillian,” Simon said.
“I’m sure she won’t mind,” Penny said. “And hey, just so you know we’re out of toilet paper.”
“You want another beer?” Kurt said, and Simon said he was fine. He was still in that place where he could take it or leave it. It wouldn’t last long. As many times as he’d quit, the craving came back. But he wanted to stay as long as possible.
Kurt had just come back with a bottle, cracked it open, and kicked one of his combat boots onto the coffee table when the bedroom door opened, the wood sticking in the jamb, so Jillian had to yank it, then she was standing in her pajamas with her fists clenched, her face white in the moonlight coming through the windows, her eyes sweeping the room, taking in the three of them sitting in the dark.
“Can you please keep it down out here?” she said.
He felt a tiny jolt of satisfaction: you asked for this, babe, didn’t you?
Then everything capsized, the bottom caving out from under him, like the ground he was standing on had eroded. He couldn’t do this to Jillian, not after everything he’d put her through in San Francisco, not after all she’d done to bring them back to what was supposed to be a safe harbor.
But here he was, doing it. And he didn’t even understand why.
“Shit,” Penny said, “we’re sorry.”
And she gave Simon a conspiratorial look, like they were kids who’d gotten busted filching from the candy dish.
“Sorry,” Simon said.
Sorry—I’m sorry, Jillian—for everything.
“And can you turn the goddamn stereo down?” Jillian said.
“Sure,” Penny said.
“Simon,” Jillian said, “what the hell?”
“We’re just talking,” he said.
But she was staring at the bottle, and he understood. He knew all that portended, all those nights he’d disappeared in San Francisco.
Penny got up to go to her room, and Simon crossed the living room to go to Jillian, but she turned around, slamming the bedroom door behind her.
***
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later Kurt brought out the bindle, a glassine envelope of speed, meth, or coke.
“What do you think of Obama?” Penny said, and Simon said he didn’t know, but he was planning to vote for the guy.
“How could you not?” he said.
“Don’t vote,” Kurt said. “Haven’t voted in years. You have anything I can chop this up on?”
Simon felt a tightening ball of anticipation and longing at the pit of his stomach, and he understood what he’d recognized in their eyes when they’d come out of Penny’s room, seeing also that decision he’d made in the kitchen, a choice to give into that pull from beneath that was always there, threatening to tug him under.
Hell, maybe he’d decided earlier, when he’d stormed out of the house that afternoon.
Simon passed Kurt a CD case, John Coltrane, Giant Steps.
But Kurt picked up that copy of The Moon Rolls Like a Lopped off Head Across the Battleground, held it like he was weighing it. He dropped it on the table and cut the stuff up on that.
Sometimes it was easier not to fight.
“I think I’ve got enough for three decent lines,” Kurt said.
“You have any cash?” Penny said to Simon. “We can see if our guy’s around, maybe score a little more.”
No, he didn’t have cash. They didn’t have the money for him to party, not even if they were back in a place where they could rent a two-bedroom house for less than that cramped studio had cost in San Francisco. Life had changed, becoming serious in a way he felt ill-equipped for, and maybe that was what had happened to Stokes, too. Thirty years old, and the guy had shot himself in the heart after his wife and mistress confronted each other. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to grow up, either.
“I’ll check my wallet,” Simon said.
Kurt was carving out three slender lines, and he passed the book to Simon along with a rolled-up dollar bill.
“You first,” he said, and Simon set the book on the table, re-rolled the bill, and leaned over the rails Kurt had cut out for them, closing one nostril, snorting the line, and leaning back in his chair. It was bad stuff, cut with God knew what, maybe bleach, and it made his left eye blur with tears. They were looking at him, Penny clinging to Kurt, grinning, her teeth shining gray and sickly in the moonlight.
“You okay?” Penny whispered, and Simon nodded. As the stuff hit his brain, numbness spreading like a stain, he felt all right for the first time in weeks. He felt like he’d come home.
Tom Andes is a writer and musician whose fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012. He won the 2019 Gold Medal for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, a New Orleans-based literary organization. He has released two critically acclaimed EPs of original music. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and can be found at www.tomandes.com.
by Tom Andes
The title of the story comes from a note the poet Frank Stanford left his friend Ralph Adamo before Stanford flew home to Arkansas, where he died a day or two later by suicide. He was 29. Ralph was one of my teachers when I was an undergrad at Loyola University New Orleans and introduced me and a bunch of my friends in the English Department to Stanford’s poetry. We passed around lovingly worn Lost Roads first editions that Ralph was kind (or foolish) enough to loan us. Miraculously, he always (I think) got them back.
I’ve taken obvious liberties with this, transplanting Stanford from Fayetteville to Oxford, Mississippi and renaming him.
After they moved back to Oxford, Simon and Jillian were renting a two-bedroom on North Lamarr where a couple of poets had lived and that had been a legendary party house when Simon was in grad school. Jillian’s sister Penny was renting the second bedroom. Simon was trying to stay clean. Ron Paul yard signs were up all over town, but the primaries were long since over, and the race had come down to those final two candidates, history in the making, or so people said—the stakes for America couldn’t be clearer: Jillian’s parents said stuff like that—but without denying the importance of the moment, Simon thought they were all full of shit.
“We don’t need a president,” he said, “we need a benevolent dictator. People can’t be trusted with democratic rule, anyway. People are idiots, and they always make the wrong choices—like studying goddamn poetry in grad school.”
Jillian’s face soured. It was so easy to get under her skin. They were in the living room, unloading books they’d thrown into boxes before packing their U-Haul and leaving Hayes Valley, their neighborhood in San Francisco, in the dead of night, a decision they’d made and followed through on in less than a week. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but he blamed her for bringing them back to a town he’d just as soon have left behind in a haze of half-remembered nights shooting pool at Proud Larry’s and arguing about Ezra Pound with friends who were gone, who’d moved on from the writing program at the university to one underpaid academic position or another.
“You don’t think it’s important,” she said, “a Black man being president for the first time in history? You don’t think that matters?” And he felt both disappointed and satisfied that she’d taken the bait, and that she was going to argue with him.
“I’m not saying it’s not important,” Simon said. “I didn’t say that did I? No, I’m just saying it’s not going to change anything. We’re still screwed as a society and as a species. People are stupid, and poetry doesn’t matter.”
He was holding a copy of Farrell Stokes’s The Moon Rolls Like a Lopped off Head Across the Battleground, one of the original Vanished Pathways Press editions, long since out of print. It must’ve weighed ten pounds, one of the longest poems in the English language, but Simon might’ve brained himself with it, for all the good it did, poetry. Stokes was a famous suicide and apart from Faulkner, the best thing Oxford, Mississippi had ever produced, and they didn’t teach him at the university, which showed you what those people knew, the kind of stuffed shirts who got real jobs in academia.
Jillian sighed. “That’s nice,” she said, “a great attitude you’ve got there.”
He knew he should let it go, but he couldn’t.
“Is anything going to change?” he said. “Do you really think anything’s going to be different if Barack Obama or any other Black man wins this election?”
“It’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?”
She was in a red skirt and a black tank top, and she’d cut her hair in a pixie cut all the hipster girls in San Francisco wore that year. Simon would’ve laid down in traffic to be worthy of her, but he was enraged at what she’d made their life by dragging them back to where she was from. They were close to her people, her family, and that proximity to her mom and her sister felt like a snare around his neck.
“John McCain?” He was laughing, enjoying the fight. He was—he knew it—a terrible person. “Sarah Palin? Shouldn’t you be happy if they win, since there’ll finally be a woman in the White House?”
“What am I supposed to do with all these?” She kicked the box of books she was shelving. “I told you we should’ve gotten rid of a bunch of this stuff before we hauled it back. There’s no room for all this crap.”
And that was his fault, too. He was the one with the boxes full of books, chapbooks, poetry anthologies, the useless dead weight he’d accumulated during four years of grad school and dragged halfway across the country and back.
“Great.” He crossed the room, grabbed the box. “We’ll throw it out. We’ll donate it.”
“Stop.” Jillian took it back from him. “That stuff’s mostly mine, anyway.”
“You want to throw it out,” Simon said. “We can throw it out.”
Jillian set the box on the table. She pulled out a book of journalism about the tech industry, a collection she’d had an essay in, and shelved it above the stereo. “I guess you’re right, nothing’s going to change if he wins, not with all these stupid corporations in charge of everything, anyway.”
“Of course, I’m right.” But Simon didn’t feel good about her conceding the point. It felt like he was choking, like vines were twisting around his neck. He had to get out of the house, so he could breathe.
“Where are you going?”
He was halfway out the door.
“Out.”
“Simon?”
And he could hear the question in her voice, just like all those nights in San Francisco when he’d stormed out of the studio they’d shared, sometimes going to visit friends, sometimes just walking the streets, barhopping, with his phone turned off or sometimes—usually—ignoring Jillian’s frantic texts and calls.
And he was—yeah, he knew it—a piece of shit.
Boy, did he ever know that.
And if he ever forgot, well, Jillian would remind him.
He was standing in the doorway, the room filled with late summer light, and he had a momentary feeling of being outside himself. What did any of this matter, anyway, his rage, her tears? People lived entire lives, had careers, kids, and died, without any of the crap Jillian and Simon had built their worlds around. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
Jillian wiped her cheeks.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t have you disappearing, not here. Not anymore.”
And Simon felt himself coming back down to earth, his feet planted on their porch, with Duncan, the cat they’d named for the great Bay Area poet and friend of Jack Spicer’s, Robert Duncan, winding around his ankles. When they’d started dating, she’d been so present, so together, like she could take care of everything, make it okay, an anchor holding him in place.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m just going for a walk. Relax.”
And he grabbed his denim jacket off the hook by the door, left her standing there with tears rolling down her cheeks, nodding, but like she didn’t believe him, like she would never believe anything he said again.
***
Jillian’s sister Penny worked at the bookstore downtown. Simon had lived in San Francisco and had friends who’d worked at Green Apple, but Square Books was the best bookstore he’d been to, four buildings on the town square, a world of books with sunlight shining on varnished hardwood, comfy chairs tucked into alcoves where a person could hide and read.
The place was closing when he walked through, Penny sitting on a stool behind the counter, adding up receipts on a calculator. Simon grabbed a paperback from the bins in front, something by Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness, the kind of crap he never read, prose, but he wanted something in his pocket, something he could read while he sat and got his head straight.
As if they needed any more damn books in their house. She was right about that.
She was right—he knew this—about everything.
“I’m bringing my stuff over after I finish my shift.” Penny took his dollar bill.
“Yeah?” Simon had forgotten she was there, never mind that she was moving in with them. Maybe it was denial. She had a shy way of smiling, like someone was going to hit her, and she was flinching. She was a townie, and she’d never left Oxford, never finished at the university, not like Jillian and all her high-achieving, snooty friends who’d gone to the law school. Penny had gotten knocked up, dropped out, and the kid was a holy terror, with multiple disorders and diagnoses. He lived with his dad, sometimes with Jillian and Penny’s parents.
And now, after her last trip to rehab, Penny had visitation privileges again, so the kid would be staying with Simon and Jillian sometimes, too.
“What time?” Simon knew he should relay this information to Jillian, knew also that he wouldn’t, and not even because he wasn’t sure he wanted Penny and her psychotic kid living in their second bedroom, which—of course—had been their mother’s idea, too. But if he texted Jillian, it let her off the hook, let her feel like everything was okay, and it wasn’t.
Piece of shit that he was, he wanted to let her twist.
“I don’t know, 7:30, 8:00?” Penny was moving stacks of books on the counter, her nails bitten down to the quick, scabs on the backs of her hands like she’d been in a fight. She smelled like cigarette smoke, Old Holborn rolling tobacco. Something severe was in her face, like she was weathered, and it made Simon think of a shrunken head. “I have to grab dinner, once I get out of here.”
“Come over,” Simon said, “and we’ll order a pizza or something.”
And yeah, he’d catch a ration of shit for that, too. And of course—again—she would be right: they didn’t have the money to order a pizza or eat in restaurants. Jillian had an interview for an entry-level position at the press at the university, so they might have something coming in by the end of the month, but Simon wasn’t going to have a paycheck till classes started at the community college in the fall, and till then, it was going to be pasta, beans, and rice.
“I’ll check with Kurt,” Penny said.
Kurt was the current boyfriend, not the child’s father. He was 58, which was two years more than twice Penny’s age.
“Hey,” Simon said, “do you know if they’re hiring here?”
Penny shrugged. She had a tongue ring, and it rattled around in her mouth, Penny clutching the barbell between her teeth.
“You want me to give the manager your number?”
“Sure,” Simon said, “thanks.”
He pocketed his book. He wanted to go. Seven years of school—four in college, then three for a terminal degree—and he was going to end up stocking shelves at a bookstore for not much better than minimum wage.
But they needed the money. And hell, it would be a nice place to work.
“Here’s his number,” Penny said, “You can call him, too.”
She’d written the guy’s name—Skip—on a scrap of receipt paper beside a number with a 662 Area Code.
“He pay your insurance?” Simon said. That was the issue with the community college and the university: they had part-time, adjunct positions, which didn’t pay for shit and had no benefits.
“If you’re full-time, yeah.”
“Cool.” Simon pocketed the slip of receipt paper. He wondered how many of the books on the shelves had belonged to him or his friends, how many new students in the program would buy those same books, then sell them back to the bookstore like Simon and his friends had done three years ago when he’d left town.
He wondered how many of those graduates would wash up back here three years after they finished, out of options, hustling classes at the local universities.
Probably not many, but not many of them would be stupid enough to marry an Oxford girl, either.
“See you later.” Penny finger waved as the door closed, and Simon started down the street toward Rowan Oak with the sun setting over the confederate statue in the Square and his book in his pocket, not sure where he was going, only that it wouldn’t be far enough away.
***
It was a quarter of ten and full dark by the time he got home, every light burning in the house, Penny’s boyfriend’s Subaru parked out front with cardboard boxes in the back.
“You didn’t tell me Penny was coming tonight,” Jillian said, starting in on him as soon as he came in the door, and Simon felt a little frisson of satisfaction. Good. If she wanted her sister to move in with them, fine, but it wasn’t up to him to play go-between.
“I’m not your secretary.”
“Where did you go?” Jillian followed him into the kitchen. Pizza boxes were scattered on the counter. Simon grabbed the last slice of peperoni. Through the paper-thin walls the stereo in Penny’s room was playing heavy metal, something sludgy, Pantera or crap like that, Penny and Kurt talking in low voices. He took a bite of pizza, the muscles in his jaw aching from grinding his teeth all day, Duncan winding around his ankles like the cat was hoping a piece of meat would fall off the pie and into its mouth. Green glass glinted in the recycling bin, a beer bottle, Rolling Rock, Heineken.
“I didn’t go out drinking, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He finished the slice, tossed the crust back in the empty box, and started in on the veggie supreme.
“Why did you tell them we were going to order pizza?” Jillian lowered her voice the way she did when she talked about money, indignation making her tone sharp. “I keep telling you, we can’t afford to eat out all the time, not until at least one of us gets a job.”
“Then what the hell did you want to move back here for?” Simon’s mouth was dry, and he swallowed the pizza without tasting it, hardly chewing, slippery chunks of roasted bell pepper and artichoke sliding down his throat, oil on his lips. “You’re the one who kept telling me how cheap everything was going to be.”
“Because.” Jillian grabbed her hair like she was going to pull it out. “You were going to kill yourself if we stayed in San Francisco. And because I’m sick and tired of being the one who has to take care of goddamn everything.”
She’d escalated, her voice rising to a yell, that music still pounding, then Penny and Kurt were talking again. Jesus, we’re supposed to be the functional ones.
Jillian kicked the table, a hand-me-down from her parents.
“Goddammit,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Simon said, but he’d said those words so many times, it didn’t feel like they meant anything, not even to him. “It’s all my fault, I know.”
“Stop it.”
Outside the cicadas were singing, and Simon felt like he was inside and outside his body at the same time. All day, he’d felt like he was on the verge of exploding, so uncomfortable in his own skin he might’ve clawed it off. Now he was in this room with Jillian, like her yelling at him had brought him back to himself, and he wanted to go to her, to hold her, to let her anchor him, hold him down to this place.
“Where did you go just now,” Jillian said, “anyway?”
Simon could feel himself deciding something, but he wasn’t sure what.
Where did he go?
“Just out walking,” he said. He’d walked out the trail into the woods behind Rowan Oak, where there was a dry, sandy creek bed, which was the one place in town he felt like he could be alone. “I walked around and sat and read for a while. I needed to get my head straight.”
He’d tried to write a poem, scribbling in the margins of that Algren book, which he hadn’t been able to read more than a few pages of, but nothing would come, not even a few simple lines. Ever since they’d come back here, six weeks that felt like a lifetime, when he’d tried to turn to poetry, he’d found a blank space inside himself.
“Penny said you saw her at the bookstore.”
“Yeah.”
“You could’ve texted, told me she was coming.”
Jesus, she wouldn’t let up, would she?
The kitchen lights were off, Jillian’s face pale, her teeth shining in the moonlight coming in the windows. He hadn’t been able to write one simple line about the moon, like Stokes had put in every damn poem.
But what did poetry matter, anyway?
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you, Jillian. She’s not my sister. I figured you two would talk to each other.”
Jillian folded her arms. “You don’t need to be like that.”
“No, really, Jillian, you’re right. I failed. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
He tossed the crust back in the box, wiped crumbs from his lips.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I—” and she glanced over her shoulder at the wall between the kitchen and Penny’s room— “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, not if she’s partying again. Not if she’s hanging out with Kurt. Jesus, I hope she’s not using.”
And Simon knew better than to say it, but hadn’t it been Jillian’s mom’s idea that Penny moved in with them in the first place?
“I don’t know, Jillian,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, what do you want to do? How else are we supposed to pay for this place?”
And in that, again, she was right, and he was still the biggest piece of shit in the world.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake devoting my life to poetry and taking this stupid degree. I’m a failure. I fucked it all up.”
As if the degree wasn’t bad enough, he’d had a teaching stipend, but it was 19K, so he’d taken out loans. He’d borrowed against a future he didn’t have.
“I don’t want to hear you feeling sorry for yourself,” Jillian said. “That’s not going to pay the bills.”
When he reached for her, she was stiff, hugging herself, and she pulled away from him. He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned against him, her breath warm in the crook of his neck. She smelled of sweat. When he tried to kiss her mouth, she turned her head.
“I can’t,” she said, “not tonight. The press called. They want me to interview first thing in the morning.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” He didn’t mind rejection, but it still smarted. But that’s what marriage—partnership—was: not getting what you wanted.
“I don’t know.” Jillian glanced over her shoulder at Penny’s wall. “It’s entry-level bullshit, and even if I get this, we’re not going to be able to afford this place unless we rent her that room, not on my salary.”
“I’ll have classes in the fall.”
He was still wearing his jacket, and he reached in the pocket, felt for the crumpled piece of paper with Skip’s number at the bookstore.
“I don’t want to have to borrow any more money from my mom,” Jillian said.
“I can ask at the bookstore,” Simon said, “see if they’re hiring.”
That was as much of a promise as he could make.
“Whatever you can do, Simon,” Jillian said, “would be great.”
Feeling that same need, he reached for her again, but she put her hands up like the chick in a horror movie. He pulled her closer, pressing against her, her thighs white in the moonlight, Simon’s hands moving up her skirt, his fingers reaching under her cotton panties.
“Stop.” She was stiff as a statue against him.
“It’s been weeks.”
“Some of us don’t get to sleep till noon.”
She was exasperated. She left Simon in the kitchen, the water running in the bathroom while she brushed her teeth, and when he came out to the living room, their light was off.
***
It was true: he hadn’t been sleeping at night. Like the character in that famous Hemingway story, he couldn’t bring himself to go to bed until dawn.
Now he was sitting in the living room, working on his laptop. He’d been corresponding with a guy in New Orleans, an old buddy of Stokes’s, another poet, who Stokes had been visiting before he’d shot himself. Stokes had left the guy what was effectively his suicide note: Keep yr eye on the moon, yr poetry.
It was like a poem itself, mysterious, elegiac, fragmentary, yet like all Stokes’s work, it might’ve been part of a larger, never-to-be-completed whole.
Penny’s door opened, and she and Kurt tiptoed out, taking exaggerated care to walk into the kitchen, like a pair of Christmas elves. Music was coming from Penny’s room, and for Jillian’s sake, Simon should tell her to turn it down. But Penny was Jillian’s sister, not his, and he hadn’t asked for this situation.
At least she’d changed the music, and it was Mazzy Star, something Jillian liked.
“Hey.”
When he looked up, they were standing in front of him, Penny in jeans and a black tee shirt, Kurt in a grungy pair of Dockers and an overcoat, and their eyes were glinting with a familiar kind of mischief that hit Simon in the gut. They were wobbling, their eyes glassy, both stifling a case of the giggles, and if Simon didn’t know what they were holding, he knew they were both high.
Maybe it was weed, which he’d smelled earlier, coming from under her door.
“What’s up?” Simon closed his laptop. That Algren book was on the arm of his chair, a blurb by Hemingway on the cover comparing Algren to a boxer who could hit fast and hard and knock you out, as if literature were a boxing match.
“Did you finish the pizza?” Penny was whispering, leaning toward him, then Kurt pulled her down onto the couch.
“You want a beer,” Kurt said, “brother?” He passed Simon an open bottle of Rolling Rock, and Simon raised it to his mouth and drank half of it, setting it on the table beside him before it computed that he’d thrown away six weeks of grudging sobriety.
“We have the munchies,” Penny said.
She glanced at the bottle, but what did he expect, that his sobriety should matter to her?
Or maybe she wanted this, that they should ruin her sister’s life together.
“No shit.” Simon burped. He felt a tremor of terror in his gut.
“You mind if we join you?” Kurt said.
Simon took another sip of Rolling Rock, relief washing through him on a cellular level, like the molecules in his body could relax. And Christ, it had been a hell of a six weeks, with the move, Jillian mad at him, being back in Oxford.
He felt like Clint Eastwood chugging the bottle of whiskey before he shoots up the bar at the end of Unforgiven.
“Go ahead,” Simon said. Like they hadn’t joined him already.
“Right on.” Kurt had his arm around Penny. Dude had been an old man when Simon was in grad school. Kurt had worked at the bookstore. Now he was what, pushing 60? He’d been fired for a reason Simon couldn’t remember.
Simon felt satisfied, gloating. Good choice, Jillian, having your sister move in with us.
“What’re you up to?” Penny said.
“Working on something,” Simon said.
He meant it as a hint: leave me alone.
“Right on.” Penny grabbed Kurt’s thigh. “I’ve gotta take a piss.”
And she got up and crossed the room.
“I’ve had a thing for that chick since she was thirteen,” Kurt said, and Simon blinked, but the guy might’ve had tears in his eyes. He was burly, in an overcoat that was all wrong for the summer weather, with a goatee, crooked teeth, and his head shaved down to stubble. “I remember when she and Jillian used to come in the bookstore with their mom, like 15 years ago. I knew even back then there was something special about her, yessir.”
“You would’ve been what,” Simon said, “45?”
“About,” Kurt said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Simon said.
“Love,” Kurt said, his mouth a black hole between the wiry gray hairs in his beard, a sour, musty smell coming off him, so those boxes in his car started to compute. “I’m talking about love. I’m saying I’ve loved that girl since she was thirteen.”
When Penny came back, she dropped into Kurt’s lap.
“I was just telling Simon I’ve been in love with you since you were an itty-bitty thing.”
Penny slapped his arm. “Don’t go getting all sentimental on me.”
Was it too late to kick them out?
“Where are you staying?” Simon finished his beer.
Kurt gave Penny a look, shifting on the couch, but it had the air of theater, like they’d rehearsed this.
“We were going to ask you about that,” he said.
“He’s been sleeping in his car,” Penny said. “They kicked him out of his place in Springdale. He might need to stay with me, but it’ll just be for a couple weeks.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Talk to Jillian,” Simon said.
“I’m sure she won’t mind,” Penny said. “And hey, just so you know we’re out of toilet paper.”
“You want another beer?” Kurt said, and Simon said he was fine. He was still in that place where he could take it or leave it. It wouldn’t last long. As many times as he’d quit, the craving came back. But he wanted to stay as long as possible.
Kurt had just come back with a bottle, cracked it open, and kicked one of his combat boots onto the coffee table when the bedroom door opened, the wood sticking in the jamb, so Jillian had to yank it, then she was standing in her pajamas with her fists clenched, her face white in the moonlight coming through the windows, her eyes sweeping the room, taking in the three of them sitting in the dark.
“Can you please keep it down out here?” she said.
He felt a tiny jolt of satisfaction: you asked for this, babe, didn’t you?
Then everything capsized, the bottom caving out from under him, like the ground he was standing on had eroded. He couldn’t do this to Jillian, not after everything he’d put her through in San Francisco, not after all she’d done to bring them back to what was supposed to be a safe harbor.
But here he was, doing it. And he didn’t even understand why.
“Shit,” Penny said, “we’re sorry.”
And she gave Simon a conspiratorial look, like they were kids who’d gotten busted filching from the candy dish.
“Sorry,” Simon said.
Sorry—I’m sorry, Jillian—for everything.
“And can you turn the goddamn stereo down?” Jillian said.
“Sure,” Penny said.
“Simon,” Jillian said, “what the hell?”
“We’re just talking,” he said.
But she was staring at the bottle, and he understood. He knew all that portended, all those nights he’d disappeared in San Francisco.
Penny got up to go to her room, and Simon crossed the living room to go to Jillian, but she turned around, slamming the bedroom door behind her.
***
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later Kurt brought out the bindle, a glassine envelope of speed, meth, or coke.
“What do you think of Obama?” Penny said, and Simon said he didn’t know, but he was planning to vote for the guy.
“How could you not?” he said.
“Don’t vote,” Kurt said. “Haven’t voted in years. You have anything I can chop this up on?”
Simon felt a tightening ball of anticipation and longing at the pit of his stomach, and he understood what he’d recognized in their eyes when they’d come out of Penny’s room, seeing also that decision he’d made in the kitchen, a choice to give into that pull from beneath that was always there, threatening to tug him under.
Hell, maybe he’d decided earlier, when he’d stormed out of the house that afternoon.
Simon passed Kurt a CD case, John Coltrane, Giant Steps.
But Kurt picked up that copy of The Moon Rolls Like a Lopped off Head Across the Battleground, held it like he was weighing it. He dropped it on the table and cut the stuff up on that.
Sometimes it was easier not to fight.
“I think I’ve got enough for three decent lines,” Kurt said.
“You have any cash?” Penny said to Simon. “We can see if our guy’s around, maybe score a little more.”
No, he didn’t have cash. They didn’t have the money for him to party, not even if they were back in a place where they could rent a two-bedroom house for less than that cramped studio had cost in San Francisco. Life had changed, becoming serious in a way he felt ill-equipped for, and maybe that was what had happened to Stokes, too. Thirty years old, and the guy had shot himself in the heart after his wife and mistress confronted each other. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to grow up, either.
“I’ll check my wallet,” Simon said.
Kurt was carving out three slender lines, and he passed the book to Simon along with a rolled-up dollar bill.
“You first,” he said, and Simon set the book on the table, re-rolled the bill, and leaned over the rails Kurt had cut out for them, closing one nostril, snorting the line, and leaning back in his chair. It was bad stuff, cut with God knew what, maybe bleach, and it made his left eye blur with tears. They were looking at him, Penny clinging to Kurt, grinning, her teeth shining gray and sickly in the moonlight.
“You okay?” Penny whispered, and Simon nodded. As the stuff hit his brain, numbness spreading like a stain, he felt all right for the first time in weeks. He felt like he’d come home.
Tom Andes is a writer and musician whose fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012. He won the 2019 Gold Medal for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, a New Orleans-based literary organization. He has released two critically acclaimed EPs of original music. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and can be found at www.tomandes.com.