the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 456, Jan. 26, 2004
George Herbert (1593-1633)
“It’s horrible. I’ve heard them bleat
Before you cut the throat, and I’ve seen
The fear in their dumb eyes. What it must by like,
I wonder, to die.”
—Cain to Abel in “Cain” from The Next
Room of the Dream by
Howard Nemerov
One night, it was right before Billy was
going to start at the community college, Jean was sick. Had stomach something
from eating crabs a guy brought into the gas station. The guy had just been out
to the coast and had all this boiled crab in a cooler in his trunk. Jean gets
to remembering France when he was a kid and stuffs himself with it, right out
of the cooler. He’s sick, like immediately, and has to go home and lay around
puking and what not. I didn’t see him again until after Billy was dead.
I got nothing to do after work, so I walk
up to the diner and slide into a booth, get some coffee. I’m just watching
people. Same people I always see in there. Mr. Reynolds who owned the
barbershop before the Supercuts put him out of business always sits at the
counter and gives Bonnie hell. Reverend Smith from the Presbyterians comes in
to read the paper and eat a pork chop. A couple of mechanics from the garage amble
in after they close the shop. People like that. People who I always knew and
only remember when I tell a story.
I’m about ready to go, thinking of
walking up to the library before it closes, and in slides Maria. She asks about
Billy and wonders where Jean is. I give her the lowdown. It’s a big deal Jean
got sick, from a stranger’s crabs, of all things. We talk a while. She tells me
what she’s reading, some novel about a guy who flies airplanes in the First
World War. I tell her about this mystery story I’m reading by Agatha Christie,
the one on the train.
Well, it starts getting late and I ask
her if she wants to go down to Simple’s and drink a few beers. It was a nice
night, cool, no wind. Simple’s isn’t crowded. It’s pretty thin, as a matter of fact.
Harold Williams is playing bad music on the jukebox and some teachers up at the
high school are playing pool. There’s a couple of bikers in there. That’s it.
We take a table and order a pitcher. Then
another. Pretty soon, we’re both pretty looped, whining about being in the next
morning to work. I hadn’t been late or sick all summer, and I’m thinking I’ll
call old Dolan at the nursery in the morning and be sick. She says maybe that’s
a good idea. Pretty soon, we both got our minds made up. We’re sitting there,
drinking beer, talking about stuff. Williams shifts from crappy music to Patsy
Cline and it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world, getting my ear
pierced.
We’re all sloppy. We start dancing to
Patsy Cline songs. People in the bar are looking at us. But it’s all real
friendly. I don’t even have her close enough to feel her tits against me. Drunk
as I am, I’m thinking of it. But this is Maria, and I think, she sells
insurance, maybe even she’s got a career. I’m just a dirt monkey over at
Dolan’s. Besides, Billy’s got a thing for her, though he doesn’t show it much.
She probably doesn’t even know.
When I bring it up to her—earring, I
mean—I tell her it’s something I been thinking abut a while, she says she knows
where I can get it done and get a pair of earrings, all for about fifteen
bucks. I figure I’m never taking it out, so two earrings is enough for a
lifetime.
About the time Simple’s closes, we
arrange to meet for breakfast at the diner after we call in sick. I wake up
with a headache and wondering how, exactly, I made it home because I can’t
really remember much. But I remember to meet Maria. That wasn’t something I was
going to forget.
I get there and she’s already got coffee.
I don’t eat much, just an English muffin, and we go over to Lorene’s Salon over
on 14th Street. I’m pretty spooked about it, getting an earring’ll change the
way the guys at the nursery look at me. But I’m ready to go through with it.
“Which side would you like your earring
on?” Lorene asks. I tell her I don’t know what’s right, left or right, and it
doesn’t matter much anyway. Most everyone knows I like girls, so who cares.
Maria just standing there smiling.
“Well, you’re standing there, just put it
in that side,” I tell her. So she puts this little gun up to my right ear.
They say it feels like a bee sting, but I
say it hurts like hell, like putting that ear lobe on an anvil and hitting it
with a hammer. After I get done squirming around, Maria holds up a mirror and I
see it’s in.
We spend the rest of the day laying
around in the park in the sun, reading books and getting over our hangovers.
After a while, we go over to the pool and spend more time reading there. I
can’t help but looking over my book at Maria in her swimsuit. Man, I think,
she’s good looking.
After I go home and take a nap, I go back
up to the diner to have some coffee and an ice cream. Maria comes in pretty
soon, sunburned except around her eyes. She kisses me on the cheek just as
Billy comes in the door.
“Goddammit,” he says, coming up to the
table. “I knew you were going to do this to me, you bastard. I knew it.”
I try to tell him it’s not like it looks.
But he sees my ear, and I got an earring, same kind as Maria. “Fuck. Goddammit.
You even went and got a damn earring to sorta cement the whole thing. You make
me so fuckin’ sick.”
And he slaps me as I’m sitting in the
booth. Just backhands shit outta me. Maria, she’s shocked, she doesn’t know
what to say.
And fucking Billy gets into his Chevelle,
a car he loves, and backs out onto Highway 7 right in front of a semi.
I can’t do anything but watch with my
mouth open. The truck never even brakes. Billy’s car rolls right up under the
wheels of the tractor. And then there’s just fire, it seems like. Cops come.
Firetrucks.
Maria left with the smoke still rising. I didn’t stick around after dark. But when they finally got him out of the car, they tell me, he was just cinders. Ashes. Livy Jackson, the trooper, says he was dead before the car took fire, which is something I can’t understand because it was like the car was on fire as soon as the truck hit it.
I used to see Maria sometimes. But it was
like she was nice but far away. Jean moved to Chicago to go to school. I quit
the nursery before the fall layoff and drifted around. Sometimes I get jobs,
regular jobs I keep for a while.
I ain’t been back to Harlin since the
accident. I just go where I want, Greyhound mostly. I keep the earring, and
sometimes guys think I’m gay when I’m not. But it doesn’t bug me. I read a lot.
That’s the way it goes.
I keep thinking I’ll go to see Jean in Chicago. But
as soon as the idea gets ripe, I remember we won’t really have much to talk
about. Except Billy Jenkins. And that’s no reason for me to go that far.
Today’s poems:
(a song for cakes and ale to the tune of Marty
Robbins’ “El Paso”)
First verse:
Lars Iceberg sails westward
on ol’ S.S. Gluten,
fists on his hips
he stands watch on the bow.
That Lars is a man
known for rootin’ and tootin’
Wheatstretch and hooch are his famous
cash cows.
Refrain:
Say, Lars Iceberg,
your future looks bright.
Oh, Lars Iceberg,
sail into the night.
With grain in your mane
and a gleam in your eye,
you’re just the lad
who can sail to the sky.
Second verse:
When Lars was a boy
he was hermaphroditic.
Onions and eggies
both of them
had he.
He grew into manhood
with help from a surgeon.
A life on the ocean
made him squeal with glee.
Refrain
Third verse:
Now Lars he plays paintball
on deck of ol’ Gluten
happy to splatter
his reds and his greens.
Lars, he does grow wistful
and, lo, reminiscent
when he peeks down there
at what’s not in his jeans.
Refrain (with flourish)
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