Boonville (5 page)

“John does marketing,” Sarah said. “I'd tell him what you do, Billy Chuck, but jerking off is more of a hobby than an occupation, isn't it?”

“When in doubt, whip it out,” Billy Chuck answered. “You ought to know, Sarah. Must be lonely at the commune without Daryl, havin' a boat on and no oar to paddle.”

“You're such a child,” Sarah said. “I can't believe we're the
same age.”

John couldn't believe it either. Bad teeth aside, Billy Chuck was aging like picked fruit. John had gauged him to be at least twenty years older than Sarah, one of her friends' fathers. His hairline was receding, temples gray. Maybe he had that accelerated-growth disease that turned children into old men. John tried to catch a glimpse of the younger man trapped inside Billy Chuck's skin, but didn't want to be caught staring.

“We went to school together,” Sarah told John. “Junior high and high school, not to mention the quality time spent drinking at the gravel pits, the Indian caves, and right here. If I didn't know you so well, Billy Chuck, I'd have to kill you.”

“I can't believe he was my prom date,” Lisa offered.

“Hard to believe I would have asked a dagger,” Billy Chuck admitted. “But you were pretty, Lisa. And it's hard to spot a lesbian when they're young.”

“It's easy to spot an asshole,” Sarah replied.

She told John that when they had attended Anderson Valley High School, the student body was ninety. Forty boys, ten in special ed. Certifiably retarded. That didn't include the shop crowd, which straddled the line between retarded and dull-normal. Girls went to dances with their cousins and brothers. In her English class, combining all the juniors and seniors who had the scholastic aptitude to maybe take an aerobics class at the junior college someday, there was only one boy. And she married him.

“I was against Lisa going to prom with you, Billy Chuck,” Sarah recalled. “I fixed her up with a Mendo boy, but he canceled. What was his name, Lisa?”

“Todd Chambers,” Billy Chuck said, surprising both women. “Mendocino's the next real town north, Squirrel Boy, and everyone there's named Todd or Morning Starr. Spelled with two D's and two R's. Buncha fuckin' yup hippies. Never did an honest day's work in their lives, growin' dope, sellin' seaweed, spendin' their money fuckin' up the valley. Goddamned tourists. And their kids are second-generation tourists.”

Billy Chuck told John that Mendocino used to be good country when his father was young, but tourists had brought in their tourist shit, wine and cheese, art and whale T-shirts, retreats and inns, and now they were overrun by Todds and Morning Starrs who thought they were better than the people
who built the county, who did the living and dying before any of them had ever heard of the Redwood Highway. His eyes rested on John, who was tempted to point out that he spelled his name with one N.

“I knocked his dick in the dirt,” Billy Chuck said, spitting tobacco onto the floor, smearing a string of saliva across his stubbled chin. “Whenever we played football against Mendo, we picked out who we were gonna hit on the kickoff. Didn't matter if they ran the ball back all the way for a touchdown, the point was to stick somebody. Hopefully someone would choose the ball carrier. I picked Todd, number 82. Hit him so hard his whole family said, ‘Ouch!'”

At this point, Billy Chuck reached for a cocktail napkin to make a diagram of “The Play.” John knew every man had their own version of “The Play,” a last-second shot, called third strike, diving catch, where in their minds they became the testosterone-dripping center of the universe. “The Play” after which lightning flashed, women fainted, headlines were printed, and children were named on your behalf. John's “play” had come prematurely on a game-winning, check-swing single in Little League, leaving him quiet during conversations about sporting glories.

“See, I was over here,” Billy Chuck drew an X on the napkin. “That yup was way on other side of the field.” He drew an O. “I ran straight at him.” He drew a line connecting the two. “I was low like you're supposed to be. Neck up, arms in close. I put my shoulder so far into that pretty boy, I thought they were gonna have to surgically remove him from me.” He scribbled over the O, tearing a hole in the napkin. “He flew about six feet. I told him, ‘Stay there son, I'll be right back!'”

Billy Chuck chortled. John laughed too, not at the joke so much as Billy Chuck in general, at being drunk in the Lodge in Boonville. John could tell Sarah and Lisa thought Billy Chuck was pathetic and if it weren't for the size of the town and their shared experience, they wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire.

“When I heard Lisa was goin' to prom with Todd, I reminded him how bad it would hurt to get hit again, this time without pads,” Billy Chuck said. “‘Take a Morning Starr or Sequoia Cooze to your own yup-fest,' I told him.”

He wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve, getting the spit this time.

“I was all-league honorable mention that year,” he said, taking a long pull from his can of Coors Light.

“That's sweet in a Neanderthal kind of way,” Lisa declared. “How come you never told me?”

“Strong silent type,” Billy Chuck answered, ordering more drinks for all of them.

The bartender, Melonie, set another round of beer and whisky in front of them. She was pregnant; tired eyes, sand-bagged posture, inflated body encased in jaundiced skin. Her hair seemed to have been carefully styled and then slept on. She wore a T-shirt with an arrow pointing to her stomach that read: “This one better make money.” Her mouth moved wordlessly as she took care of the orders, whispering advice to her unborn in the language of reluctant mothers. The men in the Lodge avoided her eyes.

“Sides,” Billy Chuck said, “It don't look good with you turnin' out to be a dyke.”

“Will you stop with your homophobia?” Sarah pleaded. “Just because we don't date anybody from Boonville doesn't mean we're lesbians. It means we have standards.”

“Guess I hit a nerve,” Billy Chuck said. “You better bring that up at one of your clit-chats, if you get past exchangin' dildos.”

“Fuck you,” Sarah said. “I haven't seen a woman near you since that prom. If anyone's gay, it's probably you. Why don't you take it to the other end of the bar, Big Man?”

John looked to where Sarah was referring, an empty stool near a television tuned to an endless chase scene, no outlaws or cops, just cars following each other across terrain that resembled a Hollywood back lot. A man wearing a Confederate flag bandanna stood at the bar by the open seat, fingering a bundle of butcher paper with one less finger on his hand than the national average. Blood seeped from the package, forming a puddle on the bar. He was delivering a soliloquy on the merits of his smoker, stating he could make jerky out of anything: deer, bobcat, raccoon. A woman was sleeping with her head resting next to the mess. Two men holding beers racked their memories and math skills to figure out which of them had “got” and “kicked” more ass. They debated whether a piece of ass should be counted twice if it had been both “got” and “kicked,” or if that constituted a separate category. Meanwhile, a woman in pink overalls climbed onto her barstool to dance to her “all-time favorite song.” No expert, John guessed it
was Dolly, Tammy, or Reba. Something aside from bleeding meat smelled pungent.

“Just joking.” Billy Chuck backed off.

There would be plenty of nights to drink alone, John could see him thinking. This didn't have to be one of them.

“You used to be able to take it,” Billy Chuck said, still pushing.

“I can take it,” Sarah replied. “I've been hearing that shit since before I had any idea what sex was. Assholes coming on to me and crying lesbian because I said, ‘No.' I've had enough of insecure men and their tiny dicks.”

“I know you're not talkin' about me 'cause I measured myself this morning,” Billy Chuck said, “That must be the way it is at the Waterfall, Aslan with his Ecstasy and eight-year-olds. ‘Father of the New Children.' Talk about a ‘new age,' happy birthday, there's a six-foot-ten hippie corkscrewin' your ass.”

“Fuck you, Howdy,” Sarah cursed. “You've never been to the Waterfall. You don't know what goes on there. I meant Boonville, you and these rednecks.”

Sarah swung her arm to include the whole bar. John's head rolled dizzily trying to follow her gesture. He tried to control the visual insubordination by focusing on the pool table, but too much motion surrounded it, lights and laughter, players and pool cues. Uh-oh, he thought. Head spins. His stomach churned with the recollections of vomiting in half-forgotten bathrooms, tile and porcelain, splattering alleys with his insides; car bumpers, bushes, dress shoes. Unsettling short orders wavered somewhere between his pancreas and the back of his throat, minestrone and milk, egg yolks and escargot, okra and octopus. It was familiar territory, as common as sticking his finger down his throat to get it all out. John was a puker. He tried to think of cold water and light breezes. But the odor of rancid meat wormed its way from the Siberian end of the bar, snowballing its fragrance with everything else sour and unwashed in the Lodge. John looked to his new friends for support, but they were deep into their discussion, justifying their animosity for each other. He shut his eyes, fighting his reflex to gag.

Why didn't I stop at three? he asked himself.

“Don't wag your finger at me, bitch,” Billy Chuck said, oblivious to John's plight. “You don't know Boont from bullshit. Lisa's grandpa and mine drank in this bar when it was called the
Bucket of Blood, logged these forests with plain old axes and saws. When the tourists have gone off to ruin someplace else, me and Lisa will be here doin' what our families have always done here: try to get to the next day. Where you gonna be? Smokin' dope in some other town? Talkin' shit in some other therapy group? You came with the Volvos and you'll leave with them.”

“Don't worry, Billy Chuck,” Sarah promised. “I'll be here.”

They stared at each other, beauty and the beast bickering with no fairy tale ending in sight. A trucker sucked in his gut, strolled over to the pool table and placed a stack of quarters beneath the far rail. One of the cars on the television crashed and caught fire. Someone burped for a solid five seconds. A couple opened a bag of pork rinds and began munching. The man with the missing finger was showing Melonie a bloody hoof. The song on the jukebox wound to a conclusion and Pink Overalls climbed off her stool.

“I'll be here too,” John said.

They were the first words John had spoken in some time and nobody seemed certain they had come from his mouth. Billy Chuck was the first to laugh. Sarah and Lisa joined in with a few others who had been eavesdropping. Someone bought him a drink. John again became more concerned with the state of his stomach and the ricocheting of the pool balls. But despite nausea and the unpleasantness of the conversation, something had told him that this was in line with a larger picture; Grandma had led him here for a reason. There was nothing for him back in Miami but the man he had left behind. Boonville was something he had to endure. He had the feeling he was going to be here for a while, a good long while, and eventually he would belong as much as anybody else. Then he could decide to leave.

“I'll be here too,” he repeated, emptying a shot glass.

“Damn straight! It takes more than bulls to have a rodeo,” Billy Chuck whooped, thumping John between the shoulder blades, almost causing him to expound further and less articulately. “A toast! To the new age of new locals, anyone after us is a tourist. No hard feelings.”

“Call me a bitch again,” Sarah said, “my knee's in your crotch.”

“Don't call me an asshole,” Billy Chuck replied. “In this age of equality, I ain't afraid to punch no woman.”

“Yeah?” Sarah said, her sternness giving way, clinking Billy
Chuck's beer can with her own. “Sounds like all we can ask for.”

She chugged the rest of her beer. Billy Chuck followed suit. Lisa ordered another round so they could all drink to the truce. “Tequiler to seal her,” she said, licking the fold of John's thumb and dosing him with salt. After swallowing the firewater, Sarah popped a lime in his mouth. John bit hard, then spit out the peel. He heard everyone claim “no hard feelings.” His eyes were heavy. He drooped low in his stool, beer held well below his knees, legs akimbo, room rotating to the baseline of the Wurlitzer. He snatched at a lyric, what sounded like: “If I get stoned and drink all night long, it's a family tradition.”

“Bahl hornin'!” Billy Chuck whooped.

Then somebody said something and there was a cheer and the bar was all motion like a fire drill or a hurricane warning and he was being pulled outside. He didn't think he could stand alone. But he had a new family and Billy Chuck was promising that nothing would happen to him as long as there was air in his lungs; Daryl could go fuck himself. John wasn't so sure about the air in his own lungs or Billy Chuck's sudden fraternity or who this Daryl was again and what was everybody hollering about. With each step less steady than the last, but all bringing him closer to the pulsating mob, he crossed the length of the Lodge's parking lot, wiggly beneath the night's sky. The fresh air was helping his stomach, but more than anything, right now, he wanted Christina. Not the woman who cared about what make of car they drove, but the carefree Christina who had made him feel safe and loved. He couldn't believe she wouldn't be in his bed tonight, giving purpose to his life. No more worrying about what's for breakfast, comments about his marketing strategies, arguing over who was hogging the covers. No snuggle-bunny.

Billy Chuck slapped his face and pointed to a figure across the street by the post office making a stamping motion with his leg, bellowing a chorus of moos. John was about to search for change and a telephone to call Christina, when he noticed the guy next to him breathing heavily and doing the same thing as the man across the street, pantomiming a farm animal. “One day, them Kurts brothers are going to kill themselves doing this,” a voice prophesied. And the two men ran toward one another, eating up the eighty yards of asphalt between them, throating low-pitched cowcalls and gaining speed, until in the center of the road,
on one of the hyphens of yellow that John could see would soon to be covered with blood, they collided with a butt of heads. There was a resounding pop. The brothers staggered, paindrunk. And collapsed.