Black Gum (3 page)

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.”