Black Gum

FIREWORKS

We drove out to Blackgum just east of Muskogee. We parked at the lip of a ditch and got out under clouds too heavy for summer. There on the road she took a picture of me. I had my hands in my pockets and I looked like I was tired of where I stood or any other place I might stand.

My wife and I came out there to see our friend Susan. Her family put on the best fireworks display in Oklahoma. We also came out there because a few days ago my wife told me that I was an angry person and that she needed time alone and I knew the man she’d been texting would be there. We walked over the cattle guard and down the gravel road to the house where Susan’s brothers were sorting the fireworks. They had a layout: black cats and M80s and these big motherfuckers you drop down a tube and they shoot up. Her brothers were friendly enough but they didn’t really talk and so we sat and watched them set up the fireworks until Susan’s mother came out and gathered us and took us inside to eat.

More and more folks arrived and they all ate and drank beers and talked amongst each other and I had no idea where to go or what to do or why I’d been invited to this thing in the first place. The man showed up and pushed his long hair out of his eyes and gave us both a hug. I could have just hit him and the three of us would have known why, but I didn’t and so it was just the three of us that went on knowing what we knew.

He and I made small talk and I felt outside of myself, away from the tire swing hanging from the oak tree at the edge of the property. The man too was outside of himself and though we made words and smiled we were the whole time circling each other like dogs.

While Susan’s family got the display set up and her sisters got changed, my wife wandered off to pet a llama a hundred yards down the barb wire fence. I watched her lips move and the thing lost interest in her and walked out into the long grass.

Susan and her sisters had set up little platforms out in their front yard and when the clouds were ready to kiss the ground her brothers started up the fireworks. The rain came down and the copper lit the low clouds purple and blue. Susan and her sisters performed a dance. I sat on one side of my wife and the man sat on the other and we watched the spectacle.

When it was over we headed inside. I said I was tired and told Susan and so she showed me to my room. I got in there and she grabbed my wife by the arm and said, “Let me show you where you’re sleeping,” and I didn’t say anything. The door shut.

I lay down and looked at the dolls in the room and I couldn’t get comfortable. I’d had a few and my mind was wandering. I heard them in the living room, maybe twenty of them, singing “Jolene,” and I got up from the bed and went out there and my wife was sitting by the man, too close.

I told everyone that I was leaving and they said that it was late and that I’d had too much but I just repeated myself. Before I left I saw her and him and she looked at me then looked down at her phone and he looked off into the distance, his thin arms behind him and too close.

I’d always felt a certain inclination to hurt others. Always got a kick out of knocking someone straight. But I didn’t do a thing. I just left. The rain had let up and it smelled good outside.

I’d never seen myself as such a boy until that moment, when everything that seemed so big was in fact only a small part of several beginnings, and I drove all the way back to Comanche in tears and I didn’t stop til I got to Charlie’s and he took me in.

BLEACH

Charlie was a mechanic. At any given point there’d be two hollowed-out Mustangs in his driveway, tranny over here, drivetrain over there. The grass was too long and there were beer cans and cardboard beer boxes and cigarette butts scattered over it. Looked about the same as the rest of the yards in the neighborhood.

The night I showed up he went to his room and came back with niacin capsules filled with speed. I ate mine and chased it with beer.

His living room was a couch and a recliner and stains in the carpet.

We got real high. The icons on my phone screen jiggled. I clenched my teeth.

I felt great.

Charlie said, “Business was great for a little bit but then they stole my shit. Every time. They come by at night and they take from the cars and did you know that now I owe fucking a thousand bucks to this dude? A fucking grand. Fucking niggers just reach in and take shit out the car, I don’t even know if they know what it is that they’re taking, they just fucking take it. I’m in the hole, now. I was making money and it was okay and now I owe a fucking grand.”

I said, “Whoa.”

He said, “I just wanted to have my own business, that’s all. Worked Hibdon for years and I just wanted to start up my own thing. But now all this. This fucking neighborhood. But I guess that’s life in the hood,” and he started laughing like crazy.

I looked at my phone and thought, I am having a great time.

Charlie leaned forward in the recliner. “You know Ryan’s in jail.”

“Ryan? No.”

“Ryan’s in jail. He shot a dude over some bullshit. He’s in jail, and Anuky’s fighting in the MMA. He does stuff here. Seen him hit a dude so hard the motherfucker went down. He’s fighting.”

“Ryan shot someone?”

“There was this time my uncle shot a dude and he went to jail for a long time. That shit is crazy. Ryan looked like Eminem. Don’t you think Ryan looked like Eminem?”

“He did the bleach.”

“Yeah, the fucking bleach. Ryan looked like Eminem. Man I am rolling my fucking tit off.”

“Me too.” I chewed at my lip.

KITCHEN MESS

Later on, when it was nearly dawn, I was awake and texting every woman in my phone.

I heard Charlie’s door open and saw him walk out and look at me. Nothing registered. He had wild hair. He felt around in his pants and whipped his dick out and started pissing into his kitchen.

I watched, and I laughed.

The next morning I had gotten maybe an hour of sleep when Charlie woke me up.

“I ain’t gonna be mad,” he said. “But did you fucking piss in my kitchen?”

We went and got food and I read all the text messages in my phone. Charlie ate a grilled cheese.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel like the internet runs my life. I just click stuff. Doesn’t matter what it is. I clicked a link the other day, it made me feel bad. It wasn’t even weird though, it was just a guy deep-frying a pineapple. It was one of those ‘you won’t believe what happens’ things. But I felt bad about it. After I watched it though, I realized that if a guy came out of an alley holding a pineapple and said ‘Wanna see me deep-fry this bitch?’ I’d probably say ‘hell yeah.’”

After our meal we walked out into the sun and watched the cars pass. A group of older folks in automated wheelchairs camped out at the end of the street.

“You have to eat,” Charlie said.

“Not hungry.”

“Yeah, me neither. But you have to. Otherwise you’ll get strung out.”

“What are we doing?”

Charlie checked his watch. “Shane’s coming over. You’ve met my cousin, yeah?”

THE HEATHEN

Shane fashioned knives out of railroad spikes. He gifted one to Charlie wrapped in a paper towel to make it a surprise. He pointed out the duct tape wrapped around the hilt and Charlie stabbed the air with it.

Charlie gifted him a tattoo back. Shane’s face and his arms were covered in them, tiny knives and cats and lightning bolts and numbers and names. Tonight he wanted something different. He wanted Charlie to tattoo his gums.

Shane’s torso and legs were completely bare. When I asked him why only his arms and face were tattooed, he told me that in the underworld, the ink was all anyone could see. That they glow neon down there. I asked, “But won’t you be naked when you die?” and he said, “It’s cold in hell. I’m going to be wearing clothes.”

I said, “So why tattoo your gums?”

He said, “When I meet the devil, I want him to know that I’m a friendly guy.”

I ate two capsules and cringed and watched my friend power up his gun. His foot tapping the pedal. That sound. When the needle hit the softness above Shane’s teeth he howled and when his mouth was full of blood he gurgled.

When it was done we played beer pong with Kentucky Deluxe. I looked down at my phone every time Shane took a drink, his scream caterpillaring up atop the mushroom clouds of Archie Lee bass rattling the small speakers alone on the floor by the stack of magazines.

After Charlie sunk his third shot and Shane hollered again, my friend came around the fold-out picnic table and tilted his cousin’s head back, the blurry green tattoos of his hands on Shane’s inked face like two warring clouds of gnats. Charlie peeled back Shane’s lips and shook his head at the magma flow of ink and blood. “We’re gonna have to redo this soon.”

Shane slapped his hands away and said, “My shot.” He metronomed his forearm looking down the length of the table with one open eye. Tongue between his teeth split down the middle like a snake, the left end curling up into the wiry hairs growing over his lip.

Cups stacked/table folded/us on the couch. Shane held up a finger and spit blood into an empty beer bottle and smiled. Charlie peered at his cousin’s gums and clapped his hands. “Evil, man. Ugly shit.”

The next morning Shane was gone. Charlie walked into the living room looking like hell and poured us each a glass of cranberry juice and vodka. We drank it and sat out on his porch. The weather was turning and I didn’t have a jacket. Charlie went inside and came out with a hoodie and gave it to me. We watched the folks riding by on bicycles and walking past swinging their arms up to the sky. Men and women without teeth talking to themselves or singing loudly.

A deep low cloud came in and soon it was snowing a bit.

Charlie cursed and got a blue tarp out of his garage and covered the car parts and the frame and weighed it down with cinderblocks.

I set the empty cup down and got a beer from inside and sat back down.

We each tensed against a sudden wind.

I said, “So what’s going on with your cousin?”

Charlie arranged the cigarette butts on his porch with his toe. “He’s a little off.”

“I gathered.”

“He does his own thing, I guess.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“He grew up here?”

“He moved around.”

“Seems like a character.”

“Yeah, well,” Charlie stood up to get a beer. “He’s family.”

SLEDDING

We went to Walmart and bought sleds and drove out to the only hill in town. The college stadium was pocked with kids and others like us and we slid down the hill and laughed. We texted friends and soon we had a whole group of us out there.

The whole flat of the land was white and I was freezing in my hoodie but I remember that as the first time I was able to take my mind off things. In my spare time, high or not, I’d been checking my phone and I’d go to her Facebook page and look to see who was liking her status updates. I’d convinced myself that there was a way to tell whether the likes were casual or something else. Most of them came from the man or a few others who I didn’t know but they were there and I investigated them thoroughly. I checked their profiles and felt my heart hurt but also I had this odd thing like being stuck in the lobby of a movie theater.

I was living in a present that the past hadn’t caught up to yet. I didn’t think of anything but that there was this situation and that I had nothing.

But that day when it snowed in October I forgot all about it for a second and all I could think of was how the bulbs on the scoreboard looked so dim and the goal posts stretched up and caught snowflakes in the upturned paint. I watched all my friends slide down the hill, some of them scared and others without any hands at all.

Charlie went down one of those last times and hit a strange bump and flew up in the air and flipped end over end.

When he reached the bottom, he stood up and pumped both his fists in the air.

HOOKUP

Bill’s was mostly empty that night but for us and the drunks and two good-looking women sitting at the bar.

The snow had kept on throughout the day and everyone was wrapped up until the night went on.

Eventually the two of us drank enough that we went up to these women and talked. I can’t remember what we said but I know myself enough to know that as bad as I am in the long run, I’m just as good in the short. We bought them drinks and on it went and I could see that the one with the tattoos up her arm was looking at me in that way and so we went out into the snow to smoke cigarettes and work on keeping our balance.

Even now, if I smell this woman’s perfume somewhere in a room I can pick it out and I get quiet for a long time.

I knew her name, I can say that much.

We fucked in the car and she rode me for about thirty seconds before she got hers and quit. She pulled up her pants in the passenger seat and I kind of looked at my dick and she said, “Well I’m not gonna fucking blow you. You figure it out,” and got out of the car and went inside.

I sat there with my pants down and thought to myself, All right. This is your life now.

In the car on the way home, Charlie trying not to skid, he asked me for details. When I told him, he said, “She manned you.”

“I guess so.”

“You got bitched.”

“I did indeed.”

“So you never got it done?”

“No.”

He turned a corner and nearly ran us into a ditch. “Well don’t fucking jack off on my couch.”

YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE

A few days later, Charlie had a big party at his house. He’d ordered a bunch of speed from the internet and everyone there was warm and rolling. Everyone moved between the rooms and said things to each other and I picked out women to talk to but most of them politely found themselves elsewhere.

A few GIs showed up. One of them, Raul, had cocaine and he put a bit of it on the fat of his hand between his thumb and forefinger and I inhaled it.

Raul said, “I saw him die right there. He was looking up and then his eyes went out and he just looked like a dummy. There’s a waxy thing to death. I cried like a bitch. I was covered in all of his blood.”

His buddy was a wiry fellow who took to annoying anyone he could. This Asian girl showed up and he called her Toyota, Suzuki, Honda.

Raul moved on somewhere else and I ended up next to his friend. He told me I looked like I was bummed and I told him he looked like an asshole and he said, “You’re an asshole,” so I hit him as hard as I could. He went down and I picked him up by the shirt and hit him over and over. The party quit and everyone surrounded me and him and I got the door open and he had his foot jammed under it like we might let him back in if only he pushed hard enough. He got a good one in and my right eye went shut. We hit him back and finally Charlie came up over me and put out a cigarette on his face and he fell into the snow. He stalked around until Raul peeked his head out and told him to call a cab.

BILLS

At a certain point, days later, Charlie woke me up and handed me a cup of cranberry juice and vodka and sat across from me and asked me what I was planning to do.

I told him I didn’t know.

He told me that they were fixing to shut his water off, and that I better figure out what I planned on doing real soon.

I looked around. I picked up applications. I filled them out on paper or in those little kiosk things.

Right around the college campus, there was this restaurant that was just opening up. I saw the ‘help wanted’ sign and walked in and filled out an application. They pointed me to a table and told me to talk to the owner.

He sat at a table at the far end of the restaurant. Chair pushed out. Big belly heaving under a Looney Tunes t-shirt. Grease stains and barbecue sauce on it.

The owner shook my hand. “What the fuck happened to your face?”

“I tripped and fell on a railing.”

He blinked slowly. “What did you do before this?”

“I traveled.”

“I mean, job-wise. I’m looking at this application,” he picked up the sheet of paper in front of him, “and I don’t see any prior work experience.”

“I worked at an Arby’s when I got out of college.”

“You went to college?”

“Yep. Just up the road at Pierce.”

“No shit. Graduate?”

I shook my head.

“Be glad you got out. My sons racked up some bills.”

“I don’t like bills.”

“Me neither.” The owner sighed. “Listen, your face is fucking weird. Looks like someone knocked the hell out of you. I need a dish guy, but your face is too weird.”

I sat there with my hands in my lap.

“You can go now,” the owner said.

THE SCAR ON MY LEG

I went out to dinner with my mother. We met at a Chili’s. I brought her a plastic bag full of Reese’s peanut butter cups. She looked in the bag and her face lit up and that made me happy.

She told me about her work, about how the kids were driving her crazy, about trying to teach them multiplication, about how the mothers came in for conferences still tweaking. We talked about my father and how he was good for nothing. Any time I thought of my father I became deeply afraid.

My mother ordered a daiquiri and she started talking a lot and I’d never seen her drink before.

I asked how my step-father was and Mom said, “He fishes a lot.”

We talked about the past.

Mom said, “I remember you and your little brother, you shared a room. You’d set up laundry baskets between the two beds and you’d jump on them and pretend the floor was hot lava. Do you remember that?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “I remember I told you not to do that. I told you that it was dangerous. But you didn’t listen. And one day, you jumped on a laundry basket and you went right through it. And the laundry basket got sharp and cut you.”

“Pretty deep. I still have the scar on my leg.”

“You’re kidding! It didn’t go away?”

I said, “No.”

We ate some food.

I told her, “I remember you cleaning up the cut in the bathroom, and I was crying, and you said, ‘You never listen.’”

She laughed. “That’s what I said.”

After the meal, she started eating the candy I’d brought her. That made me happy again.

JUGGALO PARTY

Shane had just rolled back into town. Charlie fixed us parachutes. We ate them and drank and dipped to a party.

The Juggalos cracked their beers and freestyled in a circle. Charlie waved his hands about, big hatchet man necklace bouncing against his wife beater. He rapped about stabbing women and raping their corpses over ICP rapping about stabbing women and raping their corpses. The Juggalos put their fists to their mouths and snapped their fingers.

The apartment was small. A tiny Chihuahua weaved between their legs. It jumped in my lap and I picked it up and held it over my head. Shane had shown up earlier that day, and he sat next to me and wiggled his fingers at the dog.

The freestyle circle dispersed. Bass still thumping.

Charlie poured shots of 151 and handed one to his cousin. Shane took the shot and growled. Charlie shouted to the mass of Twiztid shirts and baggy jeans and labret piercings and soul patches, “My nigga failed a job interview today.”

The Juggalos golf clapped. I bowed.

“You’re my blood,” he said and punched me in the shoulder.

Shane clasped his hands in his lap and looked off to the side.

A short, heavyset kid placed a small baggie on the foldout dinner table. Charlie opened it and poured a bit onto the vinyl. “You can see the crystals.”

We got high and Charlie told stories to the group.

“I remember when Shane went to jail, like sixteen or something. He was running around outside of Walmart just smashing niggas and taking their bags. Run up behind them and pop, knock their ass out. Just tossed that shit into the trash, man.”

Shane sat quietly.

The heavyset kid laughed. “Word.”

“There was the time he tried to set his moms on fire.”

Shane flinched.

The kid said, “Like, the house?”

“Nah. Like, his actual moms. Just came in the house with some lighter fluid. It was the wildest shit I’d ever seen.”

The kid held out a fist. Shane slowly tapped it.

I put the Chihuahua down.

“Or the time with that girl. That was the most brutal shit I’d seen since-”

Shane addressed the heavyset kid. “Studio?”

The Juggalo’s eyes lit up. “Yep.”

“Let’s look at that.”

The kid brought him into his room. Jack Skellington curtains and pumpkin bedsheets and a rail thin girl staring at the ceiling holding her chest. He leaned over her. “You alright, baby?”

She smiled. “I’m higher than fuck.”

He opened his closet. Cut up egg cartons lined the walls. A mic hung from the ceiling with a sock over it. “This is where I write my masterpieces.” Turned on his PC. Brought up some beats. “Let’s drop something.” Out in the living room, the Juggalos howled. A big girl lifted her shirt up.

Charlie cut out a few more lines. Shane grimaced and grinded his teeth. “I’ve got shit to do.”

His cousin glared at him. “‘Shit to do.’ Jesus. Put it in your fucking face.”

“Charlie.”

“Put it in your fucking face.”

Shane railed the line.

I didn’t need convincing.

The beat came on, lots of snare rolls and bass and organ keys.

The Juggalo said, “Grimy shit.”

“Ugly.”

“You got something for me?”

Charlie cocked his thumb at Shane. “The homie has bars for days.”

I peeked out of the room. A few kids wrapped themselves in Christmas lights and turned on a Kurosawa film. One of them just kept talking, going on about what a master this dude was, look at this shot, that shot, perfectly framed. No one else paid him any mind. Shane said, “That looks like fun.”

Charlie said, “Drop some science.”

“I don’t know.”

“Drop knowledge. You’re a clumsy librarian.”

“I might. I don’t know.”

“Either do or don’t. Weigh your pros and cons. Do it.”

Shane tapped his head. “There is no simple math in this dark thing.”

The Juggalo let the beat ride out.

Shane thrashed wildly. The Juggalo tagged him twice in his eye. He stumbled back. The heavyset kid moved in. Got him twice more on the chin. Shane landed on his ass in the dirt and the group cheered. Charlie stepped in. “He’s done. Enough.”

Shane scrambled to his feet. He stalked around the back of his house and came back carrying a giant branch. The bony ends of it scraping against the streetlights.

The Juggalos roared. Charlie held out his hand. “What are you gonna do with that?”

Something left from behind Shane’s dilated eyes. He suddenly looked confused. “I’m gonna kill him with this branch.”

Charlie picked the tree limb from his cousin’s grip. “Go home.”

Shane hesitated.

I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “Come on,” I said.

We stumbled down the street.

Charlie turned to the Juggalos. “Normally I’d say come on home with us and smoke something. But when he gets like this…”

Shane howled and I wrapped him up in my arms and carried him.

Charlie shrugged. “I better get on.”

PIRATE SHIP

The next morning I woke up and Shane looked over at me from where he sat and said, “I’m hungry.”

We walked to the Corner Store and waved hello the man behind the counter. Shane poured himself a slushie and bought some chips and talked to the clerk a bit and we went out front and sat on a picnic table off to the side and he ate his chips. Watched passersby slip on the ice.

A man in a leather jacket came out of the dark and sat between us. He had a pirate ship tattooed across his face.

He pointed at the tattoo under Shane’s eye. “What’s this dagger mean?”

“Nothing.”

He pointed at the “580” across Shane’s chin. “What’s this mean?”

“It’s the area code.”

“Where am I?”

Shane told him.

“Do you have a videogame system?”

“Yeah.”

The man rummaged through his bags. Pulled out a loaf of white bread. “I got this bread. Can I come over and play?”

Shane motioned with the bag of chips. “No.”

The man was quiet for a bit. “What’s these teardrops mean?”

“Means I’m super sad.”

“What’s this on your neck?”

“It’s a Buddha.”

“It’s a Buddha!” the man yelled. He pointed at the giant tattoo on his face. “You know what this pirate ship means?”

“What?”

The man in the leather jacket hopped up and put his hands on his knees and leaned into Shane’s face. “It means I’m a motherfucking PIRATE.”

After that the man sat down, put some sunglasses on, ate his bread, and said not one more word to Shane Tilden. He got up and left.

The snow picked up again.

The clerk came out and lit a cigarette. Offered the pack to Shane.

“No, thanks. I only smoke when I drink.”

The clerk nodded. “Me, too.”

Cars hissed past on the wet road. I took a cigarette.

The clerk said, “You attract them.”

“I seem to.”

“All that shit on your face.”

“Yeah.”

We smoked and sat and after a time we went back to Charlie’s. Shane gathered his things and left without saying a word.

GO BE NORMAL

I signed up for an online dating site. I spent a lot of time picking the right profile picture.

I couldn’t figure what to write in the “About Me” section.

Charlie saw me on the computer and came up and looked over my shoulder.

“OkCupid.”

“Yeah.”

He took a sip of beer. “They make those for queers, too, you know.”

“Shut up.”

“You have a kind of sad need for pussy, don’t you?”

“I just like it.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I’m not gay.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

I turned back to the computer. “I got a message already.”

“Have fun fucking weird internet people. I’m gonna go be normal and not get laid until I see something I actually like.”

I waited fifteen minutes before I responded to this message. The woman’s name was Hanna.

IF I’D MET YOU WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU

That Sunday, Charlie told me we needed to go to church.

I told him I’d pass. He told me they paid $50 just to show up.

I said, “Okay.”

The preacher paced at the podium. He raised his arm above his head. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Dropped his hand on “killed.”

The church was cramped. Christmas tree in the corner. Someone coughed.

The preacher smiled. One gold tooth. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Someone said, “I don’t blame you.”

He paced faster. Windpants swishing. Despite the cold in the room, he began to sweat. That mantra, repeated as he ran his fingers through wet curly hair: “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Over and over. The room churning a bit. Behind us, someone spoke in tongues.

The congregation said it with him, everyone shouting “killed” with the holy man, his hand chopping the air.

He stopped and so did the crowd.

Took a breath. “My friend Harold was bad. He was bad. If Harold and I met you, back when we were young, we would have killed you.”

Leaned on the podium. “Harold had a stomach, he could never keep it down. Anything he ate was gonna tear him up. Changed with the seasons. In the summer he couldn’t eat hardly anything without getting sick. In the winter, when it got cold like it is, he could eat everything. Never seen someone eat as much. But just in the winter. Didn’t eat more than a sandwich in the summer. He drank a lot of coffee. On top of everything else. His favorite mug had a snake on it. He liked robots and we were roommates and he had to be home to watch his TV with the lasers and I liked them okay, too. I sometimes called him Terminator because he was so tall. In the summer he’d hold his stomach and watch robots. We didn’t go out because it was only a matter of time before someone said something. You know how it is. I know you know how it is.”

The congregation nodded. Men with small eyes. Women in surplus jackets.

“When we were younger, we killed a man just down the road from here. In the bar talking about his new shoes. Got drunk and we followed him out there and took what was in his wallet, but Harold hit him too hard. We killed people who deserved it and we’d watch robots and wonder on it.”

The man behind me amped up the tongues.

The preacher pointed. “That sound, we would have killed you.”

The man behind me scaled back the tongues.

“I ate dinner at Harold’s house as a child. His father was a good man and his mother was good, too. He had brothers and sisters that had children. He couldn’t be that, though. Neither of us could. We were in and out of jail but when we were both out, we were together. I loved Harold. After a time we grew up. I kept a steady job and he did, too. We met women and we moved on and we calmed down. We became men. I had a son. He’s a grown man now himself. Harold had a daughter and we’d joke about them getting married but they never did. He once asked me over the phone if I thought it was wrong, how we were, and I said of course it was. No way you could figure it to not be wrong. We were heathens. Godless heathens.”

Someone said, “Praise Jesus.”

The preacher pushed off the pulpit and put his hands in his pockets. “His guts were gonna take him. Never went to the doctor. At first he couldn’t because of money but after a while you just don’t think about it. I wonder would it have gotten him. I wonder would he have been watching his stories. I don’t know. When he came to my house we went fishing down by the pond and got into an argument about god knows what and god knows we argued all the time, all our lives. But I hadn’t seen him in a while and it was the dry heat of summer and that stomach was killing him and the tones of his voice sounded wrong to me and so I hit him. He fell back and landed wrong and he was gone, just like that. I miss him.”

The congregation didn’t move but for the few folks now recording the sermon on their cell phones.

He scratched the corner of his mouth.

“If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you. But then I got old, and I killed Harold.”

The preacher closed his eyes and held up a hand. He said, “Let us pray.”

We collected our checks from a disinterested secretary and stepped out into the ice and the cold.

Charlie said, “I liked the thing he did with his hand.”

“The—” I made a chopping motion.

“Yeah.”

“I fucking hate going to church.”

“Next time we’ll just donate plasma.”

IDEAS

Charlie and I went to the Corner Store. He picked out a thirty-pack of Keystone and took it up to the counter.

The clerk said, “You got your ID?”

Charlie nodded and took out his wallet and showed him.

The clerk rang up the beer. He said, “You got any weed?”

Charlie shook his head and paid for the Keystone and left.

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY

I’ve never been good face-to-face, never been quick on it. There’s a term, something about the spirit of the staircase, that thing you might have said, but now there’s a delay and we all live on those stairs, waiting for our shoe to drop.

When I met Hanna at the Cellar Bar we were quiet around each other, though we’d written to each other a lot. Then the beer came and we talked and we learned what was real and what was not.

She was in a blue knit cap and a t-shirt.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s cold out there. But not in here.”

She took a paper bag out of her purse and rolled an apple out of it onto the table and started eating it.

“You know what they say,” I said.

“Apples are delicious,” she said.

I laughed. “I’m not sure that’s what they say.”

“That’s what I say.”

“You know what they say: it’s really fucking cold outside.”

“You know what they say: it’s not so cold in here.”

A table of old women were celebrating their friend’s birthday party. They cheered and sipped margaritas.

“They’re into it,” Hanna said.

“Having a time,” I said.

“I can’t get that way anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

She kind of focused on the space behind my head. “I got too drunk a year ago and threatened to rip my sister’s cunt out with barb wire.”

At that point, most sensible men might go in a different direction. But at that point, I just needed someone to be close to me. I needed to breathe in the smell of her hair and hold on to her and wake up next to her and brush my teeth with her there in the next room. I felt all of these things and I don’t know why because I didn’t know this person just the same as I didn’t know any of the people I spent my time around. I felt like I’d died and someone new was in my place. I was still coming down off the relationship with my wife and I was thirsty.

I told her about what had happened between my wife and me. It was a truncated version, but I found myself filling in the blank spaces until it became less about the give and take, less about what had happened, and more about how those things had affected me, the way they’d changed me, the way they left me with an emptiness.

It was all true, but I didn’t tell it to feel better. I told her that because I knew, somehow, that a woman who might threaten to rip out her sister’s privates wouldn’t be able to not fuck a man on his way down.

She put her hand over mine and her eyes glazed over.

The old women roared. The birthday girl had unwrapped a giant dildo.

“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah. They’re so into it.”

“No, I mean the size of that thing. Jesus.”

“Right.”

When I dropped her off, I’d just put the car in park and turned the music down when I looked over and saw that she was crying.

Her face was red and puffy.

She reached for my belt.

I pushed her hand away.

She looked at me and said, “Please.”

I said, “I think I’ll be all right.”

She said, “You think I’m ugly.”

I said, “That’s not it. I think you’re pretty. I just don’t want to.”

Hanna pushed my hands away and undid the belt. She was full-on sobbing now, really getting into it. She took my dick out and it was half-hard.

All teeth.

I braced my hands on the passenger-side headrest and the roof.

Closed my eyes and tried to focus on the warmth and the wetness of it. But the teeth cut into me and eventually I cried out and she quit and sobbed heavily and threw the door open and ran back into her house.

I deleted my account on the dating site later that night.

I told Charlie about what happened the next morning. He was under the Mustang.

“You got bitched again,” he said.

“I guess I did.”

“You’d better watch out. Next time she’s gonna fuck your ass.”

“Shut up.”

“You take a shower with your clothes on?”

“I took a shower. But I took my clothes off.”

“Did you cry?”

“Shut up.”

“Man, I’m your friend. But since you came here, you’ve been just…I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Different.”

“Well, fuck yeah I’m different.”

He rolled out from under the car and pointed a socket wrench at me. “I know that shit is fucked up for you right now. But you’ve gotta get it together. I’m your friend. You need to listen to me. You’re like a thirsty woman but it’s worse because you’re supposed to be a dude. You’re different. If you’re gonna be different, at least be a man about it.”

We were quiet for a long time. Wind chimes down the street.

We walked inside and didn’t talk to each other.

The pilot light on the fridge kicked on.

Finally, I said, “All right. You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go out to the Last Call tonight, and you’re gonna hang out and drink some beer and we’re gonna talk about our dicks and comment on the size of all the titties we see. But you’re not gonna pursue like some sad little queer.”

“Okay. I’m down.”

“And you need to get a fucking job or something, man. One, you need to occupy your time. Two,” he stabbed his finger at a stack of bills.

“I’ve been on the job hunt.”

“You’re like a dog looking out the window at squirrels.”

“I’ve been trying.”

“Not hunting, is all I’m saying.”

“I don’t know what I’m trying to do.”

Charlie loaded the bowl. “Probably you should smoke some weed about it.”

VESTMENTS

We ate a couple rolls each and met up with Shane at Last Call. Machine gun music in the jukebox. Rednecks and metal kids and women in glitter.

Charlie pointed at a woman in a halter top. “Big titties,” he said.

“Big titties,” we echoed.

Shane’s pupils were huge. He said, “Picture me like this. Picture me reaching enlightenment.”

“Like, dying?” Charlie bounced in place in his chair.

“Nah, like, picture me as this old ass monk. In all the vestments.”

“The fuck is a ‘vestment?’”

“Like a robe and I’m bald and shit.”

We pictured it. A woman in short-shorts walked by. Charlie said, “Shelf booty.”

“Shelf booty,” we echoed.

“I guarantee you that I could meet the Buddha. He could come down and talk to me and there’d be gold light and shit and me and him would go out into a garden and I’d feel at peace with fucking everything. I guarantee you this: even if that was the case, if a hoodrat nigga like you came to me with some of this shit, I would ingest it post haste and run slamdancing down the halls of my monastery.”

Charlie said, “I have no idea what the fuck you just said. But I am higher than a motherfucker.”

“Me too,” Shane said. “Me too.”

A woman in a sweater and mom jeans leaned over the bar. We all tilted our heads.

Charlie took a sip of beer. “I’d hit it.”

“I’d hit it,” we echoed.

MALKUTH

We invited everyone we knew to the crib that night and it was off the fucking chain in that motherfucker I am telling you right now. Shane decided that his gums needed a touch up and everyone stood around geeking and some of them had the red Solo cups with the Sprite and shit in them and they were seeing the people in the shadows worming their way through the spackle in the ceiling. That sound, that sound was something else, that sound makes me gag to this day, the needle hitting bare pink gum and flooding over. I wonder how much fucking ink he swallowed in those sessions, I wonder how toxic it was, and I wonder if that was why he was the way he was. A kid with long hair and an acoustic guitar sat on the arm of the couch and played songs for the girls until his gun slipped from the back of his jeans and he retrieved it and took one of the girls back to the room. A big son of a bitch that I’d never seen before talked shit in the kitchen and stood on his head and poured beer into his face and everyone laughed and carried on. Kenny was there, too, fucking Kenny. We fucked with that kid throughout high school, we were fucking merciless, we’d be out on the soccer field that no one used for soccer by the turnaround where the kid with the beamer took his girlfriends and we’d put Kenny in a shopping cart because Kenny didn’t have a family that cared about him, he had a dad and his dad was a real piece of shit but Kenny was small and sad and so we pushed him in this shopping cart right into an open port-a-john that tipped over and spilled everywhere and he was covered in it and we fucking laughed. That night we were digging into the speed and beer, I love the way a half-empty box of Coors feels when you reach into it when it’s sitting there on the floor and you can feel the cold air still in it like whatever the opposite of a tomb is, and then it’s even colder when you get the beer itself. But that night the boy with the long hair and the gun took the girl out of the room and the girl he was with discovered that while they were busy Kenny stole the girl’s purse and so Shane decided we needed to do something about this. He called up Kenny’s friend Damon who gave him up right away, told us he’d be at this hotel room holed up. We went into Charlie’s room and he opened his drawer and lifted up the snake coil of fake ass chains and yelled “I got chains on chains nigga!” and then beneath those was a pile of bandanas, a hodgepodge, ICP and Peanuts and a blue paisley one and one from Chili’s and one from Disney World. It’s at that point that Shane took me aside to the guest room and he told me that he had a spell that would protect me and I was so gone there was three of him. He drew a pentagram on the wall and did a chant and I only remember the word “Malkuth” and then he slapped me on the shoulder and said, “heathens” and suddenly I saw the pentagram on the wall and it was on fire but it gave no heat. I said, “heathens” and I felt the last little bit of who I was fall asleep. And five of us, Shane and Charlie and the new me and the acoustic man and the big son of a bitch, we piled into the big boy’s truck and off we headed. We slapped on the bandanas and banged on the hotel door but he wouldn’t answer and we had a bat and the door opened quick and the purse dropped out and we grabbed it and piled back in the truck and tore off. We got the girl her purse back but it was missing the wallet and the phone. Shane and I ran out into the field out there and we didn’t have any shirts and we shouted “heathens” and the moon wasn’t even full that night.

MORNING AGAIN

Later that night when it was morning again I got a text message from my wife. My eyes were shaking so hard my temples hurt but I pursed my lips and stared.

It said, “I hope you are doing well. I miss you. I worry about you. Do you remember when we were younger and I was leaving? We stood by the van until it got so late. I just want you to know that you’ll always be my soulmate. I love you.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I put my phone under the bed and tried to sleep.

The room turned blue with the dawn.

HARD IN THE PAINT

When I woke up, Shane was exercising in front of the TV. One of those Wii fitness games. He held the controllers at his side and pretended to jump rope.

I still had my Peanuts bandana tied around my face.

Charlie was in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

The game dinged and told Shane he did a good job.

Charlie came out of the kitchen with a skillet and picked up a plate off the end table and licked it clean. He slid the eggs from the skillet onto the plate and handed them to Shane.

The tattooed man sat down across from me and held out the plate. “Eggs?”

I thought I might throw up. I shook my head.

“Gotta have some protein.”

From the kitchen: “I’ve got some protein for you in my nuts.”

Shane frowned. “Don’t be gross.” He looked at me and chewed slowly. Finally: “You don’t do this much, do you?”

“What?”

“Go hard in the paint. We go hard in the paint. You don’t go very hard in the paint, do you?”

“Recently, yeah. But no, I guess not.”

“The thing about going hard in the paint-”

From the kitchen: “Quit fucking saying that.”

“You need to hydrate.”

Charlie brought some water. “He’s right. Drink.”

I drank it.

Shane said, “Eat an egg.”

“No thanks.”

“One egg.”

“I’ll fucking puke.”

To Charlie: “Hey, do you still have that whey stuff?”

From the kitchen: “Yeah.”

“Mix this man a smoothie.”

Charlie brought me a glass of water mixed with whey powder. Chunks floating in it. I closed my eyes and drank the whole thing and focused on not gagging.

Shane finished his eggs and set the plate down. He leaned forward and looked at me.

I said, “What?”

“The cops would have come by now, if they were going to at all.”

I felt sick again.

“You don’t have to worry. Why would they call? They stole from us.”

The two of us sat in silence for a long time. Charlie in the kitchen. Shane just staring at me.

“Jesus Christ. What?”

“I’m only just learning this, so I’m having trouble figuring it out.”

“Figuring what out?”

“Your aura.”

From the kitchen: “Your aura is gay.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“You have the aura of a gay man.”

“I’m serious. I can’t tell if you’re a dark red. If you’re a dark red, that means you’re a sexual being.”

Charlie started doing the dishes. Over the sound of the faucet: “Please stop hitting on my friend.”

“How did you meet my cousin?”

I felt uncomfortable. He didn’t blink.

“From school,” I said. “We’ve known each other since school.”

“I’ve never seen you here.”

Over the sound of the faucet: “He’s been married and shit.”

“Is he a deeply sexual person?”

A pause. “He’s a dude.”

Shane made a noise and leaned back in his chair. “It might be more of a clouded red. That means you’re a deeply angry person. Like, anger that you almost can’t control.”

Charlie said, “Not bad,” and I said “That’s true.”

“But…there’s also a little bit of dark blue. Navy blue. You don’t know what the future holds. You want to control the present moment. You’ve lost that control. It’s like a blue going into a red, like a…”

Charlie: “Like a Fruit Roll-Up.”

Shane snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Like a fucking Fruit Roll-Up.”

I said, “Are you a fortune teller? Is that what you do?”

Shook his head. “I don’t know the future. If I knew the future, I would already be living in it. What do you do?”

“Nothing, now.”

“What did you do?”

“I worked in the mall.”

He nodded.

I said, “What color is Charlie’s aura?”

Shane said, “Charlie’s aura is pink.”

Charlie shut the faucet off. “You’re gay.”

“He’s gifted. But it can grow dark. Deceitful.”

“What’s your aura?”

“I’m indigo. I can see the other worlds.”

“Like the future, then.”

“No, just other worlds. Sometimes they’re ahead of us, sometimes they’re behind. Like, for example. Me and a buddy had a trunk full of hydro and we were coming in from California. I had this vision. Came to me clear. It was Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door. I brought them in and gave them tea. So I tell my buddy, we have to dress like Jehovah’s Witnesses. He thought I was nuts. But we did, and on the way here, it was really snowy, icy, and we drove our car into a ditch. The cops came by and saw us there and saw that we were godly, and they helped us out of the ditch. Never searched the car.”

“That sounds like telling the future to me.”

“If I knew the future I’d know that we would crash and if I knew that I’d already be crashing. It’s not knowing the future. It’s reading the messages.”

Charlie sat down and picked up a bong and packed the bowl. “Don’t listen to him.”

“You were married.”

I got quiet.

“Now you’re not?”

“I’m still married.”

Shane reached for the bong. Charlie gave it to him, still holding the smoke in his lungs. “You know what you’re telling me?”

My brain wasn’t moving quickly enough. I just shrugged.

Shane inhaled. Let it out. “You should go back to your wife and apologize for whatever you’ve done.”

“I didn’t-“

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s what you should do.”

The room was quiet. The videogame asked us if we were ready to jog in place.

“I don’t know you,” I said.

“That’s true,” he passed me the bong. “But, I think I know you. I know what you should do. But you’re not there yet. And besides. You’re a fucking heathen now. You don’t work?”

“No.”

Shane got up and came back with a duffle bag. I coughed out the smoke. He unzipped the bag and brought out a giant mason jar full of weed on the coffee table. A Ziploc fat with sheets of acid. Another pregnant with ecstasy.

“This is what I do.”

I looked at the table, then back to him.

“Do you want to sell some drugs?”

I glanced over at Charlie. Engrossed in his phone. Back to Shane. “Sure,” I said.

He smiled at me. “How do my gums look?”

“Ugly, man. Evil shit.”

GIFT CARD

We bought white t-shirts from Walmart and cut them with a pocket knife and put them on. We bought fake blood from Party America and poured it over our heads.

Shane put the weed and the pills and the sheets in a backpack and cut open a blue bag of MDMC and dumped it onto a cutting board. He emptied Niacin pills in the sink, the tiny beads clinking in the tin. Scooped the white powder into the capsules and capped them off and licked his fingers. He tore off little strips of paper towels and sprinkled the speed onto them and balled them up and we parachuted them. I downed mine with a beer and nearly gagged.

He gave me ten pills and Charlie twenty. We put them in our pockets.

“Shit hasn’t been tested yet, it’s still an RC. So they’re not technically illegal. But when we put them in the pills like that, it’s kind of illegal.” He paused. “It’s a gray area. But it’s less dangerous than all that shit,” pointing at the backpack, “so I’ll start you off with a low risk.”

The speed took hold and I listened and I grit my teeth.

“They get one for twenty or they can get two for thirty.”

“What about three?”

“Three is fifty.”

“Okay.”

“Anything over one, the last is half. No more than that.”

Shane was DJing at the Last Call. He set up his mixers in the booth and arranged the songs he was going to play. I stood in there with Charlie and looked out at the kids arriving, all of them in zombie makeup and ripped shirts.

Shane said, “You look nervous as a chinaman in a dick-measuring contest.”

I said, “I’m not nervous.”

He said, “Low risk. Don’t worry.”

I said, “I’m not.”

When we got back to Charlie’s, we dumped our earnings on the small pool table in the corner. We picked through the money and divvied it up.

Shane held up a Walmart gift card. “Fuck is this?”

I told him, “It’s got $25 on it.”

“Does it?”

“I think so.”

He handed it to me. “Cash, man. Cash.”

SLOWLY SLIPPING

I met my mother at Chili’s the next day and after all the small talk she asked me what was going on with me and my wife.

I told her that she said I was an angry person. I told her about how she started to talk to others. I told her that it was a feeling of slowly slipping. I didn’t really know what else to say. She cried and told me that she couldn’t stand to see me that sad.

We finished our food and I told her, “I brought you a present.”

I handed her the Walmart gift card and hoped there was actually money on it.