Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 21

Vietnam. Fucking Vietnam, fiction by William Trent Pancoast

The darkness started on my lunch break at the fender factory. I went out by myself that day, late in February with snow on the ground, yet with full sunshine, the sort of day that promises something but you know it can’t and won’t deliver anything. I drove to the local beer dock where I bought the usual six pack then sat in the parking lot with the truck windows down, a cold breeze filtering through the cab.

Down a couple of spaces from me, one of the guys from shipping was playing Billy Joel’s “Goodbye Saigon.” He had it turned up loud like you’re supposed to listen to that song, the anger of it shearing the hum of the factory in the distance. The song finished and he played it again, louder yet, the choppers, always the choppers in Vietnam, the fucking chopper war, blasting their rotors loud and obnoxious, the anger of the song blending with the arriving blackness of my mood, and it was 1966 again, us high school kids standing in the hallway looking at a picture of a guy who had graduated in the spring, just four months earlier. There on the bulletin board in the hallway was Tom Lane, a little guy, not athletic, not artistic or musical, not handsome, not anything that I could ever remember about him. But he was patriotic and dead. He had joined the Army and gone straight to Vietnam where he got blown the fuck up. So the school put his picture on the bulletin board in the main hallway, him kneeling in his fatigues holding his rifle and wearing his helmet, with a caption that read, “Tom Lane, killed in Vietnam last week.” That day in the hallway was the first I had ever heard of Vietnam.

I sat there in the parking lot thinking of Tom Lane and the next year of 1967 when Vietnam was plastered all over the TV screen every evening, guys getting fucked up in front of us, and a great big What the Fuck was forming in my high school brain. I pictured my dad, the Army Infantry grunt from the Battle of the Bulge who got through the rest of his life by consuming a hundred thousand dollars worth of alcohol, watching the news, eyes fixed on the little black and white screen but flitting over to me every once in awhile like he wondered what the fuck I thought about it, or if I even understood what it was going to mean to me. He never talked to me about Vietnam—what I should do—join up, run, get a deferment, not a fucking thing.

The next year I was a student at Ohio State University. That winter I got a phone call that a friend in my class from high school had been killed in Nam. He had been there a week and stepped on a land mine. His wife was one month pregnant when he died.

I sat thinking these things and seeing these images, thinking too of the day of the Kent State killings when my dad and I came to blows, and a fierce dark anger covered me completely, the Vietnam War upon me again, a sickness that haunted every citizen in America those years—Johnson and Nixon and McNamara sending nearly three million American kids to a fucking worthless jungle just because they could, like the kings of old. Pick a country and make war. The darkness of all things settled over me that day at lunch in the parking lot of the GM plant and I didn’t go back in the place.

I sat in the parking lot with nowhere to go now that I was back in the middle of the Vietnam War a half decade after the war’s end. Back in the darkness, not going down together in Vietnam with my classmates and 58,200 others who got blown up, got sold out by the government, for the glory of nothing. For Nothing.

A whole country with PTSD—the American Legion guys hating the hippies, and the hippies hating the government, the government killing us all, and moms and dads and kids at every crossroad and in every corner of the nation in constant sorrow for the lost or soon to be lost children, and the governor of Ohio ordering the murder of kids at Kent State University.

 

I was plenty drunk, me and several of the regulars, by the time John sat down on the bar stool beside me that evening. I could see that he was half in the bag too. “Hey. How’s it going?” I asked.

He just nodded.

“I got this,” I told the bartender.

John nodded again.

We drank our beers. I had heard he was getting a divorce. Him and most of the other Vietnam guys. Treating their PTSD with alcohol like soldiers have done since alcohol was invented. But so was I getting a divorce. So was I sitting here.

“Where you working?” I asked him.

He tilted his head to look at me without turning his neck. “Nowhere man. There aren’t any jobs.” After a minute he added, “I think you got the last fucking job in America over at General Motors.”

“Not much around,” I said. I was past the darkness and way into the numbness and wanted everyone everywhere to be forgiven for everything and all get on with America and our lives.

“Your dad said he would get me in the plant. I can’t even take care of my family.”

“I’m sure he did what he could.”

“He promised me. He said it was a sure thing he could get me in.”

I imagined my dad sitting on a bar stool beside John up at the American Legion Hall, late in the evening and drunk, treating his own PTSD from 35 years ago and World War II..

“He said us vets got to stick together.”

I nodded, starting to lapse back into the darkness from the numbness. “Man, it’s hard to get anyone in that place.”

“He got you in.”

I glanced over at John, watched him rotate the beer bottle and pick at the label, the condensation dripping onto the bar.

“Yeah,” I said. The darkness was back on top of the numbness and the anger of Vietnam was returning. I wanted to say I knew what he was feeling, but I didn’t because I couldn’t. I wanted to say that I was sorry I didn’t go to Vietnam, but I wasn’t.

"You got my fucking job.”

“He did the best he could,” I said, thinking of my old man, a bottom rung accountant who had gotten fired in 1956 for standing up for vets where he worked then, when the company was firing them to beat them out of their retirement.

“Your old man‘s a fucking liar,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I told him.

“A fucking liar.”

“Fuck you. Fucking Vietnam vet,” I scoffed, all the anger and the darkness and numbness all rolled into one big ball of ugliness now.

He was to my right, so when I saw the first movement of his bar stool toward mine, I nailed him with a big roundhouse left hook and knocked him clean off his seat. He got up fast and I was ready, blind to everything except the enemy, and got him another good one. He socked me one hard punch in the eye, then the bartender pulled him off and another guy grabbed me. He held up his hands, palms out to indicate he was done, the dark sadness of the day on him too, and turned and headed for the door.

“What was that all about?” one of the guys asked.

“Vietnam. Fucking Vietnam.”

"Vietnam. Fucking Vietnam." first appeared in Issue #16 of Steel Toe Review. William Trent Pancoast's novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His fiction has appeared in MONKEYBICYCLE, Night Train, The Mountain Call, and Solidarity magazine. Pancoast recently retired from the auto industry after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in 1949, the author lives in Ontario, Ohio.

 

 

Three Poems by Teisha Twomey

Memory of a Pool Shark

You told me I was a good shot,

the same way you praised me

when I knocked that eight ball

into the corner pocket before you could.

I had to call them out loud,

when the game got too close.

We’d practice in a local pool hall

where I was allowed

free refills of Shirley Temples

and as many quarters as I could carry

to the jukebox. On the weekends

we’d take on a team of barfly townies,

in some pub over the mountain.

They’d see that pool cue towering

over my summer-sun lit hair, wide eyes

batting and figure it was a father humoring

a daughter, an easy enough steal.

Then, I’d scratch on the break, miss

the first couple high balls, warming

up the way you’d taught me. Soon,

we’d both bring it home, banking shots

off the sides, behind our backs, watching

the dropped jaws fall as I’d tighten up

on those angles and sink one shot

after another. Then, I would smile

my toothy grin, my tiny face-up palm,

demanding they pay up, fair and square,

watching the greasy bills piling into it.

You’d lean back then, grinning beneath

a handlebar mustache, saying

Girl, you done good. I wanted to know

if winning would always be so easy,

aiming with one eye closed,

the other focused on a ball or bird

still in flight, some shot

I was born to sink.

 

Lamentation of the Mouse

We were only crawling inside to get warm,

still those traps went off all night. We heard

each equilibrium breaking, those springs coming

loose, hammers falling, the splintering of spinal

columns, skeletal axis’ severed. Don’t you recall

the shatter of bones and marrow as each soft body

gave way? They were pinned every night. Tonight

that bar caught your tiny foot so tight the skin

was wrenched from the bone. You could have chewed

your own leg off. Had you really no choice to scuttle

that way? That gory plank towed around,

before you finally bled out beneath the rocking chair.

That’s where they hid the peanut butter and cheese.

You knew better, than the toddlers and puppies

that came later. I imagined those wires snapping closed,

the stilted monstrosities like stiff wooden louses.

Louses on mouses, remembering the shifting of dishes,

the nibbling. Once, I startled the man in his sleep.

When he sprang from his bed, I flew through the air.

I only needed some bedding, but expected

something sooner, always with the break of spine

and neck, a swift and lucky way to die. One day,

you’ll drag yourself room room to room, until you bleed

out, just like the animal you were born to be. They will

just throw your velvety-hide out the nearest window.

Tonight will be different. Someone will turn on a light

and you won’t be able to hide by scurrying

from countertop and into the breadbox.

 

The Secret to Survival

You never put all your eggs in one bromeliad

or counted your tadpoles before they’d hatched,

or hinged your faith on that, the budding bulge

where protruding limbs had begun to bud.

You were too bewildered by their fragility

and escaped into the willows to watch

their slaughter from a safe distance. Did you ever feel

inept, even momentarily, hating the jagged edges

of yourself as you realized lily pad blossoms were fleshier

than you had ever been, more equipped to nurture?

No. You planted yourself on the bank across the way,

to watch the latest brood ravaged, the way they went

opaque in the sun. Without missing a beat, you laid

a hundred more eggs in their place, coolly replaced

each casualty. So methodically indifferent

to the bearing, such bequeathed redundancy of origin,

the cloudy masses you no longer identified with.

You expelled one foamy batch after another, the latest

one indistinguishable from the last, able to afford

such reckless gravidity without pause. Then you sculled

at the edge of them as well, keeping one idle eye prying

on the wretched prospects which rarely shattering

into reality. Those fluky oddballs emerged lacking luster,

dusky-grey blobs that waggled unremittingly. You objected

to this, their slack build, primitive tail, poorly developed

gills. The armless, the tailless, the tongue-less state

embarrassed you. You resented their inability to scream

out as the heron swallowed a dozen flanking siblings,

the ones hiding at the underbelly of floating grasses.

You were privy to the way those bodies grew

tapered with time. Those few enduring creatures

who’d begun to feed off the yolk of their own insides.

It was like watching a thing give birth to itself,

a gradual overture towards beauty as nature’s formula

took hold, evoking balanced ratios of proportion within

each body of the static lagoon. The lucky ones,

still appear like unpredictable neighbors, planting

themselves at the water’s edge. These few will prove

fruitful; matching the pitchforked precision

with which you harpoon damselflies. Every cold-blooded

bullfrog on that fringe will swell with pride, each upturned

snout aimed at the heavens, much obliged at a chance to savor

this resonance; the croaking of each doomed creature

which has begun to huff and puff, relishing in the guttural

calls of copulation, esteemed by the impossibility

of existence, that all the self-worth they’ve gulped down,

comes up at once, as they deem their own death rattle

as the only miracle, worth crooning lullabies over.

Ode to the Harvestmen                   

Flies are resilient, appearing when they sense the peaches

going ripe, growing yeast. You, a microbe, eating the fruit,

and spitting up alcohol. This was how I envisioned you,

stepfather, appearing past bedtime, rolling in like larvae,

smelling like maggots wriggling in their own frothy rot,

stinking like a sour mop in the corner of my room.

You’d hatch at twilight, ruby eyes glowing, cherry snout

rooting in the kitchen, seeking fermentation, bee to honey.

I gathered daddy longlegs in the mudroom, clutched

each one in my hands, amassing my own secret army

of arachnids, housed beneath wine glasses, trying to fatten them

with slugs, caterpillars. They drew in all six limbs through

gnashed jaws, washing before every meal, and soon molted,

splitting open, one by one, taking twenty minutes to drag

their springy legs from old casings. emerging hungry.

I put those transformed troops in a bucket, watched

the way they gathered, linked limbs together. Small,

velvety-red clover mites clung to some. This is how

I envisioned my mother, the way she hung on too tightly.

Stepfather, I wanted to rip your parts off like a stepchild

tearing the wings off a pest then watching them scamper,

flightless on a windowsill, dropping you, wingless

into the teeming pail of predators, mumbling

“Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

Teisha Twomey is currently working on her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA and interns at Wilderness House Press. Teisha’s work has appeared in Ibbetson Street , Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Metazen, Poetica and she recently was selected for publication for the upcoming "Wasn't That Special?" Anthology.

http://www.teishatwomey.blogspot.com/

 

Traveling Highway Forty, by Amy Wilson

Pink single-wide

plopped in a pasture

that houses my favorite billboard,

“Curtis Watson’s Catfish Restaurant:

Free Cornbread Basket.”

I used to drink whiskey every time I ate catfish

Vern shares.

Vern, Lucille

last table

Delta Café.

Hop in

Vern says,

jumper cables

not churning

my truck battery

one iota.

Junior year

’02,

I left a keg party

for a guy

living in a cow field

just like this one

where Curtis Watson

lives.

Futon thrown on green shag,

Saddle up on top

ride me like a stud

not some Clydesdale

and say ‘Fuck’

‘Fuck my twat Dwayne.’

Wing-Nut

the German Shepherd

gnawing on Spam,

Wing Nut’s turds

the size of ash trays.Mom’s boyfriend, RJ,

peeing in our shower,

“Saves toilet paper,”

RJ pinching my ass

boobs, thighs

daily.

II.

Firelake Indian Casino exit,

Lucille says

if she, Vern

still “boozers-deluxe-o”

they’d be at home

busting each other’s noses.

I fractured Vern’s wrist

a black-out.

Stabbed my arm

a knitting needle

thinking my arm

was Vern’s–

that’s when we found recovery.

I stayed in Dwayne’s trailer three days.

Dwayne’s Grandma

chain smoking Winstons

from her wheelchair,

adult diaper

not changed during

Cops, All My Children

cuz she’d bite.

McCloud Exit,

Lucille gifts

Wheat Chex-pretzel mix,

Me, Vern, Lucille,

I-Traveled-To-Hell

club members,

invisible t-shirts

safety orange,

“ Survivor”

etched in red.

Amy Susan Wilson has recently published in Southern Women’s Review, Southern

Literary Review, Cybersoleil, Dead Mule, Crosstimbers, Red River Review, The Literary Lawyer, Red Dirt Review, and in other similar publications. Amy Susan is the Founder and Publisher of Red Truck Review: A Forum of Southern Literature and Culture, forthcoming September 2013; www.facebook.com/redtruckreview. Amy lives in Shawnee, Oklahoma, one of the world’s few towns that boasts both an operational K-Mart and go-cart race track adjacent to June’s Sno-Cone Shak, Home of Ninety-Nine Flavors.

Comings and Goings, poem by Pamela Johnson Parker

COMINGS AND GOINGS, OR,

DORIS HOLBROOK HEADS AGAIN FOR HOME

(after James Dickey’s “Cherrylog Road”)

I. Jimmy

Off Highway 106

At Cherrylog

I go at noon to meet

This boy that drives

His daddy’s beat-up

Indian, a Chief,

A hand-me-down like most

Of Mama’s clothes,

(Passed to me long after

She passed). When we’re

At school, Jim don’t—no,

Doesn’t–know my name,

Just swags on by without

A by-your-leave;

Some big-shot boy, his tee

Shirt sleeves twice rolled,

A Parliament unlit

Hung from his lip,

A red cloth jacket when

The weather’s cool.

(A Georgia guy that smokes

A filtered cig?

Can you believe? What’s wrong

With Chesterfields?)

I know about James Dean

That drove a Porsche,

A Triumph motorbike,

An Indian

500, not some wired–

Round piece of tin

That whines and whinges. Half

A mile away,

I hear him coming, squall

Of tires and all.

I’d rather ride my Schwinn.

Back of the barn,

Than that. “And just because

Your name’s James D.

Don’t mean that you’re a star”

(Or doesn’t mean).

I’ll tell him later. First

I’ll make him wait

And wait and wait, because

I told him noon.

“You always make men sit,

Then get right up

When you waltz in the room

Like Marilyn,”

The Confidential says. Now,

I’m not too much

A tease; I’d just as lief

Talk carburetors,

Plugs, lug wrenches, hot–

Wired starts, almost

Anything than flirt. But try

To tell a fellow

One fact—sprockets, stock cars,

Or even names

Of snakes…A boy from town’s

All hands, no ears,

When tussling in that spring–

Sprung Pierce Arrow

A ’34 stalled out among

Junked cars, in what

Jim likes to call parking

Lot of the dead.

That’s poetry.Well, bone

Yard’s more the word,

If you ask me, picked–

Over field, where

I can glean, like Ruth,

What’s left behind.

II. Daddy

The laying on of hands

Is taught in church,

Along with strychnine

In a mayonnaise jar

(I still see the label’s

Gummy trace—Blue Plate),

And rattlers coiled like

Sister Hattie’s hair.

You’ve stropped me for not

Listening straight

Through, again the laying

On of hands, rod

Not spared, my backside

Not spared neither.

My skin is welted red,

And marks are raised

Like rickrack round an apron’s

Edge—a hem

To hem me in. When Jim’s

With me, I’m hemmed

In that same way. Sometimes

He’ll sing a hymn

Of rattles, sighs, and snuffles,

High notes all,

Notes I can’t quite reach,

I’m more alto

In shape-note singing, more

The harmony.

I hold the measure low,

And Jim holds me

And holds me and holds me.

He holds me down.

The corkscrew springs are fangs

Piercing my back,

Dotted Swiss to the rick–

Rack’s snaky lines.

What would you say, Daddy,

If you was to see

The other points I’ve picked

Besides these plugs

And knobs, my new engine

Revving up?

III. Doris

What’s sharper than

A serpent’s tooth

I know is me,

Ungrateful child.

Born on a Thursday,

Far to go and

Redding up to get there.

Mama’s movie

Magazines, Mary Worth,

True Confessions

And her Bible

All the compass

I need to steer me north

Of North Georgia,

Away from Cherrylog

And Cherry Cokes

And cars that isn’t, no, aren’t,

So cherry. My lipstick’s

Cherries in the Snow, case

Black as that old

Pierce-Arrow’s hood, spangled

With stars, more than

The sky over my head,

More than what’s notched

In old Orion’s belt, or

Jimmy’s either.

My fingernails are varnished,

And my pocketbook

Is patent-leather red.

The highway snakes

Before me like that

Fat racer slow

In sun and smudged

Lightning in

Shadow. Black road, black

Racer, black dress

From back of Mama’s closet.

Of the black and red words

In her Bible, I recall

The first ones best,

Matthew and Genesis:

Begat. Beginning.

IV. DeeDee (Mrs. Madison) Shearer III

I know that time is ticking

After me; the good

Lord knows I’ve done my best

To push its hands

Away from me (the way

I never did

With Jim’s). How time’s passing

And now it’s past.

I’ve gone back only once

Since Daddy died,

Decades since I left

A girl of 15

On the farm, decades since

Jim died. I’ve heard

He wrote some fine books in

His time. I bought

But never read them, my coffee

Table a marble

Mausoleum for books.

My husband likes

To brag I went to school

With Jim. Well, I’ve

Been schooled, all right. I’ve swapped

My name and hair

For something more genteel,

Cherries in the Snow

For muted Clinique gloss.

Madison sells

Chryslers, Buicks, Cadillacs,

Three dealerships.

He doesn’t know I’ve changed

Out plugs and points

As easily as shoes. He

Knows I tap my nails

But not lug wrenches. He knows

The pedicured,

And Botoxed, frozen–

Chosen, proper tail–

Gate-going Papagallo

Girl, pearls and

Circle pin that he married,

Good at golf and

Gardening, who dabbles

In real estate.

Daddy’s acres and that

Neighboring auto

Salvage yard will fetch me

Quite the tidy sum.

I’ll turn it over fast,

For Atlanta

Businessmen will swallow

Up a farm like

Blacksnakes after mice, one

Single gulp.

Pamela Johnson Parker is an adjunct professor of humanities and poetry at Murray State University and a full-time medical editor. Her fiction, poetry, nd creative nonfiction have appeared in Anti-, Poets and Artists, New Madrid, Muscadine Lines, A Journal of the South, Iron Horse, Broadsided, Centrifugal Eye, Blue Fifth Review, and qarrtsiluni. her poetry is included in Best New Poets 2011 and Poets on Paintings. A finalist for this year’s Bruckheimer Award from Sarabande Press, Pamela lives in western Kentucky.

A Hard Thing, But True, fiction by Amanda Bales

Bras covered the back of the car. They draped over the seats and wrapped over the seat belts and hung from the door handles and carpeted the floor, as if a band of horny teenagers had taken the Buick for an orgy joy ride. But these were not the bras of teenagers. They were thick-strapped and sturdy and made of plain white cotton, the kinds of bras bought in packs and tossed into a grocery cart.

With these bras, George knew there were also french fries and cheerios and smears of jam and peanut butter. Some nights his dreams filled with roaches gnawing at the stains, and then the seats, and then working their way toward him until he sat on the road, the Buick gone save the steering wheel in his hands. Within the dream this filled him with panic, but when he awoke, he would close his eyes and pretend to continue the dream, so that an eighteen wheeler screeched its jake brake, but could not stop in time.

In all other ways the car was immaculate. George kept the front vacuumed and dusted. He changed the oil, and rotated the tires, and made his mechanic perform a tune-up every five thousand miles, though the mechanic assured him this was not necessary and usually did no more than blow-out a filter and bill him for the full labor. This was how George lived, and there was no one in his life to demand he do otherwise.

Just as there was no one to tell him this trip was a bad idea, to warn him that truth rarely brings understanding. He’d taken a week off from his job as an Assistant Principal at Lake Dallas Middle School, and was now driving narrow, unmarked highways through Eastern Oklahoma with a map resting on the passenger seat and an I-Pod twice through an Eagles playlist.

George slowed as he passed a mileage sign. He checked the nearest name against the piece of paper crinkled and damp in his hand. PANOLA. PA-no-LA? pa-NO-la? PAN-ola? His wife had never spoken the name, not once in their life together. It was always just ‘back home,’ or ‘where I’m from.’ And even that was a rare occasion.

A speed limit warning arrived, then a sign welcoming him to town and listing the state championship years of various high school sports. A few houses appeared, squat and siding plated. Plastic flower containers hung from front porch hooks. Televisions flickered behind mini blinds. George rolled past darkened storefronts—a pharmacy, a diner, a dollar general. He could not tell if these places were closed for the night or for forever.

At the edge of anything that could be called town, George paused at a flashing yellow stoplight and circled back. No hotel. No sign for one since McAlister. Maybe there was one farther east. The gas station was open. George would use the restroom, ask the clerk for advice.

A handful of flat bed diesel trucks sat rumbling near the entrance. Inside, George nodded at the group of men gathered around the cash register. Each wore jeans and work boots and long-sleeved shirts. Two had goatees. One had a giant, unruly beard. Hard men. Masculine men. The kind of man his father had been. The men quieted as George made his way to the toilet. He could feel their eyes on him and his skin grew hot, the way it did in faculty meetings when the Principal made a joke at his expense.

George needed to go, but would not be able to do so with those men hulking outside. He flushed so they would not guess his problem, then splashed his face and dried it with a paper towel. He used the mirror to adjust his posture. This was something Lauren had taught him. The appearance of confidence, of belonging, could get a person through.

In the store, George grabbed a Dr. Pepper and a Hershey Bar. He placed the items onto the counter, asked if the cashier could point him toward the nearest hotel. The cashier lifted a pen from a coffee mug and poked at the candy bar as if it were maggot-ridden.

“A hotel, huh?” the cashier asked.

Lauren had sounded like this man when she was angry, or after too many glasses of wine. She had maybe known this man, had entire twangy conversations with him.

“Been driving all day,” George said. “Could use twenty winks.” He cringed at his own attempt at folksiness. At least the men from before had left. At least there was just this one man to witness his embarrassment.

The cashier tapped the pen against the Hershey Bar. “Sweet tooth?” he asked.

George patted his stomach and laughed a little. “Unfortunately,” he said, but he could tell the cashier did not buy his attempt at casual self-deference. George opened his wallet to pay, hoped this might speed the exchange along.

“I bet you do,” said the man, and he plucked the wallet and raised it into the air. “I just bet George here likes ‘em real sweet,” he said, and George turned to find the men from earlier gathered into a tight semi-circle behind him. George lifted his hands.

“Take whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll leave right now. I won’t even call the cops.”

One of the men stepped forward and crowded George until his back was pressed against the counter.

“That what you do?” he asked. “Take whatever you want?” He turned back to his friends, gestured to George with a half-circle of his arm. “I think our friend here thinks he can take whatever he wants,” he said, then he grabbed George’s shoulders and twisted him to the ground and stomped a work boot onto George’s chest.

“Where is she?” he asked. George grasped at the man’s boot, but could not budge it. His legs flailed on the tile floor. “WHERE IS SHE?” the man repeated and stood harder on George’s chest.

“Can’t do this here,” someone said.

“Fine,” said the man standing on George. “Let’s go.” Then George knew only the swirled rubber tread of the man’s work boot before it smashed into his skull.

 

George thought that he was blind, that the blow from the man’s boot had severed his ocular nerves. This happened to a Cowboy’s running back, and he’d put together a lesson for his Biology class, had hoped to steer a few minds away from the sport of football with its head injuries and manic depressions and hair-trigger rage. Back when he was a teacher and thought he always would be. Before he ever had designs on an administrative paycheck. Before he met Lauren.

As his eyes adjusted, George realized the dark was night, and he wondered if it was the same night or another one, since he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. His fingertips tingled. He tried to move and found his wrists zip-tied, his ankles the same. The plastic cut into his flesh. He tried to stand, but could only bring himself to his knees.

“Hello?” he asked. He said the word a few more times, then changed the word to ‘help,’ which he yelled as best he could through his throbbing head until he realized that if they had not gagged him, there was no one to hear.

And no one to look for him. Not until next week. And even then, the School Board would be contacted before the police.

George called out again, though this time he did so to gauge the size of the room, the materials around him. It seemed he was in a house, though there was also a dank, rotting smell that reminded him of being in the woods with his father, one of the dozen times George had let a buck sniff through a clearing unharmed. There was something acrid in the air as well, strong enough to burn his nose through the clotted blood.

George fiddled with the zip ties, but knew it was pointless. About once a year an older male student would steal the custodian’s zip ties and lash a younger male student to the bleachers, or the flag pole, or the girls’ locker room door. It would take a sharp knife to free him.

Maybe there was something nearby. Some piece of broken metal or glass. George lowered his elbows to the floor, began a slow, awkward crawl in search of anything that might cut through the thick plastic.

 

When light began to rise, his knees and elbows were bloody, though he had not travelled far. He had been right about the place. It was a house, or had been one sometime before. Cabinets were warped and split. Parts of the floor were sunken. Piles of rat shit stood inches deep near old couches. A place no one came to or went from. The kind of place a body might rot away in for years before a golden retriever laid a femur on the porch steps of a nearby home.

A truck engine approached. George tried to compose himself. He attended seminars every year on conflict management and group aggression, spent weeks afterward reading studies and looking at videos on the internet.

“The only people interested in studying violence are the ones who’ve never lived it,” Lauren would say when he would try to discuss some fascinating new theory or experiment, then she would take her glass of wine and her Ambien and leave him to it.

Disinhibition. This was the biggest hurdle. These men had lost their individuality, their self-awareness, their self-evaluation apprehension. But there was always one group member who had not yet succumbed. There was always a Doubter.

Of course, The Doubter would be difficult to spot. Once a dynamic formed, the speech and appearance, even the physical gestures of the group members mirrored each other. George would need to observe their actions closely, employ the process of elimination.

The easiest person to name would be the Leader. They were the first to act, to speak, and the others followed in kind. They led because they held an unwavering belief in the group’s actions. George had always understood the possibility of failure. This is why he would always be the Assistant Principal. And why part of him understood what Lauren had done. Was he angry? The anger he felt would not cease or simmer. But did he understand? Yes. Some part of it, at least, he understood.

Truck doors shut and boots clomped toward him. George sat-up as straight as possible and faced the men as they entered. The men walked toward George in unison and formed the familiar semi-circle around him. One held a bra. One held his phone. One held a short piece of rebar. They began to speak.

“How many, George?”

“How long?”

“Fucking sicko.”

“Fucking perve.”

“Five phone numbers? Not even a Mom or Dad?”

George did not speak. What could he have said? ‘I stopped calling the friends who stopped answering. I stopped answering the ones who called. My father died years ago. My mother of grief. Dementia, they said. Genetic. Nothing to do with football.

The men waited in silence for a few moments, then Rebar Man lifted his weapon. George closed his eyes.

When the blow did not come, George saw that Bra Man held Rebar Man’s arm. There was a small struggle, but Rebar Man lowered the weapon. Bra Man patted Rebar Man’s shoulder, then moved past him to squat in front of George. This man. This man was The Doubter. George made eye-contact, did his best to be as human as possible.

“Look,” said The Doubter. “We just want to know if she’s okay. Can you tell us that? Can you tell us if she’s okay?”

George knew the man did not speak of Lauren or Annabelle, but his words were the same as those of the police officers who had yelled coffee breath into his face while waving photographs of his wife and daughter. One photo in particular. Christmas. Lauren in a soft, gold dress. Her hair sleek and loose around her shoulders. Annabelle in dark green velvet. A gold bow around her chubby waist. They smiled. At the camera. At him through the camera. George moaned.

It was an animal sound. It was a mistake.

“What’s that?” asked The Doubter. He leaned toward George.

George cleared his head of Christmas and smiles. He took a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He made his voice steady. I am a human, this voice insisted. I use language. I’m a man. A man just like you.

The men behind The Doubter grumbled and shuffled. The Doubter glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to George and placed his hands on George’s shoulders the way George had seen fathers embrace their sons on the first day of a new school.

“Look, George. We just want our girl back. We just want Christine. Just tell us where Christine is and we’ll give you a three day start outta here. Three days and you could be in Mexico.”

George wondered if Christine was his daughter, or Rebar’s daughter, or if she belonged to one of the men who had not spoken. Was she a little girl? A teenager? A toddler? George opened his mouth. The Doubter leaned closer.

“I. Don’t know. What. You’re talking about,” he said. He thought the repetition of these words would make them strong, would let The Doubter hear their integrity, but The Doubter’s eyes darkened and he stepped back and nodded at Rebar Man. George knew too late that Bra Man was the Leader. Rebar, with his impulse to rage, could never lead a group of men. Rebar swung his arm. George did not pass-out this time, though he wished many times that he could.

 

When the men finished, they left the room. As the pain loosened its hold on his brain, George assembled the story thus far.

There was a girl, Christine, and she was missing, and these men were looking for her, had been looking for her last night, had gathered at the gas station to form a plan when in walked a stranger, a stranger with bras covering the backseat of his car.

The men were just outside the door. George could hear their voices and the occasional cough and spit. A phone rang. Someone spoke. George could not hear the exchange, but there was nothing in the man’s voice to suggest that anything had changed. The girl was still missing. George was still to blame.

He considered going along with it, pretending to be the one who could show them Christine. This would buy him time, would get him out of the house. But what then? And what if she was found beaten? Or dead?

He could try to escape. But even if he managed to free his hands and feet, he would not survive more than a day on his own. These were men who could track a wounded animal.

He could not bluff and he could not run, which meant he would have to reason. He had chosen the wrong man, made the wrong man The Doubter. But one of them deserved this title. One would listen long enough to stay the hands of his friends. George propped himself against the rough pine wall. He would begin with why he had come here. This would link them, make him part of their group, define him as an insider.

‘Lauren and Annabelle Sloan,’ he would say. There would be a pause, and George would say the names again. ‘Lauren and Annabelle Sloan. My wife. My daughter.’

This should be enough. The story had made national news. Lauren’s name was now a congressional bill. And once George could see that the men recognized these names, he would tell them that the woman on TV was one of their own, a holler girl who moved to the city and carved her nose and flattened her accent and snared herself a man she thought was on his way up in the world because he was the son of a famous football player and she thought that meant material comfort enough to cushion the violations of her first nineteen years.

‘You must have known her,’ he would say. ‘A town like this. A father like that.’

Maybe if he began his story at that point, maybe this would help them see that he was not the evil stranger they thought him to be, or at least convince them he deserved a chance to explain.

And George would explain, if they would let him. He would explain that the only way to get his daughter into the car for daycare was to let her fondle a bra on the drive, that the doctors said she had done this while nursing, that it was an attachment thing, and that she would grow out of it, and that there was no harm in indulging her for a little while. They had used Lauren’s bras in the beginning, but it got to the point that they bought the cheapest ones they could find, and all those bras just accumulated back there, because they didn’t have any other purpose, and eventually, no one even noticed them. To their family, this was where the bras belonged.

And then George would tell them what he had not told anyone, because there was no one to tell. He would tell them that he had thrown away make-up and hair gel and soaps and shampoos and baby food. Had donated coats and shoes and most of the furniture. Had packed away photo albums and books. But every time he took a trash bag to the car and lifted one of those bras from the backseat, he wound-up on his knees in the driveway.

‘I stopped trying after awhile,’ George would say. ‘After awhile, a person stops trying.’

There would be silence, then Rebar Man would pull a large knife from his belt and slice through the zip ties on George’s wrists. The men would apologize. George would tell them that there were no hard feelings.

‘Were my own daughter alive,’ he would say, ‘I’d want men just like you looking out for her.’

“Lauren Sloan,” George said aloud through his busted lips and swollen jaw. “Annabelle Sloan. My wife. My daughter.” Yes, thought George. These would be the words that would free him.

But the men did not enter the room. A woman appeared. A woman wearing a sweater over a long cotton dress. Her hair was loose and a breeze blew it wild around her head as she paused in the doorway. George smelled something sweet as she approached. Not strong enough to be perfume. Soap maybe. Or detergent. It seemed she could not belong to the men who had put him here.

The woman knelt before him. George winced when she lifted her hands and the woman made a shushing noise before laying her palms against his broken face.

“George? It’s George, isn’t it?” she asked.

George nodded. The woman began to stroke George’s brow and cheeks; she made tsking noises over his injuries.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. Just help me, George. Please. Please help me.”

George had said these same words to his neighbors, to the cops. This woman. Christine was this woman’s girl. George knew the scratched-out, jangly nerves, the sense that nothing in the world was solid, of falling and never touching bottom. They were alike, she and him. There was no one who understood this woman better in that moment than he did.

Which is how George knew she would listen. She might make him repeat the story several times, might look for cracks in the cause and effect, but she would listen, and she would know it was the truth. There was no way to shake his story apart. George had tried. God, how he had tried.

And so George told the woman about Lauren and Annabelle and what had happened and why he had come here. When he finished, there were tears in her eyes and she stroked his hair.

“No wonder,” said the woman. “It’s no wonder at all.” George began to cry then, and the woman sang nonsense words in her rough, low voice. When George quieted, the woman lifted his face.

“Better now?” she asked.

George nodded.

“Good,” she said and placed her thumbs on either side of his broken nose. “You understand, George. Your Annabelle. My Christine. It’s a hard thing, but it’s true. When it comes to your child, you’ll do anything, sacrifice whoever.” George nodded. Had it meant saving his daughter, he would have placed every kid at Lake Dallas Middle School on a bus and set them on the bottom of that lake.

“So, George? George, I am truly sorry about Lauren and Annabelle. And I understand, trust me I understand how something like this can boil-up a part of yourself you thought gone forever, a part you thought Jesus had washed away years ago.” She pressed her thumbs hard against the fractured bones of George’s face. George gasped.

“Where’s my Christine?” she asked.

“Lauren Sloan,” George stammered. “Annabelle Sloan.” But the pressure on his nose did not relent.

“Christine, George. I need you to tell me about Christine.” George writhed, but could not break her grip.

“Lauren Sloan,” George said louder. “Annabelle Sloan.” The woman pressed harder.

“Come on, George,” she said. “Come on, now.”

And then somehow, without thinking the words, George said, “I’m sorry.”

The woman lifted her thumbs and asked him to repeat what he had said.

George fell to his side panting. Again, he tried to speak their names, but again the words that emerged were, “I’m sorry.”

The woman stood. George tried to call-out to her, but could only repeat ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again.

The woman backed away from him. George reached for her, wanted to ball her hair into his fists, jam it into his mouth, dam those words.

George watched the woman lift the rebar near the door. Her eyes. He knew the panic there, the disbelief, the rage.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The woman gave a wild, terrified scream and began to beat him. George drew his arms as best he could over his head. A blow snapped his rib. The rib pierced his lung. Had George found the words to save him—the note Lauren left, his father’s name, the color of a two year old child ten hours submerged in lake water—had George found these words, he would not have had the air to speak them.

Amanda Bales received her MFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Her work has appeared in The Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She lives in central Missouri.

Five Poems by Christopher Prewitt

A Farmer’s Son

 

I am a farmer’s son

Everyone thinks

My heart’s in recession

Because most things I eat

I first have to raise

But it is not

Fun even to shoe a horse

I have thoughts

Despite the benefits

That a nail in a hoof is

A nail in the arm on the crucifix

A red sun over blue hills

Doesn’t mean bad weather

In the evening

I think of walking into town

And using the rag of my face

To keep the red high heels

Of beautiful women dry

As they step from the sidewalk

To cross the street to their rich

Adulterous lovers in shiny red cars

With dark-tinted windows.

 

 

Gospel of a Farmer’s Son

 

For a moment I was ready

to die in the intensive care unit

of a hay roll. This was the summer

 

I’d sit in the evenings

and watch the Hatfields cross into

the Pike County, Kentucky of the dead.

 

They could only choose between that

or Mingo County, West Virginia,

but where was the honor in living

 

if other families could die better?

I don’t know what to tell you.

One day it was winter,

 

a cardinal burst through a mound

of snow in my eye,

and I knew the punks kicking in

 

my ribs were only sparrows

caught scared in an all-night hailstorm.

Now that I’m happy I don’t mind

 

that the blood I coughed was mine.

That the way I lived makes me

grieve is at the heart of every gospel

 

testimony is why I’m here

in my cadaver’s skin of blue pigment

like anti-freeze, saying Amen.

 

 

The Golden Age of a Farmer’s Son

 

I was seven-years-old.

Do you know what

you can do with that sort of time?

 

Here’s what my dad did that June:

 

he held my hand,

I was leaning too hard on the rails

of the wooden scaffold walkway

above the stalls in the stockyard.

 

Cattle were being unloaded,

a man hit them on the skull

with a long, red staff

if they hesitated to move forward

to receive their orange tag.

 

I was laughing way too hard.

 

The goats below us were numerous,

overcrowded like teeth

I couldn’t afford braces to fix.

 

One goat was trying like hell

to mount another

amongst dozens of others.

 

Even now when I think of love

I think of those goats.

How senseless it is

 

to try to get away.

 

 

 

The Dark Mane and a Farmer’s Son

Two thoughts come to me

looking at my father

in his casket: how

 

easily bucked a faithful man

is from his religion,

and if this was the age

 

that I would never be.

I thought for years

that a chocolate mare

 

would carry in its mane

my death even before my name

was known to me.

 

I knew not to be deceived

by brown, long, slender legs

and a lifted anus,

 

for there is nothing

in a legion of flies buzzing

around the ears to suggest

 

anything but impending death.

Yet my father loved them

even as he whipped them

 

 

 

for jerking as he hammered

fashion for their own good,

and every clink, curse, and smack

 

made me quiver, sitting in the truck

he left running in winter

while I waited for the bus.

 

Father, I wondered, how far

can a man go mocking his mortality?

I suspect he would say—

 

if not for the tetanus of his rage,

as he caught me quivering

on the saddle at a young age—

 

death comes to everyone

who leans against the wire fence

post soon enough.

 

Chris Prewitt's writing has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in the NewerYork, Four Way Review, Rattle, The Iowa Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and Vinyl, among many others.

Wild and Wonderful, fiction by Tom Bennitt

You need good hands to run a machine like the continuous miner. You got to know when to hold back and when to go deep. It’s the best-paying job in the mine but also the hardest, and I’m out of practice. I haven’t worked underground in five years and forgot how hard it is just to walk down here. The tunnel is less than five feet high, so I need to crouch. At least I’m not working in those dogholes where you crawl around like rats, and it’s better than strip mining work. That’s not even mining, just blowing up hillsides and mountaintops with dynamite: destroying the land, flooding creeks and hollows. Down here I feel like a real miner. Okay, that’s bullshit. With two divorces and a ballooning mortgage on a house nobody will buy, I’m here for the money. If that make me a greedy old redneck, fine.

The continuous miner is a scorpion-on-wheels: long, low to the ground, and dangerous. It cuts the same amount of coal that ten or twenty men would cut with their pick axes and shovels back in the old days, only faster. The ripper head – a rotating cylinder on the front covered with sharp steel tips, like fangs – spins around and gouges coal from the wall. But it’s tough sledding tonight. My hands feel stiff and heavy, and I’m pushing the controls too hard. This seam is narrow, so I’m cutting through a lot of rock and shale. The ripper head is loud and throws up sparks when you cut through rock and gets quiet when you’re deep in the coal. Tonight it’s loud as a chainsaw, until the machine dies and everything goes dark.

“Hold up!” Wild Man yells. He’s one of the roof bolters on our crew, which suits him because he’s got some loose bolts in his own roof. A large black man, his real name is Calvin but everyone calls him Wild Man.

“What happened?”

“Tripped the generator.”  Wild Man’s face is caked with soot. His new teeth glow like a string of pearls.

“Didn’t break the cable, did I?”

“It ain’t that bad, dog.”

I’d pushed the miner too hard through the rock. It overheated and tripped the outside generator. Happens all the time in small mines with old generators. Jerry the electrician should have us back on line in twenty minutes. It wasn’t a major fuckup, not like busting the machine’s power cable. If the cable gets caught between the ripper head and the wall, it could shred. The cable alone costs about ten grand and I’ve seen guys get fired for shredding it.

Luke, another roof bolter, walks over. I tell him it was my fault.

“I could use a break anyhow,” Luke says. He opens his tin of Copenhagen, takes a fat pinch, and works it under his lip. “Man, I haven’t worked with you in years,” he says. “Thought you was retired.”

Luke reminds me of my oldest son. They both respected their elders. Josh did things the right way and didn’t take shortcuts. He died in the mines three years ago. Methane gas explosion. Twenty-four years old. Can the world get any crueler than that?

My other son, Derek, is a different story. He is currently doing five years in Moundsville, the state penitentiary, for cooking and selling meth.

“I missed y’uns too much,” I say.

“How you doing, you know, health wise?”

“My doctor don’t want me working down here, after the heart attack and all, but I passed the physical. So here I am. And I can still run coal better than you turds.”

“You always did have the touch.”

“How’s Denise?” I ask.

“She’s been living in Pittsburgh the last couple months,” Luke says. “One of those temporary nurse jobs. Good money. She wants me to move up there.”

“You don’t want to be working down here at my age. I’ve seen all the ups and downs. Right now coal’s in high demand and we’re all making money, but it won’t last.”

“Nothing else to do around here,” Wild Man says.

Our shift ends at midnight. I made five cuts. Our target is seven per shift, but five is enough to keep them off my ass, at least it used to be. I drive home through the center of town. Dead quiet. Only the whine of two crotch rockets burning up Main Street. My truck slowly worms up White’s Hollow Road.

My bulldog Lucky greets me at the door. Tina is asleep on the couch, wearing only a Bon Jovi t-shirt and boxers. A pizza box, can of Iron City, and bottle of Vicadin are on the coffee table. The television is on – that same George Clooney movie she’d seen a hundred times.

As I watch her sleep, a strange thought hits me. As a lifelong hunter – deer and wild turkey, mostly – I always believed that men were born to hunt, that the male species was hardwired to hunt, kill, and provide. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s a crock of shit. All the women in my life were great hunters. They hunted men, using all their skills and weapons  to snare them. And I got caught every time, like the dumbest deer in the woods on opening day of buck season.

With Tina, things started out hot, like they always do. She’d wear the tightest jeans or skirt that would make her ass shake like a water balloon. But after she moved in, she just let herself go. Now she sits on the couch all day, drinks beer and smokes weed and watches her soaps. Her closet is full of clothes she can no longer fit into. Of course, I’m not exactly the picture of good health, either, not since the heart surgery that left a zipper scar from my throat to the top of my stomach. We hardly fuck anymore, and I refuse to take any pecker pills. Still, I’m too tired to be alone, too old to be trolling the bars.

Tina stirs awake as I sit down. “How was work?” she asks.

“Same shit, new day,” I say. “Can you turn that down?” In the movie, Clooney is seducing some hot Italian woman. “How many times you gonna watch that?”

“It don’t concern you.”

“If you like him so much, why don’t you go to Hollywood and fuck him?”

“Maybe I will. I’d rock his world.”

“He wouldn’t even let you suck him off.”

I duck to miss the beer can she throws at me.

“White trash motherfucker,” she says. “You got a broken dick and no more government checks coming in. That’s a low batting average. You’re lucky I’m still here, and not out fucking one of your miner buddies. If you don’t watch your mouth, you’ll have to find someone else to change your diapers.”

I feel a stir in my groin. That’s the most passionate thing she has said to me in a long time.

 

On the way to work, I notice a new billboard from the state board of tourism: pictures of people hiking and whitewater rafting, then a panoramic shot of a mountain ridge at sunset. Across the top, in big white letters, it reads “WEST VIRGINIA, WILD & WONDERFUL!” Well, at least it’s half true.

Crossing the Monongahela River Bridge, I glance down at the river and think about my dad. When I was a kid we used to fish the Mon all the time, up at Brady’s Bend. Once, he grabbed me by the ankle and submerged me in the river. “Now you’ll be invincible,” he said. For a long time I believed him.

I pass the old houses crammed together on the bluff: broken windows, busted porch steps, rusted cars with no tires in the yard. The low bank of heavy clouds conceals the ridge tops. Patches of snow cover the hillsides. The trees are skinny and crooked, like naked old men.

Back in the seventies, VISTA workers came here. Clean cut, bright-eyed young men in khakis and collar shirts who’d just graduated from Ivy League schools. They tried to sign people up for literacy and job-training programs and whatnot, but after a few years they gave up and went home. Most everyone has given up on this place, even those who stuck around.

As I pull into the mine entrance, things feel different. Out of place. Sam the manager waddles out of the office trailer and yells for me to come inside. Sam is a perfect asshole. Since he made the switch from mining to management, his loyalty to the miners has disappeared. Now his head is so far up the mine owner’s ass, he needs a flashlight. There’s a younger guy in the office that I don’t recognize.

“Larry, sit down,” Sam says. “You’re not doing a bad job, but we need six or seven cuts of coal per shift. That’s the quota. That comes straight from the top, Mr. Lambert. He’s the one who writes our checks. You’re just not pulling your weight right now. This is Jamie, we brought him in to–“

“To take my job,” I say.

“That’s not true. Y’uns are going to split time operating the miner. You make one cut, then he makes the next. When you’re not running the miner, you’ll do something else, like help bolt the roof or load the coal on the conveyer. We need an extra guy on the crew, and he’s got some experience. It’s just a little healthy competition.”

“Suit yourself. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, right Sam?”

“Just do your job and you’ll be fine.”

I scan this new kid from head to toe. He’s got spiky hair, acne-covered cheeks, and two earrings in his right ear. “What’s your last name?” I ask.

“Bosco.”

I went to high school with his old man. He was a dickhead, too. “You get a note from your mother to be here?” I say.

“Don’t get too excited and piss your pants, old timer.”

Once I leave the office, the fingers of my left hand start twitching like they’re battery-powered. I think stress triggers it. Either way, it’s been happening more often lately. I ball my hand into a fist and slam it against my truck door to make it go away.

“Take it easy, dog,” Wild Man says, “We ain’t even started workin’ yet.”

“They brought in a ringer to take my job.” I point out the new guy leaving the office trailer.

“Who, that kid?” he says. “He looks like he can’t even find a G-spot.”

This whole shit show reminds me of those scabs who broke our picket lines in the eighties and took our jobs for three months while we went on strike. But that was back when the mines were unionized. Now hardly any of them are. Lambert Coal sure as hell keeps the unions out. They have the worst safety record in the state, and they aren’t too picky about who they hire – guys with no experience, drug addicts.

We jump on the electric shuttle cart that takes us a mile deep into the dusty, dark mine. When the shuttle stops, the foreman tells me I’m first on the miner. I get situated and start cutting the coal. The tremors in my left hand have stopped. I’m feeling good. The miner is deep into the seam and running smooth, but I’m careful not to go too fast. Without too much rock or shale to bust through, I finish the first cut in forty-five minutes. Solid time. Then it’s the new kid’s turn. He starts right up, and he’s cutting faster than me. I can tell he has done this before.

“Watch and learn, old man!” he yells. I can barely stand to watch him, the cocky little prick.

I have this recurring dream: I’m deep inside a coal mine when a methane gas explosion hits. The dream ends the same way every time, with me on fire and running through a tunnel.

I’ve heard a few stories of old-timers who committed suicide – or tried to – underground. There was one guy who caused the roof to collapse on him. He did it by taking out some bolts and lodging a stick of dynamite into one of the holes, but he killed three other miners in the process.

Still, as I watch the kid operate the continuous miner, part of me thinks I could pull it off without putting anyone else in danger. That machine is so big and wide, the operator can’t see nothing but what’s in front of him. When he backs it up, he’d run right over me. I’m a small guy. A two-ton machine running over my weak chest would surely kill me. Even better, people would call it an accident. They’d say I tripped and fell and couldn’t get up in time. Nobody would question my manhood or label me a coward after I was dead. I’ve been slowly dying for years now. Why not finish the job?

It wasn’t always like this. I remember the good moments, like when me and Kelly went to Myrtle Beach and rented a house on stilts. It was a cold October weekend and the beach was empty. We sat on the porch, a blanket draped over us, listening to the waves break. Nine months later, Josh was born. I remember Christmas mornings when the boys were young, the way their faces would light up when they opened presents. The first time I took Josh hunting up in the mountains – he was thirteen – he killed a buck on the second day. The local paper published a photo of him with the deer on the back page of the sports section.

That was before Kelly left. I guess she got tired of being a mother and a wife. One day, she just up and quit. Left the divorce papers on the table, didn’t even fight for custody. She followed a younger guy to Florida.

But those are just fading memories. Derek and I never speak anymore. As for Tina, she’s a wild animal: I would never tame her. Some people never learn from their own mistakes. Like me. There’s nothing left for me here, and I’m fine with it.

I make sure the new kid doesn’t see me as I walk behind the machine. I study how far up and back it goes. I think about where to lie down. But I can’t go through with it. What if I somehow fuck it up and just injure myself real bad?

When I walk back around to check his progress, I notice that the power cable is jammed between the ripper head and the coal face. The cable is starting to tear. The new kid hasn’t seen it yet. I think about saying something, but it’s not my problem. Instead, I walk down to Section Two and check on Wild Man and the other roof bolters. Wild Man is trying to drill a two-foot steel rod into the hole he’d made. The rod is covered with hot glue and is supposed to bind onto the shale above the roof and stabilize it, but he can’t line it up right and the rod keeps getting stuck.

Suddenly, things get quiet. I look behind me. The continuous miner has stopped running. I walk back over and check it out.

“What happened?” I ask the new kid trying to play dumb.

“No clue,” he says.

I examine the cable. “Looks like the cable shredded.”

“How?”

“If I had to guess, it got stuck between the machine and the wall, and the ripper head just ate right through it.”

The foreman comes over from Section Three. “Damn son, that’s an expensive piece of equipment,” he says. “How’d this happen?”

“I didn’t see it,” the new kid says.

“How could you not see that? I think you need go back outside and talk to the boss man. Larry, you go ahead finish up.”

It takes the electrician half an hour to patch up the cable. Once I start running the machine again, I don’t know what comes over me but I’m working faster than ever. I make seven more cuts in five hours. Must be the adrenaline.

When the shift ends, I walk up to the office. I’m ready to tear Sam a new asshole, but he starts talking first. “Larry, I heard what you did for us tonight. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

“You’re goddamn right.”

“I promise you that kid’s never coming back. You’re the man from now on. In fact, I’ll give you a ten-percent raise.”

I rub my goatee. “I could probably  stick around for that.”

Luke is waiting in the parking lot. “You saved us tonight. Hey, we’re headed to Sully’s Tavern. You up for a drink? First round’s on me.”

I’m all jacked up. Part of me wants to go down to the bar with the guys, but I’m also dog tired. “Maybe. I got to run home first.”

When I get home, my first clue is that Tina’s car is gone. Then I open the front door: the place is half-empty. She moved out while I was at work. Her note on the kitchen table says “I’m leaving. Don’t know how long, I just need time to figure some things out.” I look around the living room. She took all the furniture.

I can’t stay here tonight, so I jump in my truck and drive down to Sully’s, wondering if my lucky streak will continue.

Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, I recently completed my MFA in Fiction at the University of Mississippi, where I held a Grisham Fellowship and was Co-Editor of The Yalobusha Review. My creative work has appeared in Binnacle, Burnt Bridge, Twisted Tongue, Monongahela Review, River Walk Journal, Fiction Writers Review, and FACETS. My honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, Finalist for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest, Winner of the Culver Short Fiction Prize, Runner-Up in the Memphis MagazineFiction Contest, and a residency fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Currently, I live in Oxford with my wife and my dog and teach Writing at Ole Miss. Next fall I will be starting a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska.

Distillation, sestina by Joe Samuel Starnes

Way back in early times

when we hunted down on Knob Creek

tracking the claw steps of wild turkey

we cherished the company of Old Grand-Dad

and tales of his friend Jim Beam

whom he called Old Crow.

He told of the squawk of Old Crow

who had lived in early times

when he was simply called Jim Beam,

drinking the cool waters of Knob Creek.

He told us that his Old Grand-Dad

had a thin neck like a wild turkey.

The gobbles of the wild turkey

had enchanted Old Crow

and as a boy his Old Grand-Dad

woke him at early times

on the banks of Knob Creek

to tell stories to the child Jim Beam.

This man Jim Beam

grew up on dreams of wild turkey

that lived on Knob Creek

unable to fly like an old crow

even the famed poults of early times.

This was the story told by Old Grand-Dad.

But sometimes Old Grand-Dad

confused the stories of Jim Beam

and the tales from early times

became ramblings about wild turkey.

We learned it was a black bird, not Old Crow

that drowned in the shoals of Knob Creek.

We dammed up Knob Creek.

We built a pine box for Old Grand-Dad.

We barbecued a gristly old crow.

Nowhere to be seen is Jim Beam

or the fatted wild turkey

or the lost dreams of early times.

We will never know the truth about Knob Creek in early times

only jake-legged Old Grand-Dad’s lies about wild turkey

and the friend inside his head, Jim Beam a.k.a. Old Crow.

Joe Samuel "Sam" Starnes was born in Alabama, grew up in Geor­gia, and has lived in the Northeast since 2000. New­South Books pub­lished Fall Line, his sec­ond novel, in 2011 (view the online book trailer). His first novel, Call­ing, was pub­lished in 2005. He has had jour­nal­ism appear in The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post and var­i­ous mag­a­zines, as well as essays, short sto­ries, and poems in lit­er­ary jour­nals. www.joesamuelstarnes.com

Whitetail, poem by Misty Marie Rae Skaggs

I scare easy.

Like a wobble-kneed fawn,

greedily gobbling down

daisy heads

that grow abundant

in the steep, blind curve

of the one lane,

gravel way home.

You come up on me, cool

as a cucumber

made salt pickle

on a summer day.

And I may meet your eye

and you may feel enchanted.

but I’ll bolt,

buddy.

Turn pale, white

tail

and bounce through

a briar bramble

barefoot.

There are only two cardinal directions -

Away from Kentucky

And back to Kentucky.

 

Misty Skaggs, 29, cur­rently resides on her Mamaw’s couch way out at the end of Bear Town Ridge Road where she is slowly amass­ing a library of con­tem­po­rary fic­tion under the cof­fee table and per­fect­ing her but­ter­milk bis­cuits. Her gravy, how­ever, still tastes like wall­pa­per paste. She is cur­rently tak­ing the scenic route through higher edu­ca­tion at More­head State Uni­ver­sity and hopes to com­plete her BFA in Cre­ative Writing…eventually. Misty won the Judy Rogers Award for Fic­tion with her story “Ham­burg­ers" and has had both poetry and prose pub­lished in Lime­stone and Inscape lit­er­ary jour­nals. Her short series of poems enti­tled “Hill­billy Haiku" will also be fea­tured in the upcom­ing edi­tion of New Madrid. She will be read­ing from her chap­book, Pre­scrip­tion Panes, at the Appalachian Stud­ies Con­fer­ence in Indi­ana, Penn­syl­va­nia in March. When she isn’t writ­ing, Misty enjoys tak­ing long, woodsy walks with her three cats and watch­ing Dirty Harry with her ninety six year old great-grandmother.

Jaguar for Sale by Misti Rainwater-Lites

He fucked her hard from 11:11 p.m. to 12:17 a.m. It was the damn Viagra. After he came on her tits he rolled over, fell asleep, snored like a goddamn blizzard or tornado or old school wooden roller coaster. He snored like a sated old man with crusty nasal passages, that's what he snored like. She ran a hot bath, poured in some freesia bubble bath, closed her eyes as she soaked, thought about what she needed from Family Dollar. Cinnamon candle. Paper plates. Plastic spoons. Instant coffee. Mustard. Hot dog buns. Roach spray. Cough drops. Hair dye. Tweezers. Fucking god, the man had a meaty penis. Long and thick, a real anaconda. She had sucked on it a couple of times. “Don't stroke. Just suck,” he had instructed the first time. She was a quick learner.

At 5:11 a.m. his alarm went off. She never asked him why he set his alarm for 5:11 rather than 5:00 or 5:15. The man had his quirks. He only watched television with the sound down. He liked to make the characters say ridiculous things. One night they were watching a black and white Bette Davis movie. She cracked up laughing listening to him speak for Bette Davis and the lead actor. He gave Bette Davis a British accent and the lead actor a Texas accent.

“You are really testing your limit with me, sir. I insist that you refrain from pissing in my mouth.”

“Oh hell, darlin', I thought my piss made you horny.”

“It does not make me horny, as you say. It makes me lose all respect for you. It's loathsome behavior and I tell you it must cease.”

“Come on, buttercup. Piss is packed with protein.”

“I don't give a good goddamn what it's packed with. I don't want it in my mouth. Put it in the loo where it belongs or else pack your things and find a new place to hang your hat.”

“Shit. You're cute when you play hardball, baby doll.”

For breakfast she had six chocolate donuts and a glass of skim milk. She watched “Price is Right” with the sound turned up. She liked to hear the stupid cheering. She enjoyed listening to the wheel spin. Her phone rang. She flipped it open.

“Hello?”

“Becky, this is your mama. Why haven't you called?”

“I haven't had much to talk about. No news to report. I'm not pregnant, I don't have cancer and I still haven't won the lottery.”

“Your sister just bought a new house in Muskogee.”

“Well that's wonderful. I thought she was in Tulsa.”

“Gerald got transferred to Muskogee. They got a pool in the backyard. Five bedrooms. Three bathrooms. And she's pregnant again. Baby's due on July 1st.”

“Damn. Ain't two kids enough?”

“You should be happy for your sister, Becky. You're just jealous 'cause you don't even have one.”

“Yeah. That's it. I'm jealous. I want to spend my time changin' shitty diapers and posin' for pictures and pretendin' to be the goddamn Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.”

“Watch that mouth. How's Eddie? He still workin' at that potato chip factory?”

“Eddie is better than average. I think it's fair to say he's happier than a pig in shit or a leprechaun in clover or a Christian in a casino. Yes. He still works at the potato chip factory. I still stay home and paint my toenails and work crossword puzzles. I've got the American dream by its curly tail.”

“Must be nice. I'm workin' sixty hour weeks at the call center, takin' escalated calls from jerks who want to get away with maxin' out their credit cards and not makin' payments for six months or longer. I'm still havin' migraines and major depression. But I refuse to lay down and die.”

“With an attitude like that you can only win.”

“Oh when it comes to attitude I win the prize. I don't know what the prize is but I win it.”

“Mama, I gotta go. Someone's at the door.”

“Bye.”

The Jaguar was Becky's dream car so when she loaded the groceries into her Kia then spotted the dark green Jaguar for sale across the parking lot she felt like she had been dropped into a delicious dream. “$4,500 for a Jaguar? You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me,” Becky muttered. She called the number on the windshield right away. A man answered. He sounded like George Clooney.

“Is this George Clooney?” Becky asked.

“No. This is Oliver Johnson. And who are you?”

“Um. I'm nobody important. My name is Becky Lake. I just happened to notice the Jaguar for sale. What's wrong with it for it to be so cheap?”

“My youngest son took the car for a joy ride without my permission. He drove it from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, didn't bother changing the oil, got stoned at one point and urinated in the front seat. You can no longer detect the scent of urine but the car needs a new radiator and it has too many miles on it for my liking. My son ruined that car for me. I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Would you like to come take a look?”

“Yes.”

Becky made chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. Dessert was apple cobbler. She poured hot sugary tea into Eddie's ice filled glass then sat down across from him at the scarred square table.

“We don't have that much money. Are you crazy?” Eddie said.

“Maybe I can work out a deal with the guy. He sounded really anxious to get rid of the car. It's bad luck for him. It's a cloud of rain and thunder hangin' over his head. He doesn't need the reminder in his garage that his son is an idiot.”

“You're gonna ask him if you can work somethin' out and the next thing you know you will be on your knees with his dick in your mouth. No ma'am. You got a car, anyway. You just wanna show off for your family. Who gives a rat's ass what your mama and sister and cousins think? We don't need status symbols in our life. This is real good, baby. I love the batter. You used the perfect amount of garlic salt and black pepper. I love you.”

“Don't you accuse me of bein' a whore then try to sweet talk me like that. You think I would suck strange dick for a damn car? You apologize to me right now or I'll toss out the cobbler.”

“Don't touch that cobbler. Look. Baby. I'm sorry. You know I don't think you're a whore. But the whole situation is lopsided and possibly dangerous. And there just ain't no sense in it. We don't have the money for the damn car. What kind of deal could you work out? Pay him off in hundred dollar installments? Come on. Get sensible.”

“You can go with me. I just want to test drive the thing. Think about it. Never again in this lifetime will we get the chance to drive a Jaguar. Doesn't that turn you on at least a little?”

“The wind turns me on. Everything turns me on. But I could care less about drivin' a car I cannot afford to buy. I'd rather turn on some Conway Twitty and screw you. Time is precious. Let's try not to slaughter it senselessly.”

That night they fucked in the usual way. Eddie on top. No words, just Becky's moans and whimpers. Becky imagined herself fucking George Clooney on the heated hood of the Jaguar. Becky wondered what kind of penis George Clooney had. She wondered if he took Viagra. Becky squeezed her eyes shut tight and clenched Eddie's dick with her pussy muscles. She came with a shriek. She dug her long orange nails into Eddie's sweaty ass as she came. She glanced at the clock. It was 11:49 p.m.

 

Misti Rainwater-Lites is the creator of several messes, most of them in book form. Bullshit Rodeo, a novel, will be available from Epic Rites Press in July 2013. Follow Misti's sporadic madness at http://dondeestaeldiscochupacabra.blogspot.com