Knockemstiff

by Donald Ray Pollock

Maybe my mom was right; perhaps all you had to do was pretend something was true and then someday it would be, no matter how fantastic, no matter how fucked up.

Del watched Randy gag on the cigarette in between hits off the oxygen mask. “Hey,” Del finally said, “remember that book I used to read all the time? Dorcie and Cole and…shit, I can’t remember the other one.” “Holly,” Randy said. “Her name was Holly. She was practically a virgin.” “Yeah, that’s right. Jesus, I can’t believe you remember her name.” “Now that Dorcie was something else,” Randy said. “God, I wish I’d met her when I was benching six hundred. I’d have tore that up.” “Christ, Randy, it was just a book. I mean, those people weren’t real or anything.” “Oh, no, you’re wrong, man,” Randy said. “They was real. More real than most shit anyway. I still think about her. What’s that tell you?”

**

Wherever I went in those days, I stumbled across the bill collectors and misfortunes of my past, while any chance of a future worth living kept spinning farther and farther away.

You could have nailed a cross to her forehead and the woman wouldn’t have changed her expression.

It seemed that I always talked about shit that I didn’t want to talk about, but could never say the things I wanted to say.

**

I found myself wishing I had a loved one who would die and leave me their barbiturates, but I couldn’t think of anyone who’d ever loved me that much. My uncle had already promised his to the mail lady.

listening to him go on and on about the Owl’s car. When you first heard him talking about it, you’d figure he was bat-shit crazy, but really, he was just trying to latch on to something that would fill up his days so he didn’t have to think about what a fucking mess he had made of everything. It’s the same for most of us; forgetting our lives might be the best we’ll ever do.

I’m fifty-six years old and sloppy fat and stuck in southern Ohio like the smile on a dead clown’s ass.

Jill’s always on me about my clogged pipes, but I’m a big guy—they don’t call me Big Bernie for nothing—and I crave junk food like a baby craves the tit. Besides, I’m beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

It’s the kind of feeling that people never realize they’ve had until years later, when it’s no longer possible to feel it.

My head became a perfect holiday, my nerves foamy little buds of milk. The Oxy filled holes in me I hadn’t even realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I lit my last cigarette and stared out the window.

I’d grown up here, but it had never felt like home.