SKEETER
by Joshua Trent Brown
Whether or not I accomplished it aside, I had a southern version of Denis Johnson in mind while I wrote this story. Skeeter is the first chapter from a book I’m tinkering on about a poor boy-turned-prophet – and I’m pulling heavily from some John Irving-Owen Meany stuff too. It might also be easy to guess I was listening to Colter Wall’s rendition of Cowpoke while writing. It’s covers all the way down.
Skeeter sat atop a sow named Millie who was so full of little gestating piglets that he figured she had to have weighed 400 pounds but he was on top of her so it didn’t matter and she moved around the yard of patchy grass and kicked up dirt at a snail’s pace and she grunted every few seconds and he swung his arm around in the air like he was a cowboy with a lasso and the chickens that ran around he and Millie were not chickens but instead were cattle, big huge cattle by the dozen, and Millie was not a pregnant pig who didn’t mind a boy on her back but a beautiful bronco with a gorgeous mane of black and a coat of white with brown spots and his name wouldn’t be Skeeter but instead would be something more appropriate for the rider of a buckin’ bronc like Dean or Waylon or Woodrow and in his mind Glen Campbell’s cover of Cowpoke played and he only had to find a place to camp for the evening as the sun was starting to set low and he’d want to get a fire started to heat up a big ol’ pot of beans. Carefree and range riding he was.
“Skeeter boy, get your ass off Millie.”
Oh no, Skeeter thought. Cattle rustlers were approaching. He checked his six shooter and saw that there was the right number of bullets inside and then he pulled out his carbine rifle and he made sure it was loaded too and he leaned down and whispered to Millie soft and sweet that everything would be alright but he’d need her to be strong. She grunted and he told her to play along better and she didn’t answer.
“Skeeter, did you hear me?”
The cattle rustlers, the same band of marauders he’d run into before and only barely made it out of a gunfight against alive, were approaching fast. They were close enough he could hear their awful yelling and carrying on. He whispered again to Millie to steady up now and he raised his carbine – a long stick, if you weren’t sure – to his shoulder and he took aim on the man in the front who was leaned over on his horse so tight that it seemed to be one animal, one single new beast that God had just created for the sole purpose of stealing a man’s hard earned cattle. After he felt that his bead on the man wouldn’t get any better, he fired. The horse fell and the man flopped off with it.
“Skeeter Hawk, get off that god damned sow right now and stop pointing that stick at me like a gun before I come down there and whip your little behind. Do you hear me?”
His mama called him Skeeter Hawk because his daddy had called him Skeeter Hawk because when he was an even littler boy he liked to put his arms up like they were wings and make a buzzing noise with his mouth and run around in the yard like he was flying and one time when his daddy asked him what he was doing he said he was being like them dragonflies and his daddy told him that he called them by their country name – skeeter hawks. But by now he’d moved on from flying to being a cowboy. A chicken walked straight into his foot and he was back to going the half mile an hour that Millie could afford him. He patted her on the back of the head and lifted one leg off and slung himself back to the dirt and threw his stick for the carbine and his smaller one for the revolver on the ground. He huffed and turned around and looked at his mama standing up on the porch. She was wearing a cotton gown and had her hair up in a mess and her left hand on her hip.
“I didn’t hear you answer me,” she said.
“Yes, mama, I hear you,” he let out with a sigh. A chicken pecked at his leg and he kicked at it before walking back up to the door his mama was still standing in. She slid out of the way and let him pass.
“Go on and eat up,” she said.
On the table was a plate of kidney beans and Vienna sausages. His daddy called them vi-ee-nie weenies. He figured it would do for a cowboy meal. He picked up the used-to-be-shiny fork and shoved it into a sausage. Its pink skin tore and cracked around the prongs. Something about these sausages is that they float. It was true. Skeeter’s daddy had showed him that once when they went out fishing on the two-man john boat. It was a hot Carolina early afternoon and they’d been out fishing for most of it, or at least for every bit that the sun was up, and they were tired from fishing and mostly not catching, so they pulled up to a sandbar to eat lunch. Lunch was Vienna sausages and saltines. When Skeeter’s daddy got down to his last cylinder of spongy meat, he forked it and lifted it up out of the tin can and held it in the air, looking at it. Skeeter had already finished his meal and so he watched him do this.
What are you lookin’ at, daddy? Skeeter had asked. The young man with the same nose as him averted his gaze from the sausage to Skeeter.
You know these can float? He asked.
The weenies?
The very same.
No they can’t. Skeeter said, laughing.
And then his daddy chucked that piece of squished up meat straight into the black and brown water of the Lumber River. He threw it up in the air with a high arc so it would really plop. And it did. The sound made you feel good. But then, Skeeter be damned, the thing hardly even went under the lightly running river before floating back on top like a boat for a bug. And then a skeeter hawk even came by and landed on it for a moment or two. But before he could say anything, the head of a catfish rose to the surface and swallowed the sausage whole right in front of the, the bug still on it.
Did you see that? His daddy had asked.
Was that a catfish?
And a floating sausage. That’ll about make a day of fishing worth all the trouble, won’t it?
Skeeter picked the sausage up off his plate and took a big bite of it, thinking about his daddy and this memory so hard that he could see it all happening again in front of his eyes. But his daddy was dead and he was not right in front of his eyes. He was in a patch of dirt that you could get to if you turned left out of Skeeter’s driveway and walked about a mile until you came to a fork in the road, with only two prongs instead of the three he had on his eating fork, and you took the road to the right and then in about 200 yards you’d be on a cemetery. He was on the fourth row, third over from the left side. When Skeeter thought about his daddy and how this was the only way to get to him anymore, he wanted to curl up in ball on his little bed and cry. The feeling was so strong in him that he had to let something out as he chewed up another mouthful of parboiled sausage.
“God damnit,” he said through the food.
“What the hell did you just say?” his mama yipped from the living room.
Skeeter tried to stay silent, thinking she might let it go but no, his mama was in the kitchen standing over him in just a second or two and she snatched his plate up with a big frown on her face. It was nothing new, she wore that frown all the time ever since his daddy died.
“Foul mouthed little boys don’t get to eat,” she said as she walked his plate over to the trash bin and dumped every bit of it.
No daddy and no Vienna sausages and no horses and no cattle and no rustlers and no open ranges and no big-headed catfish that eat anything you throw to them, he thought. God damnit god damnit god damnit.
Skeeter all of a sudden wasn’t sure if he’d said this out loud or not and he looked up at his mama. His face was hot and that meant it was probably red too. She was looking at him hard but not saying anything. But before she could react, he realized that it didn’t matter no way. Wasn’t nothing left for her to take from him. Except maybe Millie. He got up and walked straight past his mama with a cowboy’s nod and went outside and patted that old sow on the head and asked her if she was up for one more ride.
Joshua Trent Brown is a writer from North Carolina and a fiction editor at JAKE the mag. He has fiction in more than a dozen cool publications like HAD, JMWW, and A Common Well Journal. He's also a novelist who's looking to become a published novelist, if you know a guy. You can read more of his work at https://trentbrownwrites.squarespace.com/fiction or find his stupid ideas on Twitter @TrentBWrites.
by Joshua Trent Brown
Whether or not I accomplished it aside, I had a southern version of Denis Johnson in mind while I wrote this story. Skeeter is the first chapter from a book I’m tinkering on about a poor boy-turned-prophet – and I’m pulling heavily from some John Irving-Owen Meany stuff too. It might also be easy to guess I was listening to Colter Wall’s rendition of Cowpoke while writing. It’s covers all the way down.
Skeeter sat atop a sow named Millie who was so full of little gestating piglets that he figured she had to have weighed 400 pounds but he was on top of her so it didn’t matter and she moved around the yard of patchy grass and kicked up dirt at a snail’s pace and she grunted every few seconds and he swung his arm around in the air like he was a cowboy with a lasso and the chickens that ran around he and Millie were not chickens but instead were cattle, big huge cattle by the dozen, and Millie was not a pregnant pig who didn’t mind a boy on her back but a beautiful bronco with a gorgeous mane of black and a coat of white with brown spots and his name wouldn’t be Skeeter but instead would be something more appropriate for the rider of a buckin’ bronc like Dean or Waylon or Woodrow and in his mind Glen Campbell’s cover of Cowpoke played and he only had to find a place to camp for the evening as the sun was starting to set low and he’d want to get a fire started to heat up a big ol’ pot of beans. Carefree and range riding he was.
“Skeeter boy, get your ass off Millie.”
Oh no, Skeeter thought. Cattle rustlers were approaching. He checked his six shooter and saw that there was the right number of bullets inside and then he pulled out his carbine rifle and he made sure it was loaded too and he leaned down and whispered to Millie soft and sweet that everything would be alright but he’d need her to be strong. She grunted and he told her to play along better and she didn’t answer.
“Skeeter, did you hear me?”
The cattle rustlers, the same band of marauders he’d run into before and only barely made it out of a gunfight against alive, were approaching fast. They were close enough he could hear their awful yelling and carrying on. He whispered again to Millie to steady up now and he raised his carbine – a long stick, if you weren’t sure – to his shoulder and he took aim on the man in the front who was leaned over on his horse so tight that it seemed to be one animal, one single new beast that God had just created for the sole purpose of stealing a man’s hard earned cattle. After he felt that his bead on the man wouldn’t get any better, he fired. The horse fell and the man flopped off with it.
“Skeeter Hawk, get off that god damned sow right now and stop pointing that stick at me like a gun before I come down there and whip your little behind. Do you hear me?”
His mama called him Skeeter Hawk because his daddy had called him Skeeter Hawk because when he was an even littler boy he liked to put his arms up like they were wings and make a buzzing noise with his mouth and run around in the yard like he was flying and one time when his daddy asked him what he was doing he said he was being like them dragonflies and his daddy told him that he called them by their country name – skeeter hawks. But by now he’d moved on from flying to being a cowboy. A chicken walked straight into his foot and he was back to going the half mile an hour that Millie could afford him. He patted her on the back of the head and lifted one leg off and slung himself back to the dirt and threw his stick for the carbine and his smaller one for the revolver on the ground. He huffed and turned around and looked at his mama standing up on the porch. She was wearing a cotton gown and had her hair up in a mess and her left hand on her hip.
“I didn’t hear you answer me,” she said.
“Yes, mama, I hear you,” he let out with a sigh. A chicken pecked at his leg and he kicked at it before walking back up to the door his mama was still standing in. She slid out of the way and let him pass.
“Go on and eat up,” she said.
On the table was a plate of kidney beans and Vienna sausages. His daddy called them vi-ee-nie weenies. He figured it would do for a cowboy meal. He picked up the used-to-be-shiny fork and shoved it into a sausage. Its pink skin tore and cracked around the prongs. Something about these sausages is that they float. It was true. Skeeter’s daddy had showed him that once when they went out fishing on the two-man john boat. It was a hot Carolina early afternoon and they’d been out fishing for most of it, or at least for every bit that the sun was up, and they were tired from fishing and mostly not catching, so they pulled up to a sandbar to eat lunch. Lunch was Vienna sausages and saltines. When Skeeter’s daddy got down to his last cylinder of spongy meat, he forked it and lifted it up out of the tin can and held it in the air, looking at it. Skeeter had already finished his meal and so he watched him do this.
What are you lookin’ at, daddy? Skeeter had asked. The young man with the same nose as him averted his gaze from the sausage to Skeeter.
You know these can float? He asked.
The weenies?
The very same.
No they can’t. Skeeter said, laughing.
And then his daddy chucked that piece of squished up meat straight into the black and brown water of the Lumber River. He threw it up in the air with a high arc so it would really plop. And it did. The sound made you feel good. But then, Skeeter be damned, the thing hardly even went under the lightly running river before floating back on top like a boat for a bug. And then a skeeter hawk even came by and landed on it for a moment or two. But before he could say anything, the head of a catfish rose to the surface and swallowed the sausage whole right in front of the, the bug still on it.
Did you see that? His daddy had asked.
Was that a catfish?
And a floating sausage. That’ll about make a day of fishing worth all the trouble, won’t it?
Skeeter picked the sausage up off his plate and took a big bite of it, thinking about his daddy and this memory so hard that he could see it all happening again in front of his eyes. But his daddy was dead and he was not right in front of his eyes. He was in a patch of dirt that you could get to if you turned left out of Skeeter’s driveway and walked about a mile until you came to a fork in the road, with only two prongs instead of the three he had on his eating fork, and you took the road to the right and then in about 200 yards you’d be on a cemetery. He was on the fourth row, third over from the left side. When Skeeter thought about his daddy and how this was the only way to get to him anymore, he wanted to curl up in ball on his little bed and cry. The feeling was so strong in him that he had to let something out as he chewed up another mouthful of parboiled sausage.
“God damnit,” he said through the food.
“What the hell did you just say?” his mama yipped from the living room.
Skeeter tried to stay silent, thinking she might let it go but no, his mama was in the kitchen standing over him in just a second or two and she snatched his plate up with a big frown on her face. It was nothing new, she wore that frown all the time ever since his daddy died.
“Foul mouthed little boys don’t get to eat,” she said as she walked his plate over to the trash bin and dumped every bit of it.
No daddy and no Vienna sausages and no horses and no cattle and no rustlers and no open ranges and no big-headed catfish that eat anything you throw to them, he thought. God damnit god damnit god damnit.
Skeeter all of a sudden wasn’t sure if he’d said this out loud or not and he looked up at his mama. His face was hot and that meant it was probably red too. She was looking at him hard but not saying anything. But before she could react, he realized that it didn’t matter no way. Wasn’t nothing left for her to take from him. Except maybe Millie. He got up and walked straight past his mama with a cowboy’s nod and went outside and patted that old sow on the head and asked her if she was up for one more ride.
Joshua Trent Brown is a writer from North Carolina and a fiction editor at JAKE the mag. He has fiction in more than a dozen cool publications like HAD, JMWW, and A Common Well Journal. He's also a novelist who's looking to become a published novelist, if you know a guy. You can read more of his work at https://trentbrownwrites.squarespace.com/fiction or find his stupid ideas on Twitter @TrentBWrites.