October 2008 | back-issues, fiction
by Philip C. Breakenridge
Beams of hazy sunlight stroked Christopher’s skin as he took his usual place at the window. The gently rustling drapes, a melancholy shade of mauve, fingered his thighs and calves carelessly like an inattentive lover. Peering out over the newly awakened city, Christopher inhaled the fragrance peculiar to a late spring morning in Vancouver. A lush, green aroma rich with the pungency of Japanese blossoms and lilac bushes clung to the air. Christopher closed his eyes, timidly inviting the quiet of the early day to wash over his nakedness. He envisioned what was ahead and shifted uneasily in the rigid wooden chair.
Christopher’s eyes flicked open, his body tensing. The familiar silhouette darkened the window across the way.
Suddenly, Christopher’s stomach churned painfully; a bizarre combination of reticence and excitement wrestled inside him. An icy tremor resounded through his body as his quivering hand crept up to explore the firmness of his own chest. It was still difficult for him. Christopher’s right nipple hardened under his fingertip’s chilly touch. He twisted it between his thumb and forefinger, conjuring a delicious sensation of pain. The sharply shooting twinges of agony freed him, releasing him from a disobedient body. Christopher’s escaped self hovered above, a shadowy apparition gazing down on a vacant shell.
Christopher felt the stranger’s anxious presence in the distance. It was time to begin.
Fiery streams of water consumed Christopher as the last traces of the morning ritual swirled down the shower drain. Numbness washed over him as he pondered the repulsiveness of being touched by hands other than his own: hands that had molested the bodies of other lovers, hands that had sweetly mussed the fur of filthy, dumbly-devoted house pets. The oversized washcloth resting on the edge of the tub invited him to scour away these thoughts, a foul grime slick upon his skin. He gripped the washcloth tightly, scrubbing until his pale, freckled skin flushed an angry red.
Exhausted, Christopher slid into a heap on the shower floor, swallowed by a thick, dank blanket of dewy steam. Consciousness slipped away from him.
The boy raised a bruised hand to block the sun’s fierce rays. The colorful shorts set his mother had placed out for him that morning glimmered in its bright beams. A tepid summer breeze danced on the backs of his spindly legs. He squinted, scanning the expansive greenness of the backyard. His eyes refocused as the formidable man came back into view.
His father crouched uncomfortably ten feet away on the meticulously-manicured lawn. He wiped away copious beads of sweat from his crinkled brow with a meaty, calloused hand. A sigh of exasperation escaped his mouth, unresisted.
“Okay, Tiger. This time I wanna feel it burn right through my glove.”
The freckle-faced boy grasped the baseball clumsily. He struggled to wrap his delicately boned fingers around its shape.
“Here it comes, Daddy.”
Using a madly hurled overhand pitch, Christopher threw the ball with all the might a six-year-old could muster. The boy’s miniature physique lunged forward as the fervent force of his throw sent him tumbling to his knees. For an instant, he cowered on all fours waiting for the call.
“You still throw like a girl. Get up. Let’s do it again.”
Christopher stared down at the grass wishing its fierce green blades would wind their way around his body and pull him down into the cool soil. Droplets of childish determination welled up in his eyes. They had been at this for four hours and he wasn’t getting any better. He was still a sissy.
“C’mon. Get up. Only girls give up.”
His father ran his hands through a coppery-colored brush cut and smiled smugly. His boy would thank him for this someday.
“I’ll show you how it’s done. I’ll pitch it to you. You catch it, then throw it back to me.”
The little boy stood up and brushed flecks of dirt off of his grass-stained knees, feigning the bravado of a major league player. He swallowed hard and braced himself for the impact of his father’s pitch.
“Are you ready?”
Christopher tugged at the ill-fitting leather glove that engulfed his left hand and nodded. His father didn’t hold back.
The force of his throw seared into the boy’s chest, throwing him onto his back. Christopher lay on the grass, winded, gasping for any faint wisps of air he could smuggle into his lungs. A raucous cough rattled his chest, bringing up with it a ghastly mixture of blackened blood and spittle. The putrid liquid oozed from the corners of his pink mouth and dribbled onto his chin. Christopher stared up at the awesome summer sky, a deliriously beautiful palette of soft blues. Its radiance mesmerized and comforted him as he floated upwards to embrace it.
Suddenly, the blackness of his father’s stern expression fell across the heavens, darkening the magnificent sky like an ominous eclipse.
An hour passed before Christopher felt composed enough to leave his sodden refuge. Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped a plush towel around his narrow waist. With a sweep of his hand, he cleared the bathroom mirror of steam. His estranged self stared back at him as he ran his water-pruned fingers through an untamable mass of wavy hair. The sun had already turned it a shiny carrot-red. The murky blue pools of his eyes reflected back a sad vacancy.
The stranger had been coming every morning for over six months now. Christopher hated what his dark visitor made him feel. The detached connection that came with being watched was something Christopher both craved and despised. He was losing himself, a casualty of a sordid inner conflict. His carefully-constructed guise slowly peeled away, exposing a pinkish, tender sensualist flesh. Christopher craned his neck, bringing his face closer to the mirror. He poked at the finely etched lines tugging at the corners of his eyes. Maybe he was better off lost.
Christopher stared out into the faintly glowing blackness. The night air had an edge that prickled the flesh of his exposed chest. The pearlized buttons on his finely-tailored dress shirt were all undone. Its crisp cotton shape billowed on the breeze. Christopher summoned all the energy he could and directed it towards the shaded window. His eyes cautiously scanned the prodigious high-rise that looked especially foreboding after dark. The cold, grey building gazed back at him, its scattered illuminated suites forming a menacing grimace. Christopher focused on the dimly lit apartment across the way. Nothing happened.
He knew it wasn’t time yet. The shared addiction was precise and calculated. Christopher slid the frosted glass door back into place, shutting out the night.
Morning slowly crept up on Christopher. He awoke from a restless slumber and took his post earlier than usual. The familiar anxiety embracing him made the wait excruciating. Tiny beads of perspiration blanketed his body causing him to shiver slightly in the crisp morning air. A distorted collage pieced together with visions of other mornings just like this one spun in his head. The endless effort given to resisting the perversion of his own thoughts wore him down.
The masculine frame stepped out of the shadows, bringing Christopher to his senses. The stranger was already aroused. Christopher closed his eyes and laid back in the chair, balancing himself on the very edge. He gently ran his hands over the expanse of his chest. The stranger liked this – Christopher felt his approval. He lowered his hands, examining his rippled midsection with probing fingertips. He moved deliberately, pausing to feel each section of taut abdominal muscle.
Growing impatient, the stranger looked over his shoulder, into the black of his abode. Christopher gave him what he wanted. The stranger watched intently, fixed in the moment by an eerie stillness.
Christopher’s body convulsed with the force of his climax. He lay trembling, listening to the hurried pant of his own breath. He slowly peeled his eyes open. The stranger was pleased. The dark figure vanished into the obscurity of his apartment. Christopher was alone.
Christopher peeked through the sad drapes. Two dreary and vacuous weeks had passed since the stranger had stopped coming. The desertion had caused something inside of Christopher to short circuit, making the maintaining of his make-believe daily life unbearable. He was a fraud, a disconnected being, an unlovable abomination. Christopher had stopped leaving the apartment a week ago. The sour stench of his unwashed body grew thick upon the stale air inside. A dense, coarse stubble had claimed his smooth face. He ate only when the growlings of his belly demanded it; sleep came to him infrequently, in dreamless and gloomy waves.
Christopher’s robe slipped into a neat pile on the living room floor. He slid the balcony door open and stepped out into the midday rays, the sun’s brightness assailing his dulled eyes. He hoisted himself onto the wall of his balcony, his bare feet gripping the rough concrete ledge. Christopher closed his eyes and inhaled calmly. The thought of erasing a mistake was strangely soothing to him.
Christopher leaned forward, letting go of his balance. He simply let go.
June 2004 | back-issues, poetry
THE ANGEL OF FUGUE
BY ANDRES KAHAR
______________
Fugue
Noun 1. Fugue – dissociative disorder in which a person forgets who they are and leaves home to creates a new life; during the fugue there is no memory of the former life; after recovering there is no memory of events during the dissociative state
______________
Underemployment was a nasty, yet increasingly familiar, state of being for his generation of university-educated talent. Well, that’s what Guy Burgess kept telling himself.
Guy, you see, was trained as a journalist. Guy even worked as a journalist. But, one barely remembered chain of events later, Guy ended up on the fringes, working in a call centre.
______________
DATE: Dead of winter
PLACE: DeMens Market Research call centre (Toronto)
______________
Guy Burgess really hated his job. He really hated talking to angry North Americans about credit card debt. But he didn’t know how to break the cycle of never-ending, evening call centre shifts — it was as if he’d been there forever, and always would be.
He was suffering from some weird kind of middle-range memory loss, so the events leading up to his employment at DeMens call centre were fuzzy, shadowy outlines.
One day, he considered seeking medical or psychiatric help for his self-diagnosed condition, but that idea was nixed pronto: Guy was certain that if any professional documented the details of his life, there’d be a forensic trail leading straight to his Internet porn cache. He’d seen enough Internet pop-ups warning of likely job loss should any authority figure find out he was a regular visitor to www.sloppysausage.org.
Guy Burgess hated the thought of losing his job.
Bong-Bong: “Guys ride around in BMWs and pick up women. They pay her money to do it with them. Always end with the money shot. They call themself ‘Bimmer Bangers.'”
That was Bong-Bong making conversation one shift. Bong-Bong was an amiable colleague of Guy’s at DeMens.
But whenever Bong-Bong got to talking like that at work, Guy got nervous. Guy’s eyes began to dart, and he’d sweat profusely, watching out for supervisors.
Guy: [voice slightly raised] “Look, Bong-Bong, I don’t know about norms in Manila, but sex for me is a straight-up enterprise. One man, one woman. No bells, whistles or Bimmers.”
Bong-Bong looked injured, and Guy returned to dialing numbers for the current credit card survey.
Guy must have scrolled through that survey on the computer screen at least 100 times. So, 35 minutes later, when Guy got a live respondent willing to do the survey, he was basically on auto-pilot, almost reciting the script from memory.
Only this time — possibly the 101st — was different. The script on the screen was being rewritten before his eyes. The DeMens preamble about confidentiality was being overwritten by the following sentence, in big block letters:
‘YOU ARE AN AGENT, GUY BURGESS. AWAKEN TO YOUR DESTINY.’
Guy: “Uh, Bong-Bong, look at this. Something messed-up is happening with my computer.”
But Bong-Bong’s feelings were still hurt over the ‘Bimmer Bangers’ exchange. He wiped a tear from his cheek, and he stared ahead at his own screen, frosty and silent.
Guy turned back to his computer screen: everything was back to normal: there it was: the DeMens confidentiality preamble he knew by heart, and nothing about him being an ‘agent’ or his ‘destiny.’
Some 24 hours later, Guy found himself staring at the same screen and the same script, with a phone receiver sweating against his ear. At least he assumed it was 24 hours later. He didn’t remember going home or doing anything else since his last shift. All he had to measure time by was the DeMens clock on the DeMens wall in the DeMens phone room.
A few hours into the shift, just as Guy was starting into a survey, the script on the computer screen began overwriting itself again:
‘WE CAN HELP YOU CHANGE YOUR FATE, GUY BURGESS. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.’
Guy: “Hey, Bong-Bong, something’s gone wrong here. My computer’s talking to me.”
Bong-Bong: [hostile, sarcastic tone] “No thank you, Neo. I see that movie too. Bong-Bong is not talking to you.”
So Guy left his cubicle to look for a shift supervisor.
Guy: “My computer’s messed up.”
Supervisor: “No, you’re messed up. How many times have we said no web surfing. Especially porn. Hit the bricks, Guy. You’re fired.”
When Guy turned back to the screen, his jaw sank. His monitor displayed a looped Reel-Video clip of a man humping a woman in the backseat of a car, while the cameraman’s member bobs in and out of the bottom of the screen, poking the overzealous woman in the cheek. Then, up came the logo: ‘BIMMER BANGERS.’
As Guy was escorted out of the phone room, he glared over his shoulder at Bong-Bong, who looked just as surprised as Guy.
Guy: “Et tu, Bong-Bong!”
The allusion may have fallen flat, but Guy’s accusation was understood. Bong-Bong shook his head in confused denial.
Guy sat on the cold steps in front of the DeMens building, oblivious to the growing snow storm. What the hell just happened in there? he asked himself, aloud.
Then he noticed a weird car thumping down the midtown street, gurgling to the curbside at DeMens HQ: it looked like one of those Russian cars Soviet spies drive in espionage movies. And this car looked Soviet alright: there were red stars, hammers and sickles spray-painted all over the rusted vehicle, and words emblazoned across the passenger’s side, in blood red: ‘FROM BAKU WITH LOVE.’
The passenger’s door opened, and out stepped an old man, about 80-years-old by Guy’s guess. He wore a gray chesterfield overcoat and a snap-brim hat. He was tall, cadaverous, almost spectral. He spoke to Guy in what sounded like a British accent, with traces of something else Guy couldn’t place.
Old man: “Hullo, Mister Burgess. Smashing to see you again.”
Guy: “Do I know you?”
Old man: “Oh, tosh! Do you know me?!”
The old man turned to the Soviet car for a moment, as if to cue a studio audience. Tobacco-shaded laughter emanated from inside the car.
Old man: “Yes, you know me. I might be your dearest and only friend. And I’m here to rescue you. Change your fate. Awaken you.”
Guy: “That was you! On the computer screen! How did you do that? Did Bong-Bong put you up to it?”
Old man: “You’ll find I can do many things for you, Mister Burgess. And, no, Bong-Bong had nothing to do with it.”
Guy: “Who are you, man?”
Old man: “Oh, I have so many names. But you can call me Peter.”
With those words, Peter gestured to the backseat of the Soviet car. And Guy, not having much to lose that evening, got up and stepped in.
Once inside, Guy was introduced to the driver, a massive bear of a man who seemed only to speak Russian. The driver really did resemble a bear in appearance, size and temperament.
Driver: “Privyet!”
Guy nodded hello, cautiously.
Peter: “This is Alesker. Alesker the Azeri. My bodyguard, among other things.”
Guy: “Oh, so you guys–?”
Guy winked and made an inappropriate clacking sound.
Alesker roared with fury.
Peter: “Heavens no, old boy! Our relationship is purely business. Moreover, we fancy birds as much as the next chap. All meat eaters here–eta ny pravda, da?!”
Alesker, still looking disgruntled, growled affirmative: “Da!”
Guy: “Where are we going?”
Peter: “To a place and time far from here, my boy!”
Alesker ignited the engine, and with that, seemed to ignite the entire sky. As the Soviet car shot off in the direction of downtown Toronto, the buildings and lights of the city were smeared with red, orange, yellow and finally white light, and the car seemed to lift off the road into midair.
Guy couldn’t see anything outside of the car — only white hot light.
Guy: “What the hell’s happening?”
Peter: “It’s called time travel, Mister Burgess. Don’t soil your trousers yet–we’re here!”
In an eye-blink, Guy found himself sitting at a dirty bar, between Peter and Alesker, drinking vodka. Guy spun his stool around to take in a room full of sinister-looking mafia types, all of them sporting shaved heads and leather jackets. Everyone seemed to be speaking Russian.
Several of the mafia types nodded obeisant greetings to Peter, the old man in the gray coat. Peter responded in fluent Russian. He then demanded something (in Russian) from the bartender — a TV transmitter.
Guy: “You took me here to watch TV?”
Peter: “Oh, you really are witless in this reality, aren’t you?”
Peter switched on the TV. The first images on the screen were of another looped Reel-Video clip from ‘Bimmer Bangers’ — picking up where the cameraman’s schlong prods its way to centre-screen, toward the woman’s moaning mouth.
The mafia types pricked to attention, and stormed the bar, clearly enthused by the old man’s program selection. But Peter switched the channel immediately.
The mafia types grumbled and groaned in protest.
Peter: “Malchiki! Zatk`nis!”
Obediently, the mafia types fell silent. They returned to drinking at their respective tables.
Guy turned back to the TV screen, and he was astonished to see his own image on the screen — albeit thinner, healthier, younger. It was as if the old man was playing a home video of Guy several years earlier, circa his undergraduate years — except these were images of Guy in a life that never happened.
Guy: “Hey, man, that’s me! Don’t remember that, though.”
Peter: “Take mental notes. Retain as much as you can. Prepare to be overwhelmed–you big girl’s shirt.”
As the old man spoke those words, Guy felt as if he were sucked into the TV screen, becoming a real-life observer of the video images.
The images appeared before Guy like real life, but not real-time — all images rushed past him like a river, everything in fast-forward. Like dreaming, on Benzedrine.
Here’s what Guy saw, or at least what he remembered:
______________
Guy is walking through what looks like an old European city, along cobblestone streets …
Then he is in a room full of shouting people in suits and ties … Guy’s taking notes …
It’s an important news conference …
Then Guy’s embracing a beautiful, young woman, who calls him by the wrong name, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern of his at the moment … they have sex in what appears to be an office, on a poorly constructed table … Guy performs badly … she rolls her eyes and gets dressed … he apologizes, offering up explanations neither of them believe …
A gunshot rings out, shattering glass … Guy runs for cover with a burly middle-aged man, a friend … they catch a glimpse of a dark figure atop a roof wearing a mask … the gunman, the shooter … an assassin …
There are alarming international headlines on the front pages of international papers … an international crisis … terrorism … bombs … sex scandals …
Guy is at the centre of the crisis, and it’s all up to him … there’s a book deal … a big book deal …
Another shot rings out …
Guy’s vision goes black, in a filthy men’s room …
______________
And, in an eye-blink, Guy is returned to the backseat of the Soviet car, which is idling outside of DeMens HQ in midtown Toronto.
Guy: “What the hell just happened?”
Peter: “I gave you a glimpse of an alternative.”
Guy: “I was a journalist. A writer. That was a pretty cool life.”
Peter: “Um, yes, and the fetching bird on the table–er–it happens to many blokes. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mister Burgess.”
Guy: “There was another gunshot. Did I die?”
Peter: “Of that I am not certain–old boy.”
Guy: “So, when you say alternatives, are you saying I have a choice about what life I can have?”
Peter: “Let’s not jump the gun, Mister Burgess. I’m not a magician. And you are bounded by your reality, after all.”
Guy: “So what was the point of showing me all of this?”
Peter: “Oh, to make you think about things, I suppose. Tease you a little.”
Guy was no longer sure what to think about anything. At that moment, he couldn’t remember much from his real life. He couldn’t remember much from the old man’s video feed of his alternative life.
Guy only remembered the beautiful young woman. And the book deal.
Guy cleared his throat, and he stared hard at the old man.
Guy: “So, what now?”
Peter: “You go back to work. And you think about things. Think hard.”
Guy: “But I was fired from my job. I don’t have a job to go back to.”
Peter: “Oh, right. Hmm. Well, then, old boy, think of this as an opportunity.”
______________
Andres Kahar is a Toronto-based writer. He’s worked as a journalist in Europe & the ex-USSR. He’s worked in a Toronto call centre. Sometimes, his thoughts have wandered to themes of women and book deals.
© Andres Kahar 2004
April 2004 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
Illness smells out the trite like beagles
with noses near to the ground —
like a mother who knows
her daughter’s been smoking
in the bathroom downstairs
a dozen walls away from her.
Suddenly this narrowing
of breakdown lanes, of space to roam,
sidewalks cracking from the ice.
Slippery sunsets, stretching winters,
each hour of spring fresh popcorn
to a starving duck.
Truth becomes too short to hold —
like mustache trimmings in the sink,
like bones that go brittle and snap,
like hay that meets immutable rain.
Don’t we wish it didn’t take
a teapot growing cold and chipped
to make us want the chamomile.
The poem is a rose to press;
the rose is a poem to read —
this might be it
for both the garden and the light.
*First Published in Lily Magazine
March 2003 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
Stewart couldn’t decide how he felt about the war in Iraq. He went back and forth. One day he was for it, the next day against. Meanwhile he monitored the news from the Middle East with a growing impatience. Was war a fait accompli, or was the buildup merely a bluff?
Stewart did not like to wait, and he did not like uncertainty. What bothered him most about the affair in the Middle East was that he couldn’t make up his mind about the proper course of action. He liked being right, and he could live with being wrong, but not knowing what to do or think was driving him crazy.
His friends were no help. Monday Stew had sent an e-mail to several dozen of his friends and relatives asking for their views. Wednesday morning he was more uncertain and confused than ever.
“What a bunch of wafflers!” he proclaimed. He wrote back thanking those who had responded and totaled up the score. “It’s Doves 9, Hawks 4,” he reported. In fact, few had a clear-cut, yes or no opinion.
The next morning, Stew leapt out of bed with more than his usual enthusiasm to greet the day. “What’s wrong?” his wife asked, turning on a light.
“Charlie horse,” Stew replied. He limped into the bathroom.
When the cats were fed and the coffee made, Stew went into the small bedroom in their home that they called the office and turned on the computer. It was time for the latest episode of his favorite soap opera, Saint George and the Dragon.
Stew read an op ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor that warned against the irresolute use of power in the service of confused policy. He also read a stirring defense of the looming war by John McCain in the New York Times. In the senator’s view, it was a fight for peace, liberty, and justice.
A cartoon by Bob Gorrell was good for a chuckle. The drawing pictured Tony Blair proposing several benchmarks that Saddam Hussein must meet to avoid war, number one being surrender.
That afternoon Stew sent an e-mail to a friend telling him that he had won the Wishful Thinking award for his response to Stew’s query about the war. The friend had written,
[i]Here’s what I hope happens. Assuming the US goes in: the Iraq military caves in after a few days of onslaught and Saddam is removed (eliminated?) and the Iraqi officials and general populace accept a US engineered governmental change. The campaign is short, our economy rebounds (Osama is finally killed) and the stock market goes up and the birds sing and the sky is blue and we all hold hands and sing “We are the World.”[/i]
Later that day Stew received an e-mail from another friend, a retired doctor. It was an article by Elie Wiesel reprinted from the Los Angeles Times. We had a moral obligation to intervene said the Nobel Peace laureate. Hussein was a madman with an arsenal of unconventional weapons, which was why we had to deal with him sooner rather than later.
That evening, at dinner, Stew told his friend Nix about the Wiesel article. “It really set my teeth on edge,” he said. Stew and several of his A.A. friends were seated at big, round table at an Italian restaurant. They had given their orders to the waitress, and Nix had asked Stew if he was going to change his bet on Iraq. They had been arguing about the outcome of the buildup in the Middle East for weeks. Nix said there wouldn’t be a war, and Stew said there would.
Stew told Nix that what he learned from his e-mailed request for his friends’ opinions was that he really didn’t want to hear it if it supported the case for war. Nix replied that it was like when a newcomer in A.A. asks his sponsor a question. “When the sponsor tells him what he thinks, the new guy gets angry,” Nix said.
Every Saturday and Sunday Stew and Nix went for a two-mile walk in a local business park. They walked for the exercise, but they also enjoyed the conversational give and take.
That Sunday Stew asked Nix for his opinion about the war. “I know you think it won’t happen,” Stew said, “but do you think it should? Are you for or against sending in the troops?”
Nix replied that it was hard to know because we didn’t have enough information. “The government is lying to us,” he said. Nix said he thought the war was more about oil and Israel than they were letting on.
“All in all, I’d have to say, no, I’m not for the war,” Nix said. “On the other hand, the President has drawn a line in the sand, so I suppose he can’t back down now.”
Stew nodded his agreement.
That afternoon, another one of Stew’s A.A. friends e-mailed him a petition against the war. He was supposed to add his name to the list and send it on to all of the people he knew. There were 335 names on the list, many of them from France and Sweden. Stew forwarded the petition to Nix and then deleted it.
The following night, at an A.A. meeting, Stew apologized to Nix for sending him the petition. “The devil made me do it,” he said. Stew knew that Nix, a burly Vietnam vet, did not like peace marchers and anti-war protesters.
Nix asked Stew if he had heard the President’s speech that evening. Stew said yes, and Nix asked him what he thought of it. “I thought it was good,” Stew said.
“Me, too,” Nix said.
Earlier that evening, the President had issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that in effect signaled the beginning of the war. What the people at the meeting seemed to like best about the speech were the comments directed at the French.
The topic for the meeting was boundaries. The secretary picked that topic, he said, because he was having trouble at home, and he couldn’t fix the problem. He didn’t like the feeling that he wasn’t in control of his life, he said.
When the secretary called on Stew, he said that he used to have problems with boundaries, but he didn’t anymore. He had learned to say no, he said.
When it was Nix’s turn to talk, he said that he agreed with Stew. It was a matter of self-esteem. “It’s hard,” he said, “but you have to learn to set healthy boundaries.” He told the story about his older son who got in trouble with the law one night and ended up in Juvenile hall. Nix and his wife let him stay there four days. When the boy got out, Nix asked him how he liked jail, and his son said he didn’t. He never went back, either, Nix said.
After the meeting, several of the men gathered in the parking lot to socialize for a few minutes before going home. One of the men passed around a copy of a photograph of a U.S. trooper in the middle of the desert. The trooper was urinating on a monument to Saddam Hussein.
Tuesday morning the news was that Saddam would stay and fight and that U.S. and British forces were massed by the frontier in Kuwait. The arms inspectors had packed up and left Iraq, as had the French and Greek envoys. Military experts expected a war to begin at night–though a full moon might lessen the cover darkness might give.
Meanwhile, the nation was put on alert against terrorist reprisals. Three government ministers had resigned in Great Britain, and French President Jacques Chirac claimed that there was no justification for the decision to use force. The Russian President and German Chancellor were also unhappy.
The Iraq people stocked up on food and other essentials. In Baghdad several thousands Iraqis held a government-organized demonstration and urged a jihad, or holy struggle, against invaders.
In the Kuwait desert, U.S. and British troops packed up tents and prepared to invade. “Finally, we’re going somewhere,” said a sergeant with an army engineering unit.
Elsewhere in the world, oil prices dropped 10 percent and stocks jumped. World opinion on the wisdom of the war was divided. Some feared more violence in the U.S. and beyond. The U.S., Britain, Spain, and Italy accused doubters like France, Germany, and Canada of repeating the mistakes of those who appeased Adolph Hitler in the 1930s. Meanwhile, resistance to helping U.S. forces appeared to be softening. Turkey was said to be ready to open its airspace. The previous day, Australia had announced its support for the U.S. position, and Poland said that it was sending two-hundred troops.
That evening when his wife got home from work, Stew told her that he thought that most people would be relieved once the war got started.
Paula gave him a look that said, “Speak for yourself.”
The next morning, before he got up, Stew lay in bed watching one of their cats play a game that she played every morning. The cat, a calico, first chased the other cats off the bed, then, immensely pleased with herself, she lay down on top of the comforter and began to chase her tail.
January 2003 | back-issues, fiction
by Chris Duncan
([email]cd********@*ol.com[/email])
Skinny Steven Hilton stares at his bucktoothed continence in the mirror of a Shoney’s restroom. He absorbs critically his floppy ears, his close-set eyes, his one eyebrow, his oddly feminine lips, full and red, chapped, flaking, better looking from afar. He bites a piece of loose skin from his bottom lip and swallows it. He tilts his head toward the ceiling and stares as best he can into his formidably sized nostrils into which he rams thumbs and index fingers and grabs as many nose hairs as he can. He yanks. He yanks. His eyes fill with tears. Fuck’at shit hurts, he thinks, smiling dumbly to himself. He again stares at his buckteeth, stained brown from dipping over three thousand cans of long-cut wintergreen Skoal. He ruefully hears his dead daddy commenting: “You could eat corn on the cob through a wire fence with those teeth, boy!” Steven grimaces away the thought and pats down a cowlick. Steven is trying to be happy. No, he is happy. He is! He’s just graduated from Alliance Truck Driving Academy of Bristol, Virginia, and he and his girlfriend and his mom are celebrating. The girls are eating their salads. Steven has just drained what he calls his anaconda and flushed his venom down the dirty urinal. Steven is thirty. Steven is going places. Stephen imagines himself adopting a monkey, a capuchin perhaps; his monkey will wear a baseball cap, and they’ll be like BJ and the Bear, solving mysteries, stopping crime, and hanging out with hot girls in Jacuzzis.
“Oh, God,” says a meek voice echoing from behind the far stall door. “Is anybody out there?”
Steven freezes. Social mores have just had a car wreck. People aren’t supposed to talk from behind the stall doors. Steven’s heart is pounding like a scared bird’s, only half shot, broken winged.
“I can’t believe this. Oh, Jesus Christ!” continues the voice. “Somebody? Um, I need a little assistance.”
Steven doesn’t know what to do. He’ll get his Mom.
Steven exhales and starts tiptoeing toward the door.
“Hey, you,” says the voice. “Listen, aw, Jesus…um, hey, I need some assistance. Are you there? Huh? I know you’re there-or here, rather. I heard you-hear you. Don’t go. Jesus Christ, man, I need some help in a bad kind of way.”
Stephen primps nervously his moustache, which he has just recently waxed into an ostensibly sexy handlebar, a la Rolly Fingers. He stares at his fingers, dry and cracked, rough, cut up, calloused, trimmed short save for the right thumb on his right hand. He forgot to cut that one. He had been sitting on the toilet trimming his nails last night when Missy waltzed into the john, oblivious to the stench, saying, “Honey bunny? Baby? Mommy wants some dick.”
Missy had gotten her hair frosted earlier at PJ’s Scissor Trix and felt sexy. Both sides of her neck shone brightly with a redneck microcosmic aurora borealis of hickeys: bluish green, yellow, so blatant and ignorant, sometimes shimmering with stupidity instead of brilliance. In one of the hickeys on the left side of her neck, inside an amalgam of muted yellow and washed out blue is a penis shape, or maybe a Pepsi bottle, depending upon the angle the hickey is seen, or how one squints one’s eyes.
“What?” Stephen asks. “Huh?”
“Come here. Please. I-I-something is wrong,” says the voice. “Your discretion would be appreciated.”
“My what?” says Stephen. “Huh?”
“First of all-please, please, please, lock the door. Do it right now. Please! Just lock it. We can’t have a lot of people parading in and out of here. Not now. Gene will be wondering where I am. Christ, how fucking ridiculous this whole thing-well, never mind that-just, please, lock the door. I need your help with this. You’ll be rewarded-financially, you understand; I can assure you of that. Now, now, please: just do it. Lock the door,” says the voice, thin and squeaky, mousy, fragile, and tiny. Stephen mulls, That feller sounds like he might be a kware.
Stephen clears his throat and dead bolts the door. “Alright, buddy. I’ve locked the door. Everything’s gone be OK. You got diarrhea? It’s going around. Missy shit her brains out a couple of nights ago. Missy’s my girlfriend. Talk about the stock in Lysol going up, whew-”
“Not to cut you off-I so appreciate your help-but, um, just to be sure. The door is locked, correct? Gene’s out there, you see. Gene’s my boss-the owner of the circus.”
Stephen tugs on the door, testing it. “Yeah. It’s locked. Look, I think I’ve got some Imodium tablets out in the tru-”
“I’m not sick. I don’t have diarrhea. It’s not that. The door is locked, right?”
Stephen sighs, looks at his watch, and shakes his head. “I don’t mean to be rude but the girls are about finished with their salads, and I ordered catfish-”
“Dear God, man, please don’t leave me-not like this. You there?”
“I’m here, feller. I’m here. And before you ask, the goddamn door is locked. You need some underwear or something? Cause I gotta go. I don’t mind helping a man out but-”
“Come here.”
“Where?”
“To the outside of the stall. Please.”
Steven bends down low to the floor, looking for shoes. He sees none.
“Where’s your feet, feller. I don’t see your feet. What are you, a midget or something?”
“Well, I prefer little person but euphemisms aside, yes, I’m a midget. I’m in the far stall, the one next to the wall. Come here.”
Stephen smiles and twists the right side of his sexy mustache. “Hey, wait a minute. You’re with the circus! You’re one of them little fellers with the circus. I saw y’all in Saltville last night. I’ll bet you were one of them little fellers that kept coming out of that pink Volkswagen. That was funnier than hell. Y’all just kept coming, one after the other. I said, ‘Missy, look at all them little midgets coming out of that car.’ Man, that was a hoot, brother. Missy laughed and laughed. I think she peed on herself when one of y’all midgets started juggling knives or whatever the hell they was. I don’t know why, but Missy thought that was funnier than shit.”
“I’m sure Missy’s sense of humor is simply bubbling over with a wit that would put Oscar Wild to shame,” says the voice.
“Huh?” answers Stephen, now standing in front of the midget’s stall door.
“Never mind. Now, um, crawl underneath the door so I can talk with you.”
“You can talk with me now, feller-with me out here. I ain’t into glory holes or any of that rest-stop kind of shit. That there’s some fucked up shit, feller. Now, I’m fixing to leave and-”
“Who said anything about glory holes? I just want to converse with you, face to face. OK? I need your help. How many ways can I say it? I’m desperate, sir. I’m desperate as desperate can be.”
Stephen scratches his neck and then glances at his watch. “Missy and Mom are waiting, little man. Listen, uh, I’ll tell the manager that you’re sick or whatever, and he’ll come and help you out. Sorry, chief, but I got to get to the damned salad bar before my fat-assed girlfriend wipes out everything. Missy can put the shit away.”
Stephen practically runs to the restroom door. He’s unlocking the deadbolt when he hears the voice say something else; the inflection of the voice is different, somehow transcendent. The voice, though girlishly high, is desperate but calm as an ocean after a hurricane.
“Huh?” says Stephen, frozen in place.
“I said I’ve got a gun. I don’t want to use it. But I’ve got one, and I’m pointing it at the back of your head.”
Slowly, Stephen relocks the door. “Did ya hear that, little feller? Door’s locked. Did ya hear the click? Huh? I locked’er back, little feller. Now don’t you go shooting. I just graduated from truck driving school and everything, and I don’t need no damned bullet in the back of my head. I mean, shit, you probably can’t shoot worth a fuck, you being a midget and all, but you might luck one up and-”
“Shut up.”
“You’re telling me to shut up? Shut up, you say. Do you realize that I finished in the top ten percent of my class, little man? Do ya? You need to watch how you talk to me. I just came in here to drain the main vein, the old anaconda, and I don’t need your bull-sheet. You’re lucky I don’t bust that ass for ya, little man. Why I’d treat you like the goddamn redheaded stepchild you are, punk ass. Why, why, why I’d stomp a mud-hole so far up your ass I’d-”
“Shut up. You shut up, or I’m pulling the trigger.”
The midget lay on his naked belly on the floor of the restroom, looking like a soldier on a recon mission. The midget is bald, wears small, chic rimless glasses. He sports a well-groomed red beard. A tattoo is carved into his forehead saying Frodo 4-Ever; each letter has its own font and color. With both his chubby hands, he holds a snub-nosed .38, its barrel locked on Stephen’s head.
“Turn around. And cut the commentary.”
A small nervous trickle of urine snakes its way down Stephen’s right pant’s leg.
“Huh?” says a bewildered Stephen, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The midget is going to kill him. Sure as the world turns. The midget is going to kill him. Wasn’t it just last night that Missy jacked him off while he was sitting on the shitter? Wasn’t it earlier today that he graduated from truck driving school? Wasn’t it ten minutes ago that he stole a chickpea from the salad bar and threw it at least three feet in the air-same height as the midget-before catching it acrobatically in his ugly gullet? Fun stuff. Alive stuff. Damn it, what about all the fun stuff that had been happening to him? All these thoughts, congealed and squashed, catalyze a river of more cold, panicky piss to stream down his right leg (Stephen’s a right hanger). The midget smirks.
“Shut the fuck up. You need to shut the fuck up and turn the fuck around and walk the fuck over here,” says the midget.
Stephen primps his handlebar as he pirouettes slowly toward the midget. “You sure cuss a lot for a midget, feller.”
“Quite calling me a midget. From here on out I’m a little person to you. Got it?’
Before Stephen can say ‘Got it,” someone impatiently knocks at the door.
“I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES! I’VE GOTTA GO!” says an old man’s voice from outside the restroom. Stephen and the little person lock eyes.
The little person calmly tells Stephen, “Tell him you’re sick. Tell him to give you ten more minutes.”
Stephen inhales deeply before he cranes his head toward the restroom door. “Buddy, I’m sick’ern a dog. Give me ten more minutes.”
Stephen and the little person are quiet, listening for a response from the other side of the door. They hear only the white-noise of a busy Shoney’s on a Saturday evening: clanging silverware, a hundred conversations happening at once, the occasional piercing wail of a ticked-off toddler.
The little person clears his throat. “This has got to happen now. It just has to. You-what’s your name?”
Stephen, finally overcome by his terror, starts to cry. “My name’s St-Stephen. Stephen Hilton. I don’t want to die, little man-er, little person, I mean.”
Impatiently, the little person slides out from under the stall. He is naked and muscularly formed. Between his legs hangs a horse cock, long and thick. Stephen can’t help but stare in awe at the midget’s impressive genitals. What God didn’t give the little man in height, He compensated for in dick size. Stephen nervously tweaks the right half of his handlebar while muttering more to himself than to the little person: “Now that’s a cod.”
Ignoring Stephen’s rhetorical compliment, the little person says, “Stephen Hilton, I’m Marvin Casey.”
Stephen is not hearing Marvin. Stephen stares at the .38. Stephen has not blinked in three minutes.
Marvin continues, “Unfortunately, things have got to happen this second. I’m transporting myself tonight. Tonight is the night I free myself from my captives.” Marvin looks up at the drop ceiling. “Thank you, Jesus, for giving me this day and this weird redneck man to help me. Thank you, Jesus.” Marvin waves his gun at Stephen. “Aren’t you thankful?”
Stephen doesn’t know what to say. What if he says the wrong thing?
“Stephen, for Christ’s sake, don’t you have anything to be thankful for?”
Stephen smiles. “I graduated from truck driving school-top ten percent.”
Marvin smiles. “What do you say?”
“Thank you, Jesus,” says Stephen.
Marvin lowers the .38, pointing it toward the floor. “That’s good, Steven Hilton. That’s really good.”
“What do you want, feller?”
Marvin sighs. “Stephen Hilton, I need help getting out of the window, the one above the stall I just came out of. I’m trying to escape. I’ve got it all planned out. Tonight is the night. I’ve charted weather patters, wind directions-all my calculations, Stephen, say that tonight is the night. Now are you going to help me get out? Please help me? If I could reach that window, why, why-I’d already be airborne.”
“What the hell are you talking about, feller? Escape from who? Your momma and daddy?”
“Stephen, I’ll tell you all about it on the way to the launch pad. Right now, we’ve got to go.” Marvin walks toward Stephen and lifts the .38 until its barrel is only an inch away from Stephen’s nose. If Stephen weren’t already urine depleted, he would have surely wetted himself yet again. “OK OK OK! I’LL HELP YA!”
Marvin walks backwards to the stall. “The window is over here,” Marvin says, his voice sing-songy and excited.
* * *
“Why do I have to go naked, feller? Unlike you, I’m, I’m, I’m a grower not a shower, if you get my drift.”
Skinny Stephen Hilton and Marvin Casey stand in a secluded clearing near South Holston Lake. The mosquito filled night is alive with peepers and fish flops and cricket serenades and lightening-bugs and the lap lap lap of the lake’s giant hand clapping the edge of the shore as if trying to catch an interloper. At gunpoint, Stephen has driven himself and Marvin through Abingdon and onto route 11. “Put the pedal to the medal, mother fucker,” says a more excited than angry Marvin. Finally, after twenty minutes they park; Stephen kills the lights. Marvin asks Stephen to strip.
“You have to because this is a night of purity. My purity. And I’m not going to have my purity contaminated by the idiocy of clothing. Shuck it off, or I’ll have to use Mr. Grumpy.
Mr. Grumpy is the name Marvin uses in reference to his .38.
Stephen twists his mustache. Stephen is very angry. Stephen is being wronged. Stephen would love more than anything to shove Mr. Grumpy up this short little shit’s ass. Who the fuck knows what Missy’s thinking? Who knows what Mom is thinking? Who cares that this was supposed to be my night of celebration. Who gives a fuck if I can’t be happy one night of my life? This little bastard with his huge rod has robbed me of my night. My night! Short little fuck. Why, God, are you doing this to me? I don’t want to die-not like this. Why can’t I ever win?
“My mother gave birth to me in a public swimming pool,” says Marvin, waving his gun at Stephen. “Start stripping. Nobody even knew she was knocked up. She was skinny as a rail. Tiny. She was a sophomore in high school. She played basketball and volleyball. She was a sweet little thing. She knew I was growing inside her. She didn’t tell. She was afraid. She must have been so afraid. Take your fucking clothes off, Stephen!”
Stephen takes off his shirt. He begins unbuckling his belt.
“Her parents were God-squad members. My mom’s mom wore denim, the bow in the hair, no makeup, typical holy-roller. I’m not judging them. I’m sure they were good people. There you go, Stephen. It’s just a body. Yep, you are a grower. Anyway, nobody knew that I was growing inside my mom. I didn’t want to grow. I held off as much as possible. Don’t you see, Stephen? Each cell in my body divided with me kicking and screaming. I drug my feet. I held my breath, but I had to eventually breathe. What else could I do but come to the surface?”
Stephen stands among the mosquitoes and peepers and bats and stars, naked and simple, his hands cupped over his anaconda. Stephen can’t help but quickly glimpse at Marvin’s member, slowly jerking to life, rising to meet the stars. Stephen’s shrinking sex is hiding in its nest, impotent in its fear and release.
“Everybody called my mom Sweetie because she was such a sweet girl. Her daddy would say, ‘Sweetie pumpkin pie, I could just eat eat eat you up!’ And he’d hug her and kiss on her, and my mom would squeal. Everybody loved and hugged on Sweetie. She had naturally curly hair, a little pug nose, and sweet brown eyes. She was a sweetie, Stephen. She was. She was my mommy.”
Marvin and Stephen, a sequoia and a scrub pine, stand under the stars, asses aglow, and their backs shiny with a thin sheen of sweat.
“Bucky, my granddaddy, Sweetie’s daddy, why he’d fuck her hard. He would, Stephen Hilton. He’d fuck Sweetie because he could. He’d go into her room, paneled brown, the only picture a K-Mart print of a tacky whiter than white, blue-eyed Jesus kneeling next to a river in a ray of His father’s light. Bucky’d lift her denim skirt over her pug nose, leaving it draped over her fifteen-year-old blond head, blinding her with herself, and he’d fuck her. Then he’d pray for Sweetie, begging God to stop making his daughter do these things to him. He’d walk out of the room. He and Sweetie made me just like that. Those were my ingredients. Can you believe that, Stephen? Lift your hands up, Stephen Hilton. There’s nothing wrong with whatever you’ve got between your legs. Let Jesus see you whole. Lift up your hands. Close your eyes and touch his eyes.”
Stephen untwists his mustache, destroying his handlebar. He raises his hands above his head, feeling himself crawl from his nest.
“Sweetie loved me even though I was a sin. I was the sin itself. Hear my words carefully, Stephen. I was and am sin ITSELF. But Sweetie loved me. She tried to make me shrink into oblivion, back into sweet Jesus. She didn’t feed herself or me. She tried to help me not grow. She starved me as sweetly as she could. But I had to breathe. I ran out of breath. So I popped out of her and into the Glade Area Public Swimming Pool. Stephen, people will always remember that Sweetie birthed her baby in the Glade Area Public Swimming Pool. Sweetie thought her tummy was being ripped open from the inside. Her eyes bugged out. She didn’t know whether or not she was going to shit on herself or what. I happened in a blur, Stephen. I slipped out of her and somehow wiggled my way out of the side of her swimsuit. Sweetie looked at me hanging out of her, my eyes burning from the chlorine, my mouth gaped open; and, Stephen, I’m space walking in the water with my umbilical cord holding me to Sweetie. I couldn’t float away. I couldn’t disappear in the black. Sweetie stared at what she’d done until little girls and boys stared screaming and ‘oh my Gods,’ started raining down on our wet heads, Sweetie’s and my own.”
Stephen couldn’t help but ask, “Little feller, what the shit are you talking about?”
Marvin answers with a grin, “Stephen, I needed your ability to reach places I couldn’t-the window at Shoney’s mainly. You see, I must go back to the place from whence I came.”
Marvin’s red beard shimmers like fire under the starlight.
“What does whence mean?” asks Stephen, his hands on his hips.
“Inflated talk from a deflated little man,” says a still smiling Marvin, his erection now completely angled toward Cassiopeia.
Sweat moistens Stephen’s hairy stomach. A fine night mist enshrouds the two erect men as they stand, one in front of the other, funhouse distortions of one another with hands on hips, the .38 resting on the ground in between. The men’s bodies glisten with heat and moisture. However, sexuality is as absent from this scene as rational thought. The erection is indicative of a conscious longing on the part of Marvin and an unconscious longing on the part of Stephen. The hardness of the men in the soft, hot night is a hardness of the stiff peckers of dead men, their necks snapped, their bodies swaying from the end of a taunt rope. Their cocks are half dead and half alive, hard, yes, but longing not for the finite of the bounded woman, whose transport leads to nowhere. No, their cocks, the enormous on the short, and the short on the tall, long for the infinite transport that begins not with a gasp, then a contraction of ass muscles, and then pointless ejaculation. No, their cocks long for the infinite transport that begins with the asphyxiation of sweet death, followed swiftly by the hardness of cock reflecting a hardness of death, reflecting a softness of eternity, an endless cunt, then, finally, an eternal orgasm.
“You can either stay or leave,” says Marvin. “I’m not going to shoot. The gun’s dead. Hell, Stephen, it was never loaded.”
“I’m leaving then, feller. Missy’s gone be going out her mind with worry-not that you’d give a good goddamn, you little shit you. I’m gone put my clothes on. People might think I’m a switch hitter or an out and out fag or something,” answers a smiling, simple Stephen, stepping into his underwear and wishing his mustache was stiff and properly shaped.
Marvin doesn’t say goodbye; he starts walking toward an opening, maybe three feet high, camouflaged well in a gigantic wall of brush, leading to the dense forest guarding South Holston Lake. He leaves the impotent .38, a harmless Mr. Grumpy, lying on the ground.
* * *
Marvin fights his way through thick laurel, thorns, and scrub spruce trees before he reaches a small clearing in the brush. There it is, just a he left it: a new lawn chair and in its seat a plastic bag filled with balloons and string. Under the lawn chair is a smallish helium tank. Without hesitation, Marvin starts inflating balloons and securing them strategically to his lawn chair. In the distance he hears the loud smacking flop of a bass upon the lake’s surface. From this sound he is transported twenty years to an algae covered pond, not very big, muddy all around it, hardly a place to stand without getting dirty, without sinking up to your shins in the muck. The pond is on the outskirts of rural town, somewhere in Tennessee. The pond is a mile away from the rather pitiful excuse for a town square where the circus is setting up for tonight’s performance. Marvin has waddled away and found this oasis by accident. The day is August hot with a myriad of insects and birds filling the day to its brim. Caw Caw, cries a crow and Marvin answers back, Caw Caw. This conversation continues until the crow tires and flies away, perhaps to harass a hawk. Grasshoppers hop by the thousands and Marvin wishes more than anything he had a pole with which to cast for a bluegill. Sweat pours down Marvin’s tiny body, stinging his eyes, moistening his hands, and filling his ears. Marvin squints his eyes and sees the evaporating moisture escaping into the air like minute angels awakened from their sleep. Marvin glances down into the cloudy water, green and brown, tadpole filled, mosquito egg filled, and he sees a bluegill, tiny like him. He lowers a small hand and cups the fish and lifts it out of the water. The bluegill’s spines pierce Marvin’s hand, and he quickly flings it high into the air. The fish turns several involuntary summersaults in the air before it lands flush on one of its flat sides. Plap! The bluegill, stunned, rests on top of the water for a second or two before it leaks back into life, regroups, and swims back into the murky pond water.
Marvin smiles at his bleeding pricked hand. He decides to find another bluegill or perch or even a tadpole. Marvin decides to spend the next couple of hours tossing the pond’s children as high into the air as he can, and with every plap! Marvin is overjoyed though he doesn’t understand why. On this day in asphyxiating, wet August heat, Marvin knows that eternity resides somewhere within the plap! of the crashing fish into the surface of the dirty pond.
Now some seventy-five balloons are tied to the lawn chair that is kept bound to the earth by a piece of rope tied to the brush. Marvin, drenching wet from the soggy night and from his perspiration, climbs into the lawn chair and is about to cut the chair’s umbilical cord when he hears a voice.
“Little feller?” calls the voice. “Where are you? Come out come out wherever you are.”
Marvin shakes his head incredulously. “Are you alone, Stephen Hilton?”
Stephen emerges through the small opening in the brush cursing under his breath. “I was worried about you, little feller. Half of Abingdon is looking for you. Cops everywhere. I told Missy about you, and she’s afraid you gone off yourself or something. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you but listen, Missy’s on Prozac and that shit really works. Maybe you could start taking some of that shit. I’m telling you, little feller. You can even come live with me and Missy if’n you want to leave the circus. I’ll be on the road most of the time. We got room. Just don’t you be trying to bang Missy with that cod of yours, and we’ll get along just fine. Hey, wait a minute; maybe what you need is a piece of tale. Is that it, little feller? I seriously wouldn’t try that pole of yours out on another midget, er, I mean, little person. Hell, you’d be committing a homicide, you big dicked little shit you. Surely to hell we can find a woman who’s got a hankering for a fire hydrant up her privates. I’m just trying to help–”
Marvin smiles and then laughs mightily. “Cut the cord, Stephen. If you want to help me, cut the cord.”
Marvin kicks his feet back and forth while he sits in his lawn chair like a toddler sitting in his father’s recliner. He isn’t secured into his contraption in any way, but secure is his smile as he awaits lift-off.
“What the hell are you doing?” asks Stephen, unleashing a long stream of brown Skoal spittle.
“I’m going back from whence I came. I’m going back where I came from, Stephen. You don’t have to understand, but understand this: meeting you in the john at Shoney’s was no coincidence. I needed you, and you needed me. I’m sure of this. You’ll always remember me-even if it’s as a big dicked midget who held you up in a Shoney’s bathroom with an unloaded gun. That’s ok, Stephen Hilton. That’s ok. Memories are usually lies anyway.”
Stephen spits again, tweaks his mustache, newly stiff, curled, and quite sexy looking. He walks up to Marvin and grips the armrests of the lawn chair. “Missy told me to come get you. She said you were a desperate soul. She said she understands about feeling desperate. She said that I needed to see if I could save you.” Stephen spits. “What do you say about being my sidekick out on the road? I need a sidekick just like BJ-from the TV show. He had Bear. Look at you, you’re about the same size as a monkey.” Stephen slaps his hands together and laughs at the possibilities. “Hell, you could be my very own big peckered monkeyfied sidekick. Whatdyathink, letter feller?”
Frodo 4-Ever glows with a phosphorescent sheen in the sticky night. The rest of Marvin is slick with heat and anticipation. Marvin’s nose and beard drip sweat in a steady stream which slides down his slight body and fills his belly button, sticking to his pubic hair, settling in the creases where thighs meet lower abdomen. Even Marvin’s fingernails are covered absolutely with salty sweat, causing distorted reflections of the stars winking overhead. Mosquitoes and peepers and bird tweets and bass flops and lightening bug explosions and cricket chatter and clatter and the background hmmm of the star filled night paint a Jackson Pollack picture around Stephen and Marvin.
Before Stephen can say anything else, Marvin slashes the air violently with a Gerber knife, sharp as a scalpel, and severs the cord keeping him close to the ground. Immediately, Marvin falls away from the earth and as he rises, Stephen Hilton’s gaped mouthed, buck toothed face becomes smaller and smaller.
* * *
Marvin Casey looks down upon route 11, usually benign and without bite, but tonight is a twisting, writhing electric eel with fire trucks and ambulances and innumerable other vehicles racing toward the lake. Marvin has long since lost sight of Stephen. He rises and rises, and he begins to cry. His is a precarious position in the wobbly lawn chair. He is no longer sweating and drenching wet with himself. No, he is pale as snow. His nipples are wrinkly and cold. His balls are pulled tight to his body. He shivers. He hugs himself, but he is ashamed of his weakness. He curses all of the people in his life that have hugged their bodies so desperately, so tightly, trying unsuccessfully to keep out the cold.
Marvin spreads his arms, stops crying, and without a second though he slips easily from his lawn chair, wearing only the beginnings of a smile.
Stephen is standing with arms folded, surrounded by the kinetic night when there is a silence that cuts through the peepers and buzzing mosquitoes and the chatter of the policemen and firemen and onlookers. The silence is broken by the large plap! of Marvin Casey’s small body colliding with the surface of South Holston Lake.
[b]Author’s Note:[/b] Chris Duncan’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including Small Spiral Notebook, Intertext, Carve, Ygdrasil, Southern Ocean Review, and 3amMagazine. (c)2002.
